Welcome to the utterly deluded world of Melvin G Fromm Jr, the singer-songwriter who, for the last 15 years or so, has quietly been beavering away at the coalface of country-lounge music. Hailing from the town of Gap in Pennsylvania, since 1999 Fromm’s fertile mind has been responsible for more than 270 finished and recorded songs: all of which are, at the very least, a little off-kilter and some of which are hideously brilliant.
When listening to the wild song stylings of Melvin G Fromm Jr I am immediately reminded of two of my favourite bad singers – Nicholas Gilio and W L Horning, both of who have featured on this blog before. Often, as was also true of both Gilio and Horning, Melvin has employed modern-day song-poem outfits and session singers to add a bit of spit and polish to his tunes. Again like both Wesley and Nick, Melvin also occasionally takes his own turn behind the microphone – with spectacularly inept results.
“A lot of people always ask me how did I get started in music,” says Melvin on one of his many internet pages. “Well I sat down and wrote a song about my then girlfriend, now wife, and sent it with other songs I wrote to overseas radio on CD just to see what would happen. I had a Canada DJ named Carmen Kilburn like my music and we became good friends & he really helped me in my music in a big way. Carmen past away (sic) in 2006 but he will always have a special place in my heart for all he did for me as he told me I should start my own record label for my own music.”
That Canadian DJ has a lot to answer for – although don’t get the idea that he was the Kenny Everett of the Canucks: Carmen Kilburn, who actually departed from this earth in June 2005, only became a volunteer DJ on community radio after retiring from a lifetime working in law.Discover for yourself what Mr Kilburn saw in our Mel by listening to the two tracks I’ve included here: Bowled a Strike andOuch, Love Struck Me (are you sensing a theme here?)
Inspired by his international success, Melvin formed the four-piece band Fromm's Country Music to create what his official press release describes as ‘an exciting, diverse sound which appeals to lifelong country fans as well as bright eyed newcomers. With plenty of contemporary pop sensibilities and a strong inflection of Christian values, Fromm's Country Music fits comfortably into fan's minds and hearts’.The band has issued four albums along with many, many download-only tracks.
More recently Melvin has attempted to branch out into the song-poem field on his own, offering would be hit songwriters the chance to have their poems enhanced by a Melvin G Fromm tune. I’m guessing his latest business venture proved unsuccessful: at the time of writing Mel’s website www.frommscustomsongs.com is in hibernation.
All of Mel’s tracks can be purchased from www.productiontrax.com and a whole bunch are available via CDBaby and iTunes. Go have a listen…you’ll find some perfectly ordinary country songs performed by various members of Fromm’s Country Music as well as many. Many examples of Melvin at his best (or worst).
Recommended to me by WWR follower Graham Clayton, today’s disc, the peculiarly-named Shadow Valley and Iron Triangles, is three minutes of turgid Australian jingoistic nonsense masquerading as a call to arms to support the conflict in Vietnam . The title isn’t mentioned in the ‘song’, but it’s fairly safe to assume the ‘shadow valley’ part references the Lord’s Prayer; according to Wikipedia ‘In United States politics, the iron triangle comprises the policy-making relationship among the congressional committees, the bureaucracy, and interest groups’.
Written by Andrew Jones MP (who, at the time, was the youngest person ever elected to the Australian House of Representatives: he’s not the same Andrew Jones MP who is currently serving as the Conservative member for Harrogate) Shadow Valley and Iron Triangles is credited to the group The Young Australians but is actually narrated by Rex Heading, a former DJ turned TV exec who went on to create the popular Aussie kids’ character Humphrey B Bear, over a version of the standard Waltzing Matilda. Issued in 1967, although the song was banned by several radio stations it was a sizeable hit in certain parts of the country, even reaching Number One in the Adelaide district.
Young and idealistic he may have been, but Jones – who was elected to the House of Representatives in November 1966 – was perhaps not the best person to be playing at politics.In the same year that he had his hit single the naive young Liberal MP made the mistake of telling a journalist that "half the MPs in Parliament are drunk half the time". His faux pas ended in humiliation: he was forced to stand in the House of Representatives and apologise to Parliament.
The song later appeared on the 1986 double album Bob Hudson & Glenn A. Baker Present Antipodean Atrocities: Dubious Ditties, Patriotic Pap and Enthusiastic Excesses that Made Australia Grate. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to track down an audio clip of the song’s B-side Too Many Twisted Trails. Anyone out there help with that?
Today’s post was inspired, once again, by WWR follower Graham Clayton who, by bringing one of these discs to my attention, reminded me that I had not posted the other.
The first disc, one I had never heard before Graham mentioned it, comes from the New York-based psychedelic act the Blues Magoos. Pretty much unknown in the UK, they scored a solitary hit in the US in 1967 with the single We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet. Originally formed in 1964 as the Trenchcoats, by 1968 – after releasing a string of flop singles - the band had fractured in two and, after issuing a couple of poorly-selling albums, by 1972 they were gone for good.
Or so it seemed. In 2008 the Blues Magoos (featuring original members Ralph Scala, Peppy Castro and Geoff Daking) reunited for two concerts, including one supporting The Zombies at the Fillmore New York. Since then the band has continued to play live and, in 2012, they issued their first new album in 42 years, Psychedelic Resurrection.
However the track we feature today comes from the B-side to their 1967 flop single One By One. The utterly peculiar Dante’s Inferno, credited to all five members of the band, is a shockingly awful psychedelic jam that should never have been committed to tape and, quite obviously, took about as long to record as it does to listen to. The Brian Auger-like keyboard stabs, ridiculous guitar work and Yoko Ono-esque wailing make it sound like a Mothers of Invention live outtake. Ignore the crackling at the beginning of the disc: it’s not scratched – them’s ‘flames’ you can hear.
Hearing that abomination reminded me of another B-side by another 60s US outfit, this time the much more successful – with well over a dozen hits on the Billboard charts - The Turtles. The band, led by vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (who would later become known as Flo and Eddie and would join Zappa in the Mothers of Invention) are best known for their international hit Happy Together, although they scored their first hit with a cover of Bob Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe in 1965 and would continue to make the charts until 1970.
Umbassa and the Dragon was originally issued as the B-side to their 1968 single Sound Asleep: the backing track to the ‘song’ is actually the fade out of the A-side slowed down. Such invention! This ridiculous noise was ignored when the band came to compile their next album and was all but whitewashed from musical history until Rhino Records decided to include it on their collection The World’s Worst Records Volume One (Hmm…where have I heard that phrase before?)
Today’s bad record (well, bad download) appears here by request. The fact that the track – UKIP Calypso by The Independents - has now been ‘withdrawn’ and so (in theory) will soon become harder to find is an added bonus. Grab it while you can – if you can be bothered.
The Independents are, or rather is, DJ and professional Cliff Richard impersonator Mike Read. On Wednesday of this week (October 22), Read turned to the press to announce that he was pulling his own song, a track he had happily promoted just two days before, following criticism that it was racist.
He said that he was sorry for “unintentionally causing offence” with the tune, which he performs in a fake Caribbean accent. Read had defended his song after some objected to his using calypso music to promote Ukip’s anti-immigration agenda. “It was never meant to be remotely racist,” he said. “It’s an old-fashioned political satire … you can’t sing a calypso with a Surrey accent.” The song’s withdrawal ruined Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s hope that the song would reach No 1.
Read said: “I’m so sorry that the song unintentionally caused offence. That was never my intention and I apologise unreservedly if anyone has taken offence. I’ve asked the record company to withdraw the single immediately.” Clearly his 'record company' wern't listening: at the time of writing the track was still available through Amazon.
Currently fronting a post-lunch magazine show on BBC Radio Berkshire, the ghastly Read has a history of issuing bad recordings: in 2009 he released – as The Shooting Stars - the dismal download-only single My Christmas Card to You. Fellow former Radio 1 DJ David Hamilton – who has previously appeared on this blog – turns up in the video but doesn’t actually perform on the song. Issued to raise money for charity, I can’t imagine the modest royalties this piece of trash would have garnered would have bought many bandages. Read has claimed that UKIP Calypso was also issued to raise funds for a charity, this time for the Red Cross and the fight against Ebola. The Red Cross have issued a statement saying that they would not accept a penny from the sales of Read’s racist rant.
And racist it is. Ignore his pathetic claim that ‘you have to sing a calypso in a Jamaican accent. I like Jamaicans; honest’ or whatever the twice bankrupt looser said, you cannot escape the fact that any song that contains the couplet ‘open the borders let them all come in/ Illegal immigrants in every town’ is a tad less than welcoming to non-Brits. UKIP Calypso is not Read’s first brush with political posturing: the smug dick is a former Tory supporter who, in 2006, entertained guests at a Conservative Conference dinner with a ten-minute political rap! UKIP Calypso is awful: production values are non-existent and the 'cover' art must have taken about two minutes to toss off. One can't help wondering if this pile of crap was issued with the express intention of its being banned or withdrawn, simply in order to gain more press overage for the racist, homophobic, right wing nutjobs currently masquerading so successfully as a proper political party. Read's ridiculous song is not the first to bolster the party faithful: last year Anna-Marie Crampton issued the appalling dance tune Better Vote Ukip which - like its author - sank like a stone. Ms Crampton was suspended by the party soon after over reports that she had posted anti-Semitic comments online.
Read’s attempts to realise musical greatness go back 35 years. In 1979 he wrote and performed the song High Rise under the name The Trainspotters and followed this in 1980 with My Town asThe Ghosts. He wrote the lyrics to the theme from the TV series Trainer, recorded by his idol Cliff Richard as More toLife. In 1991 he provided a guest rap on Slade's UK Top 30 hit Radio Wall of Sound. More recently he’s had minor chart hits with re-recordings of Hank Mizell's Jungle Rock and Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime and, in 2005, his song Grief Never Grows Old(released by the One World Project, which again included Sir Cliff in its number) actually made the UK Top Five, raising money for charities working with tsunami victims. He’s also written music to accompany poems written by John Betjeman and has staged a number of musicals, including Young Apollo (a musical about the life of Rupert Brooke); Oscar (a 2004 show about Oscar Wilde which was derided by critics and closed after one performance) and Cliff - The Musical (which closed after three months, probably because Read took one of the lead roles).
Well known to TV viewers for presenting the 80s shows Saturday Superstore and Pop Quiz, in 2004 he was one of the contestants recruited for the outback-based ITV show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here, although his stay in the jungle was short-lived and he became the first ‘celebrity’ to be evicted. Two days later John Lydon walked out of the show (it’s unlikely that the two events were in any way related).
If all that wasn’t enough to hate, in 2007 he foisted his Choc Art on the world: ‘paintings’ made with liquorice allsorts and other sweets – including a reinterpretation of the Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper sleeves that look like they were slung together by a five-year-old. Oh, and he was entirely responsible for having Relax banned from the airwaves (even though he’s since tried to claim otherwise). Would you be surprised to discover that he once worked as an estate agent? If you'd like to know more about the shady world of music and politics there's a whole chapter on the subject in The World's Worst Records Volume Two - although for that you'll have to wait until next year! Enjoy!
I occasionally feel a bit mean when taking a pot shot at a charity record – after all, if it’s for a good cause surely you can overlook the wretchedness of a recording? But not today: this record is an abomination, and as such is a worthy inductee here at the hall of infamy we call The World’s Worst Records.
Issued in 1986, the same year that its top-billed miscreant was suspended for two months by the England and Wales Cricket Board for smoking cannabis, Take Time Out to Care is as miserable a slice of hokey country and western as is ever likely to assault your eardrums. Credited to cricketer Ian Botham plus Bobby Buck and Poacher (a country music act from Warrington in Cheshire who won TV talent show New Faces in 1977), the song is a dull as ditch water strum-along which barely features the main artist: Botham turns up for a couple of spoken lines in the middle of this muddle and that’s it. No doubt he went off on one of his Land's End to John O'Groats walks (in the interest of fairness I should probably note that Botham has helped raise more than £12million for good causes and was knighted for services to charity in 2007).
Take Time Out to Care is backed with the equally poor Caribbean-influenced Ian, Viv and Me (although Botham is again credited, this time he didn’t even bother to phone it in). A truly horrid song, in which Buck proceeds to tell the world how everything will be better when he gets together with his great mates Botham and Viv Richards, at least it doesn't feature the A-side's whiny lines about 'the helpless kids out there' and Botham's feeble, one-verse recitation. Nor does Buck affect a fake black accent, a la last week's entry, Mike Read and the UKIP Calypso. Luckily neither Buck nor Botham bothered the record buying public again.
Botham has long irritated me: actually to say he irritates me is an understatement. According to Wikipedia ‘he is generally regarded as being England's greatest ever all-rounder’. I’d go further: I think he’s an all-round prat.
I was working at the St Pierre Golf and Country Club in Chepstow many years ago (1987 to be precise, just 12 months after he was so kindly trying to raise funds for leukaemia research) when a drunken Beefy – there to take part in a pro-am celebrity golf tournament – verbally and physically assaulted several members of staff, actually headbutting one (a waiter named Marcus, fact fans) and throwing tomatoes at another (a waitress named Fran), all the while bellowing ‘do you know who I am?’ The incident – which made front page headlines and is recounted in Simon Wilde's biography Botham: the Power and the Glory–was apparently the result of a drinking contest between Botham, Welsh‘comedian’ Max Boyce and golfer Ian Woosnam. Botham talks about drinking with Woosnam at St Pierre in his won boook My Sporting Heroes but tactfully skips over his bully-boy braggadocio.
Every once in a while I come across a record so diabolically awful that It makes me consider the possibility that I may have finally come to the end of my quest: that I have finally found the World’s Worst Record.
Released in 1981 Cry From the Heart, backed with My Thankful Song, is a double-sided horror, two pro-life songs written and performed by a Franciscan monk who has spent more than 50 years spreading God’s word. Apparently being a member of the Order of Capuchin Friars Minor (OFM Cap) – whose lives, according to their founder St Francis of Assisi "consist in living in obedience, chastity and without property"– gives you the right to guilt women into abandoning their plans for abortion. As father Francis says on the reverse of the sleeve: “I would like to dedicate this song to any young girl or woman who may listen to it and decide not to have an abortion. Life is God's gift.”
According to www.timeforreflections.blogspot.co.uk‘the song has saved many babies from abortion. Their pregnant mothers heard the song and decided not to go ahead with abortion...Father Francis met a young boy who told him that his mother heard the song when pregnant and decided not to have an abortion. The boy said he owed his life to the priest. Father Francis has received over 20 other similar testaments of babies being saved.”
It’s no secret to followers of this blog – or to anyone who has read my book – that I am 100 percent pro-choice. That alone would make me hate this record, but its’ winsome lyrics and the priest’s sickly delivery shoot it into the stratosphere of bad records. Have a look at some of Father Francis’s words:
Why are we lying down, being drawn on four wheels?
Bang! We go through the door and there’s people dressed in green.
Everything seems so strange and so clean.
Mummy, if they hurt you, just let out a scream And I know someone will come to help you and me.
Mummy what’s going on? I am starting to cry
Come quickly they are forcing me to die. They are killing me mummy, they are pulling me apart My arms and my legs and now they’re at my heart.
It’s all very Diary of an Unborn Child, isn’t it? And before you get all holier than thou on me, or claim that I wouldn't ridicule this depressing pile o toss if it were performed by a Muslim rather than a Christian think again: I'd be aiming brickbats at anyone - irrespective of their faith - who thinks that they have the right to guilt other people out of what must be one of the most traumatic expriences of their lives.
The words, written by Father Francis himself, were – it is claimed on the sleeve – inspired by a poem written by a 13 year-old Glaswegian boy. The music is credited to Irish musician Phil Coulter, co-author of Puppet on a String, Congratulations, Forever and Ever (the Slik hit, not the Demis Rousoss song) and Back Home amongst many others.
Father Francis Maple has been singing in public form many years – he’s known in Catholic circles as the Singing Friar - and has released at least nine albums, containinga mixture of secular and religious songs, which were mostly recorded in Amazon Studios, Liverpool. According to www.timeforreflections.blogspot.co.uk the good Father ‘has raised over £1m for charity. He has also written several books (sermons, cooking recipes, jokes), and has contributed (and still does) to many newspaper columns and Catholic newspapers and magazines. He spends a lot of time travelling throughout the UK leading Missions in various Catholic churches’.
Well, good for him. Appearing in schools, churches and concert halls around the UK, he’s perhaps best known for his habit of singing the Lord’s praises in shopping centres – a habit which had him forced into a standoff with a town centre warden in Nuneaton in 2005. Said warden was branded a jobsworth after he tried to move on the busking monk, who had been visiting Nuneaton for over a decade to bolster his fundraising. The then 68-year-old priest was drawing crowds, belting out hits by the Dave Clark Five, The Searchers and – of course - Cliff Richard when the warden told him to cease and desist. “He was determined to get rid of me,” said Father Francis. “He said I should move and asked what authority I had to be here. He was like the warden in Dad's Army. I said he would have to move me - and I am fourteen and a half stone!”
Here’s a fine example of how the world – even the part of the world we cherish for our children – has been ‘dumbed down’ over the years.
Pedigree Dolls & Toys created Sindy in 1963. A rival to Barbie, Sindy's wholesome look and range of fashions and accessories made the little plastic doll one of the best selling toys in the UK - in fact she was the best selling toy in both 1968 and 1970. After an unsuccessful attempt to introduce Sindy in the United States in the late 1970s, Sindy was remodelled to look more American – a move which resulted in a decline in popularity and a lawsuit from Barbie’s manufacturer Mattel for copyright infringement, which was only settled after the doll’s then-owner Hasbro agreed to remodel Sindy's face. During the 1990s, Barbie's share of the doll market continued to grow while Sindy's diminished, but she was relaunched in 1999 and again in 2003, in celebration of her 40th anniversary.
Issued in 1966 Sindy Meets the Dollybeats is a fun little pop record issued by the manufacturers of Britain’s answer to Barbie. Side one contains the story of how she got to meet her favourite band of all time – faux Liverpudlian accents, Mary, Mungo and Midge sound effects and all. Side two features a song written by Cliff Warwick, the leader of the fictitious Dollybeats, especially for the little vinyl girl. Dolly wow!
The sleeve is a gas too. The flip of the cover bears short biographies of each member of the Dollybeats, and here we discover that it is Terry Coombes and not Cliff Warwick who is the lead guitarist of the Dollybeats, as the narrator of the A-side would have us believe. We also find out that Cliff was a former student at a Liverpool art school (remind you of anyone?) and how ‘thrilled’ Sindy is with her song. It’s a wonderful time capsule of an innocent era.
A few years later it was a whole different story. Gone is the childlike excitement, replaced by the anodyne disco drivel of Everybody Boogie!/We’re Havin' a Party! By the videO Kids (note the capital O and K, as if it’s OK to like this crap) who, as far as I can ascertain, are in no way related to the ‘other’ Video Kids featured on this blog previously Apparently this coupling comes from the ‘forthcoming album Let’s have a party – an all-star spectacular’. I’m not aware of the album ever being released, but the videO Kids did issue an album – You’re Never Too Young to Dance.
Apparently the videO Kids producers, Steve Gilston and Paul Lynton felt that the music industry was ignoring the pre-teens and aimed to give them something to dance to. Recording commenced in 1979; the 45 was given away free with certain Sindy dolls – it certainly was available inside the box of the Party Time Doll (circa 1981), and the success of the Sindy with a single lead to the release of the album You're Never Too Young to Dance in the same year. Peter Doyle – the former member of the New Seekers who sadly passed away in 2001 - sang lead on two of the tracks, and the album also features the talents of Sky/Blue Mink alumnus Herbie Flowers.
I've featured several Spanish acts here previously - including Los Punk Rockers, the pseudo-punk group who covered the entire Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks note for note, and the flamboyant, cross-dressing disco dunce Josmar Gerona - but until now I've not featured today's act, Jose Angel. And I've ignored Joe principally because I've been unable to track down any information about him. Although the song I feature here today is all over the internets the dozens of posts, YouTube videos and references all seem to stem from the same single copy of his solitary single - the heart-warming ballad Mother I am a GayChristian (Madre Soy Christiano Homosexual). Sounding like an outtake from an early Almodovar soundtrack – or the music to an 80s chocolate commercial – this 1979 single appears to be Jose’s one and only release. I've found his name attached to three other songs on MySpace, but of those there's only one that could possibly have any link - a song entitled No Te Modernices, performed by Juan Manuel but (possibly) written by our Jose.
Looking for all the world like legendary porn star Ron Jeremy (sans his famous moustache), in Hawaiian shirt, white slacks and brown loafers, Jose's song is a cry for acceptance, one that - I guess - will resonate with many men who struggle to balance their personal lives with their sexuality and their religious beliefs:
Mother, do not be sad, face of the Virgin,
I'm here for you
Mother, go ahead, You do not have fear
I am not a thief stealing hearts,
I have a heart, and it’s a good heart.
Who marginalises us is committing an error.
Mother, in my soul I feel a great pain,
For those who are marginalised without reason.
Mother, those who marginalise us, I think, sin against God
We think of the body and the soul
But I have a fragile heart,
Who marginalises us makes a error
Mother, I'm gay Christian,
It doesn’t matter that they’re whispering that I am a gay Christian.
Mother, I'm a gay Christian,
It matters more that I communicate,
Because I am a Christian homosexual
I mean, everyone, especially those who marginalise us,
We homosexuals are people like them, they will see.
We are not animals come from hell, we already carry a very large cross in life
So get over it; put that accusation behind us.
Think for a moment about the possibility of having a gay son.
My intention is not insulting, but I want you to accept me as a person.
So my song says: Mother, I am a Christian homosexual.
If it were not for the earnestness of his words I would have assumed that this was a spoof - perhaps something put together for a comedy show. the song has also turned up on the CD-only compilation La SANA Presenta Spanish Bizarro Volume 6. If anyone has any further info on Jose of his obscure disc please do let me know. Enjoy!
Welcome to the final ‘proper’ WWR post of 2014: next week we will commence our annual Christmas Cavalcade (and I’ve got some real horrors lined up for you) but for now we’re going to visit the career of one of the biggest stars of all time. Well, sort of.
To ‘celebrate’ the release of even more scrapings from the bottom of the Queen barrel (or the official issue of the Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury/Queen duet There Must be More to Life Than This if you prefer) we’re going to have a quick butcher’s at a few of the low spots in the King of Pop's oeuvre.
Jackson was one of the most creative people in pop music; he was also a total nutjob. He recorded some truly remarkable records but, like most artists who allow their egos to run rampant, he was not always on the ball, quality control-wise. Have a listen to The Girl is Mine, the first of the three – seriously, three – duets he recorded with Paul McCartney. The horrendous spoken tag (including the infamous I’m a lover, not a fighter line) is enough to make anyone puke. Written by Jackson and produced by Jackson and Quincy Jones, The Girl is Mine was released as the first single from Jackson's mega hit Thriller album. Jackson and McCartney would go on to record the duets Say Say Say and The Man for McCartney’s 1983 album Pipes of Peace. Although it was released as a single, Jackson never performed the song live - I wonder why? This dull duet peaked at Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100 and Number Eight in the UK. In 2008 one –man ego factory Will.i.am remixed The Girl Is Mine, thankfully wiping McCartney’s dire vocals, adding his own and slathering the whole thing with a new drum track. Unfortunately it was no better than the original.
Jackson had real form when it came to performing with others. Admittedly he got it right occasionally, but more often than not his duets are simply dreadful. A full decade after his recordings with McCartney he decided to add his vocal chops to a track from Eddie Murphy’s third album Love’s Alright: Watzupwitu. Voted by MTV viewers in 1999 as the third worst music video of all time, not even Jackson’s performance could compensate for Murphy’s shortcomings as a singer. Michael would, of course, revisit the thin eco message of the song’s pathetic lyrics in Earth Song. Murphy's album also included covers of songs by U2 and the Beatles and featured Paul McCartney amongst a number of stellar guest artists. I'm sensing a pattern here.
To round off today’s post a couple of Michael-related tracks. First up is When the Rain Begins to Fall, a rubbish slice of hi-NRG Europop by Michael’s brother Jermaine and failed actress turned singer Pia Zadora. This piece of drivel was – perhaps unsurprisingly – a huge hit in Europe, reaching Number One in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands and Number Two in Switzerland and Austria.
Taken from the dismal 1984 movie Voyage of the Rock Aliens, When the Rain Begins to Fall was written by Peggy March (who, as Little Peggy March, had enjoyed a Number One hit of her own in the US in 1963 with I Will Follow Him), Michael Bradley and Steve Wittmack. Zadora remains best known for her first two film roles, in the 1964 kiddie flopperoo Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and the 1982 sexploitation mess Butterfly - that's the film that focusses on an incestuous relationship between Zadora and Stacy Keach and includes a cameo from Orson Welles as a scenery-chewing judge.
Finally for this month and for this year (bar next month’s Christmassy countdown) here’s the cheesy novelty I'm in Love with Michael Jackson's Answerphone by Julie (sometimes credited as Julie B). Co-written and produced by Biddu – the man behind a bunch of UK hit singles in the 70s including Action Speaks Louder Than Words, Kung Fu Fighting, Now Is the Time and I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance) – this October 1984 single rips off several MJ themes (most notably Billie Jean, Beat It and Don't Stop Til You Get Enough) but even so was a miserable flop. With its whiny teenage vocals, cheap and dated keybord and drum machine sounds and a pathetic Michael impersonator to boot what's not to love?
Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s December which, of course, means it’s time for things to get a little Christmassy here at the World’s Worst Records. Today I bring you a trio of terrible tracks: as In previous years I’ll be providing you with a grab-bag of seasonal clunkers in the run up to Christmas Day, hopefully enough to allow you to compile your very own Christmas Hate List.
Released by a studio act under the name Santa’s Pixie Helpers – but sounding an awful lot like David Seville’s Chipmunks – The Animal’s Christmas Song backed with The Christmas Song was issued by PRI records, a division of Precision Radiation Instruments Inc. PRI were better known as a Geiger counter and radio equipment manufacturer and would enter the record business by merging with Tops Records – the company that produced soundalike covers of hits of the day (rather like an American version of the old Woolworth’s Embassy label) in 1958. The company went bankrupt in the mid 60s and their assets were sold to Pickwick International. This brace of tracks also appeared on the 1959 TOPS label album Sing Along With Santa's Helpers. My own copy of this 45 is a white label promo: some (not mine: I swiped this one from the 'net) appeared in a very rare picture sleeve, featuring the lyrics to the songs.
The third track today is by our old friend Lorene Mann – the woman who issued the dreadful pro-life horror Hide My Sin (A-b-o-r-t-i-o-n N-e-w Y-o-r-k). Today Lorene entertains us with the wonderfully non-PC Indian Santa Claus, written and released just in time for Christmas 1970, a tale of how native Americans were planning to scalp the evil white invaders as they lay in their beds awaiting the arrival of Father Christmas, but how they decide instead to give up their birthright for a few strips of leather presented by a Navajo Pere Noel. Tennessee-born tunesmith Mann, who died in May 2013 ages 76, moved to Nashville at the age of 19 to pursue a songwriting career, going on to pen songs for stars such including Kitty Wells and Skeeter Davis. She signed to RCA Records in 1964 and worked with Justin Tubb before carving out a solo career for herself. The singer, who co-founded the Nashville Songwriters Association International, was also an actress – appearing in the dreadful 1975 Burt Reynolds film W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings - and in 2011 she won the Maggie Cavender Award, in recognition of her ‘extraordinary service to the songwriting community’.
Enjoy!
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It’s never happened before but I guess it was inevitable that, one day, someone would approach me and ask for their record to be included on The World’s Worst Records blog.
Such an occurrence took place last week and I was, quite naturally, intrigued. I had intended to post nothing but Christmas-themed records during December but I think that The Last Few Days, the debut album by a young Canadian artist by the name of Cody Robertson, deserves your attention – hence this extra post. Oh, and he’s crowdfunding his next project and you’ve only got until December 23 if you want to get involved.
I’ll let Cody tell you his story himself: “I finished The Last Few Days in 2008, when I was just starting high school. Some of the songs are about experiences, dreams or jokes that I found interesting at the time. Some of the songs are not about any real events at all because, as a young person without a wide selection of life experiences to sing about, sometimes I would just sing silly songs or sing more ‘serious’ songs about experiences that I hadn't really had.”
Cody is a prime example of what Irwin Chusid would call an ‘outsider’ musician: he’s a young man with limited musical experience but who has something he wants to express. There’s lots to enjoy in the world of outsider music – and I’d certainly include acts like The Shaggs in that list – but there’s also a lot that troubles me. Many so-called outsider musicians are people who have serious mental health issues (Wildman Fischer and Jerry Solomon, for example), and there is a dichotomy at the heart of what many accept as outsider music. Clearly it’s perfectly alright to enjoy music by people whose creativity stems from their own experience (however uncomfortable those experiences are for the average listener), but it’s not acceptable to laugh at a ‘funny’ record that has been produced by someone who has health issues. Unless they intended that record to be humorous, of course.
Anyway, back to Cody: “I enjoy some of the work I did on the album, but a lot of the production, timing and singing makes me cringe. Almost every song I made got a place on the album, whereas many talented artists will make a lot of music and then choose only the best for their albums. Any album I complete represents quite an accomplishment for me because I am prone to procrastination and have a love of dreaming up and planning projects, but not finishing them.” I really like Cody’s honesty: as a teenager I would often dream up ideas for songs and I write a whole bunch of awful tunes which embarrass me to this day. Luckily very few people have heard them.
“In the six years since I released The Last Few Days I feel that I've grown as a person and as a musician,” Cody tells me, admitting candidly that being a musician “is certainly not my full time job. I think my next album shows a marked improvement over it. The songs are more genuine and I took more care when producing them. If I get around to it, I hope my next album after that will be better yet.”
I like Cody, and I genuinely like The Last Few Days. True, in places it is pretty cheesy, but he was just a teenager when he put this out, and I’d rather the naïve honesty and joy of a song like Brittany than any of the detestable output of a million other little teenage snots. Seriously: wouldn’t you rather listen to Cody’s Happy Song – which contains the brilliant line ‘I would tell the truth but it’s not really true’ and could easily be a They Might Be Giants outtake – than the hateful Video Games by the Black Out Band? The album’s failings are also its charms: his voice is off key and the instrumentation on a couple of tracks is out of sync, but some of the songs are really creative – this is far from awful. Yes, the keyboard part to Untitled is almost a direct steal from Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy, but if you’re going to plagiarise something you could do a lot worse - and I suspect it’s purely co-incidental (incidentally, I originally misread this as Untitled: pleasingly the song is called Untilted because Cody himself once misread the same word!) Yes, it sounds exactly like it was recorded in a bedroom – but so was Your Woman by White Town, and that was a massive hit. I laughed out loud at several points when listening to Hookfoot: I think you will too. ‘Your foot is a hook and you always fall down/And it’s funny’. It is.
If you go to http://codyrobertson.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-few-daysyou can download the whole album. Chuck him a couple of dollars while you’re there: he deserves it. He tells me that he’s only sold a bout 20 physical copies of the CD, and most of those were to family and friends. I hope those 20 people appreciate it.
Cody’s next album, Midsized Eras, is out in early 2015. He’s releasing it under the name Optional because he wants to distance himself from his older music, which I understand but I think it’s a shame. “I am trying to get it into the hands of people who are interested in it by doing a crowdfunding campaign,” he explains. “The main focus is selling 100 CDs for $1 each with free shipping.” You can find out more about Midsized Eras – and hear three songs from the project – at http://optionalsongs.bandcamp.com and preorder your CD there (you can, if you choose, pay more than a dollar).
“Making music is a hobby for me,” Cody tells me. “It's something that I love doing, but I would be more encouraged to keep making it if I knew that a few other people actually enjoyed it. I can always make it available for free download and hope someone finds it, but getting some CDs in to people's hands means more to me. I hope the campaign will generate enough interest to connect my music with those who find it interesting. We shall see!”
For the last three years Christopher Lee – yes, that Christopher Lee – has been issuing an annual, heavy metal Christmas single. His latest – Darkest Carols, Faithful Sing(a death metal take on Hark, the Herald Angels Sing) was released earlier this week and is available now from all of the usual download sites. He’s also issued a brace of metal albums Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which was arranged by Richie Faulkner, the lead guitarist of Judas Priest, Charlemagne: The Omens of Death– and mini-album Metal Knight.
Actor Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ, (May 27, 1922) became best known for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films; other notable roles include Lord Summerisle in the British horror film The Wicker Man (1973), Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Saruman in The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies, and Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. He was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011 and the BFI Fellowship in 2013. He was honoured with the Spirit of Metal award in the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Godawards ceremony.
To be honest the most recent single, and last year’s Heavy Metal Christmas Too aren’t that bad. However the first release (Heavy Metal Christmas) is diabolically awful, and I feel fully justified in bringing you this huge Christmas turkey today.
The two songs – Little Drummer Boy and Silent Night – are staggeringly bad: Lee, 90 at the time of recording, sings the carols in a fairly straight, if bombastic, manner but the musical accompaniment slathered over the top is ridiculous and more often than not completely out of time. It makes for painful listening.
There’s less than a week to go to the big day and, as we’re speeding towards Christmas, I thought I’d better give you a few more nativity nasties to listen to.
The first track today continues the World’s Worst Records’ proud history of bringing you Christmassy novelties by convicted sex criminals to whit the second, highly obscure, single by Laurie Lingo and the Dipsticks, aka Radio One DJ Paul Burnett and the sexual predator who once rejoiced in the nickname of the Hairy Monster, Dave Lee Travis.
In September Travis was given a suspended sentence of three months for indecently assaulting a woman in 1995. The 69-year-old had been found guilty of attacking a researcher who was working on BBC TV's Mrs Merton Show. He had already been cleared of 14 other charges. The former Top of the Pops presenter cornered the woman in the corridor of a television studio where she was smoking, commenting on her “poor little lungs” before squeezing her breasts. Delightful.
Live at the Blue Boar, the follow-up to Laurie Lingo’s huge hit Convoy GB, was originally backed by an instrumental disco version of Good King Wenceslas(which is not included here – it’s fairly pointless). It failed to chart.
Next up is the horrid Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas) by the late John Denver. Please Daddy… is the tale of a seven-year-old boy who pleads with his father to try his best not to pass out under the Christmas Tree. Denver, better known for Annie's Song, recorded Please Daddy… in 1975 for his album Rocky Mountain Christmas. There can’t be many festive songs that feature the lyrics
You came home at a quarter past eleven
Fell down underneath our Christmas tree
Please Daddy, don't get drunk this Christmas
I don't wanna see my Momma cry
In a deliciously ironic twist, Denver himself was charged with driving under the influence in 1994. He slammed his Porsche into a tree after “tossing back Scotch like lemonade,” as one witness put it. As it was his second alcohol-related smash in the Porsche in 12 months he could have gone to jail, but the judge let him off with a suspended sentence and community service. Denver died three years later when the plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay, California. He should not have been flying: although he had only recently purchased the plane Denver's medical certificate had been revoked in 1996 as he had failed to abstain from alcohol after his drink-drive arrests, effectively banning him from the cockpit.
Today’s third and fourth tracks - the appalling Christmas Conga and the risqué Minnie and Santa -comefrom Cyndi Lauper. Yes: honestly. These pieces of garbage are taken from her album Merry Christmas, Have a Nice Life!– an unmitigated flop which reportedly only sold 26,000 copies. With lyrics like this:
Come on and hold my hips a little longer
As we do the Christmas conga
Bonga, bonga, bonga! Do the Christmas conga!
…is that any surprise? Story has it that much of the album was recorded in a closet in Cyndi’s home. If the quality of the music track on Minnie and Santa is anything to judge by it may as well have been recorded in a dustbin.
Today’s final song is the wonderfully curmudgeonly The Man That Slits the Turkeys’ Throats at Christmas by Scottish folk-singer and songwriter Robin Laing. It is taken from the ‘alternative’ Christmas collection Bah Humbug, issued in 2002 by Greentrax, Scotland’s leading traditional music label. Laing began his recording career in 1989 with the album Edinburgh Skyline: he has also authored several books on whisky.
Ho, ho, ho...who'd be a turkey at Christmas? Enjoy!
Happy New Year everybody! Welcome to 2015, and to the ninth year of the World’s Worst Records. My, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?
To kick off this year I bring you Apology at Bedtime - the 1963 45 from one Dick Whittinghill, US singer, radio DJ, actor and voiceover artist - in all its winsome, sickly niceness. The sad tale of a father’s regrets, Apology at Bedtime is a maudlin little ditty, intoned over a deathly instrumental backing in which Whittinghill lists the many, many occasions on which he lost his temper and humiliated his young son - usually without reason. I know that not everyone will agree with me, but I think that it’s a nasty record: a feeble act of contrition from a bully of a father masquerading as a sweet tale of paternal love and forgiveness.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love you
It was that I was expecting too much of youth
I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own age
And son, I am sorry
Blech!
Born in Montana in 1913, Whittinghill’s early music career included being a member of The Pied Pipers, a vocal group which sang with Tommy Dorsey's big band. For three decades, beginning in 1950, Whittinghill was the popular morning disc jockey at KMPC in Los Angeles. Among the features of his program were the "story records," sent in by listeners, in which a short anecdote was completed with a line from a song. For example, the spider told Little Miss Muffet, "You can keep the curds but give me all the whey. Whitinghill would then play Frank Sinatra's song All the Way.
In 1965 he issued the album The Square, which included Apology at Bedtime as well as the 45s B-side Musings of a Father, the saccharine saga of life in a typical 60s American home. The title track was also issued as a single and scraped in to the Record World top 200 charts at number 144. The actor Jackie Gleason had previously recorded a version of Apology at Bedtime (and issued it as a killer twofer, backed with To A Sleeping Princess)on Capitol. Whittinghill’s discs were issued by Dot, home – of course – of our old friend Pat Boone.
Whittinghill, who appeared in several Hollywood movies (including Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter) would go on to have a successful TV career, appearing in several episodes of Perry Mason and Dragnet as well as in Lassie, Bonanza and many, many others. He passed away, aged 87, in January 2001.
It’s another Friday, which naturally means more bad music, although I think some of you will actually enjoy today’s choice – an album with a sweet, ethereal charm of its own.
Like the debut albums from Mrs Miller and Madame St Onge, The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits is a bit of a misnomer as titles go: the lady in question has never had a ‘hit’ in the real sense of the word. However she has proved a bit of a hit with the public in her own particular part of the world, and last year embarked on her first ever world tour – even appearing in my home town.
Her peculiar. echo drenched covers of pop classics (Ballroom Blitz, Shakin’ All Over, Born to be Wild), show tunes (Puttin’ on the Ritz) and frankly bizarre originals won’t be to everyone’s taste but I quite like her. There’s a minimalist, Flying Lizards quality to what she’s doing, and the whole album is well worth checking out (You can listen to if for free on Spotify or if you go to Mr Weird andWacky (one of my favourite blogs) you can pick up the whole album.
According to a short piece I found in The Guardian, the Space Lady - also known as Suzy Soundz but more correctly Susan Dietrich Schneider - was a regular sight on the streets and subways of Boston in the early 80s. Playing an accordion her husband had found in a junkshop – which she couldn’t play at first but, as she says: “(On) my first time out, I made both decent music and decent money.” Unfortunately an encounter with a drunk on the subway left the accordion in pieces and her hopes of a career as a ‘street level superstar’ in tatters.
Joel encouraged Susan to continue, using a mic, amp and battery-powered reverb to sing acapella. As it was close to Christmas Susan sang carols and the money came in: on Christmas Eve she made $200 busking, enough to purchase the cheap Casio keyboard she uses on her only album (to date anyway). Back on the streets and in the subways of Boston, she mixed songs written by her husband with a perverse selection of covers, many of which appear on The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits.
Joel, The Guardianreports: ‘had played with a string of 60s rock bands and knew all about making an impression, so they plugged the Casio into a phase-shifter, ran Susan's voice through a full-on echo unit and created a light show by pimping her tip box with a pile of twinkling lights. A winged helmet topped with a blinking red ball was placed on Susan's head and off she'd go’. Although still only busking, Susan was able to earn enough to support her family. In early 1990 Susan recorded some of the songs she had been singing on the streets for her album.
Championed by Irwin Chusid (who featured her cover of the Electric Prunes’ I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night on the second of his Songs In The Key Of Zcollections) sadly Joel died in 2000 and Susan abandoned music and moved back home to Colorado. However her story doesn't end there: in 2014, seemingly out of the blue, she embarked on a huge world tour, playing art house cafés and small venues around the US and Europe. She’s on Facebook: go say hello.
Here are a couple of brilliantly odd tracks from The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits for you: Born to be Wild and Radar Love. You know what to do if you want to hear more.
Today’s selection comes courtesy of WWR regular Ross Hamilton, who found this virtually unlistenable nonsense hidden away as an extra track on the third disc of the otherwise excellent compilation Love Poetry And Revolution: A Journey Through The British Psychedelic And Underground Scenes 1966 To 1972.
Sung virtually acapella by a gaggle of young kids (save for sparse accompaniment from a badly-plated flute and a drunk bashing away at a piano), this atonal version of the Beatles’ classic I am the Walrus originally appeared on the 1971 album Ear of the Beholder, issued by Lol Coxhill via John Peel's Dandelion label.
George Lowen Coxhill, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 79, was a noted figure on the UK underground jazz and rock scene. His saxophone playing appeared on recordings by Kevin Ayers (Coxhill was a member of Ayers’ group The Whole World), Caravan, John Otway and even The Damned. Recorded between July 1970 and January 1971, the Ear of the Beholder was Coxhill’s first solo album, and features contributions from Ayers, Mike Oldfield and David Bedford amongst others. A peculiar grab-bag of an album, it features everything from covers of outdated music hall songs such as That’s Why Darkies Were Born (performed by Coxhill in protest at its ridiculousness), tracks recorded al fresco with children from a Brixton primary school and poorly-recorded, interminable improvisations such as Rasa Moods. Genuinely everything including the kitchen sink.
Although he had been playing professionally for many years, it was Coxhill’s relationship with Peel that brought the free-improvising saxophonist to prominence: he is reputed to have been spotted by Peel while busking outside the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank in 1968. Coxhill forged strong links with the Canterbury scene, playing in jazz-rock groups including Kevin Ayers and The Whole World and Delivery, later working in small groups and intimate duos with the likes of Canterbury pianist Steve Miller. He was well known for his unpredictable solo improvising and for gigging in unconventional locations – such as his infamous 2004 tour of Yorkshire market towns, Lol Coxhill In A Skip.
Called ‘one of the most uncompromising albums of its age’ by Goldmine magazine, the original double album sold very few copies and is now quite hard to find. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your viewpoint) it has been reissued a couple of times in recent years.
Stephen F Singer established the song-poem label Star-Crest in the late 50s. Stephen was the son of Mortimer Singer, who founded the Nordyke song-poem factory in 1943. Laughingly referred to as Star-Crust to collectors because of the dated sound of its releases, Star-Crest is best known for its albums. The company had two distinct album series, Music of America – which usually featured a mix of singers (‘with orchestra’; although, as fellow song-poem enthusiast Bob Purse has noted: ‘rarely actually featuring more than four instruments, and often fewer than that’) and the New Favorites of… series, which would feature one singer, such as the risibly awful tenor Robert Ravis or the super-bland Tony Rogers, accompanied by a jaunty pianist. You can find a whole album’s worth of Ravis’s ravings from Bob’s own collection (if you can bear it) at http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/02/365_days_59_rob.htmlI have a couple of Star-Crest albums in my own collection (New Favorites of Tony Rogers, released in June 1961 and one of the many Music of America albums), but frankly life is too short!
They also released several 45s, four of which I present for you today.
It’s often difficult to track down exact information about song-poem companies, but thanks to Singer’s shady practices we can be pretty certain about how long Star-Crest existed for. Adverts for their wares appeared in the back pages of magazines such as Ebony and Popular Sciencethroughout 1959, 1960 and 1961 and then vanish. More than that, because Star-Crest was one of the few song-poem outfits hauled through the courts for their dodgy practices, e can ascertain a pretty firm date for when the company folded.
In late 1960 the Long Beach Independent (Nov 28, 1960) reported (under the headline Composers Bilked, Says FTC) that ‘the Federal Trade Commission charged Stephen F. Singer with using false royalty claims to obtain fees from songwriters for recording their songs’. The FTC complaint said that 'Singer did not pay royalties as advertised to those whose songs were accepted’. Instead, Singer 'paid them a royalty for each record sold, but sales were so limited the artists never were able to recover their investments’.
It wouldn’t take long for Billboard to pick up on the scandal, accusing Singer of using ‘false royalty claims and other deceptions to get fees from songwriters for recording their songs.’ The report continued to reveal that the Federal Trade Commission were taking Singer to court because ‘songwriters never actually collect royalties from Singer, that the recording talent is far from the “outstanding’ type offered in Singer’s ads, and that his “Music of America” albums do not, as claimed, contain current hits.’
Singer was given 30 day in which to file an answer the complaint, which he did, but the FTC won their case. In July 1961 it was reported that the Federal Trade Commission had been granted an order that ‘prohibited Stephen F. Singer of the Star-Crest Recording Co., Los Angeles, from using false royalty claims and other means, to obtain fees from song-writers for recording their songs’.
The chief cause of this litigation was the wording included in the contract Singer gave to his songwriters: ‘Our primary interest is in selling albums and earning money for our writers and ourselves. Writer agrees to pay for the test recording session at a special 50% scale rate of $96.20. We have with us some of the most talented and respected singing stars in Hollywood. Our "Music of America" series will contain well-known singing hits. Successful numbers that have already sold millions of copies and are being bought and played every day’. It was further alleged in the court proceedings that Singer wilfully misled songwriters in to thinking that their material would be recorded by the Chicago-based blues singer Jimmy Rogers, rather than the unknown Tony Rogers. As a result, Singer was issued with a cease and desist order. He could no longer advertise that hit artists would make his recordings, or that royalties would be paid to songwriters. For a few months Singer tried to continue without making these outrageous claims, altering the wording of his ads and removing any promises of royalties.
In March 1961 the company moved offices, from North Highland to Lexington Ave (both still Hollywood); the move happened just as Singer was attempting to move away from song-poems to more legitimate material. The first album issued by the newly legitimate Star-Crest was Curtain Time by impressionist Arthur Blake. According to a short news item in Billboard (March 1961) the company had also signed three other acts, Robert Linn, Freddie Bell and Kenny Miller, but none of them appear to have released any material for Star-Crest.
Star-Crest vanished for good some time in the early 60s. The Star-Crest name and logo would reappear, gracing a brace of singles in 1986 by soul artist El-Roy, but it’s unlikely that the company was in any way connected with the original Star-Crest.
Still, back to the music.
There’s no definitive discography of Star-Crest on the net, but the following is a list of all of the company’s known 45s: The ones that you can listen to today are in bold. So far as I am aware all Star-Crest 45s were issued in a fragile clear red vinyl. Three of the ones I own come in stock picture sleeves like those on this page.
1: Tony Rogers - Sin Duda/Fickle Baby
14: Linda Collins with Orchestra - I Love Only You (Henderson Fisher)/Tony Rogers with Orchestra - On The Oxmore Trail (Andrew Scruggs)
40: Tony Rogers with Orchestra - Waiting For My Baby (W.L. Tisdale)/Down In The Valley (Millie Lancaster)
43: Tony Rogers with Orchestra – Winds Across the Prairie (Rhea Ball)/Flash! Flash! Flash! (Martin Belle-Isle)
88: Linda Collins - Please (Ida Phillips)/Tony Rogers - My One and Only (Janette Sumrall)
90: Tony Rogers - All Yours (Ruby Sanders)/Linda Collins - That Old Man Of Mine (Violet Carter)
96: Tony Rogers with Orchestra – Moonlight and Distant Guitars (Ann C Fautsch)/Won’t You Marry Me? (Ernest Vanilla)
What really intrigues me is massive difference in the quality of Star-Crest’s product. My guess is that those with a full band arrangement would have cost the songwriter considerably more than $96.20 to have had recorded. Several of those songs sound to me like the product of the Globe studio – home to Sammy Marshall/Sonny Marcell and whose own recordings were issued on a slew of different labels over the years – but Globe was based in Nashville, and there’s little chance that a cheapskate like Singer would have paid for Tony Rogers to travel all that way to lay down a few sides. Could Globe have provided Star-Crest with music beds which they would then add their own vocalist to, or did Singer and Rogers travel to Nashville and spend a couple of days recording as many songs as they had time to fit in? If Gene Marshall could record 55 songs in one four-hour session couldn’t Rogers/Star-Crest have done similar? When you consider that the vast majority of Star-Crest tracks last under a minute and a half the duo could easily have beaten Marshall’s song-poem record.
Today we’re revisiting the career of one of the perpetrators of one of the earliest posts on this blog, actor Tony Randall.
Way back in September 2007 I featured The Odd Couple Sing, the dismal tie-in from the two stars of the TV series The Odd Couple, Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. The Odd Couple Sing is a stunningly wrongheaded album, featuring some of the worst performances I've ever come across. Released in 1973, the mismatched pair must have blinded by the huge piles of money on offer – or simply unable to contain their own egos - when they agreed to record this embarrassingly awful collection.
Flash forward six years and Randall was at it again, only this time replacing TV’s Quincy ME with actress Lynn Redgrave.
The Power is You is an utterly bizarre musical project, some sort of self-help album consisting of catchy Broadway-style show tunes about the power of human potential interspersed with preachy narration by the record's celebrity hosts.
Issued by Clarus Music in 1979, The Power is You was written by lyricist Rosemary Caggiano and composer Bernie Fass. The duo also composed the tracks on Randall’s earlier album Children are People Too and co-authored the book and accompanying album The Four Seasons (Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring a Musical Journey for Children Through the Four Seasons With Eleven Songs and Narration). The titles of the songs on The Power is You read like the chapter headings of a particularly poor self-help manual: We’ve Got to Get Back to Basics, Your Power to Dream, There's Always Room for Change, The Power to Loveand so on. Apparently this nonsense was designed to be used in the classroom, rather than sold to the general public.
According to the promotional blurb ‘Tony Randall and Lynn Redgrave campaign for the power of human potential in a new recording by Clarus Music called The Power Is You. Ten songs in a modern pop style, and appealing passages by Randall and Redgrave exalt the abilities of the human mind and form.’ That’s probably about as much as you need to know, but here are a couple of tracks from the record for your enjoyment, the opener We’ve Got to Get Back to Basics and the embarrassingly corny Make People Laugh.
***update: better versions of Hey Little Girl (Do You Want to Get Married) and Super Duper Man now uploaded, as well as the missing instrumental Chicken Track. Thanks Ross!***
When I started this blog way back in September 2007 I had no idea how (or even if) it would take off, and I’m immensely grateful and humbled that so many people seem to enjoy it. Today’s WWR entry is a bit of a milestone – it’s my 300th blog dispatch – and for today’s landmark posting we’re going right back to where it all started, revisiting the career of the man who performed one of the most infamous bad records of all time, the late Jimmie/Jimmy Cross. If you've read the book you'll already know most of this: you may want to skip to the end of the post and simply grab the tracks!
There are an alarming number of records about traffic accidents - but the sickest has to be I Want My Baby Back by Jimmy Cross. Routinely considered the worst record of all time – and feted as such by the first Kenny Everett Bottom 30– I Want My Baby Back is the king of the teenage tragedies. Written and produced by Perry Botkin Junior and Gil Garfield, the song is a parody of records like Last Kiss and Leader of the Pack, two releases which describe the aftermath of traffic accidents in rather graphic detail, although neither of them go into quite as much depth (if you’ll pardon the pun) as Jimmy Cross does:
Born in Dothan, Alabama in 1938, although radio producer Jimmy Cross had dabbled in song writing (co-writing I Still Love Him, which was produced by Garfield and Botkin for girl group The Joys) I Want My Baby Backwas his first release as a featured performer*, and the only one of his singles to chart. Issued on the Tollie label in December 1964, the single reached number 92 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following February.
Knowingly referencing both the Beatles (the group that supplied Tollie with its only major chart hits) and Leader of the Pack, I Want My Baby Back is a song which describes – in graphic detail - how the singer’s girlfriend is fatally dismembered and how he, after several months of torment, decides that the only way to overcome his grief is to desecrate her grave, crawl into her coffin and join her for all eternity.
I’ve tried, believe me I have tried
But I just can’t make it without my baby
So I decided I’m gonna have her back one way or another
It’s ghastly, and thoroughly brilliant – and hearing it for the first time in the early 1980s was a defining moment for me. This (and Fluffy by Gloria Balsam) is entirely responsible for kick-starting my interest in bad music. Bizarrely the song was covered (not very well, in my opinion) by British R'n'B act The Downliners Sect for their 1965 EP The Sect Sings Sick Songs.
The moderate success of I Want My Baby Back was reason enough for Tollie to order a follow up, so Jimmy was put back to work. His second single for the company was The Ballad of James Bong, a comedy record (credited to Botkin, Garfield, Cross, Price and Cole) based on the James Bond phenomenon, where Cross’s character is trying to save the world’s rock and roll stars from being annihilated. It was released (this time credited to Jimmie Cross) in 1965 and sank without a trace – as did Tollie Records. Red Bird Records, the company set up by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, then signed Jimmie and he released a further 45: Hey Little Girl (Do You Want to Get Married), a timely Herman’s Hermits pastiche, backed with Super-Duper Man, a tribute to the man of steel. Both tracks were co-written by a 24-year old bank clerk who, a few years later, would go on to much greater fame: Harry Nilsson.
Unfortunately this single also missed the mark and Jimmie quietly returned to the day job. Hey Little Girl was re-issued, this time with an instrumental version on the B-side (curiously renamed Chicken Track on some copies, Hey Little Girl Part 2on others, and credited to the Jimmie Cross Orchestra) on the Vee-jay imprint Chicken Records: in 1967 Nilsson would offer Super-Duper Man and Hey Little Girl, along with half a dozen other songs, to The Monkees. They turned them down but did opt to record his other compositions Cuddly Toy and Daddy’s Song.
Yet that would not be the end for I Want My Baby Back. In 1977 British DJ Kenny Everett began featuring I Want My Baby Back on his Capital radio programme The World's Worst Wireless Show although initially, probably because of the credits on his later release, Everett wrongly assumed that Jimmy Cross was in fact a nom de plume of Harry Nilsson. Even though he got his facts wrong, the interest in the song created by Everett inspired Wanted Records in the UK to re-issue the single, complete with its original B-side Play the Other Side (a short, instrumental version of the A-side) and a new picture sleeve but without bothering to officially licence the damned thing. They even had the cheek to add a jokey sleeve note and credit it to Jimmy, even though the poor devil knew very little (if anything) about the release.
Jimmy died of a heart attack that same year at the ridiculously young age of 39 in North Hollywood. Perry Botkin Jr went on to fame and fortune working with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Van Dyke Parks and Carly Simon as well as writing and producing the music for many successful TV series including Happy Days, Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirley. Gil Garfield, sadly, passed away in 2011 after a long battle with cancer. Jimmy is buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery. I hope that he’s finally been reunited with his baby.
Jimmie’s daughter, Kellee Cross Raymer, is (rightly) rather proud of her father’s most famous three minutes: “Yes, some would say that I Want My Baby Back is just a little bit out there; but never the less, it must put smile's on people's faces!”
Here, for your enjoyment, is every track recorded by Jimmie (or Jimmy) Cross. I’ve also included the instrumental B-sides to I Want My Baby Back (Play the Other Side), The Ballad of James Bong (Play the Other Side Again) and Hey Little Girl (Chicken Track).
Enjoy!
* There’s an earlier single by Jimmie Cross, Pretty Girls Everywhere (probably the same song which was originally recorded by Eugene Church and was later covered by the Walker Brothers) issued in 1961 on Recordo Records. However I’ve been unable to ascertain if this is the same Jimmy/Jimmie Cross as our hero. If anyone out there knows, do tell!
A short post today - sorry. I had written something much longer only to discover, as I checked through my previous posts, that I had already featured that particular track. Well, 301 posts down the line, surely you can excuse an old man a touch of forgetfulness? Todays brace of badness comes courtesy of the ever-brilliant Music For Maniacs, an essential blog for lovers of the obscure and perverse, and where, back in 2010, I first discovered the delights of Margaret Raven. There's very little I can tell you about the obscure Margaret Raven, apart from that they were based in New York and recorded one album - probably only issued on CD-r and passed around family and friends. A couple of the tracks on the album originally appeared on MySpace in 2009: at some point before 2011 the band split. One of the former members of Margaret Raven, posting on the (author and Shaman) Carlos Castaneda forum Sustained Reaction, had this to say: "Margaret Raven was my band. We made really crazy music, nothing like you've ever heard before. Anyway, the music we made was very heavily influenced by Carlos Castaneda. I learned how to play my instrument, Rainmaker, from the devil's weed. There is an old saying that goes "you always know when you hear a crow, but when you hear a sound and have no idea what it is, that's a raven". Our band consisted of Rainmaker, Theremin, and drums. Please give it a listen. These songs are quite a few years old." I can tell you that an earlier Margaret Raven was a playwright who published the play The Alchemist in 1912, but that's about it.I wish I had more, so if you know anything else about them please do share! For now here are two tracks from Margaret Raven: Run Me Rainbow and Fire Atop The Pyramid. Enjoy!
