BANG! BANG! MR. BADMAN!!

I have a single for you today on which I find both sides highly enjoyable. I bought it because of the ridiculous title on one of the sides, and I think the song lives up to the title, but I found that I enjoyed the flip side just as much. Oddly enough, this record popped up twice on eBay a few weeks ago, from two different sellers. I thought its title would make its price zoom upwards, but mine was the only bid for either of the copies. 

As you can see above, it's called "Bang! Bang! Mr. Badman" and it is sung by the inimitable Sammy Marshall on the impossibly tiny "Cape Cod" label. This may well be the only record released on the label, a label which encourages us to "March and Dance". 

And what of the song? It is, as the title might suggest, a song that tells a story. After I've listened to it a handful of times, however, I'm really not sure what that story is. Perhaps he's living out the life of a child pretending to be a cowboy, but that's only a guess. The music is about as far from cowboy or western music as you're going to get, but that said, it's surely peppy and infectious music, and as he almost always does, Sammy gives it his all. 

Download: Sammy Marshall - Bang! Bang! Mr. Badman

Play:

The flip side has the bland title "Be My Girl", and both musically and lyrically, it reminds me of one of my favorite Sammy Marshall sides, "I'll Do It For You", which I'm just now discovering I have never shared - horrors! - I'll have to rectify that, and soon. 

Anyway, in "I'll Do It For You", Sammy promises to do such things as "Work in the Rain", "Outrun a Train", and most spectacularly, "Buy you the Balloon with a Gold Star In It". Two of those three promises don't seem to me to be the sort of thing that will inspire life long devotion 

"Be My Girl" is much the same, right down to the same beat, and even similar chord structure at times. In this case, Sammy's promises include trying to stay freshly bathed, wearing clean socks (that are fully intact!), trying to wear a tie and working odd jobs, among many other behaviors which would probably be the base expectation from just about any woman out there. I hope this was written to be humorous, and if so, it succeeds, and Sammy and the band make it work by not doing a thing to indicate how ridiculous the material they're performing is. I love it.    

Download: Sammy Marshall - Be My Girl

Play: