Today's album is a prized heirloom from the Øverkill family collection that my mother was more than thrilled to pawn off on me when I showed the least bit of interest in it. My people are of Scandihoovian descent, of the Nørski variety. The Norwegians had some pretty serious street cred back in the days when Erik and Leif and the boys with the horned helmets were disseminating their blond DNA along every coastline possible. Nowadays they don't quite have the same rep as Fighting Men; I think of them as skiers and heavy drinkers and insane drivers and making a lot of money off of petroleum products.
Anyway, this album of 78s entitled "Fighting Men of Norway" once belonged to a relative of my father's named Orvin, who died at a young age from excessive smoking and eating cookies for breakfast, or so my mother claims. All three of the 78s are on different labels, (including one from Okeh records, which I think of as Bessie Smith's label) and none of them have anything even remotely connected with fighting, so maybe none of them are even part of the Fighting Men of Norway Collection. Which would make sense, since song titles such as "Lumbermen's Hambo" and "LaCrosse Schottische" hardly bring to mind a people who could hold their own on a battlefield (a bar fight, maybe). I guess it would go a long way towards explaining why the Nazis chose to occupy Norway instead of say, Finland. Maybe the the Logroller Polka is one of the happy "Songs of Freedom" they danced to after the Germans were gone.
Fighting Men of Norway
Ski Gutten Reinlander
Sørlands Polka
George Norgaards Quartet--Scandanavia Records 1108
Lumbermen's Hambo
Logroller Polka
Nordic Instrumental Quartet Standard Phono Co. T-2023
Norska
LaCrosse Schottische
1. Bonn Jazz
2. I gar sa var den min
3. Min besta sjomans bit
The Viking Accordion Band - Okeh C749
