I am taking a bit of a road trip down what might be an off-ramp from the song-poem world today (or might not be). Because I can't confirm that today's offering is a song-poem. It probably isn't. But it's connected to that world.
And what's more important to me, in this case, is to further the sharing of the wild, wonderful, odd world of Norridge Mayhams (aka "Norris the Troubadour). I assure you, every time I get a chance to share something previously unknown that Norridge touched, I'm going to share it.
And the Co-Ed label of the 1940's was Norridge Mayhams' label. So, stepping away, possibly, from the song-poem realm into the vanity realm, here's today's offering, which I just took ownership of this week:
"Light Up" is the feature here, and it's a jazzy, big band thing with a instrumental dance run-through leading to a vocal refrain, then back to another instrumental passage, just like a good percentage of the records from this era (ads for this song - albeit with a different flip side - appeared in multiple issues of Billboard in 1944).
The vocal chorus is very likely the band members themselves, and they sing it in unison. It is, as you might imagine, a paean to the joys of smoking. The nature of the benefits of smoking listed here indicate to this listener that the songwriter did not have tobacco in mind.
The performers are The Ministers of Melody, who appeared on at least a few other Co-Ed releases, including one I featured before.
Download: The Ministers of Melody - Light Up
Play:
In fact, that aforementioned previous Co-Ed release I just mentioned, the one which also carried the name of The Ministers of Melody, contained the exact same song and performance (same label number, too) and that which appears on the flip side of this 78. This also happened with "Light Up", which showed up on the flip side of something called "Induction Blues" in a different release, and on the flip side of a version of "From Hopewell Junction", which is the song I shared in that other long ago post I just referred to.
Anyway, although I shared this once before, 14 years ago, here's "Married Man Blues". I think this record of it is actually in slightly better quality than the one I shared in 2009.
Trying to figure out the where's, what's and why's of Norris the Troubadours career and making sense of his label releases is quite a challenge. So what's the Norris connection here? Damned if I know - could be that he just knew whoever was behind this band, and it could be that he knew the composer (Lowe) of both songs, making it, as I posited, a vanity record. Could be none of the above. Just one more piece of the puzzle, which I'm happy to provide today.
Download: The Ministers of Melody - Married Man Blues
Play:
No comments:
Post a Comment