You Get No Love from Gene OR the Squires

This is a sort of fascinating record. While not every Preview release has been documented yet, and that will probably never happen, there is only one Preview release precisely like this one documented at the AS/PMA Preview page, and now here's a second one. 

What this record contains is a standard song-poem vocal rendition of a song, by Gene Marshall in this case (and in the other case, too), and on the flip side, the Preview house band, identified as "The Squires", play an instrumental version of the same song. And it's not just the instrumental track from the Gene Marshall version, it's another, different performance of the song. 

And this is a pretty misbegotten song. It seems that maybe the song-poet's first verse lyrics to "I Don't Love You No More" simply could not be fit into standard three-to-the-bar waltz beat. Or maybe someone was just getting overly creative in a way that really didn't work. Whatever the reason, in the middle of the first verse, there are two four-beat bars, and then near the end of that verse, there is a seven-beat bar (or I suppose it could be one four-beat bar). Even the nearly always perfect Gene seams tripped up by the second one. Oddly, the second time through the verse, the oddly places measures aren't present. 

And that's without even getting to the lyrics, which suggest that the singer has fallen out of love with his former flame because he doesn't like her behavior. Is that a thing? Can one simply turn off love? I don't think I ever experienced that, in any of my relationships. Maybe I'm the odd one. I dunno. 

Download: Gene Marshall - I Don't Love You No More

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The flip side, as mentioned, is an instrumental rendition of the same song. And this suggests that I was right with my second guess - that someone was getting creative with the structure of the song. I say that because the two four-bar measure in the first version are heard here, and there is no lyrical line to make space for here - in other words, the whole thing could have been a waltz in this version, if they'd wanted it to be. The actual performance is pretty much a sleep walk. 

Download: The Squires - I Don't Love You No More

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What the HELL is He Singing About?

When I first decided to share this record, "The Rocking Chair Brand", it was mostly because of Billy Grey's forced, borderline obnoxious fake southern/western cowboy accent. Near the end of that first play, though, my ears perked up. "When did the lyrics move in THAT direction?", I thought. 

I've listened several more times, and I'm just befuddled. I guess he's singing about being a cowboy who's just about ready to die. All the lines about payday and helping his pals confused me, but I think he's promising to send them fortunate outcomes from the great beyond. I guess. He wants to apologize to St. Peter for taking so long to get there - see, he is working on improving his soul. Then he tells us where he'd like to be buried, and if that line isn't from out of left field, nothing is. Oh, but forget that, because now he'd liked to be cremated. If they find a place to park, that is. Oh, and then he throws in the title for the first and only time during the fadeout, for no apparent reason. 

A true masterpiece of oddness.  

Download: Billy Grey - The Rocking Chair Brand

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The flip side is "Shadow Dance". Maybe I'm completely off base here, but as this record dates from the early 1970's, the backing track sounds to me like the band wanted to tap into some of what Marvin Gaye was doing, musically, on the "What's Going On" album (throughout, but especially in those first ten seconds), but clearly were nowhere near  up to the task. 

The dance in question appears to involve nothing more than shaking your hands in front of a fire. The lyrics are truly minimal here: aside from riffing on individual lines from the verse, there are, by my count, only four lines to the entire song. And this gives the band (guitar, bass, drums) a chance to indulge in a solo section of approximately 1/3rd of the length of the record - over 50 seconds, during which the bass player and the guitarist do not seem to be remotely in agreement about what the chord changes are. 

Download: Billy Grey - Shadow Dance

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When the Rooster Crows...

A belated Happy Mother's Day to all Mother's who are reading this post, and all those who have or had a Mother. 

Today I have an Air label EP, on which just one of the four songs is really and truly worthwhile, and for those of you who want to skip the dross, I encourage you to skip to the last song, after which this post is named, for something fairly entertaining. 

Very briefly, the Air label, for whatever reason, seems to have existed to put out singles and EP's containing the works of multiple song-poem factories, often two or three different producers on the same 45. I'd be lying if I said I understood how this worked or why such an arrangement existed. At least occasionally, songs appearing on an Air release also came out on the home label of the production company, too. 

In the case of today's record, all four songs come from the Globe song-poem factory, with three of them being by that singer most often credited as Sammy Marshall, here cunningly hidden behind another false name, Sonny Marshall. 

The one non-Sammy/Sonny tune leads us off, and it's by one of the lesser-used Globe thrushes, Mary Kaye. "Why Can't You Tell Me" has lyrics which feature that artless quality that I've found myself writing about lately. I was particularly taken with the point at which the word "reason" is rhymed with "treason" although the latter word is meaningless, in the context of that line. It also seems to me that Mary Kaye was not the right person to record in a trio with herself - some of the chords that result are fairly painful. 

Download: Mary Kaye - Why Can't You Tell Me

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On to Sonny-land. His first offering here, "Hopeless Love" portrays a painful situation for its protagonist, and Sammy/Sonny has just the right catch in his voice for this material, which he proved again and again and again. It's too bad, because this could have been something moderately okay, what with that voice of his. But the lyrics are pretty cookie-cutter, and have been revisited a million times, and the band offers a level of uninspired support which matches the quality of those unoriginal words. 

Download: Sonny Marshall - Hopeless Love

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Flipping the record over, we have the song "Rose Marie My Love", written by Buddy Gay, who I'm sure had no idea that if he just changed one letter in his name and picked up the blues guitar, he could have been world famous. This is nearly as faceless a track, lyric and vocal performance as I can imagine. I really can't work up anything else to say about it. 

Download: Sonny Marshall - Rose Marie My Love

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Now for some fun! That title - "Where the Rooster Crows" - suggests something entertaining might be coming, and the quote from "The Chicken Reel" at the start of the track confirms it. What a set of fun, ridiculous lyrics! We're told that it's fun to be on a farm in Arkansas, and the examples of the fun are.... a broken toe, falling in a pond, and being blown 10 miles away in an explosion. Oh, and "all you can hear is Bim Bim Bim", whatever the hell that means. Okay, okay, so this record is aggressively stupid. I know. But I'd rather that something like this exist than to not have it exist, and it makes me laugh.  

Download: Sonny Marshall - Where the Rooster Crows

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