Issued in February 1969, The Good Earth is theonly single released by the legendary Irish comedian Dave Allen. If you don’t know whom I’m talking about get Googling now: Allen was easily one of the best and most important comedians of the last 50-plus years. His irreverent, religion bating monologues, jokes and sketches are priceless, and his knack of kicking against the establishment whilst gaining a huge TV audience was unprecedented.
David Tynan O'Mahony (6 July 1936 – 10 March 2005) was – certainly until the 1980s - Britain's most controversial comedian. His relaxed, intimate style (on TV he would sit on a high bar stool, smoking and sipping from a glass of what looked like whiskey, but was in fact ginger ale) charm and besuited respectability allowed him to get away with more than any other comedian had dared do before – especially on prime time television. A religious sceptic, religion (and especially Roman Catholicism) was an important subject for his humour, mocking church customs and rituals rather than beliefs.
So it’s a bit of a surprise to discover that the great man released this piece of sentimental claptrap.
Called a ‘somewhat whimsical but certainly sincere counter-cultural contribution timed to coincide with the moon landing’ by Allen’s biographer Graham McCann, The Good Earth uses the image of an astronaut looking down upon our planet, a very contemporary message at that time. Written by Ben Nisbet, The Monkees also recorded the song during sessions for their 1969 album the Monkees Present, although their version remained unreleased until Rhino Records reissued the album on CD in 1994.
The B-side, A Way Of Life, is worse: to the tune of Greensleeves, Allen recites a ridiculous poem which offers up such homilies as ‘listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant: they too have their story’. The writer credit on A Way Of Life reads ‘Martin/Kelsey’ however the words are actually by the American poet Max Erhman and, correctly named Desiderata, would provide an enormous international hit a couple of years later for Les Crane. Calling it Spock Thoughts, Leonard Nimoy also performed the poem on his 1968 album Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy.
Unsurprisingly the record was not a hit. Allen went back to comedy, leaving this sole disc an obscure footnote in an otherwise remarkable career.
Come on in and meet the elusive Elvis Pummel, the primitive rock ‘n’ roller often referred to as Swedish but seemingly from Dortmund, Germany – a place where genius and madness merge into a subtle duet.
Equipped with a '50s Hofner guitar Elvis Pummel first came to prominence in 1998, appearing on the Voodoo Rhythm compilation The Penetrating Sounds Of,,,, although he’d been playing his own brand of psychobilly since at least the mid 1980s, first in the band Barnyard Blitz before striking out on his own, weird musical journey.
Since then he’s issued at least half a dozen EPs and 45s. Many of his songs last for a minute or less: eight tracks appeared on his first EP Original 50s Punk; ten were crammed on to the 2001 EP Elvis Pummel And His Wild & Primitive Soundsystem – On Board. The majority of his earlier releases were complied on the 56 track collection Elvis Pummel – Recalled To Be Executed, issued in 2006. He’s still gigging – and issuing sporadic releases - today
Reviewing his first release, Blue Suede News magazine wrote: ‘If you think Hasil Adkins with his distinctive, raunchy one man-band music is a true stylist and genius, you might like this effort.’ I think that undersells him somewhat. Adkins has a similar primitive rock ‘n’ roll approach, and there can be no doubt that both musicians have been resolutely ploughing their own perverse furrow, but Adkins’ productions are akin to Phil Spector’s when compared to Pummel’s – and Adkins can (or at least could) sing: no matter how much you may like Pummel’s distinctive voice you could hardly call him a great singer.
Anyway, have a listen to a few tracks from Elvis Pummel And His Wild & Primitive Soundsystem – On Board and decide for yourself.
Teenagers, according to New Scientist magazine, are a uniquely human phenomenon, known to be ‘moody, insecure, argumentative, angst-ridden, impulsive, impressionable, reckless and rebellious.’ Sounds about right to me; true, it was a long time agonow, but that pretty much sums me up during my teenage years.
Teenagers are a relatively new phenomenon, unknown before the 1930 and not really recognised as a demographic unit until after WW2. A teenage boy of school leaving age, growing up prior to the end of WW2, was expected to join the services or get a job; teenage girls were expected to meet a man, marry and have kids. University was reserved for the privileged. Teenagers had limited freedom, no economic power and little influence in the decisions made by the older generation.
After the end of the war everything changed. As the economies of the UK and the USA improved – and both rationing and conscription ended - parents began to have aspirations for their kids. There was a chance now that the next generation may achieve something: stay in education, have a life, enjoy their freedom and become more than just cannon fodder.
However the post-war, pre-Beatles Britain really didn’t understand teenagers, and failed abysmally to cater for them musically. After the imported excitement of Elvis, Little Richard and the bitter disappointment of Bill Haley and his Comets (a huge act to Britain’s young rock ‘n’ rollers – until the band came to this country and people actually got to see them, that is. 12 hits before their 1957 tour: not one afterwards save for reissues) all they had was safe, homegrown cabaret star Tommy Steele, the mum’s favourite Cliff Richard and a clutch of middle-aged bandleaders and instrumentalists. If it were not for Lonnie Donegan and the skiffle craze then the teenagers of 50s Britain would have had nothing. Unless they joined a gang, that was.
As the 50s turned in to the 60s very little changed. 1959’s biggest hit was Sidesaddle, a jolly, tack piano instrumental jaunt from Russ Conway. The following year the five biggest records in the country were Cathy's Clown by The Everly Brothers, Apacheby The Shadows, Cliff Richard’s Please Don't Tease, Why by actor Anthony Newley and Shirley Bassey with As Long As He Needs Me. This was not music for ‘the kids’.
And nor was this.
Teen Street isn’t a totally awful record - Toni Eden has a good voice and the guitar work is exceptional - but what is awful is that this kind of vapid nonsense was being specifically manufactured to try and capture the teen market. The grey men in suits who ran the UK’s record labels clearly had not got a clue. Musically it’s pretty decent (if anodyne), but the ridiculous yelps from the backing vocalists are absurd and annoying, and the lyrics simplify a teenager’s life and ambitions down to little more than listening to a jukebox and waiting to get married. The A-side - No-One Understands (My Johnny) - tells the age old tale of a good teenage girl in love with a bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks: the same plot had been used a thousand times before and would be recycled again and again. No-One Understands was written by, and had previously been recorded by, American singer Pat O’Day.
Born in 1940 (the actress of the same name born in 1927 is not the same person, nor is the Chicago-based singer who recorded in the late 60s), Toni Eden had been a featured singer with Ted Heath and his Orchestra. She appeared extensively on TV in the 60s, including guest spots with Morecambe and Wise and Ken Dodd, and also appeared with Kenneth Williams in the review One Over the Eight (1961) and in Lionel Bart’s flop ’65 musical Twang! as Maid Marian. After three singles for Columbia, Toni Eden went on to issue one 45 on Decca (from One Over the Eight) and a brace of singles on United Artists.
Teen Street was covered the following year by Janis Martin, who was occasionally known as ‘the female Elvis’. Howard ‘Boogie’ Barnes and Cliff Adams, the co-composers of Teen Street also wrote Grown Up Dreams, the plug side to Toni Eden’s follow up single and The Waiting Game, the B-side to her third (and final) Columbia single. The pair also wrote The Lonely Man Theme (used in the iconic advert for Strand cigarettes) and would later pen both sides of a promotional single for Smiths crisps.
Cliff Adams was, of course, the founder of the Cliff Adams Singers, of Sing Something Simple fame; Howard ‘Boogie’ Barnes was an advertising copywriter. I’m not 100% certain, but I do not believe that he is the same man as Howard Ellington Riddiford Barnes, a songwriter who scored his biggest hit with I Really Don’t Want To Know, covered by (amongst others) Elvis Presley, Rosemary Clooney, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson.
Many - if not all - of this blog's regular followers will already know that we have a reasonably active Facebook page. If you're not already following the World's Worst Records on Facebook you might want to start.
Although I try to post here every Friday, there's much more going on at Facebook. You wouldn't necessarily know, for example, that the second volume of the World's Worst Records book is almost ready - or that there's a full album's worth of material on Soundcloud for you to listen to.
It's also a place where regular followers can post their favourite bad music clips, share information and make requests for future WWR posts. It's also an opportunity for you to meet other people obsessed with bad music.
So, if you fancy even more bad music, why not come on over and join in the fun?
Born on August 10, 1922 - exactly 42 years before me, fact fans - Al Alberts was an American singer and television presenter, and a founding member of the vocal group the Four Aces.
Born Al Albertini in Chester, Pennsylvania, he met Dave Mahoney, co-founder of the Four Aces, whilst the pair were serving in the US navy. The harmony group scored several huge hits in the 1950s including Three Coins in the Fountain (written by Jule Styne for the film of the same name: Styne also wrote the scores to a number of hit Broadway shows, including Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, Gypsy and Funny Girl), which hit the number one spot twice in the States in 1954 and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song the same year.
The Four Aces biggest hit was Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, the theme to the 1955 film starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones. Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing stayed at number one for four weeks and again won the Academy Award for best song.
Alberts left the group in 1958 to try to make it as a soloist. He issued his first album A Man Has Got To Sing, in 1959 but it – and subsequent releases – failed to chart. The Four Aces still exists today, although all four of the original members have now passed away.
After leaving the Aces, although Alberts continued to record he became better known as a television personality. He hosted a one-hour Saturday afternoon talent show in Philadelphia, called The Al Alberts Showcase, that featured a panel of local children known as the Teeny Boppers - a bunch of camera shy kids who would tell lame jokes and occasionally mangle a show tune - and a group of young teenage dancers called the Show Stoppers. The show helped launch the careers of Sister Sledge and Teddy Pendergrass and Jarrod Spector, who first appeared on the show as a precocious three year old and who went on to play the role of Frankie Valli in the stage show The Jersey Boys. The show went off the air after 32 years, following Alberts' retirement in 1994. He died at his home in Florida in November 2009.
Although undated, this particular piece of dreck – I Am A Sick American– was one of Alberts’ last single releases; the song copyrighted in the first half of 1974. The unusual writer credit - Anonymous: edited by and with new material written by Al Alberts – stems from the fact that the lyric was based on an anonymous letter sent to a newspaper. What’s interesting is that the song had been recorded some two years previously (without the Al Alberts credit and to the tune of John Brown’s Body rather than to the tune of America the Beautiful) by Frank W Morris, as the B-side to an election-boosting disc for our old friend Governor George Wallace. For more info on the Frank W Morris single - along with the artwork for the cover - check out Glorify the Turd.
Anyway, here are both sides of the Al Alberts 45 as well as the Frank W Morris track for you to compare.
Enjoy!
**Addendum: Glorify the Turd, mentioned above, is no longer running and some of the pages may be unavailable. Here's what they wrote, along with the Frank W Morris artwork and the A-side of the single: "Wow, I guess there must have been something going around in the early 70’s, because it looks like Frank W. Morris caught the same thing Al Alberts had. Yep, Frank is a sick American, too, but not sick enough to make the A Side of this record—that honor was given to Chuck Atha and his ode to presidential candidate George Wallace. Pretty weak stuff, too. You mean you can’t find a better song to rip off than the “Ballad Of Davy Crockett”? No, Mr. Morris does a much better job in my opinion, and he has different lyrics than the Al Alberts tirade."
* Unfortunately Divshare is down this morning, so I'm using my reserve file share system, The Box, I'll update the links once Divshare is back up and running
I was directed towards this particular ghastly recording by our old friend The Squire– a man whose taste in music is possibly even more eclectic than my own – so you can blame him for my inflicting My Little Chicken by Cliff Wade on you.
Cliff Wade is one of those obscure figures in British pop music who has somehow managed to maintain a career since the 60s without ever becoming a household name. As a songwriter he’s provided hits for Pat Benatar (Heartbreaker), Tina Turner (The Woman I'm Supposed To Be) and others and as a member of Fickle Pickle he scored a sizeable European hit with a cover of Paul McCartney’s Maybe I’m Amazed but, although he has issued several singles and written countless songs he’s never managed to score a hit under his own name.
Originally from York, he played with several groups during the mid- 60s before forming the Roll Movement in 1965 (their first gig took place in December of that year), who beat The Soft Machine into the finals of a 1966 Melody Maker-sponsored competition, (they finished second) and scored support spots with the Who and Cream. Cliff was also asked to audition for the Spencer Davis Group following Steve Winwood’s departure. Unfortunately the sole single issued by the Roll Movement, I’m Out on My Own (written by Cliff) failed to chart and the band split soon after its release. Wade joined a new outfit — Cucumber — although they didn’t last long and, in 1968, he went to work for independent producer Monty Babson and his Morgan Studios set up. Cliff would spend his day as a music copier, transcribing every part of the orchestral arrangements, but he also used the well-equipped Morgan studio at night, recording his own material and often sleeping there. Morgan would become the place to record, with acts including Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Kinks, David Bowie, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones all spending time there.
Wade first recorded under his own name in 1969, issuing the Mellotron-drenched pop single You’ve Never Been To My House/Sister on the Morgan Blue Town label. It sank without a trace, but over the next couple of years he cut more three more sides (and recorded a load of unreleased material which would not see the light of day until 2004). He also started singing for the group Fickle Pickle, who scored a hit in Holland with Maybe I’m Amazed and released several other sides for Philips, and had a minor role in later recordings by The Smoke (of My Friend Jack fame). Very little changed for the next decade: Cliff continued to work, writing songs and performing with various different groups until 1979 when at last he got his big break, co-writing Heartbreaker, Pat Benatar's first major hit. In 2004 Edsel/Demon Records collected together 21 tracks from the Morgan vaults - both sides of his two singles plus 17 previously unissued recordings - and released it as Looking For Shirley. Cliff Wade continues to write and record: actor Kevin Kennedy (Curly Watts in Coronation Street) had a minor hit with Cliff's song Bulldog Nation in 2000. Which brings us to today's horror. My Little Chicken is unrepresentative of Cliff Wade's other recordings which are, for the most part, in a sunshine pop/psych vein. It's an almost unfathomable aberration, and you can understand why it remained unissued for more than three decades. Did he intend this as a demo, offering the song to another act, was it a bit of fun during some free studio time or was he totally off his nut? Who knows. It is what it is - and for that I am truly grateful.
There are at least five recorded versions of the classic teen death disc Surfin’ Tragedy– well, I am aware of five and I present all of them to you today. No doubt if there are other recordings of this terrible song one or more of you will soon let me know. (Update: a sixth version, by The Blue Hawaiians, appears on their 1997 album Live at the Lava Lounge.)
I first became aware of Surfin’ Tragedy when I purchased the first volume of Rhino’s World’s Worst Records compilation back around 1982. That particular iteration, recorded by the Breakers as the flip to their 1963 single Surf Bird, was bad enough, but discovering that this was, in fact, a cover version and that there were other recordings available opened up a veritable geyser of badness.
Written by Robert J Hafner and Anthony J. Hilder, the original version of this hideous song appears to have been recorded by Doug Hume and was featured on the 1963 album Surf’s Up At Banzai-Pipeline. Tony Hilder was an A&R man for Modern Records, which was connected to the budget Crown and Custom labels. His first co-writer credit was on stomping 1957 single John John (released by Aggie Dukes on Aladdin records) and, in the early 60s, Tony Hilder became involved with surf music, producing Jim Waller's Surfin' Wild, the various artists album Surf Warand the aforementioned compilation Surf’s Up At Banzai-Pipeline. He supervised recording sessions by California group The Revels, who had a hit with the instrumental Church Key, and was also president of Impact Records, a label that released recordings by The Revels, Lil' Ray and The Premiers, Dave Myers and The Surftones, and indeed the Breakers 45. He also worked in the movies and on and supplied the music for the 1961 film The Exiles.
These days Hilder is an activist, investigative journalist, conspiracy theorist and talk show host. He’s also a documentary filmmaker, known for 911: The Greatest Lie Ever Sold, Polanski Unauthorized, E.U: Hitler's Dream Come True and Bohemian Grove amongst many others.
Robert John Hafner, a songwriter, musician, aspiring actor and producer, wrote songs recorded by The Revels, including the fabulous, sax-driven Comanche, which was used in the movie Pulp Fiction, but in the late 60s he walked away from the music scene, turned off by the hippie movement, the drug culture and the corporate takeover of music. He and his wife-to-be moved to Idaho, where they were married in 1969. The couple moved to the Chicago area in 1982 to be closer to her parents, with Bob working as a house painter for more than two decades. He passed away in October 2013 aged 81.
Anyway, back to the music. Here are all five versions of Surfin Tragedy, the previously mentioned vocals by Doug Hume and The Breakers, plus a third vocal take by The Sentinals (which appeared as the closing track on their 1963 album Big Surf!) and two instrumental versions, the first by Bob Vaught and the Renegades (issued as a single on GNP Crescendo and on their album Surf Crazy, both in 1963) and, finally, by The Surf Teens from their 1963 album Surf Mania.
Not a bad record this week, but a distinctly peculiar one, and one I feel obliged to share with you, Christine backed with S-E-X, issued in 1963 by Ember Records in the UK (the song was also issued in a rather fetching picture sleeve in Europe on Stateside Records).
Based on the then-inescapable Profumo Affair – Christine is, of course, about Christine Keeler - the enigmatic Miss X is actually Joyce Blair, the sister of dancer and choreographer Lionel. The ever-so-slightly risqué song entered the charts (it reached number 37 in August 1963) and Joyce found herself appearing on the iconic TV show Ready Steady Go alongside WWR favourite Pat Boone plus Billy Fury, Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, Burl Ives and Chris Barber.
Lionel was 15 and Joyce just 12 when their father, Myer Ogus, a Russian barber who changed the family name to Blair, died. To help support their mother the siblings both sought acting work. In 1945, the pair won an amateur talent competition in Stoke Newington, and the theatre retained their services for the week. They went on to perform together in summer shows, pantomimes, cabaret and at the Windmill Theatre.
Miscredited to Count Jaine de Mora y Aragon, the co-composer and pianist featured on the coupling was actually Jaime de Mora y Aragon, a flamboyant Spanish aristocrat who worked as a musician and part-time wrestler. With his slicked-back hair, waxed moustache, monocle and cane he was once likened to Salvador Dali.
A fixture in Marbella since the early 1960s de Mora, or Jimmy as he was known, became such a favourite among the wealthy and wellborn who make the resort their summer playground that he was named by the city's tourist office as its official greeter. Although he was at various times a waiter, bullfighter, taxi driver, model and movie actor, de Mora was primarily a promoter, one who provided the public face for an assortment of business ventures from nightclubs to theatrical productions financed with other people's money.
The son of a wealthy count - and related to the Spanish royal family – Jimmy was born in Madrid but, after dropping out of school at the age of 17, entered the bohemian life of Paris, learned to play the piano and married first a Mexican actress and later a Swedish model. In 1960, when his sister, Fabiola, married King Baudouin of Belgium, Jimmy was excluded from the wedding. When he was later cast as the Belgian Ambassador in an Italian film, he played the diplomat in drag – his act of revenge.
His role as an international gadabout was curtailed in 1965, when he was convicted in his absence in Italy for passing bad cheques. He died in Marbella in 1995.
Leslie Bricusse, the song’s other co-writer, is an English composer, lyricist, and playwright who has worked most prominently in musicals. He’s also the composer or co-composer of several huge songs including Feelin’ Good, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, What Kind of Fool am I and Christmas at Hogwarts. In the 1960s and early 70s Bricusse enjoyed a fruitful partnership with Anthony Newley. They wrote the musical Stop the World - I Want to Get Off (1961), which was successful in London and on Broadway, and was made into a film version in 1966. The pair also wrote The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd(1965) and the music and songs for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), for which they received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song Score.
Divshare - the file sharing system I've been using for a number of years - has been down for a few weeks. It's back up now but the majority - if not all - of the older files are not working: the embedded player doesn't work and if you follow the ink and try to download the tracks that also leads to a dead end.
I'm sorry about this, but there's nothing I can do. Divshare have been completely useless and the email conversations I have had with the company have not yet yielded a decent result. I may have to move all of my files over to The Box.
In the meantime, if there are any sound clips you would like feel free to get in touch via the Facebook page, by email or just leave a comment here and I'll do my best to help.
Joy of joys! Four more cuts from the hideously inept Grace Pauline Chew for you to marvel over.
First up is Musicart 316/317: Don Valino with the Celebrity Singers and the Magictones performing There’s A Fire In My Heart backed with our old friend Phyllis Moore (again accompanied by the Celebrity Singers and the Magictones) with Damisela.
Issued on both 45 and 78 rpm, the otherwise-unknown tenor Don Valino performs There’s A Fire In My Heart with the overblown passion and histrionics you would normally associate with a 30s musical. It’s dreadful, but not hysterically so – unlike the B-side. The many duff notes played by the organist on Damisela – my assumption is that the player is either Leonard MacClain (the cinema organist who cut several sides for Musicart) or (much more likely) Grace herself – but particularly those at 1’09”, 1”46” and 1’51” have me in hysterics.
The A-side of the second single (Musicart 320/321), Why Can’t It Be Only Me by Richard Rossiter and the Nightingales is a typical GPC dirge: tuneless, and – like There’s A Fire In My Heart - at least twenty years too late for the audience. It’s worth noting that There’s A Fire In My Heart and Damisela were released in 1954, the same year that Bill Haley recorded Rock Around the Clock and Elvis recorded That’s Alright Mama. Why Can’t It Be Only Me and The Space Ship Blues were issued the following year, the same year that Little Richard recorded Tutti Frutti and Chuck Berry issued Maybelline. Grace was a woman resolutely stuck in her own particular era.
The Space Ship Blues is performed by ancient vaudeville act The Romany Sisters (accompanied by the grandly-named ‘Instrumental Quartette’) and sees the return of Grace’s favourite instruments, the Solovox and that godawful village hall piano that appears on so many of her recordings. Again, bum notes abound. And don’t let the sudden end of The Space Ship Blues confound you: that’s exactly as it appears on the pressing. The Romany Sisters had been performing in vaudeville for decades by the time they came to record this spectacularly awful rubbish and must have been in their 60s (or possibly older) at the time.
Did I tell you I had a book out? Here's some blurb from the press release.
Available from April 1 2015, The World’s Worst Records Volume Two tells the extraordinary but true stories behind some of the most appalling audio crimes ever committed to vinyl.
An affectionate look at some of the most peculiar recordings ever made, read about how Frank Sinatra was forced to record a song about singing dogs; discover Billy Joel’s secret past as a heavy metal icon; try and work out what was going on in Elton John’s head when he recorded his bizarre version of Give Peace A Chance, and find out which Bob Dylan record is so bad even Dylan himself hates it. Meet the Spanish Sex Pistols, Sweden’s very own Elvis and marvel at the American President who recorded a duet with his dog.
Extensively researched, and featuring music by major stars, ‘outsider’ artists and almost forgotten singers and songwriters, The World’s Worst Records Volume Two is the second book from Darryl W. Bullock, and is the companion to his first book, The World’s Worst Records Volume One. Darryl is a writer and publisher who has been editing his acclaimed bad music blog, also called The World’s Worst Records, since 2007. The blog has brought him into contact with many of the performers of these awful recordings, some of whom were happy to be interviewed for this new book - including former Radio One DJ David ‘Diddy’ Hamilton, US child star Troy Hess and cult Australian performance artist Chainmale - and some who were not!
With over 250 pages and illustrated throughout, The World’s Worst Records Volume Two is the first book from Bristol Green Publishing Ltd., a local company specialising in bespoke print publications for small, green and ethical businesses.
The World’s Worst Records Volume Two is available worldwide from Amazon.
A bit of a mystery for you today, and one I’m hoping you can help me solve. Here, in slightly truncated versions (I snaffled ‘em off of eBay) are both sides of what appears to be the only 45 by one Eddy Walker.
Issued by the Aries Record Company – probably a vanity company (there was an Aries Records label extant in California in the late 1960s, co-founded by Shelley Fisher but I’m certain this was a different outfit: a number of Aries companies have existed over the years) - both sides were written by the performer (as Edward J Walker) and both are wonderfully off.
On Sweetie Pie, Sweetie Pie and It’s Time For Love Walker’s voice is reed thin and flat and, in spite of some sterling work on the A-side, the band playing on the flip is tired and bored. I adore it and am trying to track down a physical copy for my own collection. Unfortunately I missed the one offered for sale on eBay last year but did at least manage to grab the sound files.
The songs are published by Tyhill Music, a New York-based company owned by Elizabeth Doll Hill, who also wrote songs under the name Betty Hill and Lisa Harrison. And that’s about as much as I’ve got. There are a myriad Eddie Walkers and Edward J Walkers out there but none seem to be our Eddy. If anyone has more info about thus mysterious and quite wonderful record - or indeed the man who wrote and performed it - please do let me know.
A revisit today with our old friend Jess Conrad – and his friends the Showbiz XI charity football team.
The Showbiz XI was set up in 1957 and over the years raised a lot money for good causes, arranging football matches, fundraising dinners, charity auctions and so on throughout Britain.
Unfortunately – because they were led by Conrad - these so-called celebs (and we really are scraping the bottom of the barrel: the two albums issued feature such ‘major stars’ as Steve ‘I’m Going to Spain’ Bent and actor Tony ‘Get Some In’Selby) also decided that one way to raise money for their chosen charities was to issue a brace of albums: several tracks from which I present for you today.
As essential Footie fanzine When Saturday Comes put it (when writing about the Showbiz XI in 2008): ‘by the 1950s, with variety dying… the world of entertainment was being rapidly transformed by the twin forces of television and rock’n’roll and those two worlds collided to produce a charity football phenomenon.
‘Started in a coffee bar in Soho by disc jockey and song plugger Jimmy Henney and Cliff Richard’s manager Franklyn Boyd, it was primarily an outlet for young musicians and actors to indulge themselves in a game that many of them might well have taken up professionally, had not the stage and screen claimed them. Early line-ups included Sean Connery, Tommy Steele, Jimmy Tarbuck, Tony Newley, Lonnie Donegan, Des O’Connor and Patrick McGoohan, who was a rugged centre-half, plus various theatrical agents, managers and hangers-on. Although the team often trained at Highbury, ex-professional players featured rarely: only Billy Wright and Wally Barnes, a former Arsenal wing-half then working as a commentator, were ever-present.
‘One among the pioneers was a svelte, good-looking young rock-star-cum-male-model, Jess Conrad. Unlike Steele, Connery and many of the others, Conrad boasted no athletic ability whatsoever. But he had a dream. “I went in goal because, when I was younger, a Russian goalkeeper, Lev Yashin, caught my imagination. The pictures of him were so reminiscent of Batman sweeping through the air, and he was dressed all in black.” The fact that Conrad couldn’t actually kick a ball mattered little. For the next 40 years, Jess would earn quite a reputation as a shot-stopper, bravely diving in and risking his heavily insured teeth at the same time. Jess would ultimately captain, manage and organise the Showbiz XI. He also designed the logos, sourced the sponsors, negotiated with the FA, and packed the hampers as the various eclectic teams travelled by coach, train and plane to the four corners of the UK and beyond. When he was making movies, it was written into his contract that, every Saturday, wherever he was, he would be flown back to London to play.’
Apparently in May 1957 singer Alma Cogan kicked off a Showbiz XI game at West Ham in front of a crowd of 23,000 football fans. Injury forced Conrad to quit in the 1980s and today, as the Showbiz XI president, he confines his role to introducing the team before the game and promoting their work through his website.
There were two Showbiz XI albums, one EP and a 7” single (highlighting the dubious talents of young actor Gary Kielty and Grange Hill’s Zammo Maguire) – all issued between 1989 and 1990 on the short-lived Showbiz Records of Bognor Regis – and all are thoroughly dreadful. The front sleeve of the two albums and the EP show the same shot of Jess in football gear (with an after-the-fact Addidas logo added) heroically ‘saving a goal but musically scoring an own goal in the process’ as blogger David Noades put it when posting tracks form the two albums on WFMU. His leaden, tuneless singing would be bad enough if it were not for the awful material: Jesus The Messiah is so terrible even Pat Boone would have refused it; Soccer Superstar, sung by Jess and Tanya Tenola, is so dull doctors could proscribe it as a cure for insomnia, and Black Stockings - an ode to women in uniform – is a lumpen embarrassment.
So here, for your enjoyment, is a taste of the Showbiz XI: Jess singing Black Stockings, Tony Selby and his ode to Canada and the Showbiz XI ensemble 'singing'John Wayne, American. If you want to hear more of this awful rubbish please check out WFMU.
A real treat for you today: a brace of cuts from one of the most peculiar albums issued in that decade of peculiar albums, the 1960s.
Feted by serious collectors of psychedelia and the avant garde, Bedlam by The Crazy People originally appeared on the small independent Canadian label Condor in 1968. What is known for certain about the band behind the record is very little but the theory upheld by many collectors and rare record bloggers is that the album was the brainchild of one Johnny Kitchen, an expatriate American who was believed to be in British Columbia around the time the album was recorded, and a group of studio musicians from the Burnaby, BC area.
All of the performers were uncredited on the original album but a few song writing credits were given to Kitchen, a prolific writer who also wrote for other bands on the Condor label. Much of the Crazy People legend is a mystery, although it is believed that the album was an exploitation studio project rather being recorded by a ‘proper’ group – a theory backed up by the widespread sampling of other material (including the New Vaudevill Band’s Winchester Cathedral) . Kitchen had a hand in dozens of experimental underground records in America and Canada during the latter years of the 60s and in the same year that Bedlam was issued it is said that he relocated to LA where he was involved in the recording of An Evening with Wild Man Fischer, released on Frank Zappa's Bizarre label: sections of two Bedlam songs (Life at the Funny Farm and Let’s Split) feature in Larry’s song Life Brand New. This has led some people to speculate that Johnny Kitchen was simply a pseudonym for Larry Fischer. The whole Crazy People project - and the rumours that surround and confound its' release - becomes even more confusing when you discover that three of the songs on the album are credited Jack Millman – and that Millman has recently been outed as the ‘real’ Johnny Kitchen.
Jack Maurice Millman began composing music in 1948. A professional jazz trumpeter, who studied trumpet with Shorty Rogers and, at the age of 17, played with the legendary Lionel Hampton. After spending many years at the coal face of music, and taking a couple of years out in the early 60s as he was burned out – he became known as Johnny Kitchen, thanks to fellow musician Billy Elder.
“It was a joke, we were wise cracking and that’s the name he gave me. It didn’t mean anything, but the name stuck and I went city hall and registered it as a fictitious business name, and I used it to register with ASCAP, too.” Millman told Andrew Jervis, for the Ubiquity Records blog.
Through Abe Sommer (Millman’s attorney who was also attorney to The Doors amongst others), he met Randy Wood – the former owner of the Vee Jay label - who asked Millman to produce a budget line of records. Millman pieced together 36 albums over the next decade for Wood’s labels.
Millman placed ads for his services in music magazines in the USA and abroad, landing a ton of advertising work and recording many albums for many different companies – including Condor. “They wanted to inflate the value of their business because they were going public,” Millman told Andrew Jervis. “I think they were in the lumber business. Gene Daniels (my contact) said he was told I had a library, and could sell him product.”
So now you know. It seems that Johnny Kitchen didn't live and work in British Columbia after all and that the entire Bedlam project was pieced together by Millman from his extensive library before being offered to Condor for release.
Anyway, here, for your edification, are a couple of tracks from Bedlam: Head Games And Other Assorted Crap and the opener Parade at the Funny Farm – both of which intersperse the insanity with some instantly recognisable hits. Crazy, man!
Today’s track, the A-side of a 1968 single released by the Birmingham-based band The Exception, is a blot on an otherwise exemplary and, in the history of the British folk-rock scene, important musical career. The Exception, probably best known amongst collectors for their debut single The Eagle Flies On Friday (an aggressive, blues-influenced cut about threatening bosses with baseball bats and which featured Robert Plant on tambourine) included Dave Pegg and Roger Hill, two men who went on to work with a number of noted British folk-rock musicians and who also became members of Fairport Convention and (in Pegg’s case) Jethro Tull.
The third member of the band, Alan 'Bugsy' Eastwood, wroteRub It Down.
Reggae was still perceived as a novelty in the UK in 1968, the year that Marmalade made the Number One spot with their cover of the Beatles’ cod-reggae Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (making them the first Scots band to score a chart topper, fact fans). Millie Small had the first reggae/ska hit back in 1963 with My Boy Lollipop but apart from that it wasn’t until 1969 that Jamaican artists began to make any headway in the singles charts. That year Trojan Records – only established two years’ previously – scored with Jimmy Cliff's Wonderful World, Beautiful People, and Desmond Dekker & The Aces’ Israelites became the first bone fide reggae Number One.
The Exception were as capable as many of the better known bands coming out Birmingham in the mid-60s however, unlike contemporaries such as The Spencer Davis Group, The Moody Blues and The Move, they never to make the shift into the big time…quite possibly because they couldn’t make up their mind which musical direction to follow. Lead guitarist Roger Hill and bassist Dave Pegg had been members of The Uglies and, after recording a couple of singles with that band, the pair teamed up with former Brumbeats singer/drummer Alan Eastwood (Hill had also been a member of the Brumbeats) first as The Hooties before changing their mane to the Exception. In 1966 the trio - hoping to emulate the success of Cream - signed with CBS.
The company issued two singles: The Eagle Flies On Friday, which was credited to The Exceptions, and the tongue-twisting Gabardine Saturday Night Street Walker, which was backed by Pegg and Hill’s jazzy instrumental Sunday Night at the Prince Rupert. CBS dropped the band after the singles failed to chart and Pegg left, replaced by John Rowland who, fairly soon afterwards, was replaced himself by Malcolm Garner.
The band moved to Ed Kassner’s President Records and issued Tailor Made Babe, a decent blues chugger with a great vocal from Eastwood and some nice guitar fills from Hill. Next came this nasty, fake-reggae travesty complete with its terrible Sylvester the cat impersonation; that was followed by the poppy Helicopter, which in turn was followed by the folky Pendulum. The Exception didn’t know what they wanted to be – or if they did their record company wouldn’t let them be what they wanted to be, trying everything – and every style – to try and give them a hit.
Again the singles did nothing, but President Records had enough conviction in the band to finance an album - The Exceptional Exception. The cover of the album reveals a fourth member of the line-up, Steve Yetson, who is credited with vocals, sax and keyboards. Mostly a compilation of the singles the band had cut for President (and conspicuously missing both sides of this particular release), the album sank like a stone. Alan "Bugsy" Eastwood left The Exception shortly after the album's release: Hill carried on, fronting a new line-up but by May 1969 it was all over. Roger Hill rejoined Pegg and became a member of Fairport Convention (he sadly passed away last year) and Eastwood (on the left in the group shot here) recorded a couple of solo efforts (including the album Seeds), though alcohol addiction sidetracked his career. He died of heart failure in October 2007.
Here are both sides of the fourth Exception single: Rub It Down and It’s Snowing in the Desert.
Today’s brace of badness comes from veteran British rock ‘n’ roller Jackie Lynton – who same of you may know through his association with Status Quo – still rocking and rolling today after more than 55 years in the business.
Born John Bertram Lynton in Shepperton, Middlesex in 1940 Jackie first began singing in his church choir. However he was bitten by the rock ‘n’ roll bug early on – Elvis was a huge influence – and, after performing Blue Suede Shoes at a talent show he and his band (originally known the Plect-Tones, before changing their name to the Teenbeats) started to attract attention. In no time at all he was playing at the famous of rival agents: consequently, by the time he got around to establishing a residency at 2 I’s Coffee Bar in Soho: proprietor Tom Littlewood subsequently became Jackie’s first professional manager.
Under Littlewood’s guidance Jackie graduated to the Larry Parnes package tour circuit where he worked alongside Billy Fury, Vince Taylor & the Playboys, Wee Willie Harris, Terry Dene, Lance Fortune, Screaming Lord Sutch & His Savages (Jackie tells a story of how he and Sutch almost jumped into the Serpentine for a publicity stunt...until they both realised that neither of them could swim), John Leyton, Freddie Starr & the Midnighters and others. Soon after Littlewood managed to score a recording deal with Pye’s new Piccadilly label.
His first disc – a version of the Judy Garland showstopper Over The Rainbow - was an odd choice and it failed to chart, although it did pick up some decent reviews. Oddly, Lonnie Donegan also covered the song around the same time. Hailed by New Musical Express as ‘Most Promising Newcomer’, Jackie was widely tipped to make it big – but never quite did. The follow up, Wishful Thinking was a silly song with a ridiculous cha-cha-cha arrangement that – quite rightly – also failed to hit the charts. Then came a rocking version of the classic All Of Me, which marked the recording debut of blues guitarist Albert Lee. The single was well reviewed, but despite selling steadily it again missed the charts. Similarly I Believe also failed to find an audience.
It was at this point that Jackie’s career took a bizarre twist: his next single – and the first of today’s tracks - was an insane version of the children’s song The Teddy Bears' Picnic. An utterly ridiculous record, it however went on to become Jackie’s best selling single and was the closest he came to scoring a bone fide chart hit. But, like all of the singles that preceded it, The Teddy Bears' Picnic also proved unsuccessful.
One of the many Brit rockers to find an audience in Hamburg, he recorded 16 tracks in the city in just one day in 1964, although these were released credited to Boots Wellington & His Rubber Band, as he was still under contract to Pye/Piccadilly. After a couple more releases, including decent covers of Chuck Berry and Beatles compositions, Jackie left Piccadilly records. The sessions he had performed on had been graced by some of the biggest names of the early 60s rock scene - Big Jim Sullivan, Jimmy Page (who played on Jackie’s version of the Lennon-McCartney song Little Child), Herbie Flowers, Clem Cattini and Albert Lee among them. There was even talk of him forming a band with the young Ritchie Blackmore as early as 1962: apparently the pair were to be mentored by legendary producer Kim Fowley.
He issued one last single on Piccadilly, Laura, before he left the music scene for a while. However the stage still beckoned and, in 1965, he cut a number of independently-produced sides with Ray Horricks (who had produced Teddy Bears' Picnic) – two of which turned up on a Decca single (and one of which provides our next audio disaster) Three Blind Mice/Corrina Corrina – easily one of the most peculiar singles released by one of the vanguards of the first wave of British rock ‘n’ roll, a freakbeat nursery rhyme which never stood a chance of charting in the UK. An utterly loopy record, I can’t but wonder if David Byrne was channelling Jackie when he recorded his vocal for Talking Heads’ brilliant Blind.
Jackie went on to cut three singles for Columbia, all produced by Mark Wirtz – famous for his compositions A Touch of Velvet, A Sting of Brass and Excerpt From a Teenage Opera– but again he failed to score that elusive hit which would have finally taken him into the big time. With little in the way of steady income from his recordings Jackie maintained a day job, working as a painter and decorator (he worked on John Lennon’s Weybridge mansion) whilst gigging at weekends and cutting the occasional disc. During the 70s he became a member of Savoy Brown (and finally charted – in the US at least – with the album Jack the Toad) and, in 1974, finally issued his first full-length solo album The Jackie Lynton Album, which included his live favourite The Hedgehog Song.
He spent a few years dabbling in the pop ballad field: he recorded a few sides for European release (his band The People issued a 45 on the Spanish label Explosion), recorded the vocals for an Ennio Morricone song The Ballad of Hank McCain – which featured in the movie The Untouchables - for the Italian market and even made demos for smug repeat offender Mike ‘Ukip Calypso’ Read. Then, in 1978, Status Quo scored a massive hit with Again And Again, co-written by Jackie and Quo’s Rick Parfitt (Lynton had appeared as MC on the previous year’s Quo Live). The following year he assembled a host of old friends - including Parfitt, Clem Clemson, Chas and Dave and several members of Manfred Mann's Earth Band - to record his second solo album, No Axe To Grind. Since then he’s continued to gig and record (although he has now retired from painting and decorating), enjoying several successful appearances at the Reading Rock Festival and as a guest of The Quo. Jackie issued his most recent album - All's Fair in Love and Rock 'n Roll - in 2011.
Although I have been editing this blog for almost eight years now, I think that this maybe the first time I have featured an instrumental as the plug track. Sure I’ve included instrumental B-sides in the past, but unless my memory fails me (and, at my age, that is starting to become a regular occurrence) I don’t believe that I have ever presented you with an entirely instrumental selection.
Well, today I aim to address that. And how.
This spectacularly inept disc – Your Voice Is Like A Song backed with Take A Cup Of Kindness - was issued in 1971 by song-poem supremos Tin Pan Alley, but it’s not a song poem. Oh no: the writer of the two tunes, one Elmer S Galloway, also performs them – or should I say attempts to - with all the élan of a three year old picking up his or her first toy guitar.
This is a vanity pressing. A few song-poem outfits also allowed erstwhile composers to perform their own material, and would knock out a handful of discs to said tunesmith for a fee. Our Elmer clearly thought that as he had composed these two tunes, who could be better than him to perform them? Unfortunately the answer to that is ‘anyone’; one of more of Tin Pan Alley’s regular roster of catastrophically awful musicians would have done a better job that poor old Elmer manages.
It’s clear, judging by the mistakes and the chronically poor timing, that Elmer had but one chance to commit his precious - albeit preposterous - tunes to vinyl: what a shame then that this was the best performance he could muster. I can’t tell you much about the man, apart from the fact that he was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in August 1921 and that he died in December 2001 aged 80, just four days before Christmas. 5’ 6” high, Elmer served as a private during WWII. He was a prolific songwriter, and in March 1976 alone he copyrighted 18 tunes, including Space Age Holiday, You Were Great and Play For Me A Melody. 1976 was a good and productive year for Elmer: in the previous year he had only copyrighted four songs, and three of those were co-writes. He was still composing in the early 1980s (his song Can't Love You Now, Love You Later was issued on cassette in 1981).
Happily, my copy of the disc comes with a lead sheet for Your Voice Is Like A Song; my guess is that if Elmer had been willing to spend more money someone like Billy Grey or Madelyn Buzzard would have recorded the vocal version of the song. Perhaps they did: maybe there’s a second version of this, still waiting to be discovered that included a tortuous vocal performance to match Elmer’s rotten words. I hope it exists, and that it was Madelyn Buzzard who had to suffer the ignominy of singing the line ‘singing like a songbird in the sullen air’.Wouldn’t that have been delicious?
In the second volume of The World’s Worst Records I wrote a chapter on singing animals, mentioning the first of today’s brace of badness. However I’ve only just become aware of the second disc, so here – especially for ewe – is classical composer Adrian Munsey with his two wonderfully woolly 45s.
Issued by Virgin Records in 1979, The Lost Sheep is a mediocre slice of sub-classical dullness which features a lamb bleating whilst a small orchestra – replete with bassist and drummer - play the most maudlin music you’re ever likely to hear. Credited to Adrian Munsey, his Sheep, Wind, and Orchestra, the composer even performed this peculiar piece ‘live’ on television, accompanied by a lamb, it’s mother and an eight-piece ensemble. As the lamb was struck with stage fright, Munsey himself stood at the microphone, straight-faced and cradled the poor animal while he performed the recalcitrant beasts’ part.
Virgin must have sensed a hit, for they allowed Munsey to follow this up with C’est Sheep , a dreadful marriage of classical, disco and early techno which failed to sell despite also being issued as a disco-friendly 12” . Three years later Virgin main man Richard Branson – as Jeff Mutton - sat in the producer’s chair for the one and only time to oversee the 1982 Christmas single from The Singing Sheep - Baa Baa Black Sheep backed with Flock Around the Clock.
Munsey has enjoyed a long career as a film and TV producer, documentary film-maker, author and composer. A history scholar at King’s College, Cambridge and a graduate of the Royal College of Art, Munsey’s also promoted Elton John’s first paid gig. In 1982 he founded Odyssey Video and has since released and distributed over 500 films on video or DVD. Music has been a lifelong passion for Munsey, with Classic FM describing his compositions as “unashamedly melodic and heart-warmingly nostalgic, capturing the emotions stirred by visual imagery”. He has released several albums of vocal and instrumental compositions, including Four Suites and Incognito (both 2005), A Wider Sky(2006), Requiem (2008), Songs (2010) and Full Circle (2013). His latest album, Agnus Dei, was issued in March 2015. He has also enjoyed commercial and critical success with his Music Infinity record label, releasing albums by the bestselling Classical Brit-winning boyband Blake, soprano Lesley Garrett (her album A North Country Lass reached No. 1 in the classical charts) and showbiz legend Neil Sedaka.
So here are both sides of both of Adrian Munsey’s sheep-related singles.
Enjoy!
Once again Divshare is up the creek. I'm using The Box for these tracks but you may have issues downloading as I have limited free bandwidth. I will replace these links with Divshare ones once they have sorted out their problems.
Only one track today principally because – on this particular record – the same track appears on both sides. The only difference between the two versions of Like a Dream is that, on the A-side of the disc, the song plays backwards!
The first (and, I believe, only) release on G.H.M Records, Freda Gothenburg’s Like A Dream sounds like a reject from an amateur production of The Rocky Horror Show or similar: I can certainly hear major similarities between Freda’s performance and the vocal technique employed by Little Nell. G.H.M stood for Mike Gatton, Roy Hurley and Ken Murray, the writers of the song and the men who came up with the idea of a backwards-playing disc. Issued in 1979, other credits for the trio of Gatton, Hurley and Murray include the songs Late Night Lady (recorded by Wild Willy Barrett the same year) and What Hit Me (recorded by UK act Rich Gypsy in 1980). As a duo, Gatton and Murray wrote several songs on Barrett’s debut solo album Call of the Wild (Polydor, again 1979).
Ken Murray now runs his own recording studio and song writing business in Rochester, Kent. Mike Gatton, who sadly was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year, recently wrote a musical for schoolchildren, Delahaye the Dog, which focuses on the issue of bullying and its impact on victims. Bassist, sound engineer and songwriter Roy Hurley is still gigging today, as part of the four-piece band Elliot’s Sleeping.
Freda Gothenburg was a studio backing singer, and today is pursuing a career as a writer and proof reader; Like A Dream was her only release under her own name. It’s an awful record, but this is not her fault: she was clearly encouraged to sing the song as playfully and exaggeratedly as she could. As she herself put it when responding to a post on http://musiconvinyl.blogspot.co.uk/: “I reserved my 'good' singing for the session work I did. It was a blast making this record…even if it doesn't have listen appeal!” I’m unsure who the Charlie-boy mentioned in the song is (if indeed it is meant to be anyone): it could be Prince Charles, who in 1979 was still, young, free and single and seen by the press as the world’s most eligible bachelor (it would be two years before he would marry Diana Spencer), or Charlie Townsend, the forever-unseen titular star of Charlie’s Angels.
Issued by Warner Bros in the US in 1960, Crazy, Top 40 & Cool is a precursor – of a kind – to those awful Top of the Popsalbums that filled supermarket shelves in the 60s and 70s here in Britain (and consequently fill the shelves of charity shops today).
The premise is pretty straightforward, get a bunch of studio musicians together, add in a few sound-alike vocalists and a gaggle of enthusiastic teenagers and get them to record a selection of current chart hits: issue it at a budget price that every parent can afford and it back and watch the cash come in.
Only what we get here is nothing short of an abomination: the gaggle of teenagers are loud, shrieky, off key and annoying; the song selection is muddled - it's pretty much all novelty hits that would appeal to either the very young or the very old, hardly teenage fodder - and the end result would more likely drive people from your home than encourage your friends and neighbours to stay and party. Subtitled 'fun for all the family - the new party craze', the whole sorry mess was put together by a faceless collection of producers and publishers using the epithet Free-Sac Productions: Free-Sac were credited as publishers of the 1959 45 Tres Chic by Geoff Gilmore and the Sheiks.
The vocalist on this disc is one Dick Kerr - or rather the disc 'features' Dick Kerr and the Sing-Along Teen-Agers. Kerr, a renowned singer, comedian and impressionist who sadly died in 2010 at the age of 80 after a long battle with cancer, sang at venues in his home area of Turtle Creek, and Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania as a boy. Leaving high school, he joined the United States Air Force, where he was discovered by Horace Heidt, who was looking for a fourth singer for his shows and already had a young man from each of the other branches of military service. Kerr founded the Air Force Tops in Blue entertainment programme, which still exists today under another name.
Kerr performed at Carnegie Hall with Heidt and at every famous showplace in America during the seven years they worked together. Heidt built a show around a group of performers that included Kerr, and they filmed a one-hour television pilot in Hollywood. Kerr worked in theatres, radio, television, Las Vegas and top hotels, nightclubs and concert halls around America; he performed in Europe and Asia and entertained troops stationed overseas.
Anyway, here’s a brace of cuts from the album: an awful teenage sing-along version of Chubby Checker’s massive hit The Twist, and a dreadful cover of the Ivy Three’s dreadful novelty disc Yogi.
