Chintzy Waldorf packaging, but the usual excellent music--All Time Rock 'N Roll Hits (1956?)

 

So, now the new Blogger is importing (is that the word?) photos in small form.  Previously, photos were showing up larger than desired within text, and they had to be resized.  This is either some cruel psychological experiment, or Blogger is working out its bugs.  Probably the latter, but I like the paranoid, persecutory sound of the former theory.  I guess it's because I'm in misery from ragweed pollen and feel that all of nature is working against me.  I recognize this as a highly irrational feeling, but ragweed pollen will generate those.  With me, at least.

I'm just too nice for my own good--no fewer than 34 tracks today.  We're talking the 21 tracks included in this LP (surely, some of these have been edited down to fit the LP), plus 11 bonus tracks from my 18 Top Hits EP collection.  That's just me--Mr. Generous.  So, I'm using two zip files, numbered 1 and 2.  That seemed like the best, most logical way to go about it.  Very original, too.  1, followed by 2.  Who'd have thought?

And the new Blogger can't decide whether it wants to single- or double-space between paragraphs.  I've instructed it to call me when it's made up its mind.  Anyway, what we have here is a Waldorf-stock-art cover, a blank back jacket, and a mismatch between jacket and label titles (America's Favorite Music--All Time Rock 'N Roll Hits vs. Rock 'N Roll Hits).  All systems check--we're in the land of budge vinyl, all right.  Thanks to those booklets and order forms I scored on eBay, we now know that there was a Waldorf Top Hit Club, and so I wonder if this LP was connected with same--it doesn't look like the in-store items that would have filled the Woolworth racks.  No "Waldorf Music Hall" logo, a blank back cover, all the earmarks of a rush job--maybe the second set of Top Hit Club literature (on its way from eBay as we speak) will shed some light on this issue.  It seems to have "premium" written all over it.  Not literally, luckily--that would be a major photoshopping hassle.

Kind of funny, Waldorf referring to current rock 'n' roll hits as "all time."  As if the music had reached its chart peak in 1956.  Guess again!  Anyway, along with the big band-sounding rock fakes (Maybellene, especially), there are some surprisingly potent covers, though those happen mainly in the extra selections--The House of Blue Lights, for example, which manages to rock like crazy, and perhaps because the number is closer to big band boogie than, say, the early efforts of Chuck Berry.  Enoch Light's musicians would have had a big band era bias, after all.

We'll be hearing this blog's fourth posting of Artie Malvin's excellent Rock Around the Clock fake, a version in which, save for starting the chorus on the third of the scale instead of the tonic, everything follows from the original sheet music version.  Maybellene is a sentimental favorite of mine, because it's one of the first Waldorf fakes I ever heard, and because it so charmingly strays from the feel of the Chuck Berry original (it removes every shred of rawness).  I had a stack of 18 top Hits 78s I'd scored at a flea market outside of Toledo, and at some point I sold them off, and I could kick myself.  And I would, except that my balance isn't the best during this part of the pollen season.  I could end up in the ER.  At any rate, when I first discovered budge sound-alikes, I wasn't all that attached to them, and there were a number of fakes I didn't keep that I should have.  Live and learn.  We can never predict our future obsessions.  I can't, anyway.  And I try not to obsess over the fact that I can't predict my future obsessions.

These are all rock and roll in the Enoch Light tradition, so don't be expecting actual sound-alikes.  Loren Becker, Artie Malvin, The Rhythm Rockets, and The Brigadiers are excellent, as ever, but I have no idea why someone as lousy as Joe Fortunato was chosen to ineptly croon Roll Over Beethoven.  It's as if the regular Waldorf vocalists had left, and someone went, "Oh, no--we forgot Roll Over Beethoven.  Go grab someone off the street!  Hey, you!"  (Shouting out of nearest window.)  It's not merely that bad--it's worse.

I tossed in some tracks I thought deserve a place in the "all time" category of the time--Ain't That a Shame (which follows Pat Boone's pop version), the neglected vintage-r&r classic Two Hearts, Two Kisses (Make One Love) (shortened to Two Hearts), Don't Be Angry, the Leiber-Stoller Bazoom ( I Need Your Lovin') (shorted to I Need Your Lovin'), Close Your Eyes (which takes after the fabulous 1955 Tony Bennett rocker), Don't Knock the Rock, and I Want You to Be My Baby (of which Tops provided a magnificent fake version).  And, from 1957, the two r&r masterpieces Little Darlin' and Come Go with Me.  As of the LP's release, these weren't part of the "all time" r&r hits.

Yet another afterthought-looking Waldorf release that turns out to contain genuine gems.  I just know, somehow, that this was a Top Hit Club deal.  It was definitely not a "legit" Waldorf release.

Oh, and I included a track which is a bit out of place, but it ended up in my MAGIX project, and I decided to include it because it's so cool.  It's Loren Becker, from 1955, singing the Enoch Light-penned The Song of Daniel Boone (The Daddy of Them All), which actually became a minor hit--number 48 on the Cash Box Top 50.  I have it on an 18 Top Hits EP, but it also came out on a traditional two-sided Waldorf Musical Hall single with a cool pic cover--I'd love to have that edition.  Anyway, an actual Waldorf hit.

To the Enoch Light-style r&r...

DOWNLOAD:All Time Rock 'N Roll Hits, Part 1

                         All Time Rock 'N Roll Hits, Part 2, plus bonus sides from 18 Top Hits EPs

America's Favorite Music--All Time Rock 'N Roll Hits (Waldorf Record Corp. 33-T-7-8-9), plus 11 bonus EP tracks

Lee