How Charming!

 

Well, I've been super busy, and it's been almost two weeks since I posted. I really don't have much time even now, so I won't say too much about this week's Tin Pan Alley item, featuring Ellen Wayne singing about "The Charm of a Texan's Smile". It's got an appealing, loping beat, and the singer gives quite a winning performance. I find the few things the lyrics actually say about Texans to be somewhere between suspect and flatly untrue, in my experience, anyway - looking at you, Senator Ted Cruz (among many others) - but maybe these things were more true 64 years ago or so, when this was recorded. 

(Oh, one line rings true: I'm sure Texans still learn all about The Alamo, but somehow, I have my doubts that schoolchildren in Texas learn that the battle was about whether Texas would be allowed to have slavery, an that "we" weren't on the right side of that argument.)

Note the references to Hawaii and Alaska - since this record came out around 1960 or so, those are extremely topical, given that both states were new to the union the previous year. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - The Charm of a Texan's Smile

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The flip side is what Billboard would have probably called a "Rock-a-Ballad" at the time (or at least, a few years earlier). It's called "The Church on the Mountain", and everything is put together reasonably well, to very little effect. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - The Church On the Mountain

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Is It Too Late? It's NEVER Too Late

 

The larger song-poem factories must have turned out dozens of records a year. MSR, Film City and Globe, for example, may have released hundreds of records every calendar year. Small labels such as Noval or Star Crest may have released far under one hundred records over the course of their existence. In the middle are companies including Tin Pan Alley and Sterling, who seem to have released about 25-35 records a year, or somewhere around two or three a month. 

I bring all this up because today's release features related titles, and my strong guess is that it was just a coincidence. If Tin Pan Alley was making four to six song-poems a month, there's no way they had much of a backlog of material waiting for release, or enough "in the can" to pair two songs who's titles both ask and answer the same question. 

Ellen Wayne is the singer, and the question in song is "Is It Too Late For Me?" This record is likely from 1960 or 1961, and this song is a slow, weepy ballad, with triplets - both chorded and played individually - on the guitar (that is, when the guitarist doesn't miss the strings). In theory, this sort of thing should appeal to me, but the whole thing is ham-fisted, particularly her overly wobbly, borderline weepy vocal. 

I wonder if the song-poet here, Richards Simmonds, later dropped one letter from his first and last names and became very famous. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Is It Too Late For Me?

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The answer to the question comes from a different song-poet - Louis Gallo (this guy?), on the flip side. And the answer, of course is: "It's NEVER Too Late". And this is an almost infinitely better record than the flip. It's bouncy, swingin' and Ellen's style works much better at this tempo. The guitarist handles the part considerably more effectively and the song doesn't wear out its welcome, lasting less than 90 seconds.   

Download: Ellen Wayne - It's Never Too Late

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If I Holler, Let Me Go

 

I sure would like to know what it was about Tin Pan Alley, and presumably its advertising, which drew in so many aspiring lyricists who had cockamamie or at least out-of-left-field lyrical ideas. While every song poem label has some odd or downright bizarre submissions, Tin Pan Alley seemed to have an outstandingly weird title on about one out of every four releases, for a while there, in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Just click on the Tin Pan Alley link at the bottom of this page and read through the dozens of previous TPA postings, and see if you don't agree. 

Anyway, while today's offering is not among the strangest titles ever to appear on TPA, it's still pretty far outside the mainstream, and I was happy to see that it was sung by Ellen Wayne, who offered up some of the most ridiculous performances ever heard on song-poems. 

The song is "If I Holler, Let Me Go". I was hoping for another off-the-wall performance along the lines of Ellen's previous masterpieces, "Chicken Neck Boogie", "Don't Touch Me There!" or the bewildering "Bellingham Playday Song". However, the actual song is much more sedate, a 6/8 ballad, which, to me, throws the weird lyric into even greater relief. And Ellen's vibrato is a thing everyone should experience.

Download: Ellen Wayne - If I Holler, Let Me Go

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On the flip side is "Never Say I Didn't Tell You", which musically is pretty straightforward, too. I think the title conceit is a little weird, and certainly doesn't roll off of Ellen's tongue. But if you did not speak English, and were listening to this record, you probably wouldn't suspect it was an amateur submission, or at least not until you perhaps started wondering why it was only 100 seconds long

Download: Ellen Wayne - Never Say I Didn't Tell You

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And now, for the cut-up du jour. 

I've been sharing these, off and on, since almost the beginning of the year. And now, we've finally come to the cup-up of mine that I love the best. And in a coincidence, it's a song that could not be more perfect for labor day. I didn't plan it this way (in fact, I had this one ready a month ago), but as I was preparing it today, I thought, hey, this works out fantastically. If you don't mind, a bit of a road trip before the track. 

The source material of this song is the socialist anthem "The Banks of Marble", written in 1949, and which focuses on how the working poor provide all the labor, while the bosses get all the money and stick it in the bank, well protected by guards. True in 1949, true today. 

The song was either the first or the second song released under the name of The Weavers, in 1949. 

The version I used  here is from Pete Seeger's 1974 album, and is the title track of that album. He duets on it with his Weaver compatriot Fred Hellerman. If you want to hear the original track, it is here, in rather poor sound quality. There is also a wonderful rendition featuring Pete on banjo, and sung by a bunch of kids, just about 18 months before Pete's death. (I've been to that same festival in Pete's hometown, by the way, in 1986.)

Anyway, the Seeger/Hellerman version from 1974 is one of my top 25 tracks ever released by anyone, and that, and its storytelling style, made it a natural for me to do a cut-up with. 

A couple of things here - there are a couple of four letter words here, including a spot near the start, where I shortened the fifth word of the song, not with an insert, but with a pause button, to create a very rude word indeed. So this is not safe for  work. And second, my single favorite non-sequitur that I ever created in a cut up occurs half-way through the third chorus, the one that starts at 2:35. That's some stuffing. 

Anyway, of all of my cut-ups and mash-ups, this is my favorite. 

Download: Pete Seeger and Fred Hellerman - Banks of Marble (cut-up)

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A Song Title For the Ages

Howdy, everyone, 

Well, last week I mentioned being short of time, and that I'd be brief in my comments. Little did I know how much time I would have starting the next afternoon. For one day later, I learned that, due to COVID's effect on my agency's finances, my position was being eliminated, effective immediately. After 29 years with my agency, I am out of a job, and this is the first time in about 40 years that I've neither been employed or in school. Hopefully, it will be just a hiccup in time, but who knows. 

Anyway, I have updated another three posts from way back in the summer of 2005. To explain two of the three posts, I should mention that, as I was flailing around for something to post, I decided to offer up my listening list for the month of June, and offered to share anything from that list on my site. My friend Michael asked for six of the tracks, and I posted them, in two posts. The first featured three tracks from a Latin flavored Percy Faith album from 1952, along with a detailed explanation of how I had known two of these tracks since I was a toddler, the story of my family's first reel to reel tape, which I've subsequently told elsewhere a few times. The other featured three moderately large hit songs from 1959 and 1960. All of these have subsequently become easy to find on YouTube, but hardly anyone knew what that was in 2005, so I'm fixing these posts to get this site back the way it once looked and worked. 

The other "fixed" post is one which was meant to be part of a series (which I never really got very far with), called "The Perfect Record", in this case featuring a wonderful Nordic-flavored record from around 1950, which I later also shared at WFMU. 

And now, for a title as unique as anything I've ever seen on a song-poem: 

~~~

I try not to feature the same label - and certainly not the same singer, within two or three posts of each other. But when something comes this far out of left field, I have to share it with y'all. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I thought Ellen Wayne did a fairly poor job on the two songs I featured in a post at that time, while also allowing that she has been quite entertaining on certain, more "out there" material. 

And that's what we have here. with the bewilderingly titled "A Bellingham Playday Song", which immediately has become one of my favorite song titles ever. The Catalog of Copyright Entries shows that Edna Rice copyrighted this lyric in 1962, along with a song called "Bellingham Children". Bellingham is a city in Washington State, and I'd put money on it that Ms. Rice lived there at some point, probably when she wrote these lyrics. 

Okay, so I'll give you 150 guesses as to what "A Bellingham Playday Song" is about. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Give up? Well, it's about how much the writer loves Jesus, how much Jesus loves her, how mean the devil is (there's actually more text about the devil's meanness than there is about Jesus). Then there's a bridge section about Jesus as a child. 

Ellen Wayne provides her typical over-the-top, so bad it's good style, stretching out words so much that there are words in that bridge that I can't make out - enough of them that I have NO idea what the point of that lyric is. And those are the ONLY words in the song besides the chorus that I already summarized.  

And this may be nit-picky, but I also get a kick out of how this is "A" Bellingham Playday Song, and not "THE" Bellingham Playday Song. Like, maybe there's a whole series of Bellingham Playday Songs, and this is one of them. I'd love to hear the others. 

If they were still making song-poem compilations, I have to believe this would have been one of the selections. It would absolute have to be. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - A Bellingham Playday Song

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If someone out there has an insight as to what the title might mean, and how it relates to the lyrics, I'd LOVE to hear it. 

~~~

The flipside is called "The Feeling", and it starts out great guns, with a driving piano/bass/drums arrangement, similar to several other TPA records from the period. To my ears, though, it doesn't sustain. The lyricist's work is all over the map. Within the first verse, the singer has professed her feeling that she and her lover will never part, AND that they are drifting apart. 

We quickly move into a piano solo, one which is marked by a few clams, and far less of the energy I felt in those opening bars. When Ellen returns with her vocal, she's now sure that she has lost his love. That was quick. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - The Feeling

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~~~

And now, one of my favorites of all of the Cut-Ups I've ever done. If you are just now hearing this term from me, please check the last several posts, as I've explained what these are and where they came from a few times. 

By the way, if any of the inserts I've used intrigue you, and you want to know where they came from, simply ask, and I will answer, if I remember, which will usually be the case. 

I don't have much use for Lionel Richie's body of work, except for a couple of records with the Commodores and one solo release. But I think that solo release - "Hello" - is quite a good song and record. So it was a natural for me to chop it into bits and make fun of it. 

I think this came out quite nicely, and, as I said with a couple of my other cut-ups, this is not safe for work. 

Download: Lionel Richie - Hello (cut-up)

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On a side note, you may have noticed the word "edit" on some of these cut up files. This is an indication that I've tightened up or slightly changed the original tapes, in order to improve them in some way. 

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, Then, Which Eyes Would You Like Me to Use?

It's February!!!

When I woke up this morning, it was five below zero. If it's anything like that where you are, it's a good day to stay inside and listen to some song-poems. After all, I'm sure nothing else is happening today. 

As (almost) always, I have fixed yet another month's worth of old posts, in this case, those from March, 2011. In that month, I presented a mover and groover from Sammy Marshall, a touching Vietnam related ode from Rodd Keith, a ridiculous very early Cinema label release from The Real Pros, and an offering from a personal favorite Norridge Mayhams as Norris the Troubadour.

~~

Ellen Wayne's name turns up on barely a dozen Tin Pan Alley releases, all from roughly 1962 to 1964, but every one of them that I've heard contains at least one keeper, and in many cases, something really special on at least one side (that link will take you to all of my Ellen Wayne postings, including this one). While today's 45 doesn't contain anything nearly as wonderful as "Don't Touch Me There" (not yet repaired), "Moaning and Groaning Blues" or "Go Not Yet, Oh Go Not Yet", it does feature one cute early '60's style pop song on each of its sides. 

First up, "Don't Look At Me With Those Eyes, Darlin'", a mouthful of a title, and a song with a curious opening and closing. AS/PMA would have it that this release dates solidly in 1963, and yet the opening/closing musical quote is clearly meant to put the listener (and perhaps the lyricist) in the mind of the early 1964 Al Hirt hit instrumental record "Java". There was a minor hit version of "Java" in 1963, by Floyd Cramer, so perhaps this is what this arrangement was based on, or maybe AS/PMA is wrong, and this was recorded just as Al Hirt's record was hitting it big. But there's no way that opening piano figure is a coincidence - it doesn't even really match the song in any way - it can only have been included as a musical message to the lyricist: "Hey, it even SOUNDS like a hit record". 

The song itself actually seems structured closer to "When the Saints Go Marching In" of all things. It's peppy and bouncy, with a minimalist backing, and is over in a brisk 118 seconds, even with the presence of a piano solo. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Don't Look at Me With Those Eyes, Darlin'

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So let's flip the platter over. And here we find "Oh, Dear Daddy", and it's a supper-clubby jazzy sort of number with a story to tell, and Ellen tells it with a swing feel in her voice. The one thing I love about this side (which is one second longer than the flip) is everything that the pianist does during the last 10 seconds of the record, which I will not to describe here, aside from suggesting that you listen carefully in the last moment for the final, low bass note, which is out of tune. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Oh, Dear Daddy!

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Moaning and Groaning!

Who among us would find out that there was a song-poem record containing songs titled "Moaning and Groaning Twist" and "Wanted for Murder!" and not fervently hope that at least one of them lived up to the promise of its title? I certainly did, and was happy to obtain a copy to hold in my own little hands.

And both of them turn out to be worth the price of admission, with "Moaning and Groaning Twist" taking the top prize, for my money.

Let's start with the fact that, in barely two minutes, the song features not one, but TWO bass solos! Then, after the first of these solos, singers Phil Celia and Ellen Wayne come in, singing in lovely harmony over a heavily rhythmic track, with some great drumming and a nice (and lengthy) piano break. The lyrics are concerned with some intense twisting which was taking place in New Orleans - Ellen in particular seems to be really feelin' it - and the whole package is just first rate from start to finish.

Download: Phil Celia and Ellen Wayne - Moaning and Groaning Twist
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Phil's got a solo number on the flip side, in "Wanted for Murder!". The lazy beat, and laid back vocal may throw the listener off at first, until you get to the point of the lyric - what it is that the singer is said to have killed, and why. It's not as clever, in my opinion, as I'm guessing that the lyricist thought it was, but it's still good for a smile.

Download: Phil Celia - Wanted for Murder!
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And just as an aside, this record further confirms to me that, if I had been a song-poet in the late '50's or early '60's, Tin Pan Alley would have been the place to submit my lyrics. They received the most interesting lyrics during that period, and did the most interesting things with them.

Oh, Go Not Yet!!!

Before I get to this week's feature, I wanted to alert you that I've just posted a non-song-poem offering from the Film City label - a vanity record which almost certainly features Rodd Keith on the Chamberlain, and a deeply odd record it is, too, to the WFMU blog, here. And now, on with the countdown: Today, our attention turns back to the throaty, appealing vocals of Ellen Wayne, songstress for the Tin Pan Alley label. Here's an early '60's effort, with appropriately jazzy backing, a 95 second length, and a just-short-of-ridiculous title, "Go Not Yet, Oh, Go Not Yet". This is another sound I just can't get enough of! 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Go Not Yet, Oh, Go Not Yet

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  On the flip side, we hear "(I'm) The Clown", and if anyone can tell me how the addition of parethesis helps that title (rather than just calling it "I'm the Clown"), I'd be very appreciative:

Download: Ellen Wayne - (I'm) The Clown

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Hands Off!

I've not made a habit of featuring the same label two weeks in a row, and I don't think I've ever featured the same performer on the same label, two weeks in a row, before. But I heard this song for the first time two days ago, and absolutely couldn't wait a month or more to share it here. I think it pretty much speaks for itself, in all of 100 seconds. Please enjoy Ellen Wayne's lovely rendition of "Don't Touch Me There!": 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Don't Touch Me There!

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The flip side, "The Night That I Met You", is pretty standard issue stuff for 1960, but were it to have come out a bit later, the writer credit might have been intriguing, since it could then have been thought to indicate that the writer was a certain Mrs. Richard Burton.

Download: Ellen Wayne - The Night That I Met You

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You Devil You

As with last week, I remain sort of consumed with more serious matters, but I always intend to make an effort to post here every week. So, without much comment, here is an excellent Tin Pan Alley effort from Ellen Wayne, "Devil Fly". It sounds to me as if someone at Tin Pan Alley went 15 years into the future and grabbed the arranger and pianist from the William Howard Arpaia albums, and had them do their magic on this number: 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Devil Fly

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The flip side is another bopper, "Take Me In Your Arms Again", and features some of the wobbliest vibrato singing ever heard on a song-poem. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Take Me In Your Arms Again

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What Dance Did You Dance on New Year's Eve?

Happy New Year, everyone! Here's a nice dance record that I wished I'd thought to share before your New Year's Eve parties, because I'm sure it would have gotten everyone out there dancing the "Chicken Neck Boogie". 

Today's song poet went way out of his or her way to find rhyme's with "Cookie", even though the reason that word was chosen appears to be because it rhymes with "Boogie", which it clearly doesn't (rhyme, that is). Ellen Wayne's cool, smooth performance is really too good for this material:

Download: Ellen Wayne - Chicken Neck Boogie

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The flip side, "Too Too Late", also by Ellen Wayne, is beat to hell, and I've tried to clean up the sound as best as I could. This is a pretty standard late '50's ballad, without too much to recommend it either way, aside from one truly sloppy note on the solo. I do wish that the composer, one Mr. or Ms. "Neckers" had been the composer of "Chicken Neck Boogie" though, but that's probably too much to have asked for.

Download: Ellen Wayne - Too Too Late!

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