Although we didn't know it at the time:
Elisabeth Serenade.
Our orchestra was trying to find The Definitive Chart for this to use at this season's Christmas Concert this coming up Friday night We tried Mantovani's original
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpdkUmtBaeU but that didn't have the punch we were looking for.
We tried the remake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T74GH28jFNQ but that was too fast and kind of thin-sounding - then we tried Gunter Kallmann's first hit version from 1963 that put them on the map
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzw8OmVeh7o but that was TOO MUCH in your face like old schlager music... WAAAYYYYY too sweet.
We needed something like a Sinatra feel - you know - strong and tender at the same time and this was just not it.
And then it was September already and we had to pick one to start rehearsals with. Running out of options like I said, we went to the basement of the school's Music Library hoping to find some forgotten gem there.
Nothing in the CDs, nothing in the LPs, nothing in the 45s and the only place left was the lockers in the tunnels underneath the football stadium. But the only thing in there was piles and piles and piles of 78's that hadn't seen the light of day for 60 years.
By this time we had given up on ever finding a decent arrangement - but as the days went by and we were playing every 78 from a row of lockers a mile long looking for something else good to replace it with that hadn't been done to death already - despair was starting to set in along with the September chill.
So we rehearsed with the charts we had for maybe a couple weeks, but nobody could get any heart into it - just kind of laid there on the floor.
Going back to the lockers in the tunnel for a second try a few days later, it was getting late and cold and hungry out. All of a sudden, we're all ssstrrrraaainnnnnniiiinnngggg to hear one of the standup bass players voices appearing to come faintly from the next county, but actually bellowing out from down the hall GOOOTTTTT OOONNNEEEEEE!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XseKcA1VK4M&t=184s slide over to 2:45
We all ran down to hear on this crappy little portable that was in one of the lockers and said `This is worth taking back upstairs (to hear on proper equipment)'. So we went back to the band room and put this on an old transcription player they had in there and blasted it out through the 1959 McIntosh tube amps and Altec Voice of the Theatre shoulder-high and arm-span wide speakers we'd rescued years earlier from the school cafetorium.
Chairman of the music department was in class upstairs of the band room and felt the floors vibrate - as did everybody else in the building. But before tripping the earthquake alarm, he rang downstairs on the in house phone to see what we were up to.
Of course when we picked up the phone and the record came screaming over the receiver he marched his 450 lb frame up the stairs ready to tackle anybody who got in his way.
Fortunately for us it was five sets of stairs to get to the production booth instead of just two - so by the time he was pounding on the door he had pretty much run out of gas by then. He collapsed on a chair, we handed him an inhaler and once he could talk again all he said was `Where'd you get that at? It's just what you need for your concert.
A week later we'd gotten Goodwin's chart and we tried it out til like maybe 11 or 12 at night - by which time we were all fairly punchy. Some of the choir came in on their way home from their own rehearsal upstairs - and we were just trying to lay down a couple takes for reference and review and what did we want to do with it before we went home ourselves.
By this time the theatre troupe and the tech staff were all through with their own rehearsals, and the jazz band was letting out and etc etc so in the space of twenty minutes we had a hundred people squashed into a gallery designed for 25.
So we took it from the top straight off the chart and by halfway through - girls were sniveling and one of the hard-boiled football boys blew his nose like in a cartoon and hollered out CAN WE GET A MOP AND A BUCKET IN HERE!
That's when we knew.
The janitors saw us in the tunnels that day back in September dragging through the lockers, so last Friday night after football they snagged one of the gang and said `You know if you want any more of that stuff, we're supposed to be throwing it all in the dumpster over Christmas Break since the athletic department wants the lockers.
Guess what all the orchestra and choir and recording and production and stagecraft and etc guys were doing all weekend long? Moving them to the old instrument storage in the back of the band room and choir room - both of which you have to now suck in your belly just to get through the door nevermind be able to walk around.
But at least they ain't all going into the garbage over Christmas Break. So if anybody is walking by campus lately and you see a music building tilting precariously to the south like the Leaning Tower of Pizza we had in here over the weekend - you'll know why.
Anybody want about a hundred thousand classical and light orchestral 78's from the 30's to the 50's that got taken out of a couple hundred chemical type lockers? Otherwise we are going to be One Set of Busy Guys come January for cataloguing and sleeving.
And here is Goodwin's original 1957 recording remixed for Stereo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4XgbIhlOvkThe concert like I said is Friday night and Christmas is on Sunday.
