Not Quite Norah Jones

Upon picking up today's record, titled "Come Away with Me", I was immediately put in the mind of Norah Jones' gorgeous, sultry and immaculately performed hit record of the same name. Upon putting the needle to the record, I was immediately pulled away from that mindset, and sent instead to my imagined site of this recording session.

By this point in the Tin Pan Alley story, they had moved about as far as possible from their origins, wherein established performers and backing musicians performed often first-rate renditions of song-poem lyrics. That had been in the mid-'50's. This record appears to date from about 1969, when the near talentless likes of Bob Gerard fronted an equally inept backing band on material such as today's record and the immortal "Snow Man".

It certainly sounds like ol' Bob is reading this tune for the first time, as he goes along, and he sounds hesitant at several points, failing to follow the melody at all at a few others. The bass player sounds like he's a bit more on board here than on "Snow Man", but he's still clearly not up to the task, flubbing more than a few notes of his own.

Then there are the words, in which "baby" is enticed to come to a land where there are flowers everywhere, rainbows and strawberry clouds in the crimson sky, lollipop trees, floating birds, fairies, and rabbits which chase eagles. Naturally, you'd come to the same conclusion I did, and which is confirmed by the lyrics - this is the place "where boys turn into men". Yeah.

Download: Bob Gerard - Come Away With Me
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In comparison, "Stepping Out", heard on the flip side, is downright competent. In comparison. Only in comparison. At least the guitarist, whose chording is prominent on the track, seems largely to know what he was doing. Bob Gerard still doesn't seem to always know where the tune is going until he gets to it. The track itself is distracting enough that you might miss this deeply thought out lyric:

You see folks around the town
Standing, walking sitting down


Download: Bob Gerard - Stepping Out
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By the way, this weekend, I posted a rare vanity release from Tin Pan Alley, over at WFMU's Beware of the Blog. It's fairly hideous, and for some (me included), that makes it worth a listen or two. You can find that post here.

The Apron, The Pastries and Other Things

As I've probably mentioned too many times, MSR is not my favorite label. And so it was some surprise that I came to rediscover this weird little gem, from another category I don't much like, 1980's song-poems.

Over the past few weeks, I've been reviewing some comments and other notes I made about song-poems, when I was first getting in to them, nearly two decades ago. One song, with no reference to the singer, was referred to as "With You". Now that's a fairly generic title, and in fact, when I searched the AS/PMA for the phrase, I got hits on more than 40 of its pages. Narrowing it down to only the song-poem labels on which I would have owned records in those early days, and to songs which had "With You", as the entire title, and that narrowed it down to one label and one song, MSR and Gina Genova's rendition of "With You".

I dug into the box containing my "song-poems I never need to listen to again", and dug it out, and sure enough, it's weird in unpredictable ways and rises above what I would have expected from that label in that era. The appeal to me here is the rather unexpected lyrics, and the attempt to shoehorn them into a tender ballad, which, for me, just plays up how badly that attempt works. The opening lyrics appear to be: 

You always felt eager (?) for the pastries I baked you

You sewed me an apron, ???? blue

You spent hours repairing bikes,

made a case to put behind their well-worn seats 

Actually, that's all sort of sweet - what I can make out of it, anyway, but at the same time, those lines don't scan very well as lyrics to a melody.

I'll also mention that the recording quality on this record is horrendous, the singer's words are very difficult to make out at times (witness my attempt, above), due to overly bass-ie sound, and I've tried to clean it up a bit, so I'm posting it twice, once with its original sound, and then again in a version attempting to improve that sound. Admittedly, the effort was less than successful.

Here is the original record:

Download: Gina Genova - With You
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And here's an attempt to clean it up a bit:

Download: Gina Genova - With You (with Equalization)
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On the flip side, we have the consistently, resolutely awful Bill Joy (who sang the first song-poem I ever heard which was identified as a song-poem, "How Long Are You Staying", with some singularly banal lyrics, arrangement and melody, on the song "Be a Friend":

Download: Bill Joy - Be a Friend
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He's Sorry He Answered the Phone

Today's record does not broadcast itself as a song-poem the way that a record on Preview, Halmark or many other labels would. In fact, it's an acetate, with not even the songwriter's names listed on either side. But there are some key factors here which I think demonstrate that a song-poem is exactly what we have here.

First, there is the artist. In the late 1940's, someone named Jack Allyn made a handful of records for the Novart record label, a song-poem outfit helmed by song-poet George F. Franciosa, Sr. Jack Allyn is an unusual enough name that it made this acetate, credited to the same singer, worth a listen. And if you compare this vocalist to the one singing on Novart's greatest hit, "Goodness Gracious, It's Contagious", you will probably come to the same conclusion that I did - this is the same singer. The same singer, I grant you, sounding much older, but this record is dated 1972, nearly 25 years after "Goodness Gracious".

And that's another thing that points this to being a song-poem: the setting of this record seems to have been a perfect arrangement for 1951, a typical flaw of the song-poem world. Within its own genre, hopelessly out of date even 41 years ago, the song is not a bad one, although the lyrics are far from original. Still, it's a nice listen, if you're up for this sort of thing.

Download: Jack Allyn - I'm Sorry I Answered the Phone
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On the flip side, we have the even more outdated "Every Day of My Life", with a lyric that sounds straight out of the 1930's to me. I do get a kick of out the completely out of place glissando that the pianist decided to include just before the 90 second mark, but otherwise, this one has very little to offer.

Download: Jack Allyn - Every Day of My Life
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Gene Does Vietnam

As I've mentioned a few times, most recently five weeks ago, I've heard over the years from a few people who collect and document records about Vietnam. One result of this is that I've decided to share records about Vietnam when I come across them - at least if they are not as aggressively dull as the typical song-poem is (and if you are only hearing them via my posts and those of others, you have no idea of the percentage of song-poems that are just mind-numbingly boring).

August's Tin Pan Alley posting was actually supplied to me by one of these readers, and today, we have Gene Marshall, on Preview, offering up "Say a Prayer for Vietnam". This is a fairly pedestrian effort from Preview, saved, for me, by a nice vocal from Gene, and heartfelt, if simple lyrics.

Download: Gene Marshall - Say a Prayer for Vietnam
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The flip side, "My Love is Yours", is an example of those deathly dull records that would never make my site on their own strength. From the bee-buzzing styled opening synth notes to the bland arrangement, there's not much here to draw interest. At first, I thought that there was a line about the writer's "immature fears" - not, I'm guessing, the best way to win someone's love or trust - but another listen proves the line to be "and your image appears...". Even another sensitive, excellent vocal from Gene Marshall can't redeem this one.

Download: Gene Marshall - My Love is Yours
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The Strangest Dream

With weapons of mass destruction back in the news, along with the United Nations and, in this case, Syria all involved, I thought it was a good time to offer up this dream of a world without weapons, a dream of peace. I have a hard time thinking that the authors of this song weren't inspired (if that's the right word) by the song "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream".

Perhaps they thought they could improve on it, or come at the idea from a slightly different angle. If that was the case, my impression would be that they failed - this comes off as a weak echo at best, an anemic copy at worst. The always game Sammy Marshall gives it his best, but when a song requires you to talk over the music for nearly the first third of the entire record, you're facing a challenge.

Download: Sammy Marshall - My Dream of Peace
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By the way, this record is on the Jersey label, which I've not seen before or since, and which is not listed on the AS/PMA website.

The flip side is a tribute to God's work throughout nature, with something of a John Denver feel (that's not meant as a compliment, by the way), sung by someone named Don McHan. Interestingly, the same name pops up as a songwriter on two other labels on the AS/PMA website, one of them, like this one, related to the Globe song-poem factory, although he is not listed as the songwriter here. The most interesting thing about this record may be the additional publishing information that someone wrote on the label of the record.

Download: Don McHan - You Are Seeing God
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Practice Your Rhythm

Regular readers will already know that I'm not much of a fan of certain song-poem labels - MSR and Columbine being the biggest names from the business that I can largely do without. But... I never intended this site to be just about my taste, and I should try more to reflect the whole world of the song-poem. I don't own much Columbine, so it rarely, if ever, shows up here, but I have MSR records coming out of my ears, and I might need to put them into rotation a bit more often.

Here's a start: A decent release from 1980, titled "Practice Your Rhythm". This is a nice enough shuffle of a track, with a bright, peppy and happy vocal from Bobbi Blake. The primitive synths (one of the things I could do without) are largely relegated to background flavoring, and the track is dominated by a real rhythm section, including a bouncy bass and some solid piano.

Download: Bobbi Blake - Practice Your Rhythm
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On the flip side, we have Dick Kent, telling us how "One Woman's Sufficient for Me". The lyrics to this one are quite odd at times - at one point he mentions that it's one "body" that is sufficient for him, and what's the reference to a voucher about? There's very little about this track that I like, but I will mention that it features some excellent and interesting bass playing.

Download: Dick Kent - One Woman's Sufficient for Me
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Norm Sings in the Sunshine

I don't actually own a copy of today's record. It was recently auctioned at eBay, and while I failed to take ownership of the physical product, I loved it enough that I pursued another opportunity to own it digitally, at least. This just occurred this week, and I could hardly wait to share it with the world, or at least this small corner of it.

It not only features perhaps my favorite song-poem singer, Norm Burns, it also clearly dates from around the same time, and quite possibly the same recording date, as my favorite Norm record (and one of my three favorite song poems), "Darling, Don't Put Your Hands on Me" (which can be heard here, among other places). The label numbers are only four digits apart, and as you'll hear, there are other similarities, as well.

This song and performance are certainly not in the same league with "Darling, Don't Put Your Hands on Me" (and really, few records are), but it's got the same feel, instrumentation and energy - the same driving piano, tenor sax (which even plays some of the same fills as on the previous record) and unique Norm Burns style. And then, during the solo break, there's a lovely vocal surprise from Norm!

Download: Norman Burns, Lew Tobin's Orchestra - Sunshine Twist
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The flip side, "The Wind and the Rose", is in poor condition, with a lot of surface noise at the start. This one is not up to the standard of the A-side, or even to Norm's average. It does, however, contain a rather interesting conversation - a bragging contest, of all things, between the title characters.


Download: Norman Burns, Lew Tobin's Orchestra -  The Wind and the Rose
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Two Views of Life

Before getting to today's offering, I have an out-of-left-field request: Does anyone reading this blog either understand Dutch, or know someone who does? I have a song that I downloaded from a now long-defunct website about a decade ago, which I just love. But I have no idea what the singer is singing about, and I'd like to. I'm pretty sure it's in Dutch. Please let me know, either via the comments (with an e-mail address) or via my e-mail, which is buried on this site somewhere.... And now....

Two observations about life from Rodd Keith today, one spot-on, one cynical and off-base. At least, that's how I see 'em - your mileage may vary.

On the A-side, with a tasty supper-club style band behind him, Rodd offers up a first rate, silky smooth vocal on "Nobody Knows What Love Will Do". The words are pretty good, and the whole performance sounds like something that wouldn't have been out of place in a show at a club or a restaurant, way back when.

Download: Rodd Keith - Nobody Knows What Love Will Do
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On the other hand, the basic idea behind the lyrics to "Friends are Few", seems to be that you'll only have companionship if you have money, AND if you freely spent that money with and on your friends. That hasn't been my experience, and I can't say that I've ever heard it expressed by anyone I know. The songwriter keeps telling us that this an "intelligent song". I beg to differ.

In contrast with the a-side, the backing arrangement and Rodd's vocal here show no sign of significant work or craftsmanship - the whole thing sounds rather cookie cutter and quickly thrown together. I have no knowledge of this, but I really wouldn't be surprised if Rodd gave his all only when the lyrics at least sort of deserved it.


Download: Rodd Keith - Friends are Few
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Tin Pan Alley Does Vietnam

Today, I have a record provided to me (and all of you) by a correspondent named Justin. He initially wrote me about Mike Thomas' performance of "Prisoner's of War", but also mentioned that he had a couple of Vietnam related Tin Pan Alley releases, which he then shared with me. Justin has a Vietnam War Song Project, which can be found here: http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Gershwin/vietnam_war_song_project/

I initially thought these were two sides of the same single, but Justin has corrected me. The two records have label numbers over a hundred apart, which probably means they were recorded well over a year apart, if not more.

The first song is "A Fearless Soldier", a mother's tribute to his fallen son. For this record, Mike Thomas seems to have dispensed with his typical loose, throwaway style of performance and to my ears sounds like he was trying to capture more of the spirit of the lyric. I don't know find his attempt all that successful, as his vocal abilities were - based on available evidence - fairly limited, but its nice to hear him trying to take seriously words that were meant to be taken seriously, and there are moments where he rises to the occasion.

And I have little doubt given the heartfelt nature of these lyrics, that this author was describing a real person, and someone who she lost to the conflict in Vietnam. Certainly this has the same minimalist sound from that era at Tin Pan Alley, and yet a change of pace for them, as well - my guess is that no one wanted this to sound tossed off.

Download: Mike Thomas - A Fearless Soldier
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The second record is "The Last Ballad of Vietnam". I've listened this three times, and find the lyrics very confusing, but I think the song-poet is offering up the idea that the Vietnam war was a right and necessary thing to do - feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong.

To be honest, when I listen to this record, my ears are drawn to the lengthy guitar solo, which takes up about a third of the record. The performer sounds clearly influences by some of the Eastern-leaning solos which had been cropping up on rock and roll records around this time, but approximating those solos is also clearly beyond his talents. It's sort of a car crash, but a mesmerizing one.

Download: Mike Thomas - The Last Ballad For Vietnam
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The Longest Song-Poem Ever???

In one sense, when you pick up a Halmark record, you can be pretty sure what you're going to get. In another way though, there's no way of knowing what wonders of bad lyric writing, over the top singing or other weirdness you're going to experience. In the case of today's record, that surprise was finding the longest song-poem I've ever heard. A second surprise comes at the end of side two.

But first, we get the classic backing track to "My Daddy He Died in 1969", in this case featuring the song "O Lord Stand By Me" sung by the Kimmels, Jack and Mary, in typical style.  

Download: Halmark Productions - O Lord Stand By Me
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Next up is the star of our show, a song with the vague title of "This is Worth". Rather amazingly, Halmark did not put this song, which is SIX MINUTES AND 19 SECONDS long, by itself on one side of a record, but rather, made it part of a nine minute side, when paired with the previous song. 

And what was the subject matter that required 379 seconds of Halmark majesty?  Nothing less than the authors story of having read the entire bible, and her emotional and visceral reactions and responses to some of the high points of both the old and new testaments. She focuses on a half-dozen or so of the most familiar stories 

I assume that the backing track used here - one of the most overwrought in the Halmark catalog - has been extended via editing, but I don't have it in me to go back to other songs using this track to find out exactly where and for how long. Whatever they did, it again resulted in the need for the singer to stretch out the last few lines, repeating words here and there in order to get the last lines to occur in the right place, over the closing bars of the track. Amazing. Mind-numbing, too, but still, amazing. 

Download: Halmark Productions - This is Worth
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Side two opens with "Want to Rest a Little While", which is about as standard issue Halmark as their records can get, with a get-it-off-my-chest lyric which also features a religious aspect, sung over another of the more overwrought backing track. In this case, it's a backing track I've always loved, for its use in tandem with with the lyric of "Life is a Flame", on the first song poem I ever owned. Oddly, that record runs 4:30, which this one is well under three minutes, so "Flame" must also have utilized some looping of backing track segments.  

Download: Halmark Productions - Want to Rest a Little While
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And finally, another real surprise, in the song "Gypsy Tell My Fortune". I don't recall ever having heard this backing track before (although I may have forgotten it). Instead of the typical turgid '40's style backing track, this song features what sounds to me like 1960's supper club soul and jazz. As with most other records they made, the backing still sounds like it's been recorded from the doorway of the studio. But aside from the recording quality, the track, the lead vocal, even the lyric, sound like something I'd have expected to hear on Preview, rather than Halmark. Any other thoughts on this one? 

Download: Halmark Productions - Gypsy Tell My Fortune
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The Great Joe Noto/Phyllis Ruby Team

It's vacation week here, and although we're still at home (we're the ones being visited by relatives), I'm still spending next to no time online, hence this posting will be short and sweet.

I've only heard a handful of records on Arco, but I have really liked, or even loved, at least one side from each of those 45's. I previously featured my favorite Arco record (so far) about three years ago, here, and today's release has some similarities to that one.

Again, the prime billing goes to the backing band, Joe Noto and his Diplomats, with the actual star of the show, singer Phyllis Ruby, getting second billing. Honorable mention simple must go to the writer of "Hey There Baby", just on the strength of his rockin' name, Roston Ranson, Jr.

"Hey There Baby" is a wonderfully raucous approximation of Rock and Roll, although performed by a conglomeration which was clearly more at home with swing music. The instrumental bridge is very reminiscent of my aforementioned favorite Arco record, "My Lover".

Download: Joe Noto and His Diplomats, With Phyllis Ruby - Hey There Baby
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For "Do You Suppose", the Diplomats provide a nice, if sparse, Rhumba beat, while Phyllis Ruby unfortunately shows some of the limits of her abilities - I think she sounds a bit over her head, although that doesn't spoil the song for me. As they do on several of their Arco tracks, the band segues into another style of music for the instrumental section (in this case, a sort of loose Swing feel), then slip right back into the Rhumba sound for the return of the vocal. A very enjoyable disc on both sides!

Download: Joe Noto and His Diplomats, With Phyllis Ruby - Do You Suppose
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Sammy and John at the Hot Springs Spa!

This week, we have Sammy Marshall, appearing on only one side of the disk, which comes to us on a label not recorded at the AS/PMA website, "Spa Records" out of Hot Springs, Arkansas. And look, one of the co-writers even signed the label - bet that's worth a fortune! Sammy's song is "Kiss Me Good-Bye Tomorrow". 

I'm partial to this record, first, because the opening instrumental section is almost a carbon copy of the start of a track from a privately recorded session that I have, which I just adore (maybe I'll share that tape somewhere, someday), and second, because - within the rather hokey parameters of the day - the lyrics here are fairly well written in places, and rise above much of what came out on song-poem records, and even, in some cases, on the era's big hits. I particularly like "pretend you pretended when you said you'd leave me", and just in general, I can actually believe someone lived these words, which is a relative rarity among song-poems.

Download: Sammy Marshall - Kiss Me Good-Bye Tomorrow

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The flip side features the otherwise undocumented (in terms of song poems) John Greer, who -is backed up by the extremely clunkily named Puckett-Cravens-Hollihan Trio. The song's title is fairly ridiculous, too: "(Oh, Ho, Ho, Ho) Heartaches". To my ears, this record and song fairly well define the term "forgettable", as there's really nothing here, not even a single aspect of this brief rendition, that catches my ear or stays with me. 

Download: John Greer - (Oh, Ho, Ho, Ho) Heartaches

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