A Tale of Two Bonnies

I've been a bit busy these last two weeks, hence there have been no posts. We had a pipe spring a leak in the basement ten days ago, and it damaged several stacks of my reel to reel tapes - more on this when I next post to my other site. But my free time since, until yesterday, was largely taken up with various ways of drying out and reviving the tapes and boxes that got damaged. 

But now I've had time to work up a new post, AND, as usual, to repair another month's worth of old posts. The big news, to me at least, on this front, is that I've finally gotten the chance to fix a post featuring one of the two or three best song-poems I've ever posted, Cara Stewart and Jeff Reynolds with  "Doc Nut", a song-poem so good I even got it onto the Dr. Demento show. Definitely one of my top ten favorite song-poems, as you may have heard if you listened to the podcast I was interviewed on. That post can be found here. 

The other posts I fixed include a rather horrible, very late period Film City record featuring Jimmie James, an even worse record from Cinema's catch all group "The Real Pros", and a truly curious release on Fable from well after that label was believed to have been defunct.

And now: 

Today's entry, from Preview, seems to be unique. It's credited to Bonnie Britton, and the few sites out there that have mentioned this record also mention that it seems to involve two different singers, singing under that name. I think it's possible that both songs are sung by the same person, using a different register, but concede that it's more likely that it's two different women. 

And I don't think either of them belonged in front of a microphone. 

This is the ONLY record known on Preview or anywhere else to be credited to Bonnie Britton. The same sites I mentioned above indicate that there is some suspicion that the singer on the b-side might be a singer who appeared somewhat frequently on Preview who was billed as Bonnie Graham, but even those sites are unsure, and I'm not familiar enough with Bonnie Graham to comment. I don't recall thinking that she couldn't sing, however, and I definitely think that's the case on both sides, here. 

The more blatently incompetent singer is heard on the A-side, singing a song apparently written by someone who lived in Alaska, as it's a peon to The Land of the Midnight Sun (I'm assuming the song-poet to have been an American, and not from any of the foreign "Lands of the Midnight Sun"). This singer positively warbles at times, with a barely controlled soprano drawing several of the words completely out of the shape the started in. The label helpfully made the song-poet believe that the record was a reasonable length for a pop record in the late 1960's, adding more than 45 seconds to its actual length.

Download: Bonnie Britton - My Land

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The flip side, "Kissin' Kinfolk", has some downright peculiar lyrics, as befits the title subject, and it's quite worth listening closely to them. This side's Bonnie has a pouty, teasing and whiny tone to her voice, no particular style, and a distinct difficulty staying on pitch.

I think this is a fairly odd record, from the lyrics, to the idiosycratic backing to what I find to be a genuinely irritating vocal style. And in this case, the label added nearly 20 seconds to the length listed on the label.

Download: Bonnie Britton - Kissin' Kinfolk
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