When the Daisy, At Long Last, Opens Her Eyes

A previous post detailed my search for "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes," an obscure recording by the once-famous violinist Albert Sandler used in the delightful 1973 documentary Metro-Land. Since November 2014, I had been regularly checking eBay for the record in question, and occasionally searching for more clues elsewhere on the internet. On March 10, I came across the website of the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), once operated by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council [1]. Their database included listings for several Albert Sandler recordings that had eluded me, including one disc (Columbia DX 961) comprising a medley of tunes by the composer of "Daisy," Haydn Wood. It was an encouraging discovery: though it fell short of naming the tune I was looking for, it was my first ever indication of which disc to chase. Soon after, I found an advertisement for the record in the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times, published about 8 months after the recording session. So the record existed - it would just be a matter of finding it.

Five weeks of dead ends later, I received an email from a UK record dealer who had found a friend willing to part with his copy of "Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs." I still had no confirmation that this disc included the tune. However, having identified 136 Albert Sandler 78s that did not contain "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes," I felt assured my time had come and made the purchase. Thankfully, I was right: Sandler included "Daisy" in his Haydn Wood medley, closing the circle on my Search for Metro-Land. The record's details are as follows:

Albert Sandler - Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs (Columbia DX 961)

Side 1 (Matrix CAX-8713-1)
Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs - Part 1: Fleurette, I Shall Never Forget/Silver Clouds/It Is Only a Tiny Garden/Love's Garden of Roses

Side 2 (Matrix CAX-8714-2)
Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs - Part 2: When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes/I Love Your Eyes of Grey/Roses of Picardy

Both selections recorded January 21, 1940. Columbia DX 961 was released in March 1940 and deleted from the catalog in March 1949.

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Finding the record suggested answers to a number of questions. The dealer addressed the disc's scarcity, reasonably surmising that compositions by Wood (whose most popular song was published in 1916) would have viewed as hopelessly old-fashioned by 1940 and sold very few copies. Furthermore, the use of "Daisy" as merely part of a subtitle explained why I had found so little information on the song. For one thing, Albert Sandler's records had never been explicitly linked to the "Daisy" title on the internet: the internet ostensibly contains 3 prior references [2] to the Albert Sandler record "Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs," none of which list the subtitle. For another, even in general, "Daisy" is more often referenced as a part of Haydn Wood medleys than it is standing alone. One such fascinating artifact – part of the Australian Library of Congress' digital holdings – is a copy of sheet music bearing the same title as my record, copyrighted 1920. In keeping with "Daisy's" obscurity (apparently even at the time), it is not advertised on the front cover, but is included on page 10. It would seem likely that this arrangement of Wood's music actually served as the basis for Sandler's: though 6 of the sheet music's 13 songs were excised (almost certainly for time [3]), the remaining 7 are all found on the record, in order. At least one bit of evidence suggests the medley, truncated or otherwise, remained part of his repertoire after recording it: he performed it as the last program of the day for BBC Radio at 11:30pm on February 28, 1943.

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My quest for "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes" has been the most obscure pursuit of a life already full of them. The year and a half between first seeing Metro-Land and completing the search for "Daisy" included the hardest 18 months of medical school and multiple other unforeseen challenges - sporadically interspersed with new information on a man I was unlikely to ever have heard about. It's been a pleasure to discover the gems populating his enormous discography. In this transitional period, it's also been touching to uncover the details of a life that it's felt time is on the verge of passing by. I decided to use what I've been able cobble together as the basis of a short biodiscography, which I've published online here. I hope it'll serve in a modest way to preserve his memory, and provide some interest to anyone else that should stumble upon Albert Sandler as haphazardly as I did.

Prince, 1958-2016

It was September or October 2006, about a month into my first year at Berkeley, when I saw a new copy of Purple Rain for $5.99 in the discount bin at Rasputin Music. At that point, I knew Prince as a symbol (literally), a revered musical icon, and a Chapelle's Show character, but had never actually listened to his music. I had gotten off to a rocky start to college, and my growing music collection played a substantial role in helping me through. I dug into every corner of the Beatles' back catalog; I continued to wear out the copy of The Eraser I'd bought the previous summer; and after only one or two months I had already spun St. Elsewhere more times than I could count. As I bought music, I'd always intended to listen to Prince, and this particular afternoon seemed as good a time as any.

Sometime towards the end of college – by which time I'd acquired most of the rest of Prince's discography and bought Purple Rain and its otherworldly accompanying poster on LP – I decided to average out that $5.99 over the number of plays or hours I got out of that tinny, mid-80s pressing CD. Though the index card bearing my arithmetic has long since disappeared, by whichever metric I used we were talking about fractions of fractions of a cent per unit. Among the storied peaks of the many discographies I acquainted myself with at the outset of college, Purple Rain resonated with confident, inexhaustible vitality. Today, it's my pick for the best album of the 80s, and certainly one of my 10 favorites ever made – yet it's not without competitors for the title of best album in his catalog.

Prince passed away this morning. In the sense that his health in some way necessitated an emergency plane landing last week, it's not surprising, even for someone as young as 57. And yet the idea remains a shock – perhaps because his transcendent otherness was so immaculately cultivated that it suggested he might, in fact, actually be impervious to such Earthly concerns as death. From his star-making turn dressed in a purple jumpsuit atop a motorcycle, Prince somehow grew more eccentric as he aged, including such highlights as waging war on the internet and fully embracing his extramusical celebrity. Even as he receded from the experimental forefront of popular music, he remained one of its few truly fascinating figures. He announced his memoirs a month ago, and for the first time in my adulthood (with one obvious exception), I remember being genuinely curious to read a musician's full take on their own life. In every aspect of his person, he was one of a kind, and the world is less rich for having lost him.