Road Trip!

Today, we're going on a trip to Arkansas. I've been in 42 of the 50 states, by my count, and although I was only in Arkansas for part of a day, the land I saw there may be the most beautiful I've ever seen. Those behind this record, it appears, would heartily agree.

Here's a record on the previously undocumented Patmar records label out of Springdale, Arkansas. Springdale is in the Northwest corner of the state, about 30 miles from Decatur, Arkansas. While Springdale is a good sized city of roughly 70,000, Decatur, on the other hand, has well under 2000 residents.

I think we can reasonably guess that in one of these towns - I'm guessing Decatur, lived a couple named Pat and Marge, who threw their money into song-poem recordings as well as their own nearly eponymous record label, not even bothering to provide their last name on the songwriting credit! And for at least one side of their record, they turned to the Globe company, and stalwart Sammy Marshall, offering up a wish for those who hear him to "Give Me Decatur". Sammy gives it his typical upbeat, enthusiastic performance. By the way, the momentary fades you'll no doubt hear on this track are part of the original record, and not a flaw in the transfer to MP3:

Download: Sammy Marshall - Give Me Decatur
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On the flip side is a recording which might be a song-poem offering, or may be a commissioned performance by a local performer, or perhaps even a friend of Pat and Marge, someone named Les Anderson, nicknamed "Carrot Top" (and God help me, I hope this is the only circumstance under which I have to be entertained by someone with that nickname), along with a string band under the direction of Tex Atchison. I honestly don't know that this is a song-poem or some other animal, but I do know this: as mentioned above, I can fully understand the songwriters' point of view and love of their local land in their song "Beautiful Arkansas":

Download: Les "Carrot-Top" Anderson - Beautiful Arkansas
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A Halmark Love Letter

It's St. Valentine's Day! And I know that when we speak of love, and of song poems, there are those of you who love the Halmark label (and what better label to choose than one which is almost spelled like Hallmark, the company that bring us all of those holiday cards?).

Here's a Halmark special, featuring a superbly nasal performance - I think that's Jack Kim, but my recent singer identifications have been repeatedly called into question - on a love letter in song, titled "I'll Stand By You".



Download: Halmark Productions - I'll Stand By You
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On the flip side, we have a female Halmark singer (whose name I don't know), singing over a backing track I don't remember hearing on a Halmark disk (a real rarity in itself), in an supremely boring religious number, "Where Shall I Go?":



Download: Halmark Productions - Where Shall I Go
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It's St. Valentine's Day! For those of you who love the Halmark label (and what better label to choose than one which misp

That's Her Kissy Face - In Prison

Continuing last week's feature of songs sent to me from a long-time song-poem pal, I've got two songs from a Cinema release, featuring of course The Real Pros. As with last week's feature, because I'm getting these from outside of my collection, I don't have label scans.

The two songs contained on this record could hardly be more different. On the A-side, we've got a light-as-a-feather pop confection called "That's Her Kissy Face", featuring the unusual pairing of acoustic guitar and cheapo synth, over which the singer - who I think is Bobbi Blake - sings a wonderful sweet lyric about a mother's love for her young daughter. Despite the ridiculously low production values, it's a keeper!

Download: The Real Pros - That's Her Kissy Face
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On the flip side, we have Gene Marshall, emoting all over something called "Prison Blues", something of tone poem (a tone-song-poem?), with absolutely no beat or rhythm. Over outtakes from the Deep Purple/Iron Butterfly song-intro file, Gene does a first rate job of offering up the feeling behind the songwriter's words of woe. It's a fairly singular sound and performance from within the song-poem world, actually. Have a listen:

Download: The Real Pros - Prison Blues
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A big thank you to Michael, from me and all the readers and listeners!

AND an addendum, all these years later - it appears I was wrong about both singers here. I'm not convinced that it is not Bobbi Blake on the first cut and it is not Gene Marshall on the flip. I don't know the female singer, and the male singer is the same one who was on most of the earliest Cinema releases. 

And in the Role of "Fred Hamilton".... RODD KEITH!

Over the past few months, one of my longest standing song-poem pals, who I believe I've been corresponding with for the better part of a decade, has sent me some favorites from his collection. With his permission, I'm going to share a few of these over the next few months, interspersed with many more from my collection. Most of these do not have scans of the labels, but on the other hand, given that they are among his favorites, they are quite excellent and shareable, and I didn't want the lack of label scans to prevent me from letting them be heard here.

Today's example comes from the Preview label, and that charming man-about-Preview, Rodd Keith. For whatever reason, on this side of the record, he is billed as "Fred Hamilton", a name not documented on any other Preview record in the AS/PMA database. Be that as it may, it's certainly Rodd singing, and the fantastic production could hardly have been anyone else.

As heard here, Rodd reminds me of no one so much as late period (i.e. the last two decades) Leonard Cohen. And the otherworldly sounds on this track - the overall wooziness, the plucking guitar, the spacy sounds in the background - this is a keeper which should have been anthologized a long time ago. First rate stuff!

ADDENDUM, 1/30/13: A couple of my closest song-poem pals, including the person who supplied these tracks, have written to say that they don't think this is Rodd singing (see comments). I believe that it is, and have other records of his where his singing sounds much like this, but can see their point that it might be someone else. I'd be interested to hear what others think!

Download: Fred Hamilton - A Star Alone
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On the flip side is a song credited to "The Downtowners", titled "Among My Memories". That group name usually means Rodd and some of his cohorts, and this is no exception. But this side seems like a missed chance - the chorus at the start is absolutely fabulous, but then he does that damn talky-talk thing that rarely works (on a song-poem or elsewhere). Then nearer the end, they kind of mix up the singing and talking, and that doesn't do it for me, either. Throughout, the backing track holds the promise of what might have been. Obviously, dear listener, your mileage may vary. Here 'tis!

Download: The Downtowners - Among My Memories
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Faces I Would Like to Know

When I first discovered song-poems, among the initial things I did was check out the American Song-Poem Music Archives, which was then (1996) a vibrant, growing database, with new items added virtually every week or more, and not the mothballed site it is now. That allowed me to know what I would like to search for, and after making the rounds of my favorite stores, and buying a few handfuls of the song-poems those stores unwittingly had in their holdings, I contacted Phil Milstein, head honcho of the AS/PMA.

Thus began an ongoing e-mail exchange, and quickly, to a cassette exchange - all of my latest findings, as I continued to collect 45's, for cassettes of the finest as-yet un-comped song-poems from Phil's growing collection, sent to him from all parts of the collecting universe.

The very first tape I received from him was a cornucopia of fantastic material, starting with a double shot of Halmark ("My Hamburger Baby" and "My Daddy, He Died in 1969") and continuing through the labels and styles. I tell you all this because just last week, some 15 years after that cassette exchange, I managed to snag a vinyl copy of one of my favorite songs from that initial tape exchange, a marvelous little piece of Film City weirdness with the unwieldy title of "You Have a Face (I Would Like to Know)".

On this otherworldly sounding record, the Chamberlin (played almost undoubtedly by Rodd Keith) sets a smoky, night-club-esque mood, with one of the greatest sounds known to man, the marimba, front and center at times, as Patty Stanton sings in a "come-hither" style and lets the listener know how well she'd like to know the face to which she is singing. If the words chosen are a little less than masterful, well, that's one of the charms of the song-poem world in general, and this record specifically.

Download: Patty Stanton and the Singing Strings - You Have a Face (I Would Like to Know)
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The oddest thing about this record may be that both sides contain versions of the same song, with the flip side (actually identified as the a-side, despite being by far the weaker of the two renditions) being offered without its parenthetical title, and performed in a rather bland, blase manner by label head Sandy Stanton. This really plays up how important arrangement and vocal performance are to a song, as this is essentially the same material, but it holds almost no interest, lacking that wonderful smoky arrangement and that sexy performance from the flip side. Here's Sandy Stanton with "You Have a Face":

Download: Sandy Stanton and the Singing Strings - You Have a Face
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Dinner at the United Nations

It seems like quite a while since Gene Marshall was featured here, and it's time to rectify that. The lyrics to today's song, "United Nations", are a minefield of weirdness, to my ears, anyway. Essentially, the songwriter went to a dinner where there were people of every shade, continent, religion, ethnicity, etc. On the one hand, it sounds like she intended to share how impressed and deeply moved she was to be at this cultural gumbo of a dinner party, and how wonderful the family of man is, and maybe that's how it really was.

But I keep getting stopped short by her choice of words: she was "so shocked to see" this group, and how they were all "sitting comfortably", while they were all "staring at me". Does this sound to anyone else like the description of someone who is observing the natives, like a sociologist, or even an anthropologist. The lyrics from there on really do sell the point of interacting with those different than ourselves, but that first verse just has the feel of the society lady having an exotic day out with the natives.

Download: Gene Marshall - United Nations
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The flip side, "Jumbo Dreams", is weird in its own way, starting with that momentary disco guitar noise that leads it off. Am I hearing this right: that the writer's "Jumbo" plans and dreams of the title, are nothing more or less than the day when women would be throwing themselves at him? That's what I'm hearing - he doesn't even explain how those dreams came true. And has anyone ever actually spoken of having "Jumbo Dreams"?

Download: Gene Marshall - Jumbo Dreams
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A Little Bell Told Me

Today's EP is one that I snapped up recently, extremely happy and excited to have been able to buy a copy of a record containing one of the singularly greatest song-poems I've ever heard, one which will likely be familiar to most people reading this post. And while it's still the best reason to have bought the record, I am also extremely glad to have made the acquaintence of a song heard on the flip side of the same EP, one with a bit of mystery to it, as well. 

The Air label seems to have been a catch-all label. I have very little understanding of how this worked, but records on Air can contain the product of as many different song-poem factories as their are tracks on the record. I have no idea if whoever was behind "Air" made any recordings at all. In this case, we have two songs from the Lee Hudson production facility, one from Globe and one that I'm guessing came from Tin Pan Alley. 

First up, one of the two Lee Hudson numbers, a passable, but less than intriguing number called "You're My Lucky Number", most interesting in that it is performed by Bob Brown, last heard here on a somewhat mysterious little record which had a Lee Hudson instrumental on the flip side. Here's Bob Brown with "You're My Lucky Number": 

Download: Bob Brown - You're My Lucky Number
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And now we come to the song which led to this posting, one that sort of fascinates me. It's called "Little Bell", and it's credited to Lang Crosby. First of all, this recording features the melding of two of my passions, Calypso and song poems, so it's already got that going for it. Secondly, there is the mystery here. "Lang Crosby" does not appear anywhere else in the song-poem database at AS/PMA, and what's more, searching for him online shows that his name is the same as 2/3rds of that of one of Bing Crosby's songs, Philip Lang Crosby. Probably a coincidence, or perhaps a ruse to make the song-poet think that the song was being sung by someone who was sort of famous? Who knows. Finally, which song poem factory produced this number? My guess is late 1950's Tin Pan Alley, based on the sound, but I'm not at all sure.

Regardless of all of that, this has been my favorite new song-poem discovery for the last month or more, with the lilting beat, intoxicating, echoey production, sweet vocal and first-rate lyrics. I hope you like it at least half as much. Here's "Little Bell", by Lang Crosby:

Download: Lang Crosby - Little Bell
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In many ways, the next track, by Sammy Marshall, or in this case, Sonny Marshall, is the typical Sammy release from the people at Globe, but the one fascinating aspect to it is its title, and by extension, its lyrics. It's called "Ben Sira in the Garden", and doing a websearch for "Ben Sira" took me down a rabbit hole of information about an ancient Jewish text, left out of the Bible, but still considered very important to many people of varying religious inclinations. I'll not go into any more detail, to keep readers from seeing how very little I know about this, but there is more in this title and lyric than in your everyday song-poem, that's for sure. Here it is:

Download: Sonny Marshall - Ben Sira in the Garden
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And finally, the song which led me to pursue this record in the first place. This one is already ensconsed at the top of the song-poem heap, having been included in one of the great compilations of many years ago. But there's never a bad moment to experience Cara Stewart's classic "Song of the Burmese Land":

Download: Cara Stewart - Song of the Burmese Land

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A Little Housekeeping

Shortly after I began this song-poem-of-the-week project - exactly four years ago this week, as a matter of fact - commenters began requesting that rather than share just one song, that I post both sides of any single that I choose, and that I scan and include the labels from both sides. I aim to please, and with very few exceptions, I've done that in all of my posts since early in the project. 

But I didn't do so in my recent WFMU post of ten Christmas song poems (which, in case you missed it, can be found here). So, in a little act of end-of-the-year housekeeping, here are nine of the ten flip sides from the tracks featured in that WFMU post (as mentioned in that post, the tenth record, "Picolo, The Christmas Elf", had a significant, crescent moon shaped crack in it - the flip side was virtually unplayable, and in trying to make it playable, I broke that crescent shape right out of the record. Ah, well...)

Here goes!

I actually believe this record, and one other (below) have been available online at some point, and may circulate among collectors, but I can't find that either of them are currently available, so, in the interest of completeness, I'm including them. The flip side of the Norris Mayhams Christmas single "Jingle Mint Twist", also by Mayhams, and sung by "Singing Sammy Marshall", is "Come Back to Me": 

Download: Singing Sammy Marshall - Come Back to Me
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The flip side of Norm Burns' "Christmas With You" is the rather bland "Living Rose":

Download: Norm Burns - Living Rose
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"Xmas and You" may have been a bit of sweetness from Eleanor Shaw, but the flip side is anything but sweetness. Have a listen to "Scars On My Broken Heart": 

Download: Eleanor Shaw - Scars On My Broken Heart

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The high-end song-poem outfit Stylecraft brought us "Christmas in Ireland" in my WFMU post, and on the flip side, the same batch of performers, headed by Lynne Richards, offers up "You've Got to Live to Love":

Download: Lynne Richards with the Bill Lawrence Orchestra - You've Got to Love to Live
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Next up, two songs which I really should have included in that WFMU post, because they are both Christmas songs. But I was paying attention to titles, and not having a re-listen before making the files, so I didn't pay any attention to that fact. Here, a week or so late, is the flip side to "Christmas Tree", Sandy and Patty's Fable label rendition of "Oh, Lovely Night": 

Download: Sandy and Patty with The Panics - Oh, Lovely Night

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And another Christmassy one, here's that other record that I think probably floats around in trading circles, Rod Rogers' flip to "Smile, It's Christmas", in which he expresses a holier thought for the day, "Let's Share a Prayer":

Download: Rod Rogers - Let's Share a Prayer
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Eleanor Shaw is back again, with the flip side of "Dear Santa", which is titled "Come Back":

Download: Eleanor Shaw - Come Back
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As was often the case on MSR records, labelmates shared a release on MSR 2377. On the reverse of Dick Kent's "Everywhere You Go on Christmas" lives Bobbi Blake's very un-Christmassy "Wicked Woman":

Download: Bobbi Blake - Wicked Woman
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Saving the weirdest for last, here is Madelyn Buzzard. At WFMU, I shared her song "Christmas is the Love Within Your Heart". For the flip, we have the mid-winter saga "Chicken House Blues", which pairs deeply strange lyrics with half-assed musical performance, and Madelyn's relentlessly terrible singing for true song-poem trifecta. Enjoy!

Download: Madelyn Buzzard - Chicken House Blues
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HAPPY NEW YEAR - It's been a challenging, at times wretched year, for family, friends and neighbors. Aside from a bright spot at the beginning of November, there's not much I would want to relive, and I'll be happy to see a new, hopefully better year come along. Despite all that, I have greatly enjoyed, yet again, sharing all of this wondrous, odd and unique music with you, and one bright spot has been the feedback that I've received here, and at WFMU, and for that I am thankful.

Bob

Christmas Eve Song Poems

Howdy, folks!

It's Christmas Eve! I'm busy, you're busy, and if you're half as busy as I am, then I'm twice as busy as you are, or vice versa as the case may be.

So I'll just say a few words about today's EP, and then let you listen to the magic of Cara Stewart and her svengali, Lee Hudson. This EP showed up on the Bluemoon label, which seems to have been set up by and dedicated to songs written by someone named Frank Blood. On the b-side of this record are two song-poems which seem perfect for Christmas Eve listening, and here they are.

The first is "Christmas Is Here Again":

Download: Cara Stewart - Christmas Is Here Again
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Following that one is "On Christmas Eve":

Download: Cara Stewart - On Christmas Eve
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The flip side of this record, which was actually designated as Side One, features two non-Christmas songs, both of them wistful wishes set to music, portraying one half of a loving couple, writing about and two his far away lover. The first is "Rosewood Cottage on the Hill":

Download: Cara Stewart - Rosewood Cottage on the Hill
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And finally, "In a Dream":

Download: Cara Stewart - In a Dream
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MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!!!

Bob

Sammy Ponders

Before offering up this week's seasonal offering, I wanted to provide a link, for those who may have missed it, to the post I did of TEN Christmas song-poems, at WFMU last Sunday. It can be found here.

For today's feature, we have the ubiquitous Sammy Marshall, showing up this time on the Globe offshoot Roxie label, but sounding as canned as smarmy as a Globe imprint Sammy record can, as he ponders the question "Is It Christmas Everywhere?"

Download: Sammy Marshall - Is It Christmas Everywhere
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As I've found is often the case with Christmas song-poems, the better half of this single is found on the flip side - the non-Christmas side - of the release. In this particular case, "better" is a relative term, but I'd certainly rather have a second listen to Sammy and his label-mate Mary Kaye warble "While I'm Still Missing You" than I would to Sammy's Christmas offering.

Download: Sammy Marshall and Mary Kaye - While I'm Still Missing You
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A Very Shelly Christmas

Today, in addition to sharing another Christmas song-poem here, I'm also preparing a whole set of the same, which will appear at WFMU's blog tomorrow. That being the case, time to blather on is virtually non-existent, so I'll just share that the offering for this week features Shelley Stuart, one of the secondary acts at Sterling Records, singing (appropriately, I guess) in a rather girlish voice about "A Ride On Santa Claus' Sleigh": 

Download: Shelley Stuart and the Five Stars - A Ride on Santa Claus' Sleigh
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If it weren't for the Christmas theme I'm employing this month, this record's flip side would absolutely have been the first one featured. It is the better of the two songs, it features a personal favorite of mine, Norm Burns, and most of all, it's got a downright weird construction - very rare for a song poem - in that it has an unusual and creative chord progression that shows up at the beginning and the end of the record. It's a little thing, and quite short, but it's sort of startling. And since that progression doesn't appear anywhere in the vocal part of the record, it is in a sense superfluous - the fact that they added it  is evidence of the need to find a creative outlet, even when doing something that is often hackwork. Have a listen to "Let That Little Girl Dance":

Download: Norm Burns and the Five Stars - Let That Little Girl Dance
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It's That Time Again!

Now that December is upon us, it's time to again reach into the cornucopia of Christmas song-poems, and pull out the first of at least four holiday-themed 45's that I'll feature here during the weeks leading up to Christmas (and, if I can motivate myself, perhaps another half dozen that I'll put up over at WFMU next weekend).

And what better reason (as if I needed one) could there be to share a record on the ultra-weird and shadowy Noval label. And I think the first song featured from this 45, "A Christmas Stocking", is the only record I've heard on the label not to feature the sort of bland, pitch challenged male singer that seems to pop up on every other Noval release, including the flip side of this 45.

But in this case, the singer is a slightly more effective (emphasis on slightly) female singer, although as always on this label, she's accompanied by a bare bones combo (albeit with the addition of jingle bells ringing on every beat - on the other hand, I'm not sure I hear the vibes, which are usually the nicest part of a Noval record). The song itself is a generic tune, contained in a record which would barely last 80 seconds, if not for the fact that the backing band plays the entire tune through before the singing starts.

Download: Noval Productions - A Christmas Stocking
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For the flip side, "Thinking About Christmas", the voice-of-Noval is back, as are the vibes heard on most of Noval's records, and as is the meandering, near-tunelessness which is also a Hallmark of the label's releases. But hey, it's Christmas!

Download: Noval Productions - Thinking About Christmas
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