Stood Up AND Standing Tall

Today, we return to the waning days of one of my favorite labels, Tin Pan Alley. At this point, they were about at the end of their series of releases by "The Melodiers", and about to move towards their final credited artist, another band called "New Image". For "The Melodiers", at least, I tend to hear the records that feature a male singer as having been sung by the same vocalist who had been with the label for some time - Mike Thomas - only now backed with a thicker band sound. I'd be interested to hear if others think the same, or differently.

Anyway, I was quite taken with the mouthful of an ungrammatical title of "Stood Up and Standing Tall in My Saddle Tonight", and was very happy to find that I wasn't disappointed by the song, either. The band plays an energetic, peppy backing, while the singer voices the lyricists tale. That tale is a first person story of a man who was two-timed, then left alone, by his gal, and spends some of the song telling us how proud and happy he is in his saddle, while spending the rest of the song - an inordinate amount of time for someone is feeling "no pain at all" - about how she done him wrong. Meanwhile, the band bashes away behind him most enthusiastically. 

Download: The Melodiers - Stood Up and Standing Tall in My Saddle Tonight

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On the flip side, we have the same ensemble, in thuddish slow rock-a-ballad mode, and with their female lead singer, with "Just Because". The same person wrote both of this lyrics, and I hope he was much more pleased with "Stood Up". 

After one of those dreaded spoken introductions, we get to the song at about the 0:45 point, and it's the equally dreaded "you look happy, but I know you're not" sort of things, with "ain't this a meaningful song" broken chords on the guitar throughout. Blech. 

Download: The Melodiers - Just Because

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And now, something much more enjoyable than that last track. It's two more of my "cut-up" tracks from way back when. If you don't know what this is about, please read the bottom of this post, or any post from late January or February. 

I have two of these for you today, an appetizer and a main course. And for the first time in several weeks, there are no obscenities hidden within these two cut-ups. 

First up, a brief, but I think entertaining little take on Elvis' "Can't Help Fallin' In Love". This doesn't even get us to the second time he sings the chorus, but what's there is fun: 

Download: Elvis Presley - Can't Help Fallin' In Love (cut-up)

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And something a more substantial - a cut-up of one of the sweetest records to ever hit the top ten, Patience and Prudence's "Tonight, You Belong to Me". If you're not familiar with this record, I encourage you to seek it out, and be charmed just about out of your boots, and then seek out more of their material, much of which is off-the-charts wonderful. Anyway, I think this one is pretty funny. 

Download: Patience and Prudence - Tonight, You Belong to Me (cut-up)

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The King is Gone, and So Are Some Squirrels

It's been ages - oddly enough, exactly a year, actually - since I featured a Halmark single here. There's a good reason for that. While there are some fabulous releases on Halmark - virtually all of those being fabulous because of their entertaining level of awfulness - there are many more releases on Halmark which are simply awful, without the benefit of being funny, endearing or otherworldly.

I seem to have nearly exhausted my pre-arranged stack of worthy Halmark releases, so I am only now sharing them when I newly come across which is worth hearing. And I hadn't had that experience in many a month. Until last week.

And actually, I find the first three tracks here to be also unsuitably stultifying. But that last one makes it all worth while. But there may be some of you, who perhaps are particularly fond of that all-too-common item, the dead Elvis song-poem, who may enjoy the first of our four part saga here. It's called "An August Day", it's set to a track we now know to have been originally created to back up the song "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", and is true more often than not on Halmark, the singer is not named.

Download: Halmark Productions - An August Day
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The less said about the next two, ponderous, Christian numbers, the better. The first is "In Gratitude", and what appears to be a slightly off center pressing makes me even more woozy than the performance itself. 

Download: Halmark Productions - In Gratitude
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A favorite, dramatically awful Halmark backing track is the only thing which holds appeal to me in "He's Coming Back to Stay", and it's been used to much greater effect elsewhere. I wonder if the writer minded that the singer speaks, rather than sings, the majority of her lyrics. Then again, with non-musical phrases like "available time" and "people who haven't accepted the Lord", what other choice did they have?

Download: Halmark Productions - He's Coming Back to Stay
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But the reason for sharing this record is the track called "Hunting Country". The lyrics here are all over the map, and gloriously stupid. But I'll let you experience the joys of this ridiculous track without spoiling them.

Download: Halmark Productions - Hunting Country
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It's All Elvis' Fault

I love calypso music. Over the last several years, I've come around to the way of thinking that says that, at least in its original Trinidadian form, calypso may be the most perfect style of music ever developed by humans. 

Today's example is not part of the Trinidad tradition, and by its subject matter, quite clearly comes from the great mid-1950's revival of calypso. It's also more cute than it is "great" or "perfect". 

What little I can find out about this group, which went by the rather unweildy moniker of "The Fabulous McClevertys", is that this was in fact, the family name, and that the band was, for a time, the backing combo for the little known Calypso performer "The Mighty Charmer", a violinest and singer who later abandoned music and became better known under the name Louis Farrakhan. 

Each side of the record fits one of Calypso's typical subjects, with the A-side being quite topical, and the B-side being about one aspect of (as a great Calypso compilation once described it) "the human condition". 

I was rather surprised to find that this single was on Verve, a label associated at the time (1957 or 1958) with some of the best Jazz being made, and additionally, a bit later, with cutting edge comedy.  

The A-side: "Don't Blame It On Elvis": 

Download: The Fabulous McClevertys - Don't Blame It On Elvis

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And the B-Side: "Tickle, Tickle":

Download: The Fabulous McClevertys - Tickle, Tickle

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