Right off the bat, I want to correct an oversight, something I meant to link to two months ago. Sammy Reed has posted several songs from the ultra-rare JOiFU song-poem label, including Gene Marshall singing a song that I posted in a completely different, Tin Pan Alley recording, nearly sixteen years ago. Have a listen!
And now, for something I ALSO forgot to do when I intended to:
I totally meant to share this one for St. Patrick's day. Perhaps still being in March and only two weeks late will suffice. It's no great shakes, but it does have that St. Patrick's day tie-in, and it's also about someone who was a favorite of song-poets for a while, John F. Kennedy. Now most of the JFK records came out after his death, just as most legit albums about JFK came out after his death. But I don't think this one did.
No, "A Great Day for J.F.K.", as sung by Sammy Marshall under the name Ben Tate, which was always his credited name when he sang on the Ronnie Label, makes no mention of JFK's death, and quite clearly was a lyric full of pride, by the extremely Irish-ly named Marcella Ridenour, about the current president being Irish.
The song itself is another one of these nearly soulless Ronnie performances. Sammy provides a nice, warm vocal, but the backing band could be playing any of at least 50 other Ronnie tracks. I wonder how many of these they did in a day or week.
It's also worth noting that, although there is no copyright date on this 45, dates are known for other Ronnie releases, and 2043 seems to have been the first 1963 release on the label. Then, by Ronnie 2151, it was 1965. The label seems to have released fewer and fewer records per year as the decade continued - and almost certainly fewer than 100 records during 1963. As this is number 2099, I suspect it was made well after the half-point of 1963. If so, or even if it was made in the spring of that year, Ms. Ridenour probably only had a few months - perhaps only a few weeks - to play it for her friends before a certain world famous event caused her to throw it on the pile with Vaughn Meader's "First Family" albums and not think about it for a long, long time.
Download: Ben Tate (Sammy Marshall) - A Great Day for J. F. K.
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The less said about the lethargic flip side, "Thinking of You", the better.
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1 comment:
This appears to be 1964, actually, and not particularly early in the year. I wonder just when the JFK song was submitted. I was happy to learn from Ms. Ridenour that "charm comes from having Irish descendants."
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