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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