Rodd Rivers and the "Big Action Sound"!

I've always been fairly fascinated with the twists and turns of Rodd Keith's song-poem career, from Film City and its off-shoots to Preview and then MSR. What I'm going to offer up here is pure speculation, as I have absolutely no idea the truth of the matter, but I've noticed that with each change, Rodd changed his billing, from Rod Rogers at Film City to Rodd Keith at Preview and then, after a flurry of releases as Rodd Keith at MSR, back to the slightly different Rodd Rogers for his final releases at that label.

 What I wonder is: was this a contractual thing? Was he under contract to Film City, so to get around that, he had to go under a different name at Preview? And did Preview decide it owned the name "Rodd Keith", leading to the slightly changed earlier moniker? And if so, does that explain the further alteration seen on today's feature?

For this record clearly comes from Film City's production studio, based on the Chamberlin and the production sound, and if the stamp on the A-side is to be believed, is from a point in 1971 when Rodd had not been at Film City in quite some time, and was being billed as "Rodd Rogers" over at MSR.  Was he moonlighting at his old stomping grounds, unable to be billed under any of his preferred monikers?

Again, all speculation. If I'm totally off base, I'm sure someone is out there who knows better than I do. Whether you know or not, I'd be interested in other thoughts.

All that said, first up is a superb example of Rodd's abilities as a one man band, on the song "Any Way You Want It (clearly superior to the Journey song of the same title... although.... what isn't...). It comes complete with interactive vocals, Rodd answering Rodd and occasionally harmonizing with himself. All of this is heard over a nifty Chamberlin performance, featuring those soaring faux-choral oohs, an otherworldly sound that I just love. The song itself is no slouch, either - Rodd created a really nice, memorable melody.

Download: Rodd Rivers and the "Big Action Sound" - Any Way You Want It
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On the flip side is the deceptively titled "Sing a Happy Song". A lesser song-poem composer might have ignored the lyric and attached a bouncy, peppy backing track. Rodd's song, on the other hand, is a more contemplative mid-tempo shuffle, appropriate to the lyric, which is about a man trying to overcome his heartbreak, after a romance has ended. Again, we have some nice harmony singing, too!

Download: Rodd Rivers and the "Big Action Sound" - Sing a Happy Song
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Baby, You Sure Can Palpitate!

How can one not get at least a little stirred up at the thought of hearing a song-poem titled "Palpitatin' Syncopatin' Baby", sung by Gene Marshall, no less?

The lyrics are suitibly weird ("When I get the beat, I'm always indiscreet; when sex appeals, I kick my heels"), and Gene is certainly up to the task of filling these words with a good measure of feeling, as is the wah-wah guitarist.

On the other hand, the rest of the band seems to be sleepwalking. And whoever decided to pad this record out past three minutes, by adding a 40 second bland solo section, in which the lifeless female backups repeat the title over and over... well, that person was in the wrong job.

Still, the end result is weird enough to make it worth a few spins. I hope you agree:

Download: Gene Marshall - Palpitatin' Syncopatin' Baby
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The flip side is "Love For This Day". With its bland peace and love lyrics, MOR setting and remarkably poor Gene Marshall vocal (missed notes, wavering around the pitch), this one does not strike me as worth a few spins. I do wonder, however, what the writer of this pablum thought when he heard the lyrics that were on the flip side of his creation.

Download: Gene Marshall - Love For This Day
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And happy 21st birthday yesterday to my younger daughter, Molly!!! The years have flown by....

Baby, You're So Fine

Here's a record label that tells a tale. At the Sterling page at the AS/PMA website, there is only a single Norm Burns record listed later than this one. And that one record comes quite a few discs later, with the billing to Norman Burns, a billing ("Norman") that hadn't been used about seven years, as of 1974. It seems at least possible that that latter listing was actually an earlier recording, held back for some reason.

Either way, this record is likely among the last, and perhaps the very last, that Norm Burns recorded. As I recall the story (and it's been about 15 years, so maybe I'm not recalling it correctly), Norm was diagnosed with a terminal illness in 1974, very late in its progression, and died mere weeks later. This is consistent with the story told by record numbers on the website, where Norm was on virtually every release until, suddenly, he wasn't on any releases.

And he's only on the one side of this record, paired up with a singer (sic) who is otherwise undocumented among the Sterling discography.

The song itself, "Baby, You're So Fine" features a typically strong Norm Burns, with a haunted sounding backing track, featuring some nice bass playing and drums, soulful organ and '60's-ish backing vocalists.

Download: Norm Burns and the Satellites - Baby, You're So Fine
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The flip side of Norm's number, titled "Did I Tell You?" features Rick Wilson with the Five Stars. This is complete speculation, but given that there don't appear to be other Rick Wilson records out there on Sterling, is it possible that they just grabbed whoever was available for the other side of this record? I ask, because I can't imagine anyone thought this guy was a worthy singer - his wispy style and difficulty staying on pitch do not make me wish for a second listen. Then again, one could presume that they chose Norm's eventual replacement, the utterly unworthy Gary Roberts, over this guy, and that wouldn't have been a "sterling" choice, either.

Download: Rick Wilson and the Five Stars - Did I Tell You?
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Song-Poem Patriotism

Well, I'm a bit late for Independence Day, but better late than never. Not so much for the fourth of July, which is pretty much tied down by its own name to a particular date. But "better late than never" could have been the slogan for Halmark Records, whose material often sounded about 20-25 years out of date.

And today's feature does concern America, specifically, one song-poet's fears that the shrinking numbers of Eagles might portend the same dire fate for America and Americans. The song is simply titled "The Eagle", and before those eagle-eyed readers - those who salivate at the thought of new Bob Storm ridiculousness to enjoy - notice the billing of Bob Storm on both sides of this record label, be assured that the singer on the a-side sounds (at least to me) very little like ol' Bob, although there are a few moments where I think it's possible - perhaps he had an on-off on that over-the-top unctuousness that is absent here. (The b-side singer is quite clearly not Bob Storm.)

This side has the benefit, rare among Halmark sides, of being barely two minutes long.

Download: Labeled as Bob Storm - The Eagle
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Brevity is not among the charms of the nearly four minute long flip side, "The Man from Glory". I doubt that the singer here was known as "Bob" to anyone, as you'll hear. Here we have another person summarizing the New Testament Gospels for us, perhaps in case we were unfamiliar with the story. The turgid backing track and annoying histrionics of the singer make this one nearly unlistenable for me.


Download: Labeled as Bob Storm - The Man From Glory
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She Really Likes Those Green Mountains!

Here's an example of a song-poem, the specific likes of which I can't remember seeing before. Both sides are both sides written by the same lyricist - which is admittedly hardly a rarity - but both sides also have nearly identical song titles, but for one changed word. And of the two, the song that lyricist Dorothy Deane would presumably have preferred to have sung by a woman is the one sung by a man. I don't think these songs are particularly good - the second one I actually find extremely dreary - but I thought that the pairing of the songs themselves was interesting.

Bobbi Blake takes the lead first with "My Dear Green Mountain Home". The backing is pretty bland, as I find the majority of late '70's MSR records to be, but the lyrics are at least sweet, and Bobbi Blake provides a warm vocal.

Download: Bobbi Blake - My Dear Green Mountain Home
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Dick Kent takes over with "My Dear Green Mountain Sweetheart", which is just enough slwer than the flip side to become more and more tedious as it goes on - this is not helped out by the way that whoever wrote the music drags out the words of the chorus. And then there's "Oh, My, She's Just Swell".

By the way, the hum you may detect on both of these sides is right on the record. It starts off after the lead-in groove, and ends before the trail-off groove on each side. You can even here someone speak softly for a split second at the start of Dick Kent's side.

Download: Dick Kent - My Dear Green Mountain Sweetheart
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Real Pros Bonanza

Before offering up today's super-deluxe posting, I need to offer a giant thank you and an acknowledgement.

First off, thanks go to a man named George Galvas, who wrote me out of the blue last year to offer me this record essentially free, only suggesting that I post it if I felt it lived up to his billing, which it most certainly does. Thanks, George - I can only apologize for the more than half-a-year it took for me to post the record, which has nothing to do with the quality of the material, which is, in a couple of cases, just amazing.

Then, in the meantime, between getting the offer from George and actually receiving the record, something else happened, which is that the fine folks at Roaratorio Records released their newest Rodd Keith collection, which not only includes the song that George thought made this record so special (I would argue that there are actually two special cuts here), but actually made that track - Black Phoenix Blues - the title track of that compilation, which can be found here and elsewhere. Quite a weird coincidence! (NOTE: See correction regarding this track, below.) Take a trip over to Roaratoria and look around - they have some interesting things to offer.

So I called this a bonanza, and it certainly is - SIX song poems on one 45. You probably know that, after a brief period releasing records by a one-man-band, Cinema turned the "Real Pros" name over to the same group of freelance musicians that were appearing on all the larger name song-poem outfits in the Los Angeles of the day.

And so we find the first two songs, both rather pedestrian to my ears, sung by a vocalist I'm pretty sure is Bobbi Blake. First up is "The Dancer". While the line "fall in love and your heart gets bent" shows some promise, much of the lyric is just not that musical: you know that the singer and the producers have thrown in the towel when they have the singer start talking the lyrics half-way through, as happens here:

Download: The Real Pros - The Dancer
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The same singer returns for track two, a number called "Liberated Woman", an uninspired lyrical put down of one of the many women who would have fit that description in 1973 (and since):

Download: The Real Pros - Liberated Woman
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The real (pro) fun, for me, begins with track three, "Lady Lady", with its repeated references to the title lady being "dressed in plastic" and how she has a "plastic mind", all set to an oh-so-sensitive backing and with vocal stylings to match. This one really grabs me - it's pleasingly ridiculous. But speaking of the vocals, this singer is on three of the four remaining tracks. I'm assuming that the folks at Roaratoria believe this to be Rodd Keith.

Maybe my ol' song-poem ears are playing tricks on me, but I can't tell WHO this is - some of the inflections sound like a thicker-throated Dick Kent, other lines have the timbre and phrasing of Gene Marshall, and at moments, I could believe this is Rodd Keith. But in general, the singer doesn't sound like ANY of them to me - Gene Marshall is the closest, to my ears. What say y'all?

Download: The Real Pros - Lady Lady
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Moving on to side two, we're back to Bobbi Blake, with another song which is no match for her abilities, the stilted, obvious lyrics of "Come Back". The only thing that catches my ear here is the poorly chosen line "we built our love on concrete blocks...". I'm sorry, but when I think of concrete blocks, I think of a broken down car outside of someone's garage propped up by blocks (I probably got this from Archie comics) - this is certainly not the image the writer was going for.

Download: The Real Pros - Come Back 
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For the fifth track, we're back to the Gene Marshall-esque singer from track three, heard here singing the requisite "you done me wrong" songs which certainly seem to crop up at least once among any random sampling of six song-poems. In this case, it has the prosaic title "Girl, You Hurt Me So". This is about as stereotypical in lyric and sound as a song-poem can get.

Download: The Real Pros - Girl You Hurt Me So
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None of the above will have effectively prepared you for the final track, "Black Phoenix Blues". Here we have the same singer as the previous track - and please, feel free to tell me who you think this is - in a nightclubby blues sort of setting, singing words that I'll not quote - you should be allowed to experience them for yourself. I would love to know what this lyricist was rambling about.

UPDATE: I had not yet heard the Roarotorio release when I posted this item. As it turns out, The Real Pros recorded this song twice. This is NOT the version on the Roarotorio album, nor is anyone at that label claiming this is Rodd Keith. My error. 

Here it goes!:

Download: The Real Pros - Black Phoenix Blues
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The Intoxicating Sound of Incompetence!

The story behind this record - well, my story of this record begins not long after I started collecting song-poems. This was well before I'd ever looked at eBay, and what little online record buying I did was through independent websites and GEMM. And it was in looking at the latter one day, probably in 1999, that I saw a Tin Pan Alley release called "The Proon Doon Walk" for sale. Being short on funds at that moment, I saved my finding for later, but when I went back to buy it, it was gone. The title stayed with me, and I always wondered about fabulous, bizarre title that got away.

Flash forward more than a dozen years, to a point at which I received one of the occasional e-mail unsolicited offers to be sold some song-poems (this has happened a few times since I started posting song-poems). Among those offered - all of them listed by record number, for easier comparison with my previous collection - was TPA 402. When I got my purchases, I was overjoyed to see that this one was the very same "Proon Doon Walk".

And while great or weird song-poem titles often turn out, once heard, to be among the duller records in the genre, I'm glad to say this is the exception. It helps that this record was clearly recorded around the same time - and I surmise, listening to it, by the same people - as TPA 390, just 12 records earlier, which contains the wonderfully awful "Snow Man", also sung, as are today's songs, by Bob Gerard.

I simply can't get enough of this deeply, deeply weird record, and would love to have been at the recording session to see if everyone was trying not to crack up the whole time. It's an intoxicating listen.

Like "Snow Man", "The Proon Doon Walk" contains some of the most incompetent bass playing ever heard outside of a first timers music lesson. The bass player literally doesn't seem to be playing the same song as the rest of the band. That's okay, though, because even the guitarist seems to be in his own world at times. At the start of this record, it sounds to me as if at least two different songs are beginning.

And all of is just the underbelly to a ridiculous lyric - listen carefully to the directions, and try to do this dance (perhaps you can contemplate what "Proon Doon" means, too). And those words are set to a repetitive, virtually tuneless melody, featuring Bob Gerard's vocal, in which he demonstrates absolutely no recognizable singing techniques, save for the occasional excited interjection ("YEAH!"). Then there's the momentary addition of reverb at the 1:14 point, which then disappears just as quickly (it has to, the whole song is only 95 seconds long!).

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this song is that writer Nathaniel Eing submitted it not only to Tin Pan Alley, but also to the notably un-rock-and-roll oriented Noval records, where it was released as Noval 138, as "arranged by Jay". I would LOVE to hear what this lyric sounds like paired with the slow, lugubrious arrangements favored by the folks at Noval. I don't know which one came first, but Noval seems like the older label to me (I could be totally wrong). In imagining the Noval version, I'm also picturing Mr. Eing's reaction to it, his decision to try again with Tin Pan Alley, and then his reaction to this mess.

But that will have to wait until another day, if at all. And really, isn't it enough to hear the Tin Pan Alley version? For my money, it's one of the more off-kilter things I've ever heard on a 45.

Download: Bob Gerard - The Proon Doon Walk
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The flip side, "Wandering Eyes", features some of the same half-assed bass playing - seriously, is that a gut-bucket and string? - but the rest of the band manages to hold it together in workmanlike style for a marathon 107 seconds this time, and Bob Gerard just sounds like a guy singing Karaoke, rather than the completely over-his-head singer heard on the A-side.

Download: Bob Gerard - Wandering Eyes
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Tedium, As Defined By Sammy Marshall

For those of you who enjoy the awfulness which is often displayed in song-poems, this is your day to rejoice. Because this record is truly terrible. I'm sharing it because I haven't posted anything by Sammy Marshall in ages, because it represents a song-poem label otherwise unknown to me, and because it is so laughably bad.

Earl G. Palmer seems to have used the Globe song-poem factory to produced at least one record for the modestly named "E. G. Palmer Records" label. And for side A of record, he chose "Those Hills Down Home". My issue is not necessarily with the lyrics. They aren't very good - at all - but at least they clearly present a deep feelings about the area in which he grew up (certainly not Lexington, IL, where the record label was located - there are no hills of note there). It covers his return to town, his late mother and related issues surrounding thoughts of home.

The folks at Globe, though, didn't do Palmer any favors. That Sammy Marshall makes some rare flubs in sight reading the melody (which he is clearly what he's doing), and that my copy was minted just slightly off center gives the record a slightly woozy feeling. And as the song goes on (and on... and on), that wooziness may turn to seasickness as the tedium sinks in and you realize at the 2:20 point that the song is barely half over!

See if you can make it through!

Download: Sammy Marshall - Those Hills Down Home
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The flip side, "Keep Your Chin Up" is a more manageable three minutes. Well, they are manageable depending on how much patience you have for the variety of lyric which says that everything in the writers life was horribly crappy, until he suddenly saw the light, got religion, and now everything is fine.

Download: Sammy Marshall - Keep Your Chin Up
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That Name Just Trips Off the Tongue!

Late May is always one of the busiest times around our house, and I've fallen behind in updating the site, right past the end of the month! Rather than wait until I have more time to write at any length about a record I'm sharing, I'll just put this nice little Rodd-in-supper-club mode coupling, starting with the A-side, a tribute to a sweetheart with an oddly spelled name, "Neilida": 

Download: Rodd Keith - Neilida
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On the flip side is another winner, "Why Do I Go On Dreaming": 

Download: Rodd Keith - Why Do I Go On Dreaming
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The Immortal Bob Lloyd

Somewhere out there is, or was, a man named Bob Lloyd. His prominence in the song-poem world rests on just one side of one record, the thoroughly amazing "Our Hearts Were Meant to Beat as One". This song was on the first two song-poem compilations, and if you haven't heard it, I encourage you to seek it out. It is as incompetent a performance - by the pianist, but much more outlandishly, by the singer - as there is on a song-poem record.

The song-poem database only reports two Bob Lloyd records out there, both on the tiny Dial label (not, I assure you, the famed Soul label which featured Joe Tex, among others). There certainly may have been others discovered since AS/PMA was mothballed. I have now found a third, on the even tinier Rocket label (not, I assure you, Elton John's late '70's label).

And while the vocal on "If It's All the Same to You" is not as ridiculous as on "Our Hearts", it also confirms, in my mind, that Bob Lloyd was not meant to be a balladeer. Simply put, this is a truly bad vocal performance. Lloyd's sense of pitch is not developed, and his tone doesn't lend itself to this style of song.

On a separate note, I'd like to point out the unusual name of the song-poet - Smith A. Hopkins - and express my curiosity as to whether he was related to my favorite song-poet ever, Edith Hopkins, who wrote one of those songs sung by Bob Lloyd on the Dial label.

Download: Bob Lloyd - If It's All the Same to You
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The flip side, "Slow Train Boogie", is a masterwork in comparison with its flip side. Lloyd still can't really stay in tune, but this material doesn't particularly require him to. The backing band doesn't quite have the energy that the song requires, but the pianist is trying, and the rockabilly guitar solo approaches the passable level, which is a small miracle.

Download: Bob Lloyd - Slow Train Boogie
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Who are you - or were you - Bob Lloyd? A grateful batch of song-poem enthusiasts thank you, wherever you are!

Plagiarism, Plain and Simple

The backing tracks that were used by the folks at Halmark weren't always just random moldy sounding orchestral monstrosities and other outdated material which seemed 20 years older than the records for which they were used. As Sammy Reed pointed out last year, a few of Halmark's backing tracks were clearly originally made to back up cover versions of songs from the late 1960's. Specifically, he identified the music beds for "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me", and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (the latter of which was driven home even more strongly by the discovery of this record).

Those songs had complex enough structures and standard enough settings that the fact that their backing tracks were for those specific songs might never have occurred to me. The resulting songs, therefore, don't particularly song like the tunes for which the backing was created.

The same cannot be said for today's astonishing and wonderfully odd feature, "Footprints on the Moon". That's because the song over which this track is built has a unique sound, arrangement and chord progression. From the opening bars, it's clear that the backing track used was meant for use with the song "Gentle On My Mind", with every aspect of it sounding like a fun-house mirror version of the hit song version by Glen Campbell (except that the pristine instrumental performances of the original have been replace by uninspired hackwork, led by a banjo part which sounds like it's being played by a student new to the instrument). Even the voice of the singer - who I don't recognize as a Halmark regular - has a passing resemblence to Glen Campbell's timbre.

I can't imagine a writer being satisfied with this result, unless he was completely unfamiliar with the country hits of the day. But then again, this is a writer who's peculiar lyrical conceit here is to have a title which focuses on the fact that men had stepped on the moon, but a lyric which itself focuses almost entirely on the man who DIDN'T step on the moon - it's primarily a complaint that Michael Collins didn't get the attention or praise he deserved for taking the other two up to the moon and "back to their native land". A worthy focus, I suppose, except that the writer overshadows Collins himself by continuing to focus on the fact that two others left "Footprints on the Moon". Nicely done.

This just strikes me as the height of contempt for one's customer, more than even the typical song-poem company towards its song-poets, and, as I titled this entry, plagiarism, plain and simple.

And a weirder record I don't expect to hear this spring, that's for sure.

Download: Halmark Productions - Footprints On the Moon

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For some more typical Halmark weirdness, next up we have the immortal Bob Storm, using the aforementioned backing track to "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", singing the words of the same song-poet as "Footprints on the Moon", in this case, a first person ballad about life on the road as a hobo. It's called "The Rod Rider's Song":

Download: Halmark Productions - The Rod Rider's Song

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Flipping the record over, we find two other absolutely average and typical Halmark tracks, each with one of the backing tracks that Halmark collectors will know from the first bar or two. First up is Jack Kimmel with "Look at Me":

Download: Halmark Productions - Look At Me

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And then there's Bob Storm again, oiling up that voice of his for a turn at the song "Hurt and Rejected":

Download: Halmark Productions - Hurt and Rejected

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Song Poem Sultriness

There's not a lot that I have to say about Cara Stewart that I haven't already said on this site. There are some who have complained that her records with Lee Hudson each fit into one of a few templates (I would add "with notable exceptions"), and I don't know that I disagree, but when those templates are so exquisitely lovely and/or curiously different than the mainstream, what is there to complain of? I don't hear people saying the same things about Lee/Cara's clear inspiration, Les Paul and Mary Ford, who, despite producing recordings which were similarly limited in terms of varying styles, still managed to make several of the best records I've ever heard.

Here's a typical sultry Cara track, co-written by Earl Luton, who at some point also had his own song-poem label, Lutone, which was featured here just one month ago. Here's his song, "My Love is Like the Sunshine":

Download: Cara Stewart and Combo: My Love is Like the Sunshine
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On the flip side, the only slightly less wonderful "Could Happen":

Download: Cara Stewart and Combo: Could Happen
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