This is a good old school jazz record, like the kind my dad used to play many years ago. My father had a rather large collection of Dixieland, which included an ample selection of ‘Satchmo.’
He also had a boxed set of 45s by Bill Haley and the Comets that included Shake, Rattle and Roll and Rock Around the Clock. I would have loved that one but, after many many moves in at least a half dozen states, those records –and my huge baseball card collection– have slipped through the cracks of time.
So I can’t remember where I obtained this particular record. But I was surprised to find it on the Sears record label.
Yes, that’s correct, that place where you buy Kenmores is/was in the music business? Did not know that.
I kind of expected the sound of washing machines in the background. But Sears is serious. It seems. In small print on the back cover, Sears assures us that the ‘hallmarks of Sears Authentiphonic True Dimensional Sound are your tickets to a new experience in listening pleasure.”
Authenti-wha? Bah.
But the sound is fine. Vinyl well-preserved. Music good. Mood? Indigo.
Hidden gem: ‘Black and Tan Fantasy.’ (1929).
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
(Little known fact: Tom Petty’s first guitar was a Sears brand, no kidding.)
To win the best/worst song ever, the song has to have peculiar and/or inane lyrics, so bad they are funny. And the song has to be catchy, an ear worm so strong you can’t get it out of your head no matter what. You love it. You hate it.
I’ve got two picks. The runner-up, which I’ll reveal now. And the winner, which I will reveal at a later date. (That said, I’d be interested to know if you have nominees that can knock off my runner-up and first place, but good luck with that).
The runner-up is a 1964 song called Bread and Butter by the Newbeats.
Besides the absolutely silly lyrics,– unless there is some double entendre going on here that’s flying over my head– this song hits all the boxes: bad lyrics, catchy but cheesy hook and, the secret weapon, the falsetto guy.
Now there was this guy in the band, named Larry Henley, who went on to co-write the song, ‘Wind Beneath My Wings,’ made famous by Bette Midler and the movie Beaches.
Now several online stories about Henley say that he had a “distinctive” falsetto and one website I saw said he ‘pioneered,’ along with Frankie Valli, the falsetto style of singing. Did they actually listen to his voice in Bread and Butter? Do they want to encourage that ‘distinctiveness?’
Holy screeching seagulls, dudes.
This guy sang like he just inhaled some helium while being tortured in hell.
At the end of the song he goes into a series of short shrieks that sound like the noise Little Richard might make had he stuck a fork in the light socket..
Not to pile on, but that dancing is so bad, it hurts my feelings.
Hard to beat but I got one even better for Best/Worst Song Ever. Stay tuned.
(Put your suggestions in comments by clicking the title of this post and scrolling down.)
Confession: I have a 45 rpm record of this song. I’m afraid to listen to the other side.
MVC Rating: 3.0/$$ (Gained a .5 for introducing me to some obscure R&B)
The cover of this record album has 7, no less, photos of Paul Anka all in different sizes, including the big one. They are all the same floating mug of Anka with an alarming grin..
The Anka mug shots are shaded in purple, green, pink, and red. In medium font THE FABULOUS is followed by PAUL ANKA in really large type.
And then, if you really look, in tiny little itsy bitsy type it says: “AND OTHERS.” (See where I circled it in blue under the A at the end of Paul’s name in the cover above.)
Really? Talk about your bait and switch. Only two of the 10 songs on the 1959 Riviera R0047 album are Anka songs. AND IT NEVER SAYS THAT ON THE COVER, SLEEVE OR RECORD ITSELF. THERE ARE TITLES BUT NO OTHER NAMES EXCEPT ‘AND OTHERS.’
I guess folks back in 1959 had to Google for the playlist with names like I did.. By Googling, I found out there were cuts by such obscure luminaries as Marvin & Johnny, The Cliques and Shirley Gunter& the Queens.
Now I raise this issue because I remember getting burned buying albums back in the day that were actually re-recorded versions of the originals. Of course that information was hard to see on the album without a magnifying glass. Now that pissed me off.
But in this case, it was not so bad for me. I bought this record for 50 cents at a flea market in Fruitland Park, FL, when I was working the area as reporter for the Orlando Sentinel.
Flea markets tend to have old records, that might be valuable if only they were in good condition. Most of the time they are not in good condition, so it’s kind of like the bottom of the barrel. In this case, the Anka album’s cover is torn and taped. However, the vinyl looks good, there are a few minor pops and crackles.
Anyway, I buy these things for the music and, despite, or maybe because of, I enjoy this record for its variety of doo-wop, teenaged 50’s music (think Happy Days) and blues. It actually has B.B. King performing a song on it. It sounds weirdly out of place, but welcomed as a side 2 ender, “Please Love Me.” On the other side there’s “Mary Lou” sung by Young Jessie:
Mary Lou (Mary Lou) she took my watch and chain Mary Lou (Mary Lou) she took my diamond ring Mary Lou, she took the keys to my Cadillac car (Mary Lou) jumped in my kitty and then drove a-far
As it turns out, I don’t really like the two Anka songs as much as most of the other stuff.
My news story, by the way, for the paper was a feature about a woman who worked in this ramshackle flea market. She sold odds and ends, such as used kitchen utensils and pre-worn clothing..
She had higher aspirations, though. She said she had been working on a Star Trek novel for more than a year. It was about a little prince who had been kidnapped by some alien beings. She said she started the story when her husband took their son and ran away. She hadn’t seen them in more than a year. She wanted to get her novel published when she finished.
I never found out if she did.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
I got a lot of love today as colleague John Archibald and others began sharing my blog on Facebook and other social media.
As you can see by this post right now, every post is not going to be an album review.
Let’s be interactive! (take away 7 letters from that sentence and you have a Mitch Easter band we’ll be reviewing later.)
I just want you to know now and again, I’m going to stop the reviews to interject.
(Rap interlude follows)
Interject. If you show me some respect. And let me reflect on an imperfect text to give some perspect-ive, and be introspect-ive.
Dad?
One of my three beautiful daughters, (or all in unison), say: Don’t sing, don’t’ dance and, pretty please, don’t do hambone. PLEASE!
Now as you have just now witnessed I don’t have a lot of rap songs in my 678 records. I’m a 57-year-old balding white guy with a 3-inch vertical leap, for gosh sakes.
(Wait, though, and I’ll spin some Sugar Hill down in the S’s).
So this interjection is about restating my mission and that is to bring awareness to Lewy Body dementia, which I have. I was diagnosed officially with the brain disease one year ago (October,2016).
Symptomatically, Lewy is a little like Alzheimer’s with an unhealthy scoop of Parkinson’s disease. Last numbers I saw showed the average lifespan is 4 to 7 years after diagnosis. So with 678 records (now down to 671) I’m truly on deadline.
Please read my About Me if you haven’t already. And check out the links in the stories.
I don’t want this to be downbeat. My blog will have many fun things.
What I hope is to bring hope. How do we negotiate the suffering and turn it into positive action.? The truth cuts through like a laser, a pure and holy light.
Mostly my blog is true, except for the parts that aren’t.
I mean that I’m looking for the truth but memory loss coupled with an insatiable desire to make people laugh (or cry, or feel something) can lead to selective storytelling. But isn’t that the way it is anyway? We tease out the parts we want to show. Withhold the parts we don’t.
Ultimately we seek and need that which will set us free.
ALBUM: Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas (1976)
MVC Rating: 3.5/$$$
In hindsight I would have bought the Live at Fillmore East album, considered by many critics to be one of the best live rock albums of all time. And it had Duane Allman, who later died in a motorcycle accident.
But at age 15, I probably didn’t know all that and just bought the latest Allman Brothers release, Wipe the Windows, a collection of concert songs from the early to mid-1970’s. It may suffer from Fillmore comparisons, but it isn’t bad. ‘Wasted Words,’ ‘Southbound’ and ‘Rambling Man,’ recorded at various times and venues are tight, sometimes searing renditions.
A 17-minute workout of ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed’ brings up a comparison debate I’ve had about jam bands, specifically between the Bros and the Grateful Dead.
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, an instrumental takes up a whole side of this double record, propelled by twin guitars and the amazing keyboards of Chuck Leavell (later of Sea Level).
I carry the Southern banner high in this debate because if I’m going to listen to jam bands (yes the Allman Brothers were a jam band), I’ll take the Bros over the Dead any time.
One of my favorite, and possibly the best reviewer I’ve ever read, is Robert Christgau. The NY-based critic could do more in three sentences to destroy a musician’s conceits or identify or exalt a band’s glory.
But I disagree with him on the Bros. v the Dead.
He wrote in his excellent Consumer Guide: “But even if Duane Allman plus Dickey Betts does equal Jerry Garcia, the Dead know roads are for getting somewhere. That is, Garcia (not to bring in John Coltrane) always takes you some place unexpected on a long solo. I guess the appeal here [with the Allmans] is the inevitability of it all.”
Now first off, I don’t buy the fuzzy math. I don’t believe Garcia = Duane Allman + Dickey Betts. Duane may have died before he was 30 but one listen to the album “Layla and other love songs” dispels the notion that Duane needs Dickey Betts to help him in a guitar fight with Garcia.
Now I’m in favor of going to unexpected places. But for Deadheads (and I’ve know many having lived in Marin County for a decade) every Garcia lick must have seemed a new path – that is, until the acid wore off.
With the Bros, especially when Duane was still with us, the guitar rides took us down backroads and small time Southern byways. We rolled, brothers and sisters, down Highway 41.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
ALBUMS: ‘Wild and Blue’ (1982) ‘Eye off the Hurricane’ (1984)
MVC Rating: Wild 3.0/$$, Eye 3.5/$$
Let’s call this ‘twang dang’ music. Anderson has the best twangy voice in country music. And he sings like a guy who would say ‘dang’ a lot, especially if someone messes with his beloved Everglades or if he were rejected by a girl named Charlotte Johnson.
Here are some lyrics from “Seminole Wind:”
Progress came and took its toll And in the name of flood control They made their plans and they drained the land Now the glades are going dry And the last time I walked in the swamp I sat upon a Cypress stump I listened close and I heard the ghost Of Osceola cry
He apparently started his career singing in a rock band, but that voice ultimately led him down country roads. He’s from Apopka, Fla., which may not give him instant country ‘street cred.’ But having lived in Lake County, Fla., I commuted through Apopka every day for years and can tell you it’s got major components of rural southern living with a semi-tropical accent. It’s a suburb of Orlando but becomes rural as you drive to Apopka from Orlando. The huge, and I mean huge, Lake Apopka, polluted by years of industrial farm runoff, still has gators and big nasty catfish.
But away from the roar and rumble of 441, that lake still looks mighty purdy.
Gotta hand it to these guys, the album starts with a short instrumental so soft that it practically stage whispers: Here comes some more soft rock.
Don’t mix this opiodic music with alcohol or you may have to call a somnambulance.
Seriously, ‘Tin Man’ and ‘Lonely People’ are two soft-rock mainstays, in the repertoire of every small club singer with an acoustic guitar. With George Martin producing, one can almost hear a little soft-rock Beatles with laid back vocal harmonies and pleasantly hooky melodies. But then the lyrics let you down:
This is for all the lonely people Thinking that life has passed them by Don’t give up Until you drink from the silver cup And ride that highway in the sky
Hmmmm. Drink from the silver cup? Ride the highway in the sky?
If you are going to get George Martin to produce the album and do lonely people gibberish, give me something more tantalizing and obliquely weird like: ‘Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door.’
But hey, it’s America.
Look at all the lonely people.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
