A Rival For Paul McCartney?

Right off the bat, here is yet another ad - or in this case a series of ads - that my pal Vinnie shared with me, for me to share with you. A couple of these seven ads are not for song-poems, but presumably they all came from the same page (and strip) from a magazine or paper. There's a lot to investigate here, and i wonder how the budding song-poet decided which company to choose. 

And now! It was just a short three and a half months ago that I wrote these excited words about a record I had obtained: 

If I have a chance to pick up a Tin Pan Alley single from the late 1950's through the 1960's, I'm going to go for it, if the price is right. It's one of my favorite labels. But if that record shows a label number in the 390s threw the 400s, I'm downright giddy at the chance, and may spend a bit more than I would have otherwise. 

Because for that short period - however long it took to get through those 20 or so releases - the label sometimes (but not always) used a bass player who seemingly had no knowledge of the instrument and barely a sense of rhythm. I've shared several of these records before, most notably, but not limited to, "The Proon Doon Walk" and "Snow Man"

 Well, amazingly, and very happily, I have found YET ANOTHER ONE: 

There simply cannot be an endless supply of these records. They all occur between about number 390 and number 410, and not every record in that sequence has this bad bass player present. So every one found is a treasure, even one, such as this one, where are man on double bass plays less of a role, and is less obnoxiously incompetent, as son some of the others. 

The singer, as is the case on most of those non-ace-of-bass" singles, is Bob Gerard, singing the song "Sparkle With Dew" for us. The fact that a guitarist is playing big fat rhythm chords buries the many, many missed bass notes on this record, more so than other tracks in this series. Additionally, the rhythm of the song doesn't really lend itself to the Boommmm-ba-Boommm rhythm that not-the-second-coming -of-Charles-Mingus preferred. But it's still a worthy listen for its amusing half-assed-ness 

Download: Bob Gerard - Sparkle With Dew

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The bass player has even less to do on the martial number on the flip side, "For Our Country", but he still manages to land on the wrong note on virtually every downbeat. This is one of those records thanking the Lord for the land he granted "us", with nary a mention of the millions of people who were already, you know, using it. 

Download: Bob Gerard - For Our Country

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Making Due with Just a Few

Greeting!

First up, here is yet another Song-Poem ad, courtesy of Brian. This one is just a little blurry:

Next, I will share the latest month's worth of updates to previous broken links, which in this case are for February of 2013. That month featured a split feature on a vanity label called Patmar, a Real Pros record where I seem to have misidentified the singers on both sides of the disc, a Valentine's post from Halmark, and a Rodd Keith countrified number.

And speaking of Rodd Keith, he is featured again today, in his earlier guise as Rod Rogers and the Swinging Strings. On this Film City release, he does a typically nice job creating a music bed with the Chamberlin, but two things stand out for me in this performance.

The first is that the song-poet has not provided Film City with enough lyrics for a two minute song, perhaps not even enough for a one minute song. After an initial verse, we are treated to elements of the same, remaining lyrics for the last 90 seconds of the song, expanded nicely with multiple instrumental breaks.

The other is that those lyrics that are present seem to have presented Rodd with little chance to format them into a typical song or chord pattern. To my ear, after that opening verse, the lyrics come out of him seemingly at random, with little sense of consistent or memorable melody or, really, much of a coherent chord structure. I'm not sure he could have done much better, given what he was offered, but this really sounds tossed-off.

It's worth noting that this is one of the highest numbered Rod Rogers records on Film City. Publishing information I found in a web search dates the copyright on the song to December of 1968, which is actually after I thought he'd moved to Preview, and his name disappears from the Film City label less than 100 numbers later (although one of my all time favorites from Rodd, "The Watusi Whing-Ding Girl" came even later in his tenure).

Download: Rod Rogers and the Swinging Strings - You Stole My Heart Cupid
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As more indication that Rodd was on the way out the door, the flip side of this record is performed by Rodd's eventual replacement, Frank Perry (indeed, this record number is a full 80 releases prior to anything by Perry documented at AS/PMA). The offering here is a downright torpid number - I doubt that's Rodd on the Chamberlin - in which even the song-poet doesn't seem to have known how to spell his loved one's name, given the confusing title: "Lea, My Leah". There aren't a ton of lyrics to this one, either.

Download: Frank Perry and the Swinging Strings - Lea, My Leah
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