Education and What-not with Mrs. Grossman (& Monty)

You have just discovered a rare comedy album.

In this collection, almost each segment has a few constants: The characters are all chickens; an instructor, Mrs. Grossman (voiced by a man) is teaching a subject to a class; a cat (the chickens' mortal enemy) will be killed as part of the lesson; Monty, a student, will point out that Mrs. Grossman is doing something dangerous; the bit will end with an enormous explosion.

You now know almost as much about "Education and What-not with Mrs. Grossman (and Monty)" as I do.

In the mid 1980s, I was working at a big NYC recording studio that had rooms in two buildings in a midtown Manhattan neighborhood which, not long earlier, had been at the heart of the pop music world (just a few blocks from the famed Brill Building). Countless records and film scores were recorded there. Burt Bacharach worked there with Dionne Warwick. Television's Marquee Moon album was done there.

By the time I worked there, more records were being produced in small studios, and most film scores were done on the west coast; the sessions at our studio were mainly for commercial jingles. Because there was a vast storage space in the basement of one studio's building, and because there were so many sessions happening, we allowed clients to store project tapes there (they sometimes added to them, or recorded new vocal parts over existing jingles).

There was so much activity, that there was a guy on staff, John L., who worked full time as librarian, cataloging and signing out tapes, and carting them back and forth between the two buildings. In his spare time, John would poke around the library and find all sorts of interesting tapes...

Lots of the studio's assistant engineers did their own side projects. The studio gave them free studio time during the off hours when nothing was booked; this allowed them to hone their engineering skills. And sometimes, as this collection attests, staff members would record stuff just for fun. "Mrs. Grossman" is just such a project.

John and I asked everybody who worked there if they knew anything about the tape or who recorded it. Nothing. Many employees came and went, so it's not surprising that the person who did it was gone, but there were some employees who'd worked there for years, so it's odd that no one knew anything about it.

Whoever recorded this tape put a lot into it, writing the sketches, recording the voices, sound effects, and clucking, and selecting background music. It obviously wasn't intended for radio, what with all the cursing. And with no big names involved, there was probably no commercial potential. So it was a labor of love, made by someone with a vision (of chickens clucking their way to kingdom come). In not putting his name on the box, Mrs. Grossman's auteur joins the ranks of the great unknown architects of many of the world's most enduring monuments. But Mrs. G (or Monty) -- if you're ready to end your years of obscurity, drop a line.

- Charlie Lewis