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.
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.
Play:
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.
Play:
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