"Waltz Me Around Again, Willie" RARE Irving Kaufman late in life GREAT SOUND Thesaurus Orthacoustic

Details

Description

Irving Kaufman sings "Waltz Me Around Again, Willie," the classic song by Will D. Cobb & Ren Shields.

Willie Fitzgibbons,
Who used to sell ribbons,
And stood up all day on his feet,
Grew very spoony
On Madelaine Mooney,
Who’d rather be dancing than eat.
Each evening she’d tag him,
To some dance hall drag him,
And when the band started to play,
She’d up like a silly,
And grab tired Willie,
Steer him on the floor and she’d say:
“Waltz me around again, Willie,
Around, around, around!
The music is dreamy,
It’s peaches and creamy,
O don’t let my feet touch the ground!
I feel like a ship on an ocean of joy --
I just want to holler out loud, ‘Ship Ahoy!’
Waltz me around again, Willie,
Around, around, around!”

In 1946 and 1947, Irving Kaufman recorded numbers to be broadcast on the radio show Music Hall Varieties.

Two dozen songs were pressed for the NBC-produced Thesaurus Orthacoustic, a radio transcription label, and distributed to stations.

Identified as a baritone (after decades of being called a tenor), he is accompanied by the Music Hall Varieties Orchestra, which used original arrangements.

The songs were popular ones from 1900 to 1920. Few were actually recorded by the young Kaufman.

Titles include "For Me And My Gal," "By the Beautiful Sea," "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (recorded on July 3, 1946, and pressed on Record 1362), "Bedelia," "Under The Bamboo Tree," "My Wife's Gone To The Country," and "Oh You Beautiful Doll."

Because he was in top vocal form and the best available recording technology was used, Kaufman himself told Quentin Riggs that he would be happy if future generations judged him on these Thesaurus recordings.

Promotional literature for the radio show states, "Kaufman is well-remembered for a five year coast-to-coast network stint as 'Lazy Dan, The Minstrel Man' and his many characterizations on top network and local programs. He is a master dialectician specializing in Irish, Jewish, Scotch, Negro, Italian and Chinese."

He continued making the occasional 78 rpm recording until 1947, the last being "The Curse of an Aching Heart" coupled with "Think It Over Mary" (originally issued on the Sterling label, also issued on the Bennett label). Around this time he also recorded for Sterling some Yiddish comedy songs like "Moe the Schmo Makes Love" and "Moe the Schmo Takes a Rhumba Lesson."

As recording studios relied less on him, he worked more on radio, sometimes accompanied by his wife Belle Brooks on organ or piano.

He continued performing on radio, in Broadway stage productions (including Kurt Weill's Street Scene in 1947), and in nightclubs until a heart attack in 1949 put a stop to these professional activities.

In August 1974 he recorded in his California home eight songs for a two-album set that reissued some of his old recordings, which means Kaufman's recording career spanned six decades, from 1914 to 1974. Titled Reminisce With Irving Kaufman, the lp was only briefly available.

He died in Indio, California, a month before his 86th birthday.