TSV Score! At St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store

By the time I got to the third of the three bins of LPs that were on the floor down at the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store (SVDPTS) in Chamblee, USA, I was getting discouraged; but low and behold, there it was!

It’s unfortunate that Ferrante and Teicher tend to get discounted by many TSV collectors.  F&T brought that situation upon themselves in their later career by churning out album after album of piano-duo pablum. You can’t sift through the record bins of a thrift store without finding one or more of their dozens of Lps that catered to the suburban comatose set (their cover of the original Ernest Gold theme to Exodus is a good example).

But if you’re lucky enough to find and listen to one of their earlier LPs, those on the Winchester or the ABC-Paramount labels, you will recognize how F&T were one of the more progressive and fearless piano duos of the post-war period (eat your heart out Ronnie Aldrich):

These two F&T Lps remain TSV gold for any collector…

The reason why early F&T is the shit is the way they “played” their pianos. The liner notes from the LP I found at the SVDPTS  notes how F&T used “…self-designed mutes, picks, mallets and other assorted paraphernalia -all constructed by themselves.”  F&T were DIY innovaters.  Luckily, there is ONE Intar-Tube that shows them in action:

 

And here is a less frantic piece from the LP I scored:　

 

 
F&T are both dead now, but they still have a Web site.