"Ditto and the Marks"

AAARGH! Divshare is again screwed up. One can upload files, but not share them. So I'm back to a temporary fix. 

Here's an interesting record, at least for those into song-poem minutiae. I'll wait while the rest of you leave. Here we have a previously uncatalogued song-poem label, featuring an previously unknown song-poem performing act, the goofily named band "Ditto and the Marks". Indeed, were it not for the acts on the flip side (song-poem mainstays Cara Stewart and Lee Hudson) I'd have not thought this was a song-poem record, and were both sides not written by the same person, I'd have thought it was a hybrid song-poem/vanity release. What evidence there is, though, points to both sides being true song poems.

The record is not really anything special, and the record is in borderline horrible condition, but it interests me for the reasons alluded to above, AND because the lead singer of the group bears a distinct resemblance to the unknown guy featured on all of those one-man band records from the early days of Cinema's "Real Pros" releases, several of which I love. You can hear a few of those here, here and here. Does anyone else think it might be the same guy? What a tangled song-poem web was woven!

Ditto and the Marks - September Rose

On the flip side is another typical Cara and Lee speciality, fitting in chord-wise, arrangement-wise and vocal-wise with 85% of the other records that they produced, and to me, that's a very good thing. I couldn't listen to eight of these in a row, but hearing one a day would probably take a long, long time to get old. One song-poem mystery I'd love to solve would be: who was Cara Stewart, and where (if anywhere) is she today. She was wonderful.

Cara Stewart with Lee Hudson's Orchestra - Silver Slippers