The tenth and final installment in our ten ten-inch records on the tenth celebration is this one related to a radio show broadcast from Harrisonburg, Virginia. It's The Mennonite Hour, and it seems to somehow be related to the Eastern Mennonite College. Here in Sarasota, we have a large Mennonite community, but I've never seen or heard any of them sing. Maybe I just don't travel in the right circles. As far as I know, this is the only record I'm posting today that is actually something that has ever shown up over at Buster's
Big 10-Inch blog. I try not to duplicate too much stuff from my fellow bloggers, but it happens from time to time. Try as we might, there are only so many Christmas records out there. There are actually three different groups on this record, one with everybody, one with the men only and one with the women only. I'm sure you'll be able to tell which is which, you're pretty smart. This is
The Mennonite Hour Choral Groups-
Joy To The World (Mennonite Hour Records 10" 33 RPM MH-33-LP-5, Mono, 1956).
1. Joy To The World
2. Once In Royal David's City
3. We Three Kings Of Orient
4. O Little Town Of Bethlehem
5. Sleep Child Divine
6. Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming
7. All My Heart This Night Rejoices
8. It Came Upon The Midnight Clear
9. O Come, All Ye Faithful
10. Brightest And Best
11. As With Gladness Men Of Old
12. Hark, The Herald Angels Sing
13. The First Noel
14. I Know Not How That Bethlehem's Babe
15. To Us A Child Of Hope
16. Silent Night
(Whew! That's a lot of tracks for a 10" record!)
MEGA
I didn't know there are a lot of Mennonites near you. There are communities near where I live as well - which would seem to be the reason why we both stumbled across this record, eh? I have a few other Mennonite Christmas records, I believe, but they are 12 inchers.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that Person's Lib hasn't gotten a hold of the word "mennonite", and made them gender neutralize it into something like personnonite, or that Women's lib hasn't tried to make it be womennonite. Either way, thank you!
ReplyDeleteI live there.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine was in some of the men's groups for this radio show in the 1950s and 1960s. Over the past ten years he got the tape owners to compile and issue at least a dozen CDs of those radio recordings. (Unfortunately, the publisher went out of business a few years ago!)
He also has a Sunday morning radio show of his own where he plays them, along with other music that was (mostly) recorded by Mennonites. Here is his show:
http://www.wmra.org/programs/mostly-mennonite-mostly-acapella-wemc-0#stream/0
There is a thrift shop across the street from Eastern Mennonite University (formerly College), and it often has these Mennonite Hour LPs for 50 cents. http://giftandthrift.org/
ReplyDeleteGrab all the Christmas ones and send 'em to me!
ReplyDelete