Music from our past

So, I was talking to my partner today - not about politics, by the way. I asked if she had ever heard of "The Silver Masked Tenor" or John McCormack -- she said NO. Can you believe that?

Back in the 1920's "The Silver Masked Tenor was so popular that when the orchestra appeared at some theaters he needed a POLICE ESCORT. Talk about a rock star!

Growing up in Jackson Heights, Oueens, -- which was then an Irish neighborhood -- we were all involved with things Irish-American. There was almost automatic support for the IRA, a healthy disregard for Priests, The Catholic Church, and a need to go to midnight mass on Christmas EVE -- even if very drunk. If I recall correctly, the story went around that one of the boys vomited into the baptismal font one Christmas Eve. Though of the generation before me, even I had heard of the GREAT Irish tenor - John McCormack -- anyway, here's some music

(By the way, back then the vomit incident was looked on as "boys will be boys", good clean (?) fun. Today they might well arrest you for that.)

Here is a little music from the 20's and 30's








Here is The B.F. Goodrich Sivlertown Cord Orch. with, Mary Lou - vocal by "The Silver Masked Tenor"



By the way, "The Silver Masked Tenor" was Joseph M. White