Looking Back with Rodd Keith

Howdy, everyone, and a very happy (upcoming or otherwise) New Year to you and yours!

First up, another update as to "fixed" posts. We're all the way back to April of 2014 now - only five and a half YEARS of song-poem posts until everything is fixed! Today's repairs went to a particularly ridiculous Norridge Mayhams release, a very early MSR release featuring Bobbi Blake (under another name) and Dick Kent, and a pair of linked songs sung by Norm Burns. The other post from April of 2014 was actually repaired in June of this year, because it had a direct tie in to one of my posts at that time.

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I found a Rodd Keith record that I really enjoy, and intended to make it today's feature, before I realized that the flip side (also a great performance) had already been released commercially on one of the song-poem re-issues. And I didn't want to end the year by just sharing one song, nor did I want to simply offer up a performance that some percentage of the readers of this site already have.

So I'm still sharing the song I just mentioned, but I'm also going to add a second Rodd Keith single, in order to get at least two (actually three) songs that most of you have never heard, while also including that more easily available song.

The record in question comes from the earliest days of rhe MSR label, the only period at that label that I enjoy with any consistency. And this is a fairly wonderful ballad by Rodd Keith, a soul-pop marvel, with a tasty arrangement, an emotion-laden vocal and some truly otherworldly drumming. I've said this before about certain song-poems, and it applies here, I can get lost into almost a dream state listening to what this drummer is doing. I wish I knew who it was.

This is a compelling record - everything is right where it ought to be - a really warm, inviting sound. I could listen to this record a bunch of times before I needed to hear anything else.

And what better to share on the next to last day of the year, but a song about "looking back"?

Download: Rodd Keith - As I Look Back
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The flip side is "Ship For Home" as mentioned, has been comped, and it can be heard on the Rodd Keith release "Saucers in the Sky", which I encouarge any song-poem fan to purchase. It ends the album, which is not surprising, because I'm not sure what could follow up this record, particularly the last 30 seconds or so.

Starting with a big, thick Chamberlin sound, and again, some more killer drumming, and another warm, inviting arrangement, this is another great one. The soulful arrangement is among Rodd's best, too. Both sides of this record make me wish - as so many other have - that Rodd Keith would have, at some point, gotten the chance to make real attempts at hits with a real budget.

Download: Rodd Keith - Ship For Home
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As promised, now I have another, much simpler, earlier Rodd Keith offering, from relatively early on in his days at Preview - some time in mid 1966 seems to be about right.  "A Wonderful Life" features supper-club Rodd, offering up a rather unctuous vocal style, wrapped around some lyrics which are less than stellar - perhaps even sappy - but certainly heart-felt, and which tell a love story in about 105 seconds. 

Download: Rodd Keith - A Wonderful Life

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Equally heartfelt, but upping the sappy quotient (not helped at all by the awful alto sax solo) quite a bit is the flip side "The Baby Brother of Mine". I find myself wondering, however, why - if the brother was still a child and found himself without shoes - the narrator didn't get him some damn shoes. 

Download: Rodd Keith - That Baby Brother of Mine

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The Inimitable Michael Kasberg

First off, I want to wish everyone reading this the finest and happiest of holiday seasons! Please scroll all the way down, before you leave, to see my family's unique Christmas card. 

Second, I have fixed yet another month of previously "lost" posts, in this case, three posts (featuring seven songs) from May of 2014. This includes a set of four songs on a Halmark EP, including some truly blatant plagiarism, a single by a particularly hard-to-find vocalist (if that's the right word), on an equally obscure label, and a typically lovely set of tunes by Cara Stewart. 

And now!

I listened to this 45, as I usually do, after only a short glance. I noted the weird title - "Friendly Randy Polka", and the almost equally weird title on the flip side (see below), and knew it was a Gene Marshall record, because it was from a stack of 17 Gene Marshall records that I'd just bought at a low-low price. But I listened to it without bothering to note the name of the song-poet, which is typical.

Once I heard the lyrics, featuring some tortured syntax, a couple of deliberately jokey lines and the generally "off" feeling they projected, it was all I could do to not stop the record and look to see who wrote the dang thing. I let it play through, and was delighted - and not at all surprised - to see that it was Michael Kasberg.

I can't find that I've ever featured a Kasberg song before, and I really should rectify that with one of his albums, because everything I've just mentioned - the syntax, the jokiness, the "slightly off" feeling, shines through on most of his songs - certainly more often than not. The word "idiosyncratic" could have been invented for Mr. Kasberg.

After several years of submitting lyrics to various song-poem factories, in the late 1970's, Mr. Kasberg set up his own label, Kay-Em (you might be able to figure out the source of that label name), and proceeded to write entire albums (at least eleven of them) of his various tributes, diatribes, pleas for peace and observations, among many other styles of songs. I truly encourage you to check out the Kay-Em page at the song-poem database and just peruse some of the titles. To just choose three at random, I find:

Life is Full of Bubbles

Drug Addiction Rampant 

When Do We Eat? 

The more interesting of today's two Kasberg songs is "Friendly Randy Polka", written in tribute, one would have to assume, to Mr. Kasberg's son - his only son, as you'll hear. I will say no more, and will let you discover the peculiar charms of this record for yourself.

Download: Gene Marshall - Friendly Randy Polka
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The flip side, "Unusual Waltz", and like many of the songs on those albums I just linked you to, it is a bit of social commentary with a strong mix-in of religious themes. The lyrics seem almost completely disconnected from the title phrase, and they feature words used in ways that seem out of place, or which make no grammatical sense in context, such as "touchingly". That's used here as a key word of the lyric, yet it's seemingly flown into that spot, as if in a game of Mad Libs. That feature is such a hallmark of Michael Kasberg's writing, that if I'd heard this song first, before looking at the writer credit, I'd have guessed it was his song. It's a weird, but endearing trait, from an absolutely unique lyricist.

Download: Gene Marshall - Unusual Waltz
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As promised, here is my family's Christmas Card. Just so you know, for most of the last several years, my family has been using the Christmas Card concept as a jumping off point for a bit of performance art. Each of us has supplied ideas in the past - this one was mine. There's a lot going on here.... I'm in the middle, with my adult kids on either side of me and my wife on the far left. On the right is my daughter's boyfriend.

Better Than Paul Anka!

Yes, so much better than Paul Anka. Admittedly, I don't believe that's a hard thing to do - I've only heard two records by the man that I'd want to leave on. Oh, and there's "Johnny's Theme", which is damn good. But he has something approaching a record for near-consistent awfulness. Plus, today's title predates his song of the same title by more than three years. More in a moment. 

But first, I have again updated a previous month's set of busted links. And this month, June, 2014, was a DOOZY, with five posts and FOURTEEN songs shared. 

These include a SIX song Real Pros EP (the details of which I have amended today, with a correction), a nice Rodd Keith record, An MSR release with two very closely related songs, a remarkably tedious Sammy Marshall record, AND - drumroll please! - a record on Tin Pan Alley which has to qualify as one of the most entertainingly horrible 95 seconds ever committed to any form of recordable material. I strongly suggest those who haven't heard "The Proon Doon Walk" to immediately link to that page and have a listen. That's why I've linked the same post four times. 

And now: 

Yes, it's Tin Pan Alley again, this time featuring Alberta Jordan's performance of "Puppy Love", from some time in 1956, more than three years before Paul Anka's sappy, unctuous song and performance.

And there are certain friends of mine who will know, upon listening to it, that I LOVE this record. It's got a bunch of things that make my ears perk up: what Billboard called the "rock-a-ballad" style, complete with piano triplets, a nice overabundance of reverb on the vocal, and speaking of that vocal, a pleading, emotion-laden teen girl (or, in this case, most likely faux-teen girl) vocal, one which absolutely sells the lyric in a "this really happened" way.

That this happens to have been a song-poem is just icing on the cake - it gives me a chance to share it with the world. But this record, unlike the vast majority of song-poems, is almost indistinguishable from dozens of other actual failed attempts of the day at creating a real hit (and also not, as is so often the case, a record that sounds like attempts at hits from five years earlier. This sounds like 1956).

Download: Alberta Jordan - Puppy Love
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The flip side, "Moonlight Among the Willows", has some of the same aspects that make me love "Puppy Love", but no one but Alberta seems to be as invested in this one - the melody is not as indelible, and it's just missing that unidentifiable.... something... which the first side has in spades. I do, however, adore the tone of her voice on the long held notes for the word "willows" near the end of each verse. I could live in those vibrato notes for a week.

Download: Alberta Jordan - Moonlight Among the Willows
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Big Belly Berelly, Trouble with Girls, and a Bit of Plagiarism

I will resume the correction of old posts next week. With the holiday week that is now coming to an end, I've had little time for online activities. I hope that today's wonderfully odd new items will make up for this lack of old fixes. 

This one literally arrived in the mail yesterday, and I couldn't wait to share it. I think each side is good enough to be featured first, but I've chosen the one with the more unusual title and subject matter to go first.

The singer is Sammy Marshall, under the name of Ben Tate, which he used on all of his releases on the Ronnie label. I've usually found Ronnie releases to be staid and way too glossy/bland, but both sides here prove to be an exception, with approximations of someone's idea of what the rock and roll of the day sounded like.

And so here we have "Big Belly Berelly"! Now there may be a way to make that title phrase fit musically in a way that a singer could make it work, rhythmically, but the folks at Ronnie did not find it, as you'll hear. Then there's a line like "Though he wasn't educated", which would be hard for Irving Berlin to make into something musical.

Everyone involved does the best they can with what they were given, and I suspect that someone who didn't speak English might well believe that this was a legitimate release by a label shooting for a hit record. Then again, this record appears to date from about 1965 or 1966, so perhaps not.

Download: Ben Tate (Sammy Marshall) - Big Belly Berelly
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The first thing I noticed about the flip side, "Girls Are Trouble" was the writer credit, which is to 'Rattlesnake' Davenport. I sort of wish my name was 'Rattlesnake' Davenport.

The second thing I noticed about this record was that it opens with a blatant and completely unnecessary bit of plagiarism. Not only have the folks at Ronnie quoted a key melody from a number one song from earlier in the decade, I can't figure out why, as going forward from that point, they didn't make that melody part of this song's melody, and, in fact, the chord changes for "Girls Are Trouble" never matches that melody, or the earlier song, for the rest of the record.

Aside from that, this is another faux 1963 style rock and roll record, more obviously song-poemy this time in terms of the performance - complete with uninspired sax and guitar solo, followed immediately by a bum note on the bass - although Sammy tries his best to sell it.

And that opening still cracks me up.

Download: Ben Tate (Sammy Marshall) - Girls Are Trouble
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I Certainly Hope It's Not Ivanka

I'll get to the meaning behind that post title in a moment, but I wanted to offer up links to this week's group of corrected posts from the past, in this case, July 2014's posts. This was a nice cross section of interesting song-poems, ranging from a nice "Rodd Rivers" Chamberlin track, to a Halmark record credited to Bob Storm but only featuring one side which might have been him, to what might be Norm Burns' last release, to a sexually charged Gene Marshall record. Enjoy!

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I also want to acknowledge that my great pal Stu has some doubts about my crediting a song in this post (from last month) to Rodd Keith. He's skeptical that it's Rodd (and he's a much bigger Rodd Keith fan than me), so I'm wondering what others think.

And now:

Today, we have two genuinely peculiar lyrics from the pen of one Mina Ziegler, who teamed up with someone named "Miss Miller" for the better of the two entries. That entry would be the charmingly off-kilter "I'm Out with the President's Daughter". I get the distinct feeling that one of the lyricist here simply felt that was a lyrical concept too good to pass up, and then worked to settle on a lyric with which it might (barely) fit, as the title line seems to me to come out of nowhere, does not rhyme with anything, and strikes me as barely related to the rest of the song's story.

The Chamberlin backing track is appropriately whimsical, and Frank Perry's voice is perfect for the little story. But my two favorite things may be the use of the phrase "Scot Loose", which as far as I knew (and as far as I can find online) is not actually a phrase, and the fact that the song both fades out and has a hard ending (which can barely heard because the song has been faded). This is only the second record that I can recall where that happens.

Download: Frank Perry and the Swinging Strings - I'm Out with the President's Daughter
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(By the way, the other one that fades out on a hard ending, an all time favorite (pre?) teen girl song from Alaska (!) can be heard here.)

The flip side is called "Painting Done in Oil", another left-field sort of lyric, in this case one which seems designed to fit as many references to different styles, methods and genres of creating artwork as possible, each in reference to the quality and stability of a relationship. The results are not particularly musical lyrics, and the song stumbles several times over words and phrases such as "surrealist" and "depth and scope". If nothing else, it's an interesting choice....

Download: Frank Perry and the Swinging Strings - Painting Done in Oil
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The Return of Gary Roberts

First, I have - as promised - gone back and updated yet another month's worth of previously damaged posts, in this case, the month of August, 2014, which featured three posts: an odd late-era Film City release sung by Jim Wheeler, three quarters of an Air EP (the missing song explained in the notes), and a sort of wonderful 1950's Tin Pan Alley number. 

With that out of the way, here's what this week's record looks like: 

One of my intentions at this site is to document virtually every Gary Roberts record that I come across. Not because he was a great singer - based on the evidence, he wasn't even a good singer. Not because his records stand out as song-poems - but rather, just the opposite. They are, with a couple of exceptions, utterly prosaic. Gary Roberts and the majority of his releases are exactly what I would describe as the average song-poems: badly written lyrics, corny, unimaginative music and barely competent (if that) singing.

Plus, it's worth noting that, for song-poem fans who discovered the genre during a certain era, Gary Roberts' voice was the first one they ever heard singing a song-poem. His rendition of the utterly amazing "Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush" led off the first vinyl reissue of song-poems, and the subsequent first CD re-issue of song-poems, back in the '90's, and I have it on good authority that "Big Wood and Brush" was the single most popular song-poem among those who discovered the genre via those re-issues, back in the 1990's and early 2000's.

For both of those reasons - the fame of his biggest "hit" and the utterly stereotypical-ness of his oeuvre, I want to spread the joy of a Gary Roberts record whenever I find one. And it's been over a year and a half.

Today's song is "Gold and Silver", a record that fits everything I just said about this artist and his work at the Sterling label. An added minus is the truly awful sound of the pressing. "Gold and Silver" shows precious (heh) little creativity in any area, and features just enough poorly phrased lines and badly structured music to keep things mildly interesting.

Download: Gary Roberts - Gold and Silver
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An appropriately loping beat introduces the flip side, "Cowboy's Song of Oregon". The lyricist has had enough of those New York rodeos (?), and will resume the Cowboy life as practiced in Oregon. Is it my imagination or does this side seem to be slowing down, to the point where one expects it to stop any time, on a couple of different occasions?

Download: Gary Roberts - Cowboy's Song of Oregon
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An Odd, Grand Record

The ongoing updates to the broken postings will resume next time around.

Today, I have one of the more peculiar records from my collection. Its contents in and of themselves are not unusual, for those familiar with song-poems and with the labels involved, but their appearance on the Grand Recording Co label was, fro me, at the very least.... unexpected.

The AS/PMA shows Grand Recording Co to be a concern related to the much more well known Halmark outfit, and the small Chapel label that seems to have predated Halmark. This seems to be based on two things - one, the address for Grand was in the same metropolis - Quincy, MA, as Halmark, and two, the existence of the single record (an album) which AS/PMA was privy to when the website was a going concern. Presumably, the sound of that Grand Recording Co album was consistent with that of Halmark.

And that's what I thought I was getting. And when I listened to the most song with the most promising title on the EP, "We'll Never Ration Liberty", that's what I got. And that ridiculous Halmark sound continued into the second song of the EP. But then I flipped the record over.... And I heard two songs that were clearly from the great Preview label, including one featuring Rodd Keith that had a smoking backing track.

This provides more of a link than I knew of in the past between Ted Rosen's slimy business in Massachusetts (for I see no way that he wasn't involved, given the address of the "co" and the contents of the record), and the more talented - and somewhat more slick about their shadiness - folks at Preview. But beyond that, I have no insight into exactly what business dealings led to there being two West Coast song-poems on a New England label.

Regardless, it's absolutely an EP worth hearing, or at least (to these ears), three fourths of it is worth hearing. Let's begin, shall we?:

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Leading off is the aforementioned "We'll Never Ration Liberty", featuring the voice of the man most often identified as Bob Storm - although there have been enough contradictions about that name and the Halmark voices to leave me scratching my head. And it's a great, ridiculously patriotic lyric paired with my all time favorite Halmark backing track, the one most memorably used for "Lady Off Pedestal at Notre Dame" (although here, it is stripped of the backing chorus, so Halmark clearly had multi-track reels of their recycled classic tracks.

The vocalist seems a bit bored at times - I've never heard him sound more like he's phoning it in. But the cranky lyrics - and the singer's choice to pronounce "Ration" with a long "A" - as well as that bouncy track, and a nice final note, all keep me coming back for more, again and again.

Download: No Artist Named (Bob Storm) - We'll Never Ration Liberty
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Next up is the same singer, happily enough singing over my second favorite Halmark track, the one best used on "My Hamburger Baby" (a song I love so much that I recorded a cover version!) In this, case, after a spoken introduction, we get "If I Had One Wish", one of those "we should all love each other" songs, long on platitudes, and completely absent of actual ideas for making things happen, featuring a much more Bob Storm-ish over-the-top performance.

Download: No Artist Named (Bob Storm) - If I Had One Wish
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Let's flip the record over, shall we?

As mentioned, the flip side really caught me off guard. Within three seconds, I was thinking "This is a Preview production". And so it is. And I must say, it's not one I'd share if it wasn't part of an overall more interesting EP. Gene Marshall is professional as ever, but the song, lyrics and arrangement of "You're the One" are all deadly dull.

Download: No Artist Named (Gene Marshall) - You're the One
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The biggest surprise was yet to come. The last track, "Love Me, Baby, Love Me", clearly features Rodd Keith. The lyrics leave a lot to be desired - and thereby leave the song to be only so-so, despite an effective vocal. But the backing track is great! It's a solid soul mover, featuring some great horns, sounding like something that would have been produced in Memphis in 1966. I'm certain I've never heard this track on a Preview 45, and I wish it had been used with material that lived up to its quality.

Download: No Artist Named (Rodd Keith) - Love Me, Baby, Love Me
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Dick and Bobbi

As has been the case for several weeks now, before getting to today's offering, I want to update you as to updates. I have moved back another month, and have now made new connections for all posts from October, 2014. They include: A Hal(l)mark Bob Storm special, a minimalist Mike Thomas number on Tin Pan Alley, a jawdroppingly ridiculous Gene Marshall record about Nixon, and an very late, and depressing, MSR effort by Rodd Keith, or, rather, Rodd Rogers. 

And speaking of MSR....: 

I'm just not much of a fan of this label, particularly its output after the death of Rodd Keith. But I know there are plenty of MSR fans out there, so much so that the compilations that were released a few decades ago were subtitled after the label.

Despite my general disinterest, I do find this one, "Bye Bye" to be a minor pleasure, a nice, bouncy, almost polka-esque number, sung with more gusto than it deserves by Dick Kent. The sing-songy melody here reminds me more than a little of the repetitive melodies created by William Howard Arpaia, for those who know about him. That is not meant as a compliment.

Download: Dick Kent - Bye Bye
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On the flip side, as she so often was with Dick Kent (or, if you prefer, he on her backside), is Bobbi Blake, singing a curious lyric titled "My Souvenir". Again, this is a nice vocal, but this one suffers, as to many latter-day MSR records, from the sound of a certain deeply chintzy, early synthesizer, a model which renders many of those records unlistenable, at least to my ears.

Download: Bobbi Blake - My Souvenir
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Hilly-Dilly Billie (With a Rainbow Twist)

Good evening!

As my ongoing repairs to the earlier posts at this site continue, today, I can announce that I have fixed all four posts from October of 2014, which together feature a whopping eleven song poems. These include a Norm Burns number, Three songs from a Star-Crest album, a Brosh EP and a Rod Rogers special. 

And now...

One of the few things I've found I can truly count on in this song-poem collecting game is this: If i find a Phil Celia record which features a ridiculous title, it's going to be a winner. A quick listen through my previous Phil Celia postings will prove this to be the case. (Note - several of the links within those posts are not yet repaired.)

Today's feature is no exception. I have no idea what "Hilly Dilly Billie (with a Rainbow Twist)" meant to the song-poet, but the combination of that song's lyrics and Tin Pan Alley's minimalist version of Rock and Roll (which to my ears owes more than a bit to supper club combo music), results in something eminently listenable and very enjoyable. Phil never gives any indication that he knows what he's singing is ridiculous, as he (as always) gives the song and the lyric his all.

Download: Phil Celia - Hilly-Dilly Billie (with a Rainbow Twist)
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That is not to say that everything Phil Celia (let alone Tin Pan Alley) touched was turned to gold. "The Night is Beautiful", on the flip side, is almost the quintessential dull, uninspired song-poem lyric and equally creativity-free setting.

Download: Phil Celia - The Night is Beautiful
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Where They Use Their Bodies, Not Just For a Hobby!

Okay, so first up, in my ongoing goal of re-upping all of the old posts, I have now cleaned up the four posts I made in November of 2014. That month featured a ridiculous Mike Thomas record on Tin Pan Alley, a back-to-back series of two posts featuring Halmark-styled releases from the same company, prior to it being called "Halmark", and a sleazy record from Gene Marshall. You can find them, in that order, right here. 

Continuing something I said in the last post, I'm still not finding much time to do anything that I don't have to do (although that should change soon), so I'm not going to blather on about today's record. I'm sure there are at least some readers who don't go in for my lengthier posts anyway.

So I just bought this ridiculous and very poorly pressed record, a late-era offshoot of Film City on the Big Sound Records label (the only one I've ever seen on that label), and I enjoyed the lyrics on both sides of the record, despite the terrible sound and uninspired performances. The songs are credited to Frank Lane, who I suspect is Frank Perry, but I'm not sure.

First up, here's a song decrying all the bad things about "Divorce", featuring the line I quoted for the name of this post:

Download: Frank Lane and the "Swinging Strings" - Divorce
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And on the other side, an equally busy Chamberlin track backs up Frank Lane, again, on the saga of "Rodeo Joe", about as half-assed as a lyric and performance as I can imagine:

Download: Frank Lane and the "Swinging Strings" - Rodeo Joe
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Norridge, Rodd and Tom Dooley

Ya know, I love my hobbies, especially those that let me share parts of my collection here and on my other blog. And I love my work. If anything, it's gotten richer with a promotion a few years ago, and a more recent redefinition. But it became clear this month that, under that redefinition, Septembers are going to ridiculously busy for me. I'm going to try to prepare in advance for my blogging sites in the future, but this year, I really haven't had the time to dedicate to much posting. 

So I tried to catch up today, the first time I digitized anything in weeks. First, as I have been doing recently, I re-upped a set of old broken posts, in this case, five from December of 2014. You can find those here - the first four feature Christmas and religious song-poems of varying quality, while the last one... well, that's the one featuring "The Beatle Boys", which is one of my two favorite song-poems ever. 

And I will also acknowledge that today's offering may not be a new one to some percentage of the readership. Two decades ago, when the song-poem audience was reaching whatever zenith it reached, a CD reissue of a remarkable album was issued. That was Norridge Mayhams' "Our Centennial Album", credited to "Norris the Troubadour, Seaboard Coastliners". This album collected 29 songs that Mayhams had written, all of which he had paid various song-poem factories (and the like) to record for him. Most, if not all of these tracks had previously been released on 45's on Mayhams' label(s), and as they came from various companies, they actually featured a number of different vocalists and bands, all appearing under the name of one or more of his nom-de-plumes. 

Anyway, I say all this to offer a bit of history, but also to acknowledge that a certain, unknowable size number of those of you reading this may well have already heard these two songs, or even own them on a copy of that CD. But for those who don't, I really can't pass up sharing this 45, as the first song I'm putting up is among my top 20 favorite song-poems ever - it's my favorite from the album (there is one song on the album that I love much more - a version of "Mary Ann McCarthy" - but the version of that record that I love is not the one on the album. I find the one on the album to be fairly terrible). 

Anyway, here it is: 

On the Centennial Album, this is identified as "Tom Dooley Last Will and Testament", which is in keeping with the lyrics, but this title, "Tom Dooley Testament", works just as well. Norridge Mayhams clearly paid for the folks at Film City to produce this track, and Rodd Keith - no doubt thinking it would be released under the name Rod Rogers - provides one of his finest creations ever. And he didn't even get his preferred name on it - just "Seaboard Coastliner"

This is just damn cool. I don't have another, better word for it. The lyrics are interesting, Rod almost never did anything more slinky and sexy with the usually very clunky chamberlain - every voicing and musical choice is fantastic - and his vocal performance is loose, sly, soulful and understated all at the same time.

Many, maybe even most, of Mayhams' releases have fairly poor sound. My speculation is that he received the acetate or actual 45 from the company involved - in this case, Film City - and then mastered his 45 directly from the vinyl he received. I have no proof of this, but that's sure what it sounds like. In most cases, it is the detriment of the material, but in this case, it gives the proceedings a suitably spooky, even otherworldly feel. I'm not any other record I've ever heard sounds quite like this.

If you've not heard this before, I'd love to hear what you think.

Download: Seaboard Coastliner - Tom Dooley Testament
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On the flip side, there is a positively schizophrenic Christian Revival-style song, :"Jesus Will Be Coming Soon", a song which starts with a bouncy, Spiritual setting, then into a 1950's organ driven inspirational number, and back into the Spiritual, all in less than 105 seconds, complete with a truly terrible edits near the start. For this one, Mayhams' company of choice was the Globe song-poem factory, with Sammy Marshall taking the lead, again billed as "Seaboard Coastliner".

I really have to wonder what the average record hound thinks, when coming across this record, with the billing the same on both sides, two totally unrelated subjects (a murderer's reflections / the second coming), sung and played but are what are clearly two different singers and bands.

Download: Seaboard Coastliner - Jesus Will Be Coming Soon
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I should be able to get to more frequent postings now.

The Onliest Jack Carlin on Fable Records

Greetings!

I have again endeavored to re-up another months worth of earlier-posted song poems, in this case the three records I shared in January of 2015. This is a slow process, but at least it's started. Starting today, you can again enjoy a truly wonderfully ridiculous record by Phil Celia on Tin Pan Alley, a very rare Star-Crest single, featuring two songs that total 189 seconds between them, and the lovely and talented Norm Burns, who is not letting mom off the hook!

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And now..... 

Posting songs from the Fable label is sort of a crap-shoot. While there are a handful which are almost certainly song-poems, and plenty more which seem very likely to have been attempts at hits, that leaves a bunch which are just goofy enough or off-kilter in some way to make them seem likely to be song-poems, or at best vanity records, with Fable doing the honors of providing the performers for someome's completed lyrics and music.

I actually suspect the latter of today's record, but I'm posting it anyway, because a.) it deserves to be heard and b.) I've received requests over the years to continue sharing Fable releases, of which I have many, and which are starting to go for higher and higher prices at auction.

Both sides of this record were written by the wonderfully named Calasanz Joseph Jones & Thelma Hester Jones - I got this information from the Catalog of Copyright Entries, where the Jones' are listed as composers of a few songs. Again, my guess is that they paid Fable to record their songs - perhaps they even picked the singer, Jack Carlin, who does not appear on any other cataloged Fable release. Fable even went so far as to send this record to Billboard in late 1956, where it was dutifully reviewed (every record Billboard received got a mention, in those days), and given very poor prospects for any success.

On both sides, Carlin is backed by label honcho Sandy Stanton and the Fabel Label All Stars, billed just like that: "Fabel". I will have to look to see if any other Fable release has that billing.

Oh, and the songs? Well, for one thing, they may both qualify as the two longest titles I've ever shared on this site, each of them having a lengthy main title and a significant subtitle. And the subject of both songs is, generally speaking, laziness.

First up is "I Got One Foot in the Grave (And the Other Won't Behave)". If nothing else, the prominent bum guitar note a the 1 1/2 second mark gives me the impression that making this as professional and hit-bound a record as possible was not on the agenda that day. But the whole thing is clever and funny, and quite enjoyable, well never quite sounding completely on the level.

Download: Jack Carlin, Music by Sandy Stanton and the Fabel Label All Stars - I Got One Foot in the Grave (And the Other Won't Behave)
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Continuing the theme, in a minor key this time, the flip side is titled "The Onliest Thing I Won't Do (Is Work Work Work). This side sounds considerably more song-poem-ish to me, with its thudding beat and a guitarist who occasionally sounds like he's not following the same chord changes as the rest of the band. Jack Carlin also sounds far less like a professional singer on this track.I find this side to be a genuinely odd combination of sounds and arrangement choices.

Download: Jack Carlin, Music by Sandy Stanton and the Fabel Label All Stars - The Onliest Thing I Won't Do (Is Work Work Work)
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What Has He Done?

Arrgh! Probably with my file sharing site have kept me from posting for about two weeks. I assume the problem was only with me, as no one has complained of broken links on my recent posts. 

And speaking of broken links, I have no reconnected the four posts I made back in February of 2015. Now, once again, you can enjoy the full splendor of a classic Bob Storm emote-a-thon, a truly amazing record by Rod Barton about political problems in the Congo, Dick Kent with a simple solution for everything, and some sample kisses from Cara Stewart. 

And now....

I say this every time I share one of her songs, but Edith L. Hopkins sure could write a catchy song. She wasn't exactly a song-poet, as she wrote both the words and the music. And she seems to have gone for the legit market at times. But at other times, she engaged the services of various song-poem factories, particularly after she opened up her own label, Inner-Glo Records. So it is that we have multiple Edith Hopkins numbers sung by the likes of Sammy Marshall.

For his Inner-Glo releases, Sammy was renamed "Sandy Singer", but in every other way, this is a standard early period Globe/Sammy number, except that, to my ears, "What Have I Done?", has a wonderful, country edged and lilting melody, and Sammy provides one of his best heart-on-his-sleeve, pained vocals. The main drawback here, and it's a good one, is that the sound quality is nothing short of atrocious, as if the 45 was mastered directly from an acetate. 

Download: Sandy Singer (Sammy Marshall) - What Have I Done?

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"Never to Know" is on the flip side, and nothing I said about "What Have I Done?" applies. This is a fairly deadly 6/8 thing, done in a dreary arrangement that seems to go on forever. 

Download: Sandy Singer (Sammy Marshall) - Never to Know

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Hey, Everybody, Time to Poo-Poo!!!

The first time I saw this label scan, in an eBay auction a few weeks ago, I knew two things: 1.) I was going to buy it no matter the cost and 2.) I was going to share it as soon as I had a chance to hear it. As it turned out, it didn't come close to breaking the bank - not much money at all!! And it arrived Saturday morning while I was at a convention, so this is the closest I could come to "as soon as I had a chance". It did not disappoint. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the label for Honeywell Jackson's "Ricky Rocky Poo-Poo-Poo":

 

This record is certainly a mystery - Honeywell Jackson does not show up anywhere else in the Tin Pan Alley, or overall song-poem discography. The sleeve it came to me in appears to be original, and is dated 1962, which is fairly consistent with its numbering (early 1963 might also be correct).

 

And the song turns out to be.... you guessed it.... a song about a dance move! Why, of course. And while most of you could probably imagine a dance move called the Poo-Poo-Poo, this doesn't resemble what I'm guessing you're imagining. There is actually little to it, as you'll hear. The oddest thing about it, besides the title, is that the singer (well, the song-poet) indicates that he does this dance whenever he has a free moment, but then immediately confirms that it's a line dance which requires a leader. Well, which is it - a solo thing or a group dance?

 

Regardless, there's almost no way a song with this title was going to disappoint. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:

 

Download: Honeywell Jackson - Ricky Rocky Poo-Poo-Poo

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The flip side features "The Deans", who show up on only two documented TPA records, making this a truly unusual disc for the label. The singer here - performing "Pretty Lola" - could well be one of the other label male vocalists of the day. The song is a fairly dreary doo-wop styled ballad about a couple of folks with rhyming names who "laughed when they learned" that they had names that rhymed with "cola". I can't imagine that this would have been a surprised, but the writer? Well, he'll "be durned".

 

Download: The Deans - Pretty Lola

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Updates to previously broken links will continue with the next posting.

Trips to the Moon, With Gene Marshall, Part Three

ANNOUNCEMENT!!! ANNOUNCEMENT!!! ANNOUNCEMENT!!! 

It's almost time to complete our three week trip to the moon with Gene Marshall, but first, I wanted to do a little promotion: 

Some of you own, or are aware of my "The Many Moods of Bob" collection, an album of comic songs which I put together in the late '90's, and which went up online on the Happy Puppy label several years later. Well, since that time, I have continued to write and record both comic and serious songs, although a lot more of the former, recording them whenever I had enough time. And now, after 19 years, this 19 track album is available. It's called "A Few More Plans". 

There's a wide variety of material - songs set to psychedelic style, calypso, jazz, rhumba, gospel, and much more, all featuring my style of humor and songwriting. Three of them have been featured on the Dr. Demento show in recent years. Mostly, it's me: my voice and my keyboard (and a few other instruments in places), but a few tracks feature family members and a friend.

Mixed in are four instrumentals. One of these - the title track - is a fairly insane trip through sound which wouldn't be out of place as the accompaniment to a silent movie. The other three instrumentals are simply revved up versions of songs I've been playing forever. There's also a remake of a beloved, very obscure commercial (of all things), a remake of a song-poem, and a rendition of a song my brother once dreamed, during a nightmare, more than 50 years ago. 

I have been writing and recording songs - serious and decidedly not so - since I was 16 years old, and I believe that, as a set of material, this is by far the best project I've ever produced in those 40-some years, and I would love it if you'd have a listen. It's located here: 

https://bobpurse.bandcamp.com/releases

You can listen to all the songs for free on the site, and read the lengthy notes attached to each song (under "lyrics" - there was no other way to do it), and if you'd be so kind as to buy it (which allows the download of the material and all the notes and the front and back covers), it's only two dollars.

One more thing: I'm not really on social media, for a variety of reasons, and I would very much like it if  - on the chance that you enjoy the material - you'd consider putting up links to my project on whichever of these sites you are part of. If you choose to do that, I'd really appreciate it. 

~~

And here's another announcement: I have re-upped three more posts from around the time that my previous file-hosting site, Divshare, went down for the count. So now, if you'd like, you can once again enjoy and download a truly bizarre Preview release here, a Mother's Day special (with a shout-out to dad, too), here, and a bit of a mystery on Sterling here. 

I will continue this project as often as I can. 

~~

Finally, we're at the final stage of our Moon Shot Trilogy. Some time after last week's tribute to the initial landing on the moon (250 or so label numbers later), here's a patriotic tribute to the brave men who took part in that flight, titled "Astronauts Moon Flight", and again, of course, sung by Gene Marshall. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Astronaut's Moon Flight

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On the flip side, Gene gets to tackle another piece of history, in this case, via a war ballad, honoring the Battle of "Shiloh", an early major event in the Civil War, 1862. The words are quite respectful, and seem to be acceptably accurate, and Gene handles the song well, although musically, none of this holds my attention. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Shiloh

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Trips to the Moon, With Gene Marshall, Part Two

Well, today is the day! My younger daughter turns 26 today! Yippee!!!

Wait, while that's true, it's not why I'm posting a set of special themed records this month and, particularly, today. Today, in case you've been melting and not able to pay attention, is the 50th anniversary of the day that a human first walked on the moon.

 And as promised last week, here we have part two of our Gene Marshall triple play, all about travels to the moon. And apropos of today's anniversary, the title of the song is "Footsteps on the Moon".

Admittedly, this is far from the most exciting or even interesting record that I've ever shared here (or even that I've shared this month), but I think given the magnitude of the event and the anniversary, it's the perfect song-poem for today. Sing it, Gene!

Download: Gene Marshall - Footsteps on the Moon
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On the flip side is a brief record  - "I Can't Make You Cry" - that I find fairly peculiar, lyrically. The writer (and of course, Gene, is his vocal) is despairing that his beloved is far too young to be in love with him, the tell-tale sign being that he can't make her cry. I guess I'm trying to picture how young a young woman would be who doesn't periodically cry, or who is unable to cry in response to something done by a boyfriend. And even if such a person exists, why is that the deciding factor for the writer?

By the way, the sudden increase in volume at 1:24 is not something I did. The record plays like that.

Download: Gene Marshall - I Can't Make You Cry
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Trips to the Moon, With Gene Marshall, Part One

Well, we're back from vacation and I'm ready to rock and roll you... TO THE MOON!!!!

But before I get to that, I wanted to make sure everyone knew that, as promised, I have begun to re-up the broken files from prior to the summer of 2015. Today, I have restored three posts from spring of that year, a Gene Marshall post featuring the song "Beer Belly Polka", which can be found here, a Rod Rogers Film City classic featuring two patriotic ditties, which you can find here, and a ridiculous Mike Thomas record (but I repeat myself) from Tin Pan Alley, which can be found here. 

I will try to continue to fix the broken links as frequently as possible. 

And now, back to that satellite we all know and love!: 

As you've probably been unable to miss out on hearing, we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, which took place on July 20th, 1969. Since there is an entire sub-genre of Astronaut-related song-poems, I'm going to take the rest of the month, once each weekend, and treat you to one of Gene Marshall's musical treatises, one fanciful and the other two in tribute to those intrepid outer space explorers.

Since we're not yet on the actual anniversary just yet, I'll start with the imaginary trip to the moon, on a record which was likely made not long after the actual moon shot. It has the completely unwieldy title of "Fly With Me Darling On a Rocket to the Moon", and for some reason it features some backup singers who sound as if they've never read music before (well, it is likely that they'd never seen this music before singing it). The  lyrics smack of someone using a rhyming dictionary while trying to shoehorn those rhymes into her poem.

Gene, on the other hand, does a wonderful job, and the peppy band does its job, too, particularly a fairly wonderful, at times hyperactive drummer - that drummer gives more to this backing track than this simplistic, sing-songy lyrics had a right to expect

Download: Gene Marshall - Fly With Me Darling On a Rocket to the Moon
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The flip side, "Masque", has little to offer, aside from trying to figure out why the song-poet decided on the unnecessary alternate spelling of "Mask". The backing band sounds more like the minimalist, barely talented folks on late '60's Tin Pan Alley records than the usual stellar Preview band.

Download: Gene Marshall - Masque
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The Ted Lane Sound

I get a kick out of today's billing, and that's what's referenced in the name of this post. More on that just below. But first, I am featuring today one of the singers at the Sterling label, who hasn't been featured enough (because she's not on that many records, and because I have even fewer than that), Shelley Stuart. I have consistently - during three other posts feature her work - misspelled her name as Shelly, despite the fact that the correct spelling was clearly evident on the labels of all three records featured in those posts. I hope to fix those posts, or at least the labels, soon.

Anyway, in this case, Shelley has a peppy, pleading number to sing, titled "Come and Take Care of Me". She is accompanied (as is the case with her label mate on the flip side), by "Ted Lane's Orchestra", a combo which shows up infrequently enough on Sterling records that it is not found on any of the records indexed on the Sterling page of the song-poem website. But here's the thing: You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who can tell the different between Ted's band and Lew Tobin's ensemble, which is usually credited (if a backing "orchestra" is identified at all. This is clearly the same band. So what's the story there? I recognize that I may well be the only person who cares.

Download: Shelley Stuart, Ted Lane's Orchestra - Come and Take Care of Me
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On the flip side is everyone's favorite Norm, Norm Burns, here going by the more formal Norman Burns, backed again by Ted and the boys, led off by a loping and appealing guitar introduction, and then going into a tune, "Little Butterfly", that is completely in Norm(an)'s wheel house. It's fairly slight, but his vocal is appealing,and I sure do like that repeating guitar phrase.

Download: Norman Burns, Ted Lane's Orchestra - Little Butterfly
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