First, I want to make sure I mention that I've updated last week's post. I had inadvertently linked to versions of the tracks which were running fast (maybe at 50 RPM instead of 45). Two days ago, I replaced those with corrected tracks, so if you have the old versions, you can go back and download/hear the corrected versions.
Second, here are still more ads from 1922, via the magazine "Film Fun", and courtesy of Pete. There's a "wonderful proposition" in these ads - I wonder how many people took him up on it.
"Reaper Block" was an office building on Washington Street, in the heart of downtown Chicago.
Pete notes that Mr. Hibberler had multiple addresses, although I will add that the two addresses (on Keystone and on Dickens), would both be literally on the corner of Keystone and Dickens. Still, it's weird, especially since those addresses were, and are, for apartment buildings. Last week's post also featured multiple addresses for the same scammer.
And now...:
Some eight years or so before The Walt Disney Company released the giant hit film "The Love Bug", someone named Timberman submitted a lyric with the same title to the Tin Pan Alley song-poem factory, where label honcho Jack Covais took a co-writing credit and gave it to singer Jack Verdi, who seems to have been with the company only briefly (perhaps around a year), and who is listed as having appeared on four documented TPA singles.
It certainly can't be for lack of talent. Verdi sells this song quite nicely, and the TPA team give it a nice music bed, and the whole thing lands somewhere between hipster jazz and rat pack cool, albeit with a budget of perhaps 1/100th of what either of those genres would have had to work with, on a legitimate label. Despite that drawback, the team involved here makes this work from start to finish.
Download: Jack Verdi: The Love Bug
Play:
The flip side, "I Can't Sleep a Wink Over You", does not work from start to finish, at least not to my ears. It's overwrought, musically unimaginative and lyrically obvious.
Download: Jack Verdi: I Can't Sleep a Wink Over You
Play:
2 comments:
Bob, I'm with you on the songs. The a is real nice, the b not so good. Do you think that getting a full writer credit was something that the customer could pay for? And if they didn't want to pay for the full credit, that the co-writing would revert to the guy in charge? (Like in Lew Tobin's case? He co-wrote a lot of Sterling stuff...Preview 45s never seemed to have Rodd Keith as a co-writer.)
I've been around for a long time, and a 4 decade plus collector of vinyl records, but this is the first time I've seen the label Tin Pan Alley. The blog is absolutely amazing. I get excited when I discover old obscure music I've never heard of before.
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