Greetings, dear readers,
Well, today is the day. Today, I have reached back and corrected the first handful of posts that I wrote on this site, way back in June and July of 2005. So now, with the exception of two very labor intensive posts (which I will repair later), every record described in this site's history is paired with a download link and a playable link to that record. Yay!
To reach that conclusion, I had four posts from the summer of 2005 to refurbish. And as I said with the last batch of corrections, as it turns out, I later shared all of this material at WFMU, but I wanted the posts on this site to be able to stand alone. And so, we have the following:
1.) The introductory post I wrote on June 24th, 2005, a few days after my 45th birthday, which is here.
2.) My first musical post, featuring a favorite of mine by Thurl Ravenscroft.
3.) A much beloved track by Harley Luse and the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys, complete with an addendum containing further information.
4.) My first mention (here) of Merigail Moreland, in a post featuring the song "Head Cheese".
5.) A song I knew nothing about, from a Russian album I'd bought years earlier. This one also contains an addendum, including photos of the record labels, and a request for anyone to tell me the name of the song, and whatever else the label says. That post is here.
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Today's spotlight is on the Wolf-Tex label, a label which I have never featured before largely because I only have a few releases on the label. And Wolf-Tex fascinates me, as there are things about the label which can only really be said for one other label, and that is Fable.
For in addition to being the sort of label (such as Air and a few others) which did business collecting tracks from multiple song-poem labels and releasing them - a system I already don't really understand - Wolf-Tex also made at least a handful of attempts at releasing potential hit records (without success), records which have gone on to be highly collectable in the rockabilly collector's world. Those are by Harold Montgomery (father of John Michael Montgomery), and have sold for as much as $1000.00.
The combination of a highly collectable subset of records released along side song-poem records is a bit like Fable, but the level of success of those few collectable discs is outside of anything else found in the song-poem world.
Here is what one side of today's Wolf-Tex release looks like:
This record has what appears to be three tracks from the Globe song-poem factory, and one from Film City. Oddly, as you'll see on the flip side (below), both of these companies are credited by name on the other side of the record, while the first song credits "M.G. Guitar" rather than Globe, in Nashville, and the second one here does not credit a company at all, which is odd, only in that the other three songs have credits.
The first song up is my favorite of the four, by far. It certainly sounds like it's from Globe, but admittedly, I do not recognize the singer, credited here as Roy Biggs. And as the song is written by "C. Biggs", maybe this is more of a vanity project, commissioned with Globe, then a true song poem.
Anyway, the song, "Play Boy" has a groovy beat, a swingin' vocal and some chirpy back-up singers, and it's a catchy tune, to boot. It even has a pretty good story song lyric, about a guy who achieves fame but loses love in the process. Good stuff!
Play:
Staying with Globe, we have an artists credited as Gene Brooks, but who is quite clearly Sammy Marshall, here joined, very nicely, but I singing group credited as "Coquettes", which sound to be, at least at times, like three Sammy Marshalls. The song, with the rather clunky title, "That Thing Would I Do", doesn't hold up its end of the bargain, as it's bland, with lyrics reflected in 300 other song-poems. But I do like the harmonies.
Play:
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Now, let's flip the record over and take a trip from Nashville to Film City in Los Angeles.
The Chamberlin playing and vocal on "She Meant So Very Much to Me" cause me considerable confusion. The AS/PMA website reports this record to have been released in 1965, and those dates were usually based on considerable research, or at the very least, a dated ad from a music publication.
Yet this track - credited to "Val Norman" - has a singer who sure sounds to me like Jimmie (or Jimmy) James (the music sounds like other James tracks, too - from the post Rodd Keith period). James is not known to have recorded for the company until the late 1960's at the earliest. On the other hand, "Val Norman" has one credited performance on the Film City label itself, on one of the first dozen or so releases from the label! So I'm confused. Anyone out there have any insight?
Anyway, musically, this is no great shakes, but the lyrics have a twist which caught me off guard, and rendered them sweeter and more endearing than I think they would have, without that unexpected element.
Play:
The EP ends with by far its weakest cut, and for once, we have a singer credited under a name she regularly used on song-poems. It's Damita (who also recorded at times as Joan Auburn and as Kris Arden), and of course, for someone billed under a name she regularly used, in this case, the folks at Wolf-Tex put her name in quotes.
The song, "I See the Lord", sounds more like a demo than a produced song-poem, featuring, as it does, simply a piano accompaniment and vocalist. The lyrics, while no doubt heartfelt, are fairly trite, and there's not enough in the arrangement to make the performance interesting.
Play:
ADDENDUM: Please see the comments for some nice, additional research regarding the credits on this record, done by my pal Stu.
1 comment:
Thanks for posting this! Side A pleases me more than side B. The first cut would be better with a less unctuous vocalist, but it's still a nice tune and a fun record. The harmonies, as you say, are the best part of side B, and they're beautiful!
Two names in the article gave me pause. The first is Gene Brooks. That name struck me because it's the same name as a co-writer on a bunch of songs on Preview. Not a song-poet--a co-writer of a song poet. So maybe 'Gene Brooks' was not an actual person but was code for a group collaboration.
Then again what if 'Gene Brooks' was a service offered to clients? "For an extra 25 dollars, we'll have our professional writer give your lyrics a little bit of polishing for that extra-professional touch." Can't you see a smart company offering that? And perhaps 'Gene Brooks' was...Rodd Keith? A way for Rodd to make a little extra money? Even if it wasn't Rodd--it might have been some kid they paid $1 a lyric--it's still a feature that would make sense to me as another line item in the long lovely sales sheet.
The second name is 'C. Biggs.' When doing some research on Wolf-Tex, because I knew nothing about the label before reading your post, I saw that a "Carrie Biggs" is on the songpoemmusic.com discography for Wolf-Tex as a writer of cat. #102, "If You Forget Me I'll Die," sung by Sammy Marshall.
That doesn't explain who "Roy Biggs" is, though, unless Carrie Biggs hired her son or grandson or nephew or whoever (check the picture of her on the songpoemmusic.com Wolf-Tex page) be the singer. Which sounds reasonable.
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