Friends at the Table
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Bluff City 36: America's Playground Pt. 00
🕑 Added 2022-02-08 13:01:01 +0000 UTCOld Mister, Old Mister
In 1897, the “Twin-Pan” barrel organ was introduced to Bluff City by the Callahan Corporation and took the boardwalk by storm. The ease of use, the smoothness of operation, and purity of tone were a significant step forward from the common “Trout” model used at the time. These new instruments were expensive to source, and as such, many organ grinders found themselves pushed out of business by “Twin-Pan” operators paid for by the boardwalk hotels.
This song, first recorded by Elliott Callahan in 1899, speaks to the mingled pain and opportunity felt on the boardwalks in those days.
Old Mister, Old Mister, I heard from my sister!
The man on the boardwalk is closing up shop,
Oh brother, our mother has heard from another,
A new kind of organ has forced him to stop!
The tunes that it plays are a new kind of sweetness,
Old Mister, Old Mister, my spirits take flight!
Old Mister, with such incomparable neatness,
Its harmonies thrill and its measures delight!
So brother, we’re steeling our hearts for the parting,
The man on the boardwalk’s departure does ache,
But when we attend to the new organ starting…
We’ll find sacrifices are easy to make!
Featuring: Austin Walker, Art Martinez-Tebbel, Jack de Quidt, Janine Hawkins and Keith J Carberry
Music & Description by Jack de Quidt
Mall Kids is available at https://mr-matthew.itch.io/mall-kids
A transcription is available for this episode here.
A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project.
Comments
Virginia Paine
Shout out to Wildwood!
A.E. Ross
Deeply excited at the passing mention of Elsie the Cow!!! I did a whole podcast episode about her exhibit at the NY world's fair, it's a wild story
Jack Blair
Keith is right about cricket having lots of types but the 5 day version is like the default one, and one day is like. special, and 20/20 (slightly less than a day) is a version of the one day version. Just. If anyone actually wanted to know.
Matthew Gravelyn
So excited to hear Mall Kids played by the Friends, especially in this amazingly specific setting. This is EXACTLY the sort of hijinks Mall Kids was intended for!
Michael Penny
Am I experiencing deja vu or have you had the punter discussion before?
Luke Freitag
Busting up over the Hand-Newspaper bit. So excited for new Bluff!
Brendan Watroba
I'm not caught up on Bluff but God damn I could read Jack's description for anything. This one is top tier
