Feeling Lower Than a Cold Duck's Instep (I'm Not Hitting the Bottle Anymore)

First up, I definitely want to share this. Two posts ago, I shared two insane songs about dancing and Cupid. And I pointed out that the song-poet had written a third Preview release about Cupid, as well. Well, Sammy Reed has laid his hands on a copy, and posted it (and a few other Gene Marshall tracks, including the entertainingly silly "It's Clock Time", here. It's just was mind-numbing as the two I posted. Thanks for sharing that, Sammy!

And now for a couple of.... well, it is a song-poem records, but I don't actually think there are any "songs" here, so maybe "-poems" would be a better descriptor.

I guess maybe these fit into the category of "Cowboy Poetry", but really, the A-side sounds like the nearly random, Idaho-obsessed observations of a man who is losing his ability to think straight, and the B-side sounds more like an audio letter to a gal-pal than it does like poetry. But these are stellar examples of the more whack-a-doodle edge of song-poetry, and more than worth a share. 

Lance Hill was one of the lesser lights at the Globe song-poem factory, and he does an adequate job here of putting the team of song-poets who wrote these two pieces into action. Up first is "Without the Wind", which consists of nearly random western clichés, with a few odd turns of phrase thrown in. There doesn't seem to be a story here, or even a common thread, aside from "Me Like Idaho". Maybe I'm just not familiar with Cowboy Poetry. Maybe someone out there can tell me if this would get a performer applause or boos. 

Download: Lance Hill - Without the Wind

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As mentioned, "Bit of Idaho Haven" strikes me as an audio letter to Suzie Bell, who has left Muskogee, OK to come to see her former (and future?) sweetheart who has moved to Idaho. He extols the many virtues of his new home state, making sure Suzie (now named Ida Bell, after her own new home state) pays attention. More than anything, he wants her to know that he's not hitting the bottle anymore. 

What a weird record. 

Download: Lance Hill - Bit of Idaho Haven

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A Devilish Walk and Standing with Jesus

As I have written about, ad nauseum, the earliest records on the Cinema label mostly feature a single solo male singing, accompanied by one of those all-in-one console organs, complete with drum effects and chording, that were so popular in living rooms in the '60's and '70's. I certainly always wanted us to get one. They are by far the most direct, simplest and perhaps most scammy of song-poem releases, although on occasion, they were brilliant. 

Here we have one which is not so brilliant. The song-poet who submitted "Pretty Red Curl", couldn't be bothered to submit a poem of more than nine lines, resulting in our friends at Cinema needing to pad the record, with an instrumental intro and solo section, and with repeated lines, just to get to 112 seconds. Note that the lyrics start at 0:13 and end 38 seconds later - everything else is just a repeat of earlier lyrics. At least the lyrics are stunningly well composed. Oh, wait, no they aren't. 

Download: The Real Pros - Pretty Red Curl

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The flip side, "For Jesus I Will Stand", contains precisely the lyric that you would expect from a song called "For Jesus I Will Stand", and the stultifying arrangement and performance leaves me cold, with nothing else to say about it.

However, I would like to refer you to the author credit, which is to Dovie Beanblossom, which has to be one of the great names of all time. Further yet, an online search tells me her full name was "Dovie Lenguilliams Beanblossom", and all I can say is, I wish that was my name (although I wouldn't want to sign for anything). 

Download: The Real Pros - For Jesus I Will Stand

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Two Insane Dance-Related Song-Poems from the Pen of John Lester

 

Okay, I must admit that when I first saw the title of this Barbara Foster (aka Bobbi Blake) 45, "Germination", I sort of assumed the lyrics would be some sort of play on words regarding certain reproductive activities. 

However, this only seems to sort of be the case - any such reference is buried in something entirely other. That is to say, not only this side, but both sides of this record seem to have come from a rather batshit crazy cranium. In the simplest terms, both songs seem to be about dancing. And yes, love-making certainly can be and has been described as a dance, and song-poet John E. Lester even makes reference to Cupid here, but the dance steps in "Germination" won't get you there. 

The opening lines of this song are a mystery to me. I've listened several times and simply cannot make out every word of what is being sung in the first verse. What I can make out is non-sensical (something about Java? "Delilah in Iceland without no fur"?, "Let's Begin like in 'Begin the Beguine'"?). We are then encouraged to "Germinate Love, It's Cupid's Thing". Having said that, though - as I mentioned, - we then are instructed in some very vague dance moves.

Maybe this makes more sense to one or more of you out there. 

Download: Barbara Foster - Germination

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The flip side features Gene Marshall doing "Cupid's Review" by the same song-poet. And it's worth noting that the only documented song-poem (other than these two) credited to this song-poet was called "Cupid's Thing", so Mr. Lester certainly had an area of interest. 

If anything, this one befuddles me even more than "Germination". You know you're in for a good time when Gene speaks over the introductory music. I can't make out one of the words for certain: 

"Make like you're on the way to the city, you know in your best <clothes?>

Know your color, love? Well anyway, you're it - YEAH!"

The rest of the song is about going to something called "Cupid's Review" (don't act too extreme, by the way). By the 38 second mark, Gene is talking again, explaining that apparently the review is a series of classic dances - whether we are watching or participating is unclear. There is an important moment when Gene questions what time signature is being used, and a bit later, he has a conversation with an unheard participant. The talking goes on for a full 70 seconds of this 150 second record.

I have literally no idea what this song-poet was on about. And I'd like to hear "Cupid's Thing". 

But - and I mean this entirely sincerely - Gene's last note is one for the ages, truly a thing of beauty, and deserved to be on a better record and song than this. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Cupid's Review

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Square Dancing With the Navajos

Hoo-boy do I have a backlog of comments and such to get to. 

Someone named Shane commented - while offering up some very nice words about my site - that he is trying to start up a song-poem page on Facebook. I am not really on Facebook, but I did try to find it, without success. Please write back if you have a page, Shane, and I will link to it. 

In mid-September, someone asked about a specific Noval song-poem called "Lonesome Cowgirl Blues," lyrics by Barbara Sylvester. Unfortunately, I would have to say that Noval is the single most mysterious label in the song-poem universe, and I've never heard anything about the label that has unraveled that mystery. I'd like to hear it though. I have a backup email address that is my first and last name, no spaces at Gmail, if you (or anyone) wants to send me song-poems. 

For another anonymous poster, I am diligently trying to get and answer regarding whether Rodd Keith played saxophone - efforts are being made to ask those who might know, on my (and your) behalf. 

Sammy Reed offered a link after I shared Gene Marshall singing about a nurse. His link was to a YouTube posting of another nurse song from the same vocalist, which is heard here.  

Apesville responded to my most recent previous post, agreeing with my about the timeframe on the record's release, despite the numbering system which would appear to indicate otherwise. He also linked to his Arco label website which is here, and which names some records not listed in the AS/PMA site for the label.

My best pal Stu pointed out that the songs on that most recent post, sung by "The Reputations" would have been considerably better if their labelmate at Globe, Sammy Marshall, had been assigned to sing them. I agree completely.

In more important news from Sammy Reed, though, he has found another one of those insane Bob Gerard Records - one of seemingly a dozen or so, perhaps all made the same day, where apparently no one present knew how to play a bass, so they had someone play the same three notes, in the same rhythm, on nearly ALL of them. These are nearly uniformly terrible records, in the most entertaining way possible (although "Snow Man" and especially "The Proon Doon Walk" are far more ridiculous AND far more entertaining). The songs Sammy posted are of the same quality, with that three note pattern recurring throughout the first side and, as a bonus, an absolutely incompetent guitar solo, too. 

Whew - that's a lot. Thanks so very much to everyone who writes in, and I'm sorry if I missed anyone. 

~~

It's Indigenous People's Day, and what better time than that for the following record: 

I feared that "The Navajo Reservation", warbled by Tin Pan Alley's Mike Thomas, would be one obnoxious misrepresentation after another, if not downright racist. My review of the lyrics does not really confirm the presence of those problems, although it is rife with stereotypical (if not truly inaccurate) descriptions. 

Actually much of the lyric is about the physical beauty of the land, and the biggest flaw of the song (aside from its gormless arrangement and performance), is the attempt to squeeze in such downright unmusical phrases "ceremonial clothes" and "turquoise jewelry". 

But my biggest grin came from the reference to the Navajos participating in a "Square Dance" as well as another dance whose name I cannot make out - all the spelling I tried failed to find any references. I did find that some tribes - Eastern, primarily, which makes sense - probably did contribute to the styles involved in square dancing, but only added to an existing dance form. The Navajos do not appear to have played a role in this development. I have a close relative of Native heritage and have been to many Native events, festivals and performances and have never seen anything called a "Square Dance". 

Perhaps the song-poet wrote "Squaw Dance", which IS a Navajo tradition, and Mike Thomas pronounced it wrong. 

My favorite Native American song-poem (or it may be song-poem adjacent) remains "Navajo" by Anne and Bill Calhoun, which I shared over 13 years ago, in this post. 

Sing it, Mike!

Download: Mike Thomas - The Navajo Reservation

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The flip side of this record "Right Way", poses a conundrum it never answers. What, exactly, IS the right way. I've listened to this record three times, and while Mike offers up some versions of what the wrong way is, he never tells us what the right way is. Maybe it's supposed to be self-evident, like these truths. 

Download: Mike Thomas - Right Way

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Bad Reputations

The Arco label seems to have primarily been yet another one of the fairly tiny labels that housed the productions of the Globe song-poem factory. That's not the only thing they did - they released some really interesting records by a bandleader named Joe Noto and his "thrush" (as Billboard would have called her), Phyliss Ruby. You can hear my favorite of those records here. Those may or may not be song-poems, although the same writer I mention below wrote one of those songs, as did song-poem master Lew Tobin.

But virtually everything else I've heard on Arco seems to come from Globe. Except, I didn't think this one did. It's by a group, identified as "The Reputations", and has the lowest label number of any Arco release yet documented. For a long time, I hesitated to share it here because I wasn't sure it was a song-poem at all. 

But I saw a copy listed on eBay and listened to the songs again, and also looked more closely at the label. The lyrics are not great, the sound is remarkably close to the standard Globe bland production and antiseptic groove, and, the kicker, one of the two writers listed, Joe Brulo, paid for song-poems on another of Globe's labels, sung by Globe stalwart Lance Hill, who most definitely was a song-poem singer. 

That convinces me that this is a song-poem record. One thing still confuses me, though - the other known Arco records are all documented to be from 1956 to 1962. This one's label number pre-dates all of those, yet it sounds like nothing which would have been made during that period to me. The start of "Runaway Girl", for example, clearly is meant to remind the listener of "Oh Pretty Woman", which was released in 1964. It's all very confusing. 

Download: The Reputations - Runaway Girl

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The flip side is "I'm Burning Up the Telephone", which features the classic lines "My baby went away, you see, rather suddenly", and "I even called the twilight zone" (oh, and he wants her back "rather suddenly", too), along with a couple of delightful clams from the bass player. 

Download: The Reputations - I'm Burning Up the Telephone

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Piano Bar Sammy and Three Song-Poem Lesser-Lights

Today, it's another Air EP for y'all, featuring a Sammy Marshall track where he is heard in a setting I do not recall hearing Sammy in, before. 

I don't really want spend a lot of time recapping the Air Records craziness yet again. Suffice it to say that Air seems to had connections with several of the largely song-poem factories and released some of the product, more often than not with two or three labels represented on the same release. Again, I have no idea how this worked, but Air doesn't really appear to have done any in-house work at all. On this EP, there are tracks from at least Globe and Film City, and maybe another company, as well. 

But hey, whatever their story was, the did use, for a time, one of the best label designs I've ever seen:

Globe is represented - at least, if not more - by Sammy Marshall, identified here as Sonny Marshall. And as I said, I don't think I've heard him in quite this setting before. It's almost demo-simple - Sammy and a piano, in a very Piano-Bar-Like setting. The song is "Footprints on the Moon" - this is the second song I've shared with that exact title, by the way (this one, unlike the other one, does not feature plagiarism). 

This one is an interesting little tribute, naming the Apollo 11 astronauts by name, acknowledging that there were voices in America who thought the whole endeavor was a waste of money, and praising them for having the "courage like a stone". I guess I'll need to start being more aware and impressed by the stones I pass, perhaps even basking in the radiance of their courage. 

Download: Sonny Marshall - Footprints on the Moon

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Next up is another piano-and-voice number, so this could be from the same company (Globe) as the previous track. But compared to the ultra-professional Sammy Marshall - well, compared to 98% of the vocalists ever recorded on a vinyl release - the singer here, identified as Andy Gordon, is a rank amateur, and he offers up a laughably bad performance. It's not quite as bad as Bob Lloyd's greatest hit, but it's in that ballpark. I am reminded of the Stan Freberg record where the producer grabs the first kid he runs into on the street and asks him to sing on his teen pop travesty. 

The song-poet, meanwhile, clearly had Gilbert and Sullivan on his mind when he wrote "Sing Willow, Willow, Willow", but sadly, did not have the lyricism of W.S. Gilbert and did not pay for music to be created at the level of Arthur Sullivan. 

Download: Andy Gordon - Sing Willow, Willow, Willow

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~~

Side two gives us two Christian-themed songs. The first of the two is credited to Jack Carver, but even a momentary listen proves that the singer is none other than Film City low-light Jimmie James, who made a series of terrible records - and one hilariously bad two sided disc - at the very end of that label's existence. You can hear the other Jimmy James tracks I've shared here with this link, two more tracks I've credited to "Jimmy James" are here (including one credited to "Tony Markham"), and the two ridiculous tracks I just referred to ("Free Love For Sale" and "Mini Girl Song" are buried inside this WFMU post. There is also this Christmas song. 

Anyway, if the voice of Jimmie James didn't give away that "There is Something" is a Film City production, there is the omnipresent Chamberlin backing, as well. The song is a somnambulistic two minutes, with the most boring backing imaginable and that inimitable, awful voice. 

Download: Jack Carver (Jimmie James) - There is Something

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We finish up with yet another piano-and-vocal thing. Perhaps all three are from Globe, but I don't recognize two of the three singers, so who knows. The piano and the production does sound the same on all three. 

This one is sung by Margie Murray, who shows up on about a half-dozen Air releases around this time. She's not as bad as Andy Gordon, but she's several steps below good, and at least a few below okay. I'll say this, I'm glad there's not an Andy Gordon/Margie Murray duet on this record. I'm picturing them doing a version of that stupid Lita Ford/Ozzy Osbourne song now. Actually, they'd likely improve on the original...it'd be a challenge not to. 

Anyway, the song is "Jesus Suffered", which, in its construction, sounds to me like the song-poet was trying to capture some of the intense energy and feeling of the song "Where You There?", without any of the effectiveness of that songs tune or affectivity of its lyrics. 

Download: Margie Murray - Jesus Suffered

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Dahrlin..... Danny Dahrlin!

Presenting Song-Poem Singer Danny Dahrlin! 

It just screams out to me that someone's over-active imagination tried to come up with a perfect teen idol name. And failed miserably. And the song-poem website only shows Danny Dahrlin's name on a single Preview 45. However, that 45 is not the one I just acquired. This one is listed in newer databases than the mothballed AS/PMA site. And at one of them, someone has pointed out that the singer on "You Never Lose What You Never Had" might be Rodd Keith. 

Here's a secret - it is undoubtedly Rodd Keith. And I'm not sure how there could have been any question. That same poster posits, with certainty, that it IS Rodd Keith on Sax. How someone could know that is beyond me - maybe someone out there can explain it to me. 

Anyway, this record is a chore, in my opinion - supper club blahs without a beat (or even a drummer), and a weepy tenor sax bleating about as annoyingly as possible. It even fades out suddenly, as if someone hit a clam at the last second and they had to get rid of it. 

Download: Danny Dahrlin - You Never Lose What You Never Had

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The flip side of this record is "A Poor Man's Desire", and it features that loping country groove that Rodd Keith sometimes favored in the 1960's. comes complete. Then comes the talky talk, and we don't get to the singing until the 40 second mark. I guess this is Rodd Keith, too, although I listened twice before I was convinced. It's certainly a high register for him. 

I'd love to know why Preview (or Rodd) felt the need to use pseudonyms for him, at the same as he was releasing record after record under the usual variation of his given name. And why such a teeny-bopper  name for a record with such grown-up lyrics and musical styles. 

Anyway, this one seems to go on forever. Honestly, I don't think either of these are very good, but I did want to get a performance by Rodd under this particular pseudonym out there into the internet. Mission accomplished. 

Download: Danny Dahrlin - A Poor Man's Desire

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Sammy Marshall and the Teen Notes on Crescendo Records

Here is a record that has been sitting on my "consider using these" pile for at least six months, possibly a lot longer. And I'm not sure why I've left it sitting there, as it is quite good. Also, I've barely featured Sammy Marshall this year, so that's another reason to grab it right now and plop it onto my site. 

This is early Sammy Marshall (identified on this record as being backed by "The Teen Notes", for the first and likely only time). This is an early entry from the Globe song-poem factory, before they threw up their hands and started making every record sound lifeless and very much just the same. It's one of a handful of records that Globe released on their Crescendo imprint (not to be confused with the LA label GNP Crescendo, which was a legit outfit and had hits with both 45s and albums).

I have only heard a few Crescendo records (there only are a few), but most of those I've heard are much better than the average song-poem at sounding like what was being released by the "real" record companies of the day - they consistently sound like something which could have been legitimately produced for, and targeted at, the teen market in the early 1960's. Maybe not the best effort in the world, but there is nothing here to indicate that amateurs or scammers were involved. 

The only other Crescendo record I've featured here - 14 years ago - is the most excellent "Picture in the Fire", which you can hear here. 

If you play a Halmark, Film City or Noval record for a music buff who is unfamiliar with song-poems, that person is going to wonder what the hell produced such an odd, weird or perhaps awful record. If you play this record for the same music fan, the response is likely to be that it was a failed attempt at a hit. 

The A side is "Tinsel and Tin", and it has a loping beat, an effective piano part, winning backing vocalists, a memorable and catchy melody, and a first rate vocal from our man Sam. 

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Teen Notes - Tinsel and Tin

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The flip side is called "Outside of That", and I would say that most of what I said about "Tinsel and Tin" applies here. In fact, the lyrics here are pretty damn effect and fit quite well into what one might have heard on what Billboard would have called a "Rock-a-Ballad" in 1961, which is when this record was released. In a somewhat different arrangement, I could absolutely hear Gene Pitney (a favorite of mine) singing this song and these lyrics. 

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Teen Notes - Outside of That

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George and Kay! Who Are They?

Today we visit the land of MSR Records. As long time readers of this site may recall, I'm not much of a fan of this label, or really of anything that the "MSR" crew was doing from the early 1970's (at this label and others, such as Cinema). That puts me at odds with the powers that were behind the song-poem boom and CD releases of 25-30 years ago, who actually named their series after the label. Perhaps it puts me at odds with my readership, too - I dunno. I just find their material far more frequently sterile and boring than other labels. Plus, the early '70's to the mid '80's are simply not my favorite era, and those are the sounds they were aping. For what it's worth, I like the sound of the Columbine label (which operated in the same eras) even less than MSR, and for the same reasons. 

But I do like to throw out an MSR track every now and then, if for no other reason than to provide a more full picture of the song-poem world. And at those times, I also try to offer something interesting. 

To that end, today I have a record for which both sides were written by song-poet Fred L. Chitester. Mr. Chistester was a prolific song-poet, and apparently had enough money to throw around to have nearly two dozen documented releases of his handiwork on the MSR label - and those are just the records discovered before the song-poem archives website was mothballed. He submitted a handful of songs to the label around 1974-75, and then at least a dozen during 1979-80. This includes a couple of albums in that period which each featured five Chitester songs. 

The song that intrigues me here is "George and Kay", sung by the always incompetent Bill Joy. Bill Joy was the dominant male singer during the last days of MSR, starting in 1976 or so, and, by 1980, was singing all but a handful of the male vocals on the label until its demise in the mid 1980's. And he was awful. The first time song-poems were explained to me (by Dr. Demento), the song used to demonstrate the genre was a Bill Joy special, "How Long Are You Staying?" (I had heard song-poems before that, but hadn't known their provenance.) 

"George and Kay" intrigues me because of its lyrics. It seems to be about a famous couple - or at least locally famous, somewhere. They are seen every day, but what the song-poet appreciates about them is how they always do right, and are always bright, smiling and happy, and in particular, how they make a point of not ever telling anyone else to do. Mayhap I am spacing on a couple who were famous in 1980, but I have no idea who he is singing about. The music is vapid, particularly that awful synthesizer which is omnipresent on MSR releases of this area, and Bill Joy provides his typical supper-club awfulness. 

Anyone know who he's singing about? 

Download: Bill Joy - George and Kay

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The real horror here is the flip side, "When You Are Low and Feeling Blue", in which the solution for clinical depression is to "Change Your Ways", or perhaps move somewhere where you can pretend to be upbeat and "no one will know" that you're depressed. 

Have I mentioned my 35 years working in behavioral health? This is an infuriating lyric - because I know there is a certain subset of people out there who think like this. God help 'em if they developed a behavioral health condition. 

Download: Bill Joy - When You Are Low and Feeling Blue

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First Person Christianity

In the notes to the fourth song-poem compilation album, "I'm Just the Other Woman", there was a section in which was pointed out an uncommon aspect of the song "The Will of God", that being that it was sung from the perspective of the singer being Jesus Christ. And I agree that such a conceit is a fairly unusual one. 

Here we have another one, from the waning days of the once-great Sterling label. Sterling's greatness came from one man - Norm Burns, a singularly great singer - with a large assist from one other man - Lew Tobin, the arranger and frequent composer who set the song-poems to music. Well, Norm died in 1974, and was followed by a series of much-lesser lights, and Lew's name - which showed up as a bandleader and/or co-composer on the vast majority of Sterling records releases into the mid-1970's, disappeared from the credits, never to return, right around the time this record was made. 

The singer on this side is Mel Moore, heard here with "The Starlets", who was the dominant performer for Sterling from around 1977 until their demise around 1984. I have a few Mel Moore 45's, but had never featured him before, largely because Sterling records after the departure of Norm and Lew are often deadly dull. 

But I do get a kick out of this one. Jesus is singing the song, you see, exhorting his listener to "Walk On" and "Stand Tall", those being the two parts of the title of the song. Jesus doesn't actually get around to identifying himself until nearly half way through, by which point he's clearly irritated at not being asked "Dude, who are you anyway", and gives away his secret. I can commiserate with him there - it seems like that might be a conversation you'd have with some random stranger who was telling you how to live, somewhat earlier in your interaction. 

For all I said about the suckiness of late era Sterling records, this one is actually bouncy and even sort of swings, with a Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line" beat on the drums, a really nice interplay between the piano and the guitar, and an equally nice give and take between the lead singer and the backing gals. It's a sweet sounding track. 

Download: Mel Moore and the Starlets - Walk On - Stand Tall

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Shelley Stuart (whose name I now see I have misspelled on more than one occasion here) is the singer on the flip side, another religious number from the same song-poet. Shelley shows up on a few of the earliest tracks on Sterling, and then made well over a dozen records for the label during the period just before Norm Burns' death, but this is a later release for her on the label that I can find reference to online, exactly one hundred label numbers later than her previously known last release. For a label that seems to have released only 40 or 50 records a year, that's a significant gap of time between recordings. 

Anyway, Shelley's song, "Live For Jesus" is awful. It goes on for about 17 days, or at least it seems to. The folks at Sterling did do an effective job of creating the sort of dashed-off gospel/inspirational sound that could have been heard on a dozen religious fund-raising TV shows or cheapo Christian albums of the time. It's not a good sound, but they did a good job capturing it. 

Download: Shelley Stuart and the Starlets - Live For Jesus

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A Texas Two-Fer

Today, we make another visit to the waning days of the great Film City label. This is number 4035 on the label, that label having started at #1000 and going to around # 4140, so this is late indeed. It's two releases up from Rod Rogers' great "Little Rug Bug", so there is quite the chance that Rodd Keith is also the Chamberlin master herein. And like several other releases in this numbering sequence, this record appeared on goldish-yellow vinyl. 

The singer is Jim Wheeler, about whom the less said the better, and the songs - both about Texas - represent a fairly rare occurrence in the land of song-poems, and that is, submissions by a songwriting team. Both of these song-poems were written by the same two-man team. Does that mean they wrote the words AND music (making this more of a vanity number), or just that they both wrote the "song-poem" lyrics. There's no way to know for sure, but these melodies and chords sound so traditionally "Film City-ish", that I'm betting these were traditional song-poem, with music by the Film City crew, and not a full submission of completed songs. 

The better of the two by a wide margin - better being very much a relative term here - is "Remember the Alamo". It is peppy, with a creative backing arrangement, a nicely structured "string section" solo and a lilting melody. And best of all, it doesn't wear out its welcome, ending in well under two minutes. 

But please, while everyone is remembering the Alamo, let's not forget that those fighting for America were on the wrong side of history: The battle at that time and place was really about trying to control Texas in order to allow those living there to have slaves, a practice that Mexico had outlawed. 

Download: Jim Wheeler and the "Swinging Strings" - Remember the Alamo

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I can muster up no enthusiasm for the flip side of this record. "The Beautiful Texas Waltz" goes on for roughly five days, or at least seems like it (it is actually just under twice the length of "Alamo". The word "dreary" comes to mind, which is unfortunate, as the song tells a happy story, and seems to have been designed to be a counterpoint to "The Tennessee Waltz", a song with a positive outcome. 

I'd also like to point out that both of these songs contain the weird feature - mentioned here from time to time - of songs which have a fade out, but then end before the face out is completed. Why fade a record out if you ended on a full stop? 

Download: Jim Wheeler and the 'Swinging Strings' - The Beautiful Texas Waltz

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Hitting On the Nurse

We're featuring Gene Marshall and his lovely voice today. The song has the promising title "Patient and His Nurse". Perhaps Song-Poet Harry Fineburg was writing from personal experience, perhaps he'd been watching a few soap operas, or perhaps he was just letting his imagination run wild. I say this because, to me at least, these lyrics seem to indicate the patient - who is heard in first person in the lyrics - is quite enamored of, and seems to be at least passively hitting on, his favorite nurse. 

Perhaps there is another explanation. Feel free to chime in. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Patient and His Nurse

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"All That Remains" on the flip side, is a wisp of a song and lyric. Both sides of this record are padded out to an acceptable length (for a 45) by having the chirpy background singers go on at length (as well as short periods of instrumental vamping by the band), and then having Gene sing a verse he'd already sung. This is egregious even in "Patient and His Nurse", in which we have heard all of the available lyrics at the 70 second mark. In "All That Remains", we've heard every written lyric by the 49 second point, and even WITH the padding, the record is STILL only 110 seconds long. 

Download: Gene Marshall - All That Remains

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