Two One-Sided Song-Poem Acetates

 In my continuing - if only occasional - effort to put forth a well rounded picture of the song-poem world, today, I am going to feature two one-sided acetates, one from the relatively (within that ssong-poem world) enormous Globe factory and one from the much smaller Promo Records outfit (a company which I admittedly know nothing about). 

We'll start with Globe: 

The Globe company put its material out on a dizzying number of labels, many of the vanity names owned by the song-poets. Others, such as Air, were labels that, for reasons I still don't understand, released material by several different companies, more often than not on the same EP. Still other recordings went to labels such as Roxie and Ronnie, which, as far as I can tell, only released Globe material. The AS/PMA website for Globe lists more than 40 labels associated with the company.  

So far as I know - and I could very well be mistaken - Globe did not release any 45's under their own label, and only produced acetates for customers under their own logo. If the song-poet liked what he or she heard on the acetate, arrangements would presumably be made for the performance of the song to be released on a label. Or perhaps you could pay a smaller fee and only get an acetate two. Or five. I don't honestly know. 

Here is one of those one-sided acetates, which features label stalwart Lance Hill, singing a forgettable piece - which melodically reminds me a bit of "Gentle On My Mind", except that it's awful. And neither John Hartford or Glen Campbell would have tarted up that great song with a yakety sax. 

Download: Lance Hill - I've Got to Find My Way Back Home

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As mentioned, the other one-sided acetate for today is on the Promo Records label. Promo Records did not identify their singers, or in this case, their singer-talker, opting instead for only the author of the lyrics. 

And I must say, the lyrics, or more specifically, the story at the heart of "Sin Doesn't Pay" confounds me. And it confounds me because of that title. Here we have a short song about how sin doesn't pay wrapped around more than two minutes of a story that takes place in 1941, about a man who drank some alcohol and walked from one home to another along or more likely on the railroad tracks and (I think - it's never actually said) got hit by a train and killed. 

My confusion is this... what does that have to do with sin? Is drinking alcohol a sin? Jesus is said to have turned water into wine. Is walking when you're a bit tipsy (instead of driving) a sin? Can't see that at all. Is walking on railroad tracks a sin? Stupid, yes, but a sin? I'm not trying to be dense here - I truly don't get what the narration has to do with the song part of this record. It's as if Ray Stevens sang the chorus of "Everything is Beautiful" at the start and end of that record, and then put a detailed description of a baseball game in the middle of it. 

Beyond that, if I'm right that he got hit by a train, why was he frozen in the lake? And if I'm wrong about him being hit by a train, and instead, he drowned, where, in the story, does it say that. 

I have the feeling that the song-poet here was writing about something that happened to a family member, but even with that heartbreaking aspect of it, I'm going to call this one of the most bewildering, and one of the downright dumbest song-poems I've heard. 

Download: No Artist Named - Sin Doesn't Pay

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Incidentally, to add a completely separate mystery to this record, apart from the confusion around the story told, the un-pressed flip side of this record shows the backwards and faint imprint of a record on the legitimate Jewel label, a record by Lowell Fulsom called "Don't Destroy Me", from 1970.

On this page, there is an image of that record's label. 

And her is the backside of the Promo Records disc: