Rosenbush Cafe

Peter Churchmouse: An Early Favorite

WARNING: Language and themes will be offensive and inappropriate for some readers and gratuitous for all others! Special thanks to Paul DaliHouse Dorsey

By Henry B. Rosenbush

I have been a collector the vinyl long playing records since the 1950s, a passion that began when my father played Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade on a set of 7-inch 45s. It would be the early sixties before I learned Шехерезада was actually a symphonic suite in four movements rather than a collection of shorter works; such was the limitations of the 45 format.

Over the years I was fortunate enough to explore every new technology from Victrola to Hi-Fi for Small Fry, as they called record players for children, and then stereo. When stereo first arrived, much like the transition from black and white television to color in 1964, Beta to VHS or the most recent change from analog to high definition, there were few true examples of stereo recordings. One could play a stereo on a Hi-Fi record player but without the ability to have two channels or multiple speakers it was difficult to enjoy on the intended level.

Our first stereo system was a huge clunky affair; a long enclosed set up with record player, AM-FM radio and two moderately sized speakers. Naturally, you could play Hi-Fi recordings, 45s, 78s (many children’s records were 78s as well as jazz recordings) 33 1/3rd the standard 12-inch discs and 16, which could be practical in school for slide shows and film strips but less practical at home unless you had instructional manuals to investigate.

It would be the combined work – separately – of three men that led to the disc records that dominated the music industry until compact discs appeared in the 1980s effectively ending the gramophone record. French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott, would design in 1857, the phonautograph, which basically allowed a depiction of the visual characteristics of sound but not for playback purposes until Thomas Edison developed the phonograph in 1877, which could play back recordings but was primarily used for dictation and further developed by Edward Guilliard, who would spend the next quarter of century fighting for credit since Edison incorporated Guilliard’s innovations into his own patent.

The phonograph cylinder dominated the market starting in 1880 but as lateral-cut discs, created by Emile Berliner in 1888, began to appear musical recording began to change. Edison produced his own version, the Blue Amberol Record, in 1912, to compete with the Berliner Gramaphone label offering recordings as long as 4 minutes! By 1918, patents for lateral-cut discs expired and the market was open to countless manufacturers and by the twenties, the Amberol cylinders became merely a memory.

Our Victrola was a right-sized hand cranked device which used steel needles and there were two small doors on the front that by opening and closing ‘controlled’ volume, pitch, treble and bass! Naturally, there was no such thing as control: you cranked the cylinder beneath the platter for speed, which was generally enough for one side of a record before it s l o w e d d o w n and s t o p p e d…

The needles were designed to be used once - I had to special order stainless steel needles from New York in the 1980s because record store employees, usually college-aged students, had no idea what the hell a Victrola was never mind “steel needles!” Imagine sitting on your front porch in 1926 listening to Mario Lanza or Al Jolson for the first time. We take for granted today not only the experience but sheer volume of availability of product. In the beginning, the earth was unformed and so was the music industry.

Thanks to dad, I was more aware of Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers (Tommy & Jimmy), Benny Goodman, the Ink Spots, Mills Brothers and classical music before I was introduced to Elvis Pressley! My aunt Virginia took me to see the Swan Lake Ballet and the opera, La Traviata, in the late 1950s so even Tchaikovsky and Verdi preceded my knowledge of rock ‘n roll (1954-63).

My First Purchase: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Like most children, I had albums and 78s by The Flintstones, Quickdraw McGraw - and sidekick Baba Looey, Peter Churchmouse (I only have one of the two LPs left and no cover - sigh), The Gingerbread Man and my first acquisition, the original soundtrack recording of the first motion picture I ever saw, at age three, Michael Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Boy did I grow up with a crush on redheads thanks to Shirley McLaine! Purchased in 1961 at a yardsale of a woman who lived next to my aunt and grandmother, Rosa, in Homewood, Alabama, it was the beginning of a collection that would eventually climb into the thousands!

When Southern humorist Brother Dave Gardner played the University of Alabama in 1963 I was fortunate that one of our tenants at The Henry Apartments left behind the album of his concert and my collecting days began in earnest as I began searching for his other recordings and even got to see him in a Birmingham nightclub in 1971…that’s another story for another time, however.

By 1967, when I bought The Bee Gees “First,” their great ballad-driven album, which was acquired thanks to Virginia: “What do you want for your birthday?”

“The Bee Gees first album.”

She gave me the necessary $7.98 and I went to the record store and now knew the experience of wanting a particular record; I mainly wanted it for the song, Turn of the Century, but soon learned every song was worthwhile.
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By Henry B. Rosenbush,
Proprietor

Rosenbush Café has finally moved from the older, slower, less reliable server to a newer, faster virtual server, thanks to programmer Marty Bostick and Larry from Hackofalltrades for hosting our site and wish him well in his future endeavors.

For those of you new to the site, it is modeled on an authentic restaurant from yesteryear named naturally, Rosenbush Café, which flourished from the late 1920s until it was closed for the last time in 1971. Owned by my late, great Uncle Edwin Rosenbush, RC was a unique eatery which attracted customers from throughout the southeast. It had fresh food; nearby farmers provided fresh vegetables, eggs, meat and the occasional oddity, Canned Rattlesnake being one.

By turning my creative flow towards the Web World I spend many hours exploring other venues to learn from other bloggers, but I have my own agenda, too: Entertain my Readers. Whether it is one or hundreds I want visitors to enjoy a hot cup of 5 cent coffer with an apple strudel pie while reading about my intelligent cats in the Milo Institute of Feline Well-Being. With 13 members, all politically savvy and education gained from Toronto to Argentina, these are no ordinary pussy cats. They follow the news and have myriad interest.

As a former newspaper editor and writer I enjoy the opportunity to explore interests that my appeal to both wide and smaller markets and my audience has reached other countries and I’d like to think, deep space. So there is an example of one of my alter egos, the Existential Nilhist, who writes through what he calls a consciousness stream versus stream of… View Entrees, and learn about the thinking process. Much like the Dadaists of the 1920s, I enjoy what is called automatic writing. Whatever crosses my mind is immediately at my finger tips and written. Bizarre, off-beat, filled with black humor and not for all taste buds.

El Cine provides a voice on movies and reviews. I also write on genres that interest me, such as the atomic bomb-themed films that spawned the 1950s science fiction monster movies. When I wrote about these films last year the EN took over and I wrote a sidebar considering new roles for Godzilla, like battling the Columbian Drug Cartel and becoming addicted to drugs. I also promote movies with trailers and preview information and plan to expand that category further as the fall season approaches.

Other categories include: The Obsessive Collector, chronicling my insatiable appetite for music, movies, books and anything that can be collected obsessively; Cool Side of the Pillow details my real world experiences dealing with my mother who died of Alzhemier’s disease last year and is part of larger work, my novel dREaMbandiTs, a fictionalized hybrid of drama, surrealism, science fiction and fact and gallows humor; The Laughing Ricochet, is a work in progress, with the posts similar to EN so much will change here in the coming weeks.

Being surrounded by the University of Alabama I started covering, and I use the covering term loosely, Alabama Crimson Tide Football from my off-the-planet office at the Henri Villas (The Henry Apartments is my business). With a tail gating mishpoca (Jewish paradigm for “extended families”) who come year after year to eat, drink, smoke and breathe college football in T-Town (Tuscaloosa) I face this season with curiosity as to how these ardent fans will view Coach Nick Saban’s second full schedule. For the record, I’m a 1977 University of Southern Mississippi graduate in Journalism and English and enjoy football far less intensely as other here; well, someone has too!

If you peruse the site you will find my collection of links under Appetizers. As an avid fan of Australian Rules Football, I’ve added their link. After this post is a video about the rules of this exciting variation on American Football. You won’t be bored.

I update the links weekly; there are entertainment, governmental, worldwide newspapers in native languages and more that should be savored like a glass of Courvoisier VSOP with a Cigarrilhas Dannemann Speciale Sumatra.

For unique experiences in the Internet, visit Musecatcher and DaliHouse. These two locations are my top links and will provide endless hours of enjoyment. Kalliope’s amazing self portraits, that you won’t find anywhere else on this blue green planet, and Paul’s Daliesque house of the Dada and Surreal experience. We hope Kalliope’s Friday night art exhibition, in RI, was a success and look forward to seeing what this talented multi-media femme artiste delivers next. Paul keeps the Avant-Garde and Dadaism alive with superbly written texts and plenty of links to virtually every artist in this genre.

Originally, I placed links under Soups and Salads 25 cents extra and a check today reveals they are all working. There are many arcane links with more common place sites.

As with any site, there is room for improvement and new ideas, so feel free to email me - it is listed on the main page. You can also comment and I read and reply to all of them.

For the next few days, I’ll be learning the Wordpress upgrade and replacing missing picture links and doing some fine tuning to the entries.

We have plenty of booths, a fountain, an ever-changing menu and specials often. So come place your order for tasty delights and come back often.

While recently searching for Dada and Surreal art links I found Dalihouse

Dali House derives its name from the the master surrealist himself, Salvador Dali. For anyone who enjoys these movements and wants extensive backgrounds on the major artists and plenty of visuals to stimulate and educate check it out. Over two years old, Dali House is the brain child of northern British-born Paul Dorsey, now working in Bangkok, Thailand. He lived for a while in Toronto, Ontario where my wife’s family still lives - I’ve only been there once but would love to live there if it wasn’t so expensive. For Canadians who’ve moved and miss the CHUM AM & FM Stations, check Appetizers. You can listen to live streaming audio and feel home again.

Paul was nice enough to devote time and space to my site; Dali House is linked under my Appetizers. Paul has a highly polished site with plenty of artists featured “On the Palette” and a great sense of humor can be found through the “House.”

Dorseyland
is his main blog with plenty of humor and interesting posts and wonderful photos.

While Paul and I come from different backgrounds, areas of the world and undoubtably multi-varied educational and travel experiences, the technologies involved in the transmission of pictures and text allowed us to “meet” and “share” our sites with new audiences.

We should always remember and thank the pioneers that took the first steps towards “moving pictures” for without those late 18th Century experimentations I would be unable to share the aforementioned thoughts to an computer-linked audience anywhere in the world.

Talk about surrealism; early cinema provided audiences with motion pictures, literally. Imagine sitting in a darkened theater awaiting the start of the shorts, a totally new experience. We take movies for granted in the early 21st Century; much of it is trash, albeit, expensive, highly artistic special effects-driven trash. The advertising budget for the new Indiana Jones film could have bankrolled every movie made from 1895-1960.

Pioneer Georges Méliès - he was in the audience for the introduction of the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe on December 28, 1895 - was profoundly affected by this experience and afterwards tried to get the brothers to allow him to license the process. He was turned down. If Antoine Lumière really believed motion pictures was an invention without a future he must be spinning in his grave like a Keystone Cops’ two-reeler. An apocryphal ancedote? Perhaps, but Méliès would perfect the process and became a true pioneer of early cinema.

Early Cinema
provides a nice introduction to the beginnings of an art form that originally amazed and fascinated its audience. We’ve come a long way from A Trip to the Moon (1902) to viewing Pioneer’s footage from the planet Mars just two days ago!

Georges Méliès on DVD

We have installed new ceiling fans in the main cafeteria and added more flowers and plants to the garden. We’ll save you a table by the fountain.