The Crafty Styles of Stylecraft Records

Right off the bat, I'm going to acknowledge that I don't know for certain is Stylecraft was actually a song-poem label, or if it was always a song-poem label, or if it was sometimes a vanity label, or.... something else.  The song-poem archives website does not question the designation as a song-poem label, but also doesn't show any links to any other song-poem labels, which is a rarity. Fewer than a dozen records on the label have been documented, as AS/PMA or elsewhere. And the artists heard on Stylecraft records rarely made more than one or two known releases, and with a couple of exceptions, never for any other labels. 

The records I've shared on Stylecraft, here (click on the Stylecraft link, below) and at the recently deceased WFMU blog (no link available, unfortunately) are typically several steps more professional sounding than most song-poems, yet the songs themselves tend to seem fairly amateurish. And for one of today's songs, the composers actually self-published sheet music for the song, two years after this record was made. That fairly well screams out to me vanity release. But I think this record is fairly interesting, the A-side may qualify as a song-poem, and regardless, if this is a vanity release, it's one which seems closer to a song-poem record than a lot of vanity records do. 

The singer on both songs is Bobby Kaye, backed up by Eddie Kaighn leading the orchestra. The more interesting song, by a wide margin, at least to these ears, is "My Huddle-Up, Cuddle-Up, Lovin' Baby". Just that title alone suggests to me amateur songwriting and at the very least a vanity release, if not a full blown song-poem. The fact that two authors are credited might make me lean towards vanity. Regardless, no established and legitimate label was going to try to make a hit out of something with that title. 

The song sounds to me more like a 1940's composition than a record from 1956 - what passed as big band vocalist records in the mid '50's had blanded its way down to irrelevance, with the exception of a few big names. That caveat aside, it's a cute song, and like I said, the arrangement was far more than a song-poet would have gotten out of anything but the earliest days of the Tin Pan Alley label, and a very few other, smaller labels. 

Download: Bobby Kaye, Orchestra Conducted by Eddie Kaighn - My Huddle-Up, Cuddle-Up, Lovin' Baby

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The flip side, "The New Hampshire Waltz", is the one with the self-paid printed sheet music, which you can see here. To my mind, this is clearly someone's idea of an answer song to "The Tennessee Waltz, albeit with a happy story from start to finish. There's really not much to this song - I think one has to be a really good songwriter (or, again, in this case, a songwriting team) to make an interesting song entirely about how happy you were on a single day from your past. These guys are not "really good". 

Download: Bobby Kaye, Orchestra Conducted by Eddie Kaighn - The New Hampshire Waltz

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Give the Drummer Some!

 

I don't have a lot to say about today's offering, particularly not the first of the two I'm sharing. The singer is Eleanor Shaw, who we last heard doing the utterly ridiculous "Ohoo Made a Sing Out of Sex". For this song, "Fountain of Hope", I have listened a few times, and I really don't know - or much care - what she's singing about, not only because it's sounds pretty vapid, but more so because as the song goes on the drummer is killing it. The guitarist has some nice moments, too. This is the same basic minimalist lineup that appeared on Tin Pan Alley for over a decade, but they rarely sounded this good. And for song poem drumming, I usually only expect to hear playing like this on 1960's Preview releases. 

Download: Eleanor Shaw: Fountain of Hope

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The flip side is "A Soldier Dies", and I liked this less and less as it went on. First, Eleanor Shaw does not appear to be the right singer for this type of material. But more than that, the gung-ho view of Vietnam soldiers - even at the time of this release (1969 or 1970), but certainly in retrospect - doesn't sit well with me. I daresay at least a good portion of soldiers who found themselves mortally wounded at that point in the war did not consider themselves willingly doing a job "they had to do" or that their deaths allowed others to be free. And when, in the end, the song-poet ties the soldier's death into the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers", that was way too much for me. 

Download: Eleanor Shaw: A Soldier Dies

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Feeling Lower Than a Cold Duck's Instep (I'm Not Hitting the Bottle Anymore)

First up, I definitely want to share this. Two posts ago, I shared two insane songs about dancing and Cupid. And I pointed out that the song-poet had written a third Preview release about Cupid, as well. Well, Sammy Reed has laid his hands on a copy, and posted it (and a few other Gene Marshall tracks, including the entertainingly silly "It's Clock Time", here. It's just was mind-numbing as the two I posted. Thanks for sharing that, Sammy!

And now for a couple of.... well, it is a song-poem records, but I don't actually think there are any "songs" here, so maybe "-poems" would be a better descriptor.

I guess maybe these fit into the category of "Cowboy Poetry", but really, the A-side sounds like the nearly random, Idaho-obsessed observations of a man who is losing his ability to think straight, and the B-side sounds more like an audio letter to a gal-pal than it does like poetry. But these are stellar examples of the more whack-a-doodle edge of song-poetry, and more than worth a share. 

Lance Hill was one of the lesser lights at the Globe song-poem factory, and he does an adequate job here of putting the team of song-poets who wrote these two pieces into action. Up first is "Without the Wind", which consists of nearly random western clichés, with a few odd turns of phrase thrown in. There doesn't seem to be a story here, or even a common thread, aside from "Me Like Idaho". Maybe I'm just not familiar with Cowboy Poetry. Maybe someone out there can tell me if this would get a performer applause or boos. 

Download: Lance Hill - Without the Wind

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As mentioned, "Bit of Idaho Haven" strikes me as an audio letter to Suzie Bell, who has left Muskogee, OK to come to see her former (and future?) sweetheart who has moved to Idaho. He extols the many virtues of his new home state, making sure Suzie (now named Ida Bell, after her own new home state) pays attention. More than anything, he wants her to know that he's not hitting the bottle anymore. 

What a weird record. 

Download: Lance Hill - Bit of Idaho Haven

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