The postseason for Major League Baseball begins this week, so I thought I would present some miscellaneous baseball-related items that I forgot to share at the beginning of the season.
For our non-US friends, baseball is a game where almost nothing happens for hours on end. Pitchers unaccountably stare off into the distance. Batters step out of the box after every pitch to adjust equipment and bodily parts. There are frequent beer ads. Occasionally wood hits horsehide and people run. And that's about it.
As you can tell from the previous paragraph, I think the Great American Pastime is past its prime. But then so am I. This post looks back to the days when we both were a little livelier.
One connection between the days of old and today is the persistence of beer advertising. When I was a young fella, too young to drink the stuff, baseball broadcasts in our local market and some others were sponsored by Carling Black Label Beer. Throughout the 50s and into the 60s, Carling used the slogan "Hey Mabel! Black Label" and an associated jingle to sell the goods. "Hey Mabel!" was sung to the "salt peanuts" figure - apt for a beer, I'd say.
This campaign was concocted by Carling's ad agency, Lang Fisher & Stashower. Sometime in the early 50s, the agency prepared a 78 of the music, containing two instrumental versions of the Hey Mabel theme and the Carling Black Label jingle. One was a dance band version (label above), which combined the Carling material with Take Me Out to the Ballgame, the other a Dixieland arrangement as played by a number of well-known LA musicians. There are no vocals on the record, so my guess is it was sent to the radio stations carrying the baseball games for use as filler before breaks, as was the practice on radio stations at the time.
I've also included two 45s by Hall of Fame pitchers, Dizzy Dean and Don Drysdale. Ol' Diz was quite a character who spent many years broadcasting games after his arm gave out. He adopted a country-cousin persona for this role, mangling the language and singing the Wabash Cannonball, which Roy Acuff popularized. Sometime circa 1960, Dean recorded a single of the song on the Colonial label. The record has no number, which leads me to believe it was produced as a item to be sold or given away at Dean's promotional appearances. The Wabash Cannonball is backed by a song called You Don't Have to Be from the Country, and from Dean's performance, I doubt he had seen it before stepping before the microphone.
Like Dean, Drysdale became a broadcaster after his career ended, but unlike Diz, he made his record (sleeve below) during his prime as a player - in 1963, when his team, the Dodgers won the World Series. Ferocious on the pitching mound (said Orlando Cepeda, "The trick with Drysdale is to hit him before he hits you"), Double D was a sensitive soul in the recording studio, sounding a lot like Pat Boone. And frankly, I'm not sure he isn't a better singer than Boone. Sinatra fans in the crowd will recognize one of the Drysdale songs, Give Her Love. Frank recorded it in 1966, and it became the flip side of Something Stupid. Drysdale's arrangements are by Jack Nitzsche, a talented fellow who worked with everyone from Doris Day to Link Wray.
LINK (ambient stereo - February 2024)
