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.