"Hi-Fi Baby" and Three Other Non-Hits

Howdy, folks!

Right here at the start I want to share that a new online friend of mine named Vinnie has gifted me with nearly four dozen vintage song-poems ads. I got a bunch from another person several years ago and shared them on this site, one per post, and it's possible that there is some duplication here, but that's far more work of comparison than I am up for at the moment, so I'm just going to share them over the next few months in the order they were in the file he sent to me. 

Here is the first one: 

Thanks, Vinnie. Here is some information about what else went on at that address in the top ad. Oh, and if anyone wants to try calling that number and letting us know what happens, GO FOR IT!

And now, let's walk on Air. 

Today, it's another Air compilation 45 - an EP in fact, featuring three disparate song-poem stalwarts and one complete mystery (at least to me). 

The EP opens up with what is by far the best song on the record - no surprise there, as it comes from the often-above-average song poem mill run by Lee Hudson, and featuring his frequent male go-to, Jeff Reynolds on "Hi-Fi Baby"

I bought this EP (on eBay) solely because I was almost sure that Jeff Reynolds singing for Lee Hudson on a song called "Hi-Fi Baby" would be worth hearing. I was not disappointed. While the lyrics want to be about dancing to rock and roll, it's more of a swing record, with Hudson's typical small band arrangement, fantastic and thick backing harmonies - of the sort I swoon for - and a verse sung in what seems to be triple-tracked unison. I wouldn't be surprised if that section was inspired by Jim Lowe's "The Green Door", which in my book is one of the 100 greatest tracks ever recorded. Come to think of it, perhaps the whole record owes something to "The Green Door". This one's a keeper. 

Download: Jeff Reynolds With Orch - Hi-Fi Baby

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Are you ready now to go about as far in the other direction as possible, with a bit of mystery thrown in, too? Well, let me introduce you to "My Valentine" by Leo Lebow. The mystery here is that I have absolutely NO idea what song-poem outfit put this monstrosity together, or who "Leo Lebow" might be. I guess it sounds a little like Halmark, if their backing tracks had high fidelity sound. But they didn't, and this sounds like a live track, although Leo's vocal sounds grafted on to me. The whole construction reminds me of something that Star-Crest or Noval would have done if they actually had had money. 

I suppose that there are people who like this sort of musical setting and this type of singing, and for them, I would guess they'd say Leo Lebow does an adequate job (unlike the singers on Star-Crest and Noval). But good God, I hate this sort of music. 

But anyway, if anyone reading this has an insight into what company produced this track, please offer up thoughts. 

Download: Leo Lebow With Orch - My Valentine

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The flip side is all Globe all the time. Kris Arden is up first with "Suddenly I Knew". It's got an appealing, loping beat, and a sweet, engaging vocal. But oh, those lyrics. Not only is the title phrase uttered more times than ALL of the other lines of lyric combined, those other lines hit their peak with the writer's admission.... not that she'd pledge her life to the person she just met, but that she'd GIVE HER LIFE for this person. 

I actually get much of the lyric here. As a young, young man, I once spent two hours with someone and found my world turned upside down. I'll give the lyricist that. But has any person ever had the experience of meeting another person for the first time and immediately being ready to die for him or her? I'm guessing not. 

Download: Kris Arden with Orch - Suddenly I Knew

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And that leaves us with the King of the World.... er, the king of Globe, Sammy Marshall, technically  billed Sonny Marshall for this rendition of "Just Before Day. 

As far as the musical setting, this is one of Globe's early Twist-like records, at which Sammy/Sonny excelled, and enjoyable from that perspective, but again, the lyrics let us all down. Essentially, the lyrics describe, blow-by-blow, a lovingly teasing bit of conversation that the song-poet had with his lady. Not only is the story not very long (even at 104 seconds, half the story is repeated twice), but it seems to be meant as humorous. And the biggest problem for me is, it's just not humorous. Plus, the lyricist rhymed "five" with "five". Penalize, penalize - that rhyme is null and void. 

But the sound of the track is nice. If it in a language I didn't understand, I'd probably like it quite a bit more. 

Download: Sonny Marshall With Orch - Just Before Day

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A 1960 Wolf-Tex / Globe EP

I've only shared two posts this month, but I made both of them EP's, to make up for that low number of posts. Today's offering is from the Wolf-Tex label, a somewhat schizophrenic outfit that seemed to sometimes serve as the outlet for the song-poems of Carrie Biggs and Stanley Herron, among others, while also releasing rockabilly and country records by a few acts, including one Harold Montgomery, the father of John Michael Montgomery, as well as another which fetches over $400 on the rockabilly market. And yet... some of those records may have also been song-poems. 

Their record number system also went through a few revisions, with records sporting three digit, four digit and even five digit label numbers across what were a small number of releases. The song poems on Wolf-Tex seem to have all (or nearly all) come from the Globe song-poem factory. I get much of this information from the Wolf-Tex page at the AS/PMA website, where you can also view a photo of the delightful Carrie Biggs, although I also own several records on the label not reflected on that page, and there are multiple YouTube videos of records on the label - although not this one.

Three of the four songs on this EP are listed as being sung by Kris Arlen and John Hurley. "Kris Arlen" is most certainly the singer variously identified elsewhere on song-poem records as Kris Arden, Joan Auburn and Damita. I have identified her as Kris Arden in the tags, as the Arlen name seems to have been limited to Wolf-Tex releases. Who John Hurley is/was, I have no clue.  

Two of the three songs are most definitely songs sung from a male perspective towards/about a female, and the main vocalist is John Hurley, yet Kris Arlen is listed first for all three, even on our first track, "Be the Little Girl I Used to Know", where she is barely present aside from a few harmonies and wordless backing vocals. 

More curious still: The three Arlen/Hurley tracks are listed as featuring the "MG Orchestra". MG appears to have been a vanity label with no direct link to Wolf-Tex, aside from the common link to Globe, and what's more, the label appears to have only ever issued one album, and it has no songs written by those song-poets whose name appear and recur on Wolf-Tex releases. The mysteries of the song poem world.  

Download: Kris Arlen and John Hurley, MG Orchestra - Be the Little Girl I Used to Know

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The second song on side one is "Little Nobody (Somebody Loves)", and if anything, first-billed Kris Arlen is even less featured on this track, providing multi-tracked harmony backing vocals and not sharing the lead with John Hurley at all.  

Download: Kris Arlen and John Hurley, MG Orchestra - Little Nobody (Somebody Loves)

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The Globe factory's MVP, Sammy Marshall, shows up for one song on this record, curiously also assigned an orchestra, rather than a singing credit, and assigned not to MG, but to the parent company, Globe. The song is "If You Forget Me, I'll Die". Interestingly, this lyric (but not, technically, this song) is available on YouTube, in a version on a Wolf-Tex single (not an EP) and also sung by Sammy Marshall, but that version is completely different - and superior, I'd say - to this one. It's got a different melody, chord structure, rhythm, everything!

Download: Sammy Marshall Orchestra - If You Forget Me, I'll Die

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The record finishes with another "duet" featuring Kris and John, but really mostly John (again). At least on "Miss Belle of the Blue", they due sing in harmony here and there. This song is about a beauty contest in Kentucky. You'll be glad to know that the first two qualities upon which the winner is chosen is her figure and how she does her hair. And as with the previous Sammy Marshall track, this one is ALSO available on another, at least somewhat better Wolf-Tex 45, which is somehow identified on YouTube as Bluegrass (??), and which can be heard here. 

Download: Kris Arlen and John Hurley, MG Orchestra - Miss Belle of the Blue

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Kris "Patsy Cline" Arden

To quote a previous post featuring the Inner-Glo label: 

As I do whenever I feature either an Edith Hopkins composition and/or a record on her custom label (out of Emporia, Kansas), "Inner-Glo", I will again explain that Ms. Hopkins is my favorite song-poet, based on the high quality of her (large number of) best songs, and also that she was a bit of a curio in the song-poem world in that, although she used the song-poem factories, particularly Globe, it appears that she wrote all the words AND music to her songs, so she was not technically fully part of the song-poem world. Additionally, although it doesn't apply here, she also wrote and commissioned records of certain songs meant to be directed at the legitimate radio/record store/Billboard magazine world, most notably with (but not limited to), the incomparable "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got)", by Betty Jayne.

"I Don't Get Over You" is another solid piece of songwriting. And as I wrote about a previous Inner-Glo release by Kris Arden, the singer and the arranger had clearly been listening to some of the later recordings made by Patsy Cline. The flute doesn't really fit in with that description, and seems superfluous to me, but otherwise, this is countrypolitan, Cline style all the way around. The harmony vocal on the bridges is particularly nice. 

Download: Kris Arden - I Don't Get Over You

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The flip side is "So You're Sorry Again", and pretty much everything I said about "I Don't Get Over You" applies here, although in this case, the unnecessary addition is a tenor sax player, whose honking is distracting and doesn't fit with the feel of the rest of the band. I don't think this is as solid a performance as the flip, but I do like a few moments of tight harmony, and it's worth a listen.

Download: Kris Arden - So You're Sorry Again

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She Wants Him Back. He's Just Passing Through

 Greetings! 

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season, whatever it is you celebrate or don't celebrate. Here's hoping for a fabulous 2024. 

Whatever happens next year, though, it will happen without one of my favorite people in the world. Tommy Smothers died this week, and I want to just say a word or two here. That's because I think The Smothers Brothers - in addition to what they did for the expanding of boundries in television (and for letting Pete Seeger back on the air) - they were, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest comedy acts of the 20th century. I'm probably forgetting someone or some team, but I'd put them with Monty Python, The Marx Brothers, Shelley Berman, George Carlin and David Letterman and the staff of "Late Night" on that short list. 

And specifically for Tommy, I'd say that I'm not sure anyone ever had better comic timing or a more fully realized comic persona. And he was a hell of a guitar player, too, something that flew under the radar, but of which he was very proud. 

My favorite political site, Electoral-Vote.com has a nice write up about Tommy, saying far more than I want to here, and doing it better than could. 

Here are my two favorite Smothers Brothers tracks, both of which make my personal all-time favorite top 200 tracks ever recorded: Mediocre Fred and Crabs Walk Sideways.

Also, please keep reading after the song-poem post below, as I am debuting my latest recording, a parody song I've been working on, off and on, for the last seven months or so. 

~~

For the last post of the year, I have a sweet record from the early days of the Globe song-poem factory, featuring the honey-voiced Kris Arden and the ubiquitous Sammy Marshall, both acoompanied by the usual gang, here identified as "The Keys". This record is from early enough in Globe's existence that they hadn't fallen into the bland, interchangable backing sounds that crop up repeatedly on later releases. 

Oddly, the AS/PMA page for this label has the artists reversed, each credited with the wrong side, and that error has made its way onto other discographies, as well. AS/PMA also dates the release to 1962, but this three star non-recommadation ("moderate sales potential") from Billboard says 1961. I was amused to see, a few slots down from that listing, Eddie Holland's "Jamie" - which is a GREAT record and which did chart top 40 pop and top ten R & B - relagated to a very poor two star rating. 

Kris Arden's offering, "Sundown Valley" is particularly nice, a country flavored shuffle in which the singer tries to coax a someone special to come back to her hometown, with a few enticing things about the town that they experience together. Kris' vocal is just lovely, the equal (in the song poem world) of a Cara Stewart performance, and that's high praise from me, indeed.  

Download: Kris Arden and the Keys - Sundown Valley

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It strikes me that Sammy Marshall's turn, on the flip side, could be considered the answer record to "Sundown Valley", and the fact that both of the songs were written by the same song-poet makes that even more possible, although I have no way of knowing for certain. 

Anyway, in "Just Passing Through", Sammy sings of a woman who has fallen in love with him, despite his best efforts to let her know he wasn't going to stick around, which could certainly explain why Kris' man is no longer in "Sundown Valley". 

The music here is a little less compelling - I could certainly do without the sax solo, for one thing - but I am a sucker for that pained tone on certain words and notes, something that Sammy excelled at. 

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Keys - Just Passing Through

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~~

And now for something completely different. About six years ago, something inspired me - something insistent - to write a parody lyric for the song "Up Up and Away" by the Fifth Dimension. This is not even a record that I like - not when it came out when I was seven, and not now - and although I've written and recorded parodies in the past, all but one were of records that I love. Anyway, it wasn't until April of this year that I decided to make a track of my parody. 

Anyone my age or perhaps even 10-15 years younger will likely know the song this is based on, but for those who don't, the original can be found here. 

I decided along the way that I wanted my music track to sound as close to exactly like the original Fifth Dimension track as I could possibly get out of my Midi set-up, and I think I succeeded to the point that the track sounds like a Karaoke track. It is not - I built it from the ground up, instrument by instrument. I worked on it off and on, sometimes on weekends, mostly when I took days off from work. It took me over seven months! 

I am very happy with the final product.... except that I can't settle on which prospective title is better, the one that reflects the original song's title ("Come, Come in and Play") or the one which better reflects the text of the parody ("My Curio Filled Room"). Regardless, I hope you enjoy it, and would love to hear comments, including thoughts on the better title. 

Download: Bob Purse - My Curio Filled Room (AKA Come, Come In and Play)

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Once in a Blue Hill

I'm back after yet another too-long-of-a-break, but again this week, I have a bonus posting, with four song-poems instead of the usual two. 

 But first, it's time for more updates! I've traveled all the way back to February of 2009, just one month into the song-poem project that is continuing to this day. Keep in mind that, in those days, I was not always sharing label scans, and I was also regularly sharing things which were not song-poem related. 

In that month, I posted a Halmark release that someone actually took the time to label as "Horrible", a set of two full singles and a fifth track from Rodd Keith, one pair of oddly named tracks from two different labels, and another pair of favorite - and ridiculous - song poems about a.) squabbling spouses and b.) Nancy Reagan

Also that month, I shared both sides of a truly awful vanity single by one Cal Andrews - a magnificently terrible pair of sides, and a cover version of The Box Tops' classic, "The Letter", which I found on a three inch reel of tape. 

Today's double feature is not two separate singles, as it was a few weeks ago, but four tracks from an EP. And today's EP is from the teeny tiny Blue Hill Records label of Union City, New Jersey, which was likely under the ownership of people named Irving Decker and Mina Zeigler, perhaps among others, including someone with the last name Ambrose. Mr. Decker's name shows up as the song-poet for five of the six known songs on the label, and Ms. Zeigler and the person named Ambrose each co-wrote two of the same six songs.

The other documented Blue Hill release features songs from both the Globe song-poem factory and Lee Hudson's company, but for this EP, all four tracks come from Globe. I'm only really enamored of one of the foursome, but I liked it enough to share the EP, under the theory that I often share singles where there is only one good song, so why not do the same with an EP which has a single good track. 

The single kicks off with Globe's most frequent artist, Sammy Marshall. "New Baby", has some things going for it, mostly the goofy take on the old cliché of a father preventing a girl from dating because she's too young, what with the references to "her pappy", and, in the first line, "an apple green suit". On the other hand, the Globe band is on autopilot, and there's nothing remotely interesting about the melody or vocal performance. The dip in the speed and key in the last seconds of this track are on the record - perhaps a moment of tape stretch? 

Download: Sammy Marshall - New Baby 

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The aforementioned really good track - to my ears, at least - comes next, and it's from the rarely heard from Globe singer who's work was released under the name "The Mystery Girl", or, as in this case, "Mystery Girl". "How I Wish You Knew" grabs me immediately, with a timeless chord progression, straight out of a vaudeville number, bouncy and ingratiating in the best ways possible. The singer offers an appealingly pleading vocal, in a manner I'd enjoy regardless of what she was singing. Then there's a ragtimey piano solo and that suitably vaudevillian ending... ah, what's not to love!

Download: Mystery Girl - How I Wish You Knew

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The flip side of this record is beat to hell, as you'll hear. And I'd prefer to think that maybe it was stored somewhere where that side got damaged, because the concept that the flip side got more play than the Mystery Girl song - indeed, that the flip side got much play at all, given it's fairly wretched contents - is hard to fathom. 

Both tunes on this side are sung by Kris Arden, a fine singer on many Globe releases, who can't help but sputter, given the material she was given to work with. The worst of the two is surely the first one, "It's My Turn". It would seem to me a challenge to create a song with that title worse than the Diana Ross track that carries the same title, but the folks at Globe succeeded. I defy anyone to follow these chords or this melody from start to finish - different members of the band appear to be on different chords at the same moment at least a couple of times. 

I'll guess that Kris Arden was sight reading, and hats off to her for staying on pitch, as there are moments when the notes seem to be thrown her way at random, and with little relation to the chords being played. 

Download: Kris Arden - It's My Turn

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In comparison, the final track, "I'm Always Yearning For You" is just deadly dull, in a stultifying arrangement, and the surface noise here really becomes distracting, too. 

Download: Kris Arden - I'm Always Yearning For You

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By Special Request

First, this week, I would like to acknowledge that today is the 40th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. Amazingly, and sadly, John has now been gone nearly as long as the time that he was alive. 

~~

Secondly, and as (almost) always for the past many months, I have updated yet another month's worth of old posts, in this case, October of 2011. These include a very early, one man band performance on Cinema, Norm Burns failing to sound angry on a song about being angry, a great, really early Rod Rogers record on Film City, and another ridiculous Tin Pan Alley offering. 

~~ 

I received a request a few days ago from an old friend, asking if I owned a particular EP, and if so, if I could make MP3's and send them along. 

As it happened, not only due I own that very EP, it was right near the top of the pile of "these would be good to share", that sits a few feet from my record player and computer. 

So that came together nicely, and I now have two reasons to share this EP: it contains two tracks which are two good not to share, and it was specifically requested!

So here it goes!

As I've mentioned before, Air records seems to have been less than a producer of song-poem records themselves, then a clearinghouse for the works of a few disparate song-poem factories. Today's EP features three song-poems from the early days of the Globe factory, and one from Lee Hudson and his favorite singer. 

We start with my favorite of the four - "Daddy-O", by Kris Arden ("with Orch.", which all four songs tag onto the singing credit). To my ears, the folks at Globe very quickly settled into a midtempo, bland sound, but at the beginning (and occaisionally thereafter), they were capable of swinging and creating an effective rockin' beat, and that's the case here. The fact that this one features such boppin' sounds (and the "zone" number on the address) dates this one to the early 1960, probably 1962, based on the documented dates of other Air releases. 

Love that stinging guitar intro!!!

Download: Kris Arden With Orch. - Daddy-0

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Almost as good, even more rockin' but with elements of a true car crash, too, is the second track, "A Dog Gone Good Gal", sung by Sammy Marshall, under the cunningly devised aka of "Sonny Marshall". 

The backing tracks got it going on, and Sammy gives it his all, but these are among the least sing-able lyrics I've heard in some time (are there any other songs that try to fit "how we both love hot dogs with all the trimmings" into a twist-style rocker?), and I'm sure his beloved was thrilled to hear herself described as she herself having "all the trimmings". 

Download: Sonny Marshall With Orch - A Dog Gone Good Gal

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Side two starts with the only non-Globe entry of the EP, and it's a unusually weak Cara Stewart entry from Lee Hudson's production stable, featuring the song "Dakota Hills". Interestingly, as Paul McCartney would do more than half a decade later, she refers not to the Black Hills of South Dakota, but of "The Black Hills of Dakota". I've never heard anyone else, besides on those two songs, describe that location in that way, leaving out the "South". 

For me, that's about the only interesting thing here, as this seems to drag on forever. Her voice is wonderful, as always, and the echoey production is right up my alley, but even with all that, it's just dull, dull dull. 

Download: Cara Stewart With Orch. - Dakota Hills

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And finally, we're back to Globe and Sammy, er, Sonny Marshall, with the song "Walking and Crying". This is one of those mid-tempo tracks that would eventually become the hallmark of Globe, complete with the sort of "you done me wrong" lyrics that are a dime a dozen (and that's being generous) among song-poets. 

Download: Sonny Marshall With Orch. - Walking and Crying

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Thanks for the suggestion/request!

Dreamy Music to Make Your Inners Glo

Happy Second Half of the Year. Let's hope it's better than the First Half. 

I have updated another month's worth of broken posts, October of 2012 in this case. We're getting there.....

This week's fixes include a special post of a Bob Storm record sent to me by Darryl Bullock, a set of two disparate offerings from Tin Pan Alley, a pairing of Cara Stewart and "The Mystery Girl" singing a song with a mangled title, and a fairly awful Dick Kent number on MSR. 

As I do whenever I feature either an Edith Hopkins composition and/or a record on her custom label (out of Emporia, Kansas), "Inner-Glo", I will again explain that Ms. Hopkins is my favorite song-poet, based on the high quality of her (large number of) best songs, and also that she was a bit of a curio in the song-poem world in that, although she used the song-poem factories, particularly Globe, it appears that she wrote all the words AND music to her songs, so she was not technically fully part of the song-poem world. Additionally, although it doesn't apply here, she also wrote and commissioned records of certain songs meant to be directed at the legitimate radio/record store/Billboard magazine world, most notably with (but not limited to), the incomparable "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got)", by Betty Jayne.

Anyway, what we have today is a Hopkins special from that Inner-Glo label, from about 1964, and sounding all the world like some sort of brilliant mixture of a Patsy Cline song with production one might have found coming out of certain early '60's Los Angeles studios.

Whatever you want to call it, I think "That's the Place I Should Be" is just lovely. The lilting melody, the appealing duet vocals, and the loping 6/8 beat played by creating a wonderfully dreamy sound. And... I may have mentioned this before, but I adore the sound of a vibraphone, and the presence of one on both sides of this record (including a solo in each track!) is the perfect addition.

Download: Kris Arden - That's the Place I Should Be
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The flip side, "Should I Forget", doesn't have as much going for it - its main attraction for me is some fabulous vibraphone flavoring and another solo. Otherwise, while it's structurally somewhat similar to the flip side, and the lyrics are considerably better than the vast majority of song-poems, there's not much to set it apart from 100 other slow 6/8 weepers.

Download: Kris Arden - Should I Forget
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Words and Music by "Jim" Stross

I know posting around here has been a little sparse in recent months, and particularly in January, but BOY OH BOY do I have a lot to share today, including eight previously unheard song-poems, all from the same disc.

First up, I am happy to announce that I have been invited to be part of yet another podcast, this one focusing on my own personal 25 favorite song-poem and song-poem related records. This has been in the works for over six months, and the podcaster, Brian Kramp, and I finally did the interview late in January. The podcast can be heard here and here, and if you want to see the list of songs, it can be found here (the list is in reverse order, from 25 up, with a section near the top of a handful of song-poem related discs (which are not actually song poems). It's all explained in the show.

Brian was nice enough to include one of the songs from my recently released album of comic songs, and also to include a cover I performed, live, of one of my favorite song-poem related records, at the end of the show.

Looking over the list, there are some others I might have included - and I've been invited to do a second episode. I think there might be a few replacements in the bottom half of the list, so this is not my absolute top 25, but it's close, and the top 10-12 are unshakable. And as I've mentioned here before, my tastes in song-poems does not necessarily match that of the larger (however large it is) song-poem fandom world - there are, for example, no MSR, Sammy Marshall or Gene Marshall tracks in this top 25, it does reflect that my basic taste in music prefers things from before 1965 in a lot of cases, and a LOT of the fringe of this fringe world is represented.

I hope you'll enjoy it.

Brian has also offered up a multitude of song-poem ads that he's found, since our interview, and I'm going to share those with you, much as I shared a similar collection that was sent to me a few years ago. I don't have a lot of details about them. Here's one from Calgary:

~~~

Second, as has been the case for the last several months now, I have fixed yet another month worth of postings, in this case, January of 2014. This was a month I tried out a short lived feature in which I shared song-poems about places, a sort of song-poem travelogue. This includes the earliest known "Real Pros" record, featuring a trip to Napoli, a peppy Rodd Keith trip to Wisconsin, an absolutely wonderful pair of polkas from Cara Stewart, and a soulful vocal from Gene Marshall. I remember deciding to go on that little song-poem road trip, and can hardly believe it was over six years ago!

This completes my postings from 2014, with the exception of a massive post I did upon the occasion of the death of Pete Seeger, which I will have to put back together when I have considerably more time. 

~~~

To make up for the slow down in postings lately, I thought this would be a good time to share a song poem album. In this case, "album" is a bit of an overstatement, as this is a ten-inch special, containing eight songs and about 24 minutes of music. But it's a unique entry, in that it represents an otherwise unknown label and song-poet. 

The songwriter - who in this case wrote both the words and music, making this a song-poem/vanity hybrid, is identified as "Jim" Stross, just like that, with quotation marks. He employed the Globe song-poem factory and its stable of singers, providing that key link between vanity project and song-poem release. The label is JKS, presumably Mr. Stross' initials, and the label informs us that the record is "Not For Sale". Don't tell anyone that I bought it on eBay. 

The first side contains the following four songs: Just Before Sunset, One Night in Tucson, Sudden Love & Stop Playing With My Heart. The first three are sung by Sammy Marshall, the final one by Kris Arden. They generally have the typical Globe studios sound. I have not separated them out - here is side one: 

Download: Various Artists - Words & Music by "Jim Stross", Side One

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Side two starts with my favorite of the eight songs, a Sammy Marshall dance special - which are almost always fun - titled "Dip, Flip, Twist, Stomp". This is followed by My One Ambition (which has a co-writer and is sung by Kris Arden), Autumn Rain (sung by Mary Kaye), and Santa Claus Means Christmas (sung by Kris Arden). Enjoy!

Download: Various Artists - Words & Music by "Jim Stross", Side Two

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A Favorite Topic: Astronauts!

Divshare continues to misbehave, and if anyone has found a suitable replacement (I'm not fond of the clunky "Box" site), please let me know. Even when Divshare is "working" nowadays, you can only upload one file at a time, which is not a way to reconnect all of the old tracks on this site. Suggestions?

 

As has been pointed out many times before, the height of the song-poem business coincided with the Space Race, and as a result, there are a lot of songs about various aspects of that international contest.

Here's a label which is new to me, seemingly created for song-poet Jerry Thomas - Jay-Tee Records - no doubt (based on the singers) a product of the Globe song-poem factory, at least on this release.

I'm sort of sad that this astronaut record - "The Tale of John Glenn", as performed by Ken Richards - turns out to mostly feature spoken word verses, because the track is rollicking (and actually sounds like a backing track to a real hit), and the chorus has a dynamite tune and a memorable rhyming couplet:

In the global race from nuclear fission
He put his country in the ace position

It would have been nice for Ken to have pronounced "nuclear" correctly, but he's hardly alone in that. But how good could this have been if the verses were sung, and as catchy, as that chorus?

Ken Richards with Orchestra and Chorus - The Tale of John Glenn

Globe stalwart Kris Arden gets Jerry Thomas' other song, "A Happy Day's Comin'". This one doesn't do it for me the way the flip side does. The song is nothing special and neither the band or the singer seems all that interested in the material.

Kris Arden with Orchestra and Chorus - A Happy Day's Comin'

A Brosh-Tastic EP

It's four for the price of two today, here at song-poem central, and what's more, today's EP, on the tiny Brosh label, features four different singers, all but one from the Globe song-poem empire.

First up is frequently used Globe female vocalist Kris Arden, with a song not written by Smokey Robinson, nor sung by Mary Wells, yet still titled "My Guy". The backing track is Globe 101 - if not for the lyrics, I'm sure Sammy Marshall would have been singing this. But just listen to these lyrics - her guy sounds like a dreamboat; he's swell.

Download: Kris Arden - My Guy
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Speaking of Sammy Marshall, he's up next, with a number titled "Just a Few". This is also paint-by-numbers Globe stuff, and Sammy sounds (to me, anyway) pretty darned wistful, as if he believes the songwriter doesn't expect to win the girl. The ache in his voice here doesn't match the promise of the lyrics.

By the way, I'm going to make another file of this record tonight and see if it gets rid of some of the harshness of the sax portions (I didn't notice at the time of making this file that there was so much distortion, and the other tracks seem to be fine, so it might just be the track).

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Keynoters - Just a Few
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Best of the batch by a wide margin is "Makes My Heart Start Flopping Around", sung by everyone's favorite, The Mystery Girl. Here we have a swingin' little track, with a winning vocal, a nice band sound, and a lyric that, with a few improvements, could have sounded like someone's attempt at a hit record, at least during the late '50's (although I'm pretty sure this record is not from the late '50's). I could do without the honking sax, but that's a minor complaint - this is a fun song and record.

Download: The Mystery Girl - Makes My Heart Start Flopping Around
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The final track, on the other hand, is as vapid as they come. It's called "I Love 'Em So", and it does NOT sound like it comes from the Globe world (so to speak). The lyrics here are literally as stupid as I've ever heard on a song-poem 45, and there are so few of them that some sections have to be repeated three times (almost everything is sung at least twice) in the 110 seconds it takes for the record to mercifully end. The bridge is especially inspired:

Nothing but girls
Lots of girls
Nothing but girls
I'm in a whirl

I don't believe I've come across the song stylings of Ronnie May before, and I'm not sure what casa-de-song-poems put this masterpiece together, but I'm sort of interested in hearing more.

Download: Ronnie May - I Love 'Em So
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A Sammy Marshall/Kris Arden Globe Acetate!

Another rarity today! Perhaps not as rare as a Stylecraft 78, or a Cubs song-poem, the combination of which was shared a few weeks ago, but a 78 acetate from Globe isn't all that common, either. That's what I have here.

The Globe company released few "records" as such on their own label, mostly limiting their own name to demos of their products on acetates, and putting their actual "releases" out on literally dozens of labels. I have several Globe demos, most of them on 45's, and most of those are simple piano and vocal demos.

But in this case, we have what sounds like a finished product, and a pair of songs that could easily have found release on any of those myriad labels that they were connected with.

First up is label mainstay Sammy Marshall, and the song "Winds of Chance", a song and arrangement which is a perfect fit for Sammy's talents. There are few elements to this record which give it away as anything but a failed attempt at a hit (mostly a few bum notes here and there in the backing, and some less than inspired lyrics).

Download: Sammy Marshall - Winds of Chance
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Over on the flip side is another of those clues to this not being a "real release", that being that the flip is by another artist entirely, in this case Kris Arden. This performance of "Take Your Letters", is, to my ears, a slightly clunkier arrangement and performance of a slightly stronger song than the one Sammy got to sing. I'm not a fan of Globe's reliance on hokey sax solos, however, I am partial to the brief guitar solo here, and a few of the simple, accented fills performed by the drummer, as well as the warm lead vocal.

Download: Kris Arden - Take Your Letters
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Something a Bit Different from Sammy Marshall

If you've been listening to song-poems for any length of time, you've probably noticed that almost every Sammy Marshall record fits into one of a limited number of categories - rockin' 1960's party anthem, happy love song, sad love ballad, etc. - provided by the Globe Records factory which provided Sammy records to a seemingly endless number of ssmall labels. But today's offering, "Picture in the Fire", doesn't fit into any of those categories, being a sort of spooky meditation of a song, with appropriate accompaniment and production. Perhaps it comes from early in Globe's song-poem work, or perhaps the song-poet submitted the song complete, words and music, leading to this interesting performance. Whatever the story, it's definitely worth a listen: 

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Rays - Picture In the Fire

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  (By the way, one online discography indicates that this label - Crescendo - is the same label as the GNP Crescendo label which was a significant force for a time in the 1960's singles market. This does not appear to be the case - for one thing, it would mean this record came out in about 1956, which is unlikely, and for another, it would mean that the label both changed its name and went legit at some point in the early 1960's, which is even more unlikely.) 

The flip side is fairly unfocused, in both construction and performance (have a listen to that backing!), in addition to a clunky name. Here's Kris Arden with "Ever (Modern Fantasy)":

Download: Kris Arden and the Rays - Ever (Modern Fantasy)

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On a Bender

I'm dreadfully late this week, but I think that not only will today's posting make up for it, but an on-time posting for Thanksgiving, this Thursday, will also be worth making time for. I had great hopes upon getting this record, and while the original reason for my excitement did not pan out, the actual subject of this record is in no way a let down. I did think that maybe a record called "The Bender Song" would be about binge drinking, and was really interested in hearing what Sammy Marshall would do with that subject. But it turns out that the song is actually about a famous 19th century family who lived in Labette County, Kansas, and who are known to history as "The Bloody Bender Family", due to their having been serial killers. You can read about them here. Sammy Marshall and the Sun-Rays (how's that for a mismatch of group name and song subject) sound almost giddy in singing about mass murderers, as you'll now hear:

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Sun-Rays - The Bender Song

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Good to know that this record was FREE! What's even more amazing is that this 45 was meant to promote Kansas, on the occasion of the state's Centennial, which is spelled "Centenial" on the label! The flip side, "Come to Kansas", which was also co-written by the wonderfully named Clavelle Isnard (along with Jimmy Holland), can't possibly live up to the song it is paired with, but it's got a typically strong Kris Arden vocal, and more peppy accompaniment by the Sun-Rays:

Download: Kris Arden and the Sun-Rays - Come to Kansas

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