The Bass Player... Yes, THAT Bass Player.... from Tin Pan Alley... is BACK!!!!

If I have a chance to pick up a Tin Pan Alley single from the late 1950's through the 1960's, I'm going to go for it, if the price is right. It's one of my favorite labels. But if that record shows a label number in the 390s threw the 400s, I'm downright giddy at the chance, and may spend a bit more than I would have otherwise. 

Because for that short period - however long it took to get through those 20 or so releases - the label sometimes (but not always) used a bass player who seemingly had no knowledge of the instrument and barely a sense of rhythm. I've shared several of these records before, most notably, but not limited to, "The Proon Doon Walk" and "Snow Man"

Well, I've got another one for you, this time featuring the stylings of Cathy Mills, who shouldn't have been let within a country mile of slow song, a torch song, or a song that was both. Yet, that's what we have here, with the clunkily named "Because We Both Belong to Someone Else"

As overmatched as she is by the style, she is again shown up by the bass player, who largely hits notes at random. Unlike those other records, though there are places where the bass part requires the hapless performer to provide some rhythm runs, and the results are spectacularly incompetent, my favorite  of these occurring from 0:40 to 0:46, before he returns to largely playing the two back-and-forth notes, neither of which are on the scales of the chord changes the song uses. 

Download: Cathy Mills - Because We Both Belong to Someone Else

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On the other side is "Would You Darling?", and I must admit I have a soft spot for these spare, "rhumba-but-only-the-rhythm-section-and-no-full-band" records that TPA was doing from time to time during this period. The band perks along nicely - it's worth noting that there is NO bass player on this side - maybe even the rest of the band couldn't stomach the way the bass player was impacting their groove and told him to lay out. 

Cathy Mills is much more suited for this number, the melody is memorable and it doesn't wear out its welcome in its 104 seconds. But I'm a sucker from pre-1960's Latin rhythms (and not at all a fan of what's come since, by the way), so your mileage may vary. 

Download: Cathy Mills - Would You Darling?

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This Record Goes Round and Round

It's been a bit of a crazy month, and I've only just barely gotten two posts out, for the first time since last June. And I'm still crazy busy so I won't have a lot to say. 

BUT, I do want to think a new reader/listener/commenter who goes by the absolutely delightful posting name of "Asphalt-Type Person", who has been methodically going through a lot of my posts - primarily older ones, including from the pre-Song-Poem days - and commenting like crazy. I count 22 comments from this person since the first one, just four days ago! The posts have been very idiosyncratic and tons of fun. Well, Mr. or Ms. Person, I'm not sure you'll see this, as you were most recently looking at 2011 posts, but I'm glad you found me, and I'm glad you're enjoying the show. 

~~

Today's feature stars Cathy Mills, one of a few female vocalists who showed up on Tin Pan Alley in the mid 1960's. You could be forgiven for thinking that you were about to hear a rendition of "Twist and Shout" during the first ten seconds of this record, But no, "Everything Goes Round and Round" immediately turns into a midtempo number with a bit of a Latin beat. The song has a philosophical lyric about doing what's right and thanks God for making things spin and keeping them spinning. The guitarist clearly has an idea of what he wants to play - something perhaps approaching the solo Jimmy Page played on ":Sunshine Superman" - but his desire had a greater reach than did his talent. The note at 1:22 is particularly special. All that said, it's a peppy number and I enjoy her nearly artless vocal here and the general groove of the band. 

Download: Cathy Mills - Everything Goes Round and Round

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The flip side is a dirge titled "You Said Hello", which has nothing whatsoever to recommend it, at least not to these ears. 

Download: Cathy Mills - You Said Hello

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A Veritable Master Class in Bass Playing

Well, I only got two posts up this month. I spent the middle of the month enjoying working (from home) while experiencing a COVID infection, and didn't really feel like doing anything I didn't have to do. 

I'm going to use this space here to respond to a few comments and also link folks to some comments that have been made. A poster calling him-or herself "Doctor Future" offered a very interesting comment, complete with a couple of links, regarding my post about a song-poem regarding Lt. William Calley, which you can find here. 

On a completely different subject, Sammy Reed took me up on my wish to hear a song called ""HOOPA LOOPA HOOPA LOOPA DOOPA", which you can read about here, and, in the comments therein, provided a link to that song! 

And Rock Smith of Spectropop just wrote TODAY to offer up a photo which features Rodd Keith among several others, at a party in 1974. That picture is at the bottom of an article here. 

Thanks to all of you! 

Also, a fantastically named poster ("Bob") wrote asking if I own a couple of specific Tin Pan Alley singles. Due to the fact that I am not provided the e-mail address for the sender of most of the comments I get, including this one, I will offer up here that, sadly, I do not have those records. If anyone has early TPA releases by Carmen Taylor, please let me know and I'll let that other Bob know in a future post. 

I'd also just like to again thank everyone else who has written in offering thoughts and comments. They are deeply appreciated. 

Okay, let's hear some amazing bass playing!

For a short period - perhaps no more than 15 releases, which might very well have been only one or two recording sessions - Tin Pan Alley used the talents (sic) of a stand-up (double) bass player who seemingly picked up the bass for the first time that week. The records I own or have heard him documented on range from around TPA-390 to around TPA-405. It's almost enough to make me wonder if no professional musician was available that day, so someone from the business end of things stepped in and tried to fill in. 

The most spectacularly awful of these are "Snow Man" (TPA-390) and "The Proon Doon Walk" (TPA-402), the latter of which is among the most amazingly incompetent things I've ever heard. 

Happily, I've now found another record featuring this giant of bass playing originality, and it features Cathy Mills singing a tribute to Johnny Appleseed, who here has been renamed "Apple Seed Johnny". Our hero happily plucks essentially the same two notes, with a tiny bit of variety throughout the 93 seconds of the song. As a bonus, the guitarist screws up the little ending figure, then he and the rhythm guitarist seemingly can't quite agree on how to play the final chords. Delicious!

Download: Cathy Mills - Apple Seed Johnny

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On the flip side, "What Can I Do?", the bass player has expanded his or her attempts, playing a series of three notes - same notes, same pattern of four beats- through out the 111 seconds of this number. The lyrics also take a sort of startling turn - the singer spends the first 2/3rds of the song wailing about how alone she is and wishing her man would return. He seemingly does return, very suddenly, between 1:17 and 1:19 of the song, over the course of which the lyrics go from "I'm so all alone" (before) to "Thank you for coming back" (after). Glad that was solved. 

Download: Cathy Mills - What Can I Do?
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A Little Latin Supper Club Music From Tin Pan Alley

Howdee, 

As the name of the post indicates, today, we have the good folks at Tin Pan Alley, providing a Latin-esque track which actually reminds me much more of the sort of supper club track that Sterling might have turned out (although the instrumental lineup there would have been a bit different), perhaps one backing up Norm Burns. At least it sounds more similar to that than it does to what I'm used to from this period (or any period) of TPA. 

Anyway, here we have Cathy Mills, with a rather winning vocal, singing "That Flower", which features some lyrics which, in my hearing, are just a few steps on this side of Risqué, what with the singer referring to a flower which is opening her buds and references to "what we're doing". I also find the lyrics confusing: oddly, at times she seems to be referring to herself as the flower, but then repeatedly says that the flower is her beloved. 

Then there is this exceptionally poorly constructed lyric: 

"And if you know why

If you're still wondering why" 

Huh? Maybe someone out there will parse this for me for effectively. 

Download: Cathy Mills - That Flower

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On the flip side, we have yet another song title which would vie for the title of "The Quintessential Song-Poem Title", specifically, "My Sad Heart". I don't find there to be anything here to interest me, unfortunately. Perhaps you'll find it more entertaining. 

DownloadL Cathy Mills - My Sad Heart

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Tin Pan Alley Twin-Spin!

Hello, everybody, hello, 

Okay, so I continue to march through the earliest days of this blog, repairing old posts in backwards order. Today, I have added the sound files to three posts from October and December of 2005, the first year of this project. 

These include: 

1.) A posting of my own live rendition of "The Night Before Christmas", as it was rendered after I put it through the wringer of eight language translations with a now-long-defunct (and fairly poor) free translation site. I later posted this same recording to WFMU.

2.) A set of two examples of the way I was playing with sound that year, one of them the first "cut-up" I'd done in years (of "She Loves You"), and one a layering of elements of 16 pop hits, most of them from the late 1970's, over the original recording of "Yesterday". 

3.) A post about my mom, as she entered the hospital at the beginning of her decline (she died two years later), featuring two of my favorites of her performances. 

All in all, a very Bob-centric set of posts. Sorry about that. Must have been where my head was at, at that moment. 

Oh, and I did get a request for the Merigail tracks that I mentioned last time. Since I'm already sharing two singles this week (and two more "cut-ups"), I'll try to get to that one next time. 

And now: 

~~~

So I realized with a bit of surprise that I hadn't featured Tin Pan Alley in over three months, and thought I'd rectify that with a double offering, one record from the early 1960's, and one from circa the Summer of Love. We'll start with the latter, and better, of the two. 

I truly expected Cathy Mills' "I Was a Dry Wishing Well" to have a lyric which used the Wishing Well as a metaphor, but I was wrong. Instead, it's a fairly delightful and bouncy rendition featuring a lyric in which the wishing well tells us about the people who wish at her location and what they wish for, and entreats those who doubt her power to give it a try. 

And delightful is absolutely the word - if I didn't know better, I'd  have thought Rodd Keith had a hand in this backing track - it has some of the hallmark's of his work at Preview around the same time (roughly 1967), particularly the opening guitar figure, but even more so just the general feel of the thing. This is a really cute and fun record. 

Download: Cathy Mills - I Was a Dry Wishing Well

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The flip side has the clunky title - one which sounds as if it were coined by a non-native speaker of Enlgish - of "My Romance For This Summer-Time". It turns out to be a supper-club-ish number, meandering and unfocused, with a melody I find genuinely hard to follow. 

Download: Cathy Mills - My Romance For This Summer-Time

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The other record, featuring an earlier and more interesting Tin Pan Alley label design, is from roughly 1962, and featuring two songs in styles I would peg to the very late 1950's:

I have greatly enjoyed some performances by Ellen Wayne, mostly on novelty or lighthearted TPA releases. Judging from this record, and some others, I would say that her style on more serious is not my cup of tea. 

Here we have a song with one of the quintessential song-poem titles, "You Hurt Me". The lyrics are pretty standard cookie-cutter song-poem level. Ellen's vocal is, to my ears, over the top, with an almost ridiculous level of vibrato at times, and a degree of emoting via stretching out words and syllables which draws attention to her and away from the words. Your mileage may vary. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - You Hurt Me

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The flip side, "Hold Out Your Arms to Me", bears some resemblence to what the Platters and others were doing in 1956-57, with the exception of that weird stopped beat at the start, which doesn't work for me at all. Ellen tones it down a bit, but only a bit. The song is pretty disposable. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Hold Out Your Arms to Me

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~~~

And now, to my offering up of more of my "cut-ups". Please see the bottom of the my previous two posts, and indeed, the link above to another posting of a "cut-up" for what this is about. 

I'll start with an aperitif, perhaps the briefest "cut-up" I ever did, all two-and-a-half seconds of it. It's another Beatles tune, chopped down to a very basic interaction. 

Download: The Beatles - We Can Work It Out (cut-up)

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For the other one, I just played around with the sounds on one tune, rearranging things within that record. You may need to familiarize yourself with the song.

You see, when I was six, we got the album "The Return of Roger Miller", and I fell in love with it, and it's still one of my dozen favorite albums. I could go on about that album for an hour. Anyway, while this song, "Our Hearts Will Play the Music" is not among my favorites from the album, it is ripe for playing around with the lyrics. 

If you haven't heard the song, I suggest you listen to it first. You can hear it here.  

And now, here's the cut up. You might note a change in tonal quality early on, as I think I switched from a cassette copy of the song over to the original reel, in the midst of playing with the song. 

Download: Roger Miller - Our Hearts Will Play the Music (cut-up)

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"Okay, That Was Good - Now, Once More, Just a Bit More Obnoxiously"

So I just heard this record for the first time this week, and even though it's a Christmas song-poem, I didn't want to wait ten months to share it with you. It's our old friend Cathy Mills, occasional star of the Tin Pan Alley label, doing (what was apparently) her best to sound cutesy. Perhaps the results are exactly what the song-poet was looking for. I certainly hope so, but what I hear is an entire performing ensemble being as cloying and obnoxious as I would think was possible. It's certainly not impossible that this was on purpose - I've heard enough song-poems to know that sometimes the musicians had a bit of mean-spirited fun with the material.

Whatever its backstory, I find "Just Like" to be sort of wonderfully awful. See what you think.

Download: Cathy Mills - Just Like
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One listen to Cathy Mills' flip side, "Hey, Hey" makes clear that her real singing voice sounds nothing like the kiddie voice on "Just Like". Here we have a tribute to the various instruments that make up a combo who are playing a rockin' number. And all is fine with that - there's a trumpet, a sax, a mellow organ. Cool. But then, in a phrase I'm not sure has ever been uttered or written, outside of this song, "Don't forget the bass cello groan". Yep. That old groaning "bass cello".

(And yes, I understand that the writers were surely referring to a double bass, but still... "The bass cello groan"?)

Download: Cathy Mills - Hey, Hey
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Two Sides of Tin Pan Alley

The Tin Pan Alley label went through more different styles of music than most song-poem labels. Partly this was because it existed for a long period, a period during which musical styles changed quickly and with wild differences. But they also appear to have made an effort to keep up with the styles of the day more aggressively than many labels.

A Sterling record may sound like something from 5-10 years earlier, and a Halmark record may sound (if it sounds like anything ever released) like something from 30 years earlier. But a Tin Pan Alley record is likely to sound in the neighborhood of what might be on legitimate releases from the same year it was released, although often the quality of the music and lyrics would be several steps below those legitimate records, particularly on the records from beyond about 1962. Today, two records from perhaps eight years apart, which share nothing in common except for the label on which they appeared.

First up, someone named Tony Miller, with what may be his only appearance on a Tin Pan Alley record, or any song-poem record, and it's a really good, fun one, too. "That's the Way It Goes" appears to date from about 1958, and it bounces along in the pop-rock-rockabilly hybrid feel of more than a few 1957-58 records, with a trebly guitar leading the way, and a doo-wop bass singing what sometimes seem to be almost random oom-boppa's, and a rhythm section that wouldn't have been out of place on dozens of records I can
think of. I like this a whole bunch - maybe you will, too:

Download: Tony Miller - That's the Way It Goes
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"Don't Say Goodbye" is on the flip, and this one begs for a doo-wop arrangement that never shows up. Although this is clearly the same band as on the other side, and they do their jobs well enough, I don't think this one is nearly as inspired as its partner in vinyl.

Download: Tony Miller - Don't Say Goodbye
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Let's flash forward eight years, now, to roughly 1966:

By 1966, and going forward for the next few years, Tin Pan Alley had morphed into a low-fi, lower budget house of garage rock and, for lack of a better term, garage pop. Many of these records are ridiculously minimalist, are often poorly played, and feature amateurish singing - I've shared more than a few of them. They don't sound like most of the biggest hits of the mid '60's, but they do share something with the more homemade sounding of the hits of the era, particularly the records I've posted by Mike Thomas

"Dreamy Eyes" by Cathy Mills, barely qualifies for the above description, and some listeners may disagree that it has any overlap with the pop of the era at all. But in it, I do here some of the simple-as-a-garage-band quality, and to my ears, it also has some of the Vo-De-Oh-Do feel that can be heard in some of Herman's Hermit's hits, and which was just coming into vogue in early 1966. Not to say that it's very good - it's fairly ridiculous, but at least in a fun sort of way. And like several other TPA records from this period, whoever was playing the bass seems to have only picked up the instrument for the first time a few hours earlier.

Download: Cathy Mills - Dreamy Eyes
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"Come Home to Me" is the sort of pleading ballad that could have been released at any point from the mid '50's, well into the '60's. But this record is remarkable for containing a fairly early reference to missing a soldier who is in Viet Nam. The number on this record fairly well places it as being from late '65 or early '66, well before most pop records (Barry Sadler's hit being the big exception), or indeed any other song-poem I've heard, were making lyrical reference to that conflict.

Download: Cathy Mills - Come Home to Me

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Willy Nilly

For the first time in a while, I'm introducing a new name to this series, a singer not previously heard from in my ongoing review of song-poems. It's Cathy Mills, whose work turned up for a brief period around 1966-67 on the Tin Pan Alley label. All of her work that I've been able to find documented occurs within a span of less than 100 release numbers on TPA.

This is a nice one, featuring the goofy word play which seems to have been endemic to people who bought into Tin Pan Alley's deal (i.e. "Fine Cars, Fine Cigars", "Doggone! My Dog is Gone" "Right, Right, Right the Wrong", and too many lyrical couplets to mention). "Willy Nilly Over Billy" also has the garage-lite sound that make so many of TPA's records from this era so pleasantly weird (or weirdly pleasant) to experience.

Cathy Mills has a sweet, engaging voice, which makes me wish that she turned up on more of these records than she does.

Download: Cathy Mills - Willy Nilly Over Billy
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(Of course, some reader may now let me know that Cathy is heard, on another label, under another name, making a connection that I'm perhaps missing...)

The flip side, "Find the Way to My Heart", is, as you'll hear, beat to hell. I started trying to fix the clicks and pops, but the results were almost as bad as the unfixed version, and I eventually gave up, part of the reason being that the song didn't strike me as anything special at all.

Download: Cathy Mills - Find the Way to My Heart
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Finally, today would have been mom's 89th birthday, and I hope that somewhere out there, she's celebrating.