Blind Skeleton's Three Tune Tuesday

In this special Independence Day episode of Three Tune Tuesday , we celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence through three remarkable recordings that preserve the musical traditions of the nation’s earliest years. From the colonial dance tune Money Musk , to Durang Hornpipe Medley , honoring Revolutionary War veteran John Durang, to the stirring Washington Grays March , these recor...

This week, it’s personal. Boneapart skipped into new territory at the GNCC Arena Championship bonspiel — a first time playing on Sunday, a first time in a championship final. Runners-up in the C final, sure, but the letter on the bracket isn’t the point. The point is he’d never been there before. This was his first. So here’s the question: what are some others? First, off-theme and by way of welco...

This week on Three Tune Tuesday, we throw open the barn door for “Animal House” — three records with critters in the title and not a serious thought among them. No grand theme, no hidden agenda. Just a bird, some chickens, and a bee, scattered across two decades of shellac. We open with “On the Wing” (1904), a breakneck galop from Arthur Pryor’s Orchestra hiding behind the house name “Victor Dance...

Three Tune Tuesday plays tunes. So why does this week open with a man reciting a poem? Because the best story about a game isn’t always sung. The theme this week is “Games,” and we follow the stakes as they drain right out of one — from everything riding on a single swing, through the swagger of a man who never loses, to an afternoon where the only thing on the line is a bag of peanuts. We open at...

D-Day happened in 1944. Three Tune Tuesday only plays music recorded before 1927. So how do you tell a D-Day story with songs that predate it by decades? You tell the story underneath the story. This week, we’re not playing war songs. We’re playing three recordings that trace the arc of what D-Day actually was — a moral obligation, a human cost, and a hard-won liberation — without a single referen...

This week’s Three Tune Tuesday is personal, political, and unapologetically defiant. When Donald Trump attempted to stage a partisan concert and seven of nine scheduled artists declined to participate upon learning its true nature, it was a reminder that saying “no” is one of the most powerful things an artist can do. That act of refusal — of drawing a line and refusing to let your name, your tale...

Today would have been his 149th birthday, and we are marking the occasion by telling the story of Billy Murray — the Denver Nightingale, the Phonograph King, the Irish-American kid from Colorado who talked his way into a New York recording studio in 1903 and never really left. We open with a song he recorded on his own birthday in 1922, a comic gem that catches him at the height of his powers and...

This week’s Three Tune Tuesday takes us back to the origins of Victoria Day — not the long weekend, not the fireworks, but the woman herself. We open with an “On This Day” entry: “June Brought the Roses,” recorded by contralto Marcia Freer on May 19, 1924, one hundred years to the day before this episode was released — nothing to do with Queen Victoria, but everything to do with the warmth her hol...

This week on Three Tune Tuesday, we’re thinking about health — specifically, the kind of health check that requires preparation, a gown, and a level of personal exposure that no one particularly looks forward to. We open with a piece of good timing: “By the Saskatchewan,” recorded on this very date in 1911 by baritone Andrea Sarto, taken from the hit Broadway musical comedy The Pink Lady, with mus...

This week’s Three Tune Tuesday heads south of the border for Cinco de Mayo, tracing the sound of Mexican national pride through three recordings from the acoustic era. We open with a happy accident of the calendar: Arthur Pryor’s Band recorded Franz von Suppe’s “Jolly Robbers Overture” on this very date in 1909, a piece of spirited Viennese theatricality that had been delighting concert audiences...

April has a sound, and this week’s Three Tune Tuesday goes looking for it across three recordings that span a decade of the early phonograph era. We open with Charles Harrison’s 1922 Victor recording of “April Showers,” the optimistic Tin Pan Alley standard that Al Jolson had introduced just months earlier on Broadway in Bombo — a song built on the oldest of consolations, that rain makes the flowe...

Three Tune Tuesday marks 4/20 the only way it knows how: by reaching into the pre-1926 catalog and finding three recordings whose names, in combination, do all the work without saying anything at all. We open under the canopy — Renée Chemet’s violin drifting through Francis Thomé’s pastoral miniature “Under the Leaves,” recorded the day after 4/20 in 1924. Then the Victor Military Band crashes in...

This week on Four Tune Tuesday, we’re going old. Very old. Rather than our usual today-in-history framing, we’re taking a detour into the cylinder era — the format that preceded the 78rpm disc entirely, and the one that gave birth to the commercial recording industry in the first place. We open in 1891 with what is, as best as we can determine, the oldest cylinder in the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archiv...

Spring arrives with music this week on Three Tune Tuesday, as we mark the convergence of Easter and Passover with three recordings that span the full range of what this season sounded like on early shellac. We open with a detour into pure coincidence — Vessella’s Italian Band recorded the “Blushing Maiden March” on this very date in 1911, a bright and breezy piece of light entertainment from one o...

This week on Three Tune Tuesday, the theme is Inner Peace — inspired by a vision over the weekend. We open with a Today in History pick: on this very date in 1907, Prince’s Military Band recorded The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend for Columbia Records, a chaotic, lurching musical portrait of the nightmare state that reminds us what peace is not. From there we move to something quieter — the Revillon T...

March 24, 1918: German forces crossed the Somme during Operation Michael, Ludendorff’s great spring offensive — the war machine’s last confident lunge toward a victory that never came. In 2026, with the Trump administration dismantling alliances built on the bones of two world wars, treating the consequences of war as someone else’s problem, and marching forward with the kind of certainty that his...

St. Patrick’s Day This week, Boneapart and Yulia talk about St. Patrick’s Day and share some songs celebrating the emerald isle. Mother Machree There’s a spot in my heart which no colleen may own there’s a depth in my soul never sounded or known There’s a place in my mem’ry my heart that you fill no other can take it no one ever will CHORUS Oh I love the dear silver that shines in your hair and th...

This week Yulia and Boneapart talk, not sing, The Blues. We discuss some history and share two very fantastic Blues songs that come from different backgrounds. Of course, we also play a song “Released on this Date In History.” Songs Irish Hearts Artist: Fred Van Eps (banjo solo, with orchestra) Composer: Henry Frantzen Arranger: Everett J. Evans Recorded: March 10, 1916, New York Label: Columbia,...

This week on Three Tune Tuesday, Boneapart and Yulia open with a piece of music history: on this day in 1916, Swedish tenor Aage Wang-Holm stepped into a New York recording studio to record a tender song of longing for home, sung in his native language for the millions of Scandinavian immigrants who made up a largely invisible audience for the early phonograph industry. Then the episode turns to i...

This week on Three Tune Tuesday, Boneapart and Yulia explore the theme of Égalité — equality — through three recordings from the acoustic era. We open with a "This Day in History" spin: the All Star Trio's rollicking fox trot medley "You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet," recorded by Victor Arden, George Hamilton Green, and F. Wheeler Wadsworth in New York City on this very date in 1920. Then we turn to th...

Coinciding with The Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville discovering that their theatre was actually opened in 1902, not 1903, Yulia and Boneapart visited the theatre and recorded a special, one-off, Three Tune Tuesday - named "Six Song Sunday" - in the hotel room the night before! All songs were recorded in 1902!

In this week's episode, Boneapart and Yulia continue their Liberty, Equality, Fraternity series with a look at Fraternité — brotherhood, solidarity, and standing together — themes that feel as urgent today as they did a century ago. We open with a "today in music history" moment: Marcel Journet's rich bass voice bringing the Porter's Song from Flotow's opera Martha to life in a 1905 Victor recordi...

In this week's episode, Boneapart and Yulia both get ready to run through a wall after a listen to an early recording of Patrick Henry's famous (possibily anachronistic) Give me Liberty speech. They also listen to a couple other Liberte inspired runes and get all sorts of riled up.

On this Imbolc-themed Three Tune Tuesday, Boneapart and Yulia spin three pre-1926 gems: a cheeky hospital flirtation in Billy Murray's "Good-night, Nurse" (1913), the hopeful robin-call of Charlotte Kirwan's "When the Robins Nest Again" (1913), and Irving Berlin's tender confession "Tell Her in the Springtime" (1924). Amid crackly grooves and seasonal candlelight, they explore rebirth, from person...

The world today sucks. So do fascists. It's important to remember that fighting them also requires Self Care. In this episode we try for some levity as a method of self care.