Saturday, August 24, 2019

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. 

Play:  

"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. 

Play:  


1 comment:

Stu Shea said...

I hope Edith wrote a check to whoever wrote "Who's Sorry Now" for what she took for "Never to Know."

Like you, I don't care for the ballad and enjoy the peppier side a lot. The backing vocals ("he doesn't know") are terrific.

Thanks!