Gary in the Country

Howdy, 

Time is short this week, so I won't have a lot to say, but I did make the effort to repair yet another month's worth of posts. So this week, you can again enjoy those posts I originally shared in May of 2013, including: A Caveman Records release featuring both Cara Stewart and Sammy Marshall, a Norm Burns number with some pretty funny lyrics and offbeat performance (for Norm, anyway), a Gene Marshall single, and a fairly awful Frank Perry tribute to Mother, on her Day. 

And in our continuing series of song-poem ads, provided by Brian Kramp, here is a most basic and simple one, perhaps an ad that was for a single provider of the service, rather than a company: 

And now:

When is it NOT the right time for Gary Roberts? Not today, because today is a perfect time for Gary and his vocal chords. For today's first song, "Right From Their Land", I actually find that he offers up a stronger performance than on many of his "I'm-Seeing-This-For-The First-Time", deer in the headlights performances.

The song is about the people who worked the land and sang about their lives and enjoyed sometimes difficult but always rewarding lives while creating traditional American Country Music. Unfortunately, the backing sounds nothing like either what passed for Country Music in the mid 1970's (when this record was undoubtedly made), or in the early days of the Carter Family, etc., to which it refers.

Gary tries to add a bit of twang to the vocal, but the backing is the generic latter-day Sterling, which is not a terrible sound, but has nothing to do with what he's singing.

Download: Gary Roberts - Right From Their Land
Play: 

On the flip side, we have "My Texas Queen", a story of love found, kept and treasured. The author is clearly expressing deeply held feelings (even if they expressed in a fairly ham-fisted way), and Gary and the backing group do nothing to ruin it, while not really doing anything special with it, either. Just another middling song-poem.

Oddly enough, there is more country styling - at least in the piano part - than anywhere in the song about old-timey country music on the flip side.

Download: Gary Roberts - My Texas Queen
Play: