The Arco label seems to have primarily been yet another one of the fairly tiny labels that housed the productions of the Globe song-poem factory. That's not the only thing they did - they released some really interesting records by a bandleader named Joe Noto and his "thrush" (as Billboard would have called her), Phyliss Ruby. You can hear my favorite of those records here. Those may or may not be song-poems, although the same writer I mention below wrote one of those songs, as did song-poem master Lew Tobin.
But virtually everything else I've heard on Arco seems to come from Globe. Except, I didn't think this one did. It's by a group, identified as "The Reputations", and has the lowest label number of any Arco release yet documented. For a long time, I hesitated to share it here because I wasn't sure it was a song-poem at all.
But I saw a copy listed on eBay and listened to the songs again, and also looked more closely at the label. The lyrics are not great, the sound is remarkably close to the standard Globe bland production and antiseptic groove, and, the kicker, one of the two writers listed, Joe Brulo, paid for song-poems on another of Globe's labels, sung by Globe stalwart Lance Hill, who most definitely was a song-poem singer.
That convinces me that this is a song-poem record. One thing still confuses me, though - the other known Arco records are all documented to be from 1956 to 1962. This one's label number pre-dates all of those, yet it sounds like nothing which would have been made during that period to me. The start of "Runaway Girl", for example, clearly is meant to remind the listener of "Oh Pretty Woman", which was released in 1964. It's all very confusing.
Download: The Reputations - Runaway Girl
Play:
The flip side is "I'm Burning Up the Telephone", which features the classic lines "My baby went away, you see, rather suddenly", and "I even called the twilight zone" (oh, and he wants her back "rather suddenly", too), along with a couple of delightful clams from the bass player.
Download: The Reputations - I'm Burning Up the Telephone
Play:
1 comment:
Hello Bob I blog the label at
https://anorakrockabilly45rpm.blogspot.com/search/label/Arco%20%28PA%29 download still works & these two tracks were missing at the time. Your right I had them as 1955 but they sound a lot latter. The others are in the 4600 series were as this is in the 4500 series I'll remove the 1955 date it must be wrong Dean
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