Letter From the Great Beyond!

It's maudlin hour here at song-poem central. Today we have Norm Burns, singing a first-person narrated letter from Billy in heaven to the family down below. It's called "Billy's Poem". I'm going to guess that there was a real Billy and that this composition meant a great deal to the song-poet named on the label. that being the case, I hate to be critical. And yet.... well, I'll just say that if I had the opportunity to write my family from the great beyond - or imagine what a family member might do, given the same chance - I would like to think I'd be more eloquent and say considerably more than the greeting-card level thoughts offered here. 

This is among the last records that Norm Burns made. It's from 1973, and he died unexpectedly in 1974 after a very short illness, from what I've been told. This is number 641 - the last known Norm release (aside from one several months later, which may have been held back for some reason) is number 666. I'd love to have heard a poem from Norm from the hereafter. 

Download: Norm Burns - Billy's Poem

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The flip side is a snoozer of a track called "Someone to Need Me", and it is one of innumerable song-poems on the subject of being alone / looking for love / looking back sadly. I'd really be more interested to hear what happened to the people with whom the song-poet used to enjoy happy times around the fire. The hard swing into religion in the second half is a bit unexpected for this particular breed of song-poem, but even that doesn't pull me out of the stupor caused by the arrangement and performance.

Download: Norm Burns - Someone to Need Me

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A Mike By Any Other Name Would Sing Just As Poorly

Hello! 

First, I want to acknowledge a comment from a poster on my previous post, a Hal(l)mark release that you can find here. That poster wrote that the record was a Rite pressing from 1964. Now, I know nothing about Rite pressings (or any others), how they are determined, etc. And honestly, I don't want to know how this sort of thing is determined - it's enough for me to be told what someone else figured out. 

The reason I mention this here is that the Halmark (or Hallmark) label has been documented to have begun operations in 1967. If this 1964 date is correct, it is a significant new understanding (well, for me anyway) about this label. I have always guessed that the "Hallmark" version of the label was the first one, and have further guessed that a lawsuit from that other "Hallmark" resulted in the permanent loss of one "L" from the label, so this one is probably among their earlier releases. If that poster (or someone else) can confirm 1964, I'd be much interested. 

And now for a voice frequent visitors will know, but not by this name. 

Before getting to this week's songs, I want to acknowledge that my pal Darryl Bullock got to this record first, and shared one side of it on his "World's Worst Records" blog more than a dozen years ago. However, that post's offerings are now dead links, so I thought I'd make it - both sides of it - available. The post in question, though, is well worth reading, being that it contains the memories of a niece of Tin Pan Alley chief Jack Covais. You can read it here. 

And I was excited to get this record, anyway. Not only is their scrawling on one side of the label, written by the song-poet, but it also promised to offer a taste of a previously unknown (to me) Tin Pan Alley warbler, one Mike Yantorno. 

However, one listen to Mr. Yantorno convinced me - surely this is Mike Thomas under another name. And... I'm guessing that's his real name. Perhaps his full name is Michael Thomas Yantorno. I dunno. But that's certainly the same singer who made dozens of half-assed vocal performances for Tin Pan Alley during the mid to mid/late period. A glance at the label numbers does everything short of confirms this - the two documented "Mike Yantorno" records come in sequence immediately before the first known Mike Thomas record - literally no more than three (known) releases before Mike Thomas shows up. 

So, I hear you clambering to know - are the the songs / performances any good? 

NO!!!!

Of course not. "A Beggar's Life" is an Oompah song without the Oompah tuba or bass, but with some less than stellar attempts to stay on the beat. Lyrically, it features the complaint of a man of the street, featuring the requisite mean policeman, the request for money for a drink, repeated verses and second grade level rhymes. Sing it, Mike!

Download: Mike Yantorno - A Beggar's Life

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Aside from the unknown (now known) singer, it was the title of the flip side of this record that drew me to it. What the hell does "I Tried, John (Joan)" mean? Unfortunately, the lyrics of the actual song don't give us a clue, as they are entirely directed at Joan. My guess is that the song-poet meant for the song to be sung by either a man or woman, with the singer deciding who he or she was singing it for. But it's weird to put it on the label like that, isn't it? 

The actual song and performance - dreary and draggy, with our Mike doing his version of the Bob Dylan imitation that popped up on seemingly every tenth record released in 1966. The last word of the song sort of gets buried in the music, but I think it's "me", and if that's the case, at least the song-poet got creative and included a surprise ending to her song. 

Oh, and on this side of the record, the song poet has written "Permanent Request: Play For Me - Kay B." Well, Kay, here's your long distance dedication. 

Download: Mike Yantorno - I Tried, John (Joan)

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I Can't Live Without Your Imagination

I am distressed at how little I've posted so far this year - an average of less than once every two weeks so far. So I really wanted to get something up here before nine weeks of the year had gone by with only four posts. And what better way to do that than with something I have very little to say about: A Halmark record that doesn't feature the crazy-voiced Bob Storm. 

To be sure, this one is credited to Bob Storm, but it's the other Bob Storm (search my posts for his name if you need an explanation). And aside from the hilarity that crazy-voiced Bob Storm causes for me, I think I'm just about out of things to say about Halmark (or in this case, Hallmark) releases. 

Here we have "I Can't Live Without You", backed by one of the most common of the Halmark backing tracks. Please note, I did not clip the start of the backing track. The record was released that way. I think that marks three posts in a row in which there is something faulty about the recording heard on one side of the record. Aside from the faultiness of the entire endeavor, in this case, I mean. 

Download: Bob Storm - I Can't Live Without You

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And yet another of the classic, most overused backing tracks is featured on the flip side, "Imagination". There is, at least, an interest conceit in the lyrical makeup of this one, although the resulting record is just as stultifying as at least 85% of Halmark, er Hallmark releases. 

Sing it, Other Bob!

Download: Bob Storm - Imagination

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Gabriel Is the Pin Boy

I haven't featured Gene Marshall for a while, so today it's Gene Marshall day. "Thunder Lullabye" consists of a parent trying to calm a child down when the child is frightened by a storm. The parent's explanation here is an old standby (or perhaps "standbye" given the spelling of "Lullabye") fleshed out with some unlikely manual tasks assigned to a few heavenly heavy hitters. 

This record also features a rare flub by the folks behind the scenes at Preview, which you'll no doubt notice as the song comes to an end. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Thunder Lullabye

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I would love to tell you the name of the song on the flip side, and share the label with you, but this particular record came to me with the same label - the one for "Thunder Lullabye" - so I don't know its name. And this record never made it into the song-poem archives database. So feel free to supply whatever name you feel most fits the track. 

The singer is again Gene Marshall, and it's one of the endless series of "you're leaving me" song-poems, as well as yet another one of those records where the chirpy backup singers repeat the last thing the singer said, like a child with echolalia. And a hint to the song-poet (sadly unnamed, due to the lack of label credit): The phrase "Please Repeat This Again" is redundant.  

Download: Gene Marshall - Flip Side of "Thunder Lullabye"

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LIsten to the Eagle Scream!

Howdee, 

I'm going to lead off with a funny comment from Sammy Reed, in response to my last post, in which a song about a steel guitar didn't actually feature a steel guitar. He wrote, regarding two other songs I've posted:

Gene Marshall was also "Hummin' and a-Strummin' on a steel guitar" with no steel guitar. Then there was his "Didgeridoo" song with no didgeridoo.

 

Quite right, indeed. I would add that, so far as I know, one doesn't usually "strum" a steel guitar, at least not in the way I would use the word "strum"....

On to some ridiculous patriotism!

I've probably explained the "Air" label far too many times. Suffice it to say that the label re-released (or provided the only release) for the products of multiple other song-poem labels, and does not appear to have produced any work of its own. I don't understand how or why this worked, but there it is. 

And like plenty of other Air releases I've  heard, both of these sides seem to have been mastered directly from a 45 or acetate provided by the respective song-poem factories, as the sound is relatively poor and, on each side, there is a moment in which the sound dips, considerably, for no apparent reason. I doubt those dips in sound were on the original tapes or on the original discs which contained these songs. Both sides also cut off VERY suddenly, before the last chords have a chance to fade away. 

From the Film City company - complete with requisite Chamberlin, played, perhaps, by Rodd Keith - comes the rarely utilized Joe Staunton, manly vocalist. (Air also released multiple tracks by a Joe Stanton, a much less manly singer and clearly not the same person - also, Joe Stanton's records were clearly not Film City productions. Whether either Joe was related to Film City and Fable Records maestro Sandy Stanton, I just don't know.)

ADDENDUM: My friend Stu suggests that Joe Staunton is Rodd Keith. I can certainly hear that, after the fact, but I don't think it occurred to me because as far as I know, Rodd didn't use any pseudonyms on Film City apart from "Rod Rogers". But then, this was licensed out to Air Records. So yeah, it could well be. Probably is!

 

Joe Staunton gets to sing - double tracked, yet - the song "Stand Proud and Tall On the U.S.A.". And it's exactly the sort of patriotic clap-trap that I'd expect from a title like that. The march arrangement is perfectly suited to the lyric and yet ridiculous at the same time. 

By the way, shouldn't that be "With the U.S.A." or "For the U.S.A." Maybe that's just me. And then there's the line that made me laugh out loud the first time: "This is the land where the eagle screams". I looked it up, and I guess eagles really do scream, and there are even alcoholic drinks and restaurants called "Screaming Eagle", but it still sounded REALLY weird to me. And that ending is classically incompetent. 

Download: Joe Staunton - Stand Proud and Tall On the U.S.A.

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The flip side is from the fabulous Lee Hudson's song-poem factory. And I would have to say that, well over 95% of the time, if I have a record with Cara Stewart on only one side, I'm going to lead with the Cara side. She might just be my favorite song-poem singer. However, the oddness of the U.S.A. song won out here, especially since Cara turns out to be a supporting player on "Wishful Thinking". It's a duet with Jeff Reynolds, but Jeff gets all the solo bits, as it's clearly - in this arrangement anyway - the man's story being told. In fact, it's a little weird that Lee Hudson put Cara on it at all, as she seems to be singing Jeff's story along with him, while he's singing about her. I mean, by the end of the first chorus, wouldn't she know all the things he seems to think she doesn't know? 

Anyway, this song bounces along in a pleasant slow clip-clop, with an absolutely typical Lee Hudson arrangement, and that's just fine with me - I love his sound. 

Download: Cara Stewart and Jeff Reynolds - Wishful Thinking

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"Can Anyone Here Play a Steel Guitar?" "A What? What's a Steel Guitar?"

The band at Tin Pan Alley must have thought they knew exactly what to do when they received the song-poem lyric "Steel Guitar Waltz". We know how to play a waltz!!! However, having heard the output of the TPA gang from the mid 1960's on into the late '70's at least, I am pretty sure that none of the members of this small, extremely limited combo knew anything about steel guitars. You could even convince me without trying to hard that some of them had no idea what a steel guitar was. 

So here we have the "Steel Guitar Waltz" put forth by Mike Thomas with his usual level of aplomb - that is to say, frightfully little of it - backed by a band performance that is noticeably sans steel. That's okay - their oom-pah-pah style would fit better in a German beer hall anyway. "Lederhosen Waltz", anyone? 

This is also one of the many, many song-poem submissions where even someone who has never written a lyric can guess the rhyme that's coming up long before it gets there. In an all to quick mercifully short 122 seconds, it's over. 

Download: Mike Thomas - Steel Guitar Waltz

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If "Steel Guitar Waltz" contained rhymes one could probably sniff out in advance, the flip side, "Country Boy Going Home", contains to obvious a five year old might guess some of them. 

Even so, getting to those rhymes is a really fun ride at a couple of points, wherein the words ending the line are just as expected, but the syntax is odd, at the very least. 

For example, why, exactly, is the word "though" doing in this phrase?: 

And though it's pouring down outside, I'll leave here in the rain. 

I was also a little befuddled by the line "there won't be a town". Nice home you're going back to, country boy. 

And this one - in the same key as its flip (helpfully, I'm sure, for the band) takes two seconds longer than the other side. 

Download: Mike Thomas - Country Boy Going Home

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Starting the Year with Norris

 Happy New Year, everyone, 

It's been almost three weeks since I've posted, and I suspect that there will be only two posts this month. I'm absolutely Captain ADHD, and thrive on keeping ridiculously busy - I'm pretty nuts when I don't have too much to do - but this last month has just swept my legs out from under me, with a couple of brief but intense illnesses, end of the year madness and work demands. I hope and intend to be back to at least three posts a month in February. 

Thanks to everyone who has commented recently. I've received multiple comments on older posts in the last month, from a few readers who seem to be getting caught up on the site. Welcome, and thanks again. 

During the last three weeks, I've had a couple of interesting conversations about the last post - the New Image 45. At the time, I had meant to point out that its label number - 1717 - was the highest I could remember seeing, and the highest by about 250 numbers recorded anywhere. I overlooked the records Sammy Reed has posted in thinking that there have been no such high numbers found until now, but still, it was clear that the label continued for far longer than I had expected, and a range of 250 releases, of which only one or two have been documented, is astounding. More astounding than that was the email I got from Sammy himself, in which he reported: 

Looking at Tin Pan/New Image records on Discogs, I found out that in 1984, they used the QCA pressing plant, so from that year on, you can tell what years they were made, from the first number of the QCA code on the label. This means that "Pride"/"A Girl and a Guy in Love" was pressed in 1984 and "Lady Wildcat"/"Fortune Teller" is from 1986. My record "Still the Same", which mentions Andy Warhol's death among many other things, is in fact from 1987. My latest one, 1711, is from 1992. And the one in your latest post is from 1993! 

So TPA was still in business until at least 1993. That's astonishing to me. They also seem to have stuck with the "New Image" band name for a decade, which is unusual for them too. Thanks for the research, Sammy. I am amazed. 

~~

As I frequently do when I feature a record that came from the mind of Norridge Mayhems, I have to offer the disclaimer that I include him in this site, and label his posts as being "Song Poems of the Week", even though his output, prior to the late 1950's, does not technically qualify as part of the larger world of the song-poem. "Vanity Release" is a more accurate term, and, it should be noted, he had an honest-to-goodness band on an honest-to-goodness record label very early in his career as a songwriter and musician. But he did, extensively, use the song-poem companies for the last 25 years of his life, often having them re-record songs he had released much earlier in his life. And his story, and his records, are fascinating to me, so I include them when I come across them. 

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that today's featured record is not a song-poem. It features Norridge compositions (typically, one side is credited to Mayhams under his real name, and the other is listed as being co-written by his altar-ego, Norris the Troubadour, and Mayhams' wife), and appeared on his own label, in fairly terrible quality - like all records he released on his Co-Ed label, this is definitely a vanity release. And the second of the two songs is one that he continued to promote, sing, pay others to sing, and release, in multiple versions, for much of the rest of his life. If you want to hear more, just click on "Norris the Troubadour" in the labels at the bottom of this post. I find him utterly and endlessly fascinating, and hope you will, too. 

Can I just say, I LOVE the Co-Ed record label. 

Both sides are credited to Jimmie Miller, although Mr. Miller leads two different bands on the two sides. Interestingly, the label numbers do not match, and this first song, " 'A Wedding In May' Or a Funeral in June" (to use his preferred punctuation) was released with at least three B-sides that I've been able to find reference to. This particular one is a documented "upcoming release" in Billboard Magazine in 1949, dating it quite nicely. The A-side features Jimmie Miller All Star Quintet, and features a fairly brief lyric/vocal performance framing lengthy solo sections

Download: Jimmie Miller All Star Quintet - "A Wedding In May" or a Funeral In June

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The flip side features Jimmie Miller and the Charlestonians, and as with the A-side, this record was released at least twice, with a different flip side each time. The song is "The Seaboard, The Southern and the A.C.L.", and as noted, he had this song re-recorded in other versions at least twice in later years. This very brief record is a slow, bluesy number, sung by a female vocalist, a rarity on Norris records. 

And, as you'll hear, someone wasn't paying attention at the start of the recording of the master. I've only ever heard one other 78 that starts like that, and I don't understand enough about the recording of 78s to know exactly what happened. 

Download: Jimmie Miller and the Charlestonians - The Seaboard, The Southern and the A.C.L.

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