A Veritable Master Class in Bass Playing

Well, I only got two posts up this month. I spent the middle of the month enjoying working (from home) while experiencing a COVID infection, and didn't really feel like doing anything I didn't have to do. 

I'm going to use this space here to respond to a few comments and also link folks to some comments that have been made. A poster calling him-or herself "Doctor Future" offered a very interesting comment, complete with a couple of links, regarding my post about a song-poem regarding Lt. William Calley, which you can find here. 

On a completely different subject, Sammy Reed took me up on my wish to hear a song called ""HOOPA LOOPA HOOPA LOOPA DOOPA", which you can read about here, and, in the comments therein, provided a link to that song! 

And Rock Smith of Spectropop just wrote TODAY to offer up a photo which features Rodd Keith among several others, at a party in 1974. That picture is at the bottom of an article here. 

Thanks to all of you! 

Also, a fantastically named poster ("Bob") wrote asking if I own a couple of specific Tin Pan Alley singles. Due to the fact that I am not provided the e-mail address for the sender of most of the comments I get, including this one, I will offer up here that, sadly, I do not have those records. If anyone has early TPA releases by Carmen Taylor, please let me know and I'll let that other Bob know in a future post. 

I'd also just like to again thank everyone else who has written in offering thoughts and comments. They are deeply appreciated. 

Okay, let's hear some amazing bass playing!

For a short period - perhaps no more than 15 releases, which might very well have been only one or two recording sessions - Tin Pan Alley used the talents (sic) of a stand-up (double) bass player who seemingly picked up the bass for the first time that week. The records I own or have heard him documented on range from around TPA-390 to around TPA-405. It's almost enough to make me wonder if no professional musician was available that day, so someone from the business end of things stepped in and tried to fill in. 

The most spectacularly awful of these are "Snow Man" (TPA-390) and "The Proon Doon Walk" (TPA-402), the latter of which is among the most amazingly incompetent things I've ever heard. 

Happily, I've now found another record featuring this giant of bass playing originality, and it features Cathy Mills singing a tribute to Johnny Appleseed, who here has been renamed "Apple Seed Johnny". Our hero happily plucks essentially the same two notes, with a tiny bit of variety throughout the 93 seconds of the song. As a bonus, the guitarist screws up the little ending figure, then he and the rhythm guitarist seemingly can't quite agree on how to play the final chords. Delicious!

Download: Cathy Mills - Apple Seed Johnny

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On the flip side, "What Can I Do?", the bass player has expanded his or her attempts, playing a series of three notes - same notes, same pattern of four beats- through out the 111 seconds of this number. The lyrics also take a sort of startling turn - the singer spends the first 2/3rds of the song wailing about how alone she is and wishing her man would return. He seemingly does return, very suddenly, between 1:17 and 1:19 of the song, over the course of which the lyrics go from "I'm so all alone" (before) to "Thank you for coming back" (after). Glad that was solved. 

Download: Cathy Mills - What Can I Do?
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LIVE FROM THE HOLIDAY INN LOUNGE! A REAL PRO!

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at song-poem central, and if I don't get this out today I probably won't for another week. So I'm not going to say much about these sides, in order to get y'all some music. 

Today's offering is another one of those early Cinema releases where the label's credited band, "The Real Pros" was actually one guy with one of them all-in-one home chord-and-rhythm accompaniment organs. And this is from the earliest days of Cinema, when they were also crediting each song-poet as a co-producer of his or her track, for some odd reason. 

As they have in the past, this guy's recordings on today's 45 put me in the mind of a particularly chintzy act, performing (in 1971, of course, when this record was produced) in the corner of a Holiday Inn Lounge, being ignored by roughly 90 of the 12 people present. 

And while I do adore some of the records this guy made (one of them is in my top five favorite song-poems ever), both of these sides leave something to be desired. "Where Has She Gone?" has a bit more energy and slightly less (very slightly) hackneyed lyrics, so we'll spin that one first. Have at it, dude!:

Download: The Real Pros - Where Has She Gone

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I chose the word "hackneyed" up there on purpose, because... well, let's just say that if the dictionary came with sound file links, the word "hackneyed" might come with a clip of "Be the Girl of My Dreams". Our man at the organ has chosen equally dumbed down musical backing for this masterpiece. 

Download: The Real Pros - Be the Girl of My Dreams

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