Two Very Different Goodbyes

This month, I was lucky enough to obtain yet another Norm Burns 45, although technically this record is by "Lew Tobin's Orchestra & Singers with Vocal by Norman Burns". Happily, it's from the same early period of Sterling which featured a lot of piano and sax driven, vaguely (or very) twist oriented numbers. "If I Had Believed In You" clearly shares at least some of its inspiration to the same person or people who arranged "Sunshine Twist" and "Darling, Don't Put Your Hand On Me".  

Today's song isn't nearly up to the level of "Sunshine Twist", and certainly not to "Darling, Don't..." which is possibly my favorite song-poem of all, but it's a sweet pleasure, bouncing along with its cowbell and the chirpy girls, an unusually intricate vocal arrangement, and Norm(an)'s typical warm and inviting vocal. The lyrics are far more downcast than the music, being that they are a dismissal of and a goodbye to an unworthy lover. I especially enjoy that the backing girls actually sing "forgive me" a couple of times in counterpoint to the lead vocal. 

Download: Lew Tobin's Orchestra & Singers, Vocal by Norman Burns - If I Had Believed In You

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The flip side, with words by the same song-poet as "Believed in You", is "She Took the Ring From Her Finger". This one is nearly a dirge, and that's a well matched style. This is another song of goodbye, but quite a different type of goodbye. The song doesn't do much for me at all, but the words are heartfelt,  and there's more well arranged interplay with the backing vocalists. The microphone popping on a couple of "p's near the end of the song really should have resulted in another take, but that's not the way things were done in song-poem land. 

Download: Lew Tobin's Orchestra & Singers, Vocal by Norman Burns - She Took the Ring From Her Finger

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Oddly, both of these songs are listed as being two minutes and twenty seconds on the labels, although neither of them comes close to that length. 

The Shortest Song-Poem Title Ever?

First up, a quick thank you to "Nedzilla" for a really great comment. I enjoyed it mightily. Actually, now that I look back at that post, all four comments were fantastic. That one really brought out the best in you reader/listeners. 

I recently came across an eBay auction for a record with what has to be at least tied for the shortest song-poem title ever. Unless a song called "I" or "A" comes along, I'm going to assume that there's never been a shorter title on a song-poem 45 (and never a title which gave away less of its lyrical direction), than Alan Poe's rendition of "To". Happily, no one else bid and I got the record at a reasonable price. Here it is: 

I'm not at all sure that this is the singer who usually went by "Alan Poe". There were multiple records released under that name, and clearly they weren't all by the same singer. At least one those was actually sung by Rodd Keith, but this doesn't sound like the other Alan Poe records I'm familiar with, and it's certainly not Rodd.

Anyway, both "To" and the flip side, the almost equally generically titled "Lovely" are religiously themed offerings, both from the same song-poem. I think it's sort of odd that Rodd Keith isn't singing, here, actually. The backing track has many of the hallmarks of his production, and the melody of this song could not more clearly be a Rodd melody and chord changes - it resembles several of his creations, none more than elements in the melodies of "Ecstacy [sic] To Frenzy" and "Nativity", two of his most beautiful melodies. This tune is not anywhere near the same league as those two, but it's nice, and neither "Alan Poe" or the color-by-numbers Jesus lyrics of "To" are worthy of this melody.

Download: Alan Poe - To

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"Lovely" - about all the lovely creations the Lord has made - has almost a sunshine pop sound (if it was a bit bouncier, perhaps), and again, this melody and chord structure has Rodd dripping off of it in every measure. I'd like to think that Rodd kept his distance from the vapidity of these lyrics, but of course I know he had no problem selling much worse song-poetry than this. So his decision to make the arrangement, lead the band and call in a rather lugubrious singer remains a mystery. 

Download: Alan Poe - Lovely

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Another Michigan "Air-Loom"

 Howdy folks, 

First, just a quick nod to Sammy Reed, who has posted an entire song-poem album here.

And now for an echo of a post from a few years ago: 

Nearly eight years ago, I posted a record on the "Air-Loom" label, with both sides sung by Cara Stewart. The song featured at the top was "Michigan, My Home". Today, I have another rendition of the same song on the same label. This time, the artist is Jeff Lawrence, accompanied by the far too wordy "Film City Orchestra (New Sounds From Hollywood)", all of which immediately identifies this as a Film City creation. 

The existence of this record confirms (or nearly confirms) one thing about this label and one about the author of these songs. The first is that "Air-Loom" was very likely the product of one Gail Hines (or as she is credited here, Gail Hamilton Hines). Ms. Hines is the credited author of every documented song released by the Air-Loom label. 

And the second is that Air-Loom, and Ms. Hines creations, are probably more accurately identified as vanity releases rather than true song-poems. A quick listen to Cara Stewart's rendition of "Michigan, My Home" and Jeff Lawrence's performance demonstrates that they are the exact same song - tune and words - although the two versions start at different points in the lyric/tune. 

Almost always when two renditions are found of the same song-poem, by two different companies, the backing, tune and arrangement bear no similarities. In this case, Lee Hudson took this material, and at some other point, Sandy Stanton took the material, and each made a record of it, and they both came out with the same song, lyrics and melody. My guess is that Ms. Hines was actually a songwriter and not just a lyricist. 

Jeff Lawrence seems to have made only a handful of records for Sandy Stanton, and he is just as ineffectual as the other post-Rod Rogers/Keith singers he featured at Film City, and this rendition of "Michigan, My Home" cannot compete with Cara's version. But few can really compete with Cara. 

Download: Jeff Lawrence with the Film City Orchestra (New Sounds From Hollywood) - Michigan, My Home

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Speaking of the ineffectual singers of the late period Film City crew, the flip side of this record features another Gail Hines song (of course), this time sung by Frank Perry with another rarely heard from song-poem singer, Karen Kent. "A Sweetheart By My Side" is a lugubrious slog of nearly four minutes, with the dullest Chamberlin backing imaginable, poor production and bland vocals. A song-poem trifecta!

Download: Frank Perry & Karen Kent with The Film City Orchestra (New Sounds From Hollywood) - A Sweetheart By My Side

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B-Atlas Redux

First, I want to thank everyone who has been commenting lately. There've been a few folks who have also gone back and listened to things I posted a while ago and sent a bunch of comments back to back. I am much appreciative.  

Second, I will point out that I have adjusted the link (at right) to Sammy Reed's site, "Music from the World of the Strange and the Bizarre", which can now be found here. 

And now it's time for us all to Be Atlas. 

~~

Nearly ten years ago, I shared a Rodd Keith Record (released under his frequent aka of Rod Rogers) on the B-Atlas label. One commenter related how a search of Billboard Magazine indicated that the label was somehow related to the Jody label, which you can read about here, and which seems to have been a crazy set-up, even by song-poem and vanity standards. But note that they shared the same address. And our friends at Roaratorio Records shared that there was another B-Atlas record in existence, with both of its songs also written by the same song-poet as the record I shared, Anne De Grace, and positing that B-Atlas may have been a vanity set up for Ms. De Grace. I'm not sure how that tracks with them being a subsidiary of the bizarre Jody set up, but there are plenty of things in the song-poem world that I don't understand, and given that she did write all four known songs on the label, that supposition is probably correct. 

I now own a copy of that second B-Atlas release (or perhaps it was their first release, as the two records are numbered A-2000 and A-900). And here it is: 

Yes, that's right, we are still having Rodd Keith in his Film City, Chamberlin Orchestra, Rod Rogers persona. I do not have a ton of stuff to say about either of these songs, both of which I find fairly turgid. The better of the two, to my ears, is certainly "L'amour C'est Si Doux My Darling", if for no other reason than I love that vibraphone sound. The lyrics are nothing to write home about. In fact, the opening four lines are fairly awful, in a laugh-out-loud sort of way: 

Someone says there's no such thing as love

Someone says there's some things in love

Someone says they've never been in love.

Someone says they've always been in love. 

Cole Porter it ain't. Then it's into the main part of the song, the vibraphone retreats into the background, and Rodd (or Rod) turns on the smarm. 

Download: Rod Rogers - L'Amour C'est Si Doux My Darling

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The flip side is "There's Still Room in My Heart", and the best thing I can say about it is probably that it isn't as long as "L'Amour C'est Si Doux My Darling"

Download: Rod Rogers - There's Still Room In My Heart

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Rocket 88??? NO! This is Rocket 99!!

Perhaps you are familiar with the classic R & B record "Rocket 88". If not, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with it now. This is one of the records that often gets called "The First Rock & Roll Single". It was credited to Jackie Brenston, but should have more accurately been credited to Ike Turner and his Band, as that was the name the group was named at, at the time. Today's record is not "Rocket 88", but does seem to be about a product that came out 11 updates later, and went up in the air, not down the street. 

Anyway...

I recently found an eBay auction for a record on Tin Pan Alley, "Florida Rocket (Number Ninety-Nine) by one Charlie Hines. Doing a little research, I found that a previous copy listed on eBay once sold for $200. And I thought "well, no bidding on this one for me". But then, as I often do, I went to see if I already owned a copy, and, wonder of wonders, I DO! 

The biggest surprise to me is not that I own a copy, or that it copies sell for up to $200, but rather, that I didn't put this one aside for use here on the blog the first time I heard it. I say that because it's a really fun record!

The record is from late 1958 or early 1959. It's definitely a silly arrangement, what with the slide whistle effects, and the song is a time capsule, with references to rockets into space, the space race with the Russians. That $200 sale described it as Rockabilly, which is a stretch, to say the least. 

Charlie Hines is not documented - anywhere that I can find - as having recorded anything else for Tin Pan Alley. I wonder why - he's the equal of the other singers they had working for them at the time. Anyway, like I said, this is a fun one, and I'm surprised I never thought to share it before. 

Download: Charlie Hines - Florida Rocket (Number Ninety-Nine)

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If "Florida Rocket" was a little silly, it had nothing on the flip side "Riding In My Little Sport Car", in which the focus is solidly on the car honk effect which recurs far too often, and sounds nothing like what a sports car's horn would have sounded like. Everyone involved plays as if they were well aware they were performing a ridiculous - and not very good - novelty arrangement. And I find that sort of odd, as the lyrics didn't have to be used in such a fashion - a straight ahead rocker would have worked with these lyrics just fine. 

Although.... does anyone else think it's weird that it's a "sport car" and not a "sports car"? Was the the terminology in the late 1950's? 

Download: Charlie Hines - Riding In My Little Sport Car

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Come See the Man! After All, Vicki Sees Him!

 Any time I acquire a song-poem record on a small or tiny label, if at least one of the songs is at all worth sharing, for any reason, I like to do so, in order to give a more full picture of the song-poem world. So it is that today, I have another record on the Vellez label of Lomita, California, where "The Songs They Play Are On Vellez"

I've offered up at least one simply marvelous record on Vellez in the past, which is heard here, and two other records, one of which was fairly interesting but bad, and the other which was comically bad. All of the Vellez tracks will pop up, in backwards order, starting with this post, if you click here. 

The "Comically Bad" previous posting featured a woman named Vicki Farrell, and what I said there, applies here, too: Here's what I wrote: 

Vicki Farrell doesn't sound like she was ready to be within two miles of a recording studio. 

It's more than a bit of a mystery as to why they utilized her, too. As you'll hear, Vellez seems to have had plenty of money to spend on musicians, and people to arrange their music. Money that other song-poem labels would have LOVED to have had, but didn't. Both sides of this record sound well made. Except for the little manner of the singer. It's not good music, but it's rendered absolutely professionally, with real strings and competent backing vocalists. 

Both songs are Christian oriented. I assume so, anyway. "Won't You Come and See the Man" never mentions Jesus, so I guess she could be singing about, oh, I don't know, Fernando Lamas or Andy Devine, but I doubt it. But she is just awful. The fact that this side seems to have been pressed slightly off center just adds to the incompetence of her vocal. 

Download: Vicki Farrell - Won't You Come and See the Man

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Incidentally, while preparing this post, I discovered that, almost nine years ago, I featured a record on the even tinier "Hit Records International" label featuring a singer just named "Vicki", of whom I was equally dismissive, saying, at the time: 

"I'm reminded of the beautiful but tone-deaf singer who Keith Partridge went crazy over in an episode of The Partridge Family - as long as he was looking at her, he couldn't hear her awful singing"

It's clear to me now: That "Vicki" and "Vicki Farrell" are one and the same. See if you agree. 

Anyway, the flip side is "I See Him", another religious ballad, this one more about God's presence all around us. Again, we have a backing which is thoroughly professional - this could be the backing to a Doris Day or Tony Martin record. Not that that's a good thing, but it is rare for the backing track on a song-poem to be this 1952 Big-Hit-On-Decca-Esque. Vicki Farrell nearly holds her own here, much more so than on the other records I've featured her on. But she's still not good. 

I think that the folks who make Hi-C could have used a bit of this song's chorus, where Vicki and guys momentarily seem to be singing about their product. 

Download: Vicki Farrell - I See Him

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Incidentally, this record was received by Billboard Magazine upon its release in 1961. That was during a period in which Billboard essentially mentioned every record they received. As you can see from this page, they felt this record had "Limited Sales Potential". 

You Get No Love from Gene OR the Squires

This is a sort of fascinating record. While not every Preview release has been documented yet, and that will probably never happen, there is only one Preview release precisely like this one documented at the AS/PMA Preview page, and now here's a second one. 

What this record contains is a standard song-poem vocal rendition of a song, by Gene Marshall in this case (and in the other case, too), and on the flip side, the Preview house band, identified as "The Squires", play an instrumental version of the same song. And it's not just the instrumental track from the Gene Marshall version, it's another, different performance of the song. 

And this is a pretty misbegotten song. It seems that maybe the song-poet's first verse lyrics to "I Don't Love You No More" simply could not be fit into standard three-to-the-bar waltz beat. Or maybe someone was just getting overly creative in a way that really didn't work. Whatever the reason, in the middle of the first verse, there are two four-beat bars, and then near the end of that verse, there is a seven-beat bar (or I suppose it could be one four-beat bar). Even the nearly always perfect Gene seams tripped up by the second one. Oddly, the second time through the verse, the oddly places measures aren't present. 

And that's without even getting to the lyrics, which suggest that the singer has fallen out of love with his former flame because he doesn't like her behavior. Is that a thing? Can one simply turn off love? I don't think I ever experienced that, in any of my relationships. Maybe I'm the odd one. I dunno. 

Download: Gene Marshall - I Don't Love You No More

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The flip side, as mentioned, is an instrumental rendition of the same song. And this suggests that I was right with my second guess - that someone was getting creative with the structure of the song. I say that because the two four-bar measure in the first version are heard here, and there is no lyrical line to make space for here - in other words, the whole thing could have been a waltz in this version, if they'd wanted it to be. The actual performance is pretty much a sleep walk. 

Download: The Squires - I Don't Love You No More

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What the HELL is He Singing About?

When I first decided to share this record, "The Rocking Chair Brand", it was mostly because of Billy Grey's forced, borderline obnoxious fake southern/western cowboy accent. Near the end of that first play, though, my ears perked up. "When did the lyrics move in THAT direction?", I thought. 

I've listened several more times, and I'm just befuddled. I guess he's singing about being a cowboy who's just about ready to die. All the lines about payday and helping his pals confused me, but I think he's promising to send them fortunate outcomes from the great beyond. I guess. He wants to apologize to St. Peter for taking so long to get there - see, he is working on improving his soul. Then he tells us where he'd like to be buried, and if that line isn't from out of left field, nothing is. Oh, but forget that, because now he'd liked to be cremated. If they find a place to park, that is. Oh, and then he throws in the title for the first and only time during the fadeout, for no apparent reason. 

A true masterpiece of oddness.  

Download: Billy Grey - The Rocking Chair Brand

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The flip side is "Shadow Dance". Maybe I'm completely off base here, but as this record dates from the early 1970's, the backing track sounds to me like the band wanted to tap into some of what Marvin Gaye was doing, musically, on the "What's Going On" album (throughout, but especially in those first ten seconds), but clearly were nowhere near  up to the task. 

The dance in question appears to involve nothing more than shaking your hands in front of a fire. The lyrics are truly minimal here: aside from riffing on individual lines from the verse, there are, by my count, only four lines to the entire song. And this gives the band (guitar, bass, drums) a chance to indulge in a solo section of approximately 1/3rd of the length of the record - over 50 seconds, during which the bass player and the guitarist do not seem to be remotely in agreement about what the chord changes are. 

Download: Billy Grey - Shadow Dance

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When the Rooster Crows...

A belated Happy Mother's Day to all Mother's who are reading this post, and all those who have or had a Mother. 

Today I have an Air label EP, on which just one of the four songs is really and truly worthwhile, and for those of you who want to skip the dross, I encourage you to skip to the last song, after which this post is named, for something fairly entertaining. 

Very briefly, the Air label, for whatever reason, seems to have existed to put out singles and EP's containing the works of multiple song-poem factories, often two or three different producers on the same 45. I'd be lying if I said I understood how this worked or why such an arrangement existed. At least occasionally, songs appearing on an Air release also came out on the home label of the production company, too. 

In the case of today's record, all four songs come from the Globe song-poem factory, with three of them being by that singer most often credited as Sammy Marshall, here cunningly hidden behind another false name, Sonny Marshall. 

The one non-Sammy/Sonny tune leads us off, and it's by one of the lesser-used Globe thrushes, Mary Kaye. "Why Can't You Tell Me" has lyrics which feature that artless quality that I've found myself writing about lately. I was particularly taken with the point at which the word "reason" is rhymed with "treason" although the latter word is meaningless, in the context of that line. It also seems to me that Mary Kaye was not the right person to record in a trio with herself - some of the chords that result are fairly painful. 

Download: Mary Kaye - Why Can't You Tell Me

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On to Sonny-land. His first offering here, "Hopeless Love" portrays a painful situation for its protagonist, and Sammy/Sonny has just the right catch in his voice for this material, which he proved again and again and again. It's too bad, because this could have been something moderately okay, what with that voice of his. But the lyrics are pretty cookie-cutter, and have been revisited a million times, and the band offers a level of uninspired support which matches the quality of those unoriginal words. 

Download: Sonny Marshall - Hopeless Love

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Flipping the record over, we have the song "Rose Marie My Love", written by Buddy Gay, who I'm sure had no idea that if he just changed one letter in his name and picked up the blues guitar, he could have been world famous. This is nearly as faceless a track, lyric and vocal performance as I can imagine. I really can't work up anything else to say about it. 

Download: Sonny Marshall - Rose Marie My Love

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Now for some fun! That title - "Where the Rooster Crows" - suggests something entertaining might be coming, and the quote from "The Chicken Reel" at the start of the track confirms it. What a set of fun, ridiculous lyrics! We're told that it's fun to be on a farm in Arkansas, and the examples of the fun are.... a broken toe, falling in a pond, and being blown 10 miles away in an explosion. Oh, and "all you can hear is Bim Bim Bim", whatever the hell that means. Okay, okay, so this record is aggressively stupid. I know. But I'd rather that something like this exist than to not have it exist, and it makes me laugh.  

Download: Sonny Marshall - Where the Rooster Crows

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Cardinal Rodd

Before I get to today's songs, a bit of a backstory. Nearly four years ago, in this post, I shared an EP of Sammy, er, Sonny Marshall singing four songs by Michael Rose. Within that post, I commented that I'd already shared one of those songs, "A Little Bird", in a post nearly three years before that. I also mentioned that, although Michael Rose was listed as the composer of "A Little Bird" on the Air release, on the earlier Cardinal post, the song was credited to a different person Margaret A. Rosenberger (although I didn't provide either of their names at the time). 

Now, I have another Cardinal release and it continues the weirdness and confusion. It also features four songs credited to Ms. Rosenberger, two of which were ALSO on that earlier Sonny Marshall EP from 2020, where they were also credited to Mr. Rose. 

Rodd Keith, in his guise as Rod Rogers and with Film City's Chamberlin, performs the songs on the first side. "If I Could Have One Wish Tonight" is 110 seconds of midtempo nothingness, made into something by the creative arrangement that Rodd worked out on his one-man-band machine. From the oboe introduction to the choral oohs to the "hey-let's-make-this-into-a-long-enough-record" instrumental section in the middle - which is simply masterful for about 33 seconds - this is true demonstration of what Rodd could do with that weird machine .

Download: Rod Rogers - If I Could Have One Wish Tonight

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The second song on this side is the stronger of the two, I think. "Oh, How I Miss You", starts with a well worn idea about looking at the moon and knowing she can see it, too, but it's phrased very effectively, and the words continue to be nicely put together for much of the rest of the song, too. The tune for this one is considerably more memorable, and again, Rodd's use of voicings is again very effective. 

Download: Rod Rogers - Oh, How I Miss You

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As mentioned, the two Sonny Marshall songs on this EP were already heard, in identical versions, with different writer credits, in this post, and I am not going to repost them here. They are available in that post. I will say that "My Second Home" is the strongest track on this EP, just as Sonny's "A Little Bird" was the best song on that previous Cardinal record I shared. That's twice that Sammy/Sonny and his Globe band outshone Rodd Keith, and that's a rarity indeed. 

Norm and Joe

In the early days of the Sterling label, when they were creating a sound I truly love, one of the first singers hired was someone named Joe Hall. I've featured him here once before, and he was really not a very impressive singer. I have a few other Joe Hall records, but they're just not very good. Shortly after his name starts appearing on Sterling labels, the name of Norm Burns shows up, and very quickly, Norm became the standard bearer, which he would remain until his death in 1974. And shortly after Norm showed up, Joe made his last record for the label, which is no surprise. Today's record may be the only one on the label which features Norm on one side and Joe on the other. 

As I would have predicted, the Norm side is the much better of the two. It's called "Ain't A-Kiddin' You", and it's just 110 seconds long. And what a cute little record it is, with a bouncy beat, a swinging band and a memorable melody. Norm provides a first rate vocal, too. 

I love Norm. 

Download: Norman Burns, Lew Tobin's Orchestra - Ain't A-Kiddin' You

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Joe Hall, of course, takes the lead on the flip side, "Honey, Honey Do". If a midtempo record can be described as "turgid", this might be that record. The band seems to be a room away from the microphones and are playing in a truly uninspired manner - hard to believe this is the same band. Joe Hall hits all the notes, but shows no style and doesn't do anything interesting. This record is only 17 seconds longer than it's flip, but seems twice as long. 

Download: Joe Hall, Lew Tobin's Orchestra - Honey, Honey Do

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How Charming!

 

Well, I've been super busy, and it's been almost two weeks since I posted. I really don't have much time even now, so I won't say too much about this week's Tin Pan Alley item, featuring Ellen Wayne singing about "The Charm of a Texan's Smile". It's got an appealing, loping beat, and the singer gives quite a winning performance. I find the few things the lyrics actually say about Texans to be somewhere between suspect and flatly untrue, in my experience, anyway - looking at you, Senator Ted Cruz (among many others) - but maybe these things were more true 64 years ago or so, when this was recorded. 

(Oh, one line rings true: I'm sure Texans still learn all about The Alamo, but somehow, I have my doubts that schoolchildren in Texas learn that the battle was about whether Texas would be allowed to have slavery, an that "we" weren't on the right side of that argument.)

Note the references to Hawaii and Alaska - since this record came out around 1960 or so, those are extremely topical, given that both states were new to the union the previous year. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - The Charm of a Texan's Smile

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The flip side is what Billboard would have probably called a "Rock-a-Ballad" at the time (or at least, a few years earlier). It's called "The Church on the Mountain", and everything is put together reasonably well, to very little effect. 

Download: Ellen Wayne - The Church On the Mountain

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