Helping You Get In That Winter Mood!

It's been hard to tell it around these parts (just outside of Chicago), especially with temperatures yesterday above 60, but Winter began either on December 1st (if you listen to the Meteorologists) or three days ago (if you listen to almost everyone else).

To help get you in the mood, here's a record from Tin Pan Alley, from the label's mid-to-latter days, a period when their hiring standard seems to have been "only allow people who have minimal talents on their instruments or in singing".

At least either the typesetter or the song-poet himself kept with the incompetence theme, spelling the word "Icicle" as "Icycle" (I only just noticed this, so if you are a perfectionist, you'll need to change the spelling on the downloadable track).

It's worth noting that at one point the lyrics move us into August - I'm not at all sure we weren't there from the start. If so, Eleanor Shaw is singing to something that isn't even there.

Download: Eleanor Shaw: The Little Icycle
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The less said about the flip side, "Always", the better. Suffice it to say that Irving Berlin has nothing to worry about.

Download: Eleanor Shaw: Always
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HAPPY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!!

The Blog Post Title (Confusing)

So it appears that Gertrude Faith decided that she had material that had to be heard, and she contracted through the Globe Records song-poem factory for a few of her lyrics to be turned into song, sung by label superstar Sammy Marshall. This seems to have been in 1962 or 1963. In her case, she decided to form her own label, naming it after the biggest town in her area, Cheyenne, WY, just about 40 miles from her local burg of Pine Bluffs, WY.

Okay, so far so good - many other song-poets did the same. But let us look at the songs featured on one side of this record (which may very well have been the only record ever issued on Cheyenne Records). It seems to be about the men who guard the nuclear missiles pointed at the Godless Commies, and the guards' fervent hopes that those missiles never have to be used. And it is in a slightly different style than most of the records Globe produced, with the martial beat and 91 second length.

Still, not totally unusual. But why, oh why, did Gertrude decide on the aggressively un-commercial, confusing and ridiculously clunky title, "The Bird (Missile). Will we ever know why? Would anyone, then or now, looking at that title, have any chance of knowing what it was about? These are the things I ponder when I have nothing more important to do.

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Rays - The Bird (Missile)
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A far more typical lyric, title and Globe Records performance can be fond on the flip side, "Game of Love", which predates the big hit single of the same name by a couple of years. If I'm understanding this lyric, this ballad is sung to a young lovely for whom Sammy was once guy # 1. But now she's up to guy # 9, and still she's not happy. Yes, both records involve people grouped into a set of 9. Paging John Lennon!

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Rays - Game of Love
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By the way, thanks to the person who posted a comment about a file link being broken on the post about "One of Satan's Angels". I have fixed the problem!

Questions Questions Questions

I think this is just one of those weeks when I let the featured song speak for itself. And even if I didn't think that, I'm not sure what I'd say about Gene Marshall's performance of "Black Questions", because I have absolutely no idea what the hell this song is about. In fact, I welcome all commenters who wish to chime in and speak to the meaning of G. A. Bamisendu's idiosyncratic lyrics. Please. I beg you.

Download: Gene Marshall: Black Questions
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By the way, the song poem database informs me that G. A. Bamisendu also provided the lyrics for a song called "Luster Galore", which is a hell of a phrase. Also note that the label claims the song is over three minutes shorter than it actually is.

~~

On the flip side, there's a peppy pop song called "Get Ready Miss Betty". The first thing that occurred to me about this record is how similar the backing instrumentation and arrangement is to the all time Gene Marshall classic "We Are the Men Counting Sheep", which you can hear here. Sure enough, their label numbers differ by only a few digits. My guess is that they were recorded the same day, or at the very most, a few days apart.

This one isn't in the same category as "Counting Sheep", but it has a driving, forceful band, with some wonderful drumming, and is definitely worth a spin or two.

Download: Gene Marshall: Get Ready Miss Betty
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And a very happy 94th anniversary of my father's birth to everyone out there. Wish you were still here, dad.  

Music of America! A Full Album from Your Friends at Star-Crest

Howdy, Y'all,

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving, at least those who are in the areas which celebrated this holiday yesterday. And for all of you, I give thanks that you continue to read and listen to this site, and that I have continued to have this opportunity to share all of this wonderful, weird music with you.

As promised (or at least hinted at) in my last post, today, for the first time, I am posting an entire song-poem album. Previously, I had limited this level of posting to the WFMU blog, but with that no longer being an option, I've decided to periodically post full albums here.

One thing I'll not be doing, though, is making individual tracks out of all of the songs on an album - there is just too much time needed to separate and post them in this way. Instead, I'll highlight my favorites with two or three best-of tracks, then post both sides of the album in their entireties.

This week, the album in question is one of the many released by the deeply weird folks at Star-Crest, in this case, LP # 8400. It's likely that this was their 84th album (or thereabouts) rather than their 8400th album, given that every one of their album numbers ends with a double zero. And they didn't bother changing their album covers much, choosing instead to just slap on a sticker telling you which release number you were lucky enough to be holding. The front cover looks like this:

And here is the back cover:

The album, on the A-side, is credited to Robert Ravis (who you can also hear on a full album here), Tony Rogers and Linda Collins. They do not sing together, as you will hear. Here is the A-side's record label:

Robert Ravis does not appear on the B-side, so its label is only credited to Tony Rogers and Linda Collins, as you can see below:

Yes, you will be able to hear a full 24 songs below, 22 of them song-poems. For, as you may have noticed, like other song-poem outfits, Star-Crest sometimes made a point of including a few popular songs among the entries of their customers, so that Ms. Meeks, who submitted "Just One More Chance", can say that her song was on an album right alongside the title song to "The Desert Song" and that big hit "Mr. Sandman".

Before the files containing both full sides of the album, here are my three favorite entries. First up, Tony Rogers with "It's a Small World" (no, not that song). I enjoy the march music behind Tony, as well as the trip around the world to be found in the lyrics.

Download: Tony Rogers: It's a Small World
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Oh, and did I forget to mention? Except for the aforementioned "The Desert Song", which is a bit longer, nearly all of the songs are within shouting distance of being 90 seconds long.

My two favorites from this album are both sung by Linda Collins. First up, from side one, is "Who Knows?", which starts off being about how she doesn't really understand her man, but by the end, she is making a startling (for the era) cry out for some rather intimate satisfaction. This, for me, is the high point of the album:

Download: Linda Collins: Who Knows?
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Moving over to side two, we have one of the few clever lyrics to be found on an album which is otherwise made up of uninspired tales of devotion, and equally uninspired tales of loss. Again, we have Linda Collins, singing "Just One More Chance", the tale of an older person who hopes that life hasn't completely passed her by, complete with some downright weird lyrical choices (find me another song with the line "I wash my feet with any old soap"!) and a goofy bit of playing with words at the end.

Download; Linda Collins: Just One More Chance
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And now, if you're still with me, here are the complete album sides. First, the A-side:

Download: Robert Ravis, Tony Rogers and Linda Collins: Music of America (LP 8400), Side One
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And here is the B-side:

Download: Tony Rogers and Linda Collins: Music of America (LP 8400), Side One
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ENJOY!!!!

Are Those Like Charlie's Angels?

This is one of those weeks where there's barely been time to do anything. As a result, as occasionally happens, I've had to find time to make a few MP3's and am now slapping them up on the site for your perusal and enjoyment. 

I quite enjoy this slice of countrified Preview material, performed by the faceless group "The Sunbeams", who are documented to have turned up on only two such Preview discs. I'm not recognizing the singer on this song, which has the unwieldly title of "I Fell in Love with One of Satan's Angels". Perhaps one or more of you know him by his velvet tones. 

Download: The Sunbeams; I Fell In Love with One of Satan's Angels.mp3

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The flip side, "All Because of You", pretty clearly features Rodd Keith on the lead vocal - and just as clearly, Rodd Keith on arrangement, although it is still credited to The Sunbeams. Just a nice mid-'60's pop record. 

Download: The Sunbeams: All Because of You

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Coming next week: A BIG post around Thanksgiving, something I would have in the past saved for WFMU's blog. 

Ridiculously Short AND... Just Plain Ridiculous

Before I share my Tin Pan Alley find for this week, I wanted to pass along a new posting of both sides of a very nice late-period TPA single, recently purchased and posted to youtube by Sammy Reed. You can find both sides of that record here and here.

 

And now, for a very special episode of "The Wonderful and the Obscure"!:

 

 



Okay, I love this record. I do believe that of all of the song-poems I've heard for the first time this year, this is my favorite. I'm intrigued by the stylings of the singer, Johnny Williams, and now wish to find copies of the other half-dozen or so records he made for Tin Pan Alley in the late '50's and early '60's. I love every one of the record's 164 seconds.

 

And while two minutes and 44 seconds may sound like the length of a typical song-poem, the missing information is that this is the total length of BOTH sides of this record added together. Aside from the albums released by Star-Crest and George Liberace, both of which tended towards raw demo versions of songs, I can't think of another release I've seen containing two songs of 82 seconds each.

 

None of that would matter if the contents of these sides weren't outstanding - unique - deeply odd - with performances which are captivating in an decidedly off-kilter way. Let's start with the intriguingly titled "Somebody Fiddle! I'm Burning!" 

 

From the opening countrified instrumental, you'll know something special is happening. And then Johnny Williams comes in, and any suspicions that you had that he might be a moonlighting professional singer go right out the window. He sounds more like crazy ol' Ed at the Senior Center on talent night. And you're never going to improve on the opening lines:

 

I believe in Roman Nero

He has always been my hero

 

HA HA HA!!!

 

If anyone asks me why I collect song-poems, I now have another example to share with them. This is gold.

 

Download: Johnny Williams: Somebody Fiddle! I'm Burning!

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On the flip side, "Darling, I'm So Blue", is a much more conventional song, but it still has that rollicking sound, and another winning, heartfelt and deeply amateurish vocal from Johnny Williams.
 

Download: Johnny Williams: Darling, I'm So Blue

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Telling Fables

Of all of the labels I learned about, via my expanding knowledge of song-poems, my favorite long ago became Sandy Stanton's Fable Records. I'm not calling it my favorite song-poem label,.because plenty of its releases, perhaps most of them, were not song-poems. Stanton did go on to start Film City Records and discovered Rodd Keith after winding Fable down, but during the Fable years, it seems to have been a catch-all, with song-poem releases, novelty numbers, vanity records and perhaps some attempts at producing honest-to-goodness hits. 

Because of its multi-hybrid nature, quite a while ago I decided to stop featuring Fable on this site, and instead, put together posts at WFMU featuring multiple Fable tracks. You can find those here and here. Unfortunately, I even stepped away from that project, for a few different reasons. 

Now, with the WFMU blog closed, and no other outlet for these wonderful records, I'm going to throw them into the mix here and there, with the caveat that I know some of them are not song poems, and that I'm not sure about most, if not all of the rest. I hope you enjoy them, regardless of each record's individual provenance.

From the category of "maybe a song-poem record?"... comes a 45 sung by Roberta May, featuring two similarly titled songs by someone named Sidney Whitacker. First up is a bopping, swinging number called "Don't Tell Me That Jive". As do many Fable records of this period (this is from 1957), this features some fairly wonderful rockabilly guitar playing. I've been told a couple of times that the guitarist on these sessions was the highly respected (by a few, and woefully obscure to everyone else) Roy Lanham, who was later a member of the Sons of the Pioneers.

Download: Roberta May - Don't Tell Me That Jive

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The flip side, with two of the same words as the first song, is "Tell Me", a fairly standard, and fairly bland rock-a-ballad, indistinguishable from a hundred other records from the era, except for some truly awful backup singing near the end...

Download: Roberta May - Tell Me 

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I got a lot of good feedback from my Fable posts, back in 2010 and 2011, and by all means, please let me know if you'd like to hear more, or not hear more from this label. In fact, please let me know in general what you'd like to hear more and/or less of. I aim to please!

Bob

Say No to Dick

I'm not much of a fan of the MSR label, as I've mentioned perhaps too many times. But an exception is their early releases, where the bands were often cooking, and the vocalists - lead and backing - often sound very involved in the lyrics and performances in general. 

Here's an example. The lyrics to "Can't You Say No" are fairly tortured - something about the lyricists complain that the object of the singer's attention has had the audacity to say "no" to the singer, while the singer thinks that his beloved should be saying "no" to everyone else but him. 

In a rarity, I really dig Dick Kent's vocal here. He really sells the lyric and the song. But even better is the backing band , who are playing a track which deserves a better song. and the backing vocalists, who are offering up some wonderful three part harmonies, particularly during the line "say yes to me" which finishes each verse. Good stuff!

Download: Dick Kent: Can't You Say No?

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I cannot work up the same enthusiasm for the flip side, Dick Kent's performance of "Come Join Us", a story of promoting Christianity to everyone within earshot.

Download: Dick Kent: Come Join Us

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"Lance" the Untrustworthy, Parts One and Two

Today, we're all being "Lanced". Whether we need it or not. "Lance" (always in quotes) appears on a handful of Tin Pan Alley singles, performing in a particularly idiosyncratic style. He often seems to have been given the more offbeat submissions, or maybe TPA simply received more offbeat submissions.

In both of the songs contained on this 45, "Lance" is heard portraying a person who seems to not have the best of intentions towards whoever it is he is addressing. On the second side, he's quite upfront about what is to be done about his untrustworthiness, but on the first song, titled "Conception", I'm honestly befuddled as to what he's on about.

The protagonist of "Conception" is upfront about his unsavory ways, but his motivation is quite mysterious, as is the meaning of the title. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, or even something hinted at, and by all means, offer up your thoughts regarding this song.

Play:
Download: "Lance" - Conception

On the other hand, the lyrics that "Lance" sings over the thud-rock of "Hands Behind My Back" leads one to believe that the protagonist has been, shall we say, grabby with his gal-pal in the past. So he's offering to go parking somewhere remote with, yes, his hands tied behind his back.

Another interpretation, I suppose, is that the object of his affection is a dominatrix, and given the second verse lyrics, indicating that this is not his first time having his arms bound, and that she's been "cruel" to him, that's certainly a possibility. If so, I suspect this would be a first in terms of lyrical subjects for song-poems.

Whatever the meaning, "Lance" certainly gives the lyric his all, especially at the 1:51 point.

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Download: "Lance" - Hands Behind My Back

GO CUBS!!!!!!

Just a Great Little Record

After I first heard this record a few weeks ago, I thought to myself, "well, that'd be great for the site, but I'm sure a record this good has already been online somewhere", thinking of the various files that used to be at the AS/PMA website and have since been hosted at WFMU.

When the first search turned up nothing, I searched again. And again.

So, I'm now convinced that this absolutely lovely little treat, "Day Dreaming" by Rodd Keith and the Raindrops has not been widely dispersed to the song-poem faithful. And it's time that that changed.

I love this record! Rodd fills the verses with the sort of '60's pop that gets a bad name, with the piano triplets and cheery unison singing, which I typically am indifferent to, but which I can really enjoy, when done right, as it is here. And then he adds a soulful keyboard solo halfway through to increase the likability of the track.

Finally, there's that bridge. It comes in twice, and what's that I hear? Is that Blue Beat flavoring? Would Rodd have known about Blue Beat? There's no way the bridge would have sounded like this if he didn't. Just another surprise from Rodd Keith's gigantic bag of musical tricks!

Download: Rodd Keith and the Raindrops - Day Dreaming
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On the flip side, we have The Raindrops, for some reason billed without Rodd Keith, who is clearly singing here just as on "Day Dreaming". While I appreciate the close harmonies Rodd designed here, particularly that final sixth chord at the end, the song is performed in a style that does extremely little for me, and Rodd uses his smarmiest, most ingratiating vocal style here, a style which I rarely find interesting, unless the song/performance sink into self parody, which doesn't happen here.

Download: The Raindrops - Red Grow the Roses
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John R. Taylor's Greatest Hit

 

For much of their last two decades at the forefront of the song-poem world, Tin Pan Alley seems to go through a variety of wispy, wimpy-voiced vocalists interspersed with backing musicians who didn't seem to know what they were doing.

 

So it was a pleasure, and yet also frustrating to find this outlier, a record performed by the otherwise completely unknown John R. Taylor. Aside from the resolutely awful vinyl pressing, I genuinely like this record - the band is cooking, especially a hyperactive drummer and very involved lead guitarist. And John R. Taylor is a bit over-the-top, but not in a Bob Storm way - just an intense, all-in performance of a lyric which benefits from such a reading.

 

While it's a far cry from great, I actually believe this singer singing these words (well, aside from the disconnect between the very adult singer singing about "another boy". I truly wish he'd recorded more material for Tin Pan Alley, and hope he's not the same John Taylor who went on to help form Duran Duran.

 

Download: John R. Taylor - My World

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The flip side is "When the Day Kissed the Night", and it shows to me that even a singer of this style who sounds good singing forceful, upbeat material will start resembling the unctuousness of a Bob Storm when handed ballad material, although in Taylor's case, he just sounds a little pretentious, rather than ridiculous. I don't find any aspect of this record appealing.

 

Download: John R. Taylor - When the Day Kissed the Night

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Unusual Reasons to Leave This Town

Sometimes, I feel like saying too much - or much of anything - will ruin and pleasure and surprise of listening to a song-poem which has pleasures too good to spoil. So it is with "Pussycat", by Gene Marshall. Aside from the reference in the name of this post, I'm just going to let you enjoy it as the song unfolds on your computer. I highly doubt that you'll be disappointed.

Download: Gene Marshall - Pussycat
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The flip side, "Now I Lay Me Down" seems to be about a soldier in Vietnam wishing he was back home. That's a good topic, and I wish I could drum up some enthusiasm for it, but I find the product that the folks at Preview came up with deadly dull. You?

Download: Gene Marshall - Now I Lay Me Down
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Under the Influence

So I came across an auction of a record by perhaps my favorite Song-Poem singer, Norm Burns, singing a song with a title that has to rank up there with "You Insulted Me" (which was sung by Sammy Marshall), as the songs with the most stereotypical song-poem-perfect titles. There was no way I wasn't going to go for a song called "Don't Influence Me", especially with Norm as the singer.

And while this isn't an all time winner (the ones with the great titles rarely are), it's a solid Norm performance of a suitably ridiculous lyric and song. It's great to hear Norm sing lines such as "lead me by the nose", and the decidedly unmusical title phrase.

Here 'tis:

Download: Norm Burns - Don't Influence Me
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Flipping the record over, we find "Hello My Sweet" a peppy, upbeat song, complete with Norm (or someone) whistling, and an extended piano break, perhaps disguising there having been too few lyrics to sustain a three minute pop song. The lyrics seem to be a dismissal of a wayward lover, but in the final line, it sounds like he's welcomed her back, so I'm confused... Norm shines, as he almost always did.

Download: Norm Burns: Hello My Sweet
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Rod Rogers Sings More Military Melodies!!

Last April, we all enjoyed a few rousing patriotic songs courtesy of the famous team of lyricist Clarence M. Boness and composer/man-about-town Rodd Keith (as Rod Rogers), on Film City release # 1067, which you can hear here. An earlier posting of a later Boness/Rogers team-up, linked within that post, is currently not working. I hope to restore the old posts soon.

But Mr. Boness was hardly just a four-song wonder. Today, we get to hear yet another two amazing patriotic/military numbers. First up is a tribute to everyone's favorite defense command personnel, the Air Defense Command, or, for convenience sake, The A.D.C. Rodd gives it all, with a stirring march sound and an appropriate and stirring (well, to the degree that the Chamberlin could muster it) solo. Dig the Roddtastick harmonies at the end!

Download: Rod Rogers with the Film City Orchestra: The A. D. C.
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On the flip side is Mr. Boness tribute to The Six Ninety First, starting with a quote from the song "Old Folks At Home". I can't say I'm familiar with the specific base he's referring to here, but it clearly is another aspect of Air Defense, based on the lyrics. I love the Mandolin-esque solo, and the general pep and verve of the entire enterprise.

Download: Rod Rogers with the Film City Orchestra - The Six Ninety First
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Vicki Doesn't Need a Makeover

A few frantic weeks and I ended up missing my posting for last week entirely, without even realizing it. Well, I'll try to get back on schedule early next week!

 

For the second week in a row, here's a previously unknown singer (sic), in this case on a teeny tiny label - the only record I've ever seen on this particular label, Hit Records International.

The singer is only identified as "Vicki", and perhaps that's in order to save her some embarrassment, as she clearly had no business being in a recording studio - I'm reminded of the beautiful but tone-deaf singer who Keith Partridge went crazy over in an episode of The Partridge Family - as long as he was looking at her, he couldn't hear her awful singing, which sounded very much like this anonymous "Vicki". The song, "You Can't Make Me Over", is not likely to make anyone forget Dionne Warwick's much more forcefully worded "Don't Make Me Over".

Download: Vicki - You Can't Make Me Over
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Now that you've seen the title of the flip side, "The One I Love", I hate to burst your bubbles, but this is not an early version of the R.E.M. hit, although I'd love to hear "Vicki" take a crack at that one. No, this one is a bland love ballad with completely predictable lyrics and another interesting vocal interpretation.

Download: Vicki - The One I Love
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Rockin' Hard with Rusty Ray and Phil Carroll!

As I've written before, Phil Carroll is something of a song-poem lyricist superstar, having been the wordsmith behind such songs as "Yippee Hippee", "Watch Johnny Carson", "I Take a Fancy to Nancy", and my personal favorite by a wide margin, "Dreams of Love". Most of these can be found online or on the previously released song-poem compilations. MSR records even seems to have had a separate set of label numbers just for Phil Carroll's songs!

But here's a double dose of Phil Carroll, seemingly from a few years down the line from those MSR releases. Appearing on the "Action" label, which seems to have been a small off-brand label for some of Sandy Stanton's releases (perhaps after the demise of Film City?), and notable for some truly horrible sounding pressings (this record included) - I understand from Phil Milstein that Stich Stampfel, whose vanity pressings on Action have label numbers just before this one, complained a lot about the pressings of his records. 

So I apologize for the sound quality of these files, but they come by them honestly. 

The singer here is one "Rusty Ray", who I don't recognize at all - anyone else out there want to hazard a guess as to whether he's one of the song-poem stalwarts or a one-time interloper? The first song I'm offering up, "Magic Touch", strikes me as an attempt to make a early-70's hard-rock record on a Chamberlin, a ridiculous concept if there ever was one. If there's any doubt, please enjoy the direct rip from a well known example of the genre near the ending. I hope you laugh as much as I did.

Download: Rusty Ray and the "Swinging Strings" - Magic Touch
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The flip side, "A One and A Two", seems to be an attempt at a mid-'60's dance number, complete with instructions making up much of the lyric, although the suggestions of what to do for each couplet are different enough that I suspect anyone trying them as they are called out would likely sprain something. And again, the Chamberlin is probably not the right instrument for an interactive dance track.

I have to wonder if, after getting such wonderful results from MSR (largely from Rodd Keith) if Phil Carroll was satisfied with the work done by Sandy Stanton's crew. The answer is probably yes, as he submitted another two-fer, including the song "When They All Go to Chicago", sung by Dick Kent (as "Dick Lee"), which I hope you'll again be able to hear here, when I get the old posts back up and running (the files are currently dead). I'm hoping to have the old posts repaired soon.

Download: Rusty Ray and the "Swinging Strings" - A One and A Two
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A Stormy EP

Before getting to today's song-poem EP, I wanted to announce that I've started another blog! With the demise of WFMU's Beware of the Blog, I wanted to have somewhere to continue posting my reel to reel treasures, oddities and ephemera. So I have begun posting to a site I'm calling "Inches-Per-Second", which you can access through the link you just passed by, while reading this paragraph!

And now, it's time for some Stormy Weather! 

Finding a new (to me) Halmark record is always a potential treat - with the knowledge that it also may turn out to be a stultifying dud. Happily, the first side of this week's EP is anything but a dud, as it features my favorite ridiculously over-the-top baritone, Bob Storm, being ridiculously over the top!

The first song, "The Golden Wedding Ring", actually starts with Storm narrating with a music bed, something I think I've only heard on one or two other song-poem records. Then the song starts, and I actually feel a little twinge of remorse for the writer than they chose the overwrought folks at Halmark, because there are some genuinely affecting moments in the lyrics of this song, about a man losing his wife after many, many years. Someone could have done something decent with this, even if the results still wouldn't have likely been much to my taste. But the generic, tear-jerking background music and Bob Storm's ridiculous performance keep me from being able to take anything about this record seriously in the least. Not that it isn't entertaining - it certainly is! See if you agree:

Download: Bob Storm - The Golden Wedding Ring

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But the real news on this EP, at least for me, comes in the second track on this EP. For quite a while, beginning around 15 or 16 years ago, my very favorite song-poem was "Lady Off Pedestal at Notre Dame", a Bob Storm special (although, oddly, the record credited Jack Kim, another Halmark singer who sounds nothing like Storm. You can find that track within the many song poems posted here.

One of the many great things about "Lady Off Pedestal" is its ridiculous marching band backing track. And unlike virtually every other track used on any Halmark record, the "Pedestal" track did not seem to be reused and recycled endlessly, not heard again and again on multiple tracks. In fact, I've been unaware of even a second release featuring that wondrous backing. Until now.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Bob Storm with "The Wishing Well". A few things are clear from this track: First, Halmark had the multi-tracks for this (and other) backing tracks - there are elements on "Pedestal" which are not heard here. Second, the Dolly-O release of "Pedestal" featured a track at least a few generations removed from the original performance - the backing track here is much cleaner and sparkly.

And all of this before you listen to Bob Storm's energetic, bouncy vocal and the idiosyncratic lyrics. The lyricist thoughts bounce back and forth between expressing ongoing love for his lost sweetheart, and a few hopes of her return, and expressing thoughts such as those in this curious couplet:

Two wrongs don't make a right,

so I'll fix your clock tonight!

Of all the song-poems I've heard for the first time this year, this is probably my favorite so far!

Download: Bob Storm - The Wishing Well

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The flip side of the EP doesn't exactly offer the wonders of the two songs above. First up is Bob Storm in his less throaty mode, on the song "How Lonely is Lonesome?", sounding oddly (to me) more than a bit more like Rodd Keith (on some of Keith's country offerings). This is among the least Halmark-y tracks I can think of from the label, at least to when the chorus and orchestra swell a few times near the end.

Download: Bob Storm - How Lonely is Lonesome?

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Finally, it's back to the sound of Halmark, with one of their most frequently used backing track serving for the setting of "Hello Baby". This one contains one great verse, to wit:

"How's that sun and moon?

I'd like to see you soon.

A city is a city

and a town's a town."

Clearly, this meant something to the lyricist, as it repeated twice, but I'm missing the meaning, even in the context of the other lines.

Download: Bob Storm: Hello Baby

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That Broken Guitar Plays Pretty Well

Hello again,

I had a few comments from Mac users that downloading was the only option that the new system I'm using allowed them. I believe I've rectified this, but may have to tinker with it a bit. There are now two versions of each track - the first which will either play or download for non-Mac users, and the other of which will be an opendrive player, which will only play within the blog post. Please let me know if this is working.

Here we have the truly tiny Fanwood Records label. My guess is that there are at least a few other discs out there on Fanwood, but this is the only one I've ever seen, and the only one documented on the song-poem database website. It features my choice as the best female song-poem singer, Cara Stewart, and her constant musical companion, Lee Hudson, here heard with his fictional String Band. The records Cara and Lee made together are just lovely, and this one, "Broken Guitar", is no exception, although having the backing track dominated by a clearly not-broken-guitar doesn't quite fit the lyric, now does it? Given that this was Lee's style, however, I'm not sure what else he would have done.

Cara Stewart and Lee Hudson's String Band - Broken Guitar

From the flip side comes the excessively wordy title, "May the Angels Watch Over You For Me". This one is a bit slower than the flip, but otherwise very much cut from the same cloth. I have almost no doubt that if I'd sent my lyrics in to Lee Hudson, I would have been quite pleased with the results. Relax, stretch out, close your eyes, and let the sound of Cara and Lee wash over you.

Cara Stewart and Lee Hudson's String Band - May the Angels Watch Over You For Me

Read All About It

Okay, I'm trying something new here, which may be the solution to the increased number of posts I'm going to be making, here and elsewhere, after the WFMU blog shuts down in two weeks. If this works, it will be the format going forward.

 

And before I explain, a big THANK YOU for all the suggestions you made, via comment and e-mail. I really appreciate it.

 

I'm using a paid site called "Opendrive", and hoping that the low rate I'm paying will be enough to sustain whatever downloads my site(s) experience. I believe that by clicking on the names of the songs you will have a choice to either listen to or download the material. PLEASE let me know if that's not the case, or if you have any other issues. I really want to make this work. 

 

 

Today we have what would sound like a rather hateful man, telling us of his plan to kill his wife - she's a two-timer, ya see, although he seems just as upset that she just doesn't care for him, and wrap her world around him, the same way his mother did. I was at the stage of wondering whether the fine folks at Tin Pan Alley needed to have called the police when I noticed that the writer was a woman. With Gay Marriage happily all in the news these days, I suppose it's possible that Ms. Wilson was writing about a domestic partner, way back in the '60's, but I rather doubt it. Let's hope this was just a fantasy for her, a piece of fiction taking a male bastard's point of view, and not a situation where TPA changed the genders in the song because they only had male singers.

Whatever way you slice it, it sure is a peppy little number, belying the fairly horrible tableau described in the lyrics.

Mike Thomas - Tomorrow I May Make the Headlines

For the flip side, we have a number from the "Urrrrrrgggghhh" file, a slow drag, of the sort which really plays up Mike Thomas' limitations as a vocalist (and the TPA band's general limitations). It carries the unfortunately title of "Cleanse My Body", wherein the lyricist sets out "on a voyage through the ocean of my mind", where he sees all manner of things, including "women, men and lovers" (there's a turn of phrase), but mostly, ecological problems, such as littered Coke cans (again, we are in his mind). On the other hand, it's always good to work the word "paraphernalia" into a lyric.

Mike Thomas - Cleanse My Body

Just Call Him Rodd Presley

Before I get to this week's songs, I want to ask one last question to anyone who has an answer: have you used Opendrive? I've used Box the last few weeks, but they have extremely limited downloading for free users (it will likely run out well before the end of each month), and their prices are exorbitant for paying users. I do not believe I'll be using them at length.

Divshare was the cheapest by far (and i guess now we know why), but Opendrive seems to be the next cheapest - it was suggested by someone who posted a comment to a previous song-poem posting (thank you very much!). Unfortunately, I can't actually tell if I can share downloadable materials via Opendrive, as their free version does not allow this. And I don't want to start paying for something, only to find that it doesn't meet my needs. So, has anyone used it, and found it an acceptable way to share downloads?

At the same time, I guess I could ask if anyone has another service they'd like to recommend. I don't want to pay a lot of $$ for something that I do for fun, and even the cheapest of the other sites want as much for two months of service as Divshare charged for a year. And for reasons I'll explain in a few weeks, if all goes well, I will be uploading and sharing perhaps two to three times as much material (in terms of file size - and it won't all be song-poems) starting in August, via this and another site, all of which I'm going to have to pay for....

To my ears, this early Preview single, "Great-A Big-A Blue Eyes" sounds like it was cut out of the same cloth as many of Elvis' 1962-64 singles, and I hardly think that's a coincidence. Perhaps song-poet Don Gaydick (!) even asked for it to sound like those Elvis hits. Rodd doesn't really sound like he's doing an Elvis impression, but the rest of the track (featuring "The Go-Getters") does the trick for him. I enjoy this one a bunch.



Here's a switch. I'm not sharing the flip side of this record, because it has not only been released on a compilation album (Saucers in the Sky), which I encourage everyone to buy, if you haven't done so already. You can hear a clip of the song here.

Instead, I grabbed another Rodd Keith Preview 45, one with an exceedingly dull Dan Monday (not Rodd) song on the flip side, and thought I'd share the better of those two sides here. While not as wonderful as the song above, this one is a mid-tempo number reminiscent of any number of mid-'60's Baroque styled hits, if quite a bit more simple on the instrumentation. I really enjoy Rodd's vocal here.

By all means, chime in if you have words of wisdom about what site to use for links. 

A Big Disco City, A Self-Absorbed Man, and a Muslim Prayer

Recently, I was lucky enough to acquire another honest-to-goodness Preview Label album!!! While this one largely features Barbara Foster and Gene Marshall, it also boasts two songs performed by the mysterious Ace Mona. Whether this is the same Ace Mona as any of those who turn up in a Google search, including one who has an album for sale on Amazon, is unclear to me, but Ace does get to sing one of the more ridiculous song-poems I've heard in some time, on the "Singin' With Style" album.

It's called "Poplar Bluff Missouri is a Big Disco City", and it's just has half baked as that title suggests. For me, the first sign that something very weird is going on is the fact that on lyricist Claud Griffin's list of attractions that make Poplar Bluff (population about 17,000 in 1980) worth visiting (and, presumably, make it a Big Disco City), second on that list is the fact that it has a "New McDonalds"! It also has an Ace Hardware ("disco, disco"), some brand of food store, a 7-11 ("disco, disco") and "an Osco Drug store with disco". Based on the businesses in town, it would appear that any town with more than 10,000 people could probably qualify as a Big Disco City.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do.


Also on side one (track two, in fact), is a Gene Marshall performance of a song blandly titled "Suddenly". That title does nothing to betray the (most likely unwitting) way the lyricist displayed the clueless nature of his complaint. You see, he and the Mrs. have had a lovely life up until now, but now she's ready to move on, and won't wait another moment. My point is this: the songwriter's conviction and self-assurances that he has never done a single thing wrong in any way ("so how can I be wrong???")... well, that might just indicate something about Mr. Perfect that might make him more than a little hard to live with...


And now, as a bonus, my favorite song from the "Singin' With Style" album, and the only song-poem I've ever heard that takes the form of a Muslim prayer. It's called "Insha Allah (God Willing)", and it's again sung by Gene Marshall, who gives the lyric exactly what it needs - this immediately becomes one of my favorite Gene Marshall vocals. The arranger did a nice job with the limited tools available to him or her, and the whole track is catchy, driving and appropriate intense. I'd actually like to hear this song done up with more than ten minutes of preparation.

It's Father's Day! What Ought Men Be Doing?

Happy Father's Day!!! - and happy Double-Nickles Day to me yesterday. I'm 11 for the fifth time, or at least that's what it feels like.

Today is all about Men, and in honor of all the men out there, here's one of my favorite singing men, Norm Burns, with a very odd entry into the song-poem archives, "Men Ought to Run Side By Side". As far as I can tell, lyricist Stella Greenhill wrote a series of unrelated verses, some of which seem to have no sense even within their own couplets, and strung them together with a chorus featuring nothing but the title phrase.

"Take all the flowers:
The roses are there.
I choose you now.
Isn't that fair?
Men Ought to Run Side By Side.
Men Ought to Run Side By Side.
Men Ought to Run Side By Side.
Men Ought to Run Side By Side."

Um, yeah. I enjoy this record - it's a nice sound (I generally really like the sound of Sterling 45's from this era), and I love Norm's voice. But really, what the hell is this song about?

As you can see below, I've transitioned over to box.com, at least for the moment. Their interface is either better than I'd remembered or has been improved. Not sure what will happen in the long term, as I still have hundreds of posts to restore.

The flip side is the awkwardly titled "babbling Brooks and Running Rambling Rivers". The lyric doesn't disappoint - it's made up of one mouthful of long, unmusical lyrical choice after another. Norm does his best with it, but it's certainly an uphill attempt, and seems most likely doomed to failure. If Norm and Lew Tobin couldn't do anything with it, I'm not sure who could have.

A Favorite Topic: Astronauts!

Divshare continues to misbehave, and if anyone has found a suitable replacement (I'm not fond of the clunky "Box" site), please let me know. Even when Divshare is "working" nowadays, you can only upload one file at a time, which is not a way to reconnect all of the old tracks on this site. Suggestions?

 

As has been pointed out many times before, the height of the song-poem business coincided with the Space Race, and as a result, there are a lot of songs about various aspects of that international contest.

Here's a label which is new to me, seemingly created for song-poet Jerry Thomas - Jay-Tee Records - no doubt (based on the singers) a product of the Globe song-poem factory, at least on this release.

I'm sort of sad that this astronaut record - "The Tale of John Glenn", as performed by Ken Richards - turns out to mostly feature spoken word verses, because the track is rollicking (and actually sounds like a backing track to a real hit), and the chorus has a dynamite tune and a memorable rhyming couplet:

In the global race from nuclear fission
He put his country in the ace position

It would have been nice for Ken to have pronounced "nuclear" correctly, but he's hardly alone in that. But how good could this have been if the verses were sung, and as catchy, as that chorus?

Ken Richards with Orchestra and Chorus - The Tale of John Glenn

Globe stalwart Kris Arden gets Jerry Thomas' other song, "A Happy Day's Comin'". This one doesn't do it for me the way the flip side does. The song is nothing special and neither the band or the singer seems all that interested in the material.

Kris Arden with Orchestra and Chorus - A Happy Day's Comin'