I'm here today to continue the unique saga of Norridge Mayhams, better known (when known at all) as Norris the Troubadour. If you follow
this link, you will find all of my previous Norris postings (including this one) and hopefully some text to explain who he was and my fascination with him.
Norris was only on the fringes of the song-poem world, but I include him here because, although he wrote all the lyrics and music to his songs (including an actual bona fide hit song), once he discovered song-poem companies, he gave up singing his own songs and let the professionals (or near professionals) do it. Despite the fact that at least a half-dozen performers sang his songs from then on (if not far more), the records usually came out baring the artist name "Norris the Troubadour", adding, in later years, "The Seaboard Coastliners", as it does in this offering.
And he never stopped hawking that one hit song he wrote. It was called "We'll Build a Bungalow" and it was a hit in 1950. A protracted legal battle over its copyright followed, and Norris never stopped trying to parlay it into another hit record.
So it was that Norris engaged yet another company to re-record his song in 1978 or so, in a thoroughly disco-fied setting. I don't know which company he contracted with (perhaps others can make a suggestion of this), but he most clearly told them to "Make it Sound like that "Yowsa Yowsa" record that's so big right now ("Dance Dance Dance" by Chic), which the producers did, right down to the old-timey megaphone announcer heard now and then on the track.
To my ears, the result is resolutely awful, amateurish in the extreme and almost comically overlong (all of them common faults of disco records of the time). But I am dedicated to getting as much of Norris' story out there, and as this one does not seem to have been shared on the internet before, I'm presenting it here.
Download: Norris The Troubadour, The Seaboard Coastliners - We'll Build a Bungalow (You Spell It For Two)
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On the flip side is "I've Got Soul Love Burning In My Heart". It's a wisp of a song and of a performance - didn't anyone tell this band that disco records aren't meant to be 123 seconds long? - sung in the falsetto style and instrumental backing favored that decade by the makers of Philly Soul (quite possibly my least favorite genre of popular music ever, or at least in the running). As a result, I can't stand this record. The fact that it's pressed a tiny bit off-center adds an appealing level of wooziness, but still, this side is a no-go for me. At least it's short.
Download: Norris The Troubadour, The Seaboard Coastliners - I've Got Soul Love Burning In My Heart
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