She Wants Him Back. He's Just Passing Through

 Greetings! 

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season, whatever it is you celebrate or don't celebrate. Here's hoping for a fabulous 2024. 

Whatever happens next year, though, it will happen without one of my favorite people in the world. Tommy Smothers died this week, and I want to just say a word or two here. That's because I think The Smothers Brothers - in addition to what they did for the expanding of boundries in television (and for letting Pete Seeger back on the air) - they were, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest comedy acts of the 20th century. I'm probably forgetting someone or some team, but I'd put them with Monty Python, The Marx Brothers, Shelley Berman, George Carlin and David Letterman and the staff of "Late Night" on that short list. 

And specifically for Tommy, I'd say that I'm not sure anyone ever had better comic timing or a more fully realized comic persona. And he was a hell of a guitar player, too, something that flew under the radar, but of which he was very proud. 

My favorite political site, Electoral-Vote.com has a nice write up about Tommy, saying far more than I want to here, and doing it better than could. 

Here are my two favorite Smothers Brothers tracks, both of which make my personal all-time favorite top 200 tracks ever recorded: Mediocre Fred and Crabs Walk Sideways.

Also, please keep reading after the song-poem post below, as I am debuting my latest recording, a parody song I've been working on, off and on, for the last seven months or so. 

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For the last post of the year, I have a sweet record from the early days of the Globe song-poem factory, featuring the honey-voiced Kris Arden and the ubiquitous Sammy Marshall, both acoompanied by the usual gang, here identified as "The Keys". This record is from early enough in Globe's existence that they hadn't fallen into the bland, interchangable backing sounds that crop up repeatedly on later releases. 

Oddly, the AS/PMA page for this label has the artists reversed, each credited with the wrong side, and that error has made its way onto other discographies, as well. AS/PMA also dates the release to 1962, but this three star non-recommadation ("moderate sales potential") from Billboard says 1961. I was amused to see, a few slots down from that listing, Eddie Holland's "Jamie" - which is a GREAT record and which did chart top 40 pop and top ten R & B - relagated to a very poor two star rating. 

Kris Arden's offering, "Sundown Valley" is particularly nice, a country flavored shuffle in which the singer tries to coax a someone special to come back to her hometown, with a few enticing things about the town that they experience together. Kris' vocal is just lovely, the equal (in the song poem world) of a Cara Stewart performance, and that's high praise from me, indeed.  

Download: Kris Arden and the Keys - Sundown Valley

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It strikes me that Sammy Marshall's turn, on the flip side, could be considered the answer record to "Sundown Valley", and the fact that both of the songs were written by the same song-poet makes that even more possible, although I have no way of knowing for certain. 

Anyway, in "Just Passing Through", Sammy sings of a woman who has fallen in love with him, despite his best efforts to let her know he wasn't going to stick around, which could certainly explain why Kris' man is no longer in "Sundown Valley". 

The music here is a little less compelling - I could certainly do without the sax solo, for one thing - but I am a sucker for that pained tone on certain words and notes, something that Sammy excelled at. 

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Keys - Just Passing Through

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And now for something completely different. About six years ago, something inspired me - something insistent - to write a parody lyric for the song "Up Up and Away" by the Fifth Dimension. This is not even a record that I like - not when it came out when I was seven, and not now - and although I've written and recorded parodies in the past, all but one were of records that I love. Anyway, it wasn't until April of this year that I decided to make a track of my parody. 

Anyone my age or perhaps even 10-15 years younger will likely know the song this is based on, but for those who don't, the original can be found here. 

I decided along the way that I wanted my music track to sound as close to exactly like the original Fifth Dimension track as I could possibly get out of my Midi set-up, and I think I succeeded to the point that the track sounds like a Karaoke track. It is not - I built it from the ground up, instrument by instrument. I worked on it off and on, sometimes on weekends, mostly when I took days off from work. It took me over seven months! 

I am very happy with the final product.... except that I can't settle on which prospective title is better, the one that reflects the original song's title ("Come, Come in and Play") or the one which better reflects the text of the parody ("My Curio Filled Room"). Regardless, I hope you enjoy it, and would love to hear comments, including thoughts on the better title. 

Download: Bob Purse - My Curio Filled Room (AKA Come, Come In and Play)

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Is It Too Late? It's NEVER Too Late

 

The larger song-poem factories must have turned out dozens of records a year. MSR, Film City and Globe, for example, may have released hundreds of records every calendar year. Small labels such as Noval or Star Crest may have released far under one hundred records over the course of their existence. In the middle are companies including Tin Pan Alley and Sterling, who seem to have released about 25-35 records a year, or somewhere around two or three a month. 

I bring all this up because today's release features related titles, and my strong guess is that it was just a coincidence. If Tin Pan Alley was making four to six song-poems a month, there's no way they had much of a backlog of material waiting for release, or enough "in the can" to pair two songs who's titles both ask and answer the same question. 

Ellen Wayne is the singer, and the question in song is "Is It Too Late For Me?" This record is likely from 1960 or 1961, and this song is a slow, weepy ballad, with triplets - both chorded and played individually - on the guitar (that is, when the guitarist doesn't miss the strings). In theory, this sort of thing should appeal to me, but the whole thing is ham-fisted, particularly her overly wobbly, borderline weepy vocal. 

I wonder if the song-poet here, Richards Simmonds, later dropped one letter from his first and last names and became very famous. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Is It Too Late For Me?

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The answer to the question comes from a different song-poet - Louis Gallo (this guy?), on the flip side. And the answer, of course is: "It's NEVER Too Late". And this is an almost infinitely better record than the flip. It's bouncy, swingin' and Ellen's style works much better at this tempo. The guitarist handles the part considerably more effectively and the song doesn't wear out its welcome, lasting less than 90 seconds.   

Download: Ellen Wayne - It's Never Too Late

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A Really Interesting Globe Acetate

Greetings!

I am doing a LOT of rearranging the various types of recorded material I have in my basement - shelving things differently, putting some things in boxes to get them out of the way, etc. And last month, I came across a Globe acetate that - according to my carefully saved eBay email - I bought over 11 years ago (for five dollars!), and then seemingly just put with some other 10 inch records in my basement. I'm not sure I ever even listened to it before last week. 

I'd like to correct that oversight right now, because this is a really interesting record. It is, as mentioned, a 10 inch acetate but, like several others I've owned, it is recorded at 45 RPM and only the internal seven inches are recorded, as if it were a standard 45 that just got cut too big. 

The vocalist is Oscar Franck, who does not turn up on any other song-poem releases that I've been able to find. A man with the same name did work for a time as a songwriter, and is listed with more than 50 renditions recorded of his songs on Discogs. The obituary for that Oscar Franck is here. Is this the same guy? Who knows!?!

The writer of both sides is Earl Green, who perhaps is related to Earl Grey of Tea fame, but who also does not show up in the song-poem database. And that's far too common a name to search for. However, neither of these song titles (combined with his name) bring up anything. 

These are not full band performances of the type that you'd have found on one of the many, many 45's that the Globe song-poem factory churned out for literally dozens of labels. Both sides feature very small combos, and these were almost certainly seen as demos. But they both strike me as pretty darn good, for what they are, albeit with that special "something" that sets them apart as the work of  an amateur songwriter. 

The better of the two, to my ears, is "I'll Walk a Million Miles or More". This strikes me as a solid performance of a genuinely well constructed song. But I'm partial to the pop sounds of the late 1950's, anyway. In his best 1958ish Conway Twitty-esque voice, Oscar Franck emotes some (almost) typical pimple-rock lyrics. Meanwhile, the chords leading up to each individual line of the bridge are pretty interesting. I wonder if Earl Green wrote the whole song, or, as was usually the case, someone put the music together for him, and provided those weird guitar patterns. 

About those words, though - this is what I was referring to earlier. Two odd turns of phrase signal this as the work of an amateur, and both would have been cleaned up by someone if this was meant for anything beyond a piece of vinyl for the lyricist to take home. The first is "to kiss your lip". Not lips, lip. And the other is the deeply clunky "I'd walk another million miles, just for you and hold your hand". 

Enjoy!  

Download: Oscar Franck - I'll Walk a Million Miles or More

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The flip side is "Don't Cry Little Girl". On this one, Oscar Franck sounds more like he's channeling any of a number of late '50's or early '60's teen idol types. I hear some Bobby Darin, some Gene Pitney, some Del Shannon and at least one other singer whose name is escaping me at the moment. If the other side sounded straight outta 1958, this one sounds like the music of 1962 to me. It even sounds - as did the flip - like something that, with a bit of professional help, might have been a song actually offered for the 1962. But I think the main conceit of the lyric - that not only does the boy not know "the other woman", all she did was ask him what time it was - would probably have needed to be reworked. 

Download: Oscar Franck - Don't Cry Little Girl

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All in all, a very interesting record. Sorry it took me 11 years to get to it!