A March Treat - a Full Star-Crest Album - And it ROCKS! (Well, Once)

 I have a treat for you today!

It's a full song-poem album. And it's on the mustiest of fusty old early 1960's labels, Star-Crest. I don't have a lot to say about it. The singer is Tony Rogers, who I have featured on this site twice - nearly ten years ago, and more than a year after that, and a label which I have featured in the past both here, and ages ago at WFMU. 

Here are the front and back covers, which, aside from song titles, were largely interchangeable from album to album. Note that, on this one, Tony Rogers doesn't even get a mention - just a tiny rendition of his name on the labels themselves. 

Star-Crest tracks tend to sound like not only were the musicians not aware of the Rock and Roll Revolution, but that they'd missed The Big Band Era, too. I'll really only make three more comments. 

The first is that, as they did on several other releases, the folks at Star-Crest included a song that everyone would know, perhaps to fool the listener (presumably a friend of one of the song-poets featured) that this is a legitimate release. Otherwise, why would there be a rendition of "Oh! Susanna"? 

Second, I have not separated the tracks. To do so would have pushed this post back another week at least. So there are just two files to download, one for side one, and one for side two. 

And third, the winner here is definitely, "Rockin' All Over the World" which is on side one, starting at 10:55. The good folks at the session make there very best attempt as a drummer, guitarist, tenor sax and violin can do, after a day of playing music that was otherwise about 40 years out of date, if not more. I'm actually impressed at how (relatively, and only relatively) close they came to being convincing, given how comically bad the folks at Noval did with a similar set of lyrics, although that label's Rock and Roll product, Rock, Rocking All the Time, is both more unintentionally hilarious and somehow, much more endearing. 

Download: Tony Rogers - Music of America, Star-Crest LP6200, Side One

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Download: Tony Rogers - Music of America, Star-Crest LP6200, Side Two

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Music of America! A Full Album from Your Friends at Star-Crest

Howdy, Y'all,

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving, at least those who are in the areas which celebrated this holiday yesterday. And for all of you, I give thanks that you continue to read and listen to this site, and that I have continued to have this opportunity to share all of this wonderful, weird music with you.

As promised (or at least hinted at) in my last post, today, for the first time, I am posting an entire song-poem album. Previously, I had limited this level of posting to the WFMU blog, but with that no longer being an option, I've decided to periodically post full albums here.

One thing I'll not be doing, though, is making individual tracks out of all of the songs on an album - there is just too much time needed to separate and post them in this way. Instead, I'll highlight my favorites with two or three best-of tracks, then post both sides of the album in their entireties.

This week, the album in question is one of the many released by the deeply weird folks at Star-Crest, in this case, LP # 8400. It's likely that this was their 84th album (or thereabouts) rather than their 8400th album, given that every one of their album numbers ends with a double zero. And they didn't bother changing their album covers much, choosing instead to just slap on a sticker telling you which release number you were lucky enough to be holding. The front cover looks like this:

And here is the back cover:

The album, on the A-side, is credited to Robert Ravis (who you can also hear on a full album here), Tony Rogers and Linda Collins. They do not sing together, as you will hear. Here is the A-side's record label:

Robert Ravis does not appear on the B-side, so its label is only credited to Tony Rogers and Linda Collins, as you can see below:

Yes, you will be able to hear a full 24 songs below, 22 of them song-poems. For, as you may have noticed, like other song-poem outfits, Star-Crest sometimes made a point of including a few popular songs among the entries of their customers, so that Ms. Meeks, who submitted "Just One More Chance", can say that her song was on an album right alongside the title song to "The Desert Song" and that big hit "Mr. Sandman".

Before the files containing both full sides of the album, here are my three favorite entries. First up, Tony Rogers with "It's a Small World" (no, not that song). I enjoy the march music behind Tony, as well as the trip around the world to be found in the lyrics.

Download: Tony Rogers: It's a Small World
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Oh, and did I forget to mention? Except for the aforementioned "The Desert Song", which is a bit longer, nearly all of the songs are within shouting distance of being 90 seconds long.

My two favorites from this album are both sung by Linda Collins. First up, from side one, is "Who Knows?", which starts off being about how she doesn't really understand her man, but by the end, she is making a startling (for the era) cry out for some rather intimate satisfaction. This, for me, is the high point of the album:

Download: Linda Collins: Who Knows?
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Moving over to side two, we have one of the few clever lyrics to be found on an album which is otherwise made up of uninspired tales of devotion, and equally uninspired tales of loss. Again, we have Linda Collins, singing "Just One More Chance", the tale of an older person who hopes that life hasn't completely passed her by, complete with some downright weird lyrical choices (find me another song with the line "I wash my feet with any old soap"!) and a goofy bit of playing with words at the end.

Download; Linda Collins: Just One More Chance
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And now, if you're still with me, here are the complete album sides. First, the A-side:

Download: Robert Ravis, Tony Rogers and Linda Collins: Music of America (LP 8400), Side One
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And here is the B-side:

Download: Tony Rogers and Linda Collins: Music of America (LP 8400), Side One
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ENJOY!!!!

Tony Rogers Does His Homework

By now, almost everyone who planned on being in school for the winter semester has returned to school. So what better time for a light-hearted complaint about Homework?

As I wrote a few months ago, the Star-Crest label fascinates me. Although their products seem to have started appearing in the early 1960's (the only confirmed date for the label found in the AS/PMA website is 1961), virtually everything I've heard from the good folks at Star-Crest sounds like it was intended for release in the 1930's.

That causes even more of a disconnect than usual with label stalwart Tony Rogers' rendition of "Homework". The lyrics present a typical young man, perhaps in his late teens, complaining of how he won't be showing up on time for his date (where they'll "neck and talk"), because of all the work he's been assigned. When it turns out that he's too late to even go to her door at all (although he also stopped to "take a bath"), he decides to read a good book, only to realize he can't even do that, because, you guessed it, there's more homework to be done.

That actually would not a be a bad bit of storytelling for an early '60's novelty pop or teen idol rock and roll record, come to think of it. Gary "U.S." Bonds could have made that work.

Unfortunately, lyricist William E. Cobb sent his lyrics to Star-Crest, and not Sterling or Lee Hudson, and we end up with a backing, and vocal delivery, that sound straight out of 1933. I wish I could have been there when Mr. Cobb heard the results of the work he'd paid for. Still, for all it's ridiculousness, I pretty much love this record.

Download: Tony Rogers with Orchestra - Homework
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On the flip side, we hear Mary Marcuso's lament of having been tricked by an untrue lover, one who has now gone on to break yet another lover's heart. The setting again sounds like it was created in the mid-'30's (well, minus the guitar line, anyway) but at least this time, the lyrics and feel are appropriate to that time.

It's worth noting that this side of the record is a mere 84 seconds long: last week, I speculated that the total time of that week's 45 (3 minutes, 10 seconds) might be a record. Well, today's two-sider contains music that totals exactly... 3 minutes, 9 seconds!!!


Download: Tony Rogers with Orchestra - What a Fool I Was
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Music of Crusty America

Although I've never featured it on this site before, the Star-Crest song-poem label holds a special fascination for me. Their albums (and it's almost always an album - I've only ever heard of four 45's on the label, and have only ever seen one of those) are unlike the products of any other label, except for perhaps Film-Tone, a label which they are reported to have had some sort of connection to.

Star- Crest releases are extra chintzy, often described on the label as featuring an orchestra, although rarely actually featuring more than four instruments, and often fewer than that. Their singers are either hopelessly incompetent, or at best are not very good at sight-reading - it certainly sounds to me like these singers have never seen the material before. That was rarely a problem for the likes of Gene Marshall, but the Star-Crest vocalists seem to trip over the melodies quite a bit more than was the average for song-poem vocalists.

The songs are also over in a flash. This album contains 22 songs in barely 40 minutes, many of them under 100 seconds long. Like many Star-Crest albums, it also contains a genuine hit song from the past, in this case WAY past (hello, public domain), "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean".

Then there is the material that Star-Crest received, or at least those lyrics they accepted. Much of their clientele seems to have been stuck in that period of the '30's where exceptionally corny novelties and sickly sweet sentimental clap-trap ruled the day. Those writers whose lyrics were in some way more contemporary (again, see the second track, below) were simply out of luck. Because to nearly all of these lyrics were paired arrangements that simply exist out of time entirely. There is no period in American music that I'm aware of when hit music (or potential hit music) was released which featured vocalists paired with piano, guitar and clarinet (or sax). True demo records are not typically this elaborate - and actual releases on real record labels not anywhere near this sparse.

The first example today is the song "The Little Grey Rabbit", as sung by Mary Martell. Here's a lyric which is clearly leading up to a moral, and when it arrives, it's more sudden and perhaps a bit harsher than one might have expected.

Download: Mary Martell - The Little Grey Rabbit
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From the other end of the spectrum comes a hapless attempt at Rock and Roll, sung by label stalwart Tony Rogers, titled "Rock N' Roll Rocker". This contains one of the weirdest couplets I have heard in a song-poem (or any song) in quite some time:

"Grandma may be dead and weak,
but her get her in her rocker and she's a freak."

Dead and weak?

That's the "best" line, but the whole thing is amazing, in a car-crash sort of way.

Download: Tony Rogers - Rock N' Roll Rocker
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Finally, as an example of what some of the other material on the album sounds like - the stuff that isn't hit-over-the-head moralistic or hopelessly misguided, here's an attempt at whimsy, titled "Just a Little Tugboat", sung again by Mary Martell.

Download: Mary Martell - Just a Little Tugboat
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A full Star-Crest album which I posted several years ago to WFMU can be found here.