This is post # 700. Wow.
Today, let's attend a little BROSH-Ball game. You remember the BROSH label, right? I don't actually understand how this works, but it released the products of a variety of other small and large song-poem outfits, often mixing two to four different outfits on one EP. And what's more, given the address on this record, it seems to have operated out of a non-descript four bedroom house in the middle of nowhere, better known as the furthest reaches of the Chicago suburbs, a town called Carpentersville, IL
Today's game features a match-up between the Globe company stalwart Sammy Marshall, playing against Lee Hudson's favorite chanteuse, Cara Stewart
Sammy Marshall, playing for the Nashville Globes, scores first, with "The Chimes of Heaven", although given the nature and low quality of this song and performance, I imagine his run came in on a cheap error or a wild pitch, 'cause he didn't earn his run honestly with this track. It's as sappy as they come - it's a wedding song, backed by a truly bland and boring band arrangement, and bathed in echo.
Download: Sammy Marshall - The Chimes of Heaven
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Up comes Cara Stewart, the star player of the California Lee Hudsons, and she ties the game, hitting one - a number called "Dance With Me" - right out of the park. The debt owed to Les Paul and Mary Ford has rarely been more clear on a Lee/Cara record than it is on this number. Slinky and sexy, with some great guitar, and yet another killer vocal from Cara, and a lovely overuse of reverb (there is no such thing as too much reverb, in my book). The song is cool, too. And instead of the usual Lee Hudson "downward chord" effect at the end, in this case, the chord moves up a notch for the final bit.
Download: Cara Stewart - Dance With Me
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The Lee Hudsons take the lead for good, with what must have been a workmanlike series of walks and hits, with the second side opener. This one isn't really much better, as a song, than Sammy's number, sort of draggy and some stale "poor little me" lyrics, but Lee and Cara elevate the material, as they so often do, with that same winning combination of slinky guitar, sexy vocal and irresistible reverb.
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Cara scores an insurance run with the final number, "I'm Coming Home to You", perhaps a single and a double, or vice versa. Honestly, much of what I wrote about "Love, What Is It All About" would apply here, and yet.... well, Cara Stewart is one of those proverbial people who could sing the phone book and make it sound great. I'll just let her voice wash over me, and wish that I was the one she was coming home to.
Download: Cara Stewart - I'm Coming Home to You
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1 comment:
That's a fine series of Cara performances right there! I enjoyed them all. The Sammy song not so much--boring song, dull arrangement.
Thanks for posting!!!
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