Hello!
I'd wish you a Happy New Year, but that concept doesn't seem possible already, just 14 days in.
I took a bit of a break to start the year, and to make up for it, I have an EP. a HALMARK EP. It looks like I've only featured Halmark once in the past 18 months, and that was almost a year ago.
But first, I have a long delayed answer regarding a question I received almost four months ago, with regarding to this posting of a Rodd Keith record. And rather surprisingly, as I was getting ready to share the answer in this post, about five days ago, I received another query, asking roughly the same thing, in response to this posting of a different Rodd Keith record.
The question in general is: Did Rodd Keith play saxophone on any of his records. And more specifically I was asked if I knew if that was Rodd on that first link up there, since someone on a 45 database claimed it was him.
And now I have a general answer, and a specific answer regarding the song "You Never Lose What You Never Had", from that post. I am indebted to song-poem guru Phil Milstein, and equally indebted to Rodd's son Ellery Eskelin for the answer. Phil reached out to Ellery and then sent me his response, which I will quote now:
Yes, Rodd did play many instruments including saxophone. I’m pretty sure that Nita mentioned that he played saxophone as well as guitar and perhaps trumpet on sessions. I have a recording of Rodd playing the saxophone when he was in college. The recording shows that he could play it well, meaning in tune and nice sound with a natural musicality to his phrasing.
As for Preview records, many of those actually sound like pro session musicians to my ears. I can think of some in which the saxophone player sounded like a session guy but there are certainly some that Rodd might have done. I’m willing to venture that it is in fact him playing on “You Never Lose What You Never Had”. I say that knowing that in most cases Rodd hired professional LA studio musicians, meaning that not every saxophonist you hear on his records is him.
Thanks, Phil and Ellery!
AND NOW!:
Ah, Halmark.... The big focus here is on the first song of the EP, something called "The Sketch". Label stalwart Jack Kim sings "The Sketch", and what comes out of his mouth is, as far as I can tell, is a mish-mash of nearly random words tied together just enough to make it clear that it's about an artist of some sort. I would love it if someone else would take a stab at figuring out these words. I just spent about ten minutes on the first half of the song, and here's what I came up with:
"Amid the shavings, tools and winch, a burden task obscured to win that fight for accomplishment as his specialty of skeptic tour. Oh, wait, sigh, the way it goes. Our shrub or skeptic snarls. The ruined old be must sash door, my lore, the way of toils. The thought afflicts for reason sits....."
And then I gave up - I could not make out the next phrase at all. I'm sure I have some of those words wrong, but I'm also sure I have most of them correct. Anyway, I think this bunch of gobbledygook is worth the two week wait, and I hope you do, too.
Download: Halmark Productions - The Sketch
Play:
Next up on side one is "I Love You Only", with Jack Kim sounding, to my ears, remarkably like Dick Kent. This is a largely boilerplate "You are everything to me" lyric, although it's fun to hear what the writer finds to be "classy" about his gal. The writer apparently didn't write nearly enough words to fit over the moldy old, and endlessly reused, backing track, so we get some "do-do-do's" and a recap of earlier lyrics in the second half of the track.
Download: Halmark Productions - I Love You Only
Play:
~~
Side two starts with "A Hero Unsung", sung by Jack Kim's wife Mary, and which a grieving daughter clearly wrote about her coal miner father, and how he died from Black Lung Disease, apparently not living quite long enough to benefit fully from a crusading labor agitator, if I'm understanding the lyrics correctly. I guess that makes him her hero, because otherwise I'm not getting what was heroic about him. If everyone who works hard for their families at an awful job are heroes, the word loses pretty much all its meaning.
Download: Halmark Productions - A Hero Unsung
Play:
Finally.... well.... sometimes it feels like it wouldn't be Halmark without some sort of Christian content, and this EP is no exception. Here's Jack Kim again, singing "I Know My Savior Cares for Me". The lyrics are cookie-cutter simple, exactly what one would expect from the title.
Download: Halmark Productions - I Know My Savior Cares for Me
Play:
