BREAKING NEWS: BOB STORM REVEALED!!!!! (And Some Cara Stewart Music, Too)

HI!!!!

THERE'S BIG NEWS!!!!

At least it's big news if you've been at all interested in the slippery and mysterious Halmark label, and it's seemingly double-voiced main man, identified on countless records as Bob Storm. 

Following my post of an entire Halmark album, last month, I have heard from a guy named Bruce Baryla, who also owns a copy of that same album. My post inspired him to finish some research he'd been doing, and post it. You can find that post here. His research and proofs offered are quite compelling. 

First of all, he offers up the idea - and not all of this is on the site just linked, but rather, in follow-up e-mails - that the song-writer compiled this album himself, from individual 45's purchased the normal way from Halmark, then had the album put together himself, stole the actual "Hallmark" company logo, with an adjustment, and added his own address, and that Ted Rosen never knew any of this happened. 

What's more, he's found that this album was genuinely a local success (that is in the article). Read all about it. 

But the bigger news: There really were two singers who were identified as Bob Storm. The more midrange, typical baritone singer really is named Bob Storm, or at least has been billed elsewhere under that same name. 

The other singer typically labeled as Bob Storm, with the ridiculous, pompous and frequently off-the-charts unctuous vocal delivery, is, in fact, the other singer credited on that album, Marshall Young. Mr. Baryla has even included links to other tracks recorded by Marshall Young which demonstrate that he is the name behind that storied (and ridiculous) voice. 

Well, anyway, I'm certainly convinced. The amusingly entertaining Bob Storm, the one I've made fun of here for years, is really Marshall Young. 

There is no indication as to why Mr. Young's name disappeared from the Halmark label, or why Bob Storm became the person credited with both his own work and that of Mr. Young, but even without that information, I am impressed by the research, and overwhelmingly thankful to Mr. Baryla for sharing it with me. 

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I have also updated yet another month's worth of very old and broken down posts. Today, it's June of 2009. During that month, I featured a lovely set of tunes from Norridge Mayhams (updating that post with scans of the label this time), a Norm Burns song with an out of the blue ending, an Air label EP which was one of my first song-poem finds, and a post full of requests from readers/listeners, at what was then nearly six months into this project. 

That was also the month that my older child graduated from High School, and I wrote a post about her, featuring some of her photographs and one performance of a song she sang with me and two of my friends.

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Today's offering is the only record I own on the Sylvan label, which was the vanity pressing created by song-poet Sylvan Forrest, utilizing (here) the Lee Hudson song-poem factory. There are only three listed records on Sylvan, and this is # 2. 

Sylvan Forrest seems to have had a fixation with powerful, reputedly beautiful women (real and legendary) of the distant past. That this is the point of the flip side is obvious. And I think I've muddled through the complicated twists and turns of the (very non-musical) lyrics of "The World's Fairest Look" to say that they're at least in part about Helen of Troy, although I'm still a bit mystified as to what the lyricist thinks Helen was doing at the World's Fair. Maybe someone out there can decipher it better than me. 

Download: Cara Stewart and Lee Hudson Orch - The World's Fairest Look

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On the flip side, a more obvious tribute to another fine lady of (actual) history, although one who, many say, was not really much of a looker. Here's "Cleopatra Waltz". 

Download: Cara Stewart and Lee Hudson Orch - Cleopatra Waltz

Play: