Cuca Vintage 45 1960's "America" Steam Calliope Concert III Circus World Museum
$
25
Favourite Auctions
To save auctions to your favourites, please login
If you don't have an account, please register
Description
Gorgeous clear blue. Cuca Record Corp. Sauk City, Wisconsin. Steam Calliope Concert, Volume Three, circa 1963. Recorded at the Circus World Museum Baraboo, WI by Ethel Romelfanger, James Romelfanger Porductions. excellent condition, kept in a sleeve and upright in a 45 disc storage box. As an nonexpert, I call this unscratched (looks unplayed to me). On one side may be a very slight scratch, see close up. I have added a piece I found on Ms Romelfanger below.
Please use photos for further description.
Flashback: The Queen of Calliope
BY STEFENE RUSSELL PHOTOGRAPH BY DICK WEDDLEThis is Mrs. Ethel Romelfanger (née Judevine; later Luckey). She was the official organist at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis. Here, she plays air calliope, flanked by shaker chimes and a Unafone, at the “Beautiful American Festival” at the downtown St. Louis Famous-Barr. It’s mid-October, yet she wears a sleeveless shift (look closely, and you’ll see it’s shot through with metallic threads) and wooden high-heeled sandals. If her 1961 album“American” Steam Calliope Concert II offers any clue, she’s playing a classic like “Camptown Races,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” or “Happy Birthday.” In 1968, Billboard was stuffed with lists of groovy singles like “Love Child” and “Magic Carpet Ride,” but just six years earlier, it reviewed Ethel Romelfanger’s album—and gave it four stars. That was when Billboard did a column called “Circus Trouping,” which ran next to ads for actual carnival work. Clyde Beattie of Cole Bros. sought a winter-season fat lady; Buckeye Circus was in need of a “menagerie man” to “drive Hitch with White Mules”; and shockingly, Rudy Bros. announced: “Want Second Elephant Man.” (Read further, and you realize it’s just an ad for a day laborer, preferably one “sober, reliable, able to drive a truck.”) In 1961, you could run away with the circus, but there are clues on the next page that you’d have to try much, much harder in ’68. “The Final Curtain”—that’s the obits—is filled with death notices for circus and carnival people, including Tito Flint, the clown; George Lake of Lake Bros. Penny Arcades; and Kelly the Candy Man, “veteran concessionaire.” In a way, Romelfanger’s got a funeral-hymn posture here—of course, that’d be a circus funeral for the circus itself, with a brass band, and clowns without makeup, and for the music, a secret showperson’s version of “Abide With Me,” with lyrics about stomped-on cotton candy under the bleachers after the lights go down, and trains rolling on to the next town forevermore, and some wistful bearded lady playing the harmonica, watching a cold rain falling outside the tent flaps.
Photograph by Dick Weddle, Globe-Democrat Collection, courtesy of the St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
St. Vincent de Paul is a nonprofit organization. 100% of its proceeds go to helping those in need. All items are sold AS-IS and are nonrefundable. Thus, please view all pictures carefully before bidding. We are not experts in any field. The items are described and photographed in a manner to help you make your purchasing decisions. We accept PayPal only. Payment must be received within 3 days of closing or buyer forfeits all rights to purchase and item will be relisted. Thank you.
price rating
![Ricochet by Tangerine Dream - [New & Sealed] 12](https://www.popsike.org/php/thumbnail.php?url=https://www.popsike.pics/pix/20250509/127101752736.jpg)
