Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Ohoo! Ohoo Who? OHOO! Who's That? And What Did Ohoo Do?
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
Kris "Patsy Cline" Arden
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
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!
~~
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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Thursday, September 26, 2024
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
Play:( 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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Friday, September 13, 2024
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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Saturday, August 31, 2024
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 HomePlay:
~~
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.
Sunday, August 25, 2024
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
Play:Monday, August 12, 2024
The Cat and the Mouse in the Tender Trap?
I've been busy as a porcupine lately, to quote one of Shelley Berman's more "out there" routines, and I haven't posted in almost two weeks. I still don't have much time to put this up, but wanted to get something up here. I haven't put any Halmark records up in quite some time, so today's the day.
So today, we'll visit with our old friend Bob Storm. Well, as has been discussed, there were two Bob Storms. This is that Bob Storm and not the other Bob Storm. Hope that clears things up.
The only thing I'll say about "Why Is It So", is that it contains a set of lyrics that, as far as I can tell, don't mean much of anything. Your mileage may vary of course. But really, what, exactly, is being expressed here:
But baby, you could be the cat that trapped the mouse in the tender trap... so why is it so?
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Two Very Different Goodbyes
Saturday, July 20, 2024
The Shortest Song-Poem Title Ever?
First up, a quick thank you to "Nedzilla" for a really great comment. I enjoyed it mightily. Actually, now that I look back at that post, all four comments were fantastic. That one really brought out the best in you reader/listeners.
I recently came across an eBay auction for a record with what has to be at least tied for the shortest song-poem title ever. Unless a song called "I" or "A" comes along, I'm going to assume that there's never been a shorter title on a song-poem 45 (and never a title which gave away less of its lyrical direction), than Alan Poe's rendition of "To". Happily, no one else bid and I got the record at a reasonable price. Here it is:
I'm not at all sure that this is the singer who usually went by "Alan Poe". There were multiple records released under that name, and clearly they weren't all by the same singer. At least one those was actually sung by Rodd Keith, but this doesn't sound like the other Alan Poe records I'm familiar with, and it's certainly not Rodd.
Anyway, both "To" and the flip side, the almost equally generically titled "Lovely" are religiously themed offerings, both from the same song-poem. I think it's sort of odd that Rodd Keith isn't singing, here, actually. The backing track has many of the hallmarks of his production, and the melody of this song could not more clearly be a Rodd melody and chord changes - it resembles several of his creations, none more than elements in the melodies of "Ecstacy [sic] To Frenzy" and "Nativity", two of his most beautiful melodies. This tune is not anywhere near the same league as those two, but it's nice, and neither "Alan Poe" or the color-by-numbers Jesus lyrics of "To" are worthy of this melody.
Download: Alan Poe - To
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"Lovely" - about all the lovely creations the Lord has made - has almost a sunshine pop sound (if it was a bit bouncier, perhaps), and again, this melody and chord structure has Rodd dripping off of it in every measure. I'd like to think that Rodd kept his distance from the vapidity of these lyrics, but of course I know he had no problem selling much worse song-poetry than this. So his decision to make the arrangement, lead the band and call in a rather lugubrious singer remains a mystery.
Download: Alan Poe - Lovely
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Sunday, July 14, 2024
Another Michigan "Air-Loom"
Howdy folks,
First, just a quick nod to Sammy Reed, who has posted an entire song-poem album here.
And now for an echo of a post from a few years ago:
And the second is that Air-Loom, and Ms. Hines creations, are probably more accurately identified as vanity releases rather than true song-poems. A quick listen to Cara Stewart's rendition of "Michigan, My Home" and Jeff Lawrence's performance demonstrates that they are the exact same song - tune and words - although the two versions start at different points in the lyric/tune.
Almost always when two renditions are found of the same song-poem, by two different companies, the backing, tune and arrangement bear no similarities. In this case, Lee Hudson took this material, and at some other point, Sandy Stanton took the material, and each made a record of it, and they both came out with the same song, lyrics and melody. My guess is that Ms. Hines was actually a songwriter and not just a lyricist.
Jeff Lawrence seems to have made only a handful of records for Sandy Stanton, and he is just as ineffectual as the other post-Rod Rogers/Keith singers he featured at Film City, and this rendition of "Michigan, My Home" cannot compete with Cara's version. But few can really compete with Cara.
Download: Jeff Lawrence with the Film City Orchestra (New Sounds From Hollywood) - Michigan, My Home
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Speaking of the ineffectual singers of the late period Film City crew, the flip side of this record features another Gail Hines song (of course), this time sung by Frank Perry with another rarely heard from song-poem singer, Karen Kent. "A Sweetheart By My Side" is a lugubrious slog of nearly four minutes, with the dullest Chamberlin backing imaginable, poor production and bland vocals. A song-poem trifecta!
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Sunday, June 30, 2024
B-Atlas Redux
First, I want to thank everyone who has been commenting lately. There've been a few folks who have also gone back and listened to things I posted a while ago and sent a bunch of comments back to back. I am much appreciative.
Second, I will point out that I have adjusted the link (at right) to Sammy Reed's site, "Music from the World of the Strange and the Bizarre", which can now be found here.
And now it's time for us all to Be Atlas.
~~
Nearly ten years ago, I shared a Rodd Keith Record (released under his frequent aka of Rod Rogers) on the B-Atlas label. One commenter related how a search of Billboard Magazine indicated that the label was somehow related to the Jody label, which you can read about here, and which seems to have been a crazy set-up, even by song-poem and vanity standards. But note that they shared the same address. And our friends at Roaratorio Records shared that there was another B-Atlas record in existence, with both of its songs also written by the same song-poet as the record I shared, Anne De Grace, and positing that B-Atlas may have been a vanity set up for Ms. De Grace. I'm not sure how that tracks with them being a subsidiary of the bizarre Jody set up, but there are plenty of things in the song-poem world that I don't understand, and given that she did write all four known songs on the label, that supposition is probably correct.
I now own a copy of that second B-Atlas release (or perhaps it was their first release, as the two records are numbered A-2000 and A-900). And here it is:
Yes, that's right, we are still having Rodd Keith in his Film City, Chamberlin Orchestra, Rod Rogers persona. I do not have a ton of stuff to say about either of these songs, both of which I find fairly turgid. The better of the two, to my ears, is certainly "L'amour C'est Si Doux My Darling", if for no other reason than I love that vibraphone sound. The lyrics are nothing to write home about. In fact, the opening four lines are fairly awful, in a laugh-out-loud sort of way:
Someone says there's no such thing as love
Someone says there's some things in love
Someone says they've never been in love.
Someone says they've always been in love.
Cole Porter it ain't. Then it's into the main part of the song, the vibraphone retreats into the background, and Rodd (or Rod) turns on the smarm.
Download: Rod Rogers - L'Amour C'est Si Doux My Darling
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The flip side is "There's Still Room in My Heart", and the best thing I can say about it is probably that it isn't as long as "L'Amour C'est Si Doux My Darling"
Download: Rod Rogers - There's Still Room In My Heart
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