A Tale of Two Demos

 Greetings, song-poem fans!

First up, I would like to acknowledge by best friend Stu, who is the most frequent poster here, I do believe, and who, earlier this week, had one of those big round birthday numbers. Happy Birthday, Stu!!!

And then, I want to mention Sammy Reed, perhaps the second (if not the first) most frequent poster here. Sammy recently discontinued his blogspot site, meaning that a whole lot of comments on my posts had links which went nowhere. I have changed several of those today, to go to his new site. Most of those links now go to a massive post where he has included virtually everything that he previously uploaded in response to, or in anyway related to, this site. I could direct you to all those individual posts, but most of them link to this page. 

But in addition to that, Sammy remembered a post I wrote nearly a year ago, in which I commented that I'd found a copyright entry for a song called "HOOPA LOOPA HOOPA LOOPA DOOPA", and I commented that I'd pay to hear that song.

Well, sure enough, Sammy has found that song on YouTube, with a somewhat simplified title. I can't say it lived up to my hopes, but should also note that the chorus did repeat in my head for hours afterward. On a side note, if that's Ruth Brown I'll eat my hat. "Venus" can't even stay on pitch.  Thanks, Sammy - where do I send the check?   

And now: 

Over two months ago, I wrote, rather excitedly, about having found two Cara Stewart acetates that I'd bought somewhere along the line and had completely forgotten about. I shared a two sided acetate at that time, including a wonderful tune called "I Just Dropped In to Say 'Hello'"

Today, I have the other acetate. This one is one-sided, and it is written by the same team that wrote both of the songs on the other acetate. Like the other disk, this one came with sheet music, seen here: 

The song, "Don't You Think We Better Dance", isn't much musically, but the lyrics hint at something considerably more steamy than the typical song of the era, without getting into details. And of course, Lee Hudson's arrangement and Cara's warm, inviting singing make it something well worth hearing. 

Download: Cara Stewart - Don't You Think We Better Dance

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The label on that record makes it clear that the recording is a demo, rather than a completed product sent to the song-poets (or in this case, songwriting team). But the care and effort evident in the performance take it well beyond the average demo. 

I didn't want to just share one track, so I pulled out another one sided song-poem demo 78, not only to give you a good deal in reward for stopping by, but also to contrast what a demo from most song-poem outfits sounded like: Dull as dishwater. 

Here's a record on the previously unrepresented (here) Hollywood Tunesmiths label. The song is "Laura Lee", and it features a nondescript male singer accompanied, boringly so, by piano backing. I find everything about this record bland, and it makes it just that much more impressive to hear what Lee Hudson was doing for his customers, most likely just a few years after this record was made. 

Download: No Artist Named (Hollywood Tunesmiths) - Laura Lee

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A Major Find - Cara At 78!

I have a real find for everyone today!

But before I get to that, a frequent correspondent, who I've mentioned before, Tyler, has made a real find of his own. Everyone first click on this link and read about an odd record on Halmark, which I shared nearly a decade ago. It features a song written by Halmark head dude Ted Rosen on one side, and a rendition of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", listed under the wrong title and no writer credit on the flip side. 

The songs were performed by Barry Craig, and I presented it as a real outlier, without any clear understanding of what its backstory might be - although it certainly isn't a song poem record by any definition. 

Well, Tyler has found this article. It is a profile of Barry Craig from MUCH later in his career, and runs down the high points of that career, including the fact that he recorded his first release for Halmark back in 1968 - the very record I posted. My guess is that makes Craig's rendition of Ted Rosen's composition either an attempt by Halmark at an honest-to-goodness hit song (unlikely), or a vanity release for Mr. Craig, who was given the song by its author (more likely). The presence of a hit song on the flip side indicates to me that perhaps there was only one original composition available at that moment. 

There could of course be another explanation, and I'd love to hear what people thing. Thank you SO much, Tyler. 

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As readers of my other blog may have read, I have been divesting myself of the vast majority of the 100-150 acetates that I've collected over the years, only keeping those that I really treasure, including my relatively few song-poem acetates. Some sell, some don't. 

I thought I'd listened to, and listed, just about all of them, but over the weekend, I found a small stack of acetates stored quite a ways separate from where all the others had been. And that stack was full of several that I bought ages and ages ago, in a few different purchases, with considerable excitement, due to their apparent content. Somehow, upon receiving them, I put them away and forgot about them, which is really not like me. There must have been something else going on in my life at that moment. This literally may have been ten years ago!

Anyway, the most exciting of them, to me, upon finding them again a few days ago, were two 78 RPM acetates sung by Cara Stewart, on a previously unseen label - "A Lee Hudson Recording". Lee Hudson obviously produced hundreds of song-poems, and often his name is prominent on those records. But these are the first I've seen where the label name contains his name. Even his AS/PMA page doesn't have any indication of records released on an eponymous label.  

What's more, one of the two songs is as winning a performance from Cara Stewart as you're likely to hear. The record looks like this. 

It's "I Just Dropped In to Say 'Hello'", and it is, admittedly, a wisp of a song, making it to 95 seconds only because a piano solo and a repeat of the bridge and chorus are tagged on - without those, the song probably would barely break a minute. But I LOVE this. Was anyone in the song-poem world ever better than Cara is here? 

The credit to a team of writers (Dick Felt and Ross Hollowell, on both sides of the 78) indicated to me that perhaps this was a professional songwriting team, but an internet search has turned up nothing. 

Download: Cara Stewart - I Just Dropped In to Say "Hello"

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These are obviously demos, what with just the piano and vocal, and also obviously acetates, as the  auditory damage apparent on the flip side, "The Biggest Fool in Town" will make clear. 

But this is the far less interesting of the two, to me, so at least the damaged side is the right one. 

Oh, and this record came to me with a lead sheet for "The Biggest Fool in Town" which is reproduced below, as well. 

Download: Cara Stewart - The Biggest Fool in Town

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Wishful Thinking on Vietnam

I've commented on the Brosh label before. I've never seen a Brosh release which features material that wasn't either a vanity pressing, or clearly from another song-poem factory - it's quite possible that they didn't do anything "in-house" at all. Similar to Air Records (whose label Brosh sort of resembles), most Brosh releases, including today's EP features singers who are well known to have worked for other production houses, specifically, Bob Storm at Halmark, Sammy Marshall (credited here as Sonny Marcell) at Globe and Cara Stewart with Lee Hudson's operation.

In some cases, records of the same some have been found on the Brosh label and on whatever label the song was originally produced by, sometimes with the latter having noticeably better sound quality. Even when a non-song-poem song shows up on Brosh, there is typically some record of the same material showing up on a different label, as well, and as I mentioned, most of these look like vanity pressings. (I will mention that AS/PMA documents that Brosh released the same songs, with two different label numbers, featuring backing by Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins, but even those songs are known to have been released by another label, as well.)

What a weird label. I sometimes wonder what the average record collector thinks of a Brosh or Air release, upon listening to the haphazard, clearly unrelated material on one of their EPs or singles.

Today's first offering is definitely one of those with abysmal enough sound that it seems to be mastered directly from another 45. Even the surface noise is noticeably different than that of the song which follows it moments later on the same side of the EP. That's too bad, because "How Many Have Kissed You" is a fairly peppy, countrified Sammy Marshall performance, with some effective guitar picking and a lilting melody. I'd like to hear this from a clean copy.

Download: Sammy Marshall - How Many Have Kissed You
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The title of this post, though, is in reference to song two, "A Cold and Stormy Night", which is by far the most interesting lyric and arrangement here. The song-poets wrote what could have been a fairly harrowing story of a soldier's experience in Vietnam. I say "could have been" because it doesn't really work. First, the lyrics are hackneyed and obvious - exactly what you'd expect the average person on the street to think a soldier's experiences and thoughts would be. Second, the big lyrical build-up ends with a piece of fiction that can best be labeled "wishful thinking", and ruins whatever emotional resonance the earlier lyrics had delivered.

But the biggest mistake here was when the lyricists sent their poetry to Lee Hudson, who set those words to one of his sultry, romantic, Les Paul-esque backings for the equally sultry, echoey and dreamy vocals of Cara Stewart. I can hardly think of a song-poem where the lyrics and the arrangement/singer/performance were more of a mis-match. See what you think:

Download: Cara Stewart: A Cold and Stormy Night
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I don't have nearly as much to say about the tracks on the flip side of the EP. The oddly titled "Drop Me Love" is yet another unctuous performance by Bob Storm, over vapid music, as is so often found on Halmark releases. Come to think of it, Bob Storm and Halmark probably could have given a much more appropriate and performance to "A Cold and Stormy Night" than Lee Hudson and Cara Stewart. Not that I believe it would have been good, you understand, just better matched to the subject and material.

Download: Bob Storm - Drop Me Love
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We end up where we began, with Sammy "Sonny Marcell" Marshall, with another track with terrible sound quality, this time without much, musically speaking, to distinguish it. It's Sammy in sad-sack mode, which he inhabited far too often, as he warbles about being "On Your List of Broken Hearts".

Download: Sammy Marshall - On Your List of Broken Hearts
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Lost In Space

For a second straight week, here's one whose history and link to the song-poem field is more than a bit blurry. As with "Friendly Melvin", this record is certainly worth hearing, and the evidence is that it's a song poem. The presence of the name "Lee Hudson" caused me to purchase this one, unheard, due to the fact that a certain Lee Hudson was a central figure in the song-poem field in the 1960's. I bought even though that name is far from uncommon, and even though the name "Bob Brown", as a song-poem artist is unknown to me. The Luster label is not listed in the AS/PMA website, but on the other hand, there are records by a "Bob Brown" (again, hardly a rare name), and not only that, those Bob Brown records appeared on records with a Lee Hudson connection. That brings us to the record in question, "Space Flight", which certainly has many of the hallmarks of a Hudson production, from the thick string arrangement to massed backing vocals which (mixed low though they are) sound a lot like Cara Stewart (along with some male singer) to me. The song itself is a wonder to hear, a veritable composite of many of the thoughts about space exploration which might have been heard during the 1960's. 

Download: Bob Brown - Space Flight

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The flip side, in a real rarity for a song-poem record, is an instrumental version of the a-side, with piano taking over the melody, in the best Roger Williams style.

Download: Lee Hudson Orchestra - Space Flight
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