Next up, and not wholly unrelated to Ms. Layne, is Miss Tipsie Lee, who was apparently even younger at the time of this recording than Ms. Layne seems to have been trying to sound: according to the label, Tipsie was "13 years old" when this record was made, and I can certainly believe that. But as much as some others might quickly lump this into the "difficult listening" file, I find that there is something magical happening here. There are points in the song where it feels to me that the train (heard at the beginning and the end of the song) is about to slip right off the track.
The energy in Tipsie's lead vocal is infectious, in a way that I rarely hear in the voice of a grown singer, and I'm a big fan of records where you can hear the intake of breath before a big vocal.
I found this record at the late, lamented record store "Toad Hall", of Rockford, Illinois, easily the best record store I've ever been in. Three buildings, two of them combined storefronts. However, the owners had taken over the basement and what had once been upstairs apartments, and virtually every space in the buildings, even closets, where stuffed with records, except those places filled with books and magazines. The third building housed nothing but 45's and 78's.
Sadly, the owners both died in the past three years, and the store is no more.
Play:
ADDENDUM, JANUARY, 2022: As mentioned in the comments, some wonderful person (or peo-ple) bought Toad Hall records and all of their inventory, and the store has been open again, for the last several years. If you're ever anywhere near Rockford, IL, I encourage you to spend a day there.
