Traversing musical worlds C through image and sound: Americana on Thomas Hart Benton'S Saturday Night at Tom Benton'S (Decca records, 1942) and the album's connection to Kansas City, Missouri

This chapter focuses on Saturday Night at Tom Benton’s, an album of musical Americana recorded by Missouri artist and folklorist Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975). Its folksong tracks recall the musical evenings Benton hosted in his Kansas City home where he performed on harmonica alongside members of the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra and local composers. To investigate this album more comprehensively than art historians have done previously, this chapter explores, for the first time, the interrelationships among the visual, verbal, and sounding components of Saturday Night. Directed by Decca conductor Harry Sosnik (1906–96), it features Benton on harmonica, his son T.P. (1926–2010) on flute, Edward Robinson (1905–?) on harpsichord, the Frank Luther Singers, and an orchestra composed of oboe, banjo, two violins, viola, and cello. By collectively examining Saturday Night’s constituents—Benton’s cover drawing and album notes, the photos of the musicians, the folksong arrangements, and the instruments heard here and in Kansas City—this study suggests that Benton traverses self-constructed, unique musical worlds of fluid boundaries through both image and sound.