Music for Monday (or on whichever day you're playing this): The Demensions, Al Cernik, Clyde Stacy and the Nitecaps, Les Brown, more!

 

The Sheila Southern Burt Bacharach Songbook will be ready to go any time now--It's just that the LP needed a cleaning and some declicking, as it's not in the pristine condition that I falsely remembered.  Memories will do that sometimes (fool us, I mean).  The Southern LP, a UK import that ended up on SPC's Ambassador label over here in the U.S., is outstanding and I know that you Burt fans will love it.  The sound is quite good for SPC, I'm happy to say.

In the meanwhile, fourteen interesting tracks for our Monday (or whichever day you're dropping by), including three Burt tracks while we wait: Eydie Gorme with What Am I Doing Here?. Sue Raney with (There's) Always Something There to Remind Me, and Dusty Springfield with her 1967 rendition of They Long to be Close to You, three years before the Carpenters' monster-hit version.  Dusty's interpretation is interesting, and it's preferable (imo) to Richard Chamberlain's 1963 recording!  

And, four years before Bill Haley covered the song, we have Les Brown (vocal by Jo-Anne Greer) with a surprisingly rock and roll-ish Forty Cups of Coffee, from 1953.  We continue the show with Hoy Hoy--fine 1957 rockabilly by Clyde Stacy and the Nitecaps (50 cents at Half Price Books)--and its rather odd flip side, Too Young.  And the Demensions (sorry, spell-checker) with 1960's Nursery Rhime.  (Dunno what's up with either spelling.)  Smooth, mellow doowop (Dreaming) is next up, courtesy of the Five Stars on the Hunt label.  Then, an item surely high on anybody's want list: a dance instruction version of Get Back on the Statler Records sublabel Avant Records, from... I don't know.  1970?  Thereabouts.  

The outstanding 1957 Chuck Lovett fake-hit rendering of Short Fat Fannie comes from a The Nation's 12 Big Hit Recordings LP (that series which always sported the same two-older-looking-teens-in-front-of-the-45-rpm-phonograph pic), which has much cleaner sound than my 45 rpm EP editions.  Meanwhile, a before-he-was-Guy-Mitchell Al Cernik croons The Love Nest on a 1948 MGM 78 that doesn't show up in the blog history and therefore must be a first appearance.  (That's solid logic for you.)  And even in a playlist as quirky as this one, 1953's World Events must rate as an outlier--basically, it's an easy listening arrangement of the theme music for Movietone News newreels, which were before my time (or my memory, at least), but the side is memorably weird and quite cool, so... here it is, straight from a vinyl 78 on the Oroco Records label.  Discogs reports that Larry Cotton owned that label, in case you were wondering.

How to explain "The Homestead" and its recording of the Star Wars theme?  Well, "The Homestead" was a catch-all group name for the 1977 fake-hits LP, Today's Pop Hits, on Homestead Records.  I recently thrifted one half of this two-record set, and I was expecting a straight imitation of the movie theme, though what we get is a slowed down imitation of the Meco Disco-version atrocity, a huge hit which (back in the day) caused me to like John Williams' theme even less than I already did.  Never a fan of that movie's music--or, for that matter, the movie.  So, don't ask me what I think of Star Wars.  (Oh, wait--I just told you.)

Not your usual playlist, but this is Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else, so all systems normal!

DOWNLOAD: Music for Monday, 10/24/2022

Hoy Hoy--Clyde Stacy and the Nitecaps, 1957

So Young--Same

Forty Cups of Coffee--Les Brown and His Band of Renown, V: Jo-Anne Greer, 1953

Nursery Rhime Rock--The Demensions, 1960

Dreaming--Five Stars, 1958

Get Back--Unknown Artist (Avant Records 2100)

Short Fat Fannie--Chuck Lovett With Herbie Layne's Orch., 1957

Peter Gunn--Ted Nash, Conductor (Crown CLP 5101; 1959)

The Love Nest--Al Cernik (Guy Mitchell) With Buddy Kaye Quintet and the Tune Timers, 1948

World Events--Warren Baker and "The Baker's Dozen," 1953

They Long to Be Close to You--Dusty Springfield, 1967

(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me--Sue Raney, 1966

Star Wars--The Homestead, 1977

What Am I Doing Here? (Bacharach-David)--Eydie Gorme, 1968.

Lee