Today, a day late, I'm offering up two Red-White-and-Blue tunes for America's birthday. And for those of you who enjoy car-crash level horrible song-poems, you're also in for a treat. Both of these tunes feature lyrics provided by the extraordinary Dolly O. Curran, of South Bend, Indiana.
Not content to submit lyrics to a variety of song-poem labels, Dolly set up her own label, and released the product of her submissions on 45's and EP's, on her own "Dolly-O" label. Her songs tend to have religious, patriotic and/or Indiana-Centric themes. She reached her highest point with a Halmark production of her song "Lady Off Pedestal At Notre Dame", which was at one point my favorite song-poem at all, and which is readily available for download on line if you go looking.
From the other end of her releases, these are two heartfelt, but truly awful patriotic numbers, both of which clearly feature the sounds of the Film City label. I'll assume the "Vern Carson" heard on the song "The Spirit of '76 Still Prevails" is the singer usually billed as Fred Carson (although I don't remember Fred's voice, at this moment, well enough to swear by this). Enjoy it, and keep in mind that you ain't heard nothing yet: Play:
"Frank Lane", heard on the flip side, with "America Spreads Her Wings", is quite clearly Frank Perry, a Film City stalwart. Here we have a nearly tuneless ode to, of all things, the admission of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union. I defy anyone to sing along with this song. And then there's the clunky "everyone is welcome" spoken word section in the middle. ENJOY!:
Play:
3 comments:
Wonderfully awful! I have a 45 on Dolly-O which is one of my all-time favourite song-poems: The Barber Shop by Singin' Jack Curran, with some of the most ridiculously out of tune piano playing it's ever been my good fortune to hear. Thanks for posting this Bob, and Happy Birthday America!
I'm disappointed -- they're not as bad as "Vampire Husband."
My guess: the label specifies "mono" so these are at least from the 1970s, and the ASCAP logo is prominent so they might have been sent out as song demos.
Both big time winners, here. Although the number 1 prize goes to "Spirit Of '1776". A real champion!
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