1906 Billy Murray - The Grand Old Rag (aka You’re A Grand Old Flag)
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- Опубліковано 12 чер 2024
- This famous tribute to the Red, White & Blue was written by George M. Cohan for his 1906 stage musical “George Washington, Jr.” with “Grand Old Rag” being the original title and lyric. It was changed soon after to “Grand Old Flag,” but not until after Billy Murray had recorded this first release of the song. See Wikipedia for more about that: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27r... Also, one or two shorter versions were recorded at the same session for release on 7-inch and 8-inch 78 singles (yes, they existed back then).
Transferred from 78rpm Victor 4634 - The Grand Old Rag (Cohan) by Billy Murray with orchestra, purportedly recorded in Philadelphia on February 6, 1906 (though DAHR shows a January release date for this February recording)
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When you think of classic shellac records, 0:49 is the pinnacle of that genre of music. At the time of this recording, Billy Murray was one of the top-selling artists in the world. This song came out a few months before San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, which is truly mind blowing. Murray’s career would go on strong for a few more decades. It’s great seeing his music survive after nearly 120 years ❤
I totally agree with you 👍 💯
@@tessstirtonI own quite a few copies of Murray’s records. By far, my favorite song he performed was Pretty Baby. It sounds great on my 1905 Victor Talking Machine 😁
The following comment may do nothing more than illustrate my ignorance about older recordings, but I’m going to share it anyway. I usually am not a fan of listening to recordings from the early 1900s because the recordings I happen to have heard have been, to my ears, largely unlistenable. I found this recording incredibly impressive because, Even though it’s got some scratching as witches to be expected, it’s still quite an enjoyable listening experience! Hats off to whoever was responsible for that.
I hear you. Let me tell you why this is. What you gotta understand about recordings of any song prior to the mid 1920s is that when they were recorded, there was no microphones to record with, and the only tests done of that medium were largely failures. So what people did was have a band (and in this case Billy Murray singing too) in a room where one or more than one large horns would protrude from the wall. The horn(s) would lead to a room behind that wall where the sound from the horns would be funneled into a fine needlepoint, causing vibration to be captured, and this needle would cut into a record, and what you're hearing right here in this video is the TRUE, full result of it. Same for nearly every other acoustically recorded record.
Now, where things change is, because of the world's lack of care for accurately preserving music from the last century fully, and recent efforts to being nearly as new as the internet itself, digitization of a record is still fairly new. So now about 2010 when people started in-mass uploading these records, they were usually digital transfers from 10-20 years back done for CDs being ripped and uploaded. Not only were plenty of these poor quality to begin with as people removed too much of the noise on 1900s - 1920s recordings that were used (nearly a century old already) to get rid of that hiss and scratches. Not to mention, in the last decade, transferring records of any age has VASTLY improved, like you hear here, so now people can here consistently good quality audio of these songs!
Believe it or not, this is also in that Discoveries 100 list, one of the most important recordings of the 20th century, and certainly one of the earliest!!
I wish I were alive to see 1900-1960, even if I'd have to endure all the major events (like the World Wars and the Great Depression).
Strangely, the first time I heard this was a snippet on WCBS-FM, the oldies station in New York. It was played by one of the DJ's as a gag before seguing to "Rag Doll" by The Four Seasons.
❤❤❤❤grand old music ❤❤❤ Billy is an amazing first white rapper... he does it in many of his songs ❤❤❤
Many of these early records seem to have won some kind of Grand Prize. Makes you wonder what the contest was exactly.
Shortly afterwards, this was recorded again, by Murray. Rag was replaced with Flag. The remake is much more common than the original one.
I remember singing this (or an edited version of it) back in 2013 for my school concert in Kindergarten.
Wow, this song is older than the construction of the Olympic Class Liners from the White Star Line. It's older than the Titanic. The sound kind of reminds me of "I Want A Girl" by The American Quartet.
The name change came about due to the songs popularity. In Mr. Cohan's musical a battered & torn flag was presented to Cohans character by a civil war vet, who carried it in the war, hence the title 'Grand Old Rag'. Once it became a hit, Cohan agreed to alter the lyrics & title to 'Grand Old Flag' so as not to offend the public if they didn't know the context of the show. He was a brilliant man & a patriot and the song a smash hit still heard today. Thanks for sharing this recording!
My pleasure! 🎵
Happy flag day!
A wonderful recording
Thank you for uploading
I love this song! ❤
Thanks for sending
I Agree!
Lol, billy Murray is quite the patriot
If I'm honest, I thought this was a song you'd only find on a phonograph cylinder.
guess I'm wrong!
Bob moke who is that