The Golden Melody Boys, who I've read about at Discogs and OldTimeBlues, were also The Georgia Melody Boys -- perhaps a case of using different names for different record labels, since they were from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, not Georgia. I'm glad that 78 RPM record collectors have preserved some of their recordings.. and have even put them on youtube.
Here are a few, starting with an embedded video of the most recent I've heard...
https://youtu.be/-yaSvXgBCoE?si=JLCAaZC60UjeUted
When the Goldenrod is Blooming Once Again:
I'll continue adding their recordings to a Golden Melody Boys YouTube playlist as kind souls share songs from old 78s there! At first I was surprised that YouTube's nine songs seemed to be more of their recordings than the Discogs record-collector database for the Georgia Melody Boys -- but then I discovered the two-names situation and saw that Discogs lists them separately, with four two-sided records as "Georgia" on the Broadway label, all duplicates of songs from their seven two-sided records as "Golden" on Paramount. YouTube has some catching up to do; nine down, five to go, and maybe one of those five is already there -- since whoever uploaded Side A probably did Side B too, unless it was too damaged to digitize.
Discogs identifies the singers and players as Phil Featherstone on mandolin and sometimes harmonica, and Dempsey Jones on tiple, and as writer of their two-part dialog, "Uncle Abner and Elmer at the Rehearsal."
I hope to find more and better (less scratchy) transcriptions eventually, but from my early listening, the duet neatly illustrates my feelings about the two instruments... that the mandolin is better suited to melody or chord-melody playing, while the Tiple works best as a rhythm-chord instrument, given its doubled and tripled strings in ukulele tuning.
New to the tiple? Being tuned like a ukulele (gCea or aDf#b) means that when played at the same fret, the three lowest-pitched double and triple-string courses make a major chord (C for some players, D for others), while the three highest pitched make the relative minor chord. Sliding those positions up or down the neck can be very satisfying.
Since a ukulele playing friend of mine is learning the mandolin, and I have mandolins, ukes and a tiple, maybe we can work up such a duet.
Reminder to self: Put new strings on the tiple! When the steel string bronze windings wear out, leaving little gaps, those nice sliding chords you hear on this recording slice through the calluses on my favorite left hand fingertips and can leave behind little splinters of bronze wire. Ouch!
(Yes, I've replaced the strings since writing the first draft of this. Added that YouTube playlist too.)
(Yes, I've replaced the strings since writing the first draft of this. Added that YouTube playlist too.)
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