Here's a rather awful record which seems perfect to me for the season we in the Northern Hemisphere find ourselves in. And it presents a bit of a dilemma to me, as I'm not sure what side of the song-poem story it actually fits in.
It's on the tiny Vellez label, and most of the other records I've heard from this label (or those that appear to be related labels), are wonderful, idiosyncratic pieces in various 1950 genres, well made by everyone involved.
The weird thing here is that the week link in this case seems to be the singer. The songs (although only one of them appeals to me as a song) sound professional - perhaps a little bit too much so for them to be song poems, but you decide - and the arrangements, orchestra and backing singers all do quite well. It's the singer, Vicki Farrell doesn't sound like she was ready to be within two miles of a recording studio.
Have a listen - the Spring tie-in comes on the B-side, heard first here, "Green is the Color of Spring": Play:
The flip side, which I much prefer to the above, (and would have shared first, if not for the Spring tie-in), is a bouncy little number, with some stunning bad singing, called "Absolutely, Positi'vly Love", with, yes, an apostrophe in only the second of those two very similar words, and yes, the apostrophe in the wrong spot (lending credence to the likelihood of this being a song-poem, I suppose...
4 comments:
Wonderfully awful. Thanks!
Maybe there was someone closer, but until her recording gets uncovered, I'll have to give Vicki Farrell the "Sondra Prill of the 50's" award.
The b-side is marginally better, but boy is she terrible. I wonder if some of these song-poem records are also records that people would pay money to sing on...a vanity performance, as it were.
Now that I know what year this is from, since Bob has now posted the next Vellez 45 after this one, The Sondra Prill of 1961. There, I got it right.
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