Norman's Lullaby

As we bid goodbye to January, 2022, it's time for one more post this month. 

But first, in my ongoing quest to return this blog to its natural state, I have updated two more posts, and in doing so, completed nearly everything going back to the start 2006, meaning everything but the 2005 posts, and two complicated later posts have now been repaired. 

This required the fixing of two posts. First up, and rather redundantly at this point, was my first posting of a pair of tracks by Merigail Moreland, which later were a centerpiece of a longer post I did at WFMU. But for the same of completion, I thought I'd update that post. Plus, they are two of my favorite recordings ever. 

The other post I "fixed" is, happily, a post featuring at least one, and possibly two, song-poems. It was the second time I had done that on this blog, well before I turned most of it over to song-poems. In that post, I featured a ridiculous Phil Celia track, and an oddball number (possibly more of a vanity record than a song-poem) by Barney Spencer. I also featured a track by The Eligibles on Fable, a track which I'm sure was either a vanity release or an attempt at hit making, and not a song-poem. 

Speaking of Merigail Moreland, I did, a few years ago, manage to find one more single that she released, in the early 1960's .If anyone reading this blog has an interest in hearing that single, I'll be glad to share it. It seems to be even more impossibly rare than the one I shared in the post linked, above. 

And now: 

Today's feature is perhaps a minor pleasure, but I deeply enjoy Norm Burns, and I haven't featured him in over six months. 

Here's Norm, or as he was billed here (and as he was for only a brief time, early in his tenure at Sterling), Norman Burns, with "A Mother's Lullaby". The Sterling Band provides their sterling sound, and Norman croons a sweet lyric about a mother singing her baby to sleep. There is a nostalgic, old timey feel to the whole production which I find appealing. 

Download: Norman Burns - A Mother's Lullaby

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For the flip side, here's what I'm guessing: someone looked at the title, 'Just Give Me a Home in the Mountains", and was reminded of the song "Home on the Range", and decided that the tune of this song would bear more than a slight resemblance to that great American folk song. Seriously, see if you can listen to this track and not be put in the mind of "Home on the Range". 

Norm gives it the old college try, but there's not much here to work with. 

Download: Norman Burns - Just Give Me a Home in the Mountains

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And now, another "Cut-Up". In case you didn't see my last post, here's part of what I wrote: 

Recently, I linked back to a very old post in which I'd shared two of my "cut-ups", tracks made in which I played around with the sounds and lyrics of favorite songs, replacing lyrics with words or lyrics from other recordings, or simply messing around with the sounds of a track. 95% of more of those "cut-ups" that I have, I made as a young adult, while in college and/or single, and with a LOT of time on my hands, doing all of the edits on a cassette recorder which had a very effective pause button. 

I have been requested to share more of these, and will do so, at least until I gauge whether there is continued interest, or, perhaps, people ask me to stop. 

I will continue with the Beatles theme I started with last time. However, this one is totally different, and more in keeping with my typical practice, which was to replace lyrics of one song with sung or spoken words from another recording, sometimes a song, sometimes someone speaking. 

Before sharing this "cut-up", I will offer a few warnings. 

1.) This is extremely not safe for work - there are multiple four letter words contained herein. 

2.) A few of the jokes created by my cutting things up are fairly crude in nature, and if you find such things unpleasant, you may want to skip listening to it. 

Last week, I featured a song from the Beatles first album. Now, I jump to near the end of their career, for a dismantling of "Yer Blues", from The White Album. 

Download: The Beatles - Yer Blues (cut-up)

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A Little Golden Record About Hippies

 Greetings!

I hope it's warmer where you are than where I am. But not over 75 degrees. I don't like that, either...

I will get to today's feature in a moment, and will also, by request, start sharing more of my "Cut-Up" tapes, but first: 

I discovered a couple of days ago that I skipped over "fixing" two posts from 2007, and so I have corrected those, as well as one post from 2006. There are now barely 20 more posts that need to be overhauled. And from here on out, almost all the posts I'll be repairing actually never had files in them before. That's because, for the first 18 months or so, I was uploading tracks to an e-mail account and giving out the password so that anyone could get in and download them. In fixing all of those early posts, I will be doing the same as I've been doing all along in repairing of posts, and putting in a play feature and a download feature.  

For today, I have correctly those two posts from October of 2007, one featuring a Rudy Vallee 78 that I just love, and the other featuring a musical mystery which I wrote about much more extensively at WFMU about a year later. I have yet to get an answer to any of the mysteries contain in the post here or at WFMU, so if you have an answer, by all means, let me know!

Going back even earlier, I also updated my final post from June of 2006, which featured a novelty record about beer, which was fairly obscure at the time, but has had multiple postings to YouTube in the years since, often incorrectly credited to Thurl Ravenscroft. 

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Today's feature is a very late period Film City release, on some truly gorgeous translucent gold vinyl.

The performer - Jimmy Allen - is not credited elsewhere on the label, or anywhere else in the song-poem database, and both songs are credited to a team of three writers. Both of these facts might serve to indicate that this a vanity release, but I don't think so. A "Jimmie Allen" shows up on a Rodd Keith production on the Kondas label, and one of the writers - Frank Parkins - seems likely to be the same person as a Francis Parkins who had a song produced for him on the Vellez label. So I think it's a song-poem while accepting that it might be more of a vanity release, something Film City did with some regularity, simply providing Chamberlin backing for the composer/performer's song and performance. 

Anyway, whatever its history, these songs are worth hearing, particular "Hip, Hip, Hippy". This is the rare song-poem which talks about the Hippies, and has nothing but good to say about them, and in fact dismisses the thoughts of those who look down on them. Now, I've listened to this track four times today, and the only positive attribute being described is that hippies aren't tied down, and like to go where the road takes them. That doesn't strike me as good or bad thing in and of itself. However, there's no missing the feelings behind: 

"The hip, hip hippy's not so dip, dip, dippy as the whole world thinks he is"

The clumsy edit at the 1:02 mark is a wonder of incompetence, by the way. 

If you have a thought about this records provenance, leave a comment!

Download: Jimmy Allen with "New Sounds From Hollywood" - Hip, Hip, Hippy

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The flip side, "Trina Bird", is no slouch, either. Sounding extremely similar to the track behind, "Hip, Hip, Hippy", this song is a tribute to an apparently quite winsome teenage girl of the protagonist's acquaintance. And apparently Trina likes the singer just as much. 

Download: Jimmy Allen with "New Sounds From Hollywood" - Trina Bird

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Oh, and I meant to point out - and before I could even come back in here and type it up, Sammy Reed beat me to it (see the comments!) - both of these tracks have the odd feature, which I've commented on with a few other records, of featuring a fade out, but ending with a final chord before the fade out finishes. Very strange. 

~~~

And now....

Recently, I linked back to a very old post in which I'd shared two of my "cut-ups", tracks made in which I played around with the sounds and lyrics of favorite songs, replacing lyrics with words or lyrics from other recordings, or simply messing around with the sounds of a track. 95% of more of those "cut-ups" that I have, I made as a young adult, while in college and/or single, and with a LOT of time on my hands, doing all of the edits on a cassette recorder which had a very effective pause button. 

My "cut-up" work slowed to a crawl in 1985, when I met my then-future wife, and started working full time, and had stopped altogether by 1988, when we got married. Ah, to have that sort of free time again. I've made perhaps two dozen such playful tracks in the years since, mostly using computer software.

Anyway, I heard from someone named Douglas who wanted to hear more. Actually, if I understood correctly, it sounded like one of those shares from the earlier post was going to get played on the radio! Thank you very much!

In response, I will share some more. Today, one of the few that does not actually feature the sounds of a lot of different tracks, but mostly (except for the last two seconds), just a rearranging of the sounds of one track, in this case, "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles. 

I consider this a hell of a lot of fun, especially starting at the 0:30 second point.

Download: The Beatles - Twist and Shout (cut-up)

Play:

Soldier Boy....Oh My Little Soldier Boy

 Howdy, 

This week's offering is a few clicks down the page. But first...

Before getting to post update news or this week's offering, I want to catch up on some things that readers have shared, in response to previous posts. I know not everyone looks at comments, and more often than not, I don't answer the comments in the comments, as I never know if the original poster will be looking for a response. But several people have said or shared things recently that I thought worth bringing to everyone's attention, and I'm going to get to some of them now, and more in the future. 

First, thanks to everyone who writes in and comments. If you use your actual e-mail address, and there's a response I want to make, I will write to you. However, I understand why most folks do not choose to post using their actual e-mail addresses. 

More than 11 years ago, I posted a great Suzie and Rodd duet, titled "I'm the Wife". Well, a correspondent named Michael recently pointed out that the composer of the flip side, "Country Boy", got his name in the local Kingston, N.Y. paper, in 1967, by stating that Preview Records had recorded his song, no doubt presenting this as a great accomplishment, rather than something he'd paid them to do. The newspaper article can be found in the lower right quadrant of this page. Michael further found an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, from 1965, on a similar theme, this time regarding a song-poet named Helen Zorkowski, who had several songs recorded by preview over the years. That article is here. 

Thanks, Michael, and thanks for the nice words about my work here!

Then there was a comment from frequent contributor, and host of his own wonderful blog, Sammy Reed. On the post where I featured a song-poet who claimed to have written "The Lord's Prayer", he linked to a post he'd made in which another song-poet claimed to have created the words to the gospel song "Oh, Happy Day", and that post can be found here. Thanks for all your help and comments over the years, Sammy!

In response to my obituary-with-soundfiles for Pete Seeger (which is one of the few post 2008 posts which I haven't fixed yet), Martin has shared with me that he posted a rare audio of a Pete Seeger concert from East Berlin in 1967. It can be found here - you can download it from near the end of the German part of the post. Thanks very much Martin. I look forward to enjoying this. 

And finally, just this week I heard from the daughter of the singer who went by the name Rod Barton. He is the only person from the song poem world that I've actually spoken to, and he and I had three phone conversations many years ago - unfortunately, he has died at some point in the years since those conversations. Her comment can be found on this post. 

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In addition to all that, I have, as usual, corrected even more of the early posts to this site. I've worked my way back to 2006, the year with the fewest posts in the history of this blog (just nine). At that time, I was sharing things that tickled my fancy, whenever I got around to it. 

Specifically, today, I've repaired five posts made in July of 2006. Four of them were made on the same day, July 1st. These offerings were all over the map, and included a terrifically awful vanity 45 from a folky type singer, an equally wonderful (and also possibly vanity) 45 from a 13 year old girl, a failed hit 45 that I just love by Joan Armatrading, and a B-side to a late '50's hit record which I've always loved, and which features Thurl Ravenscroft. I ended that month with a post featuring two songs from Jimmie Driftwood, one of my favorite performers ever - the second track there remains one of my all time top 50 tracks. Some of this material later got posted to WFMU's blog, but I thought I'd "fix" the postings on this site, anyway. 

~~

And finally, today's offering. 

Today, it's back to the early days of the Preview label, a period which I know to be a particular favorite for many song-poem fans. 

And this is a nice one, sung by Suzie Smith, with "The Raindrops" credited as the backing singers, and a track which sounds very much to my ears as something Rodd Keith probably put together. It's called "Good-Bye My Soldier Good-Bye My Love" (to phrase it exactly as it is on the label). Vietnam is never mentioned here, but this could probably be considered a Vietnam related song-poem, based on the lyrics. 

Suzie sings over a martial beat for the verses, which then swings into double time - and some nice harmony vocals - for the choruses. The lyrics are pretty much boilerplate "my soldier love has left for the war" stuff, but the arrangement and vocal make them fairly effective. 

Download: Suzie and the Raindrops - Good-Bye My Soldier Good-Bye My Love

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Suzie Smith appears on the flip side without The Raindrops, on a song called "The Key to My Heart". This lyric is tied to the backing track that Rodd Keith used perhaps more than any other in his Preview days, most notoriously when Preview actually used the exact same track on both sides of the same 45. 

I don't think Suzie or anyone else behind this particular side do anything special with the material, and this is one of those tracks that seems to me to go on for about five minutes (really barely more than three). Maybe you'll like it more...

Download: Suzie Smith - The Key to My Heart

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