God Is My Co-Writer

 Howdy, 

And a hearty Happy Veterans Day and Thank You to all of my readers who have served this - or any - country. 

Although I have now updated ALL of the "Song Poem of the Week" posts, there are still about 50 posts from prior to that project's genesis, which I will be updating, rather haphazardly. I also suspect I will be deleting a few non-musical posts, those which served a minor purpose at the time, but are fairly pointless today. 

It also strikes me that, with the subsequent growth of YouTube, many of my early posts may feature records which were then truly obscure, but which now are readily available. I'm going to keep the posts up, anyway, and repopulate the tracks. 

So today, I have uploaded a handful of posts from 2008. These include a feature on one of my all time favorite singles, the criminally obscure "Jingle Down a Hill", by Gaitley and Fitzgerald. I also rewrote a post about the first track I heard from the indescribably lovely group known as The Sacred Heart Singers (I later posted an entire album by this group to WFMU). 

There's a post featuring both sides of a Calypso 45 (about Elvis) that I was enjoying at the time, and a track from the radio show "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again" featuring the unlikely sound of John Cleese singing. Finally, at one point that year, I shared a song which made the lower reaches of the Billboard Top 100 in 1957, one which has haunted, amused and fascinated me ever since, The Silva-Tones rendition of "That's All I Want From You". 

Except for the calypso and Cleese recordings, it's a collection of some of my all time favorite records. 

And now, back to the countdown: 

~~

Last time, I posted a couple of tracks by Teacho Wiltshire, and a few days later, I got a great comment from frequent correspondent Sammy Reed, who commented that "Our Teacho, He Died in 1969". 

This was, in case you're unaware, a play on a very well known song-poem, "My Daddy He Died in 1969", which was available in trading circles for years before making its debut on one of the online song-poem albums. 

This in turn reminded me that I'd promised another frequent correspondent, Tyler, that I'd find my copy of that same 45, because it features perhaps that most outrageous act of plagiarism I've ever seen on a song-poem release. It wasn't in with all of the 45's I'd alphabatized some time ago, so I had to go looking. And I found it! We'll get to the lyrical rip-off after the first two songs. 

The first track is the aforementioned "My Daddy He Died in 1969". I have always found this to be a deeply ridiculous lyric, over-the-top by several steps, but many others have found it touching and even profound (the latter for at least one person I've spoken to about it).  For those who haven't heard it, I'll share it here, as it sounds on my copy: 

Download: Halmark Productions - My Daddy He Died in 1969

Play:

Incidentally, my pal Stu, some years ago, took it upon himself to see if he could find  out when the man whose daddy died in 1969, had, himself, died. And he found out. That page led him to find "his daddy", which he shared with me, too. 

Next up is "Tears of Yesterday", which is tedium defined, nearly four minutes of yammering on over a track that is wholly without beat or feeling. And it's just keeping us from getting to the good stuff, anyway,

Download: Halmark Productions - Tears of Yesterday

Play:

~~

Okay, here goes. 

My comments are not about whether you, the reader are - or I am - a believer in any subset of Christianity. But I think we could all agree that someone who wanted to hear The Lord's Prayer set to music would almost beyond a shadow of a doubt be a Christian. 

And, being a Christian, that person would presumably know that The Lord's Prayer is perhaps among the two or three most famous utterances ascribed directly to the voice of Jesus, and that it has been credited to Him, in writing, for roughly 2000 years. And being a Christian, that person would almost undoubtedly consider Jesus to be God. 

So, in sending in Jesus' words to Halmark, and taking credit for them himself, what in the Lord's name was the good Dr. Patton thinking? What would many, if not most Christian faiths consider the act of claiming to have written The Lord's Prayer? I'm sure there are several answers to that question, but none of them are good. 

And yes, I know that there have been musical settings of "The Lord's Prayer" before. And I looked some of them up. They always say "Adapted by", or "Setting By" - in other words, the listed writer took credit for the music. And that could have been the case here, if this production was by any other label than Halmark. 

Because while some other labels did release vanity performances, and also had their performers record entire songs with music and lyrics by the unknown writer, Halmark always attached their vocal performances to one of about 14-18 backing tracks. And the possibility that Dr. Patton wrote music and melody for The Lord's Prayer and that it matched Halmark's pre-existing backing track is approximately 0%. 

As I said, I've encountered plagiarism on song-poem 45s several times, and featured it here when I've found it, but this is at another level altogether - submitting as your own work something you believe to be the word of God. 

As a side comment, please note that they used the exact same backing track for two songs on this EP. That strikes me as contempt for the customer. But then again, contempt for the customer would have been a good slogan for the Halmark people. 

Download: Halmark Productions - Our Father Which Art in Heaven

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The record ends with a rather esoteric lyric, titled "Mary Ann". The coy, indirect nature of the lyric here leads me to believe it was meant as a song about a shy courtship, although I may be reading too much into it. If it's not that, I have no idea what the lyricist was on about. 

But if I am right, then Halmark made a tactical error in assigning it to a female singer, in that a same-sex relationship was not likely what the lyricist was after, given that it was the mid 1970's, and that that song-poet had engaged with Halmark, perhaps the most conservative leaning of all song-poem outfits. 

If you have a different or better suggestion as to what's going on here, I'd love to hear about it. 

Download: Halmark Productions - Mary Ann

Play: