Rod and Bobbie Take Arco for a Spin

Good evening!

I have updated yet another month's worth of old, broken-down posts, in this case, July of 2009. 

That month, I shared the following: a perfectly dreadful - and highly entertaining - release on the Noval label, a confusingly titled Tin Pan Alley release, which is also missing an artist credit, an early MSR release featuring Dick Kent and Bobbie Boyle (aka Bobbi Blake), and, best of all, a fantastic and ridiculous record called "Goodness Gracious, It's Contagious" (the comments of which contain a response from a member of the songwriter's family!). 

I also posted a link to a then-upcoming song-poem event. It was a long time ago, but the link to the site and its information still works!

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Okay, here's a fairly odd duck of a song-poem release. If you'll click on this link to my previous posts of Arco releases here... well, at the top (for now), you'll see this post, but beneath it, you'll see the other posts from that label. And you'll hear that they feature early 1960's sounds, including some tracks which are closer to swing than to anything popular after 1955. Those found at the AS/PMA website seem to feature either acts which do not show up anywhere else, or which came from the Globe song-poem factory. 

Today's record, though, comes from much later - late 1960's, at least, features one track from Film City and one apparently from MSR (or perhaps Preview), has a quite separate numbering system from the other releases, and sports an entirely different label (although still with the same address indicated on the AS/PMA page, indicating that it is the same Arco label). 

What's more, the sound quality is dreadful, sounding to me as if the records were mastered directly off of another 45. It's a pretty standard Rodd Keith Chamberlin opus, with Rodd showing up here as Rod Rivers (with Orchestra). This record, "Don't Come Crying Back to Me", is a cute little number, and I wish I had a better pressing of it. 

Download: Rod Rivers with Orchestra - Don't Come Crying Back to Me

Play:

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On the flip side, we have Bobbi Blake, under the name of Bobbie Boyle (just as indicated above), with the song "I'm Just a Simple Living Girl". Here we have a fairly interesting tale, if I'm making out the words right, of a young woman who identifies as a hippy, but is strongly not interested in some of the free living, free love aspects that people assume someone who looks like her would partake in. 

Again, the crappy pressing takes away much of the charm that might have been...

Download: Bobbie Boyle with Orchestra - I'm Just a Simple Living Girl

Play: