Memory Holds the Floor

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 470, 25 June 1948, Page 8

Memory Holds the Floor

Y prize for the most original programme to date goes to 3ZB’s recent Sunday evening session Collector’s Corner, with half an hour of nostalgic memories calculated to draw tears of laughter from the most hardened listener. The compere of this programme had resurrected from somewhere an elderly gramophone and a number of recordings popular some 35 to 40 years ago. With a great deal of audible cranking the thing was set in motion-a performance very reminiscent of the rousing of a Ford car of the same vintage, and just about as noisy. For sheer entertainment value this probably surpassed even the recordings themselves, and they were hard to beat. Heard through the accumulated fog of thirtysomething years, Helen Clarke’s rendering of "Everybody Calls Me Honey" was neatly summed up by the compére, who remarked drily as he returned her to the dust that he "supposed they might have once." There was also a delightful recording of Peter Dawson (that dates him!) and someone else, singing Excelsior in a manner which suggested that banner-bearing in the Alps was child’s play compared with the work of singing duets against such heavy odds. A recitation, slightly muffled as to words, reached us still in all its glory of rising

and falling inflexions, but a dance recording of the same date reminded me of nothing so much as Spike Jones, again slightly blurred, but still remarkably Spike-like. Are we then forced to consider our leading cacophonist comne but a reactionary?