This particular piece of music was written by a man named Albert Hay Malotte (1895 - 1964), about whom I knew absolutely nothing until I read about him in that ever-changing fount of all knowledge, or not, Wikipedia.
Here is an excerpt:
“Malotte composed a number of film scores, including mostly uncredited music for animations from the Disney studios. Although two movies for which he composed scores won best Short Subject Academy Awards (Ferdinand the Bull in 1939 and The Ugly Duckling in 1940), he is best remembered for a setting of the Lord's Prayer. Written in 1935, it was recorded by the baritone John Charles Thomas, and remained highly popular for use as a solo in churches and at weddings in the US for some decades.”
My six degrees of separation, or two, or whatever, from both Albert Hay Malotte and John Charles Thomas is the fact that when I was a child living in a third-floor apartment in a house in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, around 1946 or 1947, I listened to that recording made by John Charles Thomas. It was one of two 78-rpm recordings that I played over and over on a huge wind-up, hand-cranked Victrola rather like this one:
The other recording I listened to over and over in those days was not sung by John Charles Thomas and it was not composed by Albert Hay Malotte. It was a country/western/hillbilly song called “I'm Goin’ Back to Whur I Come From” that included the immortal line, “whur the mockin’ bird is singin’ in the lilac bush” and here it is (2:51).
Parts of this post are ridiculous and parts of this post are sublime, and I’ll leave it to you to decide which are which.
