Shing Along With Ush - Don Costa

 

Toot Toot Tootsie

Shing Along With Ush

Don Costa and His Freeloaders

Produced by Don Costa

Cover Design by Bacon-Braefren-Lewine

Photo by Marvin Sokolsky

United Artists Records UAL 3074

1960

From the back cover: This record is the result of some people saying "Let's get together and have a party," – a real party. One where everyone could be completely relaxed and everything directed toward having fun. That required a place big enough to hold all the people to  be invited and isolated enough for everyone to make as much noise as wanted without disturbance. The merrymakers chose 150 year old Bruno's Inn in Spark Hill near Nyack, N. Y. They took the place over, literally – moving out all the chairs and the innkeeper, and invited as many people as the barroom could hold.

As with every good party, everyone arrived in the mood for one. Busloads full of people emptied into Bruno's old barroom. All kinds of people showed up. Tired city folks who never get the country air. Country folk who get tired of taking trains to the city for a night out, suburbanites, secretaries, company executives, and several gentlemen farmers.

Tables were piled high with good food – none of that insubstantial hors d'oeuvre stuff. There was spaghetti, miles and miles of it, huge pots of home-made sauce and Italian meat balls, roast beef and big bowls of salad, with stacked loaves of garlic bread. And, of course, the best of barroom beverages in properly huge quantities was available to enhance the taste of the food.

As the evening grew warmer, so did the resellers. There is something about knowing that there is no limit on the noise level that makes everyone try a room out for sound. Barbershop quartets formed in various parts of the room, musical instruments were pulled out by home-practicing musicians made brave by the warm atmosphere, and an energetic few attempted a jig. Those merrymakers who couldn't carry a tune, lifted their voices anyway. As the innkeeper's beverage stock went down, the party spirit went up.

By the high point of the evening, the steppers calmed down, the quarters united and everyone began to sing the same thing at the same time. Nostalgia filled the air, and they sang all the old familiar melodies. the best of them are reproduced here with all the party sounds left in.

As you can surely guessed by now, this is a perfect record to play at your own party. The warmth and fun at Bruno's is alive on the record ready to blend with your own party sounds. The singing is infectiously in tune (as sometimes happens with groups of non-singers). It is the kind of record which encourages singing along with the songs are those which the old remember and the young have learned.

It's not necessary to be in good voice either, indeed, it's better if the voice is slightly beery – otherwise, you might cramp the style of the broom bass sitting in the next seat and ruin the spirit of the party

Goody Goody

Makin' Whoopee

If You Knew Susie

Moonlight And Roses

Toot Toot Tootsie

Heartaches

April Showers 

Little Girl

Dream

It All Depends On You

I'll Be Seeing You

Now Is The Hour