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

Play: