Okay, well I couldn't pass up a chance to buy a Preview single showing this label, even without hearing it:
Well, it turns out that, although I've labeled this the "song poem of the week", because that's what this feature is - this is almost certainly a vanity record. The Preview discography does show there to have been a handful of vanity records - for the most part records sung by the composer of the songs - they also appear to have been extremely rare on the label. I've previously shared this resolutely awful example of a Preview vanity release.
And it does have something of a song-poem pedigree - the song-poem database contains the following quote, which it reports to have been from the fall, 1976 issue of Vellez Music News:
"The banjo and the arrangement gives this record the flavor of the 20's and 30's. It's got a good beat and sound. Banjo lovers will get a kick out of this one."
As Vellez Music News was the house organ of another song-poem label, I think that at least leaves this one well within the song-poem universe, if also residing in a far distant quadrant thereof.
Anyway, while my previous Preview vanity offering was a terrible record, this one, on the other hand, borders on delightful, if completely silly. It's credited to "The Four of Us" and contains two songs performed in 1920's style, albeit the 1920's as they likely would have been heard on "Laugh-In" or some other 1960's or 1970's variety show. The A side (appropriately) is called "My Model 'A'", about a run down 1920's Ford, and it plays up both the charms and the weaknesses of both songs. The tight harmonies are really nice, and the words are cute, but why, oh, why couldn't they have bothered to use a real Dixieland combo instead of the barely competent instrumentalists here, especially the bass player, who hits a few obvious clams.
Download: The Four of Us - My Model "A"
Play:
The flip side, "Banjo Pickin' Blues" has exactly the same strengths and weakness as "Model 'A'", although I would add that, if you're going to write a song with the words "blues" and "banjo" in the title, it might be nice to set it to blues chords and style and get a banjo player who has had more than six lessons.
Still, it's a fascinating little side trip from the label and well worth sharing.
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