Yummy Yummy Yummy by the Ohio Express is one of the most diabolical bubblegum hits ever inflicted on the world – a truly wretched record (although, to be fair, it’s not quite as abominable as the follow up Chewy Chewy). So why on earth would the wonderful Julie London – the angel who crooned the definitive version of Cry me A River– decide to cover it?
You can’t really blame the members of Ohio Express, as the band didn’t really exist. ‘They’ were a studio project put together by Jerry Kasenetz's and Jeffrey Katz's Super K Productions with an ever-changing line-up: at one time Ohio Express featured the four men who would go on to form 10CC. Miss London, however, should have known better.
Born Julie Peck on September 26, 1926 in Santa Rosa, California, Julie London began acting in movies in 1944. Ten years later the sultry singer signed to Liberty Records and issued her first album, Julie Is her Name, in December 1955. Here first four albums were all top 20 hits in the US. She died in 2000, having never fully recovered from a stroke suffered some five years earlier.
Released in 1969 – as her 29th and last LP for Liberty - London’s album Yummy Yummy Yummy is a misguided hotch-potch of contemporary covers, including Light My Fire, And I Love Her (as And I Love Him), garage band favourite Louie Louie and Bob Dylan’s Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn).
It’s beyond ridiculous. And that’s why I’m including it three of the tracks from this awful album here, for your delectation.
I’m massively indebted to David Noades and WFMU for rediscovering this curio back in 2007, and to eBay and Discogs for helping me land a copy of my own!
It’s not often that you get to listen to the sound of a surgical procedure put to music, but that’s exactly what the Dutch-based pharmaceutical company Norgine (established way back in 1906) decided its’ UK sales force needed to help them sell their laxatives to chemists’ shops around the country in the mid-1960s.
Livingstone Recordings, a short-lived London-based label that specialised in religious recordings and had previously put out an album by Billy Graham, manufactured the disc. The B-side features A Representatives Visit, an audio vignette which features a Norgine salesman selling Normacol to a GP: ‘can we begin by talking about constipation?’ Ugh! ‘Now let’s jump from the bowel to the stomach’…
But it is the A-side that’s the pip.
Tableau of a Lithotomy was written by the 17th century French composer Marin Marais. A busy man, as well as writing several books of instrumental music and being a court-appointed musician to the king, he also managed to find the time to sire 19 children. The piece, as described on the gatefold sleeve of the disc, is ‘a musical description of a bladder operation’ It appears that Marais intended that Tableau of a Lithotomy would demonstrate the versatility of the viol (also known as the Viola da Gamba), a bowed string instrument similar to the cello.
'Some 250 years ago a French composer, Marin Marais, wrote - to the best of our knowledge - the only musical description of a surgical operation. He called it "Le tableau de l'operation de la taille" or "Tableau of a Lithotomy". This most unusual offering was taken from an old edition of the Library of the Conservatory of Music in Paris; it had not previously been performed in modern times.
Marin Morais (1656-1728) - the greatest player of the viola de gamba of his time - was a pupil of Lulli and a soloist in the Royal Chamber Orchestra at the time of Louis XIV. He wrote profusely and brilliantly for the viola da gamba, but his compositions for this 7-stringed instrument are in such complicated polyphonic style that they defy transcription for the 4-stringed violin-cello and today, unfortunately all but forgotten.
Our recording was made by the famous Dutch viola da gamba player Carel Boomkamp, accompanied by the distinguished harpsichordist, Millicent Silver.
The verbal commentary which you will hear with the music, announcing the phases of the operation as it progresses, is based on the composer’s original annotations, which were intended to accompany the music’.
A lithotomy (from Greek "lithos" (stone) and "tomos" (cut)), is a surgical method for removal of stones formed inside organs such as the kidneys, bladder, and gallbladder, that cannot exit naturally through the urinary system.
Again: ugh!
Apologies for the poor quality of the B-side: I'll replace the link after I've converted my own copy.
The diminutive actor best known for his roles as Nick-Nack in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and as Tattoo in the hit TV series Fantasy Island, Herve Villechaize was born on April 23, 1943 in Nazi-occupied Paris to his English mother Evelyn and French father André Villechaize, a doctor. At a young age he was diagnosed with an acute thyroid condition, resulting in dwarfism and leaving him with a full-grown height of just under 4 ft tall.
A gifted artist, in 1959 he entered the École des Beaux-Arts, two years later becoming the youngest artist to ever have his work displayed in the Museum of Paris. In 1964 he left France for the USA, settling in New York, and taught himself English by watching television. He continued to work as as an artist and photographer, and began acting in Off Broadway productions. He even did some modelling for National Lampoon magazine.
In 1974, after appearing in Oliver Stone’s debut film Seizure he got his big break, landing the role of the tiny villain Nick-Nack in The Man with the Golden Gun. A move to California, where he met Aaron Spelling, resulted in his being cast opposite Ricardo Montalban in a 1977 ABC Movie of the Week pilot called Fantasy Island. A sequel - Return to Fantasy Island - followed in 1978 and a series was soon commissioned. Fantasy Island went on to run for six seasons from 1978-1983, making a household name out of Herve’s character Tattoo and his catchphrase ‘The plane! The plane!’
Unfortunately Herve’s newly found fame – and reported $25,000 an episode pay cheque – would also lead to his downfall. He met actress Donna Camille on the set and in September 1980 she became his second wife. The marriage quickly turned sour, with Donna filing for divorce in December 1981. A little over a year later, after demanding the same money for his role on Fantasy Island as front man Montalban, ABC dropped Herve from the show.
Herve quickly found himself short of money and was forced to sell his 2.5-acre and move into a rented house in North Hollywood. It was reported that he would often consume two bottles of wine in a single night – a huge amount for such a diminutive man. His health was suffering too: in increasing pain from internal organs that were too large for his body, Herve was forced to take a cocktail of pills each day to alleviate the symptoms. Unsurprisingly he began to suffer from frequent bouts of depression.
In the early morning of September 4, 1993 Kathy Self - Herve's friend of 14 years - found his body in the yard of his house. Herve had written a suicide note and, ghoulishly, also made and audio recording of his last moments. After saying goodbye to Kathy he aimed his gun into a pillow placed against his chest and pulled the trigger. The tape recorder caught the sound of Herve cocking the pistol and of Kathy arriving on the scene. She rushed him to hospital where he was declared deceased. He was 50 years old. Herve's body was cremated and the ashes scattered at sea. A sad, sad end.
However he did leave us with a legacy. Luckily for us Herve made several stabs at a recording career: in 1980 he released the single Why/When a Child is Born. Both of these tracks also featured on the charity album Children of the World: the Time is Now…and both of these tracks are included here for you now.
Welcome to the 345th WWR post - and the last this year before we begin our annual Christmas cavalcade.
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan (September 2, 1923) Victor Lundberg was an American radio personality and newscaster best known for his spoken-word record An Open Letter To My Teenage Son, which provided him with a US Top 10 hit in 1967.
The record, written by Robert Thompson, imagines a stern father talking to his teenage son. Whilst the Battle Hymn of the Republic plays in the background, Lundberg touches on such topics as long hair, the existence of God, the Vietnam War, and the expectation that all good Americans should fight for the freedom of their country. The song ends with Lundberg telling his son that, if the teen decides to burn his draft card then he should also burn his ‘birth certificate at the same time. From that moment on, I have no son’. That denouement is slightly at odds with Lundberg’s own liberal views and with the song’s earlier line that ‘your mother will love you no matter what you do, because she is a woman; and I love you too, son’.
The B-side My Buddy Carl, is more representative of Lundberg, and hides a plea for equal rights for people of all colours within a similar, Vietnam-themed soliloquy.
An Open Letterbecame a surprise hit, making number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, number six on Cash Box and selling over one million copies, earning a gold disc and a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Recording (it lost to Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen's similar Gallant Men). Encouraged by this success, Liberty released an entire album of Lundberg's musings, also entitled An Open Letter although that failed to chart. In January 1968 Life magazine printed a scathing review of Lundberg’s disc, dismissing it as ‘an item that anybody can hate’.
Victor Lundberg who, according to an article in The Village Voice (November 16, 1967) spent WWII working for the Psychological Warfare Department (presumably the joint Anglo-American Psychological Warfare Division) died on February 14, 1990. His daughter Terri (commenting on www.unpleasant.org in 2006), stated that Lundberg ‘died a drunken man on state aid in Michigan alone in a run down apartment’. There was no love lost between Lundberg and his family: ‘He was estranged from all of his children and never provided financial or emotional support to any of them,’ Terri wrote.
Unsurprisingly there were a good number of "response" records to An Open Letter To My Teenage Son, and I’ve included three of the best here for you today: Keith Gordon's A Teenager's Answer, A Teenager's Open Letter To His Father by Robert Tamlin, and Open Letter To The Older Generation by radio and television personality and the World's Oldest Living Teenager Dick Clark.
Enjoy!
Note: I'm trying out a new MP3 player and download site. Let me know how you get on with it!
Ho ho ho! Yes, it’s that time of year again, time to look at some of the worst Christmas-themed records ever released. And what a doozy I have for you today.
Released in several countries as the B-side to their Jingle Bell Rock, a cover of the 1957 Bobby Helms hit, Jingle Bell Imitations originally appeared (as did its flipside) in the US in 1961 on the LP Bobby Rydell/Chubby Checker – a truly awful album whose ‘highlight’ is a seven minute medley featuring the hitmaking pair singing snatches of each other’s chart toppers. Jingle Bell Rocksaw a UK release in 1962, with a different track - What Are You Doing New Year's Eve - on the B-side.
Chubby, of course, is well known for his hits The Twist, Let’s Twist Again, The Pony and others. He had form: his first release The Class featured him imitating singers includingElvis, Fats Domino… and Bobby Rydell. Rydell is less well remembered here in the UK, although he scored several major US hits in the early 60s, including the Billboard number two Wild One. Both artists were signed to Cameo Parkway records, the company that put out this tosh, and had appeared on each other’s recording sessions before this album. Both artists, now in their 70s, are still performing today, although Rydell’s poor health has caused him to cut down on his work load in recent years.
In 2013 Chubby sued Hewlett Packard over an app that "adversely affects Chubby Checker's brand and value and if allowed to continue, will cause serious damage to the Plaintiff's goodwill and will tarnish his image that he has worked to maintain over the last 50 years." That app, called the Chubby Checker allowed users to enter a man's shoe size to estimate the size of his penis. Chubby’s lawyer (one Willie Gary…seriously, you could not make this stuff up!) was seeking half a billion dollars in damages.
Enjoy!
To download the audio, click on the Tindeck logo and you'll be taken to the download page
'On Heavy Metal Christmas my true love gave to me - a tattoo of Ozzy!"
There are certain things that should never happen, no matter what time of year it is. Good will to all men? bah! Humbug! I'm talking, of course, of heavy metal acts covering classic Christmas songs. It's just awful, and it needs to stop.
If they're trying to be sincere, they come across as bombastic and over the top, and if they're trying to be funny they come across as bombastic and over the top. You can't do songs about the birth of Christ if you're supposed to worship satan. Even if you do add a ridiculously over the top guitar solo into the mx. It just ain't right.
And here, to prove my point, are four examples of the genre from some of the giants of the genre, including Ronnie James Dio (Rainbow/Black Sabbath) with Sabbath's guitar legend Tony Iommi and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Alice Cooper (why, Alice? Why?) with Santa Claws is Coming to Town from the 2008 album We Wish You a Metal Xmas; Twisted Sister with Heavy Metal Christmas and Manowar, with their surprisingly straight version of an old christmas carol.
Both Alice (aka Vince Furnier) and Twisted Sister's Dee Snider have gone on record to profess their belief in God; Ronnie James Dio as raised catholic, and according to the late singer's wife, still believed in some sort of superior being. I can't tell you anything about the beliefs of the various members of Manowar, who put out their version of Silent Night in 2013, and frankly I don't really care. Like the other three tracks here, it's shockingly awful.
Ho! Ho! Ho! Here’s another trio of terrible tinselly tragedies for you, in the shape of the late actor Dan Blocker, former Iron Maiden vocalist Paul Di’Anno and our old friend ‘little’ Marcy Tigner.
Dan Blocker is best remembered for his portrayal of the lovable Eric ‘Hoss’ Cartwright on the TV series Bonanza, which ran from 1959 to 1973, but was axed shortly after Dan died aged 43 of a pulmonary embolism following gall bladder surgery. Dan, who had appeared in a number of western shows – including Gunsmoke, Colt .45, The Restless Gun, Sheriff of Cochise, Cheyenne, The Rifleman, Cimarron City, Zorro, Wagon Train and Jefferson Drum before putting down roots at the Ponderosa Ranch released his version of Deck the Halls on the 1963 album Christmas on the Ponderosa. Featuring all four men in the Cartwright family, this cute little timepiece has since been reissued on CD.
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a decent fright, and nothing in the world of bad records is quite as frightening as the original devil doll Little Marcy, here performing her unique version of the Rosemary Clooney classic Suzy Snowflake from one of the earliest Little Marcy albums Christmas With Marcy.
Finally, Paul Di’Anno’s soulless rendering of the Bing Crosby classic White Christmas comes from the dreadful (and dreadfully misnamed: ‘featuring Denny Laine from Wings’) 1994 album Metal Christmas. I know we kind of ‘did’ heavy metal Christmas last year, but I couldn’t let the season pass without offing this turd up.
A little something extra for all of you, a huge thank you for following the blog, joining the Facebook group, reading the books and generally making me feel all smushy inside. 20 terrible Christmas records for you to stream or download - a whole album's worth of dreadful Christmas music. Some have appeared on the blog before, some will be new to you - all are diabolical (with the possible exception of Shonen Knife's Space Christmas, which is simply brilliant).
Shonen Knife – Space Christmas
The Sisterhood - Merry Christmas from Tonga, the Friendly Isle
Robin Laing - I’m the Man Who Slits the Turkeys Throats at Christmas
Dick Kent – A Christmas Rose
C3P0 – A Christmas Sighting
Red Sovine - Billy’s Christmas Wish
Gene Marshall – Evelyn Christmas
Jon Bongiovi – R2D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Sonny Cash – Merry Christmas Polka
Santa’s Pixie Helpers – the Animal’s Christmas Song
The Happy Crickets - Christmas is for the Family
Norris the Troubadour, Seaboard Coastliners - Christmas Time Philosophy
Dick Kent - If Christmas Could Come In July It's Christmas Card Time Again
Dick Kent - Everywhere You Go on Christmas
Eleanor Shaw - Little Piccolo, the Christmas Elf
Little Marcy – C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S
Madelyn Buzzard - Christmas is the Love Within Your Heart
The Royal Guardsmen – Snoopy’s Christmas
Tiny Tim – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Father Abraphart and the Smurps – Lick a Smurp For Christmas (All Fall Down)
I love XTC, with a passion bordering on mania. Since the very early 80s I have followed their every move and, after they finally called it a day in 2005, I have continued to follow the solo career of the band’s chief songwriter Andy Partridge and, to a lesser extent, the calling of former members Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory.
Mainstream success may have eluded them but, take my word for it, they are the quintessential British pop/rock band: over the course of 14 albums XTC barely put a foot wrong. And, in Andy Partridge, the band had a lyricist on a par with Elvis Costello, John Lennon and Ray Davies, and a tunesmith as good as Brian Wilson or Paul McCartney.
I’m lucky enough to have met Andy, Colin, Dave and former keyboard player Barry (Shriekback) Andrews and they are all absolutely delightful. Further, I have recently interviewed Andy for an article I’m penning for Songwriting Magazine, and he was candid, funny, honest and incredibly generous of his time. I simply adore this band.
But it was never a smooth ride. The XTC chronicle is one littered with bad management, internal squabbles, rows with record producers, health issues and even a six-year strike when the band refused to record any new material for their label. It’s pretty much the Badfinger story without the suicides.
In 1986, in an attempt to break the band in the States, Virgin records decided to pair them up with American producer Todd Rundgren (who, fact fans, had also produced Badfinger). The result was Skylarking, one of the best and most complete albums of their career, yet the sessions were fraught – with a prolonged battle of wills between Rundgren and Partridge. ‘Todd and Andy were like chalk and cheese as personalities – they didn’t hit it off from the start,’ recalled Dave Gregory. ‘Things just went from bad to worse. Andy was saying how much he hated the album, and when we returned home, he was very depressed about it. But having said that, Skylarking is probably my favourite XTC album.’
Rundgren pushed Andy’s buttons in more ways than one: he decided on the running order of the album before the recording sessions had even begun, came up with an album title and cover concept which the band rejected, and responded to studio disagreements by simply walking out, leaving the threesome to stew until they were willing to accept his vision.
As Partridge told Uncut magazine: ‘It was very difficult for me because Virgin basically told me to shut up and be produced, “because you’ll only ruin it and make it weird”. Todd wanted to process us through as quickly as possible, and we’d be fighting about the quality of takes. I hate sarcasm and he’s extremely sarcastic. His ego matches the size of the man. It was like one Brian Clough stood on the shoulders of another – with a wig. It obviously got everyone down cause we were fighting and we never usually did, and then we got barred from mixing so it took quite a few years to realise he did a fantastic job. His people skills are like Hermann Goering’s.’
Sessions may have been tense, but the results – heard at their best on the corrected polarity version issued on vinyl in 2010 and on CD in 2014 – speak for themselves. Skylarkingis a masterpiece.
The Skylarkingsessions yielded a song, Dear God, that was originally left off the album and relegated to the B-side of the album’s first single, Grass. However, when the track started to pick up radio play in the US – and attract major notoriety – Partridge’s atheist anthem was added to US copies of the record. And it’s that song that I present for you today.
Dear God is the work of a genius songwriter and of a band at the very height of their powers: both bucolic and brutal, Dear God is a brilliant iconoclastic missive. So why would producer Rundgren decide to re-record a piece of audio perfection for his dreadful 2011 album (re)Production?
On (re)Production Todd records his own versions of songs he had produced for other artists, in what AllMusic called ‘a logical enough endeavor skewed into the bizarre by his decision to rely entirely on electronic instruments’. Some of the tracks are ok (and, before you start on me, I’m not a Todd hater: I love the first Nazz album and I have a number of records that he appears on or has produced in my collection), but this collection is a self-indulgent mess. Back to AllMusic‘To his credit, he’s indulged in some radical reinventions, particularly on Patti Smith’s “Dancing Barefoot” and the New York Dolls’ “Personality Crisis.” Tellingly, these are two artists with whom he remains either personally or professionally close, but he also can’t resist tweaking notorious sparring partner Andy Partridge by taking the piss out of “Dear God” via an onslaught of claustrophobic drum machines and processed vocals’.
(re)Production is designed to amuse nobody apart from its creator. But don’t take my (or AllMusic’s) word for it, have a listen to Todd’s version of Dear God, compare it to the sublime original and judge for yourself. For good measure I’ve also included Todd’s take on Meatloaf’s Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad… make that one out of three, Mr. Rundgren!
There I was, innocently searching the interwebs for more music by Vinny Roma, when I stumbled across this: Hot Romance, the debut (and only) album from the delightfully coiffured Rick Grossman.
Not to be confused with the Rick Grossman who played bass for Australian New wave band the Divinyls, our Rick grew up in the Chicago area. A keen amateur musician, in 1978 he opened up his wallet, gathered together a few some session musicians and set out to make an album of his songs. The result was Hot Romance. Issued by Thunderbolt Records in 1978, Hot Romance – as described by Liam Carroll of Rebeat magazine - is a collection of songs ‘about how good Rick Grossman is at sex. How he has so many babes following him around all the time that he practically has to shake ’em off with a stick. It’s a bizarre, yet beguiling, juxtaposition: this sunny, laid-back music partnered with Grossman’s vaguely rockabilly Lothario persona. At one point, he equates casual sex with eating Kellogg’s cereal, as if that’s a thing.’
It’s an odd record: neither the light pop-rock settings from the band, his jazzy piano flourishes nor Rick’s flat, nasal croon could possibly charm a lady enough for her to slip between his black nylon sheets. His lyrics – when decipherable - are atrocious, the drummer is dreadful and the whole thing smacks of being recorded in one session for as little money as possible. The guitar solo on New York, Now You're Alive is indescribably awful.
Unsurprisingly, Rick didn’t sell many copies of Hot Romance, so he gave up any ideas of pop superstardom, married his girlfriend Susan (who clearly hadn’t paid much attention to his lyrics either) and went in to business, creating a credit card system for the shipping and loaning industry. Before long Rick was climbing the corporate ladder, becoming chairman of medical equipment rental firm Trans Leasing International.
Rick, Susan, and their three children moved to Highland Park, one of the better of Chicago’s many suburbs. But although life should have been sweet for the successful businessman and his family it was far from that. In July 1992, Rick and Susan were arrested: Rick on a charge of battery and Susan on a charge of disorderly conduct, according to Highland Park police. Later that year the couple divorced.
The problems between Rick and Susan were nothing compared to those between him and his son Michael. As the Chicago Tribune reported, on the outside, Rick and Michael presented‘a portrait of father-and-son calm, a pair the neighbours glimpsed in brief but serene snapshots: bicycling near their Highland Park home, walking the golden retriever, playing by their pool.
‘But behind the facade was a not-so-pretty picture’.
Michael was quiet, his friends said, and he told them that he and his father did not always get along. He told some that their arguments turned violent, though it seemed this violence did not spill over on to his two sisters, Kimberly and Joanna. Officers were called because of disputes over custody, and for fights between father and son. In July 1993 the police were called because the two were fighting over Michael’s desire to keep a cat.
One Thursday night in October 1996, Rick decided he wanted to play his piano. Apparently, banging out his songs on the keys proved too loud and distracting for Michael, his 17 year-old High School football star of a son, who was trying to do his homework. Michael became so enraged by Rick's loud, unrelenting playing that the teen grabbed a carving knife and stabbed his father repeatedly. Rick Grossman was just 44 years old.
"Who knows what happened?" said Richard Grossman's brother Larry. "It seemed like they got along fine. Everybody got along fine, I thought." In a sadly ironic twist, Rick had also been a benefactor of the Juvenile Protection Association, a private organisation in Chicago that treated abused children and their families.
Although there was evidence that father and son had an explosive relationship, police said they believed that Rick’s piano playing was the flash point for the rage in his son.
"That seems like the catalyst for this whole thing," Highland Park Police Chief Daniel J. Dahlberg told the Chicago Tribune. "That's what got it started." The two allegedly exchanged words, and then Michael went into the kitchen, picked out a knife and stabbed his father repeatedly in the neck. When officers arrived shortly before 8 p.m., Rick was outside the house, bleeding heavily. Michael was taken into custody a short time later. With his father still alive, Michael Grossman was charged with attempted murder. His mother arranged for the bond that got Michael out of jail. Authorities increased the charge to first-degree murder when Rick Grossman died while on life support, at the Highland Park Hospital.
"His mind must have snapped," said Larry Grossman, trying to explain what had happened between his brother and nephew. "Like I said, who knows what happened?"
Michael wound up pleading guilty but mentally ill. He claimed that he was schizophrenic, that he had heard voices telling him to kill his father. Defence attorney Jed Stone portrayed Michael Grossman as the product of a severely dysfunctional home. Divorce, drugs, domestic abuse and violence were all part of the Grossman household, Stone said, despite the outward facade of affluence and respectability. "Everything was not hunky-dory on Keats Street, and it never was."
In July 1998 Judge Stephen Walter sentenced Michael to 24 years in prison, with the understanding that the young man would likely only serve eight to nine years. Judge Walter also recommended that he receive continuing psychiatric care.
Let us remember Rick not as the victim of a heinous crime, nor as one of the catalysts for his son’s troubled mind, but for his recorded legacy, and take pleasure in the soft rock stylings of three tracks from Hot Romance.
Roddy: nasty synth plinkings, typically unpleasant TV variety show backing vocals, orchestra seemingly arranged by a man with a CSE in woodwork, evil disco-lite versions of standards and a lead vocalist who couldn’t sing his way out of a wet paper bag. But at least he could schlep a drunkard of a royal.
Sir Roderick Victor Llewellyn is a British baronet who, despite a lengthy career as a landscape gardener, gardening journalist and author will be forever known for his eight-year relationship with Princess Margaret, the younger sister of our own dear Queen Elizabeth II. The Princess and the poker began their relationship in 1973, when Llewellyn was 25 years old and Margaret was 43. Their highly publicised relationship was a factor in the dissolution of the Princess's marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon.
It wasn’t an easy relationship. She became deeply unhappy with Roddy’s love of the limelight and, after a row in 1980 Roddy did a runner. Margaret retaliated by taking an overdose. Shortly after they were reconciled he announced that he had met another woman and wanted to marry her. It has been alleged – by interior designer and socialite Nicky Haslam in his book Redeeming Features - that Snowdon had an affair with Roddy before he became the Princess’s pet.
Released by Phillips in 1978, our Roddy admitted in the press that he had ‘consulted the Princess before taking up an offer to make records and she had no objections – although she might have done to other careers. She likes my voice and she likes the idea of my becoming a pop singer. We are always singing together’. Serendipitously, Roddy was issued in the same year that Dame Barbara Cartland, the step-Grandmother of future-Princess Diana, issued her awful Album of Love Songs. Many of the musicians who worked on the album were better known for composing and playing on albums of library music - no wonder the whole thing sounds as if it were designed to be played in the lift of some tacky 'room by the hour' hotel.
Have a listen to Missing Her Again, a track from Roddy by Roddy Llewellyn, and just ask if you want to hear more. I have a copy winging its way to me as I write!
Taking their name from the 1947 John Steinbeck novel, or more likely the cheesy 1957 Jayne Mansfield/Joan Collins film adaptation of the same, The Wayward Bus was one of several studio projects from composer Tupper Sussay: musician turned advertising man and political agitator, and co-author of the biography of Martin Luther King’s assassin.
Tupper ‘rocked American music in 1969 with The Moth Confesses, a “phonograph opera” he wrote for The Neon Philharmonic’, apparently. His life reads like something out of a very long and convoluted film: Frederick Tupper Saussy III (July 3, 1936 – March 16, 2007) was a theologian, a restaurant owner, a King assassination conspiracy theorist, anti-government pamphleteer, and radical opponent of the federal government’s taxation laws. Born in Statesboro, Georgia, he grew up in Tampa, Florida and graduated from the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, in 1958, releasing an album with his combo - Jazz at Sewanee - with a subsidy from the University. He studied piano with Oscar Peterson at the School of Jazz, and was ‘discovered’ by Dave Brubeck.
Saussy taught English at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, co-founded the ad agency McDonald and Saussy in 1962, but kept a hand on his musical career with recording dates and the occasional club sessions. He signed to Monument Records the following year and issued his proper debut album, Discover Tupper Saussy,which was produced by Fred Foster (Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson), with liner notes by Brubeck. He composed The Beast with Five Heads for the Nashville Symphony - based on "The Bremen Town Musicians" and designed to replace Peter and the Wolf as a work to teach schoolchildren about orchestration. For its 1968/69 season, the Nashville Symphony commissioned him to write a piano concerto for Bill Pursell.
He then wrote Morning Girl, a top 20 hit and Grammy nominee for pop band The Neon Philharmonic, and worked on TV ads for Mama Cass and the hateful Anita Bryant. He would later write several books, go on the run from the government after cocking a snook at the IRS, spend more than a year in prison. Oh, he was a creationist too, and believed that all anyone needed to know could be found within the pages of the King James Bible.
Anyway, if you want to know more about Tupper, go raid the interwebs.
Released by RCA in 1968, The Prophet features The Wayward Bus backing David Hoy, ‘psychic’, Tarot reader and stage mentalist. A cut-price Criswell, if you will, Hoy is best remembered for taking part in a stunt in 1977 to coax the Loch Ness Monster from its watery home. I’ve not included the b-side, as it’s just an instrumental version of the same track. The Wayward Bus released at least one other 45 on RCA, backing Tupper on two tracks, the dull instrumental Love Him and the peculiar vaudeville-inspired Edgar Whitsuntide.
My thanks to The Squire for alerting me to this little nugget. Enjoy!
I’ve written about Mark Fox and the creepy ‘child’ Lil’ Markie before, but I’ve just found a copy of his third album Little Bits for Children Everywhere and felt compelled to share it with you.
This time credited to ‘Mark Fox Featuring Little Markie’ (although, according to the label, this travesty is entirely down to Little Markie himself), and housed in a sleeve that’s a complete rip off of the posthumous Elvis collection Sings For Children… and Grownups Too! - right down to the colours of the Crayola crayons - Little Bits features Pastor Mark Fox duetting with his inner child on a half dozen tracks on side one, with the flip given over to his famous Story of an Alcoholic Father discourse. Elvis Sings For Children... features his awful rendition of Old MacDonald, of course, but again we've already been there.
If you had only heard, but not seen, Lil’ Markie you'd be forgiven for thinking that he was a pudgy, apple-cheeked nine year-old, sweetly singing his way through life with songs about Jesus – but Markie is, in fact, the creation of adult evangelist Mark Fox, who uses his ability to switch between his own voice and a terrifying, childish, Donald Duck-esque falsetto to sing cautionary Christian tales with titles such as the aforementioned Story Of An Alcoholic Father (Something's Happened To Daddy), I Will Obey The Lord and the incredibly vile Diary Of An Unborn Child - the story of a foetus, from conception to abortion; a disgusting diatribe based on an article which originally appeared in a Jehovah's Witness magazine. It’s all very Baby Lu-Lu.
Mark/Lil’ Markie/Little Markie released a slew of similarly insane ramblings, many through his own Mark Fox Family Ministries company. He also briefly recorded under his own name, issuing the gospel album Let The Son Shine In: on the back cover he is described as'a personable young man who communicates Christ through his music.'The not-so-fantastic Mr Fox even had his own public access TV show for a while. I assume that the majority of people tuning in to his programme would have reached for the phone to call 911 as soon as Mark stopped singing in his usual pleasant baritone and started screeching like a lisping simpleton for fear that the evangelist had actually swallowed and was choking to death on a Tickle Me Elmo doll. He’s a ventriloquist without a dummy (unless you count those in his audience that is), a scary enough concept in itself.
Many of the tracks on the Lil’ Markie/Little Markie/Mark Fox albums were written by Rick and Rosemary Wilhelm, regular performers on the Christian Baptist church circuit, who released their own eponymous album in 1977. The couple are still active today. Mark Fox is still about too, troubling people in churches around the United States with his insane alter ego.
Anyway, judge for yourself after you listen to a couple of tracks from Little Bits for Children Everywhere – the medley of B-O-R-N A-G-A-I-N/For God So Loved The World and the ‘duet’ J-E-S-U-S. ‘Little’ Marcy Tigner must be turning in her grave.
We've visited the career of Ellen Marty on several occasions in the past, but adding a new 45 from her to my collection is always something worth celebrating. She has become something of an obsession.
Forgive me for repeating her story (which previously appeared in The World's Worst Records Volume Two), but for those who are not yet acquainted with the wonderful Miss Marty, here goes...
Of Swedish descent (although the liner notes on her one and only album attest she is actually half Norwegian and half Irish), Ellen Marty’s real name was Mary Ellen Mart. Born in the American mid-west but schooled in New York, she appears to have started writing songs at an early age, copyrighting her first compositions - See Saw Love and My Christmas Gift - in 1957. Moving from New York to California, Mary Ellen based herself in Hollywood and started her own publishing company, Lycklig. Mary Ellen chose the name Lycklig as it’s the Swedish word for ‘happy’.
She initially tried to break into showbiz as an actress, appearing in at least two films: Spring Affair in 1960 (as a waitress) and the 1962 cult prison drama House of Women. Neither of these films were going to make Ellen a star, and it seems that she quickly decided to concentrate instead on her musical career.
Ellen seems to have made most of her recordings pre-1968, releasing 45s under her own name and also as Buttons. Although she recorded several sides as Buttons there’s no connection between her and the many other acts who used the same name. There are at least four Buttons 45s on the Rain Coat label and several others under Ellen’s own name on Raincoat, the interchangeable name of the record company which seems to have existed primarily (and, quite possibly, exclusively) to handle Ellen’s recordings. All of Ellen’s 60s recordings were produced and arranged by Joe Leahy, the bandleader, arranger, writer and producer who previously set up the Unique Records label (which issued Leona Anderson’s collection Music To Suffer By).
Ellen also recorded an album, Mixing and Making, for her own Marty Records, an album given three stars by Billboard magazine. That LP - on which Ellen was backed by a stellar line up of musicians including drummer Hal Blaine and guitarist Bud Coleman - included her cover of The Man in the Raincoat (retitled Man In A Raincoat), which was later issued as a 45 (catalogue 601) on both the Raincoat and Marty record labels under its correct title. She followed this up with the 45 Bobby Died Today which, despite rumours to the contrary, has nothing whatsoever to do with the death of Bobby Kennedy. There are no dates on any of these releases, but Bobby Died Today appears to have been issued in 1966, two years prior to Senator Kennedy’s assassination.
All of Ellen Marty’s recordings are a delight: her voice is unconventional to say the least, veering from a kittenish whisper (as on the 45 Lovetime) to that of a truculent teenager (vis Bobby Died Today) and she occasionally sounds as if she’s about to slit her wrists. Her lyrics are distinctly odd (her single The Barn Is So Far From The Steeple starts off with the line ‘On a day that was warm I decided to be born’, for example), and her sense of scansion and timing is often at odds with what pop record buyers are used to - as in the odd, hiccoughing rhythm of Give Me A Raincheck, Baby which, when I first heard it, had me rushing to ensure that the needle of my tone arm was not skipping across the precious vinyl. One of her earliest 45s – A Petal A Day/Baby Blue Eyes– is a fine example of her slightly off-kilter world. I love the B-side, with its wailing police sirens and jaunty tack piano accompaniment, and the little giggle in Ellen’s voice towards the end is a real winner. It could easily be the soundtrack to a cartoon about a prohibition-era speakeasy. The more subdued plug side, A Petal A Day, is a miserable little ditty about unrequited love whose lyrics clash ridiculously with the jolly backing track: a suicide note sung to a fast food jingle. Locked Up And Bolted (which originally appeared as Locked Up and Bolded, resulting in some poor soul having to correct the labels on each disc by hand), the flip of the circa 1966 single Raindrops, is one of the most fun recordings you’ll ever hear, reminiscent of the Patrick Macnee/Honor Blackman song Let’s Keep It Friendly. The one thing you can say about Ellen’s material is that it genuinely deserves the epithet extraordinary.
Unfortunately Ellen Marty the recording artist, songwriter and erstwhile actress seems to have retired. She briefly resurfaced in Nashville in the mid-70s when, as Elie Marty, she released a brace of singles again on Rain Coat. However this time her mentor Joe Leahy was not available to help out, having passed away the previous year, and the ‘prestigious’ Hollywood address had been swapped for a PO box in Music City. The unusual, beguiling voice is the same, but the quality of the songs – a cover of the 1920s standard Do You Ever Think of Me and Bob G Dean’s Paper Planes (later covered by Pat Alexis; Dean was the co-author of Stella Parton’s hit I Want To Hold You In My Dreams Tonight) among them – can’t hope to compare with the best of her 60s work.
Since then there’s been no sign of her. My research has lead me down several dead ends, and the former Lycklig offices – just a stone’s throw away from Hollywood Boulevard - are now part of an apartment complex.
Perhaps I’ll never know who the ‘real’ Ellen Marty is (or was). Maybe I don’t need to. At least she has left me the key to her treasure chest of ever-so-slightly peculiar recordings. And for that I shall always be grateful.
Anyway, here's my latest find, the Vaudeville-inspired 1967 45 Cats Have Whiskers/It All Depends on You.
This record is like nothing you’ve ever heard before – unless of course you’ve heard it, in which case it is exactly like something you’ve heard before…
An absolute classic in the world of bad music, the cover turns up time and time again on those ‘bad album art’ sites, but people seldom bother with the audio, which is a shame as Gary Schneider’s demented, off-kilter takes on lounge classics are a gas.
Issued on his own Schmaltzy Records label, Just For Fun, Just For Friends is the only album from Gary Schneider, a San Francisco Bay-based lounge organist and entertainer. Originally from the American Midwest, for a number of years he provided the in-house entertainment at the Driftwood Lounge in Alameda, CA, and was known for his by somewhat risque humour, which would include singing dirty parody lyrics to some of the best-known lounge standards: What A Difference A Day Makes became What A Difference Getting Laid Makes, I Left My Heart In San Francisco became I Lost My Ass In San Francisco and so on.
“I made this album, in 1979,” he says. “I was just having fun. I'm still very much alive and living in Alameda. I had a good 35-year run in the organ bar business, but it's a dead horse now.” Gary employed all manner of keyboards, electronic effects and so on for his recording: “The device I used for the talking guitar was the Sonovox. It was invented by Gilbert Wright in about 1938 and was used in the movies and on old time radio” Predating the Vocoder by decades, you can see a clip of the Sonovox in use in 1940 here:
If you can bear the whole album, you can find it at Mr Weird and Wacky, but for now here are two tracks – Green Tambourine (“I still prefer the Lemon Pipers’ version”, says Gary; personally I think he gives Mrs. Miller a run for her money here) and Sweet Georgia Brown.
2016 hasn’t been a good year so far, has it? Far too many great entertainers have gone, and the world is a much poorer place without them. One of those - the late, great Terry Wogan - left us on January 31, but he also left us with a musical legacy that we’re celebrating here today.
Former bank employee Sir Michael Terence ‘Terry’ Wogan will be forever remembered as the charming, avuncular and slyly subversive radio presenter, game- and chat-show show host, and the front man of such annual televisual events as the Eurovision Song Contest and Children In Need. And, of course, you can’t be a star as big as Our Tel without occasionally being coerced into making a record – one of which narrowly escaped being a top 20 hit in 1977.
The Floral Dance is a popular song written in 1911 by Katie Moss, inspired by a visit to Heston in Cornwall where she took part in the age-old traditional Furry Dance – part of the Flora Day Festival. The annual Flora Day is a traditional festival to welcome the coming of spring and sees couples, dressed in their finery, dancing around the village and actually through many houses, to the accompaniment of the town band playing their traditional tune. Katie Moss’s song was based upon this tune and over the years gained wide popularity across the country.
Everyone who is interested in bad music will remember Terry’s awful ‘sing-speak’ version of The Floral Dance. What you may not know – or perhaps had forgotten - is that famed brass band the Brighouse and Rastrick Band had already recorded the song, had copies pressed up and were selling them at concerts before Terry decided to ‘do his thing all over it’. The B&R version was already gaining some airplay and was on the way to becoming a modest hit before Terry started to champion it on his Radio Two show. By the time he finished, two versions of the tune were competing for chart position.
The B&R version – arranged by the band’s conductor Derek Broadbent - was released on Transatlantic in 1976 and produced by serial offender Ivor Raymonde (father of Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins). Wogan’s was issued by Philips the next year, with the credits ‘arranged by Andrew Pryce Jackman’ (the keyboard player and musical arranger who worked with Yes) and ‘produced by Mike Redway’ (a busy session singer and former member of the Mike Sammes Singers, who recorded over 80 sides for budget label Embassy). That ‘arranged by’ credit is iffy, to say the least: outside of the addition of a cheesy drum machine, the arrangement is absolutely identical to Derek Broadbent’s version.
1977, don’t forget, was the year that punk exploded. The B&R’s version of the Floral Dance stalled at number two in the UK charts, kept off the top position not by the Sex Pistols or the Damned, but by Wings with Mull of Kintyre! Sir Terry, backed by the Hanwell Band (uncredited on the record) reached a lowly 21. Not bad for a man whose only previous single had been a flexidisc given away free ‘when you try on any bra, girdle or corselette’ from the Playtex 18 hour range.
Every single needs a B-side, of course, and Terry’s Floral Dance was backed by the atrocious, sub-Skellern drivel Old Rockin’ Chair. Philips, with a minor hit on their hands, pushed Terry back in to the studio to record an album of similarly awful nonsense, featuring covers of the Bee Gees’ Words, Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness and today’s third track, Me and the Elephant, which another national treasure, Cilla Black, would cover the following year.
Rest in Peace, Sir Terry: this world is a poorer place without you.
I don’t really know what to make of this – it smacks of novelty release, yet I can’t really see the market it was aiming for. What it actually is is a desperate stab at chart success from a singer and songwriter who had been treading the boards for over a decade and who, frankly, should have known better.
Cresceno, by Hazel Gummage, was written by Manfred Mann singer Mike D’abo, and originally recorded (as Love is Like a Crescendo) by Cliff Richard in 1969, although it remained unreleased until 2008.
Backed with Get Back to the Country, Hazel Gummidge is actually Bristol-born singer and songwriter Aj Webber. Born in December 1948, she started playing guitar in local folk clubs around the age of 13, becoming one of the residents at the Bristol Troubadour. Webber then turned professional, working the cabaret circuit under her given name Adrienne. As Melody Maker put it: ‘she has the abilty to perform, entertain, captivate and ‘win’ audiences’, and she would go on to work with artists such as Paul Simon, Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young, Gordon Lightfoot and the Everly Brothers.
She played regular dates at the Marquee in London and worked with acts as diverse as Cockney Rebel, Kraftwerk and Frank Zappa: Aj opened for The Eagles at the height of their fame in Europe. Her first album – Aj Webber (aka Rhyme and Time) - included guest artists such as Albert Lee, Gerry Conway and Michael D’Abo, the author of Crescendo.
This single, issued the year before her debut album in 1975, drew heavily on Aj’s West Country accent for ‘comedic’ effect, on novelist Barbara Euphan Todd’s beloved scarecrow character Worzel Gummidge and on Aj’s homophonic connection to Adge Cutler and the Wurzels: she picked up her nickname – employed, she told the News of the World, because there was a stripper working in Bristol called Adrienne and her gigs were starting to attract the wrong crowd – as Cutler and Webber were both part of Bristol’s then rather expansive folk scene. Worzel Gummidge first appeared in print in 1938, but reached a much wider audience in the mid 70s, thanks to several of the stories being adapted or the popular BBC kid’s show Jackanory. Although the sleeve looks as if she is aping Jon Pertwee, who played Gummidge on TV from 1979-1981, Cresceno appeared four years before the former Doctor Who donned his thinking head.
Releasing four albums over her career, Aj Webber also made appearances on television programmes as diverse as The Cliff Richard Show and The Old Grey Whistle Test, and for a number of years worked as a DJ for radio stations GWR and BFBS. Now living in France and planning a new album, during the mid-80s she took a break from music to raise a family, but continued to write songs. Many of these songs appeared on her last album of original material Running Out Of Sky.
Some time in the not-too-distant past, an anonymous record collector stumbled upon what is reported to be the only copy of this tosh. Sharing it around the net, it was (unsurprisingly) picked up, re-ordered and reissued in a new sleeve in 2002, almost 30 years after it was originally recorded. As often happens, certain lovers of the perverse decided that this was a great lost work of lo-fi loveliness, and feted it as the UK's ‘rarest 70's esoteric stoner-folk album’. Since then people have been raving about how great this is.
Well, I have a surprise for you: it’s not great at all. Supernatural Girl by Ferris Wheel is not a great folk-psych masterpiece, it is inept, badly-played and poorly recorded hokum.
Seemingly the only record issued on the Nicro label (part of Nicrosound, of Essex costal resort Leigh-on-Sea), the three-piece Ferris Wheel (Ed, Rich and Stan) sound like a parody of bad folk musicians. You could easily believe that this is the only album owned by the Flight of the Conchords, or that this was the record that Ralfe Band were trying to emulate when they made the sublime and wonderful Swords, but seriously – it’s dreadful. That said, it does have a certain naïve charm.
The songs, written and copyrighted by the otherwise unknown Blakey Burch (as credited on the label: on the original front cover his/her surname is spelled Birch) and produced (ha!) by Nick Kirby, are outrageously amateur: When I look at you/I know you’ll be true/And I will not be blue… and Piscean Ride is easily one of the most awful things that I have ever had to endure. The guitar and bass remind me of the (virtually) unlistenable Beatles/Stu Sutcliffe Cavern rehearsals, it’s that bad. The Mermaid – on which our trio don their skiffle shoes – is dire, and the guitar playing on I’m Rembering You is truly execrable.
Although the Ferris Wheel and Birch/Burch are entirely unknown, Kirby is someone we do know something about: a DJ on Radio Sutch, a short-lived 1964 pirate station in the Thames Estuary fronted by our very own Screaming Lord Sutch, Nick was born in 1944. Originally blind, groundbreaking eye surgery in his pre-teen years restored some sight although, sadly, his eyesight failed completely in later years. Nicrosound was his company: specialising in jazz,Nicrosound also put out tapes by Digby Fairweather and the Les Page Dixieland Band. Nick sadly passed away in 1994 from a brain haemorrhage. You can find out more about him and his pirate radio career here.
Described as ‘timeless, downer-style electric folk brimming with tension and despair’, you can find the whole album on YouTube, but here’s a taster – three tracks from the otherworldly Supernatural Girl.
Enjoy!
Thanks to Discogs for the image of the original cover
We had a couple of friends down last week, always a good excuse to go trawling around Bristol’s many secondhand stores and charity shops in search of vinyl bargains. I picked up a few handfuls of rubbish: some not quite as awful as their covers or titles seemed to promise, but a few delights I shall endeavour to share with you over the coming weeks.
One of the albums I picked up was the thoroughly atrocious Party Sing-A-Long by the Cockerel Chorus, a ragbag group of footie fans who had scored big in the UK charts with the Tottenham Hotspur chant Nice One Cyril. Written by Spurs fans Helen Clarke and Harold Spiro, Nice One Cyril was written to celebrate Tottenham’s much-loved left-back Cyril Knowles, and reached number 14 in the UK singles charts. There is a story that Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain is drumming on the single: maybe one of you can tell me if this is true or just an urban legend.
The Cockerel Chorus was fronted by Spiro and Jamie Phillips, who sings the faux-operatic intro to the song. Harold was a season-ticket holder at Spurs and a noted songwriter – co-authoring songs for the Yardbirds, Peter Noone, Tina Charles, Olivia Newton-John, The Troggs and Georgie Fame amongst others, and TV theme music for Kenny Ball and dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse. Of course he also wrote the horrific David ‘Diddy’ Hamilton song Just Like That, which I featured here a couple of years ago.
Party Sing-A-Longis a horrible album, with yobbish cover versions of recent hits including Long Haired Lover from Liverpool, Tie a Yellow Ribbon and Part of the Union, but the worst has to be the awful cover of Loop Di Love, which had been a hit for serial offender Jonathan King (as Shag) in 1972 but which had originally been a hit in Germany for J Bastos (aka Rolf Steitz) in 1971. Who in their right mind would have thought to throw this on the turntable to turn their flagging party around?
As a bonus, I also present to you both sides of the Breadcrumbs reggae version of Nice One, Cyril. Possibly one of the dumbest reggae records of all time, this atrocious slab of cheese was issued in the UK on Trojan’s Attack Record imprint in 1973. The kazoo solo is priceless! Thanks to discogs.com for the photo. Enjoy!
Poached from fellow blogger Bob Purse, this seemed an appropriate post for Easter weekend, a brace of crucifixion-themed cuts from the Halmark song poem stable.
I’ve written about Halmark before, but like the fable of the resurrection, it’s a story that is worth repeating: one of the cheapest (and consequently for the bad record enthusiast, one of the best) outfits in the field. Set up by Ted Rosen, almost all of Halmark’s output sounds as if it was recorded in the 40s or 50s; the entire catalogue is stuffed with sloppy, nonsensical lyrics and overwrought performances, and the performers are seldom credited.
Ted Rosen grew up in Boston spending his time, according to his son Jeff (who still runs the company his father established) with ‘a smile on his face and his head up in the clouds, writing new songs every day’. Moving to New York in pursuit of his dream of working as a full-time songwriter, his first break came when he wrote the children's song Herkimer The Homely Doll. Released by Sterling Holloway (the voice of Winnie the Pooh) on Decca in April 1954 Jeff would have you believe that ‘it ran up the Billboard charts’; it didn’t, but you can’t blame a son for being proud of his dad, and it was at least featured on the hit kid’s TV show Captain Kangaroo which began its record-breaking thirty year run the following year. Ted also claimed to have written a hit song for Rosemary Clooney, but if he did she doesn’t appear to have recorded it at any point during her career. He wasn’t a complete shyster though: Ted did write I Remember Mambo, a 1955 release by actor and singer Jack Haskell, and another song he co-composed (Too Late by Eddie Singleton and the Chromatics) was picked up by Brunswick for major distribution after it appeared on Rosen’s AMSCO label.
Like Jack Covais (Tin Pan Alley) and Lew Tobin (Sterling), Ted Rosen would often give himself co-credit on his companies’ song-poem releases. What sets his companies - Talent Incorporated, Halmark (occasionally appearing misspelled as Hallmark), Grand, AMSCO and Chapel - apart from the others though is the otherworldly quality of their productions, caused mostly because instead of using live musicians (a la Preview, Columbine, Tin Pan Alley or MSR) the company instead utilised a series of recorded backing tracks, or music beds as they're often known, for their recordings, employing the same backings again and again and again. This means that the same music track would appear as backing to a political song on Halmark, an overwrought ballad on Grand and as the tune to a hymn on Chapel, for example, and good old Ted he didn’t care how often these tracks were used. It made life simple for his small stable of vocalists: all they had to do was walk into the studio, have a quick squint at the lyric sheet, and fit the words as best they could around a track they had heard time and time again.
Anyway, just in time for you to enjoy your eggs and hot cross buns, here are the (as usual) uncredited Jack and Mary Kimmel with a pair of typically terrible Halmark cuts: He is the Resurrection and Life and From the Manger to the Cross.
