The World's Worst Records

Happy almost Christmas everybody! Three slices of seasonal song-poems for you today.

First up today is a re-post from 2009, as the original link is now dead and I want so much for you all to hear this - Merry Christmas Elvis, by Michelle Cody. Originally issued in 1978 on the Safari label, which was owned by song-poem hustler Ramsey Kearney (aka Will Gentry, co-writer of Blind Man’s Penis), I implore you not to not to choke on your mince pies at the song's saccharine denouement. Backed by All I Want For Christmas is My Daddy, little Michelle had made an earlier stab at recording Jack Toombs’ song, probably in 1977 the year of Elvis’s passing, on the obscure Jimbo label.

Next is a cousin, of sorts, to last week’s post – Billy’s Christmas Wish– and one of my favourite bad Christmas records of all time, NewSong’s The Christmas Shoes. It’s the wonderful Dick Kent (Elmer Plinger/Dick Castle/Richard House) with the MSR song-poem A Christmas Rose, written by the mother and daughter (I assume) team of Dollie A. Walta and Judy J. Walta and released in the same year as Merry Christmas Elvis. It’s a sin that neither of these great bad records troubled the charts.

Robert Ravis’s performance of Let’s Go, Santa is Here, comes from the album New Favorites of Robert Ravis, issued by one of the cheapest of all the song-poem outfits Star-Crest Recordings of Hollywood. Written by a Mr (or Mrs) Troxell, Star-Crest’s conceit was to present albums jam-packed (this particular one features a staggering 27 tracks split over two sides of vinyl) with one-take recordings of ‘demos’ from amateur songwriters and issue them as though they would be serious contenders for being re-recorded (or perhaps simply published) commercially. It was a con, of course, but this little-known company issued dozens of albums like this in the late 1950s-early 1960s.

For further Christmas awfulness can I direct you to my friend Bob Purse, author of the essential blog The Wonderful and the Obscure? He has recently posted a collection of Christmas-themed song-poems at WFMU– some old favourites, some completely new to me but all well worth a listen.

See you next week with more awfulness. Enjoy!

Welcome, everyone, to the last instalment of this year’s Christmas cavalcade. Each of today’s songs comes to you courtesy of our old friend Ross Hamilton, who I can’t thank enough for sending me a copy of his home-compiled collection of Christmas-themed novelties and oddities.

First up is the truly horrible Christmas on the Moon, by Troy Hess. Probably better known by bad music aficionados for his classic Please Don’t Go Topless Mother, Troy was just four years old when he recorded this virtually unintelligible piece of nonsense, written for him by his father Bennie. Fellow music blogger Steve Carey once described his performance as ‘Huckleberry Hound talking to you on a broken telephone, with a bad connection, in a big echo-y bathroom, standing ten feet away from the phone. Also he's wearing a mask and eating a banana.’ I couldn’t have put it better. So I didn’t.

Next up, a pair of kitsch crackers from Mae West and Kay Martin. Ms West’s contribution to bad music is well documented, with a clutch of awful albums, featuring dreadful cover versions of rock and roll standards such as Twist and Shoutand her own feeble attempts at composition, never better exemplified than in the horror that is Mr Criswell Predicts, her ‘tribute’ to TV psychic, Ed Wood alumnus and all round crackpot Jeron Criswell King. Here Mae performs Santa Come Up And See Me, from her 1967 album Wild Christmas, recorded when the old gal was nearing 75. Kay Martin was a model, nightclub entertainer and party album singer, who later in life became a hotelier, running the Kay Martin Lodge in Reno, Nevada. Born in Bakersfield, California she released several albums, the most popular being her 1962 release I Know What He Wants For Christmas... But I Don't Know How To Wrap It! From which this cut, Come On Santa, Let’s Have a Ball, comes from.

Finally today we have Christmas is For the Family by the Happy Crickets from their album Christmas With the Happy Crickets. Undated, but probably originally released around 1960 – ‘they’ released a 45 (a cover of the Chipmunks’ hit the Christmas Song in 1958) - Ross describes this as ‘probably the worst attempt at cashing in on the singing animal phenomenon. The singing is horrible, even when sped up, and the arrangements sound like they were slapped together by a committee of drunks’.

Thanks again Ross for all of your contributions over the years, and especially for ruining everyone’s Christmas with these horrors. I’ll be back next week with something a little less Christmassy.

Enjoy!

Welcome back, my friends. I trust that you all had a brilliant Christmas.

Here’s a little oddity for you: a 45 released on Film City around 1964 which, unusually, is actually performed (and I use that word loosely) by the composer.

Owned by musician Sandy Stanton, Film City was one of the most important of all the song poem companies, responsible not only for discovering Rod Rogers (aka Rodd Keith) but also for teaming the multi-instrumentalist, writer and producer up with the Chamberlin, a keyboard instrument similar to the Mellotron which used short tape loops to recreate the sound of other instruments.

Film City, like a number of other song-poem outfits, would occasionally provide budding singer-songwriters the opportunity to come in to the studio and perform vocals over an instrumental backing they had already created and, no doubt, charge them extra for the privilege. The vocalist would not get to meet the ‘orchestra and chorus’ listed on the label and therefor would never know that said orchestra was, in reality, just one man and a souped-up electric piano.

Although the vocals on the song-poem/vanity hybrid Portland Rose Song– and its B-side Voice of the Rose– are executed in flamboyant fashion by Bert Lowry, the Chamberlin work is clearly that of Rodd Keith. If Rodd had performed the vocals on these cuts chances are they would have ended up rather pedestrian (judging by the music he’s created in any case). Luckily Bert decided to do it himself – and his off-key caterwauling lifts this release from the mundane to the miraculous.

According to the now-hibernating American Song Poem Music Archive two versions of this disc were issued, once as Film City 1096 (the version you find here) and again, later, as Film City 2085 with slightly different credits (this time Mr Keith was billed as the Film City Orchestra and Chorus) on clear blue vinyl. AS/PMA state that the sides were flipped and that the B-side was credited on this reissue as Pasadena Rose Song: my assumption here is that this is either a mistake or that the labels on the 45 were misprinted; it’s highly unlikely that Bert Lowry, a resident of Portland (the City of Roses) and a member of the city’s historical society, would suddenly be composing songs about Pasadena – almost a thousand miles away. As Bert’s home town was also home to the Portland Rose Society (established in 1889) I reckon I’m on pretty safe ground. Unless you know otherwise, of course!

Mike Donahue’s book Portland Rose Festival states that Bert (possibly credited as Burt Lowry) recorded the song For You a Rose in Portland Grows, written by local teacher Bertha Slater Smith, in 1960. However this seems to be exactly the same song as he performs here, albeit miscredited: the phrase is repeated several times during the song.

Still, whatever the truth of the matter have a listen to Bert’s histrionic performances of Portland Rose Song and Voice of the Rose. And enjoy!

Special thanks to Bob Purse, who first introduced me to this disc at WFMU

Happy 2013 everybody! To kick off my seventh year of blogging, here’s a fun little thing I picked up recently on Ebay: Sweet Angelina by Mister “G” and the Joe Menen Trio.

This 45, which appears to date from 1958, was issued by the Gira record label, based in Rutherford, New Jersey. Started as little more than a vanity project in 1953, all of the early releases on Gira were written by the company’s owner Nicholas Joseph Gilio and issued exclusively as 78s, most of which were marked ‘not for sale’ or similar. The artist on the majority of these early releases was Jo Ann Lear, a jobbing singer who also cut sides for another New Jersey-based custom/vanity/song-poem outfit, the appropriately named Vanityrecords, which debuted in 1952.

By the time Gira began to produce 45s it seems like Nick Gilio had gotten into the song-poem game: every song on every disc I’ve discovered so far (apart from one, written and performed by Harold Bailey and the Country Drifters) was co-written by Gilio and another songwriter, and several of them were performed by Mister “G”– a paper-thin pseudonym for Nicholas Gilio himself.

Shades of Lew Tobin or Ted Rosen methinks. Or perhaps Norridge Mayhams? For, like Norris the Troubadour, Nicholas Gilio had one brief stab at fame – when he managed to get several of his songs recorded by the actress and singer Lorry Raine: she released Laugh, Laugh, Laugh and Gi-Gi-Gi-Gira Con Me on Dot in 1955 and also recorded his compositions What Would I Do? (issued as the B-side of her 45 Love Me Tonight, also on Dot; put out by London in the UK) and I'll Tell the World I Love You, issued by Advance Records in 1956. What Would I Do was also featured, performed by Raine, in the short film Champ Butler Sings. Incidentally, the Advance company that issued the Lorry Raine?Nick Gilio 78 was not the same as the song-poem outfit run by Lee Hudson; this particular company was run by Lorry's manager, Tim Gayle.

Gilio had been trying to get his songs recorded for at least a decade when Dot bit, but his brief period working with Lorry Raine appears to have been the sole source of his mainstream success. Old Nick certainly didn't mind spending money in his effort to find fame, paying for half page adverts in Billboard to promote his releases and clearly not stinting on the arrangements for his productions. But that voice! How could anyone have ever believed that Nick had the makings of a hit vocalist?

If anyone has any further info on Nicholas Gilio or the Gira company I’d love to know more. I'm aware that he also ran the rather grandly-named Gilio School of Music in Rutherford, and that between 1963-67 Gilio Music sponsored the Rutherford Little League team but that's about it. Still, for now, enjoy Sweet Angelina by Mister “G” and the Joe Menen Trio.

Hailing from the squalid (I promise you, no matter how much they’ve spent on the place in recent years, there’s no more apt word to describe what was, in the 1990s, the drug capitol of the west country) seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare, the Fat Doormen(Jonsey, Bezi, Rob and Mark) released a brace of 45s on the local Big fat Productions label.

Apparently a group of real nightclub bouncers (they must have been very short of work in WSM) their first release, We Hear You Knocking/Rubber Ball (Bouncy Bouncers) rewrote – in a Barron Knights style – a couple of former hits to include some rather poor ‘jokes’ and references to life working the doors. Arranged and produced by Brian Monk and Chris Merrick, issued with the catalogue number BFP2 (I can find no evidence of a BFP 1) and recorded at the now long-gone Horizon West studio, the follow up Kristmas Krackers (credited to the Fat Doormen featuring Colin and the DJ All Stars, BFP 3) like its predecessor also failed to ignite the charts. The B-side of this second single was performed, not by the Fat Doormen, but by one Barry C Bubear– born in Hendon in 1931 but who sadly passed away in Weston in 2009.

There’s not a lot else I can tell you about the Fat Doormen, but I can give you some more info about the man behind this project, Chris Merrick. Now working in ad sales for for Tenerife’s Oasis FM radio station, Chris formed his first band when he was still at school. Turning professional at the age of 18, he has toured with bands throughout Europe, Dubai and Malaysia and has featured on a number of recordings throughout his career.

When the session work stopped coming, Chris became a music teacher in Weston-super-Mare, managing a night club in the evenings (which, no doubt, inspired him to create the Fat Doormen), worked as a DJ and presented shows for local radio station Orchard FM.

Shortly after the Fat Doormen singles were issued Chris moved to Tenerife, where he started working for a local newspaper, soon becoming sales manager for the Holiday Gazette magazine before joining Oasis FM in August 1997 as a part-time presenter. He has since joined Oasis as a full-time member of their sales team. Sunny Tenerife is a long, long way from the mud and rain of WSM, and I’m sure that Chris would be happy to consign his involvement with the Fat Doormen to the past along with the terrible weather…however here the World’s Worst Records would like to remind him of his brief brush with infamy.

Enjoy, then, the Fat Doormen, and their first 45 We Hear You Knocking

God Only Knows by The Beach Boys is, hands down, one of the most beautiful, sublime and perfect pop songs ever. It's one of those songs that should be on everybody's all-time favourite lists. Brian Wilson was at the height of his powers, the Beach Boys were at the top of their game, Carl Wilson's vocal is pitch perfect and the overall effect cuts me to the quick. It's one of those records that sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about Toru and Kojima's cover version: a miserable, mediocre pastiche which has my dog covering his ears in pain. Maybe if English isn't your first language deciding to cover something as great as this is not the most sane thing to do. I know that other Japanese can carry this sort of thing off - Shonen Knife perhaps or Toquiwa - but they would have fun with it. Toru and Kojima attempt a sincere copy of a song they clearly love - ending up with something that comes off as maudlin at best.

But just who are Toru and Kojima? Well, what sounds like a solitary Japanese Beach Boys fan doing bad karaoke in his bedroom is pretty much exactly that: it appears that Toru and Kajima - who released two Brian Wilson-inspired albums, Smiley and Pot Sounds (oh, stop! My sides are splitting!) - is one person, Toru Kohjima. A nascent Wilson himself, Toru plays guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion as well as handling the vocal and production duties on his two releases. Apart from the occasional friend who adds backing vocals or the odd keyboard or bass lick here and there its all him. His two albums were collected together on one cd in 1997, complete with Beach Boys inspired artwork.

Smiley and Pot Sounds are available, in their entirety, for download at the always brilliant WFMU - grab them if you dare and wonder at Toru's interpretation of such classics as Wonderful, Don't Worry Baby, Surfer Girl and a couple of truly horrible originals....but for now enjoy Toru and Kojima and God Only Knows

One of the singularly most annoying things I've heard in years, Video Games was released in 2006 by the Black Out Band (aka the Black Out Kids). Not to be confused with the Welsh post-hardcore (whatever that is) oufit, this Black Out were three precocious, middle-class boys from Virginia: Hunter Watson on vocals and lead guitar, Tug Hunter on bass and drummer Matthew Salutillo. Hunter and best friend Matthew were 11 years old when they recorded Video Games; Tug was the old man of the group at 12.

Sounding exactly like you'd expect a trio of whiney pre-teens to sound, apparently this ghastly racket started life when the boy's music coach Dennis Decreny (not a teacher you understand; daddy had the money for a private coach) found that the boys would rather be playing with their X Boxes than learning the chord sequence to Three Blind Mice. Coach, as he was known to the youngsters, told Hunter he ought to write a song about his obsession. The following week, with assistance from his bandmates, Hunter had the chorus and first verse.

The three boys worked out the basic melody but it was left to Mrs. Watson to come up with the rest of the words. The boys recorded several more songs - including the original compositions Graffiti, 6th Grade King and Recess Blues - lined up some low-key local gigs during their summer vacation and set up their website - which laughably compares the tiresome threesome to Neil Young. Mr. Watson founded up his own record label, Chapman Records, and started to push their merchandise onto an eager public. Matthew's mum Wendy organised a video shoot, with 30 local schoolkids and lots of free pizza, and it looked like Black Out Band were on their way to the big time.

Only the public were not quite as eager as Jerry and Judy Watson had hoped. Hunter's parents might have thought that the Black Out Band were going to be the next big thing, but the rest of the world disagreed. Outside of a few random radio and TV appearances by 2008 it was all over.

Hunter, Tag and Matthew are around 17 or 18 now and, no doubt, embarrassed as hell for having produced this miserable diatribe. Or maybe not; for, when all is said and done, these three young men have written and recorded their own music and have performed it in front of hundreds of people. Which is a damn sight more than most of us. If you want more, the band's MySpace page is still up and running.

Enjoy!

We all know about the masses of bad Beatles’ cover versions; heck, I’ve featured a load here myself. Within moments of the Beatlesexploding onto the scene other artists were queuing up to cover the latest Lennon and McCartney composition; earliest examples include acts from the boys’ own management stables such as Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, established stars like Del Shannon and even the Rolling Stones who all had hits in 1963 with Beatles material.

It was also around this time that the first Beatles-inspired novelty records started to appear. Even though the boys had yet to have a major hit in the USA, one of the first off the block – The Boy with the Beatle Hair by The Swans - was released by US label Cameo Parkway in 1963. That yuletide British actress Dora Bryan made one of the most popular of all Beatle-related novelties All I Want for Christmas is a Beatle, and plenty more followed. In fact more than 200 Beatles-inspired novelties were produced in 1964 alone and it’s continued ever since: German girl group Die Sweetles had a hit at home with Ich Wunsch Mir Zum Geburtstag Einen Beatle (roughly translated as I Want a Beatle for my Birthday); we’ve had dogs sampled on a keyboard and then made to ‘sing’ Beatles hits, beloved comedians (Milton Berle’s hideous version of Yellow Submarine), people with connections to the group (John’s dad Freddie Lennon released That’s My Life); even songs released by major rock and pop acts that have used the Beatles (or a Beatle) as their inspiration (Elton John, Queen, Cher and many more)…the list goes on.

Today I present you two of the most hideous of all Beatles tributes, along with one of the absolute worst Beatles covers.

First up is Rainbo, who released John You Went Too Far This Time on Roulette in the US in 1968. Rainbo had been playing guitar in Greenwich Village coffee houses for some time, and became attached to Andy Warhol’s factory mob. John You Went Too Far This Time tells of the singer’s disillusionment and shock over the sight of John and Yoko naked on the front cover of their Unfinished Music No. 1:Two Virgins album. She’s put up with him dissing God and having long hair…but nudity? Now that just won’t do. Despite it's Beatlesque baroque instrumentation, or perhaps becase her singing is so flat in places that comparing her to a pancake would be unfair on that particular delicacy, Rainbo’s single failed to chart and she was quickly dropped by Roulette.

Never mind: Rainbo gave up the coffee houses, reverted to her real name and within a couple of years landed a spot in a brace of episodes of the Waltons. Mary Elizabeth ‘Sissy’ Spacek (although interestingly the B-side to her one single, C’Mon Teach Me To Live, is co-credited to C Spacek) would, of course, find fame in Hollywood in roles in Badlands, Carrie, Coal Miner’s Daughterand The Help.

Next is Forbes, a Swedish band who represented their country in the 1977 Eurovision Song Contest with the dire Beatles– an awful piece of drab euro-disco. Forbes ended in 18th and last place in the competition, gaining only two points and giving Sweden one of their worst placements ever. I recall seeing their dismal performance live on the night, sung in Swedish rather than English, with the only recognisable words to any non-Swedish ears being 'Beatles', 'Ringo Starr', 'John', 'Paul', 'George' and 'Yeah, Yeah, Yeah'. It’s out there on YouTube if you really want to see it. Horrifyingly the band is still together today.

Finally, from the album Beatle Barkers by the Woofers and Tweeters Ensemble, comes a hideous cover of one of the band’s most heinous releases – Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Originally released in Australia in 1983, the project came about when Gene Pierson, whose day job was compiling albums for companies like K-Tel, met Roy Nicolson a British born but Australia-based musician who invited him to his Sydney studio where he showed him a computer program that could emulate a wide range of different sounds…including animals. Nicholson agreed to put an album’s worth of material together on the strict understanding that his name would stay off the sleeve. The album went on to sell over 850,000 copies in Australasia alone.

There’s on accounting for taste.

Enjoy!

In a career which spanned seven decades, Burgess Meredith played many iconic roles: he appeared in a number of seminal Twilight Zone roles, including the bookish bank teller in the brilliant first season episode Time Enough At Last (he ties with another World’s Worst records alumnus – Jack Klugman– for having appeared in more episodes of the original series than any other actor); he was Rocky’s trainer, Mickey Goldmill, in the first three Rocky films (he died in the third but turned up again in the fifth) and, as anyone of my age will attest, he portrayed the screen’s only credible Penguinin the 1960s TV and movie adaptations of Batman.

Married at one stage to Charlie Chaplin’s ex Paulette Goddard, he was also blacklisted by Hollywood during the McCarthy witch hunt. Oh, and he got his kit off in Otto Preminger’s ridiculous Such Good Friends.

Happily for us, he would also drop in to a recording studio at the drop of a purple top hat.

On Meredith’s first release, in 1962, he narrates two stories Ray Bradbury (who also had strong Twilight Zone connections), and throughout his career he would narrate albums of everything from Aesop’s Fables to the downright peculiar Let Freedom Ring: a collection of performances of hand-bell music which Meredith reads The Bill Of Rights over the top of. But at the height of his career he issued another brace of horrors, and it’s these I present for you today.

Released in the UK in 1963, as Colpix PX 690 (through Pye, although Colpix was part of Columbia Pictures in the US and home to future Monkee David Jones), Home in the Meadowand No Goodbye – according to thelabel of the official release (the copy I have is a demo) – are taken ‘from the film How The West Was Won’. This is not strictly true. Although they are versions of tunes from the soundtrack to the classic movie, these in fact come from Meredith’s own album Burgess Meredith Sings the Songs from How the West was Won– even though there’s little in the way of singing going on here. A Home in the Meadow was originally performed in the movie by Debbie Reynolds. The authorship of the A-side is credited to Kahn and Dolan – a bit of a cheek as the tune is stolen wholesale from the traditional English tune Greensleeves (which was not, no matter what you have hear, written by Henry VIII). And anyway, the lyricist was Sammy Cahn, not Kahn.

Far more fun – and indeed more awful – is his 1966 single The Capture backed with The Escape, just one of the many spin-offs from the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman series (Frank Gorshin, for example, also released a 45 as The Riddler). Pleasingly both songs are almost exactly the same, with Burgess reciting a story about the Penguin’s run in with Batman over a backing which consists of portentous horns and a gaggle of silly girls chirruping ‘he’s the Penguin’ every few seconds.

It’s campy, nuts and thoroughly wonderful. A bit like Burgess Meredith himself. Enjoy!

A couple of early 80s oddities for you today, both from female singers in their 80s (well, almost) and both all but forgotten today.

First up is an odd little slice of whimsy and nostalgia which came via two gentleman who themselves have a combined career in showbusiness of more than a century - Chas and Dave. Chas Hodges (piano, vocals, banjo, guitars) and Dave Peacock have been around since the 60s: Hodges was a member of Joe Meek's house band (and is portrayed in Telstar, the rather wonderful film about Meek's life) and he and Dave have worked together since the dawn on the 70s on tons of studio sessions (the even appear on Eminem's My Name Is: the hook was taken from a Labi Siffre song, I Got The, on which Chas and Dave performed) .

Throughout their career as a duo they've scored a number of chart hits in their 'rockney' - pop/rock/cockney singalong - style, most notably Rabbit and Ain't No Pleasing You. They've also been responsible for some of the UK's most derided chart entries, like the terrible Snooker Loopy and Glory, Glory Tottenham Hotspur. They even opened for Led Zepplin at Knebworth! Sadly, after Dave's wife passed away in 2009 he decided to retire, although there were 'final' tours from the pair in both 2011 and 2012. We've not heard the last of them yet.

But at the height of their fame, whilst mining a thick seam of nostalgia, they teamed up with the unknown octogenarian Rosie Murphy to record and release a one-off single Cup of Tea/Alice Blue Gown.

Issued by Sniff records (an imprint of Towerbell, the company that issued C&D's records) it's horrible: poor old Rosie might have been ripe for appearing as the befuddled but cuddly granny on TV shows like That's Life, but she can't carry a tune in a proverbial bucket. She sounds like Mrs Miller, but Mrs Miller as a frail old lady about to expire, not as a strong, vibrant performer enjoying her moment in the spotlight.

Next we turn to another old lady for a completely different take on how the aged should act. Gerty Molzen was a German cabaret star of the 30s and 40s who, bizarrely, suddenly gained fame in the 80s for performing her off-kilter versions of current and recent pop hits.

Her career started pre-war, in opera, but it was during the war that her path diverged: she began to perform comic songs to entertain the troops. She toured the country in cabaret for years, began performing in movies in 1962, wrote a published a book about her life and then was 'discovered' by producer Gerd Plez at the grand old age of 79. Gerd persuaded her to join him in the studio to record a version of Lou Reed's classic Walk on the Wild Side.

A modicum of international fame followed: she appeared on the David Letterman show, released further singles - including her versions of Do You Really Want to Hurt Me and Wild Thing - and appeared in several more movies and on TV. Unfortunately this new-found fame would not last long: Gerty passed away in August 1990 and her ashes were scattered at sea.

So here are two old ladies doing what they do (or rather did) best: Rosie with Alice Blue Gown and Gerty with Walk on the Wild Side. Enjoy!

If there's one lesson that history has taught us, then surely it is that sports men and women should never, ever be allowed to set foot in a recording studio. This applies exponentially to groups of sports personalities: a solo single by a snooker player is always going to be dreadful, but a single by four of them (as in the snooker supergroup Four Away, featuring Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, Jimmy 'Whirlwind' White, 'Captain' Kirk Stevens and Tony 'I don't have a nickname' Knowles) is a guaranteed car crash.

Submitted for your approval this week are both sides of the horrific 1988 release from Liverpool Football Club,

Anfield Rap, and its B-side Anfield Rap (Red Machine Dub) was issued ahead of the 1988 FA Cup Final against Wimbledon FC. Written by Liverpool's midfielder Craig Johnston (and, apparently, an uncredited Derek B), the song reached number 3 in the UK Singles Chart. Supposedly the record was meant as a ‘parody’ of Hip Hop, British rap and a send up of the fact that there were so few local players in the current Liverpool team. According to Johnston: “They were all Scots, Irish, Welsh, a Dane, a Zimbabwean, an Australian.

“The whole thing was about the dressing room craic. It was about McMahon and Aldridge and accents and how the other lads didn't talk like them.” John Aldridge and Steve McMahon were the only two native Liverpudlians in the regular line up: the other players featured included John Barnes (predating his appearance on the equally terrible football-related record, the England New Order 45 World In Motion by two years), Bruce Grobbelaar, Alan Hansen, and Jan Molby. The record also featured manager Kenny Dalglish, ITV football commentator Brian Moore plus archived voice clips from former manager Bill Shankly and a badly sampled section of The Beatles’ version of Twist and Shout.

In his 2012 article Why are Sports Songs so Hard to get Right, the BBC’s Mark Savage credited the song as "the worst offender... an inexplicably awful track, which sees grown men struggle with the cadence of spoken English.” It also, as Savage points out “rhymes ‘hard as hell’ with ‘Ars-e-nell’.”

Sadly Derek B passed away at the ridiculously young age of 44 in 2009. I believe most of the other aural offenders are still extant.

Enjoy!

Today's slice of nonsense is a piece of ear shattering, head banging heavy metal from the rock god that is Billy Joel.

Yes, you read that right: Billy Joel.

For before Mr Joel began his career as a simpering, piano playing songsmith, before he married a model wrote an international smash about her and divorced her, before his attempted suicide by drinking furniture polish and before his box office-busting tours with Elton John, Billy Joel was a sub-Jon Lord-esque keyboard player in a heavy metal duo called Attila.

Formed from the ashes of his previous band the Hassles, Attila consisted of Joel on keyboards and vocals and drummer Jon Small. Small was Joel's best friend; it was he who rushed Joel to hospital after his attempted suicide and he who was repaid when Joel ran off with Small's wife. The pair seem to have patched things up though, and have collaborated on several projects since.

But back to Attila.

The duo released just one album, the self-titled Attila in 1970, and it’s just about the most ridiculous, bombastic piece of rock dross you’re ever likely to hear. Housed in a ridiculous sleeve, featuring the pair dressed as medieval soldiers surrounded by hanging animal carcasses like a brace of dark ages butchers, it was described by Joel himself as ‘psychedelic bullshit’. Pleasingly, the album features such inspired song titles as Amplifier Fire Part 1: Godzilla, Amplifier Fire Part 2:March of the Huns and Brain Invasion. Says Joel: “We had about a dozen gigs and nobody could stay in the room when we were playing. It was too loud. We drove people literally out of clubs.”

Called ‘the worst album released in the history of rock & roll’ by critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, why not have a listen to a couple of tracks of this preposterous drivel and decide for yourself? Here, for your delectation, is Attila with Wonder Woman and Rollin’ Home.

Enjoy!

One of the most enjoyable aspects of compiling music for this blog has been discovering (or re-discovering) music, artists or companies that are now all-but forgotten. In the song-poem field this happens all the time: although the American Song-Poem Music Archive is exhaustive it hasn’t been updated for almost a decade, and collectors are constantly turning up new recordings. During the years I’ve been collecting song-poems I’ve ‘found’ at least four companies not listed there or on any other song-poem resource, including Circle-D(with at least two Rod Rogers/Rodd Keithreleases), Globe imprints HFC and Kandee, and 50s New York outfit Vanity. I’ve also discovered UK companies who licensed song-poem material – Emerald (a Decca imprint) and Polydor offshoot Nashville.

I’ve also been able to bring you almost-lost recordings by people such as the great Leona Anderson and the inestimable Mrs Miller, and lay claim to having rediscovered the genius of Grace Pauline Chew. But one thing I never thought I would turn up would be a previously undocumented release by one of the all-time giants of bad music: Marcy Tigner.

You all know Marcy Tigner: she’s the Christian trombonist-turned vent act who releases a slew (anything up to 40) albums under the Marcyor Little Marcy tag. You know this. You also know that before she was encouraged to take up ventriloquism that she released a couple of instrumental albums under her own name.

Yet I doubt if many of you knew that, between her brace of trombone albums and the first Marcyrelease, she released a bizarre, three-track EP under her own name using her own, odd, childlike voice rather than employing her later shtick of masquerading as a wooden dolly. Get Googling: pretty much all you’ll find are links to the eBay auction for the very EP I now own. None of the Marcy fan sites mention it: none of the weirdo music blogs I frequent seem to have featured it. A genuine rarity: the real missing link. Dating from the very early 1960s I guess.

Here, in its entirety, are the three tracks from that EP: Marcy Tigner’s version of the standard Mairsie Dotes, plus Me and My Teddy Bear and Shake Me, I Rattle. None of the songs are credited: Mairsie Dotes is a novelty song composed in 1943 by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston; Shake Me, I Rattle (written by Hal Hackady and Charles Naylor) has been recorded a number of times, including in 1958 by the Lennon Sisters and by Marion Worth in 1962. Me and My Teddy Bear (Winters-Cootes) has been recorded by dozens of artists – including those as disparate as Mitch Miller and Peter Gabriel.

Enjoy!

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that (seemingly) never ends. Apologies for being missing in action last week, but we were moving house and I was without internet access for a few days.

Still, let’s get back to work. The oddity I present for you today does push the boundaries a little in as much as this is clearly a novelty record – albeit it a particularly bad one. I usually try to avoid novelties but as long time followers of The World’s Worst Recordswill know, sometimes they are simply unavoidable.

This particular disc ‘celebrates’ the crimes of one Dennis Andrew Nilsen, serial killer and necrophiliac who is also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer. Nilsen murdered 15 young men in London between 1978 and 1983, retaining his victims' bodies before dissecting their remains and disposing of them via burning or flushing the remains down a lavatory. Convicted of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder in November 1983, he became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer as a number of his crimes were committed at his home at 23 Cranley Gardens in the Muswell Hill district of North London.

Released before Nilsen was found guilty (which is why the murderer is never name checked), Somebody’s In My Drain (they got the title right on the label if not the sleeve) and its pointless sub-dub B-Side Somebodies Parts 1 & 2 (Chopped version) were issued on Secret Records by the unknown Dinah Rodd and the Drains - a play, for those who didn’t immediately get the sledgehammer-subtle humour, on the name of Dyna Rod, the nation’s favourite drain unblocking service. Secret was better known, at that time, for issuing records by acts involved in the second wave of British punk: the Exploited, Info Riot, 999, the 4 Skins and Chron Gen among them. It’s widely believed that Dinah Rodd was either one of these groups masquerading under a pseudonym or a ‘supergroup’ made up of members of some of them. Unfortunately no-one has dared own up to committing this audio crime. Secret also released a 45 by Keith Chegwin and his brother Jeff. Wouldn’t it be wonderful…

The unnamed singer/lyricist of these tasteless tracks clearly hasn’t done his homework. He mentions living at 22 Melrose Avenue, Cricklewood, yet Nilsen began his crime spree at 195 Melrose Avenue. He was arrested after problems in the drains at 23 Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill. Still, what do facts have to do with anything?

Anyway, here are both sides of this rightfully-obscure 45. Enjoy!

Happy Easter everybody. And what better way to celebrate the season than another round of creepy Christian ventriloquism? A couple of real oddities for you today courtesy of Bob Bradford and his daughter Debbie Ann, and the utterly nuts Geraldine and Ricky.

First up are Geraldine and Ricky. Hailing from Datona Beach, Florida, (although she later moved to Alabama to continue her ministry) Geraldine Ragan and her puppet Ricky have been active since the end of the 60s. Married to professional golfer Dave Ragan, Geraldine and Rickyhave performed across the U.S and are (or were as recently as 2011) still surprisingly popular on Christian cruises.

Geraldine believes her talent is a gift from God. Her future path was shaped when she attended a youth camp while she was still a teenager. “There was a ventriloquist there,” she told the Shelby County Reporter, “And I thought ‘If God can use a ventriloquist, he can use me.’” Geraldine immediately set out to learn her art. After high school she was offered a job at Disneyland, but declined in order to dedicate her life to full-time Christian service.

I just don’t get the weird world of Christian ventriloquism. But then again I’ve always thought ventriloquism was a little creepy. I can see how it works in front of an audience, but on record or on the radio it’s just someone putting on a stupid voice. So why are there so many of them?

The track presented here is from side one of her seminal album Trees Talk Too. Recorded in the studio in front of a small (presumably invited) audience, unfortunately the album is unbanded, so I’ve given you the first four minutes or so of side one: the Nickel and the Dollar/the Grand Canyon and A Million Dollars. If you want more get Googling; it’s out there. Geraldine and Ricky have issued a number of other recordings, including the High Cost of Being Lost(with E J Daniels) and a couple of live videos if you’re at all interested.

The second track, and I have to thank the good folk at WFMUfor bring this to the world’s attention, comes from the album Fun and Inspiration With… released around 1964/5 by ventriloquist and youth evangelist (as it says on the cover) Bob Bradford.

Bob's act, which debuted around 1953, included his ‘friends’ Jiggers Johnson (who introduces the track), Leo the Lion, Alfred the Dragon, Snooky Snitzel and Whiskers the Wabbit. A decade later he decided to incorporate daughter Debbie Ann in his ministry, teaching her the art of ventriloquism and allowing the little moppet both air and studio time.

On Joy Joy Joy Debbie Ann Bradford is joined by her own group of ‘friends’, namely Ann Slanders (clearly a play on Ann Landers, the pen-name used by various advice columnists from 1943 onwards) and Donny the Donkey. Although the track begins with Debbie and Ann limping their way through the classic children's inspirational tune, it starts to get downright weird once Donny the Donkey appears. Debbie’s own talents are limited to say the least, and her attempt at voicing both Ann and Donny are pretty stilted – the peculiar exchange which occurs between Debbie and Donny is clearly supposed to reduce the pre-teen audience to fits of laughter, but it’s about as funny as a punch in the face. Apparently Debbie is still working today, under her married name Debbie Gaccetta.

Still, spare a thought for poor old Jesus as your tucking into you chocolate eggs this weekend: it’s him these crazies are working for!

Enjoy!

Long time WWR contributor Ross Hamilton, aka The Squire, has just posted his latest podcast - featuring yours truly prattling on about my 20 favourite bad records. The track listing (below) will be familiar to many, but it includes a couple of songs I've not featured here before.

You’re The Only One For Me – Hank & Jimmy

Moon Crazy – The Planets

Der Holler Rache (Queen Of The Night Aria) – Florence Foster Jenkins

Downtown – Mrs. Miller

Yodel Blues – Sam Sacks

Sweet Angelina – Mister “G”

Jenny Beloved – Dick Kent

How Long Are You Staying – Bill Joy

Portland Rose Song – Bert Lowry

Prends Moi – Mme St. Onge

I Love Little Pussy – Little Macy

Jesus Loves Me – Baby Lulu

Phase “1 2 3” – Ken ‘Nevada’ Maines

Marinella – Larry London

Cousin Mosquito – Congress-Woman Malinda Jackson Parker

Fluffy – Gloria Balsam

It’s All Rite… - Barbara Markay

Mr. Tambourine Man – William Shatner

Paralyzed – The Legendary Stardust Cowboy

I Want My Baby Back – Jimmy Cross

Fancy a listen? You can find it (and download it if you wish) right here. Many thanks Ross, it was great to finally meet you, share a pint and chat about our joint obsession.

The son of a famous music hall (vaudeville) comedian, Fred Emney is probably best known to people of my generation not for his countless appearances in British film comedies or for his long-running TV show but for being one of the staples of many a TV impressionist’s act in the 1970s.

Born in Lancashire in 1900, Fred grew up in London and began his career on the stage there: his sisters Doris and Joan also trod the boards. He made his (uncredited) film debut in 1931, in the musical comedy A Man of Mayfair, and went on to appear in dozens of British and International movies, including Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, the original and far superior version of the Italian Job and the Magic Christian. Fred also appeared in Fun at St Fanny’s, described by one critic as having the worst comedy script in the history of the cinema.

Starting in 1955, Fred had his own television show, Emney Enterprises which, typically of the day, featured guest stars, comedic sketches and usually a spot where Fred would sit at the piano and play a popular melody or, often, a piece he had composed himself. Apparently he also had a short spell as straight man to piggy puppets Pinky and Perky. He was perpetually cast in the role of ‘posh fat bloke’ (he weighed in at over 22 stone), invariably wearing a monocle and puffing on a fat cigar; when he appeared on the popular radio show Desert Island Discs in 1952 his one luxury item was a box of cigars.

His prowess as a pianist persuaded Decca to drag Fred into the studio in 1958 to record the tracks for this EP release. Three of the songs, If I Should Cry Over You, Whispering and The One I Loveare pretty typical examples of Fred’s piano style: accompanied by an over-eager cinema organist he plinks his way perfectly acceptably through the songs. But the final track, Roses of Picardy, is the pip. We’re almost half way through the song when Fred, unwisely, decides to let his vocal chords loose: although Fred recites the lyrics rather than sings them his delivery is about as warm and sincere as Criswell’s. He really should have stuck to tickling the ivories.

Fred Emney died in Bognor Regis, on Christmas Day 1980.

You can hear the whole EP at the rather wonderful Lord of the Boot Sale - where the cover image (above) came from.

Enjoy!

The disco craze was responsible for many, many heinous hits and easily some of the worst (and often most tenuous) novelties imaginable. But if you thought Disco Duck by Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots was about as stupid as it could get, you obviously haven't met Freddy, the Disco Frog.

I first discovered this terrible record at the essential Music for Maniacs blog, courtesy of occasional WWR contributor Windbag. Its utter appallingness aside, what’s really fascinating about this release is the man behind it: Major Bill Smith.

Even if you don’t recognise the name, I’ll guarantee you’ve rubbed musical shoulders with Major Bill Smith. The Fort Worth-based Major enjoyed a fair bit of success as a record producer early in his career, with huge international hits for Bruce Channel and Paul And Paula as well as the early teenage car-crash biggie Last Kiss. He also had dealings with the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, grabbing a producer and publisher credit on Paralyzedand reportedly absconding with the tapes for Ledge’s first full-length album. In the 1980's the cut-price Colonel Parker was also claiming to be the manager of Elvis Presley, releasing records (and even a telephone interview) which, he claimed, were recorded long after the King had apparently left this world for the big burger bar in the sky. He also issued, under his own name, Cry Of An Unborn Child, a sub-Lil’ Markie slice of in utero schmaltz which may well appear here at a later date.

But back to today’s record. Written and performed by Major Bill Smith with Zane and Hogan, the terrible Freddy, the Disco Frog was issued on Smith’s own Le Cam label around 1978, as the B-Side to Elvis tribute Requiem to the King. After a long and colourful career in music Smith passed away, at the age of 72, on September 12, 1994.

Enjoy!

Happy Friday everyone. And what better way to celebrate the start of a lovely, sunny weekend than with a brace of recordings from one of my very favourite song-poem companies, Columbine?

Columbine produced an almost endless series of albums in the 70s and early 80s, as well as hundreds of singles and EPs. If their catalogue is to be believed there could be as many as 300 or more albums in their Now Sounds of Today series alone. Each of their albums contained anything up to 20 different tracks, all from aspiring hit makers who really should have known better, and all packaged in generic sleeves - often with different catalogue numbers used for the sleeve and disc.

Because song poem outfits rely entirely on the material submitted, and because so many of their customers are obsessed with the big man in the sky, there are an inordinate number of song-poems about God. However, for some odd reason – it could be simply because of the publications Columbine chose to advertise in - Columbine seem to have produced more religious dreck than the rest of them put together. They certainly knew their audience: several of their singers (including Kay Weaver and John Fluker) have gone on to care out careers in Christian music.

The two songs presented here barely scratch the surface, but give a good indication of the type of material the company pumped out.

There’s not a lot to say about either Kay Weaver’s Hell Express, from the 281^st volume in the Now Sounds of Todayseries. This is Columbine’s contribution to the war on drugs. at least I think that’s the idea; it could just as easily be an advert for a local pusher. Kay’s voice is totally unsuited to the material and the arrangement; she sounds to me as if she’s doing a voice-over for a Film Board of Canada public information film. It’s ridiculous, as is the 'name' of the composer - Cracked Eyes.

Next up is John-Boy Perkins (maybe Columbine were trying to attract fans of The Waltons) with the stupid He First Loved Me from one of the company’s many, many EPs (HV 168, fact fans). This is much more typical of Columbine’s religious output: dull, insipid arrangements, flat vocals and about as engaging as cold sick. Just the thing for a sunny Friday morning.

Enjoy!

You’ll probably know her best for her scenery-chewing star turn in Ken Russell’s film version of the Who’s Tommy, where she tries her best to look seductive whilst rolling about in a pool of champagne and baked beans, but the Swedish-born actress Ann-Margret has also released a number of albums during her long career. She may have gained cult status as an actress with appearances in movies such as Kitten With a Whipand Carnal Knowledge, but it’s her short-lived stab at being a disco diva that we’re interested in here – specifically her self-titled 1980 album, a couple of tracks from which I present for you today.

Ann-Margret began her recording career, with RCA, in 1961 – the same year she made her screen debut (in the Frank Capra comedy Pocketful of Miracles). Her first album - And Here She Is: Ann-Margret– was produced in Nashville and featured Chet Atkins, the Jordanaires (Elvis Presley's backing singers) and the Anita Kerr Singers – who featured among their number one Gene Merlino. An attempt to market her as 'female Elvis' led to her scoring her first minor hit (I Just Don't Understand, taken from her second album) and to co-starring with The Burger King in his 1964 movie Viva Las Vegas.

She went on to release eight albums during the 1960s and appear on a number of soundtracks, but then nothing until 1980, when this mess – simply titled Ann-Margret - appeared in the stores. Short - just five tracks in total – it’s a simpering, unsophisticated disco mess: poor lyrics, insipid production and a vocal performance which could just as easily have been phoned in. A-M’s career was built on her sexual appeal, but this collection is about as impotent as her one-time co-star would have been before he choked down his last fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. Badly dated Euro-disco, it’s Barbara Markay without the smut. Luckily her comeback album would not only be her first album for over ten years, it would also prove to be her last for more than two decades.

It took her more than 20 years to get over this diabolical rubbish, during which time she concentrated on looking after her family (she’s been married to actor Roger Smith since 1967), playing Vegas and appearing in the occasional made-for-TV movie. In 2001 she returned to the recording studio, issuing a gospel album God Is Love: The Gospel Sessions, which earned her a Grammy Nomination, and three years later released Ann-Margret's Christmas Carol Collection. Now well into her 70s, it’s doubtful she’ll never again reach the heights (or plumb the depths) touched by this rotten disco mess though.

Enjoy!

Christmas 2012 (Part Two)

Christmas 2012 (Part Three)

A Rose By Any Other Name

Sweet Angelina

On The Guest List

God Only Knows

Everything Else is Really Lame

You Went Too Far

Umbrellas at the Ready

80 in the 80s

They do Though, Don't They?

Billy Joel: Rock God

Mairsie and Marcy

Sound of the Underground

Easter Eggstravaganza

The Squire Presents

A Rose by Any Other Name

How Long Can Disco On?

Expressway to Hell

Love Rush