Tedium, As Defined By Sammy Marshall

For those of you who enjoy the awfulness which is often displayed in song-poems, this is your day to rejoice. Because this record is truly terrible. I'm sharing it because I haven't posted anything by Sammy Marshall in ages, because it represents a song-poem label otherwise unknown to me, and because it is so laughably bad.

Earl G. Palmer seems to have used the Globe song-poem factory to produced at least one record for the modestly named "E. G. Palmer Records" label. And for side A of record, he chose "Those Hills Down Home". My issue is not necessarily with the lyrics. They aren't very good - at all - but at least they clearly present a deep feelings about the area in which he grew up (certainly not Lexington, IL, where the record label was located - there are no hills of note there). It covers his return to town, his late mother and related issues surrounding thoughts of home.

The folks at Globe, though, didn't do Palmer any favors. That Sammy Marshall makes some rare flubs in sight reading the melody (which he is clearly what he's doing), and that my copy was minted just slightly off center gives the record a slightly woozy feeling. And as the song goes on (and on... and on), that wooziness may turn to seasickness as the tedium sinks in and you realize at the 2:20 point that the song is barely half over!

See if you can make it through!

Download: Sammy Marshall - Those Hills Down Home
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The flip side, "Keep Your Chin Up" is a more manageable three minutes. Well, they are manageable depending on how much patience you have for the variety of lyric which says that everything in the writers life was horribly crappy, until he suddenly saw the light, got religion, and now everything is fine.

Download: Sammy Marshall - Keep Your Chin Up
Play: