Fables from Sandy Stanton

Happy End of February!

I don't have a lot of time this week, so I'll be brief. 

I only had time to overhaul two of my previous posts, but that does leave with less than a dozen posts to fix, going forward. In this case, they were both from September of 2005. One featured two obscure singles from a favorite 1950's duo of mine, Patience and Prudence, and the other was an acetate featuring some very homely sounding violin playing. 

And now: 

Every now and then, I like to try and feature the Fable Label, which is sort of iffy with regard to a series called "Song Poem of the Week", because Fable releases went from song-poem to vanity release to attempts at legit hits almost throughout the run of the label. 

For today, though, I'm fairly sure these are song poems. Both are country flavored pieces warbled by label owner Sandy Stanton (with the "Fable Chorus" according to the label).

First up is "Time Has No End", which, despite having come out in 1958, sounds to me more like and early 1950's country release. One with some fairly cookie cutter country lyrics, but a rather lovely backing track. 

Download: Sandy Stanton and Fable Chorus: Time Has No End

Play:

The flip side has the unwieldy title "Don't Play With My Heart Like a Toy", and it features a country-ish vocal over a fairly standard late 1950's rock-a-ballad setting. The presence of the moment where Sandy's voice breaks - well, more the fact that they didn't do another take - is another indication to me that this is a song-poem record. 

Download: Sandy Stanton and Fable Chorus: Don't Play With My Heart Like a Toy

Play:

~~

And now, as has been my habit since I was requested to do so, I am featuring another of my early 1980's "Cut-Ups". I think this one is one of the most inspired that I did, and it has a theme running through it, as you'll hear. 

And it all came from the fact that the song in question, "Blue Eyes" by Elton John, could be reworked nicely if I replaced the title phrase with the many different ways that George Carlin said "Blue Food" in one of his recorded routines. 

I hope you enjoy it. 

Download: Elton John - Blue Eyes

Play:

Everything's Blue Hill! Plus, The Merigail Moreland Story Continues

Hello, everybody, Hello!

What a cornucopia I have for you today! I have two singles - unrelated in style, background or any other aspect, except that both feature the same odd aspect of having the same word repeated over and over again, and both contain the same vocal sound, not often heard on records. 

Before that, I will announce here that I have gone even further back in the archives and corrected three more posts from the initial year of this blog, 2005. That October, I featured a fairly horrible record by Pinky Pinkston (whom I was later to feature in much more detail at WFMU, as mentioned and linked in that post). I also offered, for the very time on this blog, two song poems, and, on what would have been John Lennon's 65th birthday, I shared four favorite excerpts from the often bootlegged "Get Back" sessions. While obviously those have become even more widely available in the more than 16 years since (and been the focus of a marvelous recent documentary), I still want to make this blog look like it originally did, so I have shared those tracks again. 

And now, let's climb the Blue Hill

The Blue Hill label seems to have been the creation of a handful of people whose names show up on the eight known songs produced on the label. Seven of those eight tracks came out of the Globe song-poem factory, but here we have one which came from Lee Hudson's production house, with Hudson's go-to male vocalist, Jeff Reynolds. 

This record apparently dates from 1962, and perhaps the lyricists expected a twist beat. I mean, it is called "Blue Hill Twist". But as you may know from experience with his productions, Lee Hudson didn't do twists. He did do slinky, bluesy numbers, though, and that's what we have here. 

First, I will say that this record sounds great. But second, I will add that I've listened to it at least five times now, and I don't know what the hell he's singing about. And I really don't understand the buzzing bee sound he throws in. And yet, all in all, a very enjoyable record. 

If someone out there "gets it", please chime in. 

Download: Jeff Reynolds - Blue Hill Twist

Play: 

The flip side is from the folks at Globe, as indicated above. And for the third time on the record - including the label name and both songs, we have a reference to Blue Hill. This one is called "Full Moon Over High Blue Hill", and is sung by the inevitable Sammy Marshall. This one has some nice Hawaiian style guitar, but very little else to recommend it. 

Download: Sammy Marshall - Full Moon Over High Blue Hill

Play: 

~~~

And now, something I am VERY excited to share. I have discovered yet another record by Merigail Moreland. If that name means nothing to you, click on her name at the bottom of this post, to find other posts I've made here about her, but also visit my lengthy posts about her at WFMU, here and here. 

Anyway, I never would have found this record, had I not also been searching for records by her father, Don Moreland, as Merigail, in yet another reworking of her name, is here credited as Merri Gayle (another pair of releases had it as Merri Gail). 

The record was released on the Beeline Records label, and (as was true of the record above) BOTH tracks contain the name of the label in their titles. Here's the better of the two sides: 

I am increasingly in love with the track titled "Be My Beeline Baby", and it once again plays up how fantastic a singer Merigail was, even in her teen years - which, based on the little I know of her life, is when I'm guessing this comes from. 

This was, in fact, the b-side of the single, but it is by far the stronger of the tracks, at least to me. But then again, the calypso shadings of the arrangement and fantastic horn track are right up my alley. All that pales, however, before Merigail's vocal, which I find to be off the charts sexy, particularly in the bridges, and even more so on the lines where she sings "I want kisses by the dozens", etc. 

An absolutely stunning vocal and a great record. 

Download: Merri Gayle with Larry Wellington's Orch - Be My Beeline Baby

Play:

The flip side, "I'm Makin' a Beeline For You!", sung with Don Moreland, was the a-side, but it doesn't do nearly as much for me. The standard late 1950's big band sound is not a favorite style of mine, the song doesn't do it for me, either. Oh, and maybe it's just me, but knowing the singers were father and daughter make the whole exercise sort of weird. 

But, as with Jeff Reynolds, on the previous 45, we have some bee buzzing sounds here, tying these records together in another weird way. 

Download: Merri Gayle and Don Moreland with Larry Wellington's Orch - I'm Makin' a Beeline For You!

Play:

~~~

Okay, for the last few posts, by request, I have been sharing some of the best of my "Cut-Up's", reworkings of hit songs and other material that I like, in which replacement words are plugged into key moments of the songs. For more information, please look at my recent posts. Today I'm sharing one of my all time favorites. 

But before I share this one, I have a question. Are people enjoying these, and wanting to hear more? This feels sort of self-indulgent to me, but won't feel quite so much that way if people are actually digging them. 

Okay, so here's today's "Cut-Up". When Elvis returned from the army, he cut the masterful "Such a Night". It resides in my all time top 25 tracks that anyone has ever recorded, and remains my second favorite Elvis track, behind only "A Fool Such as I", but was shelved as a single in favor of the milquetoast "Stuck On You". Perhaps it seemed out of touch with the softer sounds of 1964. After the Beatles hit, it was belatedly released as a single and made the top 20. 

So it was a natural for me to do a cut-up of this record. And the repeated lines, and story nature of the lyric, made it a natural for cut-ups, too. I think this came out great, particularly what I interspersed in with the grunting and chanting at the end. 

There is a low level four letter word repeated here, and also another word which is not obscene, but is also not typically used in polite conversations, so this is probably not safe for work. 

Download: Elvis Presley - Such a Night (cut-up)

Play:

Tin Pan Alley Twin-Spin!

Hello, everybody, hello, 

Okay, so I continue to march through the earliest days of this blog, repairing old posts in backwards order. Today, I have added the sound files to three posts from October and December of 2005, the first year of this project. 

These include: 

1.) A posting of my own live rendition of "The Night Before Christmas", as it was rendered after I put it through the wringer of eight language translations with a now-long-defunct (and fairly poor) free translation site. I later posted this same recording to WFMU.

2.) A set of two examples of the way I was playing with sound that year, one of them the first "cut-up" I'd done in years (of "She Loves You"), and one a layering of elements of 16 pop hits, most of them from the late 1970's, over the original recording of "Yesterday". 

3.) A post about my mom, as she entered the hospital at the beginning of her decline (she died two years later), featuring two of my favorites of her performances. 

All in all, a very Bob-centric set of posts. Sorry about that. Must have been where my head was at, at that moment. 

Oh, and I did get a request for the Merigail tracks that I mentioned last time. Since I'm already sharing two singles this week (and two more "cut-ups"), I'll try to get to that one next time. 

And now: 

~~~

So I realized with a bit of surprise that I hadn't featured Tin Pan Alley in over three months, and thought I'd rectify that with a double offering, one record from the early 1960's, and one from circa the Summer of Love. We'll start with the latter, and better, of the two. 

I truly expected Cathy Mills' "I Was a Dry Wishing Well" to have a lyric which used the Wishing Well as a metaphor, but I was wrong. Instead, it's a fairly delightful and bouncy rendition featuring a lyric in which the wishing well tells us about the people who wish at her location and what they wish for, and entreats those who doubt her power to give it a try. 

And delightful is absolutely the word - if I didn't know better, I'd  have thought Rodd Keith had a hand in this backing track - it has some of the hallmark's of his work at Preview around the same time (roughly 1967), particularly the opening guitar figure, but even more so just the general feel of the thing. This is a really cute and fun record. 

Download: Cathy Mills - I Was a Dry Wishing Well

Play:

The flip side has the clunky title - one which sounds as if it were coined by a non-native speaker of Enlgish - of "My Romance For This Summer-Time". It turns out to be a supper-club-ish number, meandering and unfocused, with a melody I find genuinely hard to follow. 

Download: Cathy Mills - My Romance For This Summer-Time

Play:

The other record, featuring an earlier and more interesting Tin Pan Alley label design, is from roughly 1962, and featuring two songs in styles I would peg to the very late 1950's:

I have greatly enjoyed some performances by Ellen Wayne, mostly on novelty or lighthearted TPA releases. Judging from this record, and some others, I would say that her style on more serious is not my cup of tea. 

Here we have a song with one of the quintessential song-poem titles, "You Hurt Me". The lyrics are pretty standard cookie-cutter song-poem level. Ellen's vocal is, to my ears, over the top, with an almost ridiculous level of vibrato at times, and a degree of emoting via stretching out words and syllables which draws attention to her and away from the words. Your mileage may vary. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - You Hurt Me

Play:

The flip side, "Hold Out Your Arms to Me", bears some resemblence to what the Platters and others were doing in 1956-57, with the exception of that weird stopped beat at the start, which doesn't work for me at all. Ellen tones it down a bit, but only a bit. The song is pretty disposable. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - Hold Out Your Arms to Me

Play:

~~~

And now, to my offering up of more of my "cut-ups". Please see the bottom of the my previous two posts, and indeed, the link above to another posting of a "cut-up" for what this is about. 

I'll start with an aperitif, perhaps the briefest "cut-up" I ever did, all two-and-a-half seconds of it. It's another Beatles tune, chopped down to a very basic interaction. 

Download: The Beatles - We Can Work It Out (cut-up)

Play:

For the other one, I just played around with the sounds on one tune, rearranging things within that record. You may need to familiarize yourself with the song.

You see, when I was six, we got the album "The Return of Roger Miller", and I fell in love with it, and it's still one of my dozen favorite albums. I could go on about that album for an hour. Anyway, while this song, "Our Hearts Will Play the Music" is not among my favorites from the album, it is ripe for playing around with the lyrics. 

If you haven't heard the song, I suggest you listen to it first. You can hear it here.  

And now, here's the cut up. You might note a change in tonal quality early on, as I think I switched from a cassette copy of the song over to the original reel, in the midst of playing with the song. 

Download: Roger Miller - Our Hearts Will Play the Music (cut-up)

Play:

Norman's Lullaby

As we bid goodbye to January, 2022, it's time for one more post this month. 

But first, in my ongoing quest to return this blog to its natural state, I have updated two more posts, and in doing so, completed nearly everything going back to the start 2006, meaning everything but the 2005 posts, and two complicated later posts have now been repaired. 

This required the fixing of two posts. First up, and rather redundantly at this point, was my first posting of a pair of tracks by Merigail Moreland, which later were a centerpiece of a longer post I did at WFMU. But for the same of completion, I thought I'd update that post. Plus, they are two of my favorite recordings ever. 

The other post I "fixed" is, happily, a post featuring at least one, and possibly two, song-poems. It was the second time I had done that on this blog, well before I turned most of it over to song-poems. In that post, I featured a ridiculous Phil Celia track, and an oddball number (possibly more of a vanity record than a song-poem) by Barney Spencer. I also featured a track by The Eligibles on Fable, a track which I'm sure was either a vanity release or an attempt at hit making, and not a song-poem. 

Speaking of Merigail Moreland, I did, a few years ago, manage to find one more single that she released, in the early 1960's .If anyone reading this blog has an interest in hearing that single, I'll be glad to share it. It seems to be even more impossibly rare than the one I shared in the post linked, above. 

And now: 

Today's feature is perhaps a minor pleasure, but I deeply enjoy Norm Burns, and I haven't featured him in over six months. 

Here's Norm, or as he was billed here (and as he was for only a brief time, early in his tenure at Sterling), Norman Burns, with "A Mother's Lullaby". The Sterling Band provides their sterling sound, and Norman croons a sweet lyric about a mother singing her baby to sleep. There is a nostalgic, old timey feel to the whole production which I find appealing. 

Download: Norman Burns - A Mother's Lullaby

Play:

~~

For the flip side, here's what I'm guessing: someone looked at the title, 'Just Give Me a Home in the Mountains", and was reminded of the song "Home on the Range", and decided that the tune of this song would bear more than a slight resemblance to that great American folk song. Seriously, see if you can listen to this track and not be put in the mind of "Home on the Range". 

Norm gives it the old college try, but there's not much here to work with. 

Download: Norman Burns - Just Give Me a Home in the Mountains

Play:

~~

And now, another "Cut-Up". In case you didn't see my last post, here's part of what I wrote: 

Recently, I linked back to a very old post in which I'd shared two of my "cut-ups", tracks made in which I played around with the sounds and lyrics of favorite songs, replacing lyrics with words or lyrics from other recordings, or simply messing around with the sounds of a track. 95% of more of those "cut-ups" that I have, I made as a young adult, while in college and/or single, and with a LOT of time on my hands, doing all of the edits on a cassette recorder which had a very effective pause button. 

I have been requested to share more of these, and will do so, at least until I gauge whether there is continued interest, or, perhaps, people ask me to stop. 

I will continue with the Beatles theme I started with last time. However, this one is totally different, and more in keeping with my typical practice, which was to replace lyrics of one song with sung or spoken words from another recording, sometimes a song, sometimes someone speaking. 

Before sharing this "cut-up", I will offer a few warnings. 

1.) This is extremely not safe for work - there are multiple four letter words contained herein. 

2.) A few of the jokes created by my cutting things up are fairly crude in nature, and if you find such things unpleasant, you may want to skip listening to it. 

Last week, I featured a song from the Beatles first album. Now, I jump to near the end of their career, for a dismantling of "Yer Blues", from The White Album. 

Download: The Beatles - Yer Blues (cut-up)

Play:

A Little Golden Record About Hippies

 Greetings!

I hope it's warmer where you are than where I am. But not over 75 degrees. I don't like that, either...

I will get to today's feature in a moment, and will also, by request, start sharing more of my "Cut-Up" tapes, but first: 

I discovered a couple of days ago that I skipped over "fixing" two posts from 2007, and so I have corrected those, as well as one post from 2006. There are now barely 20 more posts that need to be overhauled. And from here on out, almost all the posts I'll be repairing actually never had files in them before. That's because, for the first 18 months or so, I was uploading tracks to an e-mail account and giving out the password so that anyone could get in and download them. In fixing all of those early posts, I will be doing the same as I've been doing all along in repairing of posts, and putting in a play feature and a download feature.  

For today, I have correctly those two posts from October of 2007, one featuring a Rudy Vallee 78 that I just love, and the other featuring a musical mystery which I wrote about much more extensively at WFMU about a year later. I have yet to get an answer to any of the mysteries contain in the post here or at WFMU, so if you have an answer, by all means, let me know!

Going back even earlier, I also updated my final post from June of 2006, which featured a novelty record about beer, which was fairly obscure at the time, but has had multiple postings to YouTube in the years since, often incorrectly credited to Thurl Ravenscroft. 

~~

Today's feature is a very late period Film City release, on some truly gorgeous translucent gold vinyl.

The performer - Jimmy Allen - is not credited elsewhere on the label, or anywhere else in the song-poem database, and both songs are credited to a team of three writers. Both of these facts might serve to indicate that this a vanity release, but I don't think so. A "Jimmie Allen" shows up on a Rodd Keith production on the Kondas label, and one of the writers - Frank Parkins - seems likely to be the same person as a Francis Parkins who had a song produced for him on the Vellez label. So I think it's a song-poem while accepting that it might be more of a vanity release, something Film City did with some regularity, simply providing Chamberlin backing for the composer/performer's song and performance. 

Anyway, whatever its history, these songs are worth hearing, particular "Hip, Hip, Hippy". This is the rare song-poem which talks about the Hippies, and has nothing but good to say about them, and in fact dismisses the thoughts of those who look down on them. Now, I've listened to this track four times today, and the only positive attribute being described is that hippies aren't tied down, and like to go where the road takes them. That doesn't strike me as good or bad thing in and of itself. However, there's no missing the feelings behind: 

"The hip, hip hippy's not so dip, dip, dippy as the whole world thinks he is"

The clumsy edit at the 1:02 mark is a wonder of incompetence, by the way. 

If you have a thought about this records provenance, leave a comment!

Download: Jimmy Allen with "New Sounds From Hollywood" - Hip, Hip, Hippy

Play:  

The flip side, "Trina Bird", is no slouch, either. Sounding extremely similar to the track behind, "Hip, Hip, Hippy", this song is a tribute to an apparently quite winsome teenage girl of the protagonist's acquaintance. And apparently Trina likes the singer just as much. 

Download: Jimmy Allen with "New Sounds From Hollywood" - Trina Bird

Play:  

Oh, and I meant to point out - and before I could even come back in here and type it up, Sammy Reed beat me to it (see the comments!) - both of these tracks have the odd feature, which I've commented on with a few other records, of featuring a fade out, but ending with a final chord before the fade out finishes. Very strange. 

~~~

And now....

Recently, I linked back to a very old post in which I'd shared two of my "cut-ups", tracks made in which I played around with the sounds and lyrics of favorite songs, replacing lyrics with words or lyrics from other recordings, or simply messing around with the sounds of a track. 95% of more of those "cut-ups" that I have, I made as a young adult, while in college and/or single, and with a LOT of time on my hands, doing all of the edits on a cassette recorder which had a very effective pause button. 

My "cut-up" work slowed to a crawl in 1985, when I met my then-future wife, and started working full time, and had stopped altogether by 1988, when we got married. Ah, to have that sort of free time again. I've made perhaps two dozen such playful tracks in the years since, mostly using computer software.

Anyway, I heard from someone named Douglas who wanted to hear more. Actually, if I understood correctly, it sounded like one of those shares from the earlier post was going to get played on the radio! Thank you very much!

In response, I will share some more. Today, one of the few that does not actually feature the sounds of a lot of different tracks, but mostly (except for the last two seconds), just a rearranging of the sounds of one track, in this case, "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles. 

I consider this a hell of a lot of fun, especially starting at the 0:30 second point.

Download: The Beatles - Twist and Shout (cut-up)

Play:

Soldier Boy....Oh My Little Soldier Boy

 Howdy, 

This week's offering is a few clicks down the page. But first...

Before getting to post update news or this week's offering, I want to catch up on some things that readers have shared, in response to previous posts. I know not everyone looks at comments, and more often than not, I don't answer the comments in the comments, as I never know if the original poster will be looking for a response. But several people have said or shared things recently that I thought worth bringing to everyone's attention, and I'm going to get to some of them now, and more in the future. 

First, thanks to everyone who writes in and comments. If you use your actual e-mail address, and there's a response I want to make, I will write to you. However, I understand why most folks do not choose to post using their actual e-mail addresses. 

More than 11 years ago, I posted a great Suzie and Rodd duet, titled "I'm the Wife". Well, a correspondent named Michael recently pointed out that the composer of the flip side, "Country Boy", got his name in the local Kingston, N.Y. paper, in 1967, by stating that Preview Records had recorded his song, no doubt presenting this as a great accomplishment, rather than something he'd paid them to do. The newspaper article can be found in the lower right quadrant of this page. Michael further found an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, from 1965, on a similar theme, this time regarding a song-poet named Helen Zorkowski, who had several songs recorded by preview over the years. That article is here. 

Thanks, Michael, and thanks for the nice words about my work here!

Then there was a comment from frequent contributor, and host of his own wonderful blog, Sammy Reed. On the post where I featured a song-poet who claimed to have written "The Lord's Prayer", he linked to a post he'd made in which another song-poet claimed to have created the words to the gospel song "Oh, Happy Day", and that post can be found here. Thanks for all your help and comments over the years, Sammy!

In response to my obituary-with-soundfiles for Pete Seeger (which is one of the few post 2008 posts which I haven't fixed yet), Martin has shared with me that he posted a rare audio of a Pete Seeger concert from East Berlin in 1967. It can be found here - you can download it from near the end of the German part of the post. Thanks very much Martin. I look forward to enjoying this. 

And finally, just this week I heard from the daughter of the singer who went by the name Rod Barton. He is the only person from the song poem world that I've actually spoken to, and he and I had three phone conversations many years ago - unfortunately, he has died at some point in the years since those conversations. Her comment can be found on this post. 

~~~

In addition to all that, I have, as usual, corrected even more of the early posts to this site. I've worked my way back to 2006, the year with the fewest posts in the history of this blog (just nine). At that time, I was sharing things that tickled my fancy, whenever I got around to it. 

Specifically, today, I've repaired five posts made in July of 2006. Four of them were made on the same day, July 1st. These offerings were all over the map, and included a terrifically awful vanity 45 from a folky type singer, an equally wonderful (and also possibly vanity) 45 from a 13 year old girl, a failed hit 45 that I just love by Joan Armatrading, and a B-side to a late '50's hit record which I've always loved, and which features Thurl Ravenscroft. I ended that month with a post featuring two songs from Jimmie Driftwood, one of my favorite performers ever - the second track there remains one of my all time top 50 tracks. Some of this material later got posted to WFMU's blog, but I thought I'd "fix" the postings on this site, anyway. 

~~

And finally, today's offering. 

Today, it's back to the early days of the Preview label, a period which I know to be a particular favorite for many song-poem fans. 

And this is a nice one, sung by Suzie Smith, with "The Raindrops" credited as the backing singers, and a track which sounds very much to my ears as something Rodd Keith probably put together. It's called "Good-Bye My Soldier Good-Bye My Love" (to phrase it exactly as it is on the label). Vietnam is never mentioned here, but this could probably be considered a Vietnam related song-poem, based on the lyrics. 

Suzie sings over a martial beat for the verses, which then swings into double time - and some nice harmony vocals - for the choruses. The lyrics are pretty much boilerplate "my soldier love has left for the war" stuff, but the arrangement and vocal make them fairly effective. 

Download: Suzie and the Raindrops - Good-Bye My Soldier Good-Bye My Love

Play:  

Suzie Smith appears on the flip side without The Raindrops, on a song called "The Key to My Heart". This lyric is tied to the backing track that Rodd Keith used perhaps more than any other in his Preview days, most notoriously when Preview actually used the exact same track on both sides of the same 45. 

I don't think Suzie or anyone else behind this particular side do anything special with the material, and this is one of those tracks that seems to me to go on for about five minutes (really barely more than three). Maybe you'll like it more...

Download: Suzie Smith - The Key to My Heart

Play:

Popular Teen Styles on LECTRON

Let me be the first to wish all of my readers of Happy New Year!

I continue to rehab my site. Today, I have finished correcting posts from 2007, fixing five posts from July and August of that year. Again, this was a point at which I was simply sharing items from my collection that I particularly appreciated and seemed to be rare. Youtube has subsequently changed that last aspect, but still, I'd like the site to be playable from the earliest posts on. 

During that summer, I posted a goofy, yet endearing number by Don, Dick and Jimmy, I shared a song in Swedish that I wished to know more about (and subsequently did learn more about), I let everyone hear an odd easy listening version of a Beatles hit, and shared two of my "cut-ups", which were cassette-edited popular songs made into jokes. 

And although it's redundant at this point, I have also fixed a post, from that summer, in which I shared, for the first time, my all time favorite disc that has any connection to the song-poem world, although I'm now convinced that the record in question is not a song-poem. I later shared the record again, along with its b-side, when I got my own copy, but here is the first time that I featured "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got)". 

I have also put in addendums to a couple of those posts. 

~~

And now, Let's Go Lectron!

Today, I have a pair of genuinely sweet and effective tracks from the teeny-tiny Lectron label, whose label describes the product contained therein as "Popular Teen Style". And never has a slogan or motto been more accurate, as these two songs are composed in the most popular of teen styles for 1963, when this record was produced. 

Both sides are credited to Mary Kaye, who did some work for the Globe song-poem factory, but the A-side is actually a performance by Mary Kaye AND Sammy Marshall. And the lyrics to "Secret Thoughts" are among the best I've ever heard in a song-poem: they do an exceptional job of describing the silent longing between a teen boy and girl, who each have romantic feelings for the other, but feel unsure of expressing them. 

The words capture this dynamic perfectly - the verisimilitude is on a level I would generally associate with professional songwriting - and the arrangement captures the sort of thing that "Paul and Paula" briefly had massive success with, right around the time of this record's creation. A genuinely sweet and affecting song and performance. 

The only flaw here is that the record appears to have been pressed in asphalt. The sound quality is abysmal. 

Download: Mary Kaye (and Sammy Marshall) - Secret Thoughts

Play:  

~~

The flip side, "Actions Speak Louder Than Words", does indeed feature a solo turn by Mary Kaye. And again, it's in "Popular Teen Style", in this case, something of a twist beat, and it moves and grooves throughout - all 100 seconds of it. 

Again, the words here are pretty good, and they've been set in a sort of percussive manner that bounces off the drumbeat in places, an effect which I find sort of intoxicating. Mary Kaye's warm vocal really sells it, even if there are a couple of bum notes (perhaps she was sight-reading, which was so often the case in the song-poem world). 

There are some nice backing vocals which in a style that reminds me more of the later Preview label than what Globe usually came up with. I have a hard time saying which of these two tracks I like better - both are several levels better than the average song-poem. 

Download: Mary Kaye - Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Play:  

~~

And finally, those of you who have been reading my posts for the last few years know that my family uses the Christmas Card tradition to engage in a bit of performance art each year. Previous end-of-the-year posts have other examples, and now, here is the latest in the series: 

From the left, that's me, my wife with the marshmallow in her face, then our two adult kids, and on the right, the fellow who will soon be, variously, husband, son-in-law and brother-in-law to the rest of the individuals in the photo. 

Cara and Larry and Johnny, Oh My!

Hello, everyone, and Happy Whatever You're Having!!!!

First, before today's EP, I want to update you as to the mending of the oldest posts on this site. I only updated two posts this time around, but they are chock full of interesting sounds. In both cases, they were sequels to one of my favorite WFMU posts ever - the Merigail Moreland tapes. After I posted 15 songs to WFMU, I promised to fill in the blanks on my site, by posting the rest of the Moreland tapes to my site, and then, by posting some recordings Merigail made in 1979 or 1980, which were sent to me by a relative. 

I have now "fixed" the post containing the further1953 era recordings, and the post featuring the 1979/80 recordings. 

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And now, for my third post in a row, let's have an EP!!!

The Brosh label, like the Air label two weeks ago, was an amalgam of the works of various song-poem label, and the combinations differed from release to release. Some material on Brosh actually appears in the same exact form on other labels, while in other cases, some songs (including one from today) turn up on multiple Brosh releases. 

What's fascinating to me today is that, of the three performers listed on this EP, only one of them is documented anywhere on AS/PMA, and additionally, I don't recognize the two (male) singers previously undocumented there. Perhaps I'm just not that good with voices, or maybe the fake names are throwing me off, but I cannot immediately recall having heard the voice of either "Larry Dee" or "Johnny Dale" on a song poem record before. Perhaps some wise person out there will educate me.

But first, lets hear the always lovely, and very well known voice of Cara Stewart, sounding as wonderful as ever, on "Four Open Doors": 

Download: Cara Stewart - Four Open Doors

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Now, while "Four Open Doors" is probably the best song and recording on this EP, the most intriguing has to be the one credited to Larry Dee: "Ballad of Alan Rose". This song's lyrics have a verisimilitude that certainly makes me believe it's based on a true story, but if so, it's one I've been unable to track down, in what was admittedly a cursory search. My guess is that it was a local tragedy, from the late 1950's or early '60's, as this record likely dates from around 1962 or 1963. 

Not only do I not recognize Larry Dee, I also don't really recognize the arrangement as being the hallmark of any particular song-poem factory - my best guess is Globe, but I suspect that's wrong. Also note that the female duo perform nearly a third of the song, without the benefit of a credit. 

Download: Larry Dee - Ballad of Alan Rose

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The flip side of the disc features what can only be termed raw demos, and I really wonder whether a song-poem company was involved with them at all, or if the fabulously named "E. Quattrocelli" (who submitted songs to at least two other song-poem labels over the years) simply submitted a recording of a friend playing his or her songs. 

Regardless of the back story, they are credited - I think - to Johnny Dale. I say "I think" because unlike most records, and unlike the flip side of this disc, Johnny Dale's name is added in parenthesis under E. Quattrocelli's name, rather than in bold and/or capital letters. I'm pretty sure that's a typo, rather than a co-writer credit. 

Both songs are ballads of the pain of young love, with an emoting singer accompanied by a simple guitar backing and bathed in echo. They are simple, direct and.... amatueristic. First up is "Teen Age Tears.  

Download: Johnny Dale - Teen Age Tears

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And then there is "I Should Be Crying"

Download: Johnny Dale - I Should Be Crying

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Any guesses as to the back story of these last two songs, and the identity/song-poem factory for "Ballad of Alan Rose" would be welcomed.  

Damita Goes Bang Bang

 Howdy, folks!

First, I'd like to say that I recently wrote the most personal post I've ever done, which is at my other site, and was written in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of my father. I'd be honored to have any of you who are interested read it. It can be found here. 

And second, I continue to rehabilitate the earliest years of this site, and I have now addressed posts made more than 14 years ago, in November of 2007. It strikes me as likely - perhaps even definite - that most of the things I posted in the first three years at this site have long since been on YouTube, although I haven't checked. But I'm going to fix the posts anyway. 

In November of 2007, I offered up a guessing game in the form of a resolutely awful version of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport", a goofy rock and roll novelty record sung by a grade schooler, a very early jazz band performance of Ragtime music, and a teen girl record (a b-side) that I've loved ever since hearing it. In addition, I have added 2021 comments to three of those four posts. 

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The exceptionally tiny "Bang Bang" label, out of Washington D.C., seems to have been the vanity project of someone named David Fitzgerald. Only two records on the label are documented at AS/PMA - today's EP makes it three - and of the eight songs on those three discs, David Fitzgerald wrote six of them, and claimed to have produced both songs on one of the singles (despite them being performed by a stalwart of the Globe song-poem factory). Even more odd is that one of the eight songs on those three 45's is a cover of "Ode to Billy Joe". 

Anyway, my Bang Bang release is, as mentioned, an EP, with all four songs written by Mr. Fitzgerald - two songs published by "Fitzgerald's Music" and the others published by "Omniscient Music" All four songs feature the main female singer from the early days of Globe, JoAnn Auburn, here appearing, as she often did, as "Damita". I enjoy all four of these tracks, to varying degrees, with the standout leading off side two. But here on side one, we'll lead off with a song that starts with a surprisingly acceptable take on mid 1960's Blue-Eyed Soul. For me, at least, the feel isn't sustained - the band is way to low in the mix, and the backup singers don't fit the mood at all, but it's more than I would have expected from Globe. Here's "Your Soul Searching Kisses": 

Download: Damita - Your Soul Searching Kisses

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"Baby I'm Your Match" follows, and is my least favorite of the four-pack. The song sort of meanders, melodically,, and the band has reverted to the sort of hackwork that I tend to expect from the Globe band. Also, the phrase is sung far more often as "I Was Your Match" than "I'm Your Match". 

Download: Damita - Baby I'm Your Match

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More upbeat Soul-flavored Rock follows, with my favorite of the record, "Hey Boy, Stay in School". Musically, this is pretty much indistinguishable from some of the other material here, but I really enjoy the lyrics, which are so very far away from anything you'd have likely found on an actual hit record - have the lyrics "The P.T.A. was right" ever been featured in another song? Also, I must say, also put me in the mind of one of my favorite figures from the song poem world, Norris Mayhams, would wrote repeatedly on this same subject, particularly this record. Additionally, I enjoy the fact that this song is 88 seconds long. 

Download: Damita - Hey Boy, Stay in School

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Damita closes out the record with "Just Yesterday's Dream". This is a very typical, 6/8 setting for Globe, but her warm, appealing voice adds enough appeal to make it listenable. But then, on the other hand, there is a tape splice at 1:43 which not only results in a glitch in the sound quality, but actually cuts out part of the song! Half of a measure is just gone! How on earth was that allowed to happen? And was Mr. Fitzgerald upset? I think I've run into the sounds of a splice a few times, but usually little or no material is actually missing. Sheesh. 

Download: Damita - Just Yesterday's Dreams

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Hi Old Mistletoe

 As the Christian Church begins Advent, in preparation for the Christmas season, and as the secular world dives headlong into what it calls the Christmas season, I thought it would be a perfect time to both share an EP featuring a couple of song-poems - one Christmassy, and one December-y - and finish off correcting my final posts (Christmassy, as well) from 2008. 

As it happens, I only made 13 posts in 2008 (just before I started this song-poem project), and more than a third of those - five of them - were in December, and all were Christmas related. Today, I have corrected all of those posts, and added a few additional thoughts to some of them. 

These posts featured: two wildly different takes on O Holy Night; another post featuring one song in a stellar arrangement and one song in a deliberately ridiculous setting; a party record about decorating from the 1930's; a children's record which has, in the years since, become my second favorite Christmas record of all; and a slice of life, Randy Newman-esque performance of a song which has, similarly, since become my favorite Christmas record ever. 

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Let me say in advance that I think three of the four tracks on this EP are pretty stodgy and uninteresting, but I do enjoy that fourth track enough to make it worth sharing. Plus, the Air label - which typically had the most mundane of logos - at one point used what I think is one of the best label designs ever, for any label, song poem or not. I've only featured that design once before, and it's worth sharing again: 

There's sure a lot going on there, all of it interesting!

A quick reminder before I get to the tracks, is that the Air label was some sort of Catch-All for other labels, frequently featuring the output of two or more song-poem factories on the same disc. I have no idea how this system came into being or why. 

Anyway, the first song is titled "Hollywood F-L-A", and is credited to Tony Markham. A quick listen indicates that this is a Film City production, complete with Chamberlin, and unless I very much miss my guess, that's the fairly awful singer usually credited as Jimmie James (or Jimmy James) singing. 

I spent multiple vacations in Hollywood Florida in the late 1970's, when a relative lived there, and the ponderous, energy deficient, and overall deadly dull presentation of this song matches what it's like to spend time there, pretty much perfectly. Presumably, the song-poet did not agree with my lack of appreciation of the town, and I have to wonder what he thought of this arrangement and performance. 

Download: Tony Markham - Hollywood F-L-A

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Next up, the song that is the reason I chose this particular EP. It's everyone's pal, Sammy Marshall, or, as he's listed here, Sonny Marshall, with a fun, bouncy, yet wistful song called "Hi Old Mistletoe". Sammy, er, Sonny is looking at the mistletoe and being reminded of his lost love. There's not much more to it than that, but the winsome chorus and the mixed group harmonizing with him make these 93 seconds quite enjoyable. 

By the way, the tape stretch (or whatever it is) at the 0:07 point is on the record, and is not a flaw in my digitizing of the track. Such were the high quality standards at the Globe song-poem factory. 

Download: Sonny Marshall - Hi Old Mistletoe

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The flip side of the EP features two songs by someone named Jan Snyder, a name that shows up only on a handful of known Air releases and on no other label (at least none documented at AS/PMA. I am admittedly not the best at discerning between certain of the female singers who pop up on song-poem labels, but I don't Jan Snyder's voice is one that I've heard much, if at all. If she sang under another name, I don't know what it is. 

And..... I can find little remotely good or interesting to say about these two bland and uninteresting songs/performances. These remind me of the ultra-vacuous sound of the Ronnie label, but in saying that, I recognize that I'm not actually sure if Ronnie wasn't just an offshoot of Globe. 

At least with the last month of the year starting in mere hours, the first of the two songs is topical. I actually think something decent could have been done with the story told here, although those who produced this disc did not succeed in that way. Here's "December Love"

Download: Jan Snyder - December Love

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The final song reminds me a bit of those early 1950's ballads that were done using a single singer overdubbing herself  (starting shortly after Les Paul had perfected this technique, but with none of his talent, imagination or cleverness) . And the song itself, "The Turning Point", is about as interesting as one of those typical early 1950's pop double-trackers. That is to say, not at all interesting. 

Download: Jan Snyder - The Turning Point

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Rusty Ray is a Dick

Hello, 

First, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who will be celebrating it this week!

Also, I am continuing to slowly rebuild the early days of this site. Having completed all of the "song poem of the week" posts, I am now addressing the first few years of posts. Today, I have "fixed" two posts which each had a half-dozen offerings in them. 

One was a follow-up to a WFMU post, in which I offered up several vintage children's records, and a few others that I have known since I was a child. The other, from February of 2008, was in tribute to my mother, who had died several weeks earlier, and I shared several tracks that she recorded during her long career as a coloratura soprano, tracks ranging from 1944 to 1990. 

Now, here's a singer who was not a coloratura anything: 

Six years ago, I shared the only record I owned at that time, credited to "Rusty Ray" I stated that I did not recognize the singer as anyone who I had previously heard on a song-poem release, and, for that previous offering, that statement still stands. 

I have since obtained another Rusty Ray record, also on the Action label, but in this case, the singer is quite clearly the man much better known as Dick Kent. This is weird, because Action already had a name for Dick Kent, specifically, "Dick Lee", so why did they change his name for this release. And why, having done so, did they offer up an entirely different singer, seven releases later, under the same name of Rusty Ray. 

These are the questions that no one today has answers to. 

Anyway, the winner here has to be "Happy Hippy", which bops along with a Chamberlin approximation of a swingin' Holiday Inn lounge sound. If you want one writer's stereotyped idea of what a hippy might have said, in the early 1970's, this "happy go lucky" portrait will be your cup of tea, complete with a moral/warning at the end

Download: Rusty Ray (Dick Kent) and the "Singing Strings" - Happy Hippy

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A heavy, almost thuddish beat greets us at the start of "Jigsaw Heart", on the flip side, and that drum beat, heard throughout, sounds more appropriate for a stripper than what the words portray here, which is a wish for the singer's loved one to come back home. 

Download: Rusty Ray (Dick Kent) and the "Singing Strings" - Jigsaw Heart

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God Is My Co-Writer

 Howdy, 

And a hearty Happy Veterans Day and Thank You to all of my readers who have served this - or any - country. 

Although I have now updated ALL of the "Song Poem of the Week" posts, there are still about 50 posts from prior to that project's genesis, which I will be updating, rather haphazardly. I also suspect I will be deleting a few non-musical posts, those which served a minor purpose at the time, but are fairly pointless today. 

It also strikes me that, with the subsequent growth of YouTube, many of my early posts may feature records which were then truly obscure, but which now are readily available. I'm going to keep the posts up, anyway, and repopulate the tracks. 

So today, I have uploaded a handful of posts from 2008. These include a feature on one of my all time favorite singles, the criminally obscure "Jingle Down a Hill", by Gaitley and Fitzgerald. I also rewrote a post about the first track I heard from the indescribably lovely group known as The Sacred Heart Singers (I later posted an entire album by this group to WFMU). 

There's a post featuring both sides of a Calypso 45 (about Elvis) that I was enjoying at the time, and a track from the radio show "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again" featuring the unlikely sound of John Cleese singing. Finally, at one point that year, I shared a song which made the lower reaches of the Billboard Top 100 in 1957, one which has haunted, amused and fascinated me ever since, The Silva-Tones rendition of "That's All I Want From You". 

Except for the calypso and Cleese recordings, it's a collection of some of my all time favorite records. 

And now, back to the countdown: 

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Last time, I posted a couple of tracks by Teacho Wiltshire, and a few days later, I got a great comment from frequent correspondent Sammy Reed, who commented that "Our Teacho, He Died in 1969". 

This was, in case you're unaware, a play on a very well known song-poem, "My Daddy He Died in 1969", which was available in trading circles for years before making its debut on one of the online song-poem albums. 

This in turn reminded me that I'd promised another frequent correspondent, Tyler, that I'd find my copy of that same 45, because it features perhaps that most outrageous act of plagiarism I've ever seen on a song-poem release. It wasn't in with all of the 45's I'd alphabatized some time ago, so I had to go looking. And I found it! We'll get to the lyrical rip-off after the first two songs. 

The first track is the aforementioned "My Daddy He Died in 1969". I have always found this to be a deeply ridiculous lyric, over-the-top by several steps, but many others have found it touching and even profound (the latter for at least one person I've spoken to about it).  For those who haven't heard it, I'll share it here, as it sounds on my copy: 

Download: Halmark Productions - My Daddy He Died in 1969

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Incidentally, my pal Stu, some years ago, took it upon himself to see if he could find  out when the man whose daddy died in 1969, had, himself, died. And he found out. That page led him to find "his daddy", which he shared with me, too. 

Next up is "Tears of Yesterday", which is tedium defined, nearly four minutes of yammering on over a track that is wholly without beat or feeling. And it's just keeping us from getting to the good stuff, anyway,

Download: Halmark Productions - Tears of Yesterday

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Okay, here goes. 

My comments are not about whether you, the reader are - or I am - a believer in any subset of Christianity. But I think we could all agree that someone who wanted to hear The Lord's Prayer set to music would almost beyond a shadow of a doubt be a Christian. 

And, being a Christian, that person would presumably know that The Lord's Prayer is perhaps among the two or three most famous utterances ascribed directly to the voice of Jesus, and that it has been credited to Him, in writing, for roughly 2000 years. And being a Christian, that person would almost undoubtedly consider Jesus to be God. 

So, in sending in Jesus' words to Halmark, and taking credit for them himself, what in the Lord's name was the good Dr. Patton thinking? What would many, if not most Christian faiths consider the act of claiming to have written The Lord's Prayer? I'm sure there are several answers to that question, but none of them are good. 

And yes, I know that there have been musical settings of "The Lord's Prayer" before. And I looked some of them up. They always say "Adapted by", or "Setting By" - in other words, the listed writer took credit for the music. And that could have been the case here, if this production was by any other label than Halmark. 

Because while some other labels did release vanity performances, and also had their performers record entire songs with music and lyrics by the unknown writer, Halmark always attached their vocal performances to one of about 14-18 backing tracks. And the possibility that Dr. Patton wrote music and melody for The Lord's Prayer and that it matched Halmark's pre-existing backing track is approximately 0%. 

As I said, I've encountered plagiarism on song-poem 45s several times, and featured it here when I've found it, but this is at another level altogether - submitting as your own work something you believe to be the word of God. 

As a side comment, please note that they used the exact same backing track for two songs on this EP. That strikes me as contempt for the customer. But then again, contempt for the customer would have been a good slogan for the Halmark people. 

Download: Halmark Productions - Our Father Which Art in Heaven

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The record ends with a rather esoteric lyric, titled "Mary Ann". The coy, indirect nature of the lyric here leads me to believe it was meant as a song about a shy courtship, although I may be reading too much into it. If it's not that, I have no idea what the lyricist was on about. 

But if I am right, then Halmark made a tactical error in assigning it to a female singer, in that a same-sex relationship was not likely what the lyricist was after, given that it was the mid 1970's, and that that song-poet had engaged with Halmark, perhaps the most conservative leaning of all song-poem outfits. 

If you have a different or better suggestion as to what's going on here, I'd love to hear about it. 

Download: Halmark Productions - Mary Ann

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