Short Circle

...for whatever reason, and I can cover this in another post later, I've been listening to a lot of music from old musicals, and jazz singers who interpret such stuff. I'm just dazzled by the degree of wit, literacy, and inventiveness when it comes to lyrics, not to mention the melodic genius behind much of it. The fact that most folks were either lyricists or music writers, but not both, probably had something to do with it -- although folks like Cole Porter and Frank Loesser seemed to do just fine all by themselves.

Anyway, I popped into one of my favorite used record stores a week or so ago, and found a lot of music that fit this description -- much of it at bargain prices. I picked up some really rare stuff, like the now-deleted CD of Cole Porter demos and the very rare CD of Yip Harburg singing some of the songs he co-wrote, songs like "Over The Rainbow," "If I Only Had A Brain," "Old Devil Moon," "It's Only A Paper Moon," and more...I love hearing songwriters sing their own stuff, especially when they aren't known as performers, and those disks are a treat.

So, I came back with a big stack of records and CDs, all in the great American songbook vein. I noticed that many of them either had some handwritten dates scrawled on the jacket or a little imprinted insignia, like what a notary uses. Here's a picture showing both:


The name on the imprint said "Karl Van Duyn Teeter." The man clearly was an fan of early jazz and musical theatre, from the records...I punched his name into Google, and things get interesting. It turns out that Dr. Teeter was a very highly regard linguistics professor at Harvard, who had done extensive research on indigenous and endangered languages. There is a great obituary of him here. According to his obituary, he was also a noted jazz buff, coronet player, avid cyclist, and cook. I think I would have liked this guy, had I the chance...

Things like this are what make collecting records fun and intriguing. On one level, they are just vessels for sounds. That alone is wonderful...but on another level, they are artifacts, passed on from person to person. While I don't know how Dr. Teeter's records got to me, it seems to have the makings of an interesting if sad story. His widow maybe didn't want them around...couldn't bear to have them in the house anymore. Maybe his children didn't share his passion. Either way, they wound up on the racks, at 1.99 each...I hope he knows a handful of them found a good home.