Monday, January 23, 2017

An Amazing Find

Before we get to a truly spectacular, nearly undefinable find, here's another vintage song-poem ad, in this case from a 1919 edition of "Photoplay" magazine, courtesy of Pete. This one has a great sales pitch, and an even better drawing! Feel free to print this out and send it in - I wonder what would happen!?!?
 
 
And now!!!!!
 
 
The Halmark saga continues, in a direction I never would have guessed. In the last few years, I've come to realize that some of the endlessly repeated Halmark backing tracks began life as music beds for covers of 1960's hit songs, including "Gentle on My Mind". I've also come across a record purporting to present "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" as a Halmark original, and, most recently, found a record where Halmark actually made a good-faith effort to record a backing track that sounded like it fit in the '70's.
 
What I didn't expect this time, and what nothing I'd ever heard or seen about the label had indicated before, is that they accepted vanity projects. And that is the only possible explanation for the existence of the song "Love is Where You Are", identified only as having been written by "Mike" (no last name) of Lowden, Iowa. My guess is that's Mike singing it, too. And a more incompetent performance (of nearly four minutes) I've rarely heard, on a song-poem or anywhere else. This record truly blows my mind. I will say no more, but would love to hear the reactions of the rest of you, in the comments. My guess is that your mouth drops open and stays that way - I know mine did.
 
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The remainder of the EP contains the typical Halmark cheesiness, made even more unlistenable by a ridiculously trebly mix, one which hurts my ears at times. First up is a particularly bad lyrical construction called "Just a Tiny Bit of You", sung by the inevitable Jack Kim (although, as is true more often than not with this label, no one is identified as a performer on the label). This is set, by the way, to the backing track from Halmark's aforementioned version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix".
 
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To my ears, the worst of the three "standard" Halmark tracks on this EP is the religiously themed "This is the Salvation Way" sung by Kim and his wife.
 
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But for sheer ridiculousness, you CANNOT beat "When I Write to You", a song-poem about writing poems which contains some of the worst, simplistic lyrics I can ever recall hearing. Seriously: "Writing a letter is lots of fun, when I'm writing". And then there's the big build up to the last line, in which Jack Kim gives his all to excitedly sing what are among the least effective final six words of any song I've ever heard.  
 
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3 comments:

Stu Shea said...

Wow. That's quite the collection. I am always happy to hear the same backing track as "My Daddy He died in 1969," of course. Thanks for posting this!

Graham said...

Given some of the things you are finding it makes me wish that the American Song-Poem Music Archives was still active, as you are definitely expanding the picture of what these people were up to.

JW said...

Sometimes Zappa (and Zappa singers) would sing in this over-the-top schmaltzy voice......this guy Mike reminds me of that kind of singing. The song is actually kinda catchy!