Popular Teen Styles on LECTRON

Let me be the first to wish all of my readers of Happy New Year!

I continue to rehab my site. Today, I have finished correcting posts from 2007, fixing five posts from July and August of that year. Again, this was a point at which I was simply sharing items from my collection that I particularly appreciated and seemed to be rare. Youtube has subsequently changed that last aspect, but still, I'd like the site to be playable from the earliest posts on. 

During that summer, I posted a goofy, yet endearing number by Don, Dick and Jimmy, I shared a song in Swedish that I wished to know more about (and subsequently did learn more about), I let everyone hear an odd easy listening version of a Beatles hit, and shared two of my "cut-ups", which were cassette-edited popular songs made into jokes. 

And although it's redundant at this point, I have also fixed a post, from that summer, in which I shared, for the first time, my all time favorite disc that has any connection to the song-poem world, although I'm now convinced that the record in question is not a song-poem. I later shared the record again, along with its b-side, when I got my own copy, but here is the first time that I featured "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got)". 

I have also put in addendums to a couple of those posts. 

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And now, Let's Go Lectron!

Today, I have a pair of genuinely sweet and effective tracks from the teeny-tiny Lectron label, whose label describes the product contained therein as "Popular Teen Style". And never has a slogan or motto been more accurate, as these two songs are composed in the most popular of teen styles for 1963, when this record was produced. 

Both sides are credited to Mary Kaye, who did some work for the Globe song-poem factory, but the A-side is actually a performance by Mary Kaye AND Sammy Marshall. And the lyrics to "Secret Thoughts" are among the best I've ever heard in a song-poem: they do an exceptional job of describing the silent longing between a teen boy and girl, who each have romantic feelings for the other, but feel unsure of expressing them. 

The words capture this dynamic perfectly - the verisimilitude is on a level I would generally associate with professional songwriting - and the arrangement captures the sort of thing that "Paul and Paula" briefly had massive success with, right around the time of this record's creation. A genuinely sweet and affecting song and performance. 

The only flaw here is that the record appears to have been pressed in asphalt. The sound quality is abysmal. 

Download: Mary Kaye (and Sammy Marshall) - Secret Thoughts

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The flip side, "Actions Speak Louder Than Words", does indeed feature a solo turn by Mary Kaye. And again, it's in "Popular Teen Style", in this case, something of a twist beat, and it moves and grooves throughout - all 100 seconds of it. 

Again, the words here are pretty good, and they've been set in a sort of percussive manner that bounces off the drumbeat in places, an effect which I find sort of intoxicating. Mary Kaye's warm vocal really sells it, even if there are a couple of bum notes (perhaps she was sight-reading, which was so often the case in the song-poem world). 

There are some nice backing vocals which in a style that reminds me more of the later Preview label than what Globe usually came up with. I have a hard time saying which of these two tracks I like better - both are several levels better than the average song-poem. 

Download: Mary Kaye - Actions Speak Louder Than Words

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And finally, those of you who have been reading my posts for the last few years know that my family uses the Christmas Card tradition to engage in a bit of performance art each year. Previous end-of-the-year posts have other examples, and now, here is the latest in the series: 

From the left, that's me, my wife with the marshmallow in her face, then our two adult kids, and on the right, the fellow who will soon be, variously, husband, son-in-law and brother-in-law to the rest of the individuals in the photo. 

Let's Polka in the Sun!

As promised last week, I'm planning to take a tour around the country via song-poems, and that trip continues today! If I mentioned American cities and areas which come to mind when you think of Polkas, one would likely think of Chicago, Milwaukee, or all of Wisconsin, or perhaps the entire upper midwest.

However, one place not likely to come immediately to mind is the home of today's polka. See below:

Yes, Arizona. And yes, it's our friends Cara Stewart and Lee Hudson, along with the Polka-Cats (as well as an uncredited assist from Jeff Lawrence), with a delightful pair of polkas, perhaps the best song-poem record I've shared here in many weeks - or at least the equal of "I Liked the Old Year" from a month or so again.

Today's record comes to us via Lee Hudson's song-poem factory, but the tracks were leased out to the tiny Lectron label of Detriot, MI (another place I don't really associate with polkas). Lectron seems to have been the house label for the various song-poets named on this record - all three of them show up as the writers on another known Lectron record.

First, as mentioned, it's off to Arizona, for the Arizona Polka. This is a lovely little record, with a lilting melody, sweet violins, a bouncy rhythm, a neat instrumental break and thoroughly appropriate polka lyrics. There are even some nice backing vocals from the aformentioned Jeff Reynolds, including some well placed "yippees" and the like.

Download: Cara Stewart and the Polka-Cats - Arizona Polka
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As much as I enjoy that record - and really, really do, I like the flip side, The Whirleybird Polka, quite a bit more. I adore this arrangement, and the detail put into it. As much as it resembles "The Arizona Polka", there are little touches here that put this one over the top, particularly Jeff and Cara in the backing vocals offering verbal encourgement here and there ("'Til You're Full of Pep"), and "yee-haws" in other places.

Perhaps it because the backing vocals remind me of the vocal comments offered up by Jeff Lawrence in between a few lines within the backing track of Doc Nut, one of my favorite song-poems ever. And of course, Cara Stewart is near incomparable among the vocalists of the song-poem world - this record features a typically sexy, upbeat, sweet and sly vocal. She's one of the mysteries of the song-poem world, and I sure wish I knew who and where she is/was.

Download: Cara Stewart and the Polka-Cats - Whirleybird Polka
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All in all, an absolutely wonderful record!