A Hendrix Christmas

That's Bill Hendrix, of course, the famous.... well, I don't know who he was, actually. 

Anyway, I promised y'all a Christmas vanity/song-poem hybrid last week, and here I am to provide it! The aforementioned Bill Hendrix clearly paid his money and got to perform two songs of his own creation, with the help from the ol' Film City Chamberlin, which I'm fairly certain was played here by Rodd Keith. 

The first side, "Sharing Christmas With You" is actually a it of an outlier, as it starts with what is clearly a flourish on a real, honest to goodness guitar, one of the rare examples of a non-Chamberlin instrument being heard on a Film City (or related) release. Note that the Chamberlin (with the additional few seconds of guitar here and there) is identified as an "Orchestra and Chorus". Not hardly. 

I find this song something of a dirge, and a long dirge at that. He does not sound nearly as excited about the title prospect as I think a guy ought to, given the words he's singing. My guess is it was meant to sound like a romantic, 1940's style holiday standard, but I'm not much of a fan of those either, and this one seems to be threatening to slow to a stop at any moment. The backing track is skillfully done, for what it is, but it's a drag, too. 

Download: Bill Hendrix and Orchestra and Chorus - Sharing Christmas With You

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After a far from promising, downright smarmy opening 25 seconds, "I Wish I Was Santa Claus" proves to be a major improvement on the flip side, bouncing along with another creative - and much more enjoyable - backing arrangement, although it doesn't come close to matching Ringo Starr's similar named wish-in-song. 

Still, it's an improvement on the A-side and a typical entry into the "if I ran the world" type song. 

Download: Bill Hendrix and Orchestra and Chorus - I Wish I Was Santa Claus

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Now, if you've been hanging around my blogs for more quite a while, you know that my family tries to create a funny Christmas card - we've done it every year except for one over the past fifteen years or so. If you've seen all of those I posted here, then you've gotten to see my kids grow and change, the addition of our son-in-law, and my wife and I get older and older. Here is this year's entry: 

Little Joey Writes a Letter

I had a request for a few Christmas song-poems, and I spent part of this last weekend searching my holding for just that sort of record. While I didn't check the song-poem albums in my collection, I did look through the vast majority of my 45s, and I found.... that for the most part I've already shared most of my Christmas related song-poems over the years, either here, or, in one case, in a large post of Christmas song-poems at WFMU. Three are still way too many unshared religious song-poems (almost all of them Christian), but few of them are specifically about Christmas. 

I found two. Or rather, I found one song-poem 45 and one vanity record on the Film City label. Today is the song-poem, and in a week or so I'll offer up the Film City delight. 

From the vapid, post-Rodd Keith, cheapo synth strings era of the Preview label (and not at all long before the demise of the label), we have Gene Marshall singing "Little Joey to Santa Claus". Note how very few lyrics there are in this nearly three minute track, stretched out by an interminable instrumental break and a repeating of about half the lyrics a second time. 

Alas, as we all know, Little Joey grew up to learn to play Trombone before becoming a criminal and ending up in prison with Shifty Henry, Sad Sack and Elvis Presley. Oh, and that cutie known as Number Three. Perhaps if Santa had only brought him those roller skates. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Little Joey to Santa Claus

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This record actually has TWO Christmas songs on it. On the flip side, Barbara Foster (AKA Bobbie Blake). It's called "A Joyous Christmas", but it does not suggest anything joyful to me. I find her vocal performance really sweet at a few moments, but that's about it. Your mileage may vary. 

Download: Barbara Foster - A Joyous Christmas

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Please note that I've tried my best to honor a request. If you have a request, let me know - if I can fill it, I will!

I'll Take "Song-Poems About Utah" For 400, Alex!

Happy Post-Thanksgiving to all who celebrated it yesterday! 

Today's song poem does in fact involve Utah, and was "Song Poems About Utah" to actually be a category on Jeopardy! (I wish), I suspect there might only be two answers in the category, used across the five slots. There is a song on the Roxie label called "Utah, The Beehive State" (which, sadly, I do not own), and then there's today's offering: 

Technically, of course, this is not about Utah, but rather, it deals with "My Utah Sweetheart". And who better to sing it (who, better to sing most anything song-poem related) than Norm Burns, and his backing group, named to differentiate them from what Norm is doing I guess (?), as "Singers". 

This waltzy number has everything you'd want in a song about a sweetheart from Utah, including that ringing guitar, some sweet backing vocals, the echoey production on Norm's voice, and, of course, a reference to beehives. 

It's also worth noting that, via an instrumental solo section (shame about that missed note) and a lengthy instrumental coda, the good folks at Sterling managed to stretch the song-poet's two short verses and one bridge into a robust 134 seconds. 

Download: Norm Burns and Singers - My Utah Sweetheart

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On the flip side is a religious number, "My Fate". I find this title odd, given that it's a hymn of devotion, the choice to follow the writer's savior, and self-assuredness within that faith, rather than anything about heading unseeing into something that "Fate" has in store for him. And "My Fate" is not heard anywhere in the lyrics, either. "My Faith" would be a better title, so much so that I really wonder if there was a mistake somewhere along the line in printing the label. 

Oh, and one more thing. There is a pretty dang weird line early on. Among those lines of devotion, we hear that God "tempts me to stray". I'm a lifelong Episcopalian and that concept stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Perhaps there are other branches of Christianity that believe that God plays GOTCHA with his worshipers, sort of a cosmic version of "Survivor" or "Fear Factor"? 

Anyway, this is tedious stuff, and seems a lot more than 44 seconds longer than its flip side. 

Download: Norm Burns and Singers - My Fate

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Where Else Would You Put a Rainbow?

I find that it's been more than six months since I featured Sammy Marshall, and thought I'd better remedy that. Here he is, on the tiny, tiny Sigmar Records label. This label seems to have been created in order to have a place for the Globe Records song-poem factory to release songs written by a Mr. or Ms. Severtson, and is only documented to have released two 45s (although there may, of course, be more).

The first side - "Rainbow in Your Sky" - is a pretty typical Globe production, sounding like it's from early in their existence. It's got a bouncy feel, some nice echoey production and guitar playing that sounds a bit like Les Paul on an off day, but otherwise a bit sterile (Globe leaned further and further into that sterile sound as time went on). 

Download: Sammy Marshall - Rainbow In Your Sky

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On the flip side, "The Old Songs", is about just that. It's just about as bouncy as the other side, but less engaging, at least to my ears. And the song-poet made his or her job a bit easier by shoehorning in the names of at least a half-dozen "old songs", rather than writing a complete lyric from scratch. 

Download: Sammy Marshall - The Old Songs

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Fred Hastings Sings For You

In the late '60s and into about 1970 or so, the Preview label's releases were dominated by Rodd Keith, and to a lesser degree by Teri Summers and Bonnie Graham, among a few others, as well as records released by one of them under a pseudonym or three. There were plenty of other credited artists, as well, but their releases were relatively sparse. Around the time that the label numbers hit 1500, the volume of Rodd's releases slowed, and by label release 1600, he had virtually disappeared from the credits on Preview labels, with only about a dozen further releases for the company after that. I imagine this is about the time he moved over to MSR, but that's completely supposition on my part. 

Anyway, if you look at the Preview page on the AS/PMA website, you'll find that it is also not long after release number 1500 that Preview seems to have begun trying out various alternate vocalists. Some of these may well be Rodd under pseudonyms (again), but there sure are a bunch of them, each of whom seems to have made anywhere from one to six records for the label before disappearing for good. Then, a short time later, Gene Marshall and Barbara Foster (who I think.... someone correct me... is also the singer known as Bobbi Blake?) show up and they dominated the label for the rest of its existence. It  sort of looks like they were casting out for whoever could be their next main vocalist. 

Anyway, during that period, someone named Fred Hastings made about a half-dozen records for the label. The one I am sharing today is the only one I've heard, and what I find curious about it is that it's very clearly, to my ears, a Rodd Keith arrangement. Why didn't Rodd sing it? Was he helping Preview find his successor? Whether he was or wasn't, Fred Hastings wasn't going to be it, based on this record, anyway. 

"Left Over Love" is the better of the two songs. The arrangement - and again, it sounds like Rodd's work - isn't bad, and something more listenable could have been made out of this with a better singer. But Fred Hastings reminds of a cross between Harry Burgess of "Chicago Policeman" fame and the sort of pompous hotel lounge singer that Vivian Stanshall liked to parody, And I like both of those records I just linked, for extremely different reasons, but here, the style, such as it is, just puts me to sleep. 

Download: Fred Hastings - Left Over Love

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The flip side "My Dream", doesn't even have that interesting arrangement, although it still puts me in the mind of Rodd Keith. The lyrics here are also dimwitted - assuming one believes in angels, my guess is that no one who does, ever imagined a situation in which one of those angels asked "would you like some company". But maybe I'm wrong. 

Download: Fred Hastings - My Dream

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Ohoo! Ohoo Who? OHOO! Who's That? And What Did Ohoo Do?

Today, a record I've wanted to share for a really long time, but always held back because.... well because the record came to me with a chip out of the outside edge, and neither side will play all the way through from the start. But several days ago, I decided to see if I could create a sound file from each side which starts early enough that nothing but a few opening chords or riffs were missed, and hopefully almost make it sound like nothing was missing. Happily, I was able to do that well with one side, and passably with the other. Or at least they sound good enough to me. No more than five seconds appears to have been missed on either side.

The focus of all of this burning desire to share a record with you is the song "Ohoo Made a sin Out of Sex". And really, how could it NOT be. Especially when it features a singer as consistently awful as Eleanor Shaw (look for her other songs posted here if you don't believe me). This is the side with the nearly passable attempt at correcting for the missing music at the start. 

Other than that, I think I'd like to let you experience the weirdness, the downright otherness of this track, rather than go into much detail. Suffice it to say that it's truly awful in every aspect possible, particularly the vocal, and as the late host of a local radio show used to say "What the Hell is She Singing About". 

Download: Eleanor Shaw - Ohoo Made a Sin Out of Sex

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The flip side is "What Is Love?", happily not the insipid and mind-numbing number from 1960 by the Playmates, but unhappily, a song just as bad. And whoever wrote a melody line which contained the sweeping high notes of the sort heard at the 0:29 point.... well, clearly that person was not aware of Eleanor Shaw's vocal limitations. 

On the other hand, it's not too many songs, particularly not songs addressing aspects of the human condition (as this one does) which make reference to flat tires and a sprocket wrench. So there's that. 

Download: Eleanor Shaw - What is Love?

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Kris "Patsy Cline" Arden

To quote a previous post featuring the Inner-Glo label: 

As I do whenever I feature either an Edith Hopkins composition and/or a record on her custom label (out of Emporia, Kansas), "Inner-Glo", I will again explain that Ms. Hopkins is my favorite song-poet, based on the high quality of her (large number of) best songs, and also that she was a bit of a curio in the song-poem world in that, although she used the song-poem factories, particularly Globe, it appears that she wrote all the words AND music to her songs, so she was not technically fully part of the song-poem world. Additionally, although it doesn't apply here, she also wrote and commissioned records of certain songs meant to be directed at the legitimate radio/record store/Billboard magazine world, most notably with (but not limited to), the incomparable "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got)", by Betty Jayne.

"I Don't Get Over You" is another solid piece of songwriting. And as I wrote about a previous Inner-Glo release by Kris Arden, the singer and the arranger had clearly been listening to some of the later recordings made by Patsy Cline. The flute doesn't really fit in with that description, and seems superfluous to me, but otherwise, this is countrypolitan, Cline style all the way around. The harmony vocal on the bridges is particularly nice. 

Download: Kris Arden - I Don't Get Over You

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The flip side is "So You're Sorry Again", and pretty much everything I said about "I Don't Get Over You" applies here, although in this case, the unnecessary addition is a tenor sax player, whose honking is distracting and doesn't fit with the feel of the rest of the band. I don't think this is as solid a performance as the flip, but I do like a few moments of tight harmony, and it's worth a listen.

Download: Kris Arden - So You're Sorry Again

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Bob Bonn's Greatest Hit

Okay, so I wrote this post about six days ago, and went in today to start building the next one, and found that I never went live with it. Probably the effects of my then new tooth extraction and related pain - pain which has continued to this day, due to complications. Yay. Today, the pain seems to finally be calming down. 

But anyway, the fact that I did delay going live with this one means that it gives me a chance to publicize something I received in email over the weekend. A correspondent named Michael has found, and posted, a Rodd Keith "Real Pros" release from 1974. And to my ears, it's really something special. The opening couplet is downright weird and may make you think something goofy is on the way. But it's anything but. That weird line notwithstanding, it's a deeply meaningful and affecting lyric and a really pretty record, sung very effectively with deep emotion. 

It's worth keeping in mind that this record is Cinema 7452, that is, a Real Pros record from 1974, and well beyond the halfway point of that year's releases. It's likely this is at least from the summer of that year, and more likely that it's from the fall. Rodd died that December. This is almost certainly from among the last batch of song-poem sessions he took part in. 

Thanks, Michael! Here it is - I highly recommend it!

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I am always hesitant to post Fable 45's, or at least to post them and describe them, outright, as song-poems. And that's because I just don't know. Sandy Stanton used that label to release song-poems, but also vanity records and, I think, actual attempts at producing hit records. 

On the other hand, I adore a good percentage of what Stanton released on Fable - I would certainly rank it as one of my five favorite labels within the song-poem world, maybe top three, along with Film City and Tin Pan Alley. And when I get a "good" Fable release I want to share it with the larger song-poem community. 

I don't think this one was in any way an attempt to be "legit", but I could easily see it as either a song-poem or a vanity record, and can't really close the argument in either direction. The songwriter (or song-poet), George Blevins, does not appear to have ever written another song that was released in any way, aside from these two tracks, and singer Bob Bonn similarly does not appear to have ever sung,  under that name at least, on any other records. 

"Ooo Baby" is the winning side to my ears, a fun little 123 seconds of rockabilly, with a spare and effective backing featuring some nice, staccato guitar picking. Bob Bonn does as well as many a rocker of the era (this is from 1957), and the whole thing swings quite nicely. And those stop-chord sixth chords are to die for. 

Download: Bob Bonn, Music by Sandy Stanton - Ooo, Baby

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The flip side features 122 seconds of Country and Western, 1957 style, as Bob Bonn croons about the "Soft Spot in My Heart". He's a little more tentative giving forth with vocal style that requires a bit more accuracy than the flip, but overall, both he and the band submit another winning performance. 

Download: Bob Bonn, Music by Sandy Stanton - Soft Spot In My Heart

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The Noval Man - the Anti-Gene Marshall

Only two posts this month, I'm afraid. It's been quite an ordeal of a month, but one which suddenly turned bright and lovely in the last three days.....

But last time I had eight songs to share, and this week, you'll barely be able to get through the two I have for you without losing your lunch. Yes, it's Noval Time. 

Last time around, I paid tribute to the great Gene Marshall. Gene and the folks at Preview were certainly among those at the pinnacle of the song-poem business, at least for a time, and Gene himself was utterly professional, talented and did a flawless job 99% of the time. As I wrote a few weeks ago: 

in many, if not most cases, he was singing the song-poems you hear on this site the very first (and last) time that he ever saw the sheet music. 

Such a practice does not always turn out well. Perhaps the very opposite of the 1960's and early 1970's version of Preview (and the opposite of certain periods at Sterling and at Tin Pan Alley, among others), was the Noval label. And for that reason, I consider them to be another quintessential song-poem level, just at the other end of the quality scale. 

The stereotype of the song-poem, I think, is a talentless person writing trite lyrics and being tricked into parting with a good amount of money for a recording made my hack musicians who barely have any interest in what they're doing. And often, the first part is true. Anyone reading this knows the sort of lyrics that turn up on these records. 

The hack musician going through the motions part is unfair to a lot of people who worked their tails off, often for material which didn't deserve it. 

But Noval.... oh, Noval.... This is where the complete stereotype I just described comes utterly true. Most of the song-poetry heard on Noval 45s is thoroughly awful, the arrangements are bland and plodding, the singers are not even credited, there is NO address for the label, and the singing is the very opposite of Gene Marshall. For the singer on this record, I certainly hope, beyond hope, that he was seeing the words and music for the first time, because this guy clearly either was not a good site reader or was simply a terrible singer, or perhaps both. The anti-Gene Marshall. 

Have a listen to "Rose of Love", in which the singer misses the second note of the song, despite the fact that the pianist is also hitting the note and it's the tonic note for the key they are in (for all you musicians out there). As he typically did (this guy is on a lot of Noval records), this singer shows no technique whatsoever, and continues to find stay on the melody challenging here and there, culminating on a note he simply fails to hit at 1:59.  

And don't even get me started on these lyrics...

Download: No Artist Named - Rose of Love

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( I must point out at this point, that every now and then something accidentally turned magical, in Noval's hands.) 

On the flip side is "All I Want is You", featuring some additional cookie cutter lyrics. Somewhere during the course of listening this particular song, I became convinced that the reason the pianist constantly doubles the melody of the songs on Noval records is because that was the only way to keep this guy at or near the right notes of those melodies. Sort of a real life Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. 

Download: No Artist Named - All I Want is You

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GENE MARSHALL: 1928-2024

My best pal Stu brought me news that both of us had missed, from earlier in the year, which is that Gene Marshall - or, technically, Gene Merlino - one of the kings of song-poem singing, died early this year, at the age of 95. You can read a bit about him here. He used to have his own website, which you can still see via the wayback machine. 

Gene was a masterful singer, with a warm, inviting voice that you couldn't help believe meant everything it sang. He could adapt to many styles of music, and could seemingly instantaneously decide how to handle a song - in many, if not most cases, he was singing the song-poems you hear on this site the very first (and last) time that he ever saw the sheet music. 

But his career was much more than song-poems. He sang on TV, with popular groups, for Disney films (and other films), at least on occasion found himself at a session along with one of my biggest musical heroes, Thurl Ravenscroft. He and Thurl even teamed up with two other session singers for a Barbershop Quartet album at one point. Here is one of the songs from that album. 

Gene released relatively few records under his real name. Here is an early vocal performance with Paul Weston's group, and here he is (in poor sound quality), covering a Pat Boone hit song on one of those cheapo cover 78s from the 1950's. (By chance, his performance got paired, on the same side of the record, with Scatman Crothers great reworking of Nervous Norvis' "Transfusion".) But of course, Gene recorded under at least a half dozen different names for song-poem companies, work he reportedly always referred to as doing demos. 

I have already featured most of the greatest Gene Marshall records from my collection, and I encourage you to click on his name at the bottom of this post for all of my Gene posts (and look elsewhere online), so I don't have anything startlingly amazing to share here. But I have selected four Gene Marshall Preview 45s from what is a huge subset of my collection featuring Gene's vocals. None of these eight songs appear to have been previously posted anywhere, and they offer a variety of styles (within the increasingly limited styles that Preview offered as the label moved into the 1970's). 

Thanks, Gene.

To everyone else: Enjoy!

Download: Gene Marshall - Don't You Know I Feel Love Fever

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Download: Gene Marshall - You Asked For It

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Download: Gene Marshall - In a Little House Trailer

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Download: Gene Marshall - I'm Glad That I'm An American

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Download: Gene Marshall - That's It, Love

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Download: Gene Marshall - Hi Boys, Swing That Band

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Download: Gene Marshall - In Your Arms I Belong

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Download: Gene Marshall - Home Town Gal

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Two One-Sided Song-Poem Acetates

 In my continuing - if only occasional - effort to put forth a well rounded picture of the song-poem world, today, I am going to feature two one-sided acetates, one from the relatively (within that ssong-poem world) enormous Globe factory and one from the much smaller Promo Records outfit (a company which I admittedly know nothing about). 

We'll start with Globe: 

The Globe company put its material out on a dizzying number of labels, many of the vanity names owned by the song-poets. Others, such as Air, were labels that, for reasons I still don't understand, released material by several different companies, more often than not on the same EP. Still other recordings went to labels such as Roxie and Ronnie, which, as far as I can tell, only released Globe material. The AS/PMA website for Globe lists more than 40 labels associated with the company.  

So far as I know - and I could very well be mistaken - Globe did not release any 45's under their own label, and only produced acetates for customers under their own logo. If the song-poet liked what he or she heard on the acetate, arrangements would presumably be made for the performance of the song to be released on a label. Or perhaps you could pay a smaller fee and only get an acetate two. Or five. I don't honestly know. 

Here is one of those one-sided acetates, which features label stalwart Lance Hill, singing a forgettable piece - which melodically reminds me a bit of "Gentle On My Mind", except that it's awful. And neither John Hartford or Glen Campbell would have tarted up that great song with a yakety sax. 

Download: Lance Hill - I've Got to Find My Way Back Home

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~~

As mentioned, the other one-sided acetate for today is on the Promo Records label. Promo Records did not identify their singers, or in this case, their singer-talker, opting instead for only the author of the lyrics. 

And I must say, the lyrics, or more specifically, the story at the heart of "Sin Doesn't Pay" confounds me. And it confounds me because of that title. Here we have a short song about how sin doesn't pay wrapped around more than two minutes of a story that takes place in 1941, about a man who drank some alcohol and walked from one home to another along or more likely on the railroad tracks and (I think - it's never actually said) got hit by a train and killed. 

My confusion is this... what does that have to do with sin? Is drinking alcohol a sin? Jesus is said to have turned water into wine. Is walking when you're a bit tipsy (instead of driving) a sin? Can't see that at all. Is walking on railroad tracks a sin? Stupid, yes, but a sin? I'm not trying to be dense here - I truly don't get what the narration has to do with the song part of this record. It's as if Ray Stevens sang the chorus of "Everything is Beautiful" at the start and end of that record, and then put a detailed description of a baseball game in the middle of it. 

Beyond that, if I'm right that he got hit by a train, why was he frozen in the lake? And if I'm wrong about him being hit by a train, and instead, he drowned, where, in the story, does it say that. 

I have the feeling that the song-poet here was writing about something that happened to a family member, but even with that heartbreaking aspect of it, I'm going to call this one of the most bewildering, and one of the downright dumbest song-poems I've heard. 

Download: No Artist Named - Sin Doesn't Pay

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Incidentally, to add a completely separate mystery to this record, apart from the confusion around the story told, the un-pressed flip side of this record shows the backwards and faint imprint of a record on the legitimate Jewel label, a record by Lowell Fulsom called "Don't Destroy Me", from 1970.

On this page, there is an image of that record's label. 

And her is the backside of the Promo Records disc: 

The Irishman, Johnny Williams

I am very excited whenever I can land a copy of another Johnny Williams Tin Pan Alley release. I find that most of his records have at least one side which is entertainingly ridiculous in one way or another. He doesn't appear to have worked for the label for very long, and I love his records so much that I'm already dreading the day when I realize that there may be no more new-to-me Johnny Williams records left to hear for the first time. 

Today's presentation - hot off the eBay marketplace and into my turntable - is no exception to what I just wrote: 

I hope that the song-poet behind "The Irishman" appreciated what he or she received. Hard to say what that writer might have expected, since the entire lyric is only eight lines long. The folks at Tin Pan Alley did their best to stretch it into roughly 90 seconds of music, via a lot of drumming and a guitar solo. In this way, it's much like one of my two favorite Johnny Williams' singles, "Chinkerincky". 

If anything, "The Irishman has even fewer lyrics than that classic, but Johnny Williams gives it his all, with an appropriately, and typically ridiculous vocal performance. I am not disappointed. 

Download: Johnny Williams - The Irishman

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On the flip side is a real surprise. It's called "Shut Your Eyes and Court Her Again", and it's a tender lyric encouraging the practice of imagining one's lover as she was when you were newly in love. I found these words quite effective and touching. AND, it may be the only song poem I've ever heard to contain the word "bosom". 

Johnny Williams was, to my ears, not really capable of singing a slow and soft song with any technical skill, and I've mostly found his performances on such material to be anywhere from incompetent to cringeworthy. And he's not "good" here, either, but he sells it about as well as he was able, given those limitations, and at a certain level, he connects with the sweetness of the lyrics. 

And hey, doesn't the band sound, as heard here, seem to predict the 1960's sound of Sterling Records? That's kind of interesting, too. 

Download: Johnny Williams - Shut Your Eyes and Court Her Again

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