Who is a BUMMEL-PETRUS and why does he know PAUL TELEMANN?

I mentioned months ago that my friend Bert gave me a huge box of old sheet music. This piece is from that box.

I wish I could say I found a lot of interesting information about the composer and illustrator of the sheet music. Nope. This is not to say I didn't find enough to keep me happy, but you'll have to create your own narrative out of what I provide.

Click on any of the following four images to see them larger. They are as follows: front cover, inside cover, first page of music, back cover. NOTE that I do not know who did the inside and back cover art.

Bummel-Petrus is a song once popular in Germany in the 1920s written by M. Werner-Kersten. As you can see, by the battle-of- the-bands below, it's apparently still popular. Think beer and pretzels as you sing along.

So what is a Bummel-Petrus?

Bummel-Petrus is a very amusing song from the 1920's about St. Peter creeping from heaven with a 'heavenly' young lady for a night on the town. Before leaving he locks the gates of Heaven. After a 'great' night out he arrives back only to find that he has lost the keys and is thus caught and all the angels in heaven are in stitches at the old saint's impropriety.

The Bummel-Petrus song was written 1920 after the WorldWar I in a crazy and high spirited Berlin. (SOURCE: Andre Rerieu Translations)

Click on the source above to go to a page which shows the songs words in German along with an English translation.

I find no biographical information about the composer, M. Werner-Kersten. Zip, nada, zero. Even in a hardback book full of biographies he or she didn't make the cut. Nor did I find any biographical information about the illustrator, Paul Telemann, which isn't to say I didn't find a lot of examples of his work, mostly sheet music.

The following images, all by Telemann, can be found online at Images Musicales along with many many more.

Here and here you will find bookplates done by Telemann in 1904.

Below is another piece of sheet music he illustrated in 1908.

(SOURCE: Wikipedia)

Hopefully someday I'll find more information about this illustrator. Until then oomp-pa-pa, oomp-pa-pa...

Okay, now for the hip-hop version...

MAY IRWIN in MRS. BLACK IS BACK

I've had this card in my collection for several years having bought it at an estate sale. Until today I never bothered to really look at it. What I've found is rather interesting.

Click on either image to see it larger.

The card was sent on June 18, 1907 to Miss Belle Gordy in Santa Rosa, California from her friend Edith. That's not the interesting part.

Nor is the publisher, Carter & Gut, all that interesting.

Note the caption on the front:

May Irwin and Company

MRS. BLACK IS BACK

So who is May Irwin and why should we be worried that Mrs. Black is back?

May Irwin (June 27, 1862 – October 22, 1938), was a Canadian actress, singer and star of vaudeville.

Born at Whitby, Ontario 1862 as Georgina May Campbell, her father Robert E. Campbell of Whitby, Ontario died when she was 13 years old and her stage-minded mother, Jane Draper in need of money, encouraged May and her younger sister Flora to perform. Creating a singing act, billed as the `Irwin Sisters` debuted at the Adelphi Theatre, in nearby Buffalo, New York in December 1874. By the fall of 1877, their career had progressed, and they were booked to appear at New York's Metropolitan Theater then at the Tony Pastor Theatre, a popular New York City music hall.

The Irwin sisters proved popular enough to earn regular spots for the ensuing six years after which a 21-year-old May Irwin set out on her own. She joined Augustin Daly's stock company from 1883 to 1887, where she made her first appearance on the theatrical stage. This comedienne was known for her improvisation skills. An immediate success she went on to make her London stage debut at Toole's Theatre in August 1884. In 1886 her husband of eight years, Frederick W. Keller, died unexpectedly. Her sister Flora married Senator Grady.

By the early 1890s, May Irwin had married a second time and developed her career into that of a leading vaudeville performer with an act known at the time as "Coon Shouting" in which she performed African American influenced songs. In the 1895 Broadway show The Widow Jones, she introduced "The Bully Song" which became her signature number. The performance also featured a lingering kiss which was seen by Thomas Edison who hired Irwin and her co-star John C. Rice to repeat the scene on film. In 1896, Edison's Kinetoscope production, The Kiss, became the first screen kiss in cinematic history.

Among her own pieces have been : " The Widow Jones," " The Swell Miss Fitzswell," "Courted into Court," "Kate Kip-Buyer," "Sister Mary," etc.

In addition to her performing and singing, May Irwin also wrote the lyrics to several songs, including "Hot Tamale Alley," with music written by George M. Cohan. In 1907 she married her manager, Kurt Eisfeldt, the same year she began making records for Berliner/Victor. Several of these recordings survive and give a notion of the actress's appeal.

May Irwin's buxom figure was much in vogue at the time and combined with her charming personality, for more than thirty years she was one of America's most beloved performers. In 1914, she made her second silent film appearance, this time in the feature-length adaptation of George V. Hobart's play, Mrs. Black is Back, produced by Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company and filmed for the most part at her own sprawling home in New York. Still pictures, showing May, survive from this movie.

A highly paid performer, Irwin was a shrewd investor and became a very wealthy woman. She spent a great deal of time at a summer home on secluded Club Island a small island off of Grindstone Island of the Thousand Islands and at her winter home on Merritt Island, Florida before retiring to a farm near Clayton, New York, where a street would eventually be named in her honor.

Personal life

May Irwin was married twice. First Frederick W. Keller, of St. Louis from 1878 until his death in 1886. From 1907 to the end of her life she was married to Kurt Eisenfeldt. The couple lived at West 44th Street, New York.

May Irwin had two sons by her first marriage, Walter Keller (born ca. 1879) and Harry Keller (b. 1882).

Death

May Irwin died in New York City on October 22, 1938, aged 76. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

So what was Mrs. Black is Back about?

Based on a play by George V. Hobart, the story concerns a peppery middle-aged widow who claims to be only 29 years old. Despite the fact that she is obviously well along in years, Mrs. Black (Irwin) is able to convince a marriageable professor (Charles Lane) that she is indeed as young as she claims. But what is the prof to make of the fact that Mrs. Black has a grown son named Jack (Elmer Booth), who is himself well past the age of consent? Featured in the cast as Mrs. Mason was (Clara Blandick), best known for her work as Auntie Em in 1939's The Wizard of Oz. —Hal Erickson, Rovi (SOURCE: NY Times)

Hankering to hear May sing? Just click below to here her sing "Don't Argify". Want to hear the other songs? Click on the source below the list. WARNING: Some of the songs are offensive.

(SOURCE: Archive.org)

How about the famous May Irwin kiss?

All these years this card has been stuck in an album and I never once paid any attention to what it was. Only because I have a headache and grew weary of the work I need to do did I decide to see where this old piece of ephemera would take me.

I might still have the headache, but at least I'm not feeling so weary. In fact after listening to those tunes I'm absolutely serene.

KORLA PANDIT and the BLUES

We had a lot of odd and interesting things that ended up in the family cabin from other folks cabins. Friends sold and moved away and we got items they didn't want. Oh how fortuitous was that? How else would I have ended up with this Korla Pandit album?

Korla Pandit was an organist who is all but forgotten by most people. If you're around 60 you might recall the name and the image, but not the music. If you're in your 80's to early 90's he was your contemporary and you most likely heard him on the radio or television.

I actually only have vague memories of him. I hear the name "Korla Pandit" and I think turban. Who knew the whole bit with the turban was fake? Not me.

Korla Pandit (September 16, 1921 – October 2, 1998), born John Roland Redd in St. Louis, Missouri, was a musician, composer, pianist, organist and television pioneer. He was known as the Godfather of Exotica.

His first work for radio was in 1938 with the Central Broadcasting Company in Des Moines, Iowa. Arriving in Los Angeles, California by 1939, John Roland Redd donned a turban and performed under the name Juan Rolando. His sister, Frances Redd, was an actress in the film Midnight Shadow (1939), and his turban resembled the one worn by John Criner's character, Prince Alihabad, in Midnight Shadow.

During the mid-1940s, as Juan Rolando, he played the organ on the Los Angeles radio station KMPC, and he performed in various supper clubs and lounges. He also was heard on Jubilee, the program of black jazz and swing bands transcribed by the Special Services of the War Department for airing to WWII servicemen overseas.

In 1944, he married Disney artist Beryl June DeBeeson, and the two reinvented his image, eventually replacing "Juan Rolando" with "Korla Pandit" and fabricating a romantic history for him as a baby born in New Delhi, India to a Brahmin priest and a French opera singer, who traveled from India via England, finally arriving in the United States.

In 1948, while performing in Hollywood at a furrier's fashion show in Tom Breneman's Restaurant, Korla and Beryl met television pioneer Klaus Landsberg who offered Korla his own 15-minute daily television show with the stipulation that he would also provide musical accompaniment for , Bob Clampett's popular puppet show which featured Stan Freberg and Daws Butler as puppeteers and voices. Korla and Beryl's son, Shari Pandit, was born August 5, 1948.

Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music was first telecast on Los Angeles station KTLA in February 1949, and viewers soon became familiar with the musical opening, "The Magnetic Theme." Landsberg insisted that Korla not speak but instead simply gaze dreamily into the camera as he played the Hammond organ and Steinway grand piano, often simultaneously. Following Klaus's directorial and contractual stipulations, Pandit became an overnight star and one of early television's pioneering musical artists.

In 1951, Pandit left KTLA in a deal with Louis D. Snader of Snader Telescriptions, resulting in short films which gave Pandit a national TV audience. However, problems with contract negotiations prompted Snader to replace Pandit with Liberace by 1953, which launched the pianist to fame. Pandit then did a show on KGO in San Francisco.

In the 1970s, when his television popularity waned, Pandit supplemented his income with increased personal appearances at supper clubs, supermarket openings, car agencies, music and department stores, pizza restaurants, lectures, music seminars, private lessons and the theater organ circuit. He made a cameo appearance in Tim Burton's biographical film, Ed Wood (1994), playing himself. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

I'm trying to imagine how all of this worked. Did he do a fake Indian accent when he made appearances? Exactly how much did he stay in character? I have no idea.

To see more about Korla go to the Korla Pandit website which was run by a fan.

Enjoy!

JANVIER T. LEE'S Moment of recognition

Do you have newspaper clippings that extol about a relative or friend? Little pieces of ephemera filed away that you occasionally come upon?

I have several, including one about myself, well actually a drawing I did that was published in the Honolulu Star Bulletin. Most of the others are about my dad or mother. I do have one about a friend who was a singer, one of a friend dressed in a bikini for a local department store, and one of a friend winning a prize. Someday someone will find these after I've died and simply toss them. The person featured in the clipping will find that their fleeting moment of "fame" is officially over.

This fellow, Janvier T. Lee, has probably run close to the end of his shelf life. This clipping is in the Montez Lawton scrapbook. Google his name and nothing shows up. Dig a little deeper and I find that he died on March 7, 1989 at the age of 75 in Danville, California. He was born November 11, 1913 in Nebraska. Doing a small amount of math would indicate this clipping appeared in a local San Francisco Bay Area newspaper in 1946.

The store mentioned, Lucky, was a grocery store. Several years ago it went out of business. Then another company bought what was left of it, including the signage, and opened them back up.

I'm fascinated by how much ephemera I have, including photo collections, that belonged to people originally from Nebraska. How did so much ephemera end up from Nebraska in my hands. I can't think of any other state that features as prominently in my collection.

MAURICE THOMAS meets Barbara Cartland

It would be too easy for me to write a snarky post about author Barbara Cartland. To those that didn't like her writing she became a caricature of the whole romance novel genre. She cranked out books like McDonalds cranks out burgers. Her physical appearance was of thin blond cotton candy hair, a ton of makeup, a sagging jowl, and pink; everything was pink. But people loved her.

Dame (Mary) Barbara Hamilton Cartland, DBE, CStJ (9 July 1901 – 21 May 2000), was an English author, one of the most prolific authors of the 20th century. As Barbara Cartland she is known for her numerous romantic novels, but she also wrote under her married name Barbara McCorquodale.

She also became one of London's most prominent society figures and one of Britain's most popular media personalities, appearing often at public events and on television, dressed in her trademark pink and discoursing on love, health, and social and political issues. She is widely regarded as having originated the phrase: "I'm bringing sexy back", as popularised by singer Justin Timberlake.

Cartland is the seventh most translated author in the world and published 723 books. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

I can still remember a tv show doing a piece about her which had me shaking my head. It showed Cartland relaxing on a settee, in full Cartland garb, dictating a novel to a secretary. I was dumbfounded by how this stuff just rolled off her tongue.

"No! No! Alex…no!”

The protest was not vehement, and the man whose lips were very close to Romina’s smiled a little smile of triumph before he answered:

“Why fight? You love me—I know you do. Stop fighting, Romina, and let us be happy. I will teach you what love really is—glorious, wonderful, overwhelming.”

The deep voice with its faint accent was hypnotic. So was the soft, experienced touch of his hands, and Romina felt herself drifting into a No-Man’s-Land of warmth and feeling. (from Danger by the Nile)

For those who need more of Barbara you'll be happy to know she has a website.

This book is another one from the cabin. I have never read it.

What about the illustrator of this book cover, Maurice Thomas? He actually gets credit on the copyright page. I know I've done a post about some of his work, but now can't find it. He was known for doing romance novels and pulp fiction covers. If I ever figure out which post from the past contained information about him I'll add a link to this post.

In the meantime here is a link to a site showing another one of his illustrations, including an original.

This book was published in September of 1967.