While shuffling through lots of junk at a local thrift shop, I found two really cool Felix the Cat records. The first is a Cricket Records Play Hour long playing record. from 1959. As soon as I got home I put it on my turn table and had a listen. What I found was the theme song from the Felix the Cat cartoons and them four stories read with limited sound effects and no Felix the Cat voice. I am always reading stuff on Mark Evanier's blog about kids albums and how he would be really disappointed when he would listen to a cartoon record and the voice from the cartoon would not be on the record. In this case, they don't even have anyone doing the voice. Its just a story teller telling us the story. So, other than the theme song that starts each side of the album, the rest of the album is barely worth the one time listen.
The second record is a Cricket Records 45 from 1953, again with the Felix the Cat song and The Cat's March on the reverse side. I had not listened to this one yet, but just now as I check out the label on the centre of the record, I saw that The Felix the Cat Song was by the Criketone Chorus & Orchestra and The Cat March is by the Cricketeer Marching Band, so I decided to give it a listen. Sadly, when I tried to play it, it didn't work at 33 rpm or 45 rpm. A quick look on wikipedia and I found this:
Cricket Records was a children's label operated by the Long Island, USA based Pickwick Sales Corp., more commonly known as Pickwick Records, and headed by Seymour "Cy" Leslie. Pickwick owned and operated several budget labels; Cricket is significant in that it may have been one of the very last American 78 rpm labels to operate at the end of the 78 rpm era.
So sadly, I didn't get t hear it, or last least not the way it was supposed to sound. It was more of a reverse Alvin and the Chipmunks sound!
