Thursday, June 11, 2015

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'


3 comments:

Timmy said...

Now, see? Goes to show ya... I actually genuinely LIKE the b-side, here. It's a riot!
the John Glenn side is way too corn-fed for my taste... It's all in the interpreter's conception.

Anonymous said...

Hi Bob, Thank you for this wonderful site. I haven't listened to these sides yet - but I came in here to suggest a couple of u/l:d/l sites that I have had success with (as a d/ler) over the past 24 months. Have you given opendrive or googledrive a go? Best regards

Nathan.G

Graham Clayton said...

"1962" and "1492" is one of the worst rhymes of all-time!