Happy Second Half of the Year. Let's hope it's better than the First Half.
I have updated another month's worth of broken posts, October of 2012 in this case. We're getting there.....
This week's fixes include a special post of a Bob Storm record sent to me by Darryl Bullock, a set of two disparate offerings from Tin Pan Alley, a pairing of Cara Stewart and "The Mystery Girl" singing a song with a mangled title, and a fairly awful Dick Kent number on MSR.
As I do whenever I feature either an Edith Hopkins composition and/or a record on her custom label (out of Emporia, Kansas), "Inner-Glo", I will again explain that Ms. Hopkins is my favorite song-poet, based on the high quality of her (large number of) best songs, and also that she was a bit of a curio in the song-poem world in that, although she used the song-poem factories, particularly Globe, it appears that she wrote all the words AND music to her songs, so she was not technically fully part of the song-poem world. Additionally, although it doesn't apply here, she also wrote and commissioned records of certain songs meant to be directed at the legitimate radio/record store/Billboard magazine world, most notably with (but not limited to), the incomparable "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got)", by Betty Jayne.
Anyway, what we have today is a Hopkins special from that Inner-Glo label, from about 1964, and sounding all the world like some sort of brilliant mixture of a Patsy Cline song with production one might have found coming out of certain early '60's Los Angeles studios.
Whatever you want to call it, I think "That's the Place I Should Be" is just lovely. The lilting melody, the appealing duet vocals, and the loping 6/8 beat played by creating a wonderfully dreamy sound. And... I may have mentioned this before, but I adore the sound of a vibraphone, and the presence of one on both sides of this record (including a solo in each track!) is the perfect addition.
Download: Kris Arden - That's the Place I Should Be
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The flip side, "Should I Forget", doesn't have as much going for it - its main attraction for me is some fabulous vibraphone flavoring and another solo. Otherwise, while it's structurally somewhat similar to the flip side, and the lyrics are considerably better than the vast majority of song-poems, there's not much to set it apart from 100 other slow 6/8 weepers.
Download: Kris Arden - Should I Forget
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2 comments:
I agree--side A far more interesting and attention-holding than side B. Great sound to both sides! Thank you for posting this. Do you know if Kris Arden is known under other song-poem names?
Nothing but problems connecting to all links today 7/18/20. Will attempt tomorrow. That is all.
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