History of California Simply Sings in Ambitious Folk-Song Collection

Audio

California Songs, Volume One and Volume Two. WEM Records, $22.95 each (double CD sets). Volume One: 2 hours; Volume Two: 1 hour, 40 minutes. (909) 780-2322. For the family. https://www.pe.net/~wem. From its Indian, Spanish and Mexican heritage, pioneer spirit and Gold Rush days to its hard-riding cowboys, temperance, women’s suffrage, immigrants, Dust Bowl refugees, silent movies, orange groves, patent remedies, wartime struggles, labor movements and ‘60s protests, California’s history comes to life through meticulously researched folk songs in two double-CD volumes. The music is performed by folk singers-historians Keith and Rusty McNeil.

Although the McNeils give their simple, introductory narratives a dry delivery, this remarkably ambitious, family friendly project offers a fascinating window on a complex history that encompasses disparate cultures, fundamental struggles for survival, life-changing technologies, shifting values, political turmoil, dreamers, rogues and rebels.

Half Horse, Half Alligator. Bill Mooney. August House, $12. Cassette: 65 minutes. (800) 284-8784, Ext. 2. Ages 12 to adult. This humorous take on American history is a riverboat odyssey up the Mississippi through tall and true tales memorably performed by stage and screen actor and master storyteller Bill Mooney. Based on his long-running, one-man touring stage show, Mooney serves up a host of 18th and 19th century scoundrels, characters and eccentrics, culled from original sources and enacted with ebullient spirit and expertise. Highlights include a rowdy “Tennessee Frolic” from 1845; a fast-talking pitchman in “The Erasive Soap Man”; Will Rogers’ delightful 1921 sketch, “The Dog Who Paid Cash”; an 1858 parody of brimstone-and-hellfire camp-meeting preachers in “They Shall Gnaw a File”; and “The Specialist,” a comic reminiscence from an earnest expert in outdoor sanitary engineering, by 1919 vaudevillian Chic Sale. The cassette’s title, by the way, refers to a nickname given to 19th century American backwoodsmen.

Video

Bear in the Big Blue House, Volumes 1 and 2. Buena Vista Home Video. 50 minutes each. $12.95 each. The Disney Channel’s beautifully crafted, gentle preschooler series from Jim Henson Television, featuring big cuddly Bear and a host of other Muppet charmers, comes to home video.

The first two releases in this collection: Volume 1: “Home Is Where the Bear Is” and “What’s in the Mail Today.” Volume 2: “Friends for Life” and “The Big Little Visitor.”