"You Killed Me With Your Tongue..."

Yep, those are the words - "You killed me with your tongue" - and who better to sing such overwrought lyrics than our own Sammy Marshall, the king of the pained song-poem vocal, the veritable Prince of amateur songwriter heartbreak. And that's just (arguably) the most over the top moment in "Marble Casket". Other moments in the running: "you shoved my bleeding heart", "your scalding tears", and of course the title metaphor. Oh, and there are really only about four chords here - would it have been that hard for the bass player to keep them straight. Apparently so, judging from the segment beginning at about the one minute mark.

"Marble Casket" appeared on the tiny Blue-J label, part of the Globe song-poem factory of labels. This label was perhaps a group effort, as a glance at the songwriting credits on this 45, and the others listed at AS/PMA shows not a single writer (as is often the case for these small labels), but four or five names which turn up in various combinations as the writers on some (but not all) of the songs from the label. One of the writers who shows up on other Blue-J records (but not on this one) is listed here as the publisher of these songs!

UPDATE 9/12/20: Please see the comments section for some interesting information from Darryl Bullock. Thanks, Darryl!

Download: Sammy Marshall - Marble Casket
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Also worth noting, at least for the curiosity factor, is that the label address, listed as a Post Office Box at the AS/PMA site, is technically given as, not "P.O. Box 30", but rather "Drawer 30", in Stanton, Ill (just outside of Champaign). I'm quite certain I've never seen that particular phrase as an address before.

The best things I can say about the flip side, "Please Try", are that it's fairly peppy, and that it's over in the blink of an eye, lasting all of 113 seconds. I didn't start my turntable up slowly, by the way - the opening guitar really does sound like that.

Download: Sammy Marshall - Please Try
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My Gifts to You, Part Two

Well, last week, I celebrated some personal milestones as well as a happy reunion, by sharing some of the all time favorites of mine which have come to me from others' collections. At the time, I also meant to mention that the same happy week had brought the news that I am, for the first time, a Great-Uncle, as my niece and her husband have welcomed their first child.

As promised, here is part two of "my gifts to you", this time featuring three  classics from the mind of Rodd Keith. I assume that these tracks have circulated somewhat, but also believe that they are largely unheard by the larger song-poem loving community. All three of these are certainly good enough that they should have been anthologized by now. Again I'll mention that since these were sent through e-mail and/or via the mail on CD, I don't have the b-sides or label scans for these three tracks.

First up, a true "lost classic" from the Preview years, a soulful, deeply felt vocal and musical setting from Rodd, of a first rate lyric, in the song "Someday". I truly believe this one to be compilation-worthy, well above many of the tracks that have been chosen for CD release over the years. It's got one of my favorite Rodd vocals, nice understated drumming, wonderful backing vocals, and a nice band sound. I could absolutely see this being an actual '60's hit and a beloved "oldie", if only such things could happen to the best of the song-poem world:

Download: Rodd Keith - Someday
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Next up, we take a trip over to Film City, for a ride with The Swinging Strings, courtesy of Rod Rogers, with the happily ridiculous title "Give Me an X-Ray Picture of Your Heart". Rodd really sells the story song, and genuinely soars on a really nice bridge. That section, about "Dr. Brown", despite the goofy lyrics, is just lovely, and Rodd's vocal never indicates for a moment that he's singing lyrics which are anything less than classic.

Download: Rod Rogers and the Swinging Strings - Give Me an X-Ray Picture of Your Heart
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Finally, back to Preview, for one of the earliest releases on that label (number 1002), in which Rodd shows more than a bit of his Film City style. But what else could have possibly been called for a song called "Down The Mississippi-Ippy-Yi"? Here we have another story song, taking us all the way from a wedding to a 50th anniversary, with a riverboat tying both occasions together. To me, this sounds unlike any other Rodd Keith record, with the scratching guitar, the smile so apparent in his vocal, the minimalist backing, and the big finish, which to me is worth the price of admission, both for Rodd's ending vocal, and for the guitar, which sounds very much to me like a lift from Les Paul's arrangement of "How High the Moon".

Download: Rodd Keith - Down The Mississippi-Ippy-Yi
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I know that at least one of these tracks came to me from my friend Michael in New York, and deep thanks again go to him. Unfortunately, after all these years, I've lost track of exactly where the other two tracks came from. Many thanks to whoever provided me with them, and for the many years of enjoyment I've had with them. I hope you enjoy them just as much.

My Gifts to You, Part One

These last four days have been pretty wonderful, as I hoped and thought they would be. On Saturday, I saw one of my two oldest friends, and spent a nice amount of time with her - this was only the second time we'd been together in about 28 years, so that was really special. Then yesterday, the 21st, was my daughter Wendy's 21st Birthday! And today? Well, today, my wife and I celebrate our 24th Anniversary.

So to honor and reflect these happy times, I wanted to give a gift to all of you who like to look around in here from week to week or time to time. So I'm casting aside one of my rules for this site and throwing my collection wide open for the next two weeks, in a way I have usually avoided.

You see, I've deliberately made this site almost exclusively about records of which I physically own a copy. However, this has always meant that there is a large number of song-poems which I own only on tape or as files, which I've obtained in trade or otherwise, from other generous collectors, over the past 16 years of collecting and sharing. And a smaller number of those are truly great, and not generally known in the song-poem world. While it's likely that some of the tracks I'll be sharing this week and next do float around in collectors' circles, I'm guessing that many of you who visit here have never heard (or even heard of) most or all of them, and I want to rectify that, because these are really great records.

Due to the fact that these were all shared with me from other collectors, I have to go with the sound quality in which I received them, and I don't have scans of any record labels for these two weeks of posts.

First up, my choice for the quintessential Cara Stewart record. While I'd give a close second to the marvelous "Song of the Burmese Land", for my money, Cara and her svengali Lee Hudson never topped Iris Tipton's "I Spent My Last Three Dollars on an Irish Sweepstake Ticket". It's got everything I want in a Cara record: clever lyrics, Lee's masterful arranging - the string section and accordion flourishes are particularly nice - the fun, bouncy feel, and the inviting, warm smile in Cara's voice. Plus, there's a really amazing instrumental section - it's been suggested that what sounds like insanely closely miked pizzicato strings is actually a Chamberlin - if so, this might be the best work I've ever heard from that magical instrument. Barring anyone who can tell me that a Chamberlin could have produced that wondrous sound, I'm going to assume there really was a violin section on this record. Regardless, this whole record - from the Iris label - is pure magic, and certainly among my top 25 song-poem records:

Download: Cara Stewart I Spent My Last Three Dollars on an Irish Sweepstake Ticket
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Next up is a record from an otherwise unknown artist, working within the Film City family, in this case on the Endeavor label. The song is "My Point of View", and it opens with a flourish which may well be my favorite 8 second blast of Chamberlin work ever. It doesn't quite live up to that insanely forceful opening, but how could it? The singer, Guy Hewstan (with the ever present Film City Orchestra) has a perfect amount of smarm for the pleading lyrics, and he really sells them (I LOVE the way he sings "one that's been both'rin' me"), even when it's hard to tell exactly what they mean (is that "there's romance on my hands"?). The Chamberlin track is hotter than most of those I've heard, with a hellishly busy (and wonderful) rhythm track. This is another one I'd probably put in that top 25.

Download: Guy Hewstan with the Film City Orchestra - My Point of View
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And finally, here are both sides of a single that appeared on the Cowtown label back in 1960, credited to Anne and Bill Calhoun. The AS/PMA website is non-committal as to whether this particular record is a song-poem, while saying that the label itself released song-poems and vanity pressings. The quality of the song writing and performing here could lend itself to either conclusion - the A-side sounding to me more like a vanity release and the b-side sounding more song-poemy, but what do I know. I enjoy both of these songs quite a bit, if admittedly not nearly as much as the first two offerings, above, and I think they both deserve a wider audience.

On the A-side, Anne and Bill perform the song "Navajo". This was probably meant as sincere tribute at the time, but comes across today as more than a bit condescending. I do love the typical late '50's pop song chord changes that make up the chorus of this song:

Download: Anne and Bill Calhoun: Navajo
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And the flip side, which is called "Apple Dumpling", and which has a sound I associate with the Globe song-poem factory:

Download: Anne and Bill Calhoun: Apple Dumpling
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Special thanks to Michael and Phil for this week's offerings!

Kisses From Rod

Welcome to post number 250! If I had an MP3 of a fanfare, it would be here. Lacking that, it's still time to share something nice! Something that looks like this:

And there's never a bad time to share one of Rodd Keith's "Rod Rogers" records for Film City, and here's another winner, a bouncy slow twist number called "When We Kiss", complete with some patented genius Chamberlin orchestration - here identified as "The Film City Orchestra" instead of "The Swinging Strings", and, including a nice faux sax section solo section. Enjoy!

Download: Rod Rogers and the Film City Orchestra - When We Kiss
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The flip side, from the same song-poet, is not in the same league as "When We Kiss". "All of My Heart is an example of Rodd in lounge singer mode, a little of which goes a long way with me, but the some listeners mileage may vary. Even within the averageness, there are some nice moments, such as the momentary solo around the 1:25 point - I wish there was more of that!

Download: Rod Rogers and the Film City Orchestra - All of My Heart
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The Song-Poet as Comedy Writer

Every now and then, the song-poem collector (well, at least this song-poem collector) is surprised by a the work of a song-poet that is not only designed to be funny, but one which actually succeeds at being deliberately humorous. While today's example is perhaps far from the greatest example of absurdist humor that you're likely to hear, it is a nice effort, with some unexpected turns of phrase and several moments that had me grinning and saying, "wait.... what?". See if you don't agree as Gene Marshall tells us about Chick Sandone's view of "Walkin' to Work": 

Download: Gene Marshall - Walkin' to Work

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On the flip side, Chick Sandone offers up a much more typical song-poem subject, what it feels like to be left behind by the love of one's life. Unlike the flip side, "A Wrinkled Note" never gets past the cliche level, and even Gene Marshall turns in a less than adequate performance, actually going significantly out of tune on a few occasions. 

Download: Gene Marshall - A Wrinkled Note

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My Many, Many Moods

I wrote this post a few weeks ago, and thought I'd posted it, but clearly had not. But this is one of those rare times when I'm going to share my own work.

Because a few weeks ago, an album's worth of material that I recorded back in 1996 and 1997, collected back then (and again now) into a collection titled "The Many Moods of Bob", is part of the online "Happy Puppy Records" label.

These songs are from the humorous side of my writing and recording. The album contains several originals, a cover of a song-poem, a cover of a commercial and a couple of parodies. There are extensive liner notes, as well.

I'm quite honored and a bit overwhelmed that material I thought would only be heard by a few close friends and family has been heard by hundreds and possibly thousands of people.

The album can be found here. Have a listen, if you're of a mind to!

How Are You Defining "Success"?

Here's another one of those very early period Cinema singles, from the period in which house band "The Real Pros" was nothing but one guy with one of those cheap home-model rhythm-chord keyboards. The featured song is "If At First I Don't Succeed", and calls into question for me what the songwriter (and performer) considered "success". Certainly they failed at creating a catchy song or performance. But on the other hand, maybe the intent was to set succeed in setting a record for the number of cliches shoved into one song poem lyric. By the end of the first verse and chorus, we've had "climb the highest mountain" "swim the sea" "prove my love", "give it one more try" and "do or die" as well as the title phrase, and several more follow. See how many you can count!

Download: The Real Pros - If At First I Don't Succeed
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And here's something keen that I never noticed, but which is true of ALL of these earliest Cinema records. The songwriters not only get the standard songwriting credit (despite usually having had nothing to do with the music part of the song, they typically were the only person listed as the writer), but on these records, each of the writers also get a CO-PRODUCER credit. Click on the link for all of the Cinema postings, and see what I mean. Once they got out of their one-man-band period, they seem to have stopped doing this, but what a weird feature!

The flip side "Dancing in the Wine" is yet another one of those "I let you slip away and now I'm at your wedding, watching you with him" songs that I'm sure we've all had quite enough of.

Download: The Real Pros - Dancing in the Wine
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An Instrumental Song-Poem

Here's something quite unusual - in fact, I'm only aware of a few examples of each of two unusual facts regarding today's featured record. The first is that it came with a picture sleeve - I mentioned owning two a few weeks ago, when I posted the other one which I own, and I've since been reminded that a few other song-poems came with picture The other thing is that one of the songs is an instrumental.

There are very few song-poem records with instrumental tracks that I'm aware of, one of them being the marvelous "Elmer 21 Century Hop", which was included on the first Rodd Keith compilation. Like that track, today's offering comes from the Film City factory (although the record itself appeared on the smaller Endeavor label), and is in fact credited to "Film City Orchestra". Like "Elmer", what we have here is a chance to hear the Chamberlin played as a solo instrument, with every sound on this record created on that most wondrous of instruments.

There's no way to know who played this piece for certain. It sounds a bit simplistic for Rodd Keith, but on the other hand, who else was making Film City tracks at the time? And perhaps it sounds so simple because the author of the instrumental (titled "Carmel-By-The-Sea") wrote a simple tune. Whatever the story, it's certainly a fascinating little record, and here it is: 

Download: The Film City Orchestra - Carmel-By-The Sea

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Here are both sides of that picture sleeve:

The flip side is pretty much a standard-issue Film City style ballad, with the lead singer (as seen above) by moody, handsome JIM WHEELER!!!. Here' s "Smiling Blue Eyes":

Download: Jim Wheeler with the Film City Orchestra - Smiling Blue Eyes

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Willy Nilly

For the first time in a while, I'm introducing a new name to this series, a singer not previously heard from in my ongoing review of song-poems. It's Cathy Mills, whose work turned up for a brief period around 1966-67 on the Tin Pan Alley label. All of her work that I've been able to find documented occurs within a span of less than 100 release numbers on TPA.

This is a nice one, featuring the goofy word play which seems to have been endemic to people who bought into Tin Pan Alley's deal (i.e. "Fine Cars, Fine Cigars", "Doggone! My Dog is Gone" "Right, Right, Right the Wrong", and too many lyrical couplets to mention). "Willy Nilly Over Billy" also has the garage-lite sound that make so many of TPA's records from this era so pleasantly weird (or weirdly pleasant) to experience.

Cathy Mills has a sweet, engaging voice, which makes me wish that she turned up on more of these records than she does.

Download: Cathy Mills - Willy Nilly Over Billy
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(Of course, some reader may now let me know that Cathy is heard, on another label, under another name, making a connection that I'm perhaps missing...)

The flip side, "Find the Way to My Heart", is, as you'll hear, beat to hell. I started trying to fix the clicks and pops, but the results were almost as bad as the unfixed version, and I eventually gave up, part of the reason being that the song didn't strike me as anything special at all.

Download: Cathy Mills - Find the Way to My Heart
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Finally, today would have been mom's 89th birthday, and I hope that somewhere out there, she's celebrating.

Your Halmark Easter Card

Happy Easter!

And what better way to celebrate the holiest day of the Christian calendar than with what was clearly the go-to choice for the reverential song-poet, Halmark records.

Phil Milstein, in his most excellent essay on the Halmark label, made mention of the clear difference in writing style and quality between the authors of Halmark song-poems and those of almost every other label, suggesting that the fact that their customers were aficionados of "Writer's Digest" magazine was one reason for this distinct difference.

But as to what accounts for the fact that a far bigger percentage of Halmark releases have a Christian theme than any other label - none of them comes close - well, I have no idea. On today's EP, three of the four songs which have a religious theme, including two which refer directly to those events observed during Holy Week. Although not named on the label, these songs clearly feature husband and wife Jack and Mary Kimmel, either together or separately, on each of the tracks.

Either the recording and/or pressing here is truly horrible, or Jack's trebly voice are just too much for my poor phonograph, because at several points during his vocals, there is distortion.

First up is the one non-religious number of the batch, an "I'm better than that type of person" song, sung to a cheater, and titled "Her Kind":

Download: Halmark Productions - Her Kind
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On to the Easter theme, with a song of thanks, from a writer who "was in a coma twice", and whose recovery is attributed to Jesus, in "He is the Resurrection and Life":

Download: Halmark Productions - He Is the Resurrection and Life
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Flipping the record over, we hear one of my favorite Halmark backing tracks, this time fitted with the lyrics of the most excellently named Larn Headley, with "From the Manger to the Cross", a song which introduced me to The Legend of the Dogwood Tree, which I'd never heard of before:

Download: Halmark Productions - From the Manger to the Cross
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And finally, there is a song about "All Mighty God". I do have to wonder if either Cora Davenport, author of "Her Kind", or "James McCall", who wrote "All Mighty God", objected to - or even noticed for that matter - the fact that each of their lyrics was set to the exact same backing track as the other writer's lyric had been. That seems like just a perfect microcosm of the Halmark experience, and therefore, it seems like as good a place as any to wrap up today's feature:

Download: Halmark Productions - All Mighty God
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Praise For Young People

Today, a patriotic number for you, from Norm Burns and the Five Stars, "The Good Old U.S.A., featuring the spare, peppy sound that we all love from the Sterling Label:

Download: Norm Burns and the Five Stars - The Good Old U.S.A.
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And what's more, this is one of only two song-poems I've ever seen that comes with a picture sleeve (the other is for a Film City record). Given that this is a printed piece of paper glued over a standard white 45 sleeve, I'm tempted to say that this is something that song-poet Rolland M. Pointer put together himself. But then, why would it have all of the Sterling Records details? Perhaps this was a feature that Sterling offered, but which was rarely purchased? Whatever the story, it is nice that either Mr. Pointer or Sterling wanted to stress that his song was meant as "Praise For Young People"!



For the flip side ("Ring Out the Bells"), the Five Stars took a break, and "Singers" came in to replace them. This is, admittedly, a Christmas song, and a fairly dull one at that. But hey, it's Easter Week, so at least there is a Christian tie-in.

Download: Norm Burns and Singers - Ring Out the Bells
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The Twisted Kilt

While many people were spending much of this previous weekend celebrating (or perhaps regretting celebrations of) all things Irish, I instead spent a bit of time digitizing a record which claims a bit of a Scottish connection, instead. That connection is mostly in the title "Twistin' In His Kilt", and a few of the related lyrics, including the obligitory reference to cheap behavior (song-poet Jack Case was seemingly so intent on fitting in this reference that he didn't even bother to work up a rhyme for the line in question!). The Scottish connection to the music is quite a bit more tenuous, limited to a few moments of "The Campbells Are Coming", as honked on a rockin' tenor sax. The rest of the performance is vintage Sammy Marshall, here accompanied by a group identified by the very non-Scottish sounding "Tennessee Hot Doggers".

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Tennessee Hot Doggers - Twistin' in His Kilt

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The flip side is another Sammy special, a Holiday Inn lounge sounding number titled "Honey-Honey":

Download: Sammy Marshall and the Tennessee Hot Doggers - Honey-Honey

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