All Tore Up

Howdy Doo, 

First off, let me just say that I appreciate all of the comments, and I am particularly thankful for Timmy and Bryan, both of whom provided about a half-dozen comments to posts new and old in the last few weeks. 

Plus, I am very indebted to another frequent poster and all around good guy, Sammy Reed, who pointed out that, in my zeal to get all of the old posts fixed, I completely skipped October of 2010. No month would be good to skip, but October of 2010 was the worst one to skip of all. For that was the month that I received my very own copy of "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got" by Betty Jayne, and duly posted it. "What's She Got", in retrospect, is very likely not a song poem, or even a vanity record, but probably was an attempt at a legitimate hit. But it involved people, particularly the songwriter, who did use the song-poem companies quite a bit, and it's one of my half dozen favorite singles - by anyone - of all time. Even the flip side in great. Both sides would land in my top 300 - But "What's She Got" would be in my top 20 tracks of all time, if not higher. It is incomparable. It's a record I could listen to - and write about - all day. But I won't. You can find that post here. 

Thanks, Sammy. Y'all should check out his site, and and particularly his posting - in response to one of my own - of a George Liberace Songsmiths record. That can be found here. 

The rest of October, 2010, wasn't bad either. It featured a truly outstandingly ridiculous Tin Pan Alley release, three mind-numbing tracks from a song-poem album on the Brea label, and a rare vocal offering from Fable/Film City head honcho Sandy Stanton. 

That's all in the past, though. Let's spin on up to the present, and see what's tops: 

I always enjoy having a Cara Stewart 45 to share. As I've said many times, they tend to exist in just a couple of settings, but what lovely and charming settings they are, and Cara's vocals run rings around any other distaff song-poem singers, and most of the legit ones, too. 

The first song here is absolutely standard issue for Cara, which makes it utterly listenable, if interchangeable, with several others. It's called "I Ture Up Your Letters". 

Download: Cara Stewart - I Tore Up Your Letters

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Having mentioned that Cara pretty much always sounds the same, I will now ask if anyone hears, in the opening minute of "Just Keep My Love", not the sultry, knowing Cara we've all come to know and perhaps love, but a coy, almost coquettish vocal. To me, at least, she sounds a bit different here. Somewhere along the line, around the minute mark perhaps, her more typical delivery returns. 

That's what I hear, anyway. 

Download: Cara Stewart - Just Keep My Love

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Turn Me On, Shy Man

 Happy Saturday, everyone, 

Today, I have yet again repaired another month's worth of earlier posts, this time, July of 2010. That month I offered up a couple of truly awful patriotic numbers for the Fourth of July, a Film-Tone EP featuring two tracks worth hearing (a real rarity for that label), a fairly awful Norm Burns attempt at performing soul music, and a Halmark tribute to everyone's favorite megalomaniac, Arthur Godfrey. 

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Today, I have something fairly fascinating and at the same time truly awful on one side of the record, while the flip side contains something I find engaging and surprisingly well written. But let's start with the car-crash side first. 

The label is Tin Pan Alley, and the performer is the ubiquitous Mike Thomas. The "song", if you can call it that, is named "Turn Me On, I Love You". And when I purchased this record, some years ago, it came along with a "lead sheet" for the song-writer. Perhaps this was standard practice, but I've only seen a couple of these, and never before or since from Tin Pan Alley. 

But here's the thing: The lead sheet doesn't match the song. And I indicates a level of contempt for their customers that I hadn't necessarily seen from Tin Pan Alley before. Even if they assumed that the song-poet couldn't read music anyway, why not still just send an accurate lead sheet - it would have been no more difficult to create than it was to create the fiction you will see below. What's more, the lengthy section notated as "recite" (yes, most of this record is a recitation) indicates that the song-poet wrote additional lyrics that Tin Pan Alley chose not to include in the record they made for him. 

Here's the lead sheet: 

Now granted, there was little good that TPA would have been able to do with this material, but the chords AND the melody do not match the record. Why not? 

And on to that record - man, does this suck. I plant most of that on the song-poet - this is among the worst set of lyrics I've ever read or heard. He goes straight from not knowing her name to requesting that she turn him on and that he loves her. And then there's this section, which is somehow hackneyed, redundant, grammatically incorrect, and non-sequitur, in the course of a few words: 

With the dark clouds overhead, lightning from above, thunder in my heart, dark clouds overhead.

That's why I ask you to turn me on I love you. 

As I alluded to, the only thing that's a "song" here is the extremely basic chorus. The rest is talkity-talk over riffing. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy "Turn Me On, I Love You" as deeply and as fully as I do. 

Download: Mike Thomas - Turn Me On, I Love You

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The flip side of this record could not have been a bigger surprise to me. It's called "Shy", and I genuinely found myself being drawn into the lyrics. The music is the standard issue Tin Pan Alley minimalism of the day. But the lyrics are a damn good exploration of what it feels like to want to talk to someone who you find appealing, but being too shy to express yourself. There are some great turns of phrase, describing both the internal feeling as well as the actions of the two people being described. 

Mike Thomas, whose vocals can often feel sort of tossed off, actually strikes a really good and effective tone in singing these words. This is one of those records where I feel that the material could have actually been turned into something saleable. Again, see what you think. 

Download: Mike Thomas - Shy

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A Fascinating Piece of Song-Poem History

Well, the delay - and the near weeklong illness I encountered that led to it (happily, not that thing that's going around) - is over, and I have something truly unusual today. But first, another list of updates, in this case to the posts of August, 2010.

That month, I offered a Bob Storm special on Halmark (with some very funny text, if I do say so myself), a favorite Rodd Keith production featuring Suzie Smith, some typical Sammy Marshall, and a truly catchy number from Norm Burns. 

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And now, here's an obscure disc that has all sorts of song-poem history behind it: 

I was very excited to get this record a couple of weeks ago. I've always found records on the George Liberace Songsmith's label to be deeply odd, out of time and as different from the general song-poem world as are Noval, Halmark and Star-Crest. And when I saw the artist name, I was sold on getting this disc. For as many of you likely know, Gene Merlino is the real name of the song-poem stalwart who goes by Gene Marshall, among several other names. 

As far as I can tell, this is the only known case of Merlino being billed on a song-poem under his real name (although he used it throughout his career on hundreds of legitimate releases). And although Liberace's company eventually went into partnership with MSR, Gene barely ever worked for that company (one known release), so this likely predates their mid '60's partnership (and therefore, it also would predate his work for Preview). This record - a one sided acetate - likely was made before the persona of "Gene Marshall" (or any of the others), ever existed. 

More proof of that is the style in which Gene sings the song. This is not the relaxed, one take pro of his 1970's and 1980's song-poem releases. This is a mannered, altogether more serious (and more pompous) sounding Gene, who I barely even recognize as Gene at first - it becomes clear it's him quickly, but there is an overly staid tone to this that he thankfully lost at some later point. 

I wanted to mention here that, nearly 11 years ago, I posted a George Liberace Songsmith's album to the WFMU blog, and my pal Stu commented that the song "Rockin' and Rolling" sounded like it could be sung by "a slightly more mannered Gene Merlino" - a less extreme version of how I'm describing this record. Listening to it again, I am certain that he was right, and that the Gene Merlino, who stylized his vocals in this certain way, at the time of the recording of this acetate, is the same singer on "Rockin' and Rolling". 

After all that build-up, I should acknowledge that the song  - "I Shall Remember" - is no great shakes. Getting it's presentation pushed back several days did line it up nicely with Holy Week, which dovetails with the song's subject matter. It's a typical George Liberace arrangement, organ, guitar and violin combo with vocal. But it's another little piece of the song-poem story which hadn't been shared before today. 

Download: Gene Merlino - I Shall Remember

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