Rocket 88??? NO! This is Rocket 99!!

Perhaps you are familiar with the classic R & B record "Rocket 88". If not, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with it now. This is one of the records that often gets called "The First Rock & Roll Single". It was credited to Jackie Brenston, but should have more accurately been credited to Ike Turner and his Band, as that was the name the group was named at, at the time. Today's record is not "Rocket 88", but does seem to be about a product that came out 11 updates later, and went up in the air, not down the street. 

Anyway...

I recently found an eBay auction for a record on Tin Pan Alley, "Florida Rocket (Number Ninety-Nine) by one Charlie Hines. Doing a little research, I found that a previous copy listed on eBay once sold for $200. And I thought "well, no bidding on this one for me". But then, as I often do, I went to see if I already owned a copy, and, wonder of wonders, I DO! 

The biggest surprise to me is not that I own a copy, or that it copies sell for up to $200, but rather, that I didn't put this one aside for use here on the blog the first time I heard it. I say that because it's a really fun record!

The record is from late 1958 or early 1959. It's definitely a silly arrangement, what with the slide whistle effects, and the song is a time capsule, with references to rockets into space, the space race with the Russians. That $200 sale described it as Rockabilly, which is a stretch, to say the least. 

Charlie Hines is not documented - anywhere that I can find - as having recorded anything else for Tin Pan Alley. I wonder why - he's the equal of the other singers they had working for them at the time. Anyway, like I said, this is a fun one, and I'm surprised I never thought to share it before. 

Download: Charlie Hines - Florida Rocket (Number Ninety-Nine)

Play:

If "Florida Rocket" was a little silly, it had nothing on the flip side "Riding In My Little Sport Car", in which the focus is solidly on the car honk effect which recurs far too often, and sounds nothing like what a sports car's horn would have sounded like. Everyone involved plays as if they were well aware they were performing a ridiculous - and not very good - novelty arrangement. And I find that sort of odd, as the lyrics didn't have to be used in such a fashion - a straight ahead rocker would have worked with these lyrics just fine. 

Although.... does anyone else think it's weird that it's a "sport car" and not a "sports car"? Was the the terminology in the late 1950's? 

Download: Charlie Hines - Riding In My Little Sport Car

Play:

Come See the Man! After All, Vicki Sees Him!

 Any time I acquire a song-poem record on a small or tiny label, if at least one of the songs is at all worth sharing, for any reason, I like to do so, in order to give a more full picture of the song-poem world. So it is that today, I have another record on the Vellez label of Lomita, California, where "The Songs They Play Are On Vellez"

I've offered up at least one simply marvelous record on Vellez in the past, which is heard here, and two other records, one of which was fairly interesting but bad, and the other which was comically bad. All of the Vellez tracks will pop up, in backwards order, starting with this post, if you click here. 

The "Comically Bad" previous posting featured a woman named Vicki Farrell, and what I said there, applies here, too: Here's what I wrote: 

Vicki Farrell doesn't sound like she was ready to be within two miles of a recording studio. 

It's more than a bit of a mystery as to why they utilized her, too. As you'll hear, Vellez seems to have had plenty of money to spend on musicians, and people to arrange their music. Money that other song-poem labels would have LOVED to have had, but didn't. Both sides of this record sound well made. Except for the little manner of the singer. It's not good music, but it's rendered absolutely professionally, with real strings and competent backing vocalists. 

Both songs are Christian oriented. I assume so, anyway. "Won't You Come and See the Man" never mentions Jesus, so I guess she could be singing about, oh, I don't know, Fernando Lamas or Andy Devine, but I doubt it. But she is just awful. The fact that this side seems to have been pressed slightly off center just adds to the incompetence of her vocal. 

Download: Vicki Farrell - Won't You Come and See the Man

Play:   

Incidentally, while preparing this post, I discovered that, almost nine years ago, I featured a record on the even tinier "Hit Records International" label featuring a singer just named "Vicki", of whom I was equally dismissive, saying, at the time: 

"I'm reminded of the beautiful but tone-deaf singer who Keith Partridge went crazy over in an episode of The Partridge Family - as long as he was looking at her, he couldn't hear her awful singing"

It's clear to me now: That "Vicki" and "Vicki Farrell" are one and the same. See if you agree. 

Anyway, the flip side is "I See Him", another religious ballad, this one more about God's presence all around us. Again, we have a backing which is thoroughly professional - this could be the backing to a Doris Day or Tony Martin record. Not that that's a good thing, but it is rare for the backing track on a song-poem to be this 1952 Big-Hit-On-Decca-Esque. Vicki Farrell nearly holds her own here, much more so than on the other records I've featured her on. But she's still not good. 

I think that the folks who make Hi-C could have used a bit of this song's chorus, where Vicki and guys momentarily seem to be singing about their product. 

Download: Vicki Farrell - I See Him

Play: 

Incidentally, this record was received by Billboard Magazine upon its release in 1961. That was during a period in which Billboard essentially mentioned every record they received. As you can see from this page, they felt this record had "Limited Sales Potential".