Bindlegrim Halloween Radio

Have you tuned into Bindlegrim Halloween radio lately? Things are really hopping over there as the station fills up with seasonal listeners, and if anyone would like me to purchase more access for free listening, please let me know. As of now there are about 3+ hours of classic old Halloween tunes from the 1920s-1950s featuring jazz, ragtime, big band, and more. But is there even more out there, I keep asking?

As a matter of fact, keeping a strictly on-the-up-and-up policy, the only music I add are tunes that can either be purchased somewhere online, or in one case, made available to the public through restoration projects. That leaves a few I have come across in my internet travels, that I have been unable to find for sell in an online format. And so I thought I would post a few of those here!

Okay, given the multitude of versions for Ol' Man Mose, and (Ol' Man Mose Ain't Dead), I was happy to inlcude some of those already on Bindlegrim radio. But I would really love to include these two selections by Betty Hutton. The first was A Vitaphone Melody Master, presented by Vitaphone, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. announcing "America's No. 1 Jitterbug gives us the lowdown on Ol Man Mose."


Then there is this seeming follow up to the song from One for the Book (1940) where our Cinderalla (send-eralla) tells us Ol Man Mose Ain't Dead.

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To add just a couple more, for now, to that list of sad exclusions, here's a couple of fine selections, in this case with  bird themes.

Here's a wonderful tune for all you owl fans: The Night Owl Hoots - 1933 (Cliff Edwards, June Knight and James Dunn sing "Night Owl" from 1933).


And finally, Quoth the Raven - Ella Mae Morse 1944 (Kirby Grant and his Orchestra with Ella Mae Morse and the Mel-Tones, taken from the 1944 movie, Ghost Catchers), from the Vintage Halloween playlist by Carl with Records.


For other songs from the same era, not shown above at least as of this writing, check out Bindlegrim Halloween radio.

Ghost Writer

Three weeks since the last post! I guess ol' Bindlegrim has been spending the energy of writing elsewhere, and hopefully for a good cause which to be told is finishing up the first slim volume of spooky short stories - Sketchbook of Straw (A Collection of Tall Tales for Slippery Tongues). And it is hoped this collection will be out early next month.

With such a long absence, happy to have this Bindlegrim interview Halloween Art, Decor, and More with Bumble Bindlegrim show up today on Happy Halloween on squidoo. Please stop by for a quick read, and afterward spend lots of time on their website - amazingly packed full of Halloween ideas and goodies!

By the way, if you have been tuning in Bindlegrim Halloween radio on live365.com for those old Halloween tunes, I may have mentioned in a couple of tweets, since the last blog post, the addition of three more tune, this time with a most devlish theme.


First there's a rollicking jazz tune called Putting Salt on the Devil's Tail by Jack Teargarden with fun lyrics such as "I'm going to throw salt on the devil's tail to slow that old boy down." (Anyone have an idea what that might mean)? Second, is an upbeat tune There's Gonna Be the Devil to Pay performed by Willie "The Lion" Smith. (And while I will likely include the version by another stride style artist Fats Waller (for the lyrics) in future, the raucous instrumental by Willie Smith is just too amazing to pass up). And then finally, third, a much quieter tune, but with a ton of slow strolling attitude, is Pagin' the Devil by the Kansas City Six. May the musical selection bedevil ya!

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Oh, and one final note. There also was some fun to be had recently playing curator on etsy since the last blog post. Bindlegrim played curator finding Halloween themed items that went beyond the standard colors of orange and black. If you get a chance check out the artists collected here that expand the typical Halloween color schemes:

The Shoppe of Ghastly Designs

It could be said the poor ol' Bindlegrim is burning the cucurbita candle at both ends... trying to cram a whole host of those pesky doing verbs into a few short months since the studio moved. And after a bit of an exhausted crash (this past week) fortunately found a second wind this evening to get few things done before the day starts again early tomorrow...

First and foremost, was to add some lanterns to the Bindlegrim Etsy Shop, for a total now of four Horrid Decor paper lanterns in a variety of color schemes and material types.

Shown above is The Horrid Decor #2 in colorway Pus and Bruise on Ghost Skin (uh, ehr, known to most mortals as onion skin paper). The paper mentioned has a great crepe-paper type surface (though more durable) and the lantern here was photographed during a desert sunset, hanging out with a recent-era ghost from Hobgoblin (left) and a vintage German Jack O'Lantern (right).

The Horrid Deocr #3 in colorway Hitchcock Blue on Ghost Skin (is also available now) and is show here in a similar shot with the Pus & Bruise lantern above... while tonight two more were added in the more usual autumnal color palette of orange and black.

Above is a collapse view of The Horrid Decor #4 in colorway Classic Orange on Ether (vellum, that is), and below is a same colorway, but on parchment for a more aged look - The Horrid Decor #5 in colorway Classic Orange on Tome Parchment. Five photos of each lantern can be seen in the Etsy listings...

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There were also a couple of older projects re-added to Etsy on some remaining stock, and hope you might be curious to check out the entire shop at your leisure. In the future I hope to do more stepping outside of the digital world, and do more shows, maybe even perhaps Halloween & Vine which would be absolutely awesome, but sadly that will have to wait until year 2013. 

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In a couple of side notes, Bindlegrim actually got a chance to peruse the internet for some olde tunes to add to the existing playlist on Bindlegrim's vintage Halloween radio station.

Added to the now 3+ hours of vintage Halloween jazz oldies are the following tunes: Hush, Hush, Hush, Here Comes the Bogey Man by Henry Hall, as well as The Haunted House Blues by Helen Gross (which starts off comically enough but don't miss that blood-curdling scream at the end). Also added are 2 version of The Little Man Who Wasn't There. The first by Glenn Miller has some appropriately spooky-themes light-hearted banter, yet the second by Teddy Grace takes on a more sarcastic tone that sounds like she's trying to forget a bad relationship.

And finally a big thank-you to Pumpkinrot (also on etsy as Pumpkin Hollow) for their recent blog entry noticing the above image. Would you have guessed the styling for this October scene was occurring in the middle of summer? Alas and alack, it's not autumn quite yet... but Mr. Bindle sure seem to be enjoying the spirit of the season amidst all this heat!

The Return of Bindlegrim

Well over a month since the last post mentioning the move of Bindlegrim southward, and the long process of hauling the studio out of the cottage and in to the casita is almost complete! It's not easy moving a studio with nothing but a bindle over your shoulder... and many trips later the casita is just beginning to feel like home.

And even though the studio is still in boxes as of this writing, it was only just possible to eke out a few doodles during that time, creating new material for the next Bindlegrim limited edition vintage-style Halloween lantern. This will be style #5 (as yet untitled) in that series, with this design featuring leafy vine motifs, as if you are crawling the brambles of the pumpkin patch while spooky creatures and celestial objects peek back through the clearings.





Hope to see these pane designs incorporated into a material object casting a classical spooky glow within the next two weeks... even though this will have to happen between the unpacking of boxes, and general settling into the new digs. But there is much excitement to get old' Bindlegrim's bones rattling again, and a big thank-you to those of you who may be traveling back this way after the long break!




By the way, those of you who might have been following Bindlegrim on facebook or Bindlegrim on twitter during the break, surely noticed there was some time here and there to add around a dozen new old Halloween songs to Bindlegrim's vintage Halloween music station. Three hours now worth of haunting melodies! And while there needs to be a few separate blog entries about the music broadcasting there - you can find recent spooky additions from the era of 78 RPM records, with themes of boogie men, candy, bewitchments, bedevilment, and various other October nightmares. Tune in, and see you again here real soon!

Witches, Rockets, and Bindlegrim Radio Waves

With The Haint House Halloween Hex Lantern #3 ending today on ebay, it was maybe past time to get to work on style #4... and this time it's a countdown to outer space adventure featuring witches and rockets! Below are a couple of images from the 12 being created for this new Halloween lantern, (and, btw, for those who might be keeping track, version #1 The Pumpkin Dream & #2 The Cornish Litany will be listed for sale shortly in the coming weeks).

This upcoming version (number four) was inspired by a series of 1950's plastic candy containers with goggle-clad witches riding space-age vehicles. Here's an example of these vintage pieces from the amazing collection of flickr member ghostofhalloweenpast:

With inspiration like that, it's hard not to have fun creating this space-age imagery, while listening to some moog and theremin, with spacey retro lounge music like Space Capades: Ultra Lounge 3, or instrumental rock like Telstar by The Tornadoes, or the darker side of eerie electronic experimental music with Louis and Bebe Barron's Forbidden Planet soundtrack... to name a few.

And speaking of music, that seems like a perfect segue-way to mention Bindegrim radio, which is now broadcasting on a DIY internet broadcaster station that I've enjoyed now for many years called Live365, and is featuring alot of the vintage Halloween music I've been discovering over the past many years.

Currently the Bindlegrim station is in construction-development mode, so the playlist may seem a little limited at this time, but I think audio folks will enjoy what is currently available. I have started off with a collection of Halloween-themed tunes from the 1920's to the 1950's, and, in future, plan to expand the music from those years as well as into larger time-spans reaching into the 1960's and beyond. In the meantime, hope you enjoy the humble musical beginnings, and feedback is always welcome.

A Gaggle of Ghosts Goes to Town

I was listening to some retro-lounge music the other day - and came across an instrumental version of Mr. Ghost Goes to Town, (originally written in 1936 by Will Hudson, Irving Mills and Mitchell Parish.)  I had no idea there were so many cool versions of this song... each one worthy of a listen. Even today when I was going to say there were just three oldies of this tune - I found another blog writer who mentions two more (so that's a half dozen)!

1) I would have started first with the version by Louis Prima (1936), but can't find it anywhere as a sample online. It's a great version and it can be found on The Halloween Stomp mentioned in this entry: Halloween Music at 78 RPM.

2) The second in this list is by The 5 Jones Boys (1938), and though I'm having trouble finding information again about this band - I seem to remember they were known (minus the acoustic strumming) for creating most of their sounds with the voice: (and they use that to spooky effect here to make sounds somewhere between trumpets and theremins, with even the voice of Mr. Ghost making an appearance): 

3 & 4) For two more versions from around the 1930s (the song must have been really popular in that era), here are 2 versions featuring some early twang (one by The Tune Wranglers, and a 2nd by Zeke Manners and His Swing Billies) -- see Music/ Not Music for this entry featuring two early country/western versions: Mustic / Not Music: Three Versions of a Song About A Ghost

5) Switching gears just a bit the next one is an instrumental from The John Buzon Trio, and this is the one that spurred this entry. It's a version that will put a twitch in your tail bone, and be right at home in a cool retro lounge Halloween setting with its swinging organs and funky saxophone. (And if anyone has a collection of cool lounge Halloween tunes out there I would love to know about it!)

6) And finally for a bit of Halloween cheese in your trick-or-treat pail... here's another kicky version from the Lawrence Welk show featuring Bob Ralston in vampire attire playing the tune on the Thomas organ:

Well, do you suppose that's just for starters? With a song this catchy I have a feeling it hasn't fallen out of favor yet... but I think this covers most of the very early versions...? If you know of anymore, please post a comment.