Song-Poem Weather Forecast

Howdy, Good Buddies!

First, I want to do something I should do more often, and thank everyone for reading/listening, and particularly thank everyone who comments. I've received a bushel of comments in the last few months, to both the new posts, and (surprisingly) even more to the old, fixed posts that I link to in each new post. 

Thank you!!!

And we're in the home stretch of old posts! Today, I have corrected those posts for the end of the first year of this near-weekly song-poem feature, that being December of 2009. 

During that month, I featured a Christmassy post featuring Sammy Marshall (as "Bob Rule") AND Frank Perry, a nice Norm Burns entry, a brief post of Gene Marshall promoting a larger post at WFMU, and, on the next to last day of that year, a big Thank You post, featuring some of my favorite song poems that I didn't personally own physically (including a Norm Burns number which is perhaps my all time favorite song-poem), and cover versions I was involved in, of each of those four song-poems, three of them performed live and one a studio remake. Some of the files shared in that post, as well as the Gene Marshall one, are a bit redundant now, having subsequently been shared elsewhere, but I thought I'd rebuild that post anyway. 

And now, with extreme weather in the news from seemingly nearly everywhere in the United States, here's a bit of extreme weather none of the states are currently dealing with: 

I am always - ALWAYS - in the mood to share some Phil Celia. And what a ridiculous record he made for us to hear today. The song-poet in question had one simple concern on his or her mind - an approaching blizzard. The writer of "There's a Blizzard in Kansas", despite clearly being worked up about this weather situation, didn't actually have a lot to say about it, submitting a set of only eight lines, and the last two of them were simply a repeat of the first two. 

The good people at Tin Pan Alley had a fix for this, though. They set it to a march beat. They realized that it was approximately 1964, and therefore hired someone to play a trombone solo, which were all the rage in 1964. They didn't worry about it when said trombone player flubbed a note, and filled in the break with both the trombone and bit of piano. Then they had Phil sing the exact same two brief verses before and after the instrumental break. 

Voilà. Song-Poem Masterpiece. 

Download: Phil Celia - There's a Blizzard in Kansas

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The flip side, "Dollar to a Dime", finds Phil in supper-club mode, with a song about how sure he is that he will kiss the person he's singing to. Heard with 2021 ears, I picture the object of his affection having quite a "Me Too" moment in reaction to the ham-fisted tone - specifically, his assuredness about the rightness of his intentions and about how much the lucky lady will appreciate it, and him. 

Download: Phil Celia - Dollar to a Dime

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More Song-Poem Thievery

 Howdy!

Before getting to today's ridiculous song-poem release, I'm happy to reveal that I have now completed the upgrade of yet another year of old posts, in that for today, I have "fixed" the posts for January of 2010. This means we have just twelve months of posts to fix in order to have all of the posts (that is, all those since I made this a primarily song-poem blog) corrected!

Specifically, for January of 2010, these include a terrible Real Pros record, a typical early Rodd Keith Preview label release, a dance record titled "Chicken Neck Boogie", and a wonderfully idiosyncratic Tin Pan Alley record, featuring one song about Shoes and another about Tin Cans. 

And NOW, it's time for more plagiarism!!!

One of the things that consistently amazes and fascinates me, while collecting and listening to song-poems, falls under the broad category of "people who submitted, as their own work, something someone else already wrote". 

In the past, I have shared records "written by" someone who submitted the lyrics to the hit song "Watching Scotty Grow", changing a few things here and there, including than the name of the child, and two someones who, in one case, submitted amended lyrics to the 1949 song "Nobody's Child" (a post not yet "fixed") and in the other, submitted the lyrics to "Ruby (Don't Take Your Love to Town)" with barely a word changed. I even have a Halmark release - which I haven't shared - in which some jamoke submitted the words to The Lord's Prayer, verbatim, and claimed a writer's credit. 

Today's example seems of a piece with those, even if its construction is a little different. The song involved may have faded from public memory in the last 50 years, but I'm guessing that in 1965 or so - the era when this record was made - the vast majority of Americans knew the 1897 song "Asleep in the Deep", and at the very least could hum along to parts of it. 

The author of today's masterwork - "Beware Take Care" - simply rewrote the seafaring ballad along a religious line, making fear and caution in the face of God the subject, instead of fear and caution in the face of the roiling sea. Some lines from the original are quoted verbatim, others are changed slightly to fit the new topic, and a few are re-written completely.  

But then the "lyricist" made the theft obvious, by - I'm assuming - asking Film City to set the lyrics to the tune of "Asleep in the Deep", leaving out only the two (title) lines at the end of the chorus. The result - made all the more disconcerting by Rodd Keiths ultra-lugubrious performance - is utterly weird, off kilter and, to my ears, irresistible. 

You can read the original lyrics here, and follow along with the new ones as you listen.

I am utterly unable to comprehend the motivation here - if the song-poet proudly put on this record and said to friends and family "I wrote that", the response would almost certainly have been embarrassed silence, or maybe a blunt, "um, no... you didn't" from someone with less tact.  

Download: Rod Rogers and the Film City Orchestra and Chorus - Beware Take Care

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The flip side, "Chehalis Valley", is a pleasant midtempo shuffle, written in tribute to an area in Washington State, including glowing words about the physical beauty of the area, the niceness of the people therein, and the wonderful activities one can partake in. Rodd created a very nice music bed for this one. 

Download: Rod Rogers and the Film City Orchestra and Chorus - Chehalis Valley

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...And No Women Around to Sing It

Greetings, Song-Poemaniacs!

First, I want to thank everyone for a larger than usual batch of comments, all of them highly appreciated and warmly enjoyed. 

And second, I have, as usual, updated another month's worth of old, worn out, broken down posts. In this case, February of 2010. 

During that month, I offered up a pre-Valentine's day horror from Halmark, some Yankee Doodling from Rodd Keith, a very early Cinema release, which is one of the worst records I've ever heard, and a ridiculous record written by William Howard Arpaia (but I repeat myself). The comments on that last record turned into a brief, but interesting conversation with a few people who knew Mr. Arpaia, and who contrasted my comments with their memories of the man. 

Also that month, I offered up two non-song-poem posts, one featuring a ridiculously awful cover of a Rod Stewart song, and the other a then-update to my expanding collection of records by the wonderful Merigail Moreland. While that post was already redundant in 2010 (the songs posted there had already been on the WFMU site for two years at the time), I thought I'd update it anyway. Both "Oo-Lee, Papa" and "Reputation (1953 version) are well ensconced in the list of my top 40 favorite tracks ever recorded. 

By the way, if anyone is still interested in Merigail, I have obtained a later 45 she made, in the early 1960's, one which appears to be even more obscure than her 1960 releases, and will post it if there is interest. 

So today, I have something of a mystery, or at the very least, more evidence that low budgets and expediency usually came first in the song-poem game. There is so much to explore here - where to start? 

For someone named Rush Isaacs submitted her song-poem lyrics, all about a returning (presumably Vietnam) soldier, in what was almost certainly a first-person style from the point of view of his wife. Certainly, that would seem to be the case from the title, "My Man, I Love Him So". 

For one thing, that's not really a title that gets at the heart of her story - that title phrase never appears in the lyrics - but never mind. More importantly, I'd put money on it, that the writer was telling her own, heartfelt story, and something decent probably could have been done with the very simple, but heartfelt, direct and affecting lyrics. 

But Tin Pan Alley, at the time, only seems to have had one singer, the mighty Mike Thomas, who, as you might gather, was not, technically speaking, a woman. So okay, they made it a third person lyric instead, about a woman reacting to the changes in her returning military man. 

But they kept the original title. The title that's not even in the lyrics, and would have been changed to "Her Man, She Loves Him So", if it had been. 

The questions that occur to me: 

Why didn't they change the title to something more in line with the lyrics, or at least change it to what I just wrote. 

Why didn't they hire a woman to sing this one, or (HORRORS) tell the writer they weren't equipped at the moment to provide a female vocalist. 

Why didn't they label the record with the name of a female singer? Mike Thomas often SOUNDED like a woman anyway, and it's not like the song-poet bought so many Tin Pan Alley records that she would have said, "Wait a minute, I know that voice.... THAT'S MIKE THOMAS!!!"

See if you don't share my questions, as you enjoy the 105 seconds of "My Man, I Love Him So". 

Download: Mike Thomas - My Man, I Love Him So

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The flip side, "Ohio's the One", presents a completely different paradox. For here we have some trite lyrics about going home, paired with a sort of oompah beat behind Mike Thomas, who sings it in a gee-shucks country bumpkin style. Then we get to the solo, and while it's far from great, it does seem like the guitarist suddenly thinks he's fronting a blues band, and he at least tries some interesting stuff. I wouldn't call it good, but it is disorienting in a sort of intoxicating way, then we oompah and bumpkin our way back out the last verse door. 

Download: Mike Thomas - Ohio's the One

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