Current His Volume No. 3 (Hit Records HLP 1003; 1963)

Today, we have the third volume of Hit Records' Current Hits series, and once again the release year is revealed in the liner notes--1963.  And I'm guessing early 1963, since some of these are 1962 hits.  One track, in fact, sounds closer to 1952 (and to Patti Page)--Shake Me I Rattle--though it was originally recorded in 1957 by the Lennon Sisters.  It was country artist Marion Worth who had the hit version in 1962, and she, of course, is the performer being copied here.  Not a bad song, and this is a very nice fake, but it's kind of anachronistic for 1962-63.  The duplicate interpretations in this edition run the gamut from decent to quite good, with Walk Right In and (especially) The Night Has a Thousand Eyes falling into the latter camp.  Eyes is probably my favorite Bobby Vee single, and "Joe Cash," whoever he was, does a very adroit Vee impersonation.  Just one of the best Hit Records tracks, ever.

And, is it just me, or does "Jackie Ott" sound uncannily like Willie Nelson on From a Jack to a King?  (I'm not suggesting it's him, but...)  Meanwhile, "George Killebrew" does a more or less okay Gene Pitney impression on Half Heaven--Half Heartbreak (dash omitted in this collection).  Nothing to phone home about, but adequate.

My Dad, the older-generation-friendly 1962 hit penned by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil(!) lacks the gentle touch of the Paul Peterson original, forcing me to declare that "Woody Martin" is no Paul Peterson--the first and only time I'm ever likely to pass that judgement at this blog.  And Hey Paula is another mild number that fares significantly better in its non-fake version, though "Bonnie" (of "Bob and Bonnie") does a good job capturing the vocal mannerisms of "Paula" (Jill Jackson).  Things improve, song-wise, with Loop de Loop (orig. Johnny Thunder, charting in 1963); I'm Gonna Be Warm This Winter (orig. Connie Francis, 1962), and the entertaining, eccentric soul classic Tell Him (The Exciters, 1962; charted 1963).  The LP's condition could have been better, but things cleaned up nicely.  And it's good to have another early Hit Records collection.

Once again, we have the distorted bullseye design on the back cover, and the line of arrows pointing to its center.  The liner notes are fun--they start out by explaining why the songs on this LP are considered "hits," and you'll never guess.  Give up?  It's because people requested them from their local radio stations--and because "you, as a record buyer, may have purchased at least one of them as a single record."  Really?  Songs become hits because people request and purchase them?  Who would've guessed?

A sort of novel suggestion in the last paragraph: "It will be interesting to play this collection of hits a couple years from now and compare them with the current hits of that time."  I'm not sure what that means, exactly: Compare them to the sound of the period in question (1962/1963) or, specifically, compare the substitutes to the original?  Dunno.  At any rate, I think it's safe to say, 58 years hence, that these evoke their time and place more than adequately--in a fake sort of way.  Now that we've cleared that up...

Have a genuinely good time listening to these.

DOWNLOAD: Current Hits, Volume Three (Hit Records HLP 1003; 1963)

Walk Right In --Music City Singers
From a Jack to a King--Jackie Ott
I Saw Linda Yesterday--Dave Gibson
Hey Paula--Bob and Bobbie
Shake Me I Rattle (Squeeze Me I Cry)--Connie Landers
My Dad--Woodie Martin
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes--Joe Cash
Loop de Loop--Herbert Hunter
I'm Gonna Be Warm This Winter--Connie Landers
Half Heaven Half Heartache--George Killebrew
It's up to You--Bill Carmichael
Tell Him--Peggy Gaines (Peggy Walker)

Current Hits Volume No. 3 (Hit Records HLP 1003; 1963)

Lee

Bob Wills and the Inspirationals--Colorful Requests

 

A great cover shot, and I'd like the photo even more if it wasn't so oversaturated.  Anyway, this is Bob Wills and the Inspirationals, and we're not talking that Bob Wills (the country swing guy) but rather the baritone (and manager) of this ridiculously good quartet, which also includes Billy Hamm (2nd tenor), Curtis Elkins (1st tenor), and Johnny Hays (bass).  Tom Smith is the pianist, so he accounts for the fifth guy in this quartet portrait, though I'm not sure which one is him.  At any rate, this LP is a winner from the first track to the closing.  When I spotted Rain, Rain, Rain as the starting number in the playlist, I considered that a good sign--groups that start off with such a showstopper selection are usually groups that mean business--groups that deliver.  I will concede, though, that I've encountered LPs which start with gusto and lose it by the third band, but luckily that doesn't happen here.  All the songs work beautifully, from the uptempo titles to the slower, more thoughtful ones, in huge part because of the group's (I'm repeating myself) ridiculously good harmonizing.  Did I mention these guys are ridiculously good?

Several of the tracks have a 1960/1961 pop sound, which may give us some clue as to when this was made.  A further clue is 1964's They Tore the Old Country Church Down, which I think would have had a more graceful sound as They Tore Down the Old Country Church--but then, "down" is easier to rhyme than "church."  The song gets no writer credit on the album, but I found it in one of the New Songs of Inspiration volumes:

Those are shape (aka, shaped) notes, which I find hard to read, having been raised on round noteheads.

Anyway, my guess (going by a matrix number close to this LP's) is 1966.  It's a Columbia Record Productions pressing, XSBV 11137, and I think the four letters indicate a Nashville pressing.  Anyway, mid-1960s, even if the track Worry Who I? sounds like 1958 doo wop.

Recorded at Delta Recording Center, Ft. Worth TX, which was also the address of the group (Ft. Worth, that is--not the Delta Recording Center).  This label, Skylite, was headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.  I hope this is all perfectly clear.

Anyway, great LP, and I just looked up Gloria and William Gaither's Because He Lives, on the suspicion that 2nd tenor Billy Hamm's Because He Loves Me was inspired by same.  However, if anything, it's the other way around, as the Gaither song didn't appear until 1971.  My apologies to Billy Hamm for thinking he might have written his number with the far more famous Gaither song in mind...

Oh, and nice to have a George Beverly Shea number in the mix (Shea wrote his share of sacred songs): The Wonder of It All.  

The excellent musicians (accompanists) on this LP include Grammy-winning Lari Goss.  And we have an Elvis connection by way of Worry Who I? (possible variation on "What, Me Worry?"), whose composer, Joe Moscheo, was a member of the Imperials when that group was performing with The King.  Several composed-for-the-occasion songs in our list today, and such numbers are often throwaways, but not in this case--they fit beautifully into the playlist scheme.

To the gospel...

DOWNLOAD: Colorful Requests--Bob Wills and Inspirationals

Didn't It Rain
Turn to Jesus
If I Pray
If God Ruled Your Heart
The Wonder of It All (Shea)
He's Not Disappointed in Me Anymore
They Tore the Old Country Church Down (J.C. Fralix)
Love Like the Sun
Worry Who I?
Because He Loved Me (B. Hamm)
You Can Count on Me
You Just Don't Know What Lonesome Is

Colorful Requests--Bob Wills and the Inspirationals (Skylite SSLP 6042; about 1966?)

Lee

Country Music on Parade--Tommy Scott's Country Caravan (1971)

 

Whenever I encounter a Goodwill LP called Country Music on Parade, and one of the titles reads Don't Kill a Man Because He Calls You a S.O.B., my first thought is going to be, "Maybe I need this one." 

And, last post, I noted that I'm not here to mock things, and maybe I spoke too soon, since the songs on this LP cry out for a humorous review.  But I'll do my best to keep the humor friendly.  I could fashion a lame argument along the lines that, say, finding humor in music is not the same thing as mocking it, but my argument would necessarily be circular.  Tautological, even.

Back to Don't Kill a Man Because He Calls You a S.O.B., I'm glad to report that the lyrics live up to the title.  I just arrived in Hell and let me tell you, There's lots of faces down here that I know.  Bu there's one face down here I can't stand the sight of, And that's the man I killed a while ago.  The name that he called me did not fit Mama, And that's why I left him dyin' in the dirt.

"The name that he called me did not fit Mama"?  Interesting way of putting things.  And the last line delivers the song's moral: I lived a life I thought was pretty decent, But one mistake, and this is where you go.  Yes, the singer sounds like he was living a pretty decent life.  But you'll get an insult that does not fit Mama, and the next thing you know...

My favorite from this playlist of odd ditties (say that twenty times) is the tender love balled, Rosita:

Top of El Paso, just over the border in old Mexico, I met Rosita and she made me love her.  She changed her mind and told me to go.  I took my gun and cut her down.  Rosita, I'll always love you.

And what better way to demonstrate that love?  Georgia's Tommy Soctt, aka Ramblin' Tommy Scott, aka "Doc" Tommy Scott, seems to have been a major country/folk celebrity.  Though he never cracked the charts, far as I know, there are Scott bios all over cyberspace.  And PBS did a 2001 special on him.  And there were German reissues of his older country sides.  Solo recording artist, TV star, songwriter, Charlie Monroe bandmember, David Letterman guest, and leader of traveling medicine shows, Scott appears to have been a made-for-order "character."  An eccentric for hire.  And "eccentric," I think, perfectly describes his work on this not-quite-characteristic-of-the-genre country LP,  released in 1971 on the "Music of Many Lands" label, Request Records Inc. of New Rochelle NY.  If I were in a sarcastic mode, I might ask how many lands were musically involved in these selections.

Now, to be sure, the tunes and performances have a professional, Nashville-studio-pro sound to them--it's the texts which are memorably off-kilter.  We have, in addition to the above examples, these lines from Geneva: 

You turned this man into a child of three, By letting me taste how sweet your love can be.  The... what??  And these interesting lines, from Nobody But You: 

Baby, you're the only one that I let wear my ring, You're the one with whom I would do anything.  And I let no one else mess up my hair, But if it's you, I find that I don't care.  "Oh, it's you.  Good.  I won't have to shoot you."

And, from Scott's He Went That-a-Way, sung by Little Miss Betty: 

I tried to hold myself back, but I just couldn't quit.  With passion burning in my soul like fire down in a pit.  He led me on, loved me hard, Then he went that-a-way.  

(Not sure how to punctuate that second line without creating a dangling participle.)

And there are priceless Spike Jones-esque sound effects on Help Me Pull the Wagon--namely, whip snaps and "Hyaaa"'s.  Scotty Lee sings, You ? money as if you think I own the mint.  Girl, I ain't broke but I'm getting badly bent.  I can't speak for everyone, but I know I hate it when I get badly bent.

Pollution also sports sound effects, and they happen right away--and loudly.  So, if you're listening through speakers, you want might to cut the volume at that point--the noise is jarring.  So are some of the lyrics:

Temperatures a-fallin' a little year by year.  By twenty hundred, won't be none of us here.  Preach the word: Tell the world about pollution, Save the world: Stop the awful execution.

Except for the temperatures-falling part and the "twenty hundred," Tommy was spot on.  And I just discovered that, come tomorrow (Sep. 30th), it will be eight years since Tommy left us.  I didn't plan things that way--that's just how the post worked out.

The LP's liner notes are by Hee Haw's "String Bean."

DOWNLOAD: Country Music on Parade--Tommy Scott's Country Caravan (1971)

TITLE/SINGER

Even I Can See the Sunshine--Chuck Housley
Unconcerned--Little Miss Betty
Don't Kill a Man Because He Calls You a S.O.B.--Chuck Housley
Geneva--Chuck Housley
What About That?--Sam Baxter
Nobody but You--Chuck Housley
Sally Ann of Greenville--Tommy Scott
Pollution--Tommy Scott
I Am Free--Sam Baxter
My Jimmy--Little Miss Betty
Pack Up, Ship Out and Go Home--Chuck Housley
He Went That-a-Way--Little Miss Betty
Help Me Pull the Wagon--Scotty Lee
Four Seasons of My Life--Tommy Scott
Rosebud--Tommy Scott
Rosita--Raymond Walker

Country Music on Parade--Tommy Scott's Country Caravan (Request Records Inc. SRLP 6031; 1971)

Lee

The always reliable LeFevres: "LeFevres Sing" (Sing 3209; 1963)

 

There's something very apt about an LP called LeFevres Sing on the Sing label.  And there's something slightly strange about the label title, which is simply "LeFevre."  It could almost have a buyer thinking he or she inadvertently purchased a solo LeFevres LP.  But, such is not the case--we get the entire gang on this excellent LP.

This Wikipedia entry tells the group's remarkable history, and a quick check at Discogs reveals that most of the LeFevres' LP output happened on this label (Sing), though they also recorded for Starday, Canaan, and LeFevre Sound--the latter clearly their own label.  My late foster mother, Bev, fondly recalled the group from its TV show, and, back in the cassette era, when I regularly put thrifted sacred LPs on tape for Bev and John's car player, I was always happy when this group turned up, because homerun hitters aren't that easy to come by in gospel.  For instance, I spot-listened to (and rejected) four gospel albums by four different artists before settling on this one for today's post--the others included a good LP ruined by an "invisible" needle dig, plus one of the worst quartet efforts my ears have yet experienced.  I won't reveal the name of the group, since I'm not here to poke fun at inadequate performers, but if I were to start a series called "When Quartet Singing Goes Wrong," that LP would be the headliner.  But I'm not here to mock.

No such worries with the LeFevres, who rank with the Sego Brothers and Naomi, The Blue Ridge Quartet, The Statesmen, and other top-rank acts in terms of reliability--none of these groups seemed capable of making a bad LP.  And I'll confess that most of the titles on this 1963 album are new to me, though I have a feeling I should know most of them.  At any rate, Bill Anderson's Mama Sang a Song graced the blog last post in a fake-hit rendition, and Sweet By and By, On the Battlefield, and Where We'll Never Grow Old (aka Never Grow Old)--all flawlessly done--are "old time" classics; the second title the sort of fast-tempo spiritual this group excelled at.  I wish the accompanying musicians had been listed on the back--I'd love to know who the outstanding ivory-tickler is.  The back jacket does contain the notice, "A unit of the Gospel Singing Caravan," and the Gospel Singing Caravan is explained here.  I think I've encountered them on vinyl from time to time.

Not only are these performances as solidly professional as we could wish, the album's group photo (despite a tad too much contrast) is a model of its type.  Excellent group shots not being the gospel-LP rule, I thought I should give special notice to this one.

DOWNLOAD: The LeFevres Sing (Sing 3209; 1963)

I Love to Call His Name
Let Us Go Back
I Want to Walk
Scatter Sunshine
When I Got Saved
Mama Sang a Song (Anderson)
Is Your Name Written There
I Want to Know More
When the Gates Swing Open
Sweet By and By (Bennett-Webster)
On the Battle Field
Where We'll Never Grow Old (Moore)

Lee

Current Hits, Volume Number 1 (Hit Records 1001; 1962)

Well, I had been Google-searching for this LP's release year.  The tracks were all recorded in 1962, but Discogs doesn't tell us when this collection arrived.  Turns out, all I had to do was read the back jacket notes:

"In this album entitled Current Hits, Volume 1 (1962), we are presenting to you a collection of the best selling songs of this period.  We might well entitle this LP 'The Sound of the Hits' because we have left no stone unturned in our efforts to provide you not only with the hit songs but with an actual duplicate interpretation of the 'hit sound' as it appears on the original recording by the original artist."  It never occurred to me to call these things "duplicate interpretations," but it has a nice ring.  And that paragraph may set a record in terms of avoiding comma usage.

This LP's "Compatible Mastering" was done in New York, since said technology had yet to arrive in Nashville.  I refer to the cutting head that produced a groove playable with both monaural and stereo styli--the innovation that allowed stereo Hit Records to be played on a "regular hi-fi" AND which saved Hit Records a lot of money, since it therefore didn't have to bother with a separate mono and stereo catalog.  Smart.

This LP is a gift from Diane, and it's one of those discs which visually grades VG+ but which turn out to have "invisible" wear throughout.  That will happen--this, of course, is why visual grading can be tricky.  However, the rip is more than adequate, and it's wonderful to have the first duplicate-interpretation LP put out by Spar/Hit Records.  So, thanks, Diane!

Mostly good performances on this one, and mostly nice songs, though I've always hated He's a Rebel.  I can't help it.  I know it's a classic oldie, and I know that Gene Pitney wrote it, but it's just so empty-headed.  "Just because he doesn't do what everybody else does"--that's what makes him a rebel.  And, somehow, we know that she doesn't mean he dresses in a clown suit and yodels the greatest hits of Gene Austin.  Or that he's a scientific or literary genius who's been pushed ahead in school five grades.  "Just because he hops to class a-riding on a pogo stick.  Wears his boxer shorts outside his pants, but I love him, anyway."  That wouldn't have worked.  No gal wants that much of a rebel.

The best of the duplicate interpretations, imo, is Return to Sender, which was credited to "Ed Hardin" (possibly Buzz Cason) on the Hit Records single, while the least would have to be Big Girls Don't Cry, which is lively and fun but missing something in the vocal department. On its 45 rpm incarnation, Big Girls was credited to the fictitious Chellows (yuk, yuk)--and here's where I mention that I've rounded up all the artist credits for your convenience.  This meant checking out the singles, since the LP carries no performer info.  Oh, and in the classic budget tradition, Hit Records slightly mismatches the front cover title (Current Hits Volume Number 1) with the back cover version (Current Hits Volume One).  Meanwhile, I think that's supposed to be a bullseye on the back cover, but maybe the illustrator was a moonlighting Salvador Dali:

Furthermore, between the labels and jacket, the track listings are out of sync, so: budget mission accomplished.

"He's a rebel 'cause he puts peanut butter in chicken soup; He's a rebel 'cause he travels in a one-man ragtime group."  Oh, and Bill Anderson's Mama Sang a Song is also scheduled to show up in our Sunday morning gospel post (by the LeFevres), so we're keeping it all in the blog.  Er, whatever that means.  More from the notes: "This is a quality reproduction from every aspect."  Hm.  I thought this was a first-run HLP 1001.  That's odd.

Two bonus tracks--the monaural single edition of the Chellow's Big Girls Don't Cry and the Hit Records fake of the Bacharach-David Blue on Blue (also mono).

DOWNLOAD: Current Hits, Volume Number 1 (Hit Records 1001; 1962)

Return to Sender--Ed Hardin
Next Door to an Angel--Ward Oliver
Don't Go Near the Indians--Sandy Carmichael
He's a Rebel (Pitney)--The Gleams
Mama Sang a Song--Sandy Atkinson
Big Girls Don't Cry--The Chellows
Don't Hung Up--The Dacrons
Limbo Rock--Bill Carmicheal
Do You Love Me (Berry Gordy, Jr.)--Leroy Jones
He Thinks I Still Care--Connie Landers
Only Love Can Break a Heart (Bacharach-David)--Ed Hardin
All Alone Am I--Katy Richards
Big Girls Don't Cry--The Chellows (Mono single version)
Blue on Blue (Bacharach-David)--John Preston (Mono single version; 1963)

Lee