Howdy, Everyone!
Before I say anything else, let me share with you that, once I straightened up and arranged nearly all of my song-poems, I found that I had duplicates of more than a dozen 45's. And as a result, I am listing those duplicates on eBay, roughly one per day, on weekdays. So far, two are listed and have bids, and I have enough to continue listing them through at least the end of next week.
My eBay page, which is dominated by my old copies of Billboard Magazine, which I've been selling off for years, is here, and like I said, buried among all the other detritus of my collecting life (and that of other family members) will be a number of song poems.
And again, those sales are at this location.
Of more interest to most of you, I'm sure, is the set of posts that I've updated and made "Live" again today. This week's corrections were to May of 2011. During that month, I shared a very early (and sort of unusually labeled) Norman Burns entry for Mother's Day, a Judy Layne 45 on Preview (with a clear assist from Rodd Keith), a typically (and entertainingly) inept entry from "Lance" on Tin Pan Alley, and an EP on the Columbine label.
And now!!!
About two and a half years ago, I shared a record on the Howden Records label, and shared that I had acquired four records on that label. As I explained in more detail in that previous post, discerning if Howden was a song-poem label took a bit of research. Briefly the song quality and performance quality was higher than on most labels, but there was some overlap between the songwriter for all of the Howden releases, as well as one of the performers, with those on other song-poem labels. In reality, I'm guessing that this label was a hybrid of song-poem companies and vanity recordings, and that Howard Dennington, the author of all songs on the label, wrote both the music and the lyrics for his songs, then paid for song-poem companies to realize his songwriting dreams.
Today, I have the second of that Howden records I bought.
Today's share contains one release which sounds too professional to be a song-poem, as was true on some of the other sides, but also contains a track which has the obvious hallmarks of a very familiar song-poem factory. And I will say in advance that both sides of this record are beat to hell, so the sound quality is somewhat lacking - I've done some significant "cleaning up" of each side.
Let's start with the track that sounds like a "legit" release to me:
And this side features the same singer heard on both sides of the first Howden record I shared, Ella Howard. And again, "I Hear a Melody" sounds to me fully like something a real label would have really released, aimed at the actual sales and radio airplay market. It's competently made, features a cohesive and coherent melody and lyric, and I find pretty darn catchy, in both melody and arrangement. This is a pretty good record, with nothing of the "a little bit off" that one often finds in the "pretty good" song-poem releases. I'm not saying this would have been a hit, had it been intended for the legit market, just that it has the sheen of something targeted to that market.
Download: Ella Howard - I Hear a Melody
Play:
It is on the flip side of this record that any doubt of this label being related to the song-poem, whether they are also vanity records or not. This song features a singer credited as "Bill Clifford", who does not show up on any other known song-poem product. However, I believe what we're hearing are the unmistakable sound of the Chamberlin, and the style of the Film City label that was the most identified with that remarkable instrument.
What's more, "Bill Clifford" sounds tantalizingly like Rodd Keith at his most unctuous, at least at a few points. And the Chamberlin track could certainly be Rodd. But I don't actually think it's him singing, as there are more moments that don't sound like him at all, but I do find myself wondering who this is. m I overthinking this? Any thoughts?
Download: Bill Clifford - Everyone But You
Play:
