Friday, April 02, 2010

Empty Seats and Empty Hearts

Today, in honor of Holy Week, I've got a record written by my all-time favorite Song-Poet, Edith Hopkins. On of these days, I'll have to do a large post - probably at WFMU - featuring the best of Edith Hopkins, because I've barely featured her here. Those with larger collections might recognize such titles as "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained" by Sammy Marshall, "Only When She's Blue" by Rod Rogers or "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got)" by Betty Jayne, but many song-poem fans may have little or no idea who she was/is. Ms. Hopkins submitted lyrics to a variety of song-poem operations, and at some point set up her own label, "Inner-Glo", out of Imporia, Kansas. At Inner-Glo, she appears to have continued to commission song-poems from the usual subjects, but released the results herself, in addition to apparently commissioning some records (such as the excellent "Lock the Windows") via more legit channels. And that's really all I know about her (and even some of that is supposition). As I said, one of these days, a major Edith Hopkins blog post is coming. Today, however, two sides of an Inner-Glo 45, both featuring Christian lyrics. The first side featured is the winner here, a peppy slice of pre-Beatles era pimple-rock at its best. I don't know if Frankie Avalon ever did an inspirational album, but if he did, I imagine it sounding precisely like this. Please enjoy "Dollars For Satan": 

Play:  

From a musical and performance perspective, the flip side, "Most Precious Saviour", holds no interest for me at all, but in the interest of completeness, I'm offering it up here.

 

2 comments:

VJESCI said...

.to hell with the b side.

styluscarnivorous said...

So we have here the birth of CCM... it still sounds like it all came from song-poem companies!