In the early days of the Sterling label, when they were creating a sound I truly love, one of the first singers hired was someone named Joe Hall. I've featured him here once before, and he was really not a very impressive singer. I have a few other Joe Hall records, but they're just not very good. Shortly after his name starts appearing on Sterling labels, the name of Norm Burns shows up, and very quickly, Norm became the standard bearer, which he would remain until his death in 1974. And shortly after Norm showed up, Joe made his last record for the label, which is no surprise. Today's reco ..read more

  Well, I've been super busy, and it's been almost two weeks since I posted. I really don't have much time even now, so I won't say too much about this week's Tin Pan Alley item, featuring Ellen Wayne singing about "The Charm of a Texan's Smile". It's got an appealing, loping beat, and the singer gives quite a winning performance. I find the few things the lyrics actually say about Texans to be somewhere between suspect and flatly untrue, in my experience, anyway - looking at you, Senator Ted Cruz (among many others) - but maybe these things were more true 64 years ago or so, when this wa ..read more

This week, we have an overlap of Holy Week, Passover and Ramadan, and so I thought what better time to feature a religion dominated record from that most religious of song-poem labels, Halmark. Now, admittedly, nearly all (if not all) of the religious material released by Halmark was of the Christian variety, but still, the confluence of religious observations of three of the world's major religions is what caused me to seek out tracks for such a posting.  I don't know what it was about Halmark that attracted so many more religious oriented song-poets than utilized the other labels, bu ..read more

  It's been eight months since I featured Norm Burns, and that's just too long. Here we have a pair of songs which are both about love, but which otherwise have very little in common, subject-wise. One is a forlorn expression of sadness at the wedding of a former flame and the other is a celebration of new love. I do think they share something else in common, though - that frequent feature of song-poem lyricism: The artless effort - the use of phrases which are not poetic and/or which are simply not phrased in such a way that they can be rendered effectively in musical fashion.  For ..read more

 I have a treat for you today! It's a full song-poem album. And it's on the mustiest of fusty old early 1960's labels, Star-Crest. I don't have a lot to say about it. The singer is Tony Rogers, who I have featured on this site twice - nearly ten years ago, and more than a year after that, and a label which I have featured in the past both here, and ages ago at WFMU.  Here are the front and back covers, which, aside from song titles, were largely interchangeable from album to album. Note that, on this one, Tony Rogers doesn't even get a mention - just a tiny rendition of his name ..read more

Okay, a few things before we get to today's feature.  First, I heard from a correspondent named Jay, who has found the most phenomenal picture. Please research (here and elsewhere) W.L. Horning if you are unfamiliar with this man's work. With that said, I share with you now a picture of W.:L. Horning that Jay managed to discover.  The picture had a caption which read:  Wesley Horning, Denver Composer He learned to compose by picking out tunes on guitar. If you have heard any of his "compositions" you will doubtless find that statement extremely hard to believe. Anyway, here he i ..read more

  Those of you unfamiliar with Gary Roberts would do yourselves a favor and peruse this set of posts (which will start with this very post, until I post another Gary Roberts record). You will not be disappointed. You also can't go wrong listening to this classic.  Those of you who are familiar with the song-poem work of Gary Roberts might have several words to use to describe his performances. I'm guessing that well down below word 100 on that list would be "Bluesman".  And yet, that's what the bosses at Sterling assigned Gary to become, for the song "Remembering". The results ..read more

To start today's post, let me just reiterate that, any time I come to own a previously unknown / unshared record linked to the fabulous Norridge Mayhams (AKA Norris the Troubadour), it will get shared here, and very promptly.  I will do this even though many of these records have a dubious - or even virtually no - connection to song-poems. The link remains that, at a certain point in the 1960's, Norris stopped performing his own songs (or, as in this case, hiring and no doubt paying existing outfits to record them), and started using the song-poem companies to record his songs. But even ..read more

Looks like it's been just over six months since I featured Gene Marshall, and I must rectify that!    I think maybe I've just been a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of Gene Marshall records in my collection that I haven't shared, as well as the fact that, well, most of them are exceedingly bland, musically, often despite the typically masterful vocal work by our man Gene. The records made for Preview after Rodd moved over to MSR, as well as the records that Gene made for other labels, under multiple names, are usually lacking that something special that I try to feature here as ..read more

 Greetings!  I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season, whatever it is you celebrate or don't celebrate. Here's hoping for a fabulous 2024.  Whatever happens next year, though, it will happen without one of my favorite people in the world. Tommy Smothers died this week, and I want to just say a word or two here. That's because I think The Smothers Brothers - in addition to what they did for the expanding of boundries in television (and for letting Pete Seeger back on the air) - they were, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest comedy acts of the 20th century. I'm ..read more