A Song Poem/Vanity Record Hybrid

I've been having a hard time getting to my sites this month - it could be that there will only be two offerings this month. Just a lot going on. 

But I have a sort of weird one today, weird for a couple of different reasons, more so the second side than the first.

At first glance, the A-side of today's Preview offering looks and sounds like a typical label release of its day, Gene Marshall singing something called "Della Primavera" which my computer tells me means "Of Spring".

Like I always do, I checked first to see if either side of this record was commonly available, on YouTube or anywhere else. It is not, But upon doing that search, the annoying AI answer - which is everywhere now (and YUCK) told me about the Gene Marshall doll collection. I knew from previous searches that there is such a collection - a somewhat high end set of dolls for the collectors market. AI then told me that "Della Primavera" was a rare and very collectable Gene Marshall doll. That'd be a weird coincidence. If it was true. So far as I've been able to find, via further searches, is that AI completely made that link up. There is no Gene Marshall Della Primavera doll. 

So, as it turns out, this really IS a typical Preview label release of its day. But for a moment, I thought I had a REALLY weird coincidence to share with you. 

What was I saying.... oh, the song. Sorry about the terrible sound - I don't think the record was played to death, I just think the pressing sucks. But then, so does the song. At least it's over quickly. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Della Primavera

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The real oddity is on the flip side. It's titled "Aloha But Not Goodbye", although the torn label obscures the title a bit, and it's by The Paramours. This group does not show up on any other Preview 45's, nor does this record sound like anything produced by the label. It actually sounds more like the ridiculous, poorly arranged close harmony sing-songy tunes that showed up on William Howard Arpaia's song-poem albums and singles, for all of you who have heard those. 

What accounts for that? Well, this record wasn't made by Preview records. It was recorded for a tiny label in California called Orange Cross Records. At some point, these wily Paramours seem to have gotten the idea that maybe a label that wasn't really tiny but was completely a scam might be able to make hay with their record. THE B-SIDE of their record, to boot. And so they presumably paid Preview to put out their song again. 

I would love to hear the backstory on this one. And once again, DO NOT trust AI, which will tell you that Bobby Hatfield and Bill Medley were in this band, prior to forming the Righteous Brothers. They were not. That was a different band with the same name. 

Keep in mind - while listening to this song and imagining that The Paramours thought they might have a hit, either on a tiny label out of a suburb of Anaheim or on a label that did no promotion of its releases at any time - that this record came out around.... 1970. 

Good luck with that, men. 

Download: The Paramours - Aloha But Not Goodbye

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My First Rodd

Just under 30 years ago, in the fall of 1996, I got my first taste of song-poems when I bought the MSR Madness Volume 2 CD, "The Makers of Smooth Music". Once I had a better handle on the ins and outs of this genre, I went to the biggest used record store that was anywhere near my home, probably in November of the same year, and looked for song-poems. I found about ten, as I recall, including two early Real Pros records which are still among my favorites. The other records that I found, as I recall, were by Gene Marshall and Rodd Keith. 

By this time, I was already in email contact with song-poem maven extraordinaire Phil Milstein, and we started a nice tape exchange - me sending him cassettes of everything I found, as I found it, and him sending me his cassette compilations of tracks he considered just below good enough for his upcoming releases. 

I came across an auction on eBay recently, for a copy of one of those first ten 45s that I found, and discovered, to my astonishment, that it was not available anywhere online. I truly thought that, for all of my early Preview Rodd 45s, I had already determined that they were already available online or that I had already shared them. This one fits neither of those parameters. So.... here it is: 

Yes, indeed, this song - "Into My Dreams" - is quite likely the first Rodd Keith record that I owned. It's more than a bit beat up, but definitely worth sharing. It's worth sharing for the first couplet alone, which contains one of the dumbest lines I've ever heard in any song, song-poem or not. 

I guess it's possible that the song-poeta (there are three listed) were trying to be funny, but nothing else in the lyric suggests a sense of humor about the words or their creators. And the next following rhyme also sounds to me like the team simply grabbed a word that rhymed and contrived a line that fit, but that made little sense, too. The other two rhymes (it's a VERY short lyric) make more sense in context, so maybe I'm wrong and they were just an the hairy edge of competent writers. 

Still, it's always nice to hear Rodd at the start of his Preview career, freed up from the Film City chamberlin and working with a full group, including, herein, a violinist. 

Download: Rodd Keith - Into My Dreams

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The flip side features Judy Layne, who appeared very regularly on the Preview label around 1966 before disappearing completely from the label by 1968. The song is "Days Gone By" and it's a snooze. It's got quite the supper club style, with the trumpet obbligato and it's recitative sections interspersed with waltz sections, all in the service of a bit of very hackneyed words about a reminiscence . Eh.

Download: Judy Layne - Days Gone By

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Something Quite a Bit Different From Preview Records

Okay, well I couldn't pass up a chance to buy a Preview single showing this label, even without hearing it: 

Well, it turns out that, although I've labeled this the "song poem of the week", because that's what this feature is - this is almost certainly a vanity record. The Preview discography does show there to have been a handful of vanity records - for the most part records sung by the composer of the songs - they also appear to have been extremely rare on the label. I've previously shared this resolutely awful example of a Preview vanity release. 

And it does have something of a song-poem pedigree - the song-poem database contains the following quote, which it reports to have been from the fall, 1976 issue of Vellez Music News: 

"The banjo and the arrangement gives this record the flavor of the 20's and 30's. It's got a good beat and sound. Banjo lovers will get a kick out of this one."

As Vellez Music News was the house organ of another song-poem label, I think that at least leaves this one well within the song-poem universe, if also residing in a far distant quadrant thereof. 

Anyway, while my previous Preview vanity offering was a terrible record, this one, on the other hand, borders on delightful, if completely silly. It's credited to "The Four of Us" and contains two songs performed in 1920's style, albeit the 1920's as they likely would have been heard on "Laugh-In" or some other 1960's or 1970's variety show.  The A side (appropriately) is called "My Model 'A'", about a run down 1920's Ford, and it plays up both the charms and the weaknesses of both songs. The tight harmonies are really nice, and the words are cute, but why, oh, why couldn't they have bothered to use a real Dixieland combo instead of the barely competent instrumentalists here, especially the bass player, who hits a few obvious clams. 

Download: The Four of Us - My Model "A"

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The flip side, "Banjo Pickin' Blues" has exactly the same strengths and weakness as "Model 'A'", although I would add that, if you're going to write a song with the words "blues" and "banjo" in the title, it might be nice to set it to blues chords and style and get a banjo player who has had more than six lessons. 

Still, it's a fascinating little side trip from the label and well worth sharing. 

Download: The Four of Us - Pickin' Banjo Blues

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Mary Jo and Ted "Millionaire" Kennedy

Today's record is called "The Spoiled Millionaire" and it's by the great Gene Marshall. I'm sure that when I got this record, and looked at the title - that is, if I gave it a second thought at all - I thought it was some screed, an indictment (probably fairly vague) of some generalized, very likely fictional "millionaire". 

That is most definitely not the case. This is, instead, a story song about Mary Jo Kopechne and her July, 1969 death in a car driven by Ted Kennedy. I found the lyrics hard to understand at times, given how Gene's vocal is buried in the mix. This is even though the chirpy backup singers repeat some of what he sings, a choice which strikes me as aggressively inappropriate for the story being told. However, the song-poet clearly thinks the other person in the car should have died. 

Beyond that, I'll let the song tell the story. 

Download: Gene Marshall - The Spoiled Millionaire

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The flip side is a tribute to the credited author of the last book of the New Testament, The Revelation to John, and is therefore most logically titled "John the Revelator". I was hoping for something more interesting, because if there's one thing that book is not, it's boring. But this IS boring. There are a couple of references to what is written in the book, but nothing very interesting. Where are the Eyes of Fire? Where are the Four Horsemen? Where is the Defeat of Satan? 

No, most of this is about the writer, not what he wrote. Like I said, boring. 

Download: Gene Marshall - John the Revelator

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Guess Who's Gung Ho!!! It's Gene "Go Hung" Marshall!!!!

 

Last week's post contained one song which was indirectly about Vietnam, or at least had lyrics which would have been at least less likely outside of things that went during, and in part because of, that conflict, specifically, in that case, Woodstock. 

I thought I'd continue the theme today, with a 45 featuring not one, but two songs which certainly owe at least part of their existence to the Vietnam War. Beyond that, how could I possibly not share a song-poem titled "Gung Ho", particularly with perhaps the Gung Ho-iest song-poem singer of them all, Gene Marshall, singing it. 

Now, to me, "Gung Ho" has always meant to do something with great enthusiasm. But its original meaning to Americans, as explained on this page, was "Work Together", which is the basis for this song.(According to that site, even that understanding of the Chinese phrase is inaccurate.) Again, I didn't know this, but the phrase was specifically associated in this country with the Marines, and I suspect that the song-poet (who wrote both of these songs) was inspired by the then-current military activities in South Asia 

Anyway, here's another martial number, and Gene does his typical excellent work. I can't imagine another song-poem singer who would have been suited for this material. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Gung Ho

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Before I get to the flip side, I want to acknowledge that, again in the last post, I mentioned my friend Stu's speculation that the female singer accompanying Rodd Keith was Bobbi Blake. Sammy Reed, who I suspect knows more about Bobbi Blake than anyone else outside of her family, tells me that's not the case. Both Stu and Sammy know - and care about - the female voices of Preview much better than I do, so I don't know, or honestly care, where I land on that debate. 

But now I have a performance which is undoubtedly by Bobbi Blake, or, as she was known on her Preview releases, Barbara Foster. The narrator of "White Crosses" is, believe it or not, America herself, and herein, she laments and pays tribute to her war dead, saying that each of those deaths caused her pain, and that they were not in vain. Again, given that this was written and recorded during our misadventure in Vietnam, I beg to differ on that last point. 

Download: Barbara Foster - White Crosses

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Two Insane Dance-Related Song-Poems from the Pen of John Lester

 

Okay, I must admit that when I first saw the title of this Barbara Foster (aka Bobbi Blake) 45, "Germination", I sort of assumed the lyrics would be some sort of play on words regarding certain reproductive activities. 

However, this only seems to sort of be the case - any such reference is buried in something entirely other. That is to say, not only this side, but both sides of this record seem to have come from a rather batshit crazy cranium. In the simplest terms, both songs seem to be about dancing. And yes, love-making certainly can be and has been described as a dance, and song-poet John E. Lester even makes reference to Cupid here, but the dance steps in "Germination" won't get you there. 

The opening lines of this song are a mystery to me. I've listened several times and simply cannot make out every word of what is being sung in the first verse. What I can make out is non-sensical (something about Java? "Delilah in Iceland without no fur"?, "Let's Begin like in 'Begin the Beguine'"?). We are then encouraged to "Germinate Love, It's Cupid's Thing". Having said that, though - as I mentioned, - we then are instructed in some very vague dance moves.

Maybe this makes more sense to one or more of you out there. 

Download: Barbara Foster - Germination

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The flip side features Gene Marshall doing "Cupid's Review" by the same song-poet. And it's worth noting that the only documented song-poem (other than these two) credited to this song-poet was called "Cupid's Thing", so Mr. Lester certainly had an area of interest. 

If anything, this one befuddles me even more than "Germination". You know you're in for a good time when Gene speaks over the introductory music. I can't make out one of the words for certain: 

"Make like you're on the way to the city, you know in your best <clothes?>

Know your color, love? Well anyway, you're it - YEAH!"

The rest of the song is about going to something called "Cupid's Review" (don't act too extreme, by the way). By the 38 second mark, Gene is talking again, explaining that apparently the review is a series of classic dances - whether we are watching or participating is unclear. There is an important moment when Gene questions what time signature is being used, and a bit later, he has a conversation with an unheard participant. The talking goes on for a full 70 seconds of this 150 second record.

I have literally no idea what this song-poet was on about. And I'd like to hear "Cupid's Thing". 

But - and I mean this entirely sincerely - Gene's last note is one for the ages, truly a thing of beauty, and deserved to be on a better record and song than this. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Cupid's Review

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Dahrlin..... Danny Dahrlin!

Presenting Song-Poem Singer Danny Dahrlin! 

It just screams out to me that someone's over-active imagination tried to come up with a perfect teen idol name. And failed miserably. And the song-poem website only shows Danny Dahrlin's name on a single Preview 45. However, that 45 is not the one I just acquired. This one is listed in newer databases than the mothballed AS/PMA site. And at one of them, someone has pointed out that the singer on "You Never Lose What You Never Had" might be Rodd Keith. 

Here's a secret - it is undoubtedly Rodd Keith. And I'm not sure how there could have been any question. That same poster posits, with certainty, that it IS Rodd Keith on Sax. How someone could know that is beyond me - maybe someone out there can explain it to me. 

Anyway, this record is a chore, in my opinion - supper club blahs without a beat (or even a drummer), and a weepy tenor sax bleating about as annoyingly as possible. It even fades out suddenly, as if someone hit a clam at the last second and they had to get rid of it. 

Download: Danny Dahrlin - You Never Lose What You Never Had

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The flip side of this record is "A Poor Man's Desire", and it features that loping country groove that Rodd Keith sometimes favored in the 1960's. comes complete. Then comes the talky talk, and we don't get to the singing until the 40 second mark. I guess this is Rodd Keith, too, although I listened twice before I was convinced. It's certainly a high register for him. 

I'd love to know why Preview (or Rodd) felt the need to use pseudonyms for him, at the same as he was releasing record after record under the usual variation of his given name. And why such a teeny-bopper  name for a record with such grown-up lyrics and musical styles. 

Anyway, this one seems to go on forever. Honestly, I don't think either of these are very good, but I did want to get a performance by Rodd under this particular pseudonym out there into the internet. Mission accomplished. 

Download: Danny Dahrlin - A Poor Man's Desire

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Hitting On the Nurse

We're featuring Gene Marshall and his lovely voice today. The song has the promising title "Patient and His Nurse". Perhaps Song-Poet Harry Fineburg was writing from personal experience, perhaps he'd been watching a few soap operas, or perhaps he was just letting his imagination run wild. I say this because, to me at least, these lyrics seem to indicate the patient - who is heard in first person in the lyrics - is quite enamored of, and seems to be at least passively hitting on, his favorite nurse. 

Perhaps there is another explanation. Feel free to chime in. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Patient and His Nurse

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"All That Remains" on the flip side, is a wisp of a song and lyric. Both sides of this record are padded out to an acceptable length (for a 45) by having the chirpy background singers go on at length (as well as short periods of instrumental vamping by the band), and then having Gene sing a verse he'd already sung. This is egregious even in "Patient and His Nurse", in which we have heard all of the available lyrics at the 70 second mark. In "All That Remains", we've heard every written lyric by the 49 second point, and even WITH the padding, the record is STILL only 110 seconds long. 

Download: Gene Marshall - All That Remains

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Linda Dahrling's Greatest Hits

Right off the bat, let me point y'all to Sammy Reed's page, where he has just posted a fairly ridiculous song-poem album. 

And now: 

Today, I have a bit of an oddball release - this preview release appears to be the only record ever credited under the oddly named spelling "Linda Dahrling". It's been suggested to me that this is Bobbi Blake, and I initially identified her as such, but Sammy Reed, who knows his Bobbi Blake perhaps better than anyone in the world, says that's not the case, and suggests that it might be the singer identified elsewhere as Joan Merrill. I have no idea, so I am leaving her identified as Linda Dahrling in the tags. 

This is clearly, to my ears, a Rodd Keith production, and I'm fairly certain that's Rodd singing in the background, too. It's not one of his best - both songs sound very much alike to me and the level of creativity is far below what he was capable of. But... it's a relatively early Preview release with Rodd's involvement and for those reasons alone, good enough to share. 

The first song is "Poor Little Sparrow", in which the song-poet minimizes the future problems of a bird suffering from a broken wing (she seems to think it will heal itself - I don't think it works that way) when compared to her life, given that her man is in Vietnam and might not come back. 

Download: Linda Darhling - Poor Little Sparrow 

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The flip side, "God Bless You" is standard issue "thanks for loving me" paean to a woman's lover. 

Download: Linda Darhling - God Bless You 

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Gene's Talkin' Jesus

 

With the Christian Holy Week approaching quickly (and this is one of those years when the Western Churches and the Orthodox Church observe Holy Week's events at the same time), what better occasion than to have Gene Marshall tell us about Jesus. 

That's right, Gene is going to tell us, not sing to us. Oh, he sings a little, but mostly he's going to read a statement. A sermon of sorts. When I hear a record such as "Let Jesus Save You", I wonder a couple of things. 

First, did the song-poet understand how lyricism works, as opposed to prose? There is nothing in the spoken word section here that could have reasonably, or even unreasonably, been set to a melody. And second, was the song-poet satisfied with this performance? Gene gives a good sermon, I'll say that. But presumably, the lyricist (sic) paid for a song. What we have here, aside from about 10 seconds of instrumental passages is: 

Gene singing: 40 seconds

Gene talking: 100 seconds

Download: Gene Marshall - Let Jesus Save You

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The folks at Preview were nice enough to team up two Christian songs on one 45. It wasn't automatically going to be that way - can you imagine the song-poet of either of these sides taking a gander at the flip side and having it be either of the two songs heard in this post (you'll have to listen to those songs to get what I'm joking about). 

Anyway, "On This Mountain" is an actual song, and if nothing else, Gene provides an excellent vocal, with an appropriate aching tone in spots, unfortunately not in the service of anything special in the way of lyrics (the line "He died for all colors: black and white, you see" seems particularly half-baked) or of  backing support. Indeed, the instrumental section has to be among the more low-energy solo sections I've heard on a Preview disc, and the keyboardist and bass player don't really seem to be working from the same chord changes during this section. 

Download: Gene Marshall - On This Mountain

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Gabriel Is the Pin Boy

I haven't featured Gene Marshall for a while, so today it's Gene Marshall day. "Thunder Lullabye" consists of a parent trying to calm a child down when the child is frightened by a storm. The parent's explanation here is an old standby (or perhaps "standbye" given the spelling of "Lullabye") fleshed out with some unlikely manual tasks assigned to a few heavenly heavy hitters. 

This record also features a rare flub by the folks behind the scenes at Preview, which you'll no doubt notice as the song comes to an end. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Thunder Lullabye

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I would love to tell you the name of the song on the flip side, and share the label with you, but this particular record came to me with the same label - the one for "Thunder Lullabye" - so I don't know its name. And this record never made it into the song-poem archives database. So feel free to supply whatever name you feel most fits the track. 

The singer is again Gene Marshall, and it's one of the endless series of "you're leaving me" song-poems, as well as yet another one of those records where the chirpy backup singers repeat the last thing the singer said, like a child with echolalia. And a hint to the song-poet (sadly unnamed, due to the lack of label credit): The phrase "Please Repeat This Again" is redundant.  

Download: Gene Marshall - Flip Side of "Thunder Lullabye"

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Little Joey Writes a Letter

I had a request for a few Christmas song-poems, and I spent part of this last weekend searching my holding for just that sort of record. While I didn't check the song-poem albums in my collection, I did look through the vast majority of my 45s, and I found.... that for the most part I've already shared most of my Christmas related song-poems over the years, either here, or, in one case, in a large post of Christmas song-poems at WFMU. Three are still way too many unshared religious song-poems (almost all of them Christian), but few of them are specifically about Christmas. 

I found two. Or rather, I found one song-poem 45 and one vanity record on the Film City label. Today is the song-poem, and in a week or so I'll offer up the Film City delight. 

From the vapid, post-Rodd Keith, cheapo synth strings era of the Preview label (and not at all long before the demise of the label), we have Gene Marshall singing "Little Joey to Santa Claus". Note how very few lyrics there are in this nearly three minute track, stretched out by an interminable instrumental break and a repeating of about half the lyrics a second time. 

Alas, as we all know, Little Joey grew up to learn to play Trombone before becoming a criminal and ending up in prison with Shifty Henry, Sad Sack and Elvis Presley. Oh, and that cutie known as Number Three. Perhaps if Santa had only brought him those roller skates. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Little Joey to Santa Claus

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This record actually has TWO Christmas songs on it. On the flip side, Barbara Foster (AKA Bobbie Blake). It's called "A Joyous Christmas", but it does not suggest anything joyful to me. I find her vocal performance really sweet at a few moments, but that's about it. Your mileage may vary. 

Download: Barbara Foster - A Joyous Christmas

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Please note that I've tried my best to honor a request. If you have a request, let me know - if I can fill it, I will!

Fred Hastings Sings For You

In the late '60s and into about 1970 or so, the Preview label's releases were dominated by Rodd Keith, and to a lesser degree by Teri Summers and Bonnie Graham, among a few others, as well as records released by one of them under a pseudonym or three. There were plenty of other credited artists, as well, but their releases were relatively sparse. Around the time that the label numbers hit 1500, the volume of Rodd's releases slowed, and by label release 1600, he had virtually disappeared from the credits on Preview labels, with only about a dozen further releases for the company after that. I imagine this is about the time he moved over to MSR, but that's completely supposition on my part. 

Anyway, if you look at the Preview page on the AS/PMA website, you'll find that it is also not long after release number 1500 that Preview seems to have begun trying out various alternate vocalists. Some of these may well be Rodd under pseudonyms (again), but there sure are a bunch of them, each of whom seems to have made anywhere from one to six records for the label before disappearing for good. Then, a short time later, Gene Marshall and Barbara Foster (who I think.... someone correct me... is also the singer known as Bobbi Blake?) show up and they dominated the label for the rest of its existence. It  sort of looks like they were casting out for whoever could be their next main vocalist. 

Anyway, during that period, someone named Fred Hastings made about a half-dozen records for the label. The one I am sharing today is the only one I've heard, and what I find curious about it is that it's very clearly, to my ears, a Rodd Keith arrangement. Why didn't Rodd sing it? Was he helping Preview find his successor? Whether he was or wasn't, Fred Hastings wasn't going to be it, based on this record, anyway. 

"Left Over Love" is the better of the two songs. The arrangement - and again, it sounds like Rodd's work - isn't bad, and something more listenable could have been made out of this with a better singer. But Fred Hastings reminds of a cross between Harry Burgess of "Chicago Policeman" fame and the sort of pompous hotel lounge singer that Vivian Stanshall liked to parody, And I like both of those records I just linked, for extremely different reasons, but here, the style, such as it is, just puts me to sleep. 

Download: Fred Hastings - Left Over Love

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The flip side "My Dream", doesn't even have that interesting arrangement, although it still puts me in the mind of Rodd Keith. The lyrics here are also dimwitted - assuming one believes in angels, my guess is that no one who does, ever imagined a situation in which one of those angels asked "would you like some company". But maybe I'm wrong. 

Download: Fred Hastings - My Dream

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GENE MARSHALL: 1928-2024

My best pal Stu brought me news that both of us had missed, from earlier in the year, which is that Gene Marshall - or, technically, Gene Merlino - one of the kings of song-poem singing, died early this year, at the age of 95. You can read a bit about him here. He used to have his own website, which you can still see via the wayback machine. 

Gene was a masterful singer, with a warm, inviting voice that you couldn't help believe meant everything it sang. He could adapt to many styles of music, and could seemingly instantaneously decide how to handle a song - in many, if not most cases, he was singing the song-poems you hear on this site the very first (and last) time that he ever saw the sheet music. 

But his career was much more than song-poems. He sang on TV, with popular groups, for Disney films (and other films), at least on occasion found himself at a session along with one of my biggest musical heroes, Thurl Ravenscroft. He and Thurl even teamed up with two other session singers for a Barbershop Quartet album at one point. Here is one of the songs from that album. 

Gene released relatively few records under his real name. Here is an early vocal performance with Paul Weston's group, and here he is (in poor sound quality), covering a Pat Boone hit song on one of those cheapo cover 78s from the 1950's. (By chance, his performance got paired, on the same side of the record, with Scatman Crothers great reworking of Nervous Norvis' "Transfusion".) But of course, Gene recorded under at least a half dozen different names for song-poem companies, work he reportedly always referred to as doing demos. 

I have already featured most of the greatest Gene Marshall records from my collection, and I encourage you to click on his name at the bottom of this post for all of my Gene posts (and look elsewhere online), so I don't have anything startlingly amazing to share here. But I have selected four Gene Marshall Preview 45s from what is a huge subset of my collection featuring Gene's vocals. None of these eight songs appear to have been previously posted anywhere, and they offer a variety of styles (within the increasingly limited styles that Preview offered as the label moved into the 1970's). 

Thanks, Gene.

To everyone else: Enjoy!

Download: Gene Marshall - Don't You Know I Feel Love Fever

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Download: Gene Marshall - You Asked For It

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Download: Gene Marshall - In a Little House Trailer

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Download: Gene Marshall - I'm Glad That I'm An American

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Download: Gene Marshall - That's It, Love

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Download: Gene Marshall - Hi Boys, Swing That Band

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Download: Gene Marshall - In Your Arms I Belong

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Download: Gene Marshall - Home Town Gal

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The Shortest Song-Poem Title Ever?

First up, a quick thank you to "Nedzilla" for a really great comment. I enjoyed it mightily. Actually, now that I look back at that post, all four comments were fantastic. That one really brought out the best in you reader/listeners. 

I recently came across an eBay auction for a record with what has to be at least tied for the shortest song-poem title ever. Unless a song called "I" or "A" comes along, I'm going to assume that there's never been a shorter title on a song-poem 45 (and never a title which gave away less of its lyrical direction), than Alan Poe's rendition of "To". Happily, no one else bid and I got the record at a reasonable price. Here it is: 

I'm not at all sure that this is the singer who usually went by "Alan Poe". There were multiple records released under that name, and clearly they weren't all by the same singer. At least one those was actually sung by Rodd Keith, but this doesn't sound like the other Alan Poe records I'm familiar with, and it's certainly not Rodd.

Anyway, both "To" and the flip side, the almost equally generically titled "Lovely" are religiously themed offerings, both from the same song-poem. I think it's sort of odd that Rodd Keith isn't singing, here, actually. The backing track has many of the hallmarks of his production, and the melody of this song could not more clearly be a Rodd melody and chord changes - it resembles several of his creations, none more than elements in the melodies of "Ecstacy [sic] To Frenzy" and "Nativity", two of his most beautiful melodies. This tune is not anywhere near the same league as those two, but it's nice, and neither "Alan Poe" or the color-by-numbers Jesus lyrics of "To" are worthy of this melody.

Download: Alan Poe - To

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"Lovely" - about all the lovely creations the Lord has made - has almost a sunshine pop sound (if it was a bit bouncier, perhaps), and again, this melody and chord structure has Rodd dripping off of it in every measure. I'd like to think that Rodd kept his distance from the vapidity of these lyrics, but of course I know he had no problem selling much worse song-poetry than this. So his decision to make the arrangement, lead the band and call in a rather lugubrious singer remains a mystery. 

Download: Alan Poe - Lovely

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You Get No Love from Gene OR the Squires

This is a sort of fascinating record. While not every Preview release has been documented yet, and that will probably never happen, there is only one Preview release precisely like this one documented at the AS/PMA Preview page, and now here's a second one. 

What this record contains is a standard song-poem vocal rendition of a song, by Gene Marshall in this case (and in the other case, too), and on the flip side, the Preview house band, identified as "The Squires", play an instrumental version of the same song. And it's not just the instrumental track from the Gene Marshall version, it's another, different performance of the song. 

And this is a pretty misbegotten song. It seems that maybe the song-poet's first verse lyrics to "I Don't Love You No More" simply could not be fit into standard three-to-the-bar waltz beat. Or maybe someone was just getting overly creative in a way that really didn't work. Whatever the reason, in the middle of the first verse, there are two four-beat bars, and then near the end of that verse, there is a seven-beat bar (or I suppose it could be one four-beat bar). Even the nearly always perfect Gene seams tripped up by the second one. Oddly, the second time through the verse, the oddly places measures aren't present. 

And that's without even getting to the lyrics, which suggest that the singer has fallen out of love with his former flame because he doesn't like her behavior. Is that a thing? Can one simply turn off love? I don't think I ever experienced that, in any of my relationships. Maybe I'm the odd one. I dunno. 

Download: Gene Marshall - I Don't Love You No More

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The flip side, as mentioned, is an instrumental rendition of the same song. And this suggests that I was right with my second guess - that someone was getting creative with the structure of the song. I say that because the two four-bar measure in the first version are heard here, and there is no lyrical line to make space for here - in other words, the whole thing could have been a waltz in this version, if they'd wanted it to be. The actual performance is pretty much a sleep walk. 

Download: The Squires - I Don't Love You No More

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Now THAT'S What I Call Lyrics!

Every now and then I hear a new-to-me song-poem record that has that something extra that just completely captures me. One of the relatively recent times this happened was with a record on Tin Pan Alley by Jimmy Dee called "That's the Life For Me", and nearly two years ago, I labeled it my favorite song-poem purchase of the year, in this post. 

Well, I recently was lucky enough to purchase another Jimmy Dee record, and while I don't think this is anywhere near as good as "That's the Life For Me", I still wanted to win the record (on eBay) as soon as I heard the song file excerpt. And that's because "Cry Baby Blues!" contains a single lyrical line that made me laugh out loud, all by myself, and I literally kept laughing about that line through the rest of the song's playing time, during that first listen. 

And I don't think I'll say too much more. It's got a great sound, bouncy and infectious - I love late '50's Tin Pan Alley song-poems as much as any in the genre. But that line just kills me. Hopefully, you'll laugh, too - if not, then I suppose you and I laugh at different things. Or maybe setting you up to hear it will ruin that moment. I hope not. 

Download: Jimmy Dee - Cry Baby Blues!

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The flip side is "Heavenly Melody", and if the flip side didn't already convince me that Jimmy Dee shouldn't have done slow material (and it sorta did), this one seals the deal - I don't dig this at all, at all. 

Download: Jimmy Dee - Heavenly Melody

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Born Loser

Looks like it's been just over six months since I featured Gene Marshall, and I must rectify that! 

 

I think maybe I've just been a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of Gene Marshall records in my collection that I haven't shared, as well as the fact that, well, most of them are exceedingly bland, musically, often despite the typically masterful vocal work by our man Gene. The records made for Preview after Rodd moved over to MSR, as well as the records that Gene made for other labels, under multiple names, are usually lacking that something special that I try to feature here as often as possible. The exceptions from that era and those other labels are usually the result of something outstanding or weird about the lyrics themselves. 

Nothing stands out about the lyrics of "Born Loser", but man, do I love the bluesy backing the band is providing here, almost undoubtedly with a major assist, if not with the whole arrangement from, Rodd Keith. The interplay of the guitarist and the keyboard is compelling - and those keyboard fills are absolutely magical - and the drumming is as excellent as it usually was in this area of the Preview label. Gene's reading of the lyric is a bit more workmanlike than it is on many of the records I've shared here, and a couple of the embellishments don't land quite right, but that's only a deficit in terms of comparison to Gene's best work - he still sounds great. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Born Loser

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On the flip side, we have the far more generic "Loving Each Other". The band - again, especially the guitarist and pianist - are doing some nice stuff, but in the service of a bland arrangement of a bland song. Oddly, I actually find Gene's vocal to be stronger here than on "Born Loser" but only by a matter of a few degrees, and that certainly doesn't make me like this side better. Nope. The whole thing is over in 109 seconds. 

Download: Gene Marshall - Loving Each Other

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Not.... Exactly....

So I try not to feature the same label for two weeks in a row, but last week's post, although it featured a record on Preview, that record wasn't actually a song-poem, being something nearly unique - a vanity release from that label. I decided another Preview record wasn't a bad idea, and here it is: 

It's always fun to see some poor grammar in a song-poem title. I mean, the labels could have corrected any of these, had they chosen to, but perhaps they feared (or actually ran into) song-poets who would complain that "you changed my song title". In this case, "You're Not Exactly What I Ask For" could have been saved with just a little "ed", and if the song-poet had "experience" just a little more ED in her life, mayhap she would have "know" that. 

Anyway, if this was a true "first person" song - that is, if the song-poet was writing about her own life - let's hope she did not play her song for the object of her apparently limited affection. Because the point of the song is that she's pretty sure there is a guy out there that she'd MUCH rather be with, but it's clear to her now that's probably never going to happen, so she's going to settle. And she's going to hope she comes to love the big lug who has given her his life, love and laundry. And his house! God help him if the other guy "comes along". The song of a deeply ethically challanged, er, challange woman. 

Barbara Foster is the performer, and I believe I understand correctly that this is the same singer who became better known as Bobbi Blake on MSR and who also pops up quite frequently a one of The Real Pros on Cinema. 

I'll also note that this song seems to go on forever. Surely, at three and three quarter minutes long, it's in the upper five percent of song-poems in length. 

Download: Barbara Foster - You're Not Exactly What I Ask For

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The flip side is called "But I Need You Most of All", and I'll admit I am not quite processing what this song-poet was on about. Barbara Foster sings again, and musically, this is a bit of a continuation of the flip side - although I really like some of what the guitarist and the pianist do on this track. 

Lyrically, though.... At first, I thought I'd caught on. She loves him just fine, but more than that, beyond her romantic connection with him, she needs him. Got it. But what to make of this?: 

"I really, really do love you, but the love is still there" 

Huh? That "but" doesn't seem like it fits with the rest of that lyric, and the remainder of that verse is about how she thought she'd fallen out of love, but hadn't. Maybe I'm just dense - well, I'm sure I'm dense, in plenty of ways, actually - but that verse seems to be grabbed at random from another song. Except that, as you'll hear, that section is the only part that has lyrics that might be considered a "verse". The rest of the song is essentially the same few words, rearranged a bit, repeated over and over. And over.  

Download: Barbara Foster - But I Need You Most of All

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 Incidentally, based on what's known about a few other songs from this period on Preview, it would appear this release is from 1976. 

A Vanity Record On Preview!

Before I get to today's rather remarkable find, I wanted to say a few other things. 

First, a reader wrote to me some time ago asking if I had a record on the Meloclass label, referring back to this wonderful post, from 13 years ago, and indicating that another release was by the same group. I did not have the record in question, but he has since found a copy, and has posted it to YouTube. You can find the two sides here and here. 

Second, an old friend dropped by to comment on my recent post on the Cape Cod label, to say that he also owns a song on this label, and as it turns out, both songs are about Cape Cod. That pairing is here. And, I will add, that site is also dedicated to song-poems, so click at the top of the page and have a look!

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And now for something a bit unusual. It is not unusual, per se, for a vanity recording to show up on a label otherwise dedicated to song-poems. There are several labels who routinely engaged in this practice, including all of Sandy Stanton's label, and others who did so occasionally, including Halmark. 

But in the listings found on the Preview page at the AS/PMA, I've only found two records which are clearly vanity records (discounting Rodd Keith's recording of his own song on Preview 2000, at least - not sure it counts as a vanity release of a member of the staff wrote and recorded it). 

That is, a record recorded and sung by the same person who wrote the song. That can't really be considered a song-poem, as the listed writer(s) presumably composed the words and music, if he or she is also performing the work. Both of the clear vanity listings I've found among the Preview database feature a band called Eddie Carter and the Sunset Ramblers, who, in the words of my best pal Stu, were "a well known L.A. country band in the 1960s", and what's more that "Carter also was later the touring and session lead guitarist for the Beach Boys"

One of those two Preview sides is by Eddie Carter and his band, and the other features the band backing someone named William "Chick" Sandone. I just obtained a copy of Chick Sandone's release, and am offering it up here for everyone's perusal. Again, as my friend Stu pointed out to me, Sandone also submitted songs in the more typical way, to Preview, and several of his songs were recorded by the regular Preview team, including one of the songs on this 45. What a successful bandleader (Carter, not Sandone) was doing making a record on Preview is indeed a question for the song-poem ages. 

And a bigger question is this: how did Eddie Carter and the Sunset Ramblers become popular at all, with a bass player who clearly has no idea how to play his instrument. The bass playing here is just as incompetent as that heard on my recent Tin Pan Alley posting (and in the other posts reference within that post). I'm not sure there's a single moment here where the bass player hits a note which is consistent with the chord changes of the songs, on either side. 

What's more, Chick Sandone certainly had an idiosyncratic way with a song, and it's to the band's credit that they learned and played it correctly. Coming out of the verses, this first song suddenly goes into 5/4 or 6/4 time! The two songs are fairly interchangeable, so I'll start with the one that has the far clunkier, less commercial title, "That's Where I Want to Be With You": 

Download: Chick Sandone with Eddie Carter and the Sunset Ramblers - That's Where I Want to Be With You

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Everything I said about that side also applies to "I Wish It Could Be Me", except for in this case, there does not appear to be a time signature at all. I defy ANYONE to tell me where the down beat on "1" is going to be in any particular measure. I tried to count out the measures during the parts of the song where he sings, in this one, and found myself completely unable to do so. Interestingly, the otherwise incompetent bass player did seem to know where that down beat was going to be, making me suspect that the bass player was none other than Chick himself. Otherwise, I can't fathom how that musician new where to hit a note with emphasis. Maybe that's how Eddie Carter's band made it - they had an actual bass player who sat out this session in favor of the songwriter/singer. Just a guess. 

Download: Chick Sandone with Eddie Carter and the Sunset Ramblers - I Wish It Could Be Me

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