Dark and Dismal Eerie Organ Music
Perfect for Halloween or the approaching darkness of winter, here is some seriously dismal music. At least eight records in the Knott’s collection feature organ music. Most have a funeral home ambiance. Don’t believe me? Here is the Irving Berlin song You Forgot to Remember performed by Jesse Crawford on the Wurlitzer organ:
https://archive.org/details/78_you-forgot-to-remember_jesse-crawford-irving-berlin_gbia0002366b
It doesn’t get much merrier with After I Say I'm Sorry also on the Wurlitzer.
This music may have sounded different to ears almost hundred years ago but it certainly contrasts with the waltzes and foxtrots that make up the bulk of the Knott’s collection. Some of it is unbearably sad.
Give the The Prisoner’s Song a listen. The lyrics, mercifully not performed here, include the uplifting lines:
Now if I had wings like an angel
Over these prison walls I would fly
And I'd fly to the arms of my poor darlin'
And there I'd be willing to die
https://archive.org/details/78_the-prisoners-song_jesse-crawford-guy-massey_gbia0015458a
Amazingly this was one of the most popular songs of the early twentieth century selling seven million records by various artists, a million copies of the sheet music and sparking a squabble over authorship. Johnny Cash covered it on an album as recently as the early seventies.
Jesse Crawford (1925)
B: You Forgot to Remember
Jesse Crawford (1926)
A: The Prisoner’s Song
B: After I Say I’m Sorry
