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1 of 1- Richard Baker
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- From: Kenilworth, Warwickshire, Engl
- Registered: 20/11/2010
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Now Is The Hour
Sometimes I get fascinated by the odd byways of musical history, so please indulge me.
Bing recorded "Now Is The Hour" on 8 November 1947. It was included in the 5 LP set "A Musical Autobiography" issued in the mid 1950s. (Coincidentally the very first LP by Bing that I bought. - and still have).
"Now Is The Hour" is a Maori song. In it's original Maori it goes "Po atarau. E moea iho nei. E haere ana. Koe ki pamamao. Haere ra. Ka hoki mai ano. Ki i te tau. E tangi atu nei" but I suppose it would have been too much to expect Bing to get his mouth around that lot, so he sang "Now is the hour, when we must say goodbye - - "
Bing mistakenly said somewhere - I think it was in fact on the Autobiography set - that the song came from Australia. I recalled this when I found on a website (The 78rpm Collectors' Community) a copy of a record made in 1930 by the Rotorua Maori Choir. The record was made by Columbia and issued under number Columbia D0-63 matrix T921. But there on the label are the words "Columbia Graphophone (Aust) Ltd N.S.W. Made In Australia". So I wondered. Had Bing heard and seen that old record and been misled into the thought that the song was Australian?
The oddity is that the self same recording was also pressed by Columbia in Wellington, New Zealand with the same issue number. The Australian label is a fancy multicoloured "ethnic" pattern while the NZ version is gold lettering on a plain black label - the standard (British) Columbia design of the period.
- Graham Pascoe
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Re: Now Is The Hour
I can't throw any light on that record but, as a matter of interest, Columboa Graphophone (Aust) Ltd was a subsidiary of the English Columbia company. It had commenced record production in Sydney in 1926 and pressed Coumbia and Regal discs and also produced Parlophone 78s for the British Parlophone company. Some of Bing's records were released on the Parlophone label, namely, five 1929 recordings which were on the Okeh label in USA. After the formation of EMI in Britain, Columbia Graphophone became the company which produced Crosby records in Australia for about two decades. Its laminated records were renowned for their high quality and the Aussie Deccas it pressed were, I believe, sought after by Crosby collectors.