Cara, Sammy and Marilyn

It's time for another Air EP, featuring a trio of Cara Stewart/Lee Hudson productions and one item from Globe headliner Sammy Marshall. 

It's always nice to hear Cara Stewart, isn't it. Today's items are perhaps nowhere near her greatest moments, and the last two songs sound are essentially two versions of the same track, but they all give the pleasure of Cara's voice, and this first one, "A Carolina Love Song", has a sweet lyric, that great atmospheric Lee Hudson production (has any other bass playing ever sounded exactly like the bass playing on Lee Hudson records?) and a creamy, alluring vocal from our Cara. 

Download: Cara Stewart - A Carolina Love Song

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The only non-Cara entry here is by Sammy Marshall, er, Sonny Marshall, who is heard in a typically anodyne Globe production, singing a lyric bidding a sad farewell to "Marilyn Monroe". The song-poets words would have us believe that Marilyn "conquered fame, love and glory", although it seems to me that's hardly what a review of her life story would lead one to believe. Quite the opposite, actually - I think those things conquered her.  

Download: Sonny Marshall - Marilyn Monroe

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As mentioned, the two remaining songs, both sung by Cara Stewart, seem to be cut from the exact same cloth - both being waltzes, at the exact same tempo, and both were even written by the same song-poet.  Only the keys were changed to protect the innocent. I listened to "Tell Me Now For All Eternity" and "This is the One" at least three times while digitizing them and writing this post, and I'd be hard pressed to make any further comment about either of them. 

Download: Cara Stewart - Tell Me Now For All Eternity

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Download: Cara Stewart - This Is the One

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Mary Jo and Ted "Millionaire" Kennedy

Today's record is called "The Spoiled Millionaire" and it's by the great Gene Marshall. I'm sure that when I got this record, and looked at the title - that is, if I gave it a second thought at all - I thought it was some screed, an indictment (probably fairly vague) of some generalized, very likely fictional "millionaire". 

That is most definitely not the case. This is, instead, a story song about Mary Jo Kopechne and her July, 1969 death in a car driven by Ted Kennedy. I found the lyrics hard to understand at times, given how Gene's vocal is buried in the mix. This is even though the chirpy backup singers repeat some of what he sings, a choice which strikes me as aggressively inappropriate for the story being told. However, the song-poet clearly thinks the other person in the car should have died. 

Beyond that, I'll let the song tell the story. 

Download: Gene Marshall - The Spoiled Millionaire

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The flip side is a tribute to the credited author of the last book of the New Testament, The Revelation to John, and is therefore most logically titled "John the Revelator". I was hoping for something more interesting, because if there's one thing that book is not, it's boring. But this IS boring. There are a couple of references to what is written in the book, but nothing very interesting. Where are the Eyes of Fire? Where are the Four Horsemen? Where is the Defeat of Satan? 

No, most of this is about the writer, not what he wrote. Like I said, boring. 

Download: Gene Marshall - John the Revelator

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