This month, I was lucky enough to obtain yet another Norm Burns 45, although technically this record is by "Lew Tobin's Orchestra & Singers with Vocal by Norman Burns". Happily, it's from the same early period of Sterling which featured a lot of piano and sax driven, vaguely (or very) twist oriented numbers. "If I Had Believed In You" clearly shares at least some of its inspiration to the same person or people who arranged "Sunshine Twist" and "Darling, Don't Put Your Hand On Me".
Today's song isn't nearly up to the level of "Sunshine Twist", and certainly not to "Darling, Don't..." which is possibly my favorite song-poem of all, but it's a sweet pleasure, bouncing along with its cowbell and the chirpy girls, an unusually intricate vocal arrangement, and Norm(an)'s typical warm and inviting vocal. The lyrics are far more downcast than the music, being that they are a dismissal of and a goodbye to an unworthy lover. I especially enjoy that the backing girls actually sing "forgive me" a couple of times in counterpoint to the lead vocal.
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The flip side, with words by the same song-poet as "Believed in You", is "She Took the Ring From Her Finger". This one is nearly a dirge, and that's a well matched style. This is another song of goodbye, but quite a different type of goodbye. The song doesn't do much for me at all, but the words are heartfelt, and there's more well arranged interplay with the backing vocalists. The microphone popping on a couple of "p's near the end of the song really should have resulted in another take, but that's not the way things were done in song-poem land.
Download: Lew Tobin's Orchestra & Singers, Vocal by Norman Burns - She Took the Ring From Her Finger
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Oddly, both of these songs are listed as being two minutes and twenty seconds on the labels, although neither of them comes close to that length.
1 comment:
Pretty decent songwriting here, and Norm was such a good singer. Side B's a little maudlin, but it's tolerable. Thanks for posting these!
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