Guy Lochhead, 11/03/12
Obscure American singer who I could only find two songs by, ‘O Holy Night’ and ‘The Last Round-up’. He and his wife Norma Jean featured on the B-side of the Florence Foster Jenkins Victor album and had their own label, Swell Singing. The only people who know about him seem to be WFMU-related. It seems like Citizen Kafka showed Bob Purse, and actually had more of his recordings and was intending on “putting out 40 and 60 tracks from Ellis and Norma Jean Chadbourne’s masterwork, a multidisk 45 album of “swell singing.”” before he died in 2009. The two songs of his that I have heard turn Christmas and trail songs into arias. He sings with great enthusiasm and manages notes you wouldn’t expect, as well as missing a few easier ones. Sadly, the fact there’s so little information means I can’t include him.
One Response to Ellis Chadbourne
I heard Ellis and Norma Jean Chadbourne many years ago on The Max Ferguson Show on CBC Radio. They performed an excruciatingly bad version of some opera duet. He wasn’t so bad until his wife started to sing, and then he went wildly out of tune. Mr. Ferguson said that he had had a long correspondence with them on the subject of vocal technique, and he was quite impressed by their erudition and knowledge of the subject. Then they sent him a copy of a record they made called “The Glory of the Human Voice”. Ouch.
Ferguson has been retired for some time now–he is 87 years old now–but it might be possible to get the CBC to forward a letter to him. Here’s the address:
CBC Radio,
Box 500, Station A
Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6
Canada