Happy Birthday, America!

Howdy, everyone!

I have again updated a month's worth of posts, in this case, November of 2012. These include a Sammy Marshall "special" (with a few comments celebrating the re-election that week of Barack Obama - and weren't those the days?), a happy Rod Rogers record (and a comment on an unexpected death of a family friend) and two different Gene Marshall records - one with an otherworldly instrumental section played by flute quartet (or an imitation thereof), and one specifically shared for that year's Thanksgiving Day. That November was certainly a month of up and down emotions at our house. Can't believe that was almost eight years ago... 

Before I get to today's offering, I also wanted to offer up this rather amazing little newspaper clipping, sent along by Brian Kramp: 

Rod Eskelin, mentioned at the top of the second column, was, of course, Rodd Keith. Thanks, Brian!

And now.... 

We're just a few hours from heading into July, and towards a rather subdued version of our annual national birthday party, this weekend.

So what better time to offer up a song-poem written for the biggest of national birthday's anyone alive at the time can remember, the Bicentennial. And what better (worse?) label to provide us with a song literally titled "Happy Birthday, America" than Halmark. In this case, they turned to label stalwart Jack Kim - this is one of the relatively few releases on the label where they credit the singer - and then seem to have actually commissioned original music for the lyric, rather than one of them moldy old backing tracks.

I said "original music", but am I the only one that, after hearing the opening "Bicentennial! Bicentennial!", expected to next hear "men have named you", so similar is the opening to the old song "Mona Lisa"....

Beyond that, the song-poet seems to believe that the US has done only three things worth mentioning. One is the winning of many battles on behalf of ourselves and the for the freedom of others. Fair enough. The only other two things worthy of comment, apparently, occurred in quick succession in 1968 and 1969, and while impressive and wonderful, hardly seem like the only things a decent country would have accomplished in 200 years.

All I'm saying is, the song-poet seems to be sort of giving just a bit of short-shrift to America's accomplishments.


Download: Jack Kim - Happy Birthday, America
Play:


A moment ago, I mentioned that it was relatively rare for Halmark to name their singers on the labels of their records. That likely has to do with the designs they favored, the most common of which list just the name and address of the song-poet, confusing and confounding record collectors forever since, at least those unfamiliar with song-poems - they tend to think the listed writer is the singer.

Anyway, perhaps they also shied away from listing the singers because they were so inexplicably bad at it. A remarkable number of Halmark records in my possession which do show a named singer, show the wrong named singer. Most often this is a male singer identified on the label of a record sung by a female singer. But I've also got records where the names of frequent label performers Bob Storm and Jack Kim are mixed up.

Now I've speculated that "Bob Storm" may not even have just been one guy, so different are some of the records released under his name. But people know who Jack Kim is/was - Jack Kimmel was his name, and his voice is very distinctive. I have records with his name on them which are clearly the man identified most often as "Bob Storm", and "Bob Storm" records labeled as being by Jack Kim.

In this case, we have Jack's wife Mary Kimmel, but the label says "Jack Kim.

That was a lot of text with nothing to say about the song. That's because the flip is an uninteresting, unoriginal paean to God, similar to approximately 549 other Halmark releases, and using one of those deadly backing tracks. It's written by the same song-poet as the a-side, and titled "Oh Lord Thou Art Powerful".

Download: Labeled as Jack Kim - Oh Lord Thou Art Powerful
Play:

"The Suffering of a Serviceman's Wife" and Other Overwrought Titles

I'm back!!! As I've probably written nearly every year, the month of May is about the busiest one there is in my life - particularly the third week of the month, and as a result, I often end up posting less in May. Such is the case this month, with only two postings. But on the other hand, both were of EP's, so there's been a total of eight songs shared, and that's something....

The folks at Halmark certainly received more than their share of portentous, overwrought lyrics. On the AS/PMA website, Phil Milstein made a guess that this might be due to where Halmark tended to advertise - in "Writer's Digest" - perhaps pulling in a far higher number of people who thought of themselves as having great potential as serious authors and lyricists.

Whatever the cause, ridiculous, ponderous and pretentious song titles and lyrics abound on Halmark records. But never have I seen quite the collection of song-titles as came to me on this EP. Making all that much funnier is that all four tracks are attributed to Bob Storm, Halmark's resident over-the-top baritone (heard in my last post, as well), while in fact only one of the songs here seems to be sung by the singer typically labeled as Bob Storm - in fact, two of them have a lead vocal sung by a woman.

First up, the only true Storm vocal and the one with the least over-done title, is "Unapproachable". For that latter reason, it's probably the least interesting of the four songs to me.

Download: Bob Storm - Unapproachable
Play:

Now, le'ts get to those juicy titles, starting with the one reference above. This is yet another Vietnam-related number, titled, yes, "The Suffering of a Serviceman's Wife", sung of course, not by the identified Bob Storm, but a female vocalist. Seems her man's been wounded over there, and she considers him "half a man".

The song is full of such musically flowing phrases as "fighting for something you thought had a good cause" and "I was expecting to see the same smiling face". Certainly there is good material to come out of this situation - and such songs exist. But this author comes off as petulant and irritated that the army gave her a different person than the one who left her - which I guess is to be expected with this title - his own struggles are pretty much a side note until the final line.

Download: Labeled as Bob Storm - The Suffering of a Serviceman's Wife
Play:

Our favorite female Bob Storm is back again for the Broadway-esque 6/8 thang whimsically (and perhaps a bit less ridiculously) titled "Honeymoon on the Moon". In recent years, some of us have discovered that several of these mysterious Halmark backing tracks are actually dead ringers for existing songs' arrangements, including those for "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Gentle On My Mind". I'm guessing this is another one, but can't put my finger on the song.

Anyway, this one works a bit better, to me, than the other three songs here, because it's at least a bit peppy, and the lyrics are actually a fairly decent match for the backing track and singer, although I'm thrown a bit by the female writer mentioning "my pretty bride and me", decades before that was a possibility. Again, not that any of this means I think this is very good, but it's definitely less "bad" than the rest of this EP.

Download: Labeled as Bob Storm: Honeymoon On the Moon
Play:

Finally, there is the uniquely titled "Trench Coat, Umbrella and Boots", sung, again not by the man typically called "Bob Storm", but by the Halmark stalwart usually billed as "Jack Kim" - although this is not the only time his vocals have been identified as Storm, or vice versa. But since Jack Kim had a career under his real name, it's at least known that this "Jack Kim" is a match for the similarly named real singer behind the pseudonym.

Over one of the most stodgy and overused Halmark backing tracks, he sings a pathetic story of a pathetic feeling man, with the requisite un-musical phrases such a title would suggest - I'm particularly fond of "Walkin' in My Teardrops..."

Download: Labeled as Bob Storm - Trench Coat, Umbrella and Boots
Play:

Mystery Upon Mystery

Here is a new addition to my collection of Halmark 45's. And it presents a number of mysteries, at least one of which is completely unseen (at least by me) up to this point in the saga of the song-poem industry.

I very excitedly bid on, and watched myself win, this Halmark 45, because its label indicated that the vocalist was Rod Rogers. This seemed to me an impossibility. Rodd Keith worked in Los Angeles, and the folks at Halmark (in Boston) could very well have barely been aware of him. Rodd had also retired that particular spelling of his nom-de-song-poem when he moved from Preview (where he was Rodd Keith) to MSR (where he remained Rodd Keith for a time then became Rodd Rogers). The name Rod Rogers (in that spelling) hadn't regularly appeared on records since he'd left Film City, in the mid '60's. Given that the majority of the Halrmark records which can be dated seem to come from 1973-76 (although they existed well before and after these dates), it's not even certain that Rodd Keith was still alive when this recording was released. Could Rodd Keith have made a record, near the end of his life, for the Halmark label?

Sadly, that's not the case. The song is called "Daddy I Love You", and it's quite clearly sung by the husband and wife team of Dodie Frost and Jack Kimmel, who were Halmark stalwarts (with Kimmel's name usually shorted to "Jack Kim", when he was credited at all). It's sung over one of Halmark's patented, reusable backing tracks - and they didn't even bother starting over again when the tape stuck a bit and caused a glitch at the very beginning. I find the Frost/Kim Halmark records to be particularly, egregiously horrible, and this one is no exception.

The song itself is a fairly desperate answer record of sorts to the massive hit song "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast", by the very unfortunate Wayne Newton, which hit number four in Billboard in 1972. While in that song, the father is leaving the mother, only to be pulled back in, for one more try, due to the calls of his daughter, in this case, the child herself is narrating: the mother died in childbirth, and rather than the poignant, life altering moment (or, at least, intended so) of the original song, her lyrics are mostly a complaint that, when her daddy would take her out for a stroll, he would, literally, walk too fast for her. Given the lyrics to this thing, it's downright weird that the title is "Daddy I Love You", which is hardly the main point of the lyrics.

But I would LOVE to know how Rod Rogers' name got attached to this thing.

Download: Dodie Frost and Jack Kimmel (Labeled as Rod Rogers): Daddy I Love You
Play:

Okay, so that's one mystery. When I got done with my disappointment after hearing that Rod Rogers was not on "Daddy I Love You", I flipped the record over and saw that the Frost/Kim team were credited on the flip side. For a moment, I thought - "Maybe the artist credits were reversed, and THIS will be Rod Rogers".

But it's not. However, it's also not Frost and Kimmel! It's quite clearly a vanity recording! As I found in a record I posted in January, Halmark apparently pressed up their song-writer's own recordings from time to time. Or, in this case, someone outside of the Halmark facilities singing the song-writer's song. For, unless there are other mistakes on this record (which is entirely possible), this song was also written by the composer of "Dadd, I Love You", Mrs. Aristy Ledford.

The song has the unlikely titled "My Trailways Bus Driver", and it's a true winner. I don't doubt that Mrs. Ledford wrote the song, or at least that some woman did, at least given that it was written in those hetero-centric days, as the lyrics have a definite, "I'm attracted to the male bus driver" tilt to them. Why, then is the vanity recording performed by what appears to be a mail vocalist?

And what a song (and recording) it is. For one thing, if the early lyrics are to be trusted, the driver is apparently holding the singer while driving the bus. Then there's the whole focus of the song, which is literally a tribute to the driver of a bus doing his job. The sound quality is abysmal, and the "High Fidelity Vocal and Orchestra Directed by Ted Rosen", which are described in exactly that way on the label, consist here of a single six-string guitar.

Download: Labeled as Dodie Frost and Jack Kim - My Trailways Bus Driver
Play:

Who is singing this song? Why did Frost and Kimmel get the credit? Why did Mrs Ledford pay for one song to be produced by the Halmark factory yet submitted another one complete and on tape, sung by a male singer with his guitar? And how on earth did the name of Rod Rogers (who may well have been dead by the time this record was released) end up on this 45?

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on this matter!

Storming the Chapel

To start, a few responses to comments....

First, thanks to everyone who has been reading and listening - I appreciate your eyes and ears on what I'm sharing here more than I can say. And second, thanks to those who have offered up comments, whether occasionally (or once) or many times.

Thanks for the notification of downloads and play-files which have been corrupted somehow. I have fixed the track about One of Satan's Angels, which you can hear here, and one of the fantastic tracks from the Film-Tone label, "Have Faith in Love", which you can hear here. 

I've had a few people ask about the years in which one or more of the records I've shared may have been made. Aside from a few facts gleaned from The American Song-Poem Music Archives' labels page, in most cases, I just don't know. The same goes for those who ask about details on particular records they've found - those inquiries have mostly been about Rodd Keith records. If I have an answer, I'll post it - and if you link your comment to an e-mail address, I'll answer you by e-mail - but in most cases, again, i just don't know. 

And I really enjoy and appreciate the posted comments which go into some detail regarding the songs posted, similar songs, etc. I don't always have much to add, so I don't always respond, but that doesn't mean they aren't appreciated. And I do know I keep promising to repair the old pages. I really do hope to get to that some time in the next few months. It just seems so daunting...

On to this week's post!

~~

The Chapel Recording Company was part of the same team that brought us the tremendous products of Halmark (aka Hallmark) records. I have no idea if Chapel existed before Halmark or at the same time, but at least some of the time, they used the same decrepit backing tracks that were the hallmark of Halmark. The only other Chapel records I own are acetates, but today, here's an honest to goodness 45, although my preferred side (of the two) sounds worse than many acetates I've heard.

And it's my preferred side because it features everyone's favorite Halmark dude, BOB STORM!!! He's not named on the label, as usual, but it's clearly him. And not only that, it has one of my two favorite Halmark backing tracks - the one most famously used on on "My Hamburger Baby". If you listen closely, I think you can hear some differences between the track, as used here, and as used on "Hamburger", which, if true, would confirm that Halmark owned the multi-track reels for these tracks. To my ears, the final instrumental coda is missing some of the instruments heard on the version used on "Hamburger".

The other remarkable thing about this record, titled "What is Life Without You", is that it is one of the poorest pressings I've ever heard. The surface noise in the opening sections is a mystery - the record is as clean as they come. And the track audibly wobbles. This is not my turntable OR an offcenter pressing - it seems to have come off of the original reel sounding like this. It's truly horrible.

But Bob Storm comes through like a pro, his over-the-top unctuousness never even missing a beat. Enjoy!

Download: No Artist Named: What is Life Without You?
Play:

The flip side features that other label stalwart, Jack Kim (also uncredited), on a tedious (3 1/2 minute long) piece of religious tribute, perfect for those who want to do penitence in Lent, "With Him in Glory"

Download: No Artist Named: With Him in Glory
Play:

A Halmark Record Like Few Others

My inclination was actually to title today's presentation "A Halmark Record Like No Other", but since I haven't seen every Halmark record, I'm not going to make that assumption. But I know I haven't seen another one like this. What we have hear is clearly a vanity recording of a gentleman singing his own song, accompanied (very likely doing it himself) by a single guitar.

To hear any "real live musician" on a Halmark track - Halmark being the home of the canned, discarded backing track over which the house singers would sing the lyricists' offering - is startling. It's also jolly fun to see this solo performance carry the credit "High Fidelity Vocal and Orchestra directed by Ted Rosen".

As to the fun to be had listening to Daniel L. Johnson singing and playing his song "Backing Up in Boston", well, that fun is certainly there to be had, but I'll leave the discovery thereof to the listener!

Download: Daniel Johnson - Backing Up in Boston
Play:

For the flip side, it's back to the Halmark salt mines, for a tried and true backing track, one I've heard on at least a dozen of the label's releases, over which we have the typically shrill stylings of house tenor Jack Kim. I will admit that I have listened to "Time That I Take Out" three times today, and while I recognize that the lyricist (the wonderfully named Preston Prescott) is expressing his reasons for leaving his relationship, his wordy expressiveness leaves me gasping at times, unable to quite figure out the specific meaning of some of his phrases, including the one in the title.

Oh, and technically speaking, Ted Rosen didn't direct the High Fidelity Orchestra heard on this side, either.

Download: Jack Kim - Time That I Take Out
Play: