1952- "A Child's Christmas In Wales" (Thomas)

.....[Re-edited from December 21st, 2011]

.....Persons like myself who delve into the history of rock music inevitably come across images of the Chelsea Hotel in New York, none of which call to mind Christmas. But long before the fates of Sid and Nancy (and others) came to define it for many of us, The Chelsea had long been a magnet for literary work. It was not merely a mecca for persons working in publishing but a site of actual creative production and, significantly for today's post, a catalyst for even more work that continued beyond its walls. Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney met Dylan Thomas in the bar at the Chelsea Hotel after hearing him speak and after much cajoling convinced him to record his poems. Those recordings became the seed from which the Caedmon Records label grew. Later that year J.R.R. Tolkien recorded selected readings and the label became synonymous with spoken word recordings. Many of their releases became yardsticks by which future projects would be measured.

• 19:53 "A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES" (Dylan Thomas)
• performed by Dylan Thomas
• original source: LP DYLAN THOMAS READING A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES AND FIVE POEMS Caedmon Records TC 1002 (US) 1952
• and my source: CD A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES AND FIVE POEMS Caedmon/Harper Audio UACD 1002(1) (US) Nov. 12, 2002

.....Before kicking around New York, Thomas wrote for the BBC in his native Wales. In 1945 he submitted "MEMORIES OF CHRISTMAS" for inclusion in "Children's Hour", a popular series. In 1947 Picture Post printed his essay "CONVERSATION ABOUT CHRISTMAS". When trying to establish himself to American audiences, rather than simply rehash existing works he cannibalized these two to produce a much fuller more living work, "A CHILD'S MEMORIES OF A CHRISTMAS IN WALES" the December 1950 issue of Harper's Bazaar.

See: http://www.bfsmedia.com/MAS/Dylan/Christmas.html

.....Thomas had been promoting his work in the U.S. when Cohen and Roney discovered him. The initial scheduled recording date (Feb. 15) never happened. An appearance at the Museum of Modern Art on Feb. 18 was recorded, but those were dramatic readings of "King Lear" and other works (eventually released ten years later as Caedmon TC 1158). Finally, on Feb. 22, 1952, Cohen and Roney welcomed Thomas to Steinway Hall, which was to serve as the recording venue, and introduced him to Peter Bartók (son of Bela) who would serve as the recording engineer for the session. It was about this time that he was building the Bartók Records label and as of 2010 was still on its staff.

.....According to the liner notes of the CD noted as 'my source' above, Bartók had prepared the recording equipment in anticipation of recording a speech but decided to adjust the settings "for a symphonic recording to accommodate Thomas' sonorous voice." Listening to it, that's actually not hard to imagine. To some today, Thomas' voice might seem comically anachronistic, like Rudy Vallee or William Jennings Bryan. But listening to Dylan Thomas at length is like sitting in the center of a house as it is built around you. You wouldn't want to live in the initial frame but once the final nail is struck you wouldn't want to leave the room. It wasn't until the fifth poem was completed that the principals, somewhat intoxicated by the results, realized that their ambitious project yielded less than a half hour of material. That would be slim pickings for a long-playing record, the format of choice for the educated adult market they viewed as potentially most receptive to poetry readings. Securing the hall a third time was one pricey option, haphazardly assembling more poems without consideration for balance with the ones just recorded was another. Before a regretful error in judgement was made, Thomas remembered the Harper's Bazaar essay. Hasty panicked phone calls uncovered a copy of the issue, by then just over a year old. The session was completed with about forty-six minutes of best takes. While the quality of material wasn't in question, existing labels understandably balked at the commercial viability of recorded poetry by the authors rather than celebrity actors or vocalists. Cohen and Roney created Caedmon to release it and that proved to be a very wise move on their part.

.....The title of the essay was shortened to "A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES" for the recording which, along with the poem "FERN HILL", filled side one of the LP. Caedmon got off the ground that same year, 1952, and after a few more albums of his readings that first album was reissued in 1957 as READINGS VOLUME 1. The essay and the poems continued to be repackaged together and separately for years, even after the Caedmon label was sold in the early 1970's. It changed hands a few times and is now at home with Harper Audio at HarperCollins. The CD I cited above reproduced the album in its original form and program order including both the original cover artwork and 1985 illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman. Contemporary NPR coverage of the release can be found here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=866406

.....Dylan Thomas died of pneumonia at the Chelsea Hotel on November 9, 1953. Despite his short association with Caedmon, he left behind a wealth of recordings in that deep, Welsh accent that finally won him an American audience. On November 9, 2004 Harper released the 11CD boxed set DYLAN THOMAS: THE CAEDMON COLLECTION [UNABRIDGED] (ISBN# 978-00607-9083-7), containing not only all the tracks from the first and subsequent albums but also some material from the BBC and CBC.