Jonesing for THE WIZ

One of the more unusual WIZ related items I have is this "promotional" LP recording of an interview with Quincy Jones, the musical supervisor for the movie version of The Wiz (among many other credits). The album was sent out to radio stations in 1978 to publicize the forthcoming film.

The interviewer on the disc is rather lackluster. I suspect the idea was that the local DJ would re-record the questions and make it seem like an actual "local" interview was taking place.

There's some interesting material in the interview - one being how important Jones thought the new song "Is This What Feeling Gets?" was to the score. The song was a rather angry and bitter lament sung by Dorothy in the Emerald City Hotel after the Wiz tells them to go kill Evillene. The song serves as Dorothy's theme and appears as underscoring in the film - including a big swell just as Dorothy returns home in the snow. Yet, by the time the film hit the screen the song was cut. The full song is included on the published soundtrack album.

So now that I've whetted your appetite you can actually listen to the interview which is playing twice daily on Emerald City Radio for the next two weeks.

It's easy to listen to Emerald City Radio on Live365. Just click here to go to Live365 and click "Sign Up" in the upper right hand corner and join for free for access to thousands of internet radio stations. Then "Log In" and make a search for Emerald City Radio. When the Emerald City Radio logo shows up in your search results, just click on the logo to start listening right away! Listening is free.

So come on and give Emerald City Radio a try. Our current playlist is over 12 hours long with such a wide variety of Oz songs and music that you're sure to hear some old friends and some new delights.

Emerald City Radio - all great, all powerful - all the time! 

Just for the Record

Eloise Jarvis McGraw - early 1960s

My fondness for Ozzy and Oz-related recordings should come as no surprise to my readers - I have Ozzy recordings on everything from wax cylinders to eight tracks, from midis to mp3s.

My readers should also be aware of my interest in Royal Historian of Oz Eloise Jarvis McGraw. I was very excited a couple months ago to find two Oz-related LPs (I had never known existed) that fit neatly into both Ozzy interests.

Three of Eloise's non-Oz children's books were nominated for the prestigious Newbery Award - Moccasin Trail (1952), The Golden Goblet (1961), and The Moorchild (1996). It seems that in the mid-1970s the Newbery Awards produced a series of children's records of Newbery winners and Newbery Honor books.

The recording of The Golden Goblet was released in 1973 and the recording of Moccasin Trail came out in 1976.

The recordings are limited to one LP record each, and they are dramatizations with music, sound effects, and multiple actors, rather than a "reading" of the text. They are very well produced (as one would expect from the Newbery Awards).

These recordings were clearly made for school room and library use rather than for sale to the general public. The back of each record jacket features a synopsis, list of characters, background information on Ancient Egypt, Oregon, the Westward Movement, etc., as well as vocabulary words and "follow-up" activities.

I find no evidence that this sort of recording of The Moorchild was ever produced, though there is an unabridged version of The Moorchild produced by Recorded Books read by Virginia Leishman. In any case I'm quite pleased to have found copies of these two most unusual Oz-related recordings.

Return to Oz - Return to the '80s

A friend from England just sent me this charming little record. I've known about it for a while; I even have an mp3 recording of the song. But until now I didn't have the actual 45 rpm disc. Now I do.

The song is wonderfully mid 80s and extremely Ozzy in its lyrics. I'm not sure why Victoria Wood recorded it. It was not used in the film in any way. Wood is best known in the UK for writing humorous songs. This one is fairly atypical. But I actually really like it.

So, click the video below to hear Victoria Wood's Return to Oz!

Heavy Metal in 1903

About fifteen years ago I began collecting very old recordings from the 1903 Wizard of Oz musical. I found many 78rpm records, old wax recording cylinders, and player piano rolls.

But a few years into my little obsession I made the acquaintance of a fellow Oz fan and vintage recording buff. She said she owned two Mira music box discs featuring songs from the 1903 Wizard, and asked if I'd like to hear them. Of course I said yes, and a week later I got a tape of her two Wizard of Oz discs, Must You? and Sammy. They were charming and tinkly and a very neat find.

The next year my friend came to the Winkie Convention and brought the two music box discs for her show-and-tell. They were made of heavy gauge steel, 15" in diameter, with holes punched through the steel leaving sharp teeth sticking out the back. The disc could easily double as a nutmeg grater!

I included recordings of both my friend's discs on my 2 CD set Vintage Recordings from the 1903 Wizard of Oz. Since the CD came out a couple mores discs have surfaced featuring the Oz songs, The Bullfrog and the Coon, and I Love Only One Girl in this Wide, Wide, World. I eventually acquired a few for my own collection including the Must You? disc shown above. That one is actually a smaller 7" disc - and it has a much shorter playing time than the big ones.

Steel music box discs were produced by many different companies in the early 1900s. They came in all sizes, too, ranging from 5" mini-discs on up to 33" monsters. There were many competing brands and, for the most part, one company's discs will not play on another company's machine.

You can find out more about the song Must You? in our TIGER TUNES Archive. You can listen to a 1903 Edison cylinder recording of the song, follow along with the lyrics, and even download the sheet music.

Okay, it's time to give this steel Frisbee, this musical cheese-grater, a spin! I don't actually own a player, but a friend generously made a video of the disc in action for me. So click below and listen to Must You? from the 1903 Wizard of Oz.

Oz Connection Connected

Thanks to all of you who submitted answers to this installment of Oz Connection. None of your responses were the connections I had in mind, but that's just fine! There is no single correct way to connect someone to Oz!

Bill Lee

I've now posted all of the Connection threads that were sent in - so go back one blog and read the comments section to see how our readers' minds work. Okay, here's how I'm connecting these three gentlemen to Oz.

Christopher Plummer is best known for his starring role in the movie version of The Sound of Music. In the film, Plummer's singing was dubbed by Bill Lee who did a lot of voiceover work, much of it for Walt Disney. Bill Lee provided the singing voice for Woot the Wanderer in Walt Disney's 1970 children's story book recording of The Tin Woodman of Oz. Lee, as Woot, sings a love duet with Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter, called, "I Found My True Love." In the Disney recording Woot and Poly get hitched!

I thought F. Scott Fitzgerald might be too easy because of his very direct Oz Connection. He wrote a short-story called "Outside the Cabinet-Makers" in which a father entertains his daughter by making up a fairytale about the people they see on the street. The father describes all sorts of things, including an ogre, who is "transformed like Mombi in The Land of Oz." The story was originally published in the December 1928 issue of The Century Magazine. I reprinted the piece in Oz-story No. 1.

Last but not least, we come to Ludwig van Beethoven. The most direct connection is that the "Ode to Joy," choral section of the Ninth Symphony also served as the tune to The Seekers' 1967 recording "Emerald City." It's a good song and surprisingly unknown among most Oz enthusiasts. The song lyrics were written by Kim Fowley and Keith Potger (under the name of John Martin). You can listen to "Emerald City" from the YouTube link below:

Sweet Sixteen-and-two-thirds!

There's a pretty good collection of old Ozzy recordings here in the Tiger Den and one of the more unusual ones is this cute little set I found in a Goodwill store in Albuquerque when I was about fifteen. I think it probably cost me about twenty-five cents.

This little album measures 7.5" x 7.5" and holds five small records the size of 45s. However, these are recorded at the arcane speed of 16 and 2/3s RPM. This was a short-lived format for making talking books. This very slow turntable speed was not adequate for music but worked fine for spoken dialogue. Indeed this little set contains the entire text of L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz read aloud on its ten sides. Back then my Dad's phonograph had a 16 2/3 speed setting and I listened to the recording. It was pretty good as I recall. My current phonograph does NOT have this speed on it but it could be easily played by recording it at 33 1/3 RPM and cutting the speed by half in a computer-based sound editor.

This set was released in 1956 the year Wizard entered Public Domain.It was produced by the Audio Book Company of St. Joseph, Michigan.

Each spread of the album is illustrated in color showing a scene from the book. (See below) It's a really beautifully produced little album and one I have not seen come up for sale very often. That Goodwill in Albuquerque gave me several neat finds; but none as cool as this one.

The Wiz and Me - Part Two

Recently I blogged about the first time I saw the original Broadway tour of The Wiz on stage and how it pushed me into a career in the theatre.

I began my theatre work as a Production Assistant at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. In 1984 I was working on a musical that was being choreographed by a lovely woman named Carmen De Lavallade. On opening night I discovered that Carmen De Lavallade was married to Geoffrey Holder and that HE was coming to the opening night performance!

Geoffrey Holder was the director, costume designer, and artistic conscience of the original production of The Wiz. He is also an actor and he had recently played Punjab in the film version of Annie and was well known for his 7-Up commercials as the "un-cola" man. I mentioned to Carmen that I wanted to meet him and she said, "Of course!"

I'd had only a little warning. I called home and asked my mom to bring me my Wiz LP which she kindly did. I also borrowed the Polaroid camera from the stage management office and snapped one photo of him (see above).

Carmen introduced us, but he was on his way out to a party. There was only time for a quick hello. I told him The Wiz tour had been what made me go into theatre work. Then Geoffrey Holder signed my Wiz album. I wished we'd had a chance for a longer conversation - but that would have to wait until our next meeting.

Ozma meets the Lorax

As almost all Oz fans know, August 21st is Princess Ozma's birthday. And while we could have birthday cake and a glass of Lacasa, I decided to present the story of Ozma and the Lorax.

However, in today's blog the Lorax is not Dr. Suess's  moustachioed, tree-loving furball, and Ozma is not our beloved Princess.

Instead Ozma is the name of a record album by the grunge band the Melvins produced by Boner records in 1989. There isn't any Oz content except for the album art, which is taken from John R. Neill's endpaper design for the original edition of The Emerald City of Oz. Note, too, that Ozma's crown has been redesigned to sport an M instead of a Z.

But there is one other Oz connection that some folks may not be aware of. The bassist for the Melvins was Lori "Lorax" Black. And Lori is the daughter of Shirley Temple. Shirley loved Oz from her youngest days, she is long rumored to have been a possible casting choice as Dorothy in the MGM Wizard of Oz film, and she eventually starred in the 1960 TV production of The Land of Oz where she herself played Princess Ozma! Little Lorax was six when her mom starred in The Land of Oz. Pictured above are Lorax, her mother, and The Beatles.

The Melvins' Ozma is really not my kind of music. I suspect it isn't a favorite in the Emerald City either - where, in fact, Eureka and Bungle have started a boycott of the album after they saw the photo of Lorax on the album's liner notes (see below). Apparently they don't like the way Lorax plays with her cat. I've told them that the cat actually doubles as Lorax's bass guitar. Happy Birthday, Ozma!

 

Keeping a Record

After writing a few days ago about how I was first introduced to Baum's Oz, I got to thinking about my earliest Oz memories, and that made me think of this record.

I probably saw the MGM Wizard of Oz film for the first time when I was four or five years old. I watched it on a small black-and-white television my parents kept in the kitchen. After I'd seen the movie this couple times, but before I'd discovered the Oz books, I can remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom staring at this record jacket and playing the record on my small phonograph. My Dad was a Hi-Fi nut and so of course I had my own phonograph from before I can remember.

This album is rather odd and it confused me greatly for a year or so. But I loved the cover art. I could look at it for hours - and did! The confusing part to my five year old self was separating the conflicting imagery on the album cover from my memories of the film. On the one hand the Scarecrow looks quite a bit like Ray Bolger; yet the Cowardly lion seems to be a real Lion. I knew the characters were portrayed by actors - my Mom had explained all that - and I'd heard all about Bert Lahr and Judy Garland. But how, I wondered, did Jack Haley get his legs inside those super narrow tin legs in the costume on the record album? And why does Dorothy look sorta ... well ... different? She reminded me of Kathy Garver on Family Affair but with a That Girl! flip hairstyle.

But the songs on the album were really confusing!  Side A features Disney Studio singers performing four songs from the MGM film - plus a song called "Happy Glow" subtitled The Scarecrow Song. Having only seen the movie two times at this point (and each viewing a year apart) my six-year-old imagination plugged this oddball song into my memories of the film. Side B of the album was even weirder. It featured songs from something called The Cowardly Lion of Oz. I paid little attention to this and think on the whole I didn't like the B side much. But I remember when I next saw the movie,  the year after I got the album, that I was really surprised when Margaret Hamilton didn't sing "Just Call Smarmy." In the year of playing the record to pieces, my imagination had smooshed this song into my memories of the film.

This Disneyland LP was originally released in 1969. That year The Wizard of Oz aired on March 9th. I suspect that I got the record shortly after seeing the movie on TV. I have one other major Oz memory from 1969. I was lying in bed and supposed to be asleep. I could hear my Mom and Dad in the kitchen watching the news on the little black-and-white TV that I'd watched The Wizard of Oz on a few months before. My Mom heard me stirring and she came in to check on me; she was obviously kind of upset. She said, "Honey, Judy Garland died tonight."

I don't think I knew exactly what it meant. But I remember asking her if we could still watch The Wizard of Oz on TV. I worried that if Judy Garland was dead, somehow the movie might cease to exist, too. Or perhaps I thought of it as something that was enacted live each year.

Mom assured me that we could still watch the movie. And of course we did. Who's to think one could get nostalgic for watching The Wizard of Oz on a ten inch black-and-white television with commercial interruptions.

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught - BLOG 50!

Wow! Fifty blogs in fifty days! It's really kinda surprising. Today you get the story of how I was introduced to Oz and the bizarrely coincidental twist that set everything in motion.

I had first seen the MGM film when I was about four or five, and I had liked it. But my real introduction to the real Oz was in second grade at Monte Vista Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where my teacher, Mrs. Strong, read us the Baum Oz books a few chapters a day after lunch. I was utterly hooked and soon made my Mom buy me the Rand McNally paperback Oz books that were just then being released. But there is a fascinating back story to all this that I didn't discover until thirty years later.

As many of you know, in the mid 1990s I became very interested in old, old recordings from the 1903 Broadway Wizard of Oz musical and I began researching and collecting 78s, wax recording cylinders, piano rolls, and the like. The first time I ever spoke publicly about old Oz records was at the 1996 Oz convention in Louisville, Kentucky. Jane Albright, who attended my talk, told me she'd recently heard from an Oz Club member in California who had several old Oz records. Jane suggested I contact her, which I did as soon as I got home. Her name was Virginia Hawthorn. We talked on the phone and Virginia sent me a tape with a number of Oz records on it, recordings of "Sammy" from the 1903 Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow and Tin  Woodman’s "Football Song," and even a record of some of L. Frank Baum's Father Goose jingles. I quickly found out that Virginia and her husband Tom also ran one of the best vintage recording auctions. I was soon buying lots of stuff from their auctions:  Very little Oz material, but lots of early 1900s pop music and vintage opera.

Well, Virginia and I became friends. We exchanged recording information on occasion. And after Eric and I moved to California, we would meet Virginia and her husband Tom a couple times a year at an old record show, or if Tom and Virginia were down in San Diego we might go to dinner.

Several years ago, Eric and I were visiting the Hawthorns at their home in Roseville, California, and as we were chatting over iced tea I mentioned that I grew up in Albuquerque. And Virginia said:

 "Wow, so did I! What part of the city did you live in? Where did you go to school?"

I rattled off various schools I'd attended - one of them being Monte Vista Elementary School where I'd gone for 1st and 2nd grade.

"I went to Monte Vista, too! Who were your teachers?"

"Well," I replied, "First grade was Mrs. Flanagan, and second grade was Mrs. Strong." (shown at right)

"I had Mrs Strong, too!"

In dumbfounded amazement, I said, "You know, it was Mrs Strong who introduced me to the Oz books!" Then the stars fell into alignment, Ozma smiled, and Virginia said,

“Well, I introduced the Oz books to Mrs. Strong!"

Virginia explained to me that when she had been in Mrs. Strong's class, a generation earlier, the class had been very large. And to calm the unruly kids down after lunch Mrs. Strong would read aloud to the class. She asked for book suggestions and little Virginia quickly suggested the Oz books and even brought a few in. Oz became a tradition in Mrs. Strong's class. For twenty-five years, until her retirement, she read the Oz books aloud to a group of eager six and seven-year-olds. I was one of the lucky kids.

So, as you've just finished reading blog fifty, it's important to realize that had Virginia not introduced Mrs. Strong to the Oz books, and had Mrs. Strong not made the Oz books into a classroom tradition, and had I not been in Mrs. Strong's class, well . . . there might just be no Tiger Talk blog, or Hungry Tiger Press, and Eric Shanower might be the husband of someone else!

Special thanks to Mrs. Lena Z. Strong and Virginia Hawthorn for affecting my life so thoroughly.

Oz from Elsewhere

Foreign translations of the Oz books are another passion here in the Tiger Den. The widely varying illustration styles are one of the big draws. In general, foreign illustrators are not nearly as influenced (or ham-strung) by the MGM Wizard of Oz film as American illustrators often are.

Oz has been especially popular in Japan, and this little picture book is a favorite. This edition of The Wizard of Oz - translated as Ozu no Mahoutsukai - was published by Asahi Sonorama of Tokyo in 1980. The translation and adaptation are by Atsuko Nakamura and the illustrations are by Satoru Inoue.

This picture-book Wizard contains only twelve pages and most of them are double page spreads, many of which are quite attractive. The style is a bit cartoony - not quite Anime. I especially like the Tin Woodman. I'm not fond of the Dorothy - but pink poodle Toto is kind of a hoot! I especially like the spread for the fight with the Kalidahs (shown below).

Another cool thing about this edition is that it includes a small phonograph record (playing time about fifteen minutes) of the story, using different voices for each character and with charming little Oz songs sung in Japanese.

The Original RETURN TO OZ

I especially love finding Ozzy things that I didn't previously know existed. This 12" LP recording was certainly a surprise. It is an album of all the music from the 1964 Rankin Bass Videocraft Production of Return to Oz. This animated television feature was released as a follow-up to the short-lived Tales of the Wizard of Oz television cartoon series.

The record was produced for internal studio use and was seemingly distributed to the production staff only. The record label says "Not for Sale or Broadcast" and has a copyright date of 1963, the year before the film was broadcast. The record has music on only one side and the back is blank, containing neither label nor sound. The copyright is to FTP music, Inc., the initials of the three songwriters: Gene Forrell, Edward Thomas, and James Pollack.

When I re-watched the film recently to compare the film score to the newly acquired LP, I was surprised by two things. First, the film was better and much more enjoyable than I had remembered. The early 1960s design and animation has a charming retro feel to it now, instead of just looking cartoony and cheap, as I'd remembered it.

The second surprise was that the LP features a song that was not used in the final version of the film called "I'm a Wise Old Wiz of a Wizard," which is sung by the Wizard, of course. Otherwise the music on the record matches the music for the film. It's a neat little record.

Before the Rainbow - Designer Dilemmas

One of the most enjoyable parts of owning Hungry Tiger Press is designing the books and CDs. One of my favorite projects was designing the label for our first compact disc, Before the Rainbow; The Original Music of Oz, back in 1999. The CD is a collection of very rare Oz music and included a suite from the 1903 Wizard of Oz, long medleys from The Woggle-Bug and The Tik-Tok Man of Oz,  music from the 1913 film score for The Patchwork Girl of Oz,  and even music composed by L. Frank Baum himself for his plays The Maid of Arran and Prince Silverwings.

The booklet design was pretty straightforward. I used a 1903 poster featuring Montgomery and Stone as the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman for the booklet cover. I pulled an illustration of Tik-Tok from the more common red background Tik-Tok Man of Oz sheet music for the back cover of the booklet. And I used a photograph of the Cowardly Lion from the 1903 Wizard for the back of the CD case.

But I was stuck for what to do with the design for the actual disc itself. I've always liked CDs to be decorative, not just typography on the shiny silver disc. But CD label design is a little tricky. It's like designing a picture and typography that have to be printed on a doughnut. I looked through all of my notes and the assorted sheet music. Then I came across the alternate Tik-Tok Man of Oz sheet music cover that was used for Victor Schertzinger's interpolations.

"Hmmm," I thought, "too bad that decorative orange border isn't round . . ." And  instantly I saw the finished label design in my head. I scanned the sheet music and dropped out  the color, thus turning the image into a clean black and white illustration which I printed out in several sizes. I got out a piece of illustration board and my trusty compass and began to draw a number of concentric circles in the proportion of a CD label.

I cut out the faces of Tik-Tok and the Shaggy Man from my print-outs and positioned them on the right and left sides. I also cut out four of the the little "clock face" girls and positioned them, leaving room at the top for the title of the CD and at the bottom for credits and the copyright notice. The penciled circular lines were inked in and the new image was scanned back into the computer. The CD label was to be silk-screened onto the discs, and I was limited to two colors, so I picked a navy blue for the line art and made a second layer of color for the orange background in the top and bottom sections. I added the desired typography to the blue layer and at the last minute added an orange tone into the circles with the "clock face" girls.

 

I like to think it was a subconscious design choice, but it might have only been serendipity, that my orange and blue CD label so closely matched the orange and blue color scheme of the poster I had already used for the CD booklet cover. In any case, I was very proud of the look of my first compact disc.

The CD has been out for eleven years now and there are only a handful of copies left. If you don't already have one, this is a great time to check it out.

Before the Rainbow - The Original Music of Oz