Sunday, February 23, 2020

Sunday post-morning gospel: The Sons of the Gospel--He Will Save Your Soul Yet





I'd like this LP even more if it were The Songs of the Gospel by the Sons of the Gospel.  That would be classic.  But it's He Will Save Your Soul Yet, which is a slightly unusual title, but one that makes sense when you hear the number it's attached to.  Three originals by band members, with the rest by folks like Wm. (I'm assuming Bill) Monroe, the Stanley Bros., and Don Reno.  Notes: "Our group is made up of five God-fearing, born again Christmas men serving the Lord in the old fashioned way.  We sing and play 'Blue Grass' gospel music; the kind we were all raised by."  I think they mean "raised on," and they are definitely Bluegrass gospel--one look at that nicely-posed cover photo tells us as much.  As for "the old fashioned way," for that to be fully true, they'd have to be wearing clothes of an earlier period, but I just have fun harping on that point.  "Old fashioned" is being used here to mean honest, genuine.

Excellent stuff from an LP played a lot by the previous owner, and I almost got it posted last week, but not quite.  I was to the wire, and I decided sleep was more important than finishing the entry.  Then, when I got home, I was tired.  Just like today.  This bug is doing a good job postponing its exit, but I think I can get rid of it before it becomes something worse.  My tactic is simple: when my body wants to sleep, I let it.  I assume it's my immune system needing a recharge.

I should know where Galion, Ohio is, but I don't.  So many towns in Ohio.  We have so many towns and villages in my state, I think the whole town concept was invented here.  Hm.  Not terribly far from here.  Around Mansfield.  At first, I thought the band members were all from Ohio, but in fact the back-jacket notes (included in the zip file) simply say they resided here.  Chuck Walton, who wrote A Home in Heaven, was teased by the group for being the only "Buckeye," meaning everyone else was originally from outside of Ohio.  Not surprising, since this is a bluegrass group.  When you see the back jacket, you'll note that its group shot is posed far less artistically than the front pic--maybe the shot is from a different session.  I'd almost guess a different photographer, given the elegant positioning of the members on the front.

I'll leave you at the mercy of the label scans for the track listings, as my head is feeling woozy.  I'm not up to typing out the titles (I'm about medium woozy).  We're having a big bump up in temperature today, so maybe the wonky patterns are confusing my sinuses.  Doesn't take much!  Enjoy.




DOWNLOAD: The Sons of the Gospel--He Will Save Your Soul Yet






International Rural Music of America, Inc. (Rite Records 27635/36; approx. 1971)


Lee



Saturday, February 22, 2020

Shellac for 2020, Part 1 (1904-1920)--Dan Kildare, Don Richardson, Charles A. Prince, Earl Fuller







I've already featured shellac this year, but we'll just pretend this is the first time.  Hence, "Shellac for 2020." This latest 78-athon was inspired by Buster, who's working with software similar to mine--specially, the "Equalization Page" on my VinylStudio program, which I've been using to fine-fine-tune 78s (great for producing eye strain), and the results have made me very happy.  For instance, I was able to bring out the buried percussion on 1914's When You're a Long, Long Way from Home (featuring an African-American band led by led by Dan Kildare) by focusing on the lowest frequency range (starting at 250 Hz), and I was able to make the aggressive drumming on the Victor Military Band's High Jinks and Laughing Husband sound even more in-your-ear.  As opposed to in-your-face.   I start with a word about Earl Fuller's very interesting Texas by David W. Guion, who worked with Ferde Grofe and Paul Whiteman.  Click on the link for his amazing story--the thing to know for this playlist is that the song is actually Guion's The Texas Fox Trot of 1915.  Nowadays, and maybe for a number of decades now, we would expect music about Texas to have a "cowboy" sound, but the Bolero rhythm and minor-mode verse tells us that Guion is evoking the territory's past, not its Hollywood future.  Whatever I just typed.

I decided to start the list with some early dance band music--some of the earliest I know of, at least.  In fact, Joan Sawyer's Persian Garden Orch.--actually, as I noted above, a group led by Dan Kildare, not dancer Sawyer--is, per my own take on jazz history, an example of the kind of string bands that predated the "Dixieland" bands we incorrectly cite as the first jazz.  String bands and "clubs" (mandolin, banjo, etc.), a tradition dating back at least as far as the 1880s, were dominated by stringed instruments but were also often augmented by percussion, a cornet or two, woodwinds--whatever.  These musicians weren't working from a rule book.  I believe that the massed string orchestras mark the dawn of jazz, if only because more and more of the things--banjo orchestras, etc.--are being uncovered on recordings.  The interweaving of parts/lines/voices which characterizes Dixieland and the performances by James Reese Europe, Art Hickman, Dan Kildare, and even Joseph C. Smith (think of him as genteel jazz) is exactly what we'd expect to have evolved from large outfits which, weak on music-reading skills, would have negotiated their way through a given song, with multiple musicians doing what, come Dixieland, would be assigned to one.  Dunno if that made sense (I'm fighting a respiratory bug, so I may be feverish), but anyway, if the acoustic/acoustical process didn't make it necessary to limit the number of musicians playing at any single time, we'd have audio documents of string bands (augmented and otherwise) in their full glory.  But acoustically record an orchestra or "club"'s worth of strings or percussion, and the results were sonic mush.  Total loss of detail.  That pre-electrical era engineers did as well as they did with percussion is something of a miracle.

My outlier position regarding early jazz is that the music showed up in any number of guises, that we should be trying to document all the discrete manifestations of early, early jazz--as opposed to looking for "the first jazz recording."  Tim Gracyk writes that one Walter Rogers arranged many of the Victor label's early dance records,  and, judging from the sides I put in today's playlist, Rogers must have been listening to black orchestras.  (Wish I had the dough to buy the history book I'm sample-reading right now.)  Rock journalism, which patterned itself on jazz criticism, has Elvis as the first genuine/complete/real/viable/sustainable example of rock and roll, just as jazz critics seem to regard Dixieland as the first form of jazz which had a future.  I find that take pretty odd, given that Dixieland became obsolete within less than a decade from its first appearance on disc.  Later jazz wasn't built on its foundation, though some historians do seem to think so.  But I think a comparison of King Oliver to the Fletcher Henderson arrangements of the next decade sort of sink that notion.

Anyway, many of these sides impress me as strongly jazz-influenced.  Some can even be considered jazz, I think.  Not Don Richardson's A Perfect Day, however (and why "Don" is placed in quotes on the label, I do not know).   Don was a songwriter and a fiddler who made some extraordinary country fiddle sides in 2016 that I need to re-rip for the blog.  Wikipedia notes that Don "may have made the first country music recording in 1914."  They mean this one.  And, no, it's not country.  Oh, well.  Now we know.  However, it's great to have any example of dance music from this early, so I'll take it.  I was years waiting for it to turn up, hoping for some 1914 country, though that did seem unlikely, given the waltz tune.

After all that, we end with three nothing-to-do-with-jazz sides, starting with 1904's Come Take a Trip in My Airship (in a rip greatly improved over my Halloween rip), which features a male vocalist singing a woman's lyrics--a phenomenon that lasted into the vocal refrains of 1920s dance sides.  (I used to have two The Man I Love versions sung by males.)  Then, Victor Herbert's delightful Lanciers Figure 5 from Miss Dolly Dollars--and all I know about a lancier is that it's a type of dance (from France, looks like).  Herbert uses the rondo form, and the music is simple in an ingenious way.  Happy Heine dates from a period in which ethnic slurs were the rage.  Actually, they didn't stop being the rage until pretty recently in our popular culture.  To the shellac....




DOWNLOAD: Shellac for 2020, Part 1



When You're a Long, Long Way from Home (Meyer)--Joan Sawyer's Persian Garden Orch. (Dan Kildare) (Columbia A5642; 1914)
A Perfect Day (Intro. "Dear Old Girl")--"Don" Richardson's Orchestra (Columbia A5644; 1914)
Bugle Call Rag (Carey Morgan)--Victor Military Band (Victor 35533; 1916)
Some Sort of Somebody (Kern)--Same
Chinatown, My Chinatown--Medley (Schwartz-Cobb)--Prince's Orch., Dir. G. Hepburn Wilson (Columbia A5574; 1915)
High Jinks--One Step or Trot (Friml--Arr. Savino)--Victor Military Band (Victor 35376; 1914)
Singapore--Medley (Gilbert and Friedland)--Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orch. (Columba A2686; 1918)
Laughing Husband Medley--One-Step or Trot (Kern)--Victor Military Band (Victor 35376; 1914)
Waiting for the Robert E. Lee (Medley Turkey Trot)--Victor Military Band (Victor 35277; 1912)
When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam'--Medley--Turkey Trot--Same
Dance it Again with Me--One-step (Wallace)--Art Hickman's Orchestra (Columbia A2899; 1919)
Oriental Stars--One-step (Monaco)--Prince's Dance Orch. (Columbia A 2906; 1920)
Bound in Morocco (Herscher)--Same
I Ain't Got Nobody Much (Graham-Wilson)--Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orch. (Columbia A2547; 1918)
Arabian Nights--One-Step (David and Hewitt)--Columbia Band, Dir. Charles A. Prince (Columbia A6099; 1918)
Oriental--One-step (Vincent Rose)--Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra (Columbia A6075; 1918)
Texas--Fox Trot (David W. Guion)
Hello, My Dearie--One-step--Prince's Band (Columbia A5986; 1917)
That's Got 'Em (Sweatman)--Wilbur Sweatman's Original Jazz Band (Columbia A2721; 1919)
Come Take a Trip in my Airship (Geo. Evans)--J.W. Myers, w. Orch. (Columbia A320; 1904)
Miss Dollar Dollars--Lanciers Figure 5 (Victor Herbert)--Prince's Orchestra (Columbia A5063; 1906)
Happy Heine--March and Two-Step (J. Bodewalt Lampe)--Arthur Pryor's Band (Victor 4633; 1905)



Lee




Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Today's Grofe--Suez, Blue/Deep Nocturne, Over There Fantasie


Today's Grofe.  Or tomorrow's.  Or next week's.  I'm flexible.  Ten selections this time, and a neat Grofe mystery. It concerns Ferde's Blue Nocturne , heard here on a Paul Whiteman radio broadcast (the boxed set doesn't say which one), and there is no doubt that a Blue Nocturne by Grofe existed--I found the 1945 copyright entry on line.  So, it's not a mislisting.  But we also have Stanley Black performing a Grofe number called Deep Nocture, from the 1977 Valentino soundtrack, and it, too, was copyrighted by Grofe--in 1947.  So, two different pieces, right?  Nope.  Same piece.  For some reason, Grofe decided to retitle it, I guess.

So we have the Blue and Deep nocturnes, with Black giving the latter number (identical to the former) a beguine rhythm (or is that a rumba?).  And I think I need a six-pack of Bud right about now.

Today's offerings also include the 1922 song Suez, an "oriental fox trot romance" by Grofe and Peter (Deep Purple) De Rose.  And, speaking of Peter, I've always strongly suspected that Grofe's Blue/Deep Nocture was inspired by De Rose's superb (and way better known) Deep Purple, which began life as a "symphonic jazz"-style piano solo in 1934, featuring a hand-stretching parallel-ninth-chord intro that was old news in Classical music, but quite modern for pop.  Purple went from  piano solo to concert piece in 1935, when Domenico Savino arranged it and Paul Whiteman played it on the radio.  So my source tells ms.  As much as I like Grofe's nocturne, it's not up to De Rose's piece, which was in turn not quite up to the composer who inspired it--George Gershwin.  Who, in turn, got much of his shtick from Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel, and... I'm getting dizzy here.  Where's my six-pack of Bud?

From the LP Adventures in Music, Grade 4, Vol. 1, we have the Desert Water Hole movement from Grofe's very entertaining Death Valley Suite, and it was probably deemed educational for kids because of the ingenious (however corny) Oh! Susanna medley.  My vinyl copy has bubbles in the surface, but I denoised them best I could.  I reduced them to a minor nuisance, and they occur mainly during the big pause.  Then, from a 1967 U.K. Columbia LP, a beautifully-recorded (in stereo) piano roll performance by Grofe--as "Ferdie Grofe"--giving us Hard Hearted Hannah.  The Ampico roll dates back to the 1920s--1924, very possibly, which was the year of the song.  The jacket does not say which Ampico roll or when.  Grofe certainly had cleaner technique than Gershwin--maybe this was because Grofe's formal schooling went well beyond Gershwin's.  And we have a gorgeous Old Crole Days (from Mississippi Suite), arranged and performed by Carmen Dragon on the Nightfall LP (highly recommended); then, a fabulous rendition of the Over There Fantasie by the United States Army Band; moreover, three memorable On the Trail renditions by, among others, the great Myron Floren; and, as mentioned above, a recording of Suez--Clyde Doerr's Orchestra, 1922.  It sounded not so great on my after-market Stanton 500 78 needle, but my highly-rated Japanese after-market 600-series 78 needle did a majorly better job on it.  To my relief, I should add.  I won't say this playlist will change your life, but it may.  Who knows?  No way to be sure until you download.




DOWNLOAD: Today's Grofe




Blue Nocturne (Grofe, 1945)--Paul Whiteman, from radio brodcast
Deep Nocturne (Grofe, 1947)--Arr. and conducted by Stanley Black, from Valentino soundtrack (1977)
Death Valley Suite: Desert Water Hole (Grofe)--National Symphony Orch., c. Howard Mitchell, 1961
Old Creole Days (Grofe, Arr. Dragon)--Carmen Dragon c. Capitol Symphony Orch., 1961
Over There Fantasie (Grofe)--United States Army Band, c. Col. Samuel R. Loboda, 1975
Hard Hearted Hanna (Yellen-Bigelow-Bates)--Ferdie Grofe, Ampico piano roll, 1920s (From 1967 LP)
On the Trail (Grofe)--The Charles Randolph Grean Sounde, 1969.
On the Trail--Myron Floren, Accordion w. Orch., 1982.
On the Trail--Lew White, Organ, 1941
Suez (Ferdie Grofe-Peter De Rose)--Clyde Doerr and His Orch., 1922 (Victor 18947; 1922)




Lee




Saturday, February 08, 2020

Three Shades of Blue (1928), Mississippi Suite (1927)--Paul Whiteman Concert Orch.--improved rips!







Hi.  I'm still here.  (Or is it some alien parasite typing this?  Some super-virus from beyond who took over Lee's body?)  I realized I should post something.  All week, I've been clearing my hard drive of my backlog of MAGIX "projects"--unfortunately, I have mild hoarding tendencies, so I feel a need to burn every project from my hard drive to CD-R, which has resulted in high stacks of CDs (in mini-cases, luckily) all over my bedroom and inside this Media Room.  Burning the things is highly time-consuming, and the fact is, I don't listen to 90 percent of them, ever, so I really have to start questioning the tradition.  I'll have to go through all my burned CDs and toss out the ones I'm never going to listen to--which, really, would be most of them.  Maybe one out of every 500 will turn out to be something I would have wanted to keep.  But the other 499, I'll never miss.  Luckily, I'm nowhere near the severe range, hoarder-wise.  I won't be on TLC anytime soon.  But it's horrifying to imagine what things would be like if I'd kept every CD-R I've ever burned, and every vinyl and shellac record I ever bought.  I'd be typing this from under an avalanche of stuff.  The entire house couldn't hold all that stuff.

It's a weird feeling, not having at least two posts ready to go.  Kind of liberating.  Actually, come to think of it, I do have a couple things.  Being less than happy with my Three Shades of Blue and Mississippi Suite Paul Whiteman rips, I redid them yesterday or the day before.  I present them now.  For the former title, I just lowered the treble on the existing file.  The latter is a new rip, and it's less noisy.  The disc is one of those Victor label electrics that looks mint but which seems to have had hiss pressed into it.  Bad shellac formulation?  Moisture over time?  I do not know.  But I got it to sound better.

The Whiteman Mississippi Suite--composed, of course, by Ferde Grofe, then Paul's chief arranger--omits the wonderful first movement, and this hurts the piece.  Luckily, what remains is beautifully done, so....  Still, I'd have loved to hear Father of Waters as done by the Whiteman band.  Maybe, in some multi-verse, he did.  Or, in a reverse universe, it was recorded by Nametihw Luap.  In outside-in fashion.  But not in this universe.

By the way, the Indian-attack portion of Father of Waters is vastly similar to the first part of Grofe's 1924 arrangement of By the Waters of the MinnetonkaMinnetonka was redone, electrically, in 1926.  That adds some extra irony to Whiteman's omission of Father of Waters.  "Oh, we already recorded that Indian-attack thing.  No point in repeating ourselves."--Paul.  "But... but..."--Ferde.

In totally unrelated news, I learned from the Science Channel why our planet has lots of water, despite our being close to the Sun.  We got it from Jupiter, back when Jupiter was in a different spot--as in, much closer to the center of the solar system.  I would never have guessed.  The planets have moved around over the billions of years.  Apparently, entire solar systems migrate within galaxies, too.  It's too much to take in.  To the Grofe/Whiteman.  And I wish my spell-checker would get used to "Whiteman" and stop underlining it, dang it:






DOWNLOAD: Three Shades of Blue--Mississippi Suite--Paul Whiteman (1928, 1927)





Three Shades of Blue (Grofe)--Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orch.

1. Indigo
2. Alice Blue
3.  Heliotrope

(Victor 35952; 1928)

Mississippi Suite (Grofe)--Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orch.

1. Huckleberry Finn
2. Old Creole Days
3. Mardi Gras

(Victor 35859; 1927)



Lee


Saturday, February 01, 2020

Sunday morning gospel: The Lifeboat Quartet--Hymns We Love (1979)




This LP was thrift-gifted to the blog by Diane (thanks!), and one look at the cover photo had me wondering if this would be SMG-quality material.  Frankly, the family on the cover (the Waters Family) looked too... preppy, or something.  In its dress, if not manner.  But the track list includes  Shoutin' on the Hills and When I Wake up to Sleep No More, so I knew I owed the LP a test listen.  So I gave it one.  And out of my headphones poured pure bluegrass gospel.  Never judge a gospel LP by its cover.  I should know that after 30 years of collecting this music, but I keep forgetting.  This LP makes the grade, and then some.

Yes, the Waters Family, aka The Lifeboat Quartet.  And that is one cool quartet title.  Starting with the top row, from left to right, we have the males: Brent A. Waters, Larry Waters, Logan (18 yo), and Lynn (15 yo).  Bottom row, left to right, we have Imogene Waters (the wife), Melissa (12 yo), and Sharolyn (19 yo).  Imogene wrote two of the songs: Have We Any Time for Our Children (sung by Melissa) and Only the Redeemed (sung by Larry).

Only one track receives a composer credit, either on the labels or the jacket, but this issue has one thing that small-label gospel LPs nearly always lack: a copyright year.  1979.  Right there on the labels.  It's astonishing--an actual year on the labels.  So I can't complain about the lack of song attributions.  Besides, everyone associates One Day at a Time (not the TV show) with Kris Kristofferson, right?  And everyone knows that I Saw the Light was penned by Mr. Lonesome--the great Hank Williams, no?  And if you follow my Sunday posts, you know that Shoutin' on the Hills was penned by Eugene Monroe Bartlett in 1925, under the title, There'll Be Shouting.  So, everyone just chill.  Things are cool.  (Sorry--I've a little over-caffeinated.  What's that?  I should try decaffeinated?  Doesn't that remove the whole point of coffee?)

This all sounds like the more commercial (i.e., polished) bluegrass gospel put out by major labels, save for the less produced (read: more natural) audio, and a more down-home feel throughout.  Allowing the kids to sing might have been something frowned upon by a bigger company, but this is Jewel Records of Cincinnati OH, so we get the group as is.  The instrumental backings are by the group, so this is no amateur-gospel-family-group-sitting-in-with-studio-musicians stuff.  (That's a common small-label gospel genre.)  All the tracks are fine.  The a cappella Day Is Breaking in My Soul qualifies as superb--I'd love an entire LP of just this family, singing minus instruments.  The back jacket mentions four more titles by the group, but Discogs only lists one (Visions of Calvary).  I seem to be rescuing these folks from cyber-obscurity, and if so, I feel very honored.  To the terrific bluegrass gospel....




DOWNLOAD: Hymns We Love--The Lifeboat Quartet (1979)




These Men of God

The Sun's Coming up in the Morning
Two Coats
I Saw the Light (Hank Williams)
Day is Breaking in My Soul
One Day at a Time (Wilkin-Kristofferson)
Have We Any Time for Out Children (I. Waters)
I Will Shelter My Sheep
Shoutin' on the Hills (Bartlett)
When I Wake up to Sleep No More (Marion Easterling)
The Lord Will Provide


Hymns We Love--The Lifeboat Quartet (Jewel Records JRC-916; 1979)



Lee

The Fake Sixties, Part 2--Kind of a Drag, Dawn, See See Rider, Martian Hop, more!







When Hit Records decided to credit Kind of a Drag to the "Buchanans," I'm sure that there was no intent to deceive, despite the mild linguistic similarity between the Buckinghams and the "Buchanans."  Of course, "Buckinghams" was meant to sound British (so listeners would think they were hearing an Invasion band), while the "Buchanans" naturally sound American, since our 15th president was James Buchanan.  Further proof that there was no intention to fool anyone.  And it's too early in the morning for me to think clearly.  (That's always a good excuse.)

There are five "anon." credits in today's playlist, which means there was no credit on the record.  Sometimes that's best, as there are a number of other credits which may as well have been blank--Grand Knights (Premier), Peter Pan Pop Band and Singers (Peter Pan Records), and all the fake names on the Update Records LP, 16 Top Hits of the Week, Vol. 2--The Jumpin (no apostrophe) Jacks, The Chavelles, The Indigos, The Elektras, the Marshmallows.  Okay, which of those five names did I just make up?  The other four were made up by Update Records, but I tossed one in.  Of course, I don't think anyone can possibly top Stumpy Andersen and His Stompers, over at the Evon label.  Stumpy Andersen and His Stompers??

Stumpy Andersen and His Stompers???  (Wait--I just typed that.)

Poor Stumpy gets one credit on Discogs--the LP I have (Let's All Do the Twist).  A record devoted to the twist, and the band is called the Stompers.  No logic to this stuff, I'm telling you.

We get two Be My Babys, though that's the only dupe title--this time, anyway.  I almost added another Mrs. Brown, but one is enough in any playlist.  It's hard to describe my feelings about Mrs. Brown.  One part of me likes the tune and considers it well-conceived, whereas the other part despises the number, though not as much as everything by Salt-N-Pepa.  I'm not making this up, but years back I was watching TV, and on comes an ad for Target (?), and a bunch of kids are dancing around to Push It, that Salt-N-Pepa hit with subtle sexual overtones. I mean, they're there, if you really listen.  The song sort of beats around the bu....  Er, never mind.  Anyway, these pre-teen kids are dancing around the store, and one of the girls says, "My boyfriend likes to push it."  Seriously.  I must have sat there with my mouth open for about five minutes, hoping that I'd hallucinated.  Never saw the ad again.  I have a feeling the station's phone lines were flooded for the next week or so.

I don't think I'm pushing it by calling this ad one of the most ill-conceived in TV history.  And is it possible that somewhere, on some cheap CD or cassette tape, there's a fake version of Push It?  We can only hope not.

Bet you never thought you'd hear a fake version of Spinning Wheel.  Bet you never thought to think of such a thing.  But here it is--by "Grand Knights."  Surprisingly good playing on the track.  A rushed session, obviously, but not the disaster I'd have expected.  Our two surf numbers--Surf City and Do It Again--are awful (first title) and pointless (second).  Normally, I wouldn't include an adult pop cover of a rock number, but Beach Boys covers are surprisingly hard to find, and to find such a cover of Do It Again--priceless.  So here it is.  The song is one of the slightest numbers to come from the BB, so nothing is ruined by the EZ treatment.  In fact, it's kind of nice.  Surf City is a Song Hits wipe-out, and if your session singers aren't even on the level of Jan and Dean... then, good Lord.  Two singers who can't sing as well as two singers who couldn't sing.  Now, that's fake.  Whatever I just typed.

I forgot to mention that this Kind of a Drag fake is perfectly decent--an example of Hit Records hitting the mark.  Some of the vocal harmonies from that outfit were passable, while others were on the level of the Song Hits Surf CityRonnie is an example of the latter--dreadful singing, but the song (imo) is so good, it's likable, anyway.  The Four Seasons were my very first favorite group as a kid, and Dawn (covered here by "The Chellows"--yeah, right) takes me right back to the day.  Hit Records' Dawn has bad harmonizing, too--not quite as bad as Ronnie, though the singers lose the chords a number of times.  Yet both fakes have a kind of Four Seasons patina--it's as if we're hearing the Four Seasons doing demos while doped or desperately in need of sleep.  The fall-apart ending of Ronnie is a classic fake-hits moment--the singers merely have to go up half a step, but that takes them out of their range, which must reside within a quarter-tone.

I was listening to AM radio in 1963, but I absolutely do not remember Mr. Bass Man.  A very Ray Stevens sound to the thing.  The bass singer was obviously pushed past his count-keeping limit here, and I'm guessing the original was far more professionally done, but I have no desire to hear it.  The Hit Records Batman Theme--no credit for this ripped-from-an-LP edition, though the single would carry one--is very, very good.  Amazingly good.  How is that possible?  Maybe a fake Hit Records did it.  Which would make this a fake fake hit.

One of these days, I'll find a fake Martian Hop.  I may have to scour the solar system.  Er, wait a minute--there's one in the playlist!  My search is over.  Yay!  To the fakes....





DOWNLOAD: The Fake Sixties, Part 2






Kind of a Drag (Jim Holvay)--Buchanans (Hit Records 277; 45 4pm)
Israelites--Grand Knights (Premier 1008; LP)
Be My Baby--The Chavelles (Update Records 101; LP)
Stuck on You--Stumpy Andersen And His Stompers (Evon 351; LP)
Spinning Wheel--Grand Knight (Premier 1008; LP)
Martian Hop--The Elektras (Update Records 101; LP)
Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter--Peter Pan Pop Band and Singers (Peter Pan N 8054; LP)
Ronnie (Crewe-Guadio)--Anon. (Current Hits Volume No. 15; Hit Records 415)
Batman Theme--Anon. (Modern Sound 568; LP)
I'm Henry VIII, I Am--Anon. (Modern Sound 544; LP)
Never My Love--Anon. (Nashville Sound 1011; LP)
Wham--The Jumpin (sic) Jacks (Update Records 101; LP)
Dawn--The Chellows (Hit Records 106; 45 rpm)
The Kind of Boy You Can't Forget--The Indigos (Update Records 101; LP)
Mr. Bass Man--Anon. (Trans World Co. TT 670; LP)
If You Wanna Be Happy--Anon. (Trans World Co. TT 670; LP)
See See Rider (Raney)--Ed Hardin and the Cadets (Hit Records 268; 45 4pm)
Be My Baby (Spector-Greenwich-Barry--The Georgettes (Hit Records 83; 45 rpm)
Surf City (Berry-Wilson)--Anon. (Song Hits 24; 45 rpm)
Do It Again--Ronnie Aldrich (Pianos) w. the London Festival Orch. (Phase 4 90003; 45 rpm; 1968)



Lee