Oh, Good, ANOTHER Song Supporting Lt. William Calley

 First up, I have a few links to share, courtesy of two frequent correspondents. 

First, some of you may remember this posting of an ultra weird song called "My Doll Jane" from 2015. Well, ace collector and blogger Sammy Reed has discovered a remake of the song on the flipside in that posting. When I posted "Helen Goodnight", I commented that Gene Marshall makes a major melodic flub right at the point of the key change. 

Well, whether due to that flub, or some other reason, song-poet Helen Clak (too bad it wasn't "Helen Back") commissioned a remake of her song several years later, near the end of Preview's existence. Whether this was because of Gene's flub or some other reason, I certainly don't know - it's the same song, though, same melody and everything. Sammy's posting can be found here. 

And then, from the "I absolutely did not see that coming" file, I have an e-mail by ace song-poem detective Bruce Baryla. You might remember that he came up with the definitive answer to all those questions about Bob Storm some time ago. In this case, Bruce has discovered information about Rosalee Baker, who turned up on a single known Tin Pan Alley release, which I featured here. Well, Bruce has deduced, from a series of online sources, that Rosalee Baker was the first wife of the great guitarist (and early Tin Pan Alley sideman) Mickey Baker, and would have been his ex-wife by the time of her Tin Pan Alley. Among other sources, he has found her obituary here, and also sent me a quote from a 1957 edition of Jet Magazine: 

Rosalee Baker, estranged wife of Mickey Baker of the Mickey and

Sylvia song team, auditioned for a dancer’s role in Lena Horne’s new

Broadway musical, Jamaica."

Fascinating stuff, both of you. The song-poem world is a deeply mysterious and many layered thing, and I love finding out more information from its nooks and crannies. 

And now, let's get back to the countdown:

~~

As I may have written about. here or elsewhere, I spent a huge amount of my free time, in my early 20's, at the Northwestern University Music Library, painstakingly copying down the top 40 charts (and those which came before them, back to 1940), by hand, and at times, studying the rest of individual magazines as I paged through them. My friend Stu began accompanying me for a time, and I believe he was with me, when I saw a high entry on a 1971 chart called "The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley" by C Company featuring Terry Nelson. The song marched into the top 40 at # 37 in its second week, as I recall, stayed there, and then quickly fell off the chart, appearing for a total of four weeks.. 

I'd never heard of Calley, but Stu filled me in on Calley's atrocious, appalling and downright horrific acts in Vietnam and his wholly appropriate conviction. In an issue of Billboard from the month that the song hit, I found a front page article about the controversy surrounding the record. We wondered about the song itself, but being that it was 1982 or so, had no real way to access it without a LOT of searching.

Some years later, my friend Tom and I actually found a copy of the record amongst literally hundreds of records we'd bought, when we purchased a "dime bin" full of 45's from a local used record store for about $50 (we did that about five times - those were the days). Upon hearing the opening narration about how Calley pretended to be a soldier from early childhood, Tom was absolutely certain that it was either satire or that it was going to be an aggressive putdown of the man in question. Having already read about the song, I assured him that, as ham-fisted and misguided as it was, the tribute and support on the record were meant to be sincere. 

You can read more about that record on this page of the Vietnam War Song Project, where there are 115 songs about My Lai and Lt. Calley listed, including today's feature. The hit song I've just mentioned is number 16 on that page's list, and it includes some of the comments from Billboard. My feature today can be found there, at number 36. 

Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean.... Gene Marshall was drafted into service to provide today's offering, "The Ballad of Lt. William Calley", a record which seems to exist mostly to get people to listen to the record that they're presumably already listening to. Gene narrates about 90% of the record, rather than singing, and the song-poet expresses the interesting viewpoint that only God can judge people - no doubt he felt the same way about those protesters in Chicago in 1968 and others whose behavior he disagreed with. No doubt. 

I really wish I could be in Gene Marshall's brain before, during and after the recording of this record. For a man who, by his own admission, let fly a string of obscenities after having to record a pro-Nixon record for Preview, I feel certain that he disagreed with every word he was singing... er, speaking, here. 

Download: Gene Marshall - The Ballad of Lt. William Calley

Play:

For what it's worth, and I'm sure to the horror of those misguided enough to consider him a hero, Calley did eventually publicly apologize for his actions. 

~~

If anything, the flip side, by the same song-poet, is the more entertaining of the two songs, if only because it contains about as many poorly written and difficult to sing couplets as any song I've ever heard. It's called "America is My Country". I'd call it half-assed, but that would be an insult to asses. And what's more, it throws in yet another reference, almost at random, to Lt. Calley. 

I'm particularly fond of this set of lines, which occur back to back:  

"We've got a Lieutenant / he's a man who treats us fair /

Yes, Sir, I'm from Oklahoma / And America's My Country /

Oh, kind folks and teenagers....."

 (note, the accent is on the second syllable of Country)

There's also this: 

"I've joined the army now, boys, and I'm working for THE government."

Download: Gene Marshall - America is My Country

Play:

A Major Find - Cara At 78!

I have a real find for everyone today!

But before I get to that, a frequent correspondent, who I've mentioned before, Tyler, has made a real find of his own. Everyone first click on this link and read about an odd record on Halmark, which I shared nearly a decade ago. It features a song written by Halmark head dude Ted Rosen on one side, and a rendition of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", listed under the wrong title and no writer credit on the flip side. 

The songs were performed by Barry Craig, and I presented it as a real outlier, without any clear understanding of what its backstory might be - although it certainly isn't a song poem record by any definition. 

Well, Tyler has found this article. It is a profile of Barry Craig from MUCH later in his career, and runs down the high points of that career, including the fact that he recorded his first release for Halmark back in 1968 - the very record I posted. My guess is that makes Craig's rendition of Ted Rosen's composition either an attempt by Halmark at an honest-to-goodness hit song (unlikely), or a vanity release for Mr. Craig, who was given the song by its author (more likely). The presence of a hit song on the flip side indicates to me that perhaps there was only one original composition available at that moment. 

There could of course be another explanation, and I'd love to hear what people thing. Thank you SO much, Tyler. 

~~

As readers of my other blog may have read, I have been divesting myself of the vast majority of the 100-150 acetates that I've collected over the years, only keeping those that I really treasure, including my relatively few song-poem acetates. Some sell, some don't. 

I thought I'd listened to, and listed, just about all of them, but over the weekend, I found a small stack of acetates stored quite a ways separate from where all the others had been. And that stack was full of several that I bought ages and ages ago, in a few different purchases, with considerable excitement, due to their apparent content. Somehow, upon receiving them, I put them away and forgot about them, which is really not like me. There must have been something else going on in my life at that moment. This literally may have been ten years ago!

Anyway, the most exciting of them, to me, upon finding them again a few days ago, were two 78 RPM acetates sung by Cara Stewart, on a previously unseen label - "A Lee Hudson Recording". Lee Hudson obviously produced hundreds of song-poems, and often his name is prominent on those records. But these are the first I've seen where the label name contains his name. Even his AS/PMA page doesn't have any indication of records released on an eponymous label.  

What's more, one of the two songs is as winning a performance from Cara Stewart as you're likely to hear. The record looks like this. 

It's "I Just Dropped In to Say 'Hello'", and it is, admittedly, a wisp of a song, making it to 95 seconds only because a piano solo and a repeat of the bridge and chorus are tagged on - without those, the song probably would barely break a minute. But I LOVE this. Was anyone in the song-poem world ever better than Cara is here? 

The credit to a team of writers (Dick Felt and Ross Hollowell, on both sides of the 78) indicated to me that perhaps this was a professional songwriting team, but an internet search has turned up nothing. 

Download: Cara Stewart - I Just Dropped In to Say "Hello"

Play:

These are obviously demos, what with just the piano and vocal, and also obviously acetates, as the  auditory damage apparent on the flip side, "The Biggest Fool in Town" will make clear. 

But this is the far less interesting of the two, to me, so at least the damaged side is the right one. 

Oh, and this record came to me with a lead sheet for "The Biggest Fool in Town" which is reproduced below, as well. 

Download: Cara Stewart - The Biggest Fool in Town

Play:

THE M.S.R. SWINGERS!!!

Hello, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Before getting to today's offering, I want to make sure I send all y'all to Sammy Reed's site for something quite interesting and off kilter. 

Nearly 14 years ago, in this post, I offered up a Tin Pan Alley single with the singularly unwieldly title "What Do You Say Baby Beautiful Joyce". 

What Sammy has found is a 45 on a custom (vanity) label, wherein the same song writer (well, let's assume "Frank Wilson" and "Fu Wilson" are the same person), teamed up with Joi Dibrango (which I'm assuming is someone's name, although it sounds like something a call-girl has on her menu of pleasures) to create the J..D..i..F..U label, and released a Preview-sounding recording of the same song. 

Gene Marshall's rendition (in which he is joined by a catchily named fake backing band) proves that it was probably impossible to set these lyrics to a catchy tune, and the flip side is worth the price of admission. Sammy's post is here, and I encourage all of you to take a quick jog over there when you're done here. 

~~

For my own presentation this week, I thought I'd kill three birds with one stone, or perhaps "destroy three Smashing Pumpkins records with a 200 pound lead needle" would be a better way to phrase it. 

Anyway, I'm not much of a fan of MSR in general, or Dick Kent in particular, so I don't share their work (together or separately) here very much, and I know there are people out there who dig their stuff. So I'm going to share Dick Kent and MSR. The third side aspect that I'm taking care of today is that the record below involves a consortium of artistes who seem to have only been credited on an MSR label once - at least that is documented. To wit: 

Yes, M.S.R. Swingers. 

In actuality, as you'll hear, it's just the usual yokels that played on MSR records, with a vocal by Dick Kent. Which in itself is odd, since he is featured on the flip side, as well. Perhaps the song-poet requested that the song be performed by a group - that's quite possible. But then, why pair it with a record that so obviously has the same singer credited solo on the flip side. Were they assuming that the song-poet was dumb enough not to notice? 

Who am I kidding? Of course they were thinking that. 

Anyway, I fully expected M.S.R. Swingers to, you know, swing. And I was sort of excited to hear it - it's a low number MSR release, from some time before their releases truly began to suck, across the board (your mileage may vary...). But it's a dreamy slow number, even lush in places, with a "closing-time-at-the-supper-club" feel to it that I expect plenty of you will dig. Far more than I do, anyway. But "swing" it most certainly does not. 

It's also over four minutes long, and certainly feels it. 

Anyway, for the second post in a row, it pleases me greatly, Ladies and Gentlemen, to present a previously unheard song-poem artist (or, in this case, group). I give you.... M.S.R. SWINGERS!!!

Download: MSR Swingers - Wish I'd Never Known Your Love

Play: 

~~

As I said, the flip side is clearly the same band and the same singer, in this case, labeled as Dick Kent, and the song is "Song to September", which features what I think might be an early synthesizer bleating out a tinny, high pitched backing throughout, one which hurts my ears and threatens at times to overwhelm the rest of the backing. Blech.  

Download: Dick Kent - Song to September

Play: