A Previously Unknown Rodd Keith 45

Howdy! 

Before I get to today's rarity, here's yet another vintage song-poem ad, courtesy of Vinnie. Like most of the others, this address does not correspond to any address listed on the song-poem database website, nor is there any reference there to the "Songmakers" company: 

It was well over 20 years ago when my song-poem fascination brought me into the world of the Sullivan record label. This odd little company released some records that were song-poems but they also released the works of a rather wonderful man and his wonderful band, known as Curly Coldiron and the Circle C Boys. The label started out during the 78 era, re-released many of its 78s on 45 in the mid 1960's, then released 45s into the 1970's. It's quite possible that the entire enterprise was dedicated to vanity and song-poem releases, with far more of the former than the latter. 

I shared a bunch of Sullivan records when I was posting to the late, lamented WFMU blog, and you can find that post at the Internet Archive using this link. Happily, all of the links still work. Nearly all of the Curly Coldiron tracks are worth hearing, but the real winner, and a deeply weird one it is, is Jimmy Blades' "I'm Not Just Whistling Dixie". which, as far as I can tell, is an example of a 1940's song-poem. Its old-fashioned words are worth the price of admission. 

Anyway, one of the Curly Coldiron tracks that I do not personally own is called "Sun Valley Polka", and you can hear that here. I'll come back to that in a moment. 

What I never noticed until this month, even though it's right there on the AS/PMA Sullivan page, was that Rodd Keith, in his guise as Rod Rogers, also released a record on Sullivan, complete with the Film City Orchestra. 

I had a second look because this month, I came across an auction - which I then won - for a batch of "country 45s", the ad for which had a buried reference to the Film City Orchestra. A perusal of the auction photos showed that the vocalist on one of the records was "Rod Rogers", and that he was singing a version of the aforementioned "Sun Valley Polka". Since the Curly Coldiron record of that song is from around 1952, this clearly had to be another version, probably the one that the AS/PMA website identifies as existing in a 1972 release, but with no other information. 

(My best pal Stu let me know that other information on this label dates this record to 1966. I stand corrected - but on the other hand, given that the 1972 information almost certainly came from an ad in some music periodical, I'm guessing it's still the same record that was advertised there, just six years after release. The 1966 date also corresponds better to the quality of Rodd's efforts on this disc - by 1972, he no longer really sounded like this.)

A search today shows no other references to the existence of this record having a connection to Rod Rogers, no doubt because his name is listed sort of as an afterthought. The record itself is barely mentioned anywhere, and as I just alluded to, AS/PMA has no idea who the artist is, and additionally, the database reports these two songs as having been two different 45s. 

Well, anyway, here is that Rod Rogers release: 

Now, the same author is listed on the 1952 release and this 1972 release of this song, and this is clearly the same song as the 78 linked to above: Even though nearly all of the words have been re-written, the tune is essentially the same. That makes this more of a vanity record than a song-poem - Rodd only sings it and provides a truly winning Chamberlin accompaniment. He did not compose the music here, as opposed to most of his releases. No, the composer and lyricist of this song, a Mr. Frank Halama, paid Film City to have Rod make a record of his song, which he then had released on the Sullivan label. Perhaps he paid Sullivan, or Curly, or both, in 1952, as well. 

I find this record delightful. The Chamberlin track, as I mentioned, is wonderful, with superb uses of the various voicings, particularly the actual "voices" that were among the tapes that the machine used. It's extremely creative. Rodd's vocal is energetic and matches the material most excellently - he eventually sings in harmony with himself. The song itself is about a resort in Idaho, among the first destination ski resorts in the country. Read about it here. It's a fun, bouncy couple of minutes and I'm happy to have discovered it. 

Download: Film City Orchestra, Vocal by Rod Rogers - Sun Valley Polka

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The other side has the moderately unwieldy title of "They Can't Take Minnesota Out of Me". Ms. Halama wrote this one too, along with someone named Hand. I guess he needed a Hand writing this one. 

It was all for naught, at least to these ears. Far be it for me to say that Idaho is better than Minnesota - not a chance of that thought ever escaping my lips - but the Idaho song is infinitely better than this song. This is not exactly bad, but I have heard SO many Film City records that sound exactly like this. I don't think Rodd had any great love for these mid-tempo slogs, either, or that he put much into creating interesting tracks out of them. I could play twenty nearly identical tracks from Rodd's Film City work and they'd all be interchangeable. This is another one like that.  

Download: Film City Orchestra, Vocal by Rod Rogers - They Can't Take Minnesota Out of Me

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Try to See It My Way

It's been awhile since I shared any Halmark inanity with y'all, so I thought I'd share an EP featuring a mini-concert by the label's main female songstress, Mary Kimmell, who is joined by a male singer I don't know that I recognize on the first two songs. Normally, Mary sang duets - MANY duets, with her husband Jack, who was the resident tenor on staff, often credited (where there was any credit) as Jack Kim, even on a few records where the singer clearly wasn't Jack Kim. 

But in this case, Mary's partner is absolutely not Jack. I don't know who he is - I don't recognize him from other Halmark records, but I am not really that enamored of most Halmark records that don't feature the more manly vocalist identified as Bob Storm (I say this because there were two different men identified from time to time as Bob Storm). 

First up is a typically Halmark-level dreary piece - dreary despite the nature of the lyrics, "Magic Night". 

Download: Halmark Productions - Magic Night

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Next, I don't know what anyone would be thinking by naming a lyric with the same name as a song which is extremely well known throughout the western world. But on the other hand, I could totally believe that a person who would buy what Halmark was selling would be completely unaware of a worldwide number one hit of just a few years earlier. 

Mary is joined again by our mystery man on "We Can Work it Out". It's actually worth noting that this song is actually all about two people trying to work something out, as opposed to Paul McCartney's version, which is famously all about how the person he's singing to needs to "see it my way". I actually have never understood how that amounted to any "we" engaging in "working it out". 

Download: Halmark Productions - We Can Work it Out

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Mary sings solo on both songs on the flip side. The first song is the interminable "Sound the Trumpet", which spreads out its limited lyrics across a mind numbing four minutes. I will say that the backing track heard on this one has a more contemporary feel than most of what Halmark released, complete with that Godawful fake violin sound that infected MSR and Columbine records in the late 1970's and early '80s. 

Download: Halmark Productions - Sound the Trumpet

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The final song is called "True and Faithful Friend", and if you can't guess the identify of this friend, then you haven't been paying attention to the proclivities of Halmark customers. 

Download: Halmark Productions - True and Faithful Friend

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Vintage song-poem ads will return next time around. 

Scientists? WHAT Scientists?

Howdy, 

Before getting to today's offering, here is yet another vintage song-poem ad from Vinnie. I suspect this one may have been more for a book than for records. The limit on length and the suggestion that poets send in haikus suggests to me that no songs were being created. I have such a book, made up of somewhat fair to absolutely wretched poetry, produced by a company that was doing even less for the customer than the song-poem factories were, literally just compiling well over 1000 poems into one volume (this book is from the 1940's). There is hardly anything that could be more anonymous and would have taken less effort. 

And now, on with the Countdown: 

I'm always up for an astronaut related song-poem - as the compilers of the early song-poem album and CDs said somewhere, that's a subject that really seemed to fascinate a significant percentage of song-poets, being the subject of song-poems seemingly about as often as was John F. Kennedy. 

So I eagerly snapped this one - "The Ballad of Apollo 8" - on eBay not long ago, with the fond wish of sharing it with y'all. And it's a nice enough country groove with an effective musical and backing vocal arrangement, and a genuinely excellent vocal from Sammy Marshall. 

But ooof, those lyrics. Apparently the ENTIRE project was managed by God. The entire song is about what God did for us, including a reference to the Genesis description of the moon as "the lesser light". There is nary a mention of scientists or others who might have had just a tiny role in the project. 

The song-poet was thoughtful enough to make mention of the first manned attempt in the series - Apollo 1, which caught fire and killed three astronauts without ever taking off - but somehow.... SOMEHOW.... doesn't get around to indicating what role God's played in that disaster. After all, if he made the tin can go around the moon, then he must have made the other tin can go boom. Hmmm. Maybe it was his day off.

I suspect I can't say the following without offending at least a few readers, but this sort of thing just grates on me. As a cradle-to-grave Christian, I have yet to be able to understand the version of religion, ANY religion, that thinks God cares who wins ballgames, who wins awards, who wins wars, or who successfully circles the moon first. Maybe it's not quite as bad when someone does something singular, alone, like win a tennis championship (although I still can't stand it), but when you are literally ignoring a decade of work by thousands of people. No. Just no. As you can tell, I actually find it pretty obnoxious. Your mileage may vary. 

Science did it, Ms. song-poemist. Engineers. Science. Federal Funding (remember when that was a  thing most people supported?). Write a song about the scientists. Or the astronauts.  

Download: Sammy Marshall - The Ballad of Apollo 8

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~~

The same song-poet submitted the flip side, "Memories of Schooldays". And while this doesn't rile up any emotions close to the other side, it does strike me that the other problem exists here. This is a sort of sweet lyric about the writer visiting her elementary school, no closed and in poor repair, and reveling in her memories, hearing the voices of those she knew in her head, and imagining children on the playground. 

It's sweet. Clunky in spots but sweet. And in this case, the music doesn't do the lyrics justice, at least not for me. 

Download: Sammy Marshall - Memories of Schooldays

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