Blind Skeleton's Three Tune Tuesday

Boneapart and Yulia

Welcome to “Three Tune Tuesday,” where vintage sound meets timeless music in a weekly exploration of acoustically recorded gems. Each episode, join us on a unique auditory journey through different genres and eras, as we feature three carefully selected tracks that showcase the rich tapestry of music history. Whether you’re a seasoned audiophile or new to the world of vintage entertainment, there’s something here for everyone. Dive into the heart of music with your host, a passionate collector who brings these tracks to life on period-appropriate phonographs, offering not just songs but an authentic listening experience. From jazz and blues to folk and beyond, our “theme of the week” format keeps every episode fresh and exciting, blending informative insights with a casual, engaging style. “Three Tune Tuesday” is for music lovers and vintage enthusiasts alike, providing a rare glimpse into the past through the lens of a private collection that stands as a testament to the enduring power of music. Tune in weekly to rediscover the sounds that shaped generations, played as they were meant to be heard, on the machines that first brought them to the world’s ears.

  1. 402

    2D AGO

    402

    Three Tune Tuesday marks 4/20 the only way it knows how: by reaching into the pre-1926 catalog and finding three recordings whose names, in combination, do all the work without saying anything at all. We open under the canopy — Renée Chemet’s violin drifting through Francis Thomé’s pastoral miniature “Under the Leaves,” recorded the day after 4/20 in 1924. Then the Victor Military Band crashes in with a one-step medley from Rudolf Friml’s Broadway smash High Jinks, whose plot concerns patients of a Dr. Thorne who take a mysterious Tibetan elixir that causes them to laugh and fall in love — and the show’s best-loved song is the one where they try to describe how it feels. We close with “Some Smoke,” a 1913 dance number by Sigmund Romberg, one year before he’d become Broadway’s most prolific house composer. Plausible deniability maintained throughout. Happy 4/20.

    46 min
  2. Wax Cylinders

    APR 14

    Wax Cylinders

    This week on Four Tune Tuesday, we’re going old. Very old. Rather than our usual today-in-history framing, we’re taking a detour into the cylinder era — the format that preceded the 78rpm disc entirely, and the one that gave birth to the commercial recording industry in the first place. We open in 1891 with what is, as best as we can determine, the oldest cylinder in the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive: a cornet solo by D.B. Dana, accompanied at the piano by bandleader Edward Issler, performing the “Cujus Animam” from Rossini’s Stabat Mater — recorded live, by hand, into a phonograph horn, with no possibility of duplication. Our second cylinder is a vocal piece from the same year, J.W. Myers singing “Bell Buoy” for the North American Phonograph Company — not a record label, but the chaotic network of thirty-three regional companies through which Edison tried, and ultimately failed, to dominate the nascent industry. From there, we turn to the violin — and to one of the more quietly fascinating chapters in recording history. Charles D’Almaine was the first person ever to record with a Stroh violin, an instrument invented in 1899 specifically to solve the problem that the standard violin posed for acoustic recording. We hear him first in 1899, before the Stroh, on a conventional violin in a solo arrangement of the “Miserere” from Verdi’s Il Trovatore — and then in 1904, after, on a joyful fiddle medley that includes, somewhere in the middle, a reel he apparently named after himself. Stroh Violin [(https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=NMAH-92-13660&max=600)](https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=NMAH-92-13660&max=600)

    58 min
  3. Easter and Passover

    APR 7

    Easter and Passover

    Spring arrives with music this week on Three Tune Tuesday, as we mark the convergence of Easter and Passover with three recordings that span the full range of what this season sounded like on early shellac. We open with a detour into pure coincidence — Vessella’s Italian Band recorded the “Blushing Maiden March” on this very date in 1911, a bright and breezy piece of light entertainment from one of Victor’s most beloved concert bands, the resident ensemble of Atlantic City’s famous Steel Pier. From there we turn to the sacred, with tenor Frederic Freemantel’s “Resurrection,” a 12-inch Red Seal recording of Oliver Holden’s great hymn tune “Coronation” — a melody so enduring it is considered the oldest American hymn tune still in continuous use, here given the full solemnity of Victor’s prestige format. We close on the other side of spring’s spiritual calendar, with Cantor Mordechai Hershman’s deeply moving “K’shimcho,” a Passover prayer recorded with Nathaniel Shilkret conducting, in which one of the golden age of chazzanut’s finest voices brings an ancient liturgical text into the modern world of recorded sound.

    58 min
  4. Inner Peace

    MAR 31

    Inner Peace

    This week on Three Tune Tuesday, the theme is Inner Peace — inspired by a vision over the weekend. We open with a Today in History pick: on this very date in 1907, Prince’s Military Band recorded The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend for Columbia Records, a chaotic, lurching musical portrait of the nightmare state that reminds us what peace is not. From there we move to something quieter — the Revillon Trio’s 1915 instrumental recording of Somewhere a Voice Is Calling, a melody written by Arthur F. Tate on holiday in Whitby, England, in which the voice of the title goes unheard and the listener is left simply waiting, still, in the dusk. We close with one of the most hard-won declarations of peace in the entire hymn tradition: It Is Well With My Soul, recorded in 1906 by William F. Hooley and the Handel Mixed Quartet, the text written by Horatio Spafford as his ship crossed the spot in the Atlantic where his four daughters had drowned. Three recordings, three different ways of arriving at the same place — because inner peace, it turns out, is never simply given. It has to be found. Lyrics Somewhere a Voice is Calling Dusk and the shadows falling O’er land and sea; Somewhere a voice is calling Calling for me Dusk and the shadows falling O’er land and sea; Somewhere a voice is calling Calling for me Night and the stars are gleaming Tender and true; Dearest, my heart is dreaming Dreaming of you Night and the stars are gleaming Tender and true; Dearest, my heart is dreaming Dreaming of you It is Well With my Soul When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul. Refrain: It is well with my soul, It is well, it is well with my soul. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul. My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!— My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live: If Jordan above me shall roll, No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul. But, Lord, ’tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait, The sky, not the grave, is our goal; Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord! Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul! And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll; The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, Even so, it is well with my soul.

    55 min
  5. The Follies of War

    MAR 24

    The Follies of War

    March 24, 1918: German forces crossed the Somme during Operation Michael, Ludendorff’s great spring offensive — the war machine’s last confident lunge toward a victory that never came. In 2026, with the Trump administration dismantling alliances built on the bones of two world wars, treating the consequences of war as someone else’s problem, and marching forward with the kind of certainty that history tends to punish, it felt like a good week to reach back to the era when people were still trying to make sense of what industrialized war actually meant — and some of them were brave enough to say so. “Peter Piper” — Arthur Pryor’s Band (Victor, 1905) It sounds like a march — all brass and forward momentum and purpose. But “Peter Piper” is built on a nursery rhyme tongue-twister, a piece of music that moves with great confidence toward absolutely nothing. Arthur Pryor was the second most famous bandleader in America after Sousa, and when his band played, people stood up straight. On the anniversary of the Somme crossing, it seemed like the right way to open: all that certainty, all that momentum, built entirely on nonsense. “Stay Down Here Where You Belong” — Henry Burr (Victor, 1915) Irving Berlin wrote this in 1915, before America entered the war and before he understood which way the wind was blowing. The conceit is simple and devastating: the Devil urges his son to stay in Hell rather than venture up to the surface, because up there they’re making butchers out of brothers, and there’s more hell above ground than below. Henry Burr recorded it with the quiet conviction of a man who meant it. Within two years, America was at war, Berlin had moved on to writing songs for the troops, and this one was quietly shelved. It is the voice that said don’t go — before the drums got loud enough that nobody could hear it anymore. “Oh! It’s a Lovely War” — Courtland & Jeffries (1918) By 1918, four years in, the Somme and Verdun behind them and millions dead, two music hall performers called Courtland & Jeffries were on stage insisting that everything was absolutely fine. Every verse of this song catalogs the miseries of army life — the mud, the tinned jam, the absurdity of military hierarchy — and every verse ends with the chorus cheerfully declaring it all perfectly wonderful. It is one of the only songs of the era that got away with mocking the war while it was still being fought, by the simple trick of never technically admitting that’s what it was doing. The humor is the gap between what is said and what is meant. In 1918, that gap was the width of the Western Front.

    59 min
  6. St. Patrick's Day

    MAR 17

    St. Patrick's Day

    St. Patrick’s Day This week, Boneapart and Yulia talk about St. Patrick’s Day and share some songs celebrating the emerald isle. Mother Machree There’s a spot in my heart which no colleen may own there’s a depth in my soul never sounded or known There’s a place in my mem’ry my heart that you fill no other can take it no one ever will CHORUS Oh I love the dear silver that shines in your hair and the brow that’s all furrowed and wrinkled with care I kiss the dear fingers so toil worn for me Oh God bless you and keep you Mother Machree Every sorrow or cure in the dear days gone by was made bright by the light by the smile in your eye like a candle the burns in the window at night you fond love has cheered my and guided me right. The Wearing of the Green O Paddy dear, and did you hear the news that’s going round? The Shamrock is forbid, by laws, to grow on Irish ground No more St. Patrick’s day we’ll keep, his colour last be seen For, there’s a bloody law agin the Wearing of the Green. Oh! I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand, And he says; How is Poor Auld Ireland, and does she stand? She’s the most distressed Country that ever I have seen For, they are hanging men and women for the Wearing of the Green. And since the colour we must wear, is England’s cruel red, Auld Ireland’s sons will ne’er forget the blood that they have shed. Then take the Shamrock from your hat, and cast it on the sod It will take root, and flourish still, tho’ under foot ’tis trod. When the law can stop the blades of grass from growing as they grow. And when the leaves, in Summer time, their verdure does not show. Then, I will change the colour I wearin’ my cabbeen But, till that day, please God ! I’ll stick to the Wearing of the Green. But if, at last, her colours should be torn from Ireland’s heart Her sons, with shame and sorrow, from the dear old soil will part I’ve heard whispers of a Country that lies far beyond sea, Where rich and poor stand equal, in the light of Freedom’s day. O Erin! must we leave you driven by the tyrant’s hand Must we ask a Mother’s blessing, in a strange but happy land Where the cruel Cross of England’s thraldom never to be seen But where, thank God! we’ll live and die, still Wearing of the Green. Ireland Must be Heaven, for my Mother Came From There I’ve often heard my daddy speak of Ireland’s lakes and dells, The place must be like Heaven, if it’s half like what he tells; There’s roses fair and shamrocks there, and laughing waters flow; I have never seen that Isle of Green, But there’s one thing sure I know. Ireland must be Heaven, for an angel came from there, I never knew a living soul, one half as sweet or fair, For her eyes are like the star light, And the white clouds match her hair, Sure Ireland Must be Heaven, For My Mother Came From There. I’ve pictured in my fondest dreams old Ireland’s vales and rills, I see a stairway to the sky, formed by her verdant hills; Each wave that’s in the ocean blue just loves to hug the shore, So if Ireland isn’t Heaven, then sure, It must be right next door.

    1h 5m
  7. The Blues

    MAR 10

    The Blues

    This week Yulia and Boneapart talk, not sing, The Blues. We discuss some history and share two very fantastic Blues songs that come from different backgrounds. Of course, we also play a song “Released on this Date In History.” Songs Irish Hearts Artist: Fred Van Eps (banjo solo, with orchestra) Composer: Henry Frantzen Arranger: Everett J. Evans Recorded: March 10, 1916, New York Label: Columbia, catalog number A2283 Matrix: 46487, Take 00 Format: 10-inch disc Other title: “March and Two-Step” Flip side: “Pearl of the Harem” (Harry P. Guy / Fred Van Eps), same session Anticipatin’ Blues Southern Negro Quartette Recorded June 30, 1921, New York Columbia A3444, Matrix 79920, Take 4 Flip side: “I’m Wild About Moonshine” (Turner Layton / Henry Creamer) Composer: Billy James / Jean Harmon Format: Male vocal quartet, unaccompanied Lyrics I’ve been waiting ever so long, watching and praying for you, for you. Say if you know that my love is gone. What are you going to do? Don’t keep me worrying you. I’m tired of being alone. You hear me stating, I’m tired of waiting. You’d better worry back home, back home, of God’s laws. Tired of waiting, gonna steal the pain. It’s gonna flow, flow, flow. I’m getting worried, I’m starting to hurry. Hearing of my words, every so low, too low, too low. But what you’re telling me, I always thought that. I’ve been waiting ever so long, watching and praying for you, for you. Say if you know that my love is gone. What are you going to do? Don’t keep me worrying you. I’m tired of waiting, gonna steal the pain. You hear me stating, I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of waiting, gonna steal the pain. You hear me stating, I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of waiting, gonna steal the pain. You hear me stating, I’m tired of waiting. And there’s a pain now, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow. Someday you’ll regret what you’ve done. You’ll worry back, you’re my side, my side. But you’ll find another someone, and blame on me as his bride. Don’t keep me stalling around, waiting for what I don’t get. Oh how I’m sighing, say that you’re trying. So they can make me forget, forget. I’ve got no words. I don’t wait, sing those damn tears. The pain is so blue, blue, blue. I’m getting worried, it’s better to hurry, dear. Stop my burning with the blue, blue, blue. Those are what you tell me, always thought sad. And there’s a pain now of fifty percent. The others ain’t done. And there’s a pain now of fifty percent. The others ain’t done. The pain is so blue, blue, blue. I’m getting worried, it’s better to hurry, dear. Stop my burning with the blue, blue, blue. Oh how I’m sighing, say that you’re trying. So they can make me forget, forget. I’m getting worried, it’s better to hurry, dear. Stop my burning with the blue, blue, blue. Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose When someone does me wrong I always face down I’ve got the size of a thumb, no, why oh reason I’ve got the size of a ring and just the fate ain’t Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose Don’t be rich, it ain’t on trick I will join your life and I will kill you quick I’ve got the size of a ring and just the fate ain’t Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose Some loooooose Crazy Blues Recording details: Artist: Mamie Smith & Her Jazz Hounds Recorded: August 10, 1920, OKeh Records, New York Released: November 1920 on OKeh 4169 Matrix/Take: S-7529, take C Flip side: “It’s Right Here for You” Composer: Perry Bradford (originally published as “Harlem Blues,” itself adapted from even earlier material) Lyrics I can’t sleep at night I can’t eat a bite ‘Cause the man I love He don’t treat me right He makes me feel so blue I don’t know what to do Sometime I sit and sigh And then begin to cry ’Cause my best friend Said his last goodbye There’s a change in the ocean Change in the deep blue sea, my baby I’ll tell you folks, there ain’t no change in me My love for that man will always be Now I can read his letters I sure can’t read his mind I thought he’s lovin’ me He’s leavin’ all the time Now I see my poor love was blind Now I got the crazy blues Since my baby went away I ain’t got no time to lose I must find him today You might also like Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas) Jimmie Rodgers Believer Imagine Dragons Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer Bessie Smith Now the doctor’s gonna do all that he can But what you’re gonna need is an undertaker man I ain’t had nothin’ but bad news Now I got the crazy blues Now I can read his letters I sure can’t read his mind I thought he’s lovin’ me He’s leavin’ all the time Now I see my poor love was blind I went to the railroad Hang my head on the track Thought about my daddy I gladly snatched it back Now my babe’s gone And gave me the sack Now I’ve got the crazy blues Since my baby went away I ain’t had no time to lose I must find him today I’m gonna do like a Chinaman Go and get some hop Get myself a gun, and shoot myself a cop I ain’t had nothin’ but bad news Now I’ve got the crazy blues

    54 min
  8. F**k Trump

    MAR 3

    F**k Trump

    This week on Three Tune Tuesday, Boneapart and Yulia open with a piece of music history: on this day in 1916, Swedish tenor Aage Wang-Holm stepped into a New York recording studio to record a tender song of longing for home, sung in his native language for the millions of Scandinavian immigrants who made up a largely invisible audience for the early phonograph industry. Then the episode turns to its theme – freedom versus authoritarianism – beginning with Arthur Pryor’s Band and their 1904 march commemorating the Boston Tea Party, a moment of defiance against an empire that had decided the colonies existed to serve the crown rather than themselves. The episode closes with Reinald Werrenrath, one of the most recorded voices of his era, singing “Freedom for All Forever” – a WWI rallying cry built around a phrase chosen by the American public in a nationwide wartime slogan contest, and written by a soldier-songwriter then serving in the Canadian Engineers. Recorded in March 1918 with the outcome of the war still uncertain, it was a declaration that some things are worth fighting for. A century later, we’re still having that argument.

    57 min
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About

Welcome to “Three Tune Tuesday,” where vintage sound meets timeless music in a weekly exploration of acoustically recorded gems. Each episode, join us on a unique auditory journey through different genres and eras, as we feature three carefully selected tracks that showcase the rich tapestry of music history. Whether you’re a seasoned audiophile or new to the world of vintage entertainment, there’s something here for everyone. Dive into the heart of music with your host, a passionate collector who brings these tracks to life on period-appropriate phonographs, offering not just songs but an authentic listening experience. From jazz and blues to folk and beyond, our “theme of the week” format keeps every episode fresh and exciting, blending informative insights with a casual, engaging style. “Three Tune Tuesday” is for music lovers and vintage enthusiasts alike, providing a rare glimpse into the past through the lens of a private collection that stands as a testament to the enduring power of music. Tune in weekly to rediscover the sounds that shaped generations, played as they were meant to be heard, on the machines that first brought them to the world’s ears.

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