The World's Worst Records

It's Mavin Again

2012-01-27T09:00:00.000Z

I had started to think, that after five years of compilingthis rubbish, that I would run out of material to bring you. Luckily peoplelike Ross Hamilton would chip in with the occasional track, or remind me of anyhowling omissions – as he did when he emailed me recently to draw to myattention that I still had not posted any Mrs Miller recordings (don’t worry, Iwill!).

Still, I had worried that there may be a finite life tothis blog. But then Mick Dillingham got in touch.

Mick, for those of you who don’t know, is a music writer,record collector and was co-compiler (along with Nick Saloman of the BevisFrond) of the essential Music for Mentalists, a 33-track CD of obscure andbizarre music which includes several tracks – such as Dance With Me by ReginaldBosanquet and Together in Iceland by Mavin James – that I have previouslyfeatured here.

Since his first email, which supplied the tracks heretoday, Mick has sent me a slew of great material, much of which I was unawareof and some of which has me laughing fit to burst. I’m enormously grateful toMick for providing such a bounty and you’ll be hearing some of those tracksover the coming weeks and months, but first – and certainly most importantly – hehas kindly supplied us with the second Mavin James single.

And what a corker it is (pun very much intended). If youthought that Mavin’s He-Be – Har-Be was overproduced and would prefer somethingmore akin to My Dad you’re in for a real treat: You’re Just Like a Bubble inWine is a low-fi, two-track delight. According to the sleeve notes ‘Single 2,which might be considered to be amongst the best two-track recordings made, wasrecorded without mixing facilities and Mavin was only able to achieve this highstandard of work as a result of continual practice’. Priceless.

Of its B-side Nothing to Do, another understated low-figem, the notes proclaim that Mavin ‘tends to sing in those moments in life whenall appears lost.’ Says Mick of his find: "If the first singleis his Trout Mask Replica and the third single his Sgt Pepper then this singleis his Frampton Comes Alive..."

I’m still trying to track down more info about Mavin;perhaps there was a fourth single? Maybe somewhere in Rochester there’s a boxcontaining the tapes of his unreleased album? Unfortunately what was once thehome of Havasong Records, Mavin’s company, is now a car park. Perhaps we’llnever know anything more about the enigmatic Mr James. But at least we havethese six sides.

Enjoy

The Return of Mavin James

2012-01-20T08:29:00.002Z

A real treat for you all today: the debut single by our very own Mavin James. If you thought Together In Iceland was strange have a listen to both sides of this utterly peculiar record and wonder.

For these tracks Mavin is joined by the Venatics (aka Russ, Joan and Neill). I’m assuming these three people are related to Mavin in some way – perhaps his long-suffering wife and two adult children? You can almost hear them cringing with embarrassment as they sing the lines of He-Be – Har-Be (All Join In), described on the label as a ‘disco/dance’. Released on Mavin's own Havasong label, I love the way that he has stolen its chorus from the Salvation Army’s battle cry, and the two-note trombone solo is a thing of pure joy, reminiscent in some way of the guitar solo on the Buzzcock’s Boredom – itself appropriated by Edwin Collins for the Orange Juice classic Rip It Up. Its flip Me-Me and You (a ‘disco/ballad’ apparently) is a sweet little love song with some nicely atmospheric guitar touches. But disco it ain’t.

Unfortunately no further information on the man has surfaced since I posted Mavin’s third single back in November, so you’ll have to make do with Mavin’s own sleeve notes – printed in urgent capitals on the actual cover, which I’ve transcribed for you here complete with original syntax and punctuation errors intact:

Mavin James was born and at the age of only 2 years following the positioning of his high chair near the piano, soon found he could master the theories of music. Within a very short time original melodies were flowing from his toes and his future seemed assured. However the advent of shoes ruined this promising career and he was a has-been at the age of 2½.

Later in his life having found that fingers play better than toes he continued to play piano but eventually settled on playing the organ to the consternation of his family and friends.

Discounting the first 50 tries which didn’t really count he sat down to write and play his debut record and at first try completed he-Be – Har-Be, Immediately following up with his disco ballad me-Me and You, which is particularly suitable for close dancing when you’re in a don’t care mood.

Somewhere between the brilliant He-Be – Har-Be/Me-Me and You and the even more wonderful My Dad/Together in Iceland is a second Mavin James single. I’ve yet to track it down, but the hunt is on.

Enjoy

repair work

2012-01-14T09:02:00.000Z

Just a quickie: a couple of WWR followers have contacted me to let me know that the Mavin James tracks My Dad and Together in Iceland were not working. Well, they should be now.

If you notice any other links misbehaving do let me know and I'll fix them too. Incidentally, I'm aware that many of the old Rapidshare links are now defunct; if there are any tracks you're particularly after let me know and I'll repost.

New music next Friday.

Onions Onions

2012-01-13T08:22:00.002Z

What a peculiar record. Recorded by the otherwise-unheard of Laurie and released in the UK by Decca records in June 1966 the original version of I Love Onions, by folk singer Susan Christie, barely scraped the US charts (peaking at 63) but somehow made number 6 in Canada. Laurie’s version – a carbon copy of the original - was featured heavily by Kenney Everett on pirate station Radio London, and made Big L’s Top 40 (just) although neither this nor Laurie’s other known disc troubled the main UK charts.

I can’t tell you much about Laurie, apart from the fact that she also released an earlier Decca 45, He Understands Me/Fools Will Never Learn, in March 1966 (F12347 – a number of test pressings as well as stock copies exist). Both were produced by Noel Walker, an extraordinary man responsible for a number of unusual hit records, including Whistling Jack Smith’s top 5 hit I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman, Amen Corner’s Bend Me, Shape Me and waxings by the Big Three, the Fortunes, Ron Grainer, Cat Stevens and countless others. The Kaiser Bill story is a complicated one: Walker is widely believed to be the performer, although Whistling Jack’s true identity is unknown - he could simply be one of the many members of the Mike Sammes Singers, the uncredited group who back up the lead whistler on the single. Coby Wells, aka Billy Moeller, was used by Deram, the Decca subsidiary that released the single, to ‘front’ later releases and TV appearances but he was recruited after the initial single was recorded and in his TV appearances simply lip-syncs (or whistle-syncs) to the track; John O'Neill, who whistled the main theme to the Spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, is also occasionally cited as the original performer.

The music director on I Love Onions was Ivor Raymonde, grabbing a credit here for doing absolutely bog all – he’s simply recreated the Susan Christie arrangement note for note, including the breathy vocals, the kazoo and the backing chorus. Ivor often worked together with Noel Walker, but today is best remembered as the co-author and arranger of several Dusty Springfield tracks, including her breakthrough solo hit I Only Want to Be with You. He has also worked with artists as diverse as Anne Shelton, Ian Dury, Frankie Vaughan, Julio Iglesias, and the late Edward Woodward. After working as a musical arranger at the BBC, Ivor became a producer at Philips, working with Marty Wilde and with folk trio the Springfields. When Dusty decided to go solo in 1963 Ivor offered her a tune he'd written with lyricist Mike Hawker: I Only Want to Be with You. Ivor continued to work with Dusty until the late '60s, when she moved toward a more American-style soul sound. His son is Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins.

I Love Onions is truly odd; the a-side is clearly meant to be humorous, yet the B-side, I Want Him, is a belter, an out-and-out stormer of a track which could easily have been a big floor filler and gone on to become a hit if it had been promoted as the plug side. I’ve included it here for you. Have a listen: doesn’t that backing sound EXACTLY like the Zombies?

Enjoy!

Hughie's Right Wing Rants

2012-01-06T08:55:00.000Z

Happy New Year everybody - and welcome to the World's Worst Records. I can't believe I'm now beginning my sixth year of blogging. I'm going to try and be a bit more on the ball this year and bring you a new track (or more) every week.

To start the ball rolling today I bring you both sides of a 45 which helped to destroy one of the most successful television careers of all time.

One of the biggest stars of 50s, 60s and 70s British TV, Hughie Green is best remembered these days for having illegitimately fathered the late TV presenter Paula Yates and for his fiery temper, which reared its ugly head every time someone dared to criticise him or his work.

Born in London in 1920 to a Scottish father and English mother, by the age of 14 the prodigious young Hughie had his own BBC radio show and toured extensively with his own all-children concert party Hughie Green and his Gang. Within a year he had appeared in his first film, Midshipman Easy, and was the highest paid child star in the UK. However Britain couldn’t contain him: soon he was off to the States, appearing in Hollywood films including Tom Brown's School Days and Master of Lassie (AKA Hills of Home), in a night club act at the famous Cocoanut Grove and had toured Canada with his cabaret act.

Canada looms large in Hughie’s legend: he fathered his first illegitimate child (a boy called Barry) with a Canadian usherette at the age of 17 (the loose limbed lothario is credited with at least five other illegitimate children as well as a boy and a girl by his first wife) and served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. He eventually married Montreal-born Claire Wilson and took Canadian citizenship, working in the aircraft industry before returning to London.

TV fame soon followed: over the course of the next few decades Hughie fronted a selection of Britain’s favourite TV shows, including Double Your Money, The Sky's the Limit and the talent show which his name will always be associated with, Opportunity Knocks: his memorial, in Golders Green crematorium, reads ‘You were the star that made opportunity knock. You will never be forgotten’.

Opportunity Knocks was the first big talent show on British TV – a monster of a programme which regularly brought in three times the number of viewers shows like the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent achieve today. Opportunity Knocks, which began as a radio show in the 1940s before transferring to TV, ‘discovered’ Les Dawson, Lena Zavaroni, Pam Ayres, Paul Daniels, Royston Vasey (AKA Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown) and Mary Hopkin among dozens of others. However viewing figures, and Green’s standing with his production team, started to wane, especially when Hughie, already known for his right-wing leanings, began pushing his political views on his teatime audience.

In December 1976, at the end of an episode of Opportunity Knocks, Green ‘sang’ a bizarre rant about the state of the United Kingdom. Called Stand Up and Be Counted, the words to the ‘song’ were brought up on the screen during its performance, just to make sure that everybody watching got the message. Stand Up and Be Counted was released as a single by Philips in 1977 (backed with a grotesque rewrite of Land of Hope and Glory that was originally planned for a 1975 broadcast) with the distinctly patriotic catalogue number GB1 - the assumption here is that GB stands for Great Britain, rather than Green's Bollocks.

This wasn’t Hughie’s first attempt to crack the pop charts, he released several singles during the 60s and 70s including That’s Entertainment (EMI 1974), The Puppet Song (Decca 1961) and Cuddle Up Baby (Columbia 1966). Viewed by many as in support of Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher, Hughie was disciplined by Thames Television over his performance of Stand Up and Be Counted, but he continued to make political comments. After numerous viewer complaints, Thames axed the show in March 1978.

It’s odd, in hindsight, that Thames took this view. This is the same company which had made the white versus black race comedy Love Thy Neighbour – which screened its final episode less than a year before Hughie’s on-screen rant. The ITV network, of which Thames were part, produced a slew of offensive, race-based ‘comedies’, including Mind Your Language, Mixed Blessings and Curry and Chips, featuring a blacked-up Spike Milligan. It’s much more likely that they were exasperated with Hughie’s insistence that he was bigger than the show he devised.

Hughie spent his last years in relative obscurity, drinking heavily and taking increasingly larger doses of barbiturates. It wasn’t until his funeral in 1997 that it was revealed – by a reporter and former friend – that he was the real father of Paula Yates, a fact the poor woman was unaware of until she herself read it in the News of the World. Until then she had been convinced that her real father was Jess Yates, popularly known as ‘the Bishop’, who presented the ITV religious programme Stars On Sunday and who had produced Green in The Sky’s the Limit and Opportunity Knocks. Jess Yates was fired from his job in 1974 because scandalous stories began appearing in the newspapers about his private life, specifically over an affair with the actress Anita Kay. The source of these stories was Hughie Green, who fed them to journalist Noel Botham - the same reporter who later revealed Paula’s true parentage.

So here, for your delectation, we present both sides of Hughie Green’s appalling 1977 45 Stand Up and Be Counted/Land of Hope and Glory. Enjoy (if you can).

No Way!

2011-12-30T08:55:00.000Z

Rumours persist that the ‘group’ responsible for today’s atrocity were put together by someone within the music industry as a joke, and that two A&R men bet each other that they could get the worst song imaginable to number one. Well, I ain’t laughing.

Possibly the homeliest foursome ever to trouble Saturday morning TV, Vanilla was a girl group from Barnet, London consisting of sisters Frances and Alison Potter, plus their friends Alida Swart and Sharon Selby. Releasing just two singles for EMI in 1997 and 1998, it is the first of these we feature today.

No Way No Way reached the dizzying heights of number 14 in the UK Singles Chart. Based on the late Italian film composer Piero Umiliani's one-off novelty hit Mah Nà Mah Nà (later popularised by the Muppets and by its inclusion in many Benny Hill episodes), the video which accompanied the single (filmed, incidentally, in Brockwell Lido – not Charlton as claimed by Wikipedia) won the dubious title of Worst Music Video Ever on the 1997 ITV Chart Show end-of-year special. The song itself was voted number 26 on Channel 4's 100 Worst Pop Records.

Pretty much forgotten now, the band was just one of a plethora of appalling girl combos put together in the rush to find a second Spice Girls. One can imagine how it went in the planning meeting: “We need another ‘zig-a-zig-ahhh’!” “What about ‘mah-na-mah-na’? It sounds a bit similar; it’s got the same number of syllables.” “Perfect: gold discs all round!”

The follow-up, True to Us, managed to scrape in at 36 in the UK charts: the foursome failed to release any further singles, were dropped by their company and quietly disbanded.

Enjoy!

Christmas Cavalcade 4

2011-12-23T10:50:00.000Z

Two bites of the glace cherry today to finish off our 2011 Christmas Cavalcade, although admittedly I’m cheating a bit with one of them as it’s not a record per se, having never appeared (at least not so far) on vinyl or CD

First us is the ridiculous Cheeky Girls with Have A Cheeky Christmas – just the sort of tune you should be kicking up your heels over after enjoying too much turkey and before settling down to the Queen’s Speech. Principally famous these days for one half of the Transylvanian twins having been knobbed by useless former LibDem MP and wannabe celebrity Lemsip Nodick, the duo first came to fame on the TV ‘talent’ show Popstars: The Rivals, achieving chart success with four top ten hits between 2002 and 2004, the biggest being their debut single, Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum), which has sold more than 1.2 million copies worldwide but was voted the worst pop record of all time in a Channel 4 poll.

A tad unfair, I think, as this particular offering is far, far worse…even if it did manage to scrape into the UK top 10 in 2003. Inane lyrics in comedy broken English, the CD single even included a Christmas remix of their insufferable debut, which was pretty much exactly the same song with a bunch of sleigh bells tacked on. Ugh.

The second track, and the final one for this year’s Christmas Cavalcade, is not exactly a record, but I felt you masochists would enjoy it anyway. It’s a brand-spanking new version of the Band Aid hit Do they Know It’s Christmas put together by a bunch of British journalists – including former New of the World showbiz reported Dan Wootton, the Sun’s TV editor Colin Robertson and the Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh. A little bit of fun which has been doing the rounds of Twitter for the last few days, it should provide the ideal way to clear your house of any unwanted visitors over the Festive season.

Have a great Christmas - I’ll be back soon with more horrific noise for you all.

Enjoy!

Christmas Cavacade 3

2011-12-18T11:20:00.000Z

Here we go then, this year’s penultimate Christmas instalment. One more week of this garbage then, I promise, back to normal at WWR Towers.

First up is Snoopy’s Christmas, the follow up to the Royal Guardsmen’s inexplicably popular 1966 hit Snoopy Versus the Red Baron – a number eight hit in the UK and number two in their native America. Although this particular song (just one of a slew of tracks the band released about either the Red Baron, Snoopy or both, including The Return of the Red Baron, Snoopy for President and 2006’s Snoopy Vs. Osama) did not chart in the UK or US it was, for some peculiar reason, a number one hit in New Zealand. Originally released on Laurie records in the US (and on London in the UK), the song tells the tale of how Charlie Brown’s mutt had to go out and fight the Red Baron on Christmas Eve, the two mortal enemies setting aside their differences for the night, sharing a drink and then flying off to meet another day.

The ridiculously flat bass playing on Snow Man, from Bob Gerard, is typical of a great number of the offerings from Tin Pan Alley, one of my absolute favourite song-poem labels. Luckily this particular horror clocks in at just 97 seconds. Bob was the ‘performer’ of one of the best song-poems ever, Tin Pan Alley’s Jodey Is a Wise Guy, a real stinker which I may well bring you once the festive season is through.

Track number three, The Christmas Shoes, came my way courtesy of Ross Hamilton. Its perpetrators, Christian rock phenomenon NewSong, should have been shot for this horrifically sentimental pap: written by Eddie Carswell and Leonard Ahlstromy this garbage, about a small boy who wants to buy his mother some new shoes that she can wear when she meets God later that night, provided the inspiration for an equally sickening film of the same name. Truly music to slit your wrists to, The Christmas Shoes made the coveted number one spot on Billboard for one week in January 2001. This song made me feel so ill I was forced to play Rock Music by the Pixies incredibly loudly just to get the evil noise out of my head. NewSong are one of the biggest acts on the Xian music scene, and founders of the Winter Jam Tour Spectacular, the United States' largest annual Christian music tour.

Today’s final two ‘songs’, if you can call them that, come from Christmas in the Stars, the Star Wars Christmas Album. You may recall that we featured another track, R2D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Jon Bon Jovi’s professional recording debut, here last year. Today we present a bunch of droids singing Merry, Merry Christmas and C3PO, aka Anthony Daniels, retelling the classic T’was the Night Before Christmas (retitled here A Christmas Sighting) with a suitably Star Warsian bent. It won’t be long before George Lucas decides to remaster this album, add in a CGI JarJar Binks and repackage it as Star Wars Episode 5a, or some such nonsense.

On Friday I’ll bring you the final instalment in this year’s Christmas Cavalcade. Until then…enjoy!

Christmas Cavalcade Part Two

2011-12-09T15:22:00.000Z

It should come as no surprise that the festive season has been providing song-poets with a bottomless barrel of maudlin sentiment for decades. Along with US Presidents, Elvis and life-threatening diseases or injuries Christmas is easily one of the most popular subjects for budding lyricists. As another Christmas approached your average song-shark would have been rubbing his calloused hands with so much glee it’s a wonder they didn’t catch fire.

The first three tracks in today’s slice of festive hokum come from the MSR release 1978 Christmas Album. I’m not a huge fan of latter-day MSR, that omnipresent washy synthesiser is a real turn off for me (as it is for fellow song-poem collector and blogger Bob Purse), but if you look past that you’ll discover some real stinkers, such as those presented for your enjoyment today.

Most of this album is just mediocre, the songs wouldn’t sound out of place playing in a lift or as muzak in a supermarket, but the first track, Merry Christmas From Tonga, the Friendly Island, which comes from the splendidly-named Sione Lavemai Finau (an author who provided the ‘lyrics’ to three tracks on this particular compilation) is an exception. 1978 was a particularly creative (and probably expensive) year for Sione, as he also managed to get a song placed on another MSR release, the Special 1978 Gospel Album.

Next up is the distinctly un-cheerful Christmas Cheer, with words by song-poet Joan Tomaini. I believe Joan is being thoroughly altruistic in asking her listeners to think of those less fortunate than themselves during the Christmas period, but the line ‘does anyone ever think of those whose life compares to a dead rose’ has me in stitches.

The final cut from this particular album, Christmas Events (with words by Joseph Pullum) is shameless, stealing snatches of music and lyrics from Christmas standards luckily no longer protected by copyright. It’s a jolly romp though, and wouldn’t be out of place on a 70s BBC Christmas special. Like Sione, Joseph also decided to take another crack at the Christmas charts courtesy of MSR – he has two songs on this collection and a third, Christmas Time, appears on their album A Gift of Christmas Spirit for 1980.

Last, but by no means least, I’ve included a track from another song-poem album, My Gift To You on the Royal Master label released, I’m guessing (as there’s no date mentioned anywhere) at around the same time. Sung by Linda Lane, with lyrics by Florine Fisher, Christmas is Coming is pretty standard stuff but has some wonderfully stupid words. I particularly like how mundane this particular family’s wants were – a shawl, a pair of house shoes, some gloves, a scarf, a doll, a train set and a pipe. Come on people, it’s Christmas! What about a PS3, a flat-screen TV or an iPad?

There are worse Christmas-themed song-poems out there: check out the excellent compilation Daddy, Is Santa Really Six foot Four for some real howlers, but the four I've chosen for you today have not - to the best of my knowledge - been shared on the interwebs before. So, as ever, enjoy!

Christmas Cavalcade Part 1

2011-12-04T09:14:00.002Z

It’s December, which means it must be time to torture you, dear readers (and listeners) with a barrage of bad Christmas records. It’s my hope that, come Christmas Day, you’ll have enough material to compile a CD’s worth of terrible tunes; a festive farrago if you will. The music in today’s batch comes from my good friend and long-time WWR follower Ross Hamilton.

I’m seriously indebted to him for bringing this first horror to my attention, as it’s one I’d not come across before: The Night KITT Saved Christmas.

Now, I’m sure that most of you are aware that the former-Knight Rider, former-Baywatch, former-Britain’s Got Talent host David Hasselhoff has somehow managed to carve himself a secondary career (especially, for some unknown reason, in Austria) as a balladeer – his first career, of course, being that of a drunken, cheeseburger-demolishing bad parent. He’s actually released 16 albums since his first, Night Rocker, appeared in 1985. This track predates that by a couple of years (Dr Demento featured it on his radio programme in 1984) and it seems that Hasselhoff had yet to discover his singing chops, instead ‘rapping’ his way through this abortion. As Ross himself puts it: “The Hoff has committed quite a few crimes against music down the years but this is one of the earliest, as far as I can tell. It is sung over the Knight Rider theme and tells how Santa disappears over Christmas and so KITT must steam in and pull the reindeers along. Oh dear God, this is bad.”

The next track, also supplied by Ross, had me laughing out loud. Based on the blind singer-songwriter Leon Payne’s song of the same name (more famously covered by Elvis Costello and the Attractions), Psycho by Thirsty Dave's Western Caravan – who claim to be the best-known, most-booked western swing band in New York - is genius. Formed in 1995 and still going strong, Psycho is taken from their 2001 album Yellow Texas Moon. The original song was inspired by a visit by the Payne to ‘see’ Hitchcock’s Psycho (according to his daughter Myrtie) rather than the long-believed story that it was composed by Payne in reaction to Charles Whitman who, in 1966, strangled his mother to death, stabbed his wife and then climbed to the top of the tower at the University of Texas Library, opening fire on the unsuspecting crowd below and killing 16 people.

Today’s final cut is from Red Sovine, featured earlier at WWR for his maudlin monstrosity Teddy Bear. This offering, Santa Is A Texas Cowboy, is surprisingly upbeat for the master of the morose; released in 1974 and credited to Red Sovine and the Girls (it reappeared on his 1978 album Christmas With Red Sovine), it actually features ole Red singing, a break from his usual monotonous spoken-word delivery.

Thanks Ross, for this batch of horrors. More next week.

Enjoy!

Say May-Vin

2011-11-24T13:41:00.002Z

A quick, slightly early post to round off November. From next week I'll be bringing you the usual annual debauchery known as the World's Worst records' Christmas Countdown. Until then, let me introduce you to Mavin James.

I know very little about Mavin (Say May-Vin) James apart from the fact that this middle-aged crooner released at least three 45s on his own Havasong label, based in Rochester, Kent, in 1986/87.

The following info is almost entirely gleaned from the sleeve of this particular single, the third in the series, My Dad/Together in Iceland (complete with any errors in punctuation, spelling and/or syntax):

Mavin was born in King’s Cross and lived in Bloomsbury, London until the age of 10, when he moved with his family to Greenford, Middlesex. There he lived until the age of 22 thereafter moving to Rochester in Kent and becoming by adoption a “MAN OF KENT”.

Whilst living in Greenford he began Playing Piano at Parties and soon found, that in addition to enjoying himself he was also being paid. His enthusiasm knew no bounds and soon he was known to one-and-all as HE WHO NEVER STOPS, himself considering no party a success, unless all were exhausted.

Moving to Rochester, by now lucky enough to have a lovely Wife, fortune smiled and life was able to be lived to it’s full, Piano playing becoming but a distant memory. INEXPLICABLY MANY YEARS LATER whilst working, Mavin began to sing. Two Hours later his first Song was complete, Words and Music.

Thus was born, Mavin the Songwriter.

Single 3, written by Mavin some time ago, relates to most everybody in varying degrees and Side B, is for those who enjoy a Lively beat.

I mean, who doesn’t enjoy a ‘Lively beat’? Clearly Mavin himself was a bit of a fan: his first single – He-Be-Har-Be/Me-Me and You – is described on the sleeve as a ‘Disco Dance’, and you don’t get a more lively beat than that. Incidentally there was a second Havasong Music, which existed at the same time as Mavin’s company, which published songs by Billy Childish (for acts including the Milkshakes and Thee Headcoatees) and the Prisoners. By strange coincidence Childish (real name Steven John Hamper) originally hailed from Kent, but he had already been living in London for some time when the two Havasongs were in business.

There's something utterly beguiling about Mavin's delivery of the a-side; it's a sweet, naive little ditty which you could easily imagine being performed by Clive Dunn. However nothing can prepare you for the b-side. Together in Iceland, drenched in reverb and with its blippy organ sounds more like a lost Joe Meek masterpiece than the late 80s electropop you'd assume Mavin was going for.

I'll guarantee after a listen or two you'll be humming this one, or suddenly catch yourself singing snatches of the infectious lyrics: "I'll come with you to Iceland, I'll be there to keep you warm," or "In Iceland together, together we'll be."

So, enjoy both sides of Mavin James' third - and seemingly last - single: My Dad/Together in Iceland.

Broken Face

2011-11-19T14:50:00.000Z

A wonderfully pugnacious, mean spirited and misogynistic piece of pop from Norm Buns (this time accompanied by the Five Stars), the chief vocalist on the Sterling song-poem label during its golden years and the performer of such song-poem classics as The Human Breakdown of Absurdity, Black and I’m Proud, Darling You Make Me Angry and Set Your Date on Time.

There are a number of song-poem records about spousal abuse (My Husband, Lover, Friend by Bobbi Blake, for example, written by a stupid woman who forgave the asshole who beat her) but this particular track, Hard Head, is exceptionally vicious: “When I’m through with you the doctor’s will scream, your face will look like it’s been in the mixing machine….”, “I’ll strangle you”, “I’ll break up your nose” and so on. It reads like a check list for the Women’s Aid helpline; the fact that it comes all dressed up in a happy, country-lite sauce only serves to underline how little respect is shown (or at least used to be shown) to the victims of domestic violence.

The song is credited to Charles Storr (the man who obviously had issues with his Missus) and Lew Tobin, the Boston-based song-poem veteran who set up Sterling records and also ran the Five Star Music Masters demo facility. Lew’s song-poem empire was one of the longest-running of them all, having kept itself busy from the 1940s up until the 1990s soliciting lyrics from would-be songwriters with ads in magazines such as Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Billboard, Railroad Magazine and, later, Ebony. Tobin himself was active from the 1920s: he co-wrote a song called Lonesome Willie Blues, which was copyrighted in 1925, and he scored the music for an unknown number of songs for the song-poem sheet music company Nordyke in the 30s and 40s before establishing Five Star, Sterling and their various spinoffs. His wife, Shelley Stuart, was also a singer who appeared on a number of Lew’s releases, notably Yummy, Yummy Dum-Dum (recorded by Five Star for Delicks Records and the brilliantly-named album The 12 Most Unpopular Songs) and Vampire Husband.

It's just a shame it's so short: at a touch over 100 seconds long Hard Head must beone of the shortest songs I've posted for you so far; but it;'s also one of the best.

Enjoy!

Jailhouse Sucks

2011-11-13T13:47:00.000Z

Welcome, my friends, to the mad, mad world of Eilert Pilarm – a land where every day is Christmas and everyone spends their evening at karaoke. Born Eilert Dahlberg in 1953 in Anundsjö, Sweden, Eilert Pilarm (the name chosen because it had the same initials as his hero) has to be the world’s worst Elvis impersonator. In a world full of bad Elvis impersonators, that’s one hell of a boast.

The former farm hand and labourer began performing in 1992, almost always to backing tapes, and started to build up a loyal following. TV and radio appearances in Scandinavia and further afield followed (he even appeared on Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast in 1999) and by 2001 he was the most-booked live act in Sweden. Eilert’s TV appearances were, to put it mildly, often rather odd: on many programmes he would turn up, bedecked in an Elvis-ish jump suit, and start cooking, imitating Elvis at the same time. Kind of like the Muppet’s Swedish Chef, but dressed by Liberace and singing a bad version of In The Ghetto.

He self-released three cassettes - the stunningly originally-titled Elvis 1, Elvis 2 and Elvis 3 - before the big time came a-knocking: his debut CD Greatest Hits was released in 1996 on MCA, the same year that Eilert finally got to visit Graceland. "I can't work out whether he's brilliant or just incredibly stupid and doesn't realise what he's doing," said iconic DJ John Peel at the time, calling Greatest Hits one of his favourite albums of 1996.

Three more CDs followed; Eilert is Back! In 1998, Live In Stockholm in 2000 and Eilerts Jul (Eilert's Christmas) the following year, a collection which often appears in lists of the worst album covers of all time. His rise to notoriety amongst bad record aficionados was complete when he appeared in the Irwin Chusid book (and accompanying CD) Songs in the Key of Z, the must-have guide to the world of outsider music.

After performing more than 600 gigs, the Swedish Elvis retired from live appearances in 2002. However we still have Eilert’s music and here, for your enjoyment, is what must rank as the highlight of his entire recorded oeuvre – Eilert Pilarm’s version of the Elvis classic Jailhouse Rock.

Enjoy

Bob and Bobby

2011-11-05T11:40:00.000Z

Here’s a real stinker for you, another song poem from one of my all-time favourite performers and companies.

Bob Storm‘s Bobby, an ode to the assassinated Robert Kennedy, is another great from the Halmark stable. Typical of Halmark’s output, the song sounds like it was recorded in the 50s, although Kennedy didn’t meet his untimely end, at the hands of Sirhan Sirhan, until June 1968 and Halmark itself had been established in 1967. With lyrics by Stella Smith, the music was written by song-poem pioneer Ted Rosen and it appeared as the B-side to a dreary little ditty entitled Rosary of Kisses.

The lyrics to Bobby are just awful, and full of the usual song-poet non-sequiturs:

Far away from home and family

Lying in a cold and silent grave

Is the man we knew as Bobby

And we never shall forget

Taken away from his nation by a cruel assassin

In the prime of his life

Now that voice is stilled forever

We’ll never miss him in days to come

He was loved by millions

‘Round the world and everywhere

Many hearts are saddened

Because he is not here

And for the oppressed

Bobby always did his best

Ted Rosen, who we’ve featured on these pages before, grew up in Boston, spending his time, according to his son Jeff (who these days runs the company his father established) with “a smile on his face and his head up in the clouds, writing new songs every day”. Moving to New York in pursuit of his dream of working as a full-time songwriter, his first break came when he wrote the children's song Herkimer the Homely Doll. Released as a 78, in a rather fetching picture sleeve, by Sterling Holloway on Decca in April 1954 Jeff would have you believe that ‘it ran up the Billboard charts’; it didn’t, but you can’t blame a son for being proud of his dad, and it was heavily featured on the hit kid’s TV show Captain Kangaroo which began its record-breaking 30-year run the following year. Ted also claimed to have written a hit song for Rosemary Clooney, but nothing obvious appears in the Clooney discography.

His companies - Talent Incorporated, Halmark, Grand and Chapel – often used the same musical beds for their output; this means that the same music track would appear as backing to a political song on Halmark, an overwrought ballad on Grand and as the tune to a hymn on Chapel, for example – and he didn’t care how often these tracks were used. It made life simple for his stable of performers: all they had to do was walk into the studio, have a quick squint at the lyric sheet and fit them as best they could around a track they had heard time and time again. One particular bed turns up so often it’s unreal: Memories (Genevieve Leahy), A Friend to All (G M Fogarty), the Galveston Rose (Nathan Ricketts & Don Richards), Near to Your Heart (Walter D Rogers), Tomorrow (Mrs Marvell Wyrick) and countless other would-be hit writers have had their material shoehorned into this tune.

Unusually, Rosen was hauled over the coals by the Songwriter's Review magazine, a publication which existed almost exclusively to advertise the services of other song-poem outfits, in 1972. ‘Listen to what Ted Rosen told the Better Business Bureau and didn't tell you or the other 7,000 amateur songwriters he does business with. He [said] his services appeal to the egos of the would-be Hammersteins and the chances of any amateur receiving royalties or making money are very remote...He also doesn't promote nor sell songs; all you're sure of receiving is one record. As for his own experience, Rosen said only one of his songs, entitled "Herkimer the Homely Doll", resulted in royalties. You all remember what a smash hit that was! ‘

Never mind. We love Ted Rosen here at the World’s Worst Records…and I promise that this will not be the last time you hear from him.

Oh Reggie!

2011-10-28T10:50:00.000+01:00

Our friend, and bad music aficionado, Ross Hamilton has once again come up trumps; this week he has supplied me with a clutch of truly terrible tunes, a real embarrassment of wretches.

Today I bring you one of those tracks: a gobsmacking, jaw-dropping foray into the world of disco by none other than the late ITN newscaster Reginald ‘Reggie’ Bosanquet, himself forever immortalised in song by Pamela Stephenson on the great late 70’s/early 80’s BBC comedy series Not the Nine O’clock News. Released on Pye records in 1980 (a year after NTNOCN’s Oh Bosanquet) Dance With Me, backed with Newsletter, is utterly awful. Bosanquet slurs his way through the lyrics (such as they are), the seemingly sozzled newscaster trying his damnedest to lure lovely ladies into his very own disco hell. Intoxicating stuff.

Reggie, the son of the cricketer Bernard Bosanquet, inventor of the "googly", was on the staff of ITN from its earliest days, becoming head anchor in 1974, when Alastair Burnet left to join the BBC's current affairs show Panorama. But he was not without his critics: at times he struggled with unfamiliar words, and his trademark slurred delivery led to suspicions that he was a heavy drinker. There are many stories circulating about Reggie wandering around the halls of ITN with a glass (or two) of wine, or something stronger, in his hands, stories which led to such nicknames as Reginald Beaujolais and Reginald Boozalot. However, many of these stories are apocryphal: his co-anchor (and national treasure) Sir Trevor Macdonald was branded a liar by colleagues in 2008 for stating that Reggie “had to be dragged out (from a bar across the street from the ITN studios) at five minutes to 10 and persuaded to sit down”.

Remembered chiefly these days as much for his terrible toupee as his reputation as a drinker and womaniser, Reggie was one of the most recognisable faces on British TV during the 1970s. It was his retirement from ITN’s flagship News at 10 in 1979 which prompted the NTNOCN team to immortalise him in song. Shame that a year later he was persuaded to ‘perform’ what was to become his own musical epitaph.

Sadly, he died of pancreatic cancer just four years after his one brief sojourn into the disco field, aged just 51. It has been suggested since his death that he suffered from epilepsy, which may account for his less-than-erudite delivery. Oh Reggie, you know something? All news is bad news since you went away….

Enjoy!

The Lions Roar

2011-10-21T14:28:00.004+01:00

Today’s audio abomination was found in Booty, a second hand store in Bristol, just a couple of doors away from my office. I was browsing the shelves there yesterday and came across this horror, resplendent in its dreadful sleeve (left), and knew right away I had to have it. There’s no date anywhere on the disc or sleeve, but I’d date this at around 1979/1980, and it’s release was prompted by the wish to raise money for the Lions Club International Foundation, the charitable arm of Lions Club International, the world's largest service club organisation which currently boasts 1.35 million members in more than 46,000 clubs worldwide.

Recorded at Kaley Studios in Rotherham (where Pulp would later record) and released on the Doncaster-based Future Earth Records, this is a terrible record. The insipid lyrics - “what’s the matter with the world? Why can’t we live together? What’s the matter with the world? Let’s love one another” - are enough to set my teeth on edge (the lyrics of the B side – What A Beautiful Dream – are even more vomit-inducing) but there are a few other things about this particular disc that make it a must for the World’s Worst Records. The sappy, maudlin, sub-McCartney lyrics and de rigueur key change present on both sides would normally be enough, but the discovery that the man behind this bland bucket of hippy-dippy clichés, Lion John Pickles (as he’s credited on both label and sleeve), went on to help create Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers elevates it above its all-pervasive mediocrity.

DJ and producer Les Hemstock (also from Doncaster) created and mixed the first Jive Bunny track for the 22^nd monthly Mastermix, a specialist DJ-only release from the company owned by John Pickles. John, his son Andy and Hemstock – along with DJs Ian Morgan and (later) John Smith - went on to create something of a global phenomenon with Jive Bunny, enjoying 11 UK chart singles (including three number ones) in a little over two years and a number of hits worldwide. John Pickles is now the Chairman of the Music Factory Entertainment Group (son Andy is Deputy Chairman), owners of Mastermix and Jive Bunny. To date Jive Bunny has released close on 20 albums, all of which are available from the Mastermix website.

I realise that should be ashamed, taking the Mickey out of a record released with the sole aim of raising funds for good causes, but the fact that its composer and performer was instrumental in the creation of one of the all-time musical criminals just meant that I had to share it with you. Oh, and the letter on the back of the sleeve, from the Vice President of the International Association of Lions Clubs, is so self-congratulatory (‘we have provided a ray of hope and comfort to those with little to live for’) makes me want to go out and kill someone.

So, enjoy both sides of Lion John Pickles’ single What’s the Matter With The World/What a Beautiful Dream.

Sweatin, Smokin, Snortin

2011-10-16T10:38:00.000+01:00

Todd Andrews, who recorded almost exclusively for the Nashville-based Nu Sound label, is one of my favourite of the many Song Poem singers. His plaintive yet disinterested style is so ill-suited to some of the material he was forced to sing that it adds to its absolute ‘wrongness’; this is miserablist country of the highest order. It’s clear from his intonation and phrasing that he never bothered to give any of these songs more than a single run through, the ‘country-by-numbers’ backing is so safe and similar that anyone with more than a passing interest in singing could work out which way the tune was going to lead them. The fact that he almost always breaks off into a spoken-word passage only enhances that sense of ‘I really can’t be arsed to learn this garbage’ for me.

I’ve tried to find out some info about the life of Todd Andrews but have drawn a complete blank. He’s certainly not to be confused with the much younger Todd Andrews currently gigging around the States (a relative, perhaps?), the comedian or the chess master of the same name. Our Todd, judging by his performances, must have been in his fifties during the 1970s - the time most of these sides were recorded. Other than that I know nothing. All info gratefully received.

Nu-Sound was an odd set up, knocking out the occasional vanity or self-funded 45 but specialising primarily in song poems: from 1967 onwards a Nu Sound Recording Studio operating in Nashville, was advertising its demo facility in Billboard while in the same magazine an ‘established, progressive’ Nu Sound Records of Nashville was looking for country singers. Other Nu-Sound companies exist (or existed): one based in Ohio, another in Kentucky, a third in Brooklyn and a fourth which was primarily a reggae label. All of these seem to be unrelated, and I’m sure there are even more out there somewhere.

So, apologies for the lack of info on today’s artist, but enjoy the great Todd Andrews on a couple of truly dreadful sides - Sweating It Out (Nu Sound 79N 1404, the b-side to the equally hideous Three Little Children by Carolyn Boyle) and his cautionary tale of a night spent at a pill popping party, the utterly brilliant Smokin’ Dope and Snortin’ Coke.

Dirty Hippy

2011-10-07T12:49:00.000+01:00

Devotees of the bizarre will already know that the French-born actor Peter Wyngarde (a.k.a Cyril Goldbert), famous for his roles in 60s action dramas Department S and Jason King and infamous for hanging around the gents loos in Gloucester bus station, an incident (and subsequent arrest) which pretty much killed his career overnight, released a rather odd album on RCA in 1970.

Titled Peter Wyngarde (and more recently reissued by RPM under with a new cover under the name When Sex leers Its Inquisitive Head) the album, unusually for the time, does not feature Peter crooning his way through a series of standards but rather contains more than a dozen mostly spoken word tracks with a range of different backings, from folk to country and western.

What's most notable about the album is how utterly bonkers it is. A concept album of sorts, it begins with Monsieur Wyngarde inviting you into his home, offering you a drink and asking you to relax as he slowly build up the seduction. The centerpiece of the album, Rape, is easily one of the most peculiar tracks ever committed to vinyl - three minutes of racist jokes to a go-go backing and someone constantly howling RAPE in the background. It doesn't get much better, but often gets worse: an odd, jazzy rendition of The Attack's 1968 single Neville Thumbcatch, the terrible mess that is Jenny Kissed Me and/or Jenny Kissed Me And It Was... and the track I present for you today - the perverse, peculiar and downright puddled Hippie And The Skinhead.

It's clear that the three men responsible for this self-indulgent nonsense, Wyngarde and producers Vic Smith (who, under his own name and his nom de plume of Vic Coppersmith-Heaven also produced The Jam, Black Sabbath, Cat Stevens and others) and Hubert Thomas Valverde had a grand old time putting this together. What isn't clear is who it was intended for. Today's track, Hippie and the Skinhead (here in an edited version, ignoring the rambling intro) is full of gay innuendo: the line 'then one night he went to troll the Dilly' translates, for those in the know, as 'one evening he went off looking for sex, probably with a bit of rought trade, in Picadilly Circus'. Wyngarde's sexuality, although no great secret in acting circles - he was known off-stage as Petunia Winegum apparently - was kept hidden from his adoring female fans, which is why his arrest for cottaging (in my home town! I'm so happy!) put paid to his TV career. Yet listening to this it almost seems that he's begging to be outed.

Still, if you like this get along to your nearest independent record store (or Amazon if you must) and buy a copy. I promise you won't regret it.

Happy Fourth Birthday

2011-09-30T15:25:00.001+01:00

Thank you; thank you from the heart of my bottom. Not just for sticking with me these past four years but also for suggesting, between you, over a dozen pieces of crap I had not heard before. My cup genuinely overfloweth. And thank you too to Charlie Claggett, of Record Finders in Virginia for sending me a wonderful Grace Pauline Chew 78 to add to my collection. I’ve already started a bit of a restoration job on that and I’ll bring you evidence soon.

But back to you, my wonderful WWR followers. Over the last week you’ve lead me towards an embarrassment of riches. A couple of those I’ve yet to track down but believe me I will: The Music Of Guatemala by the San Lucas Band is an absolute must, judging from what I’ve learned over the last few days – but as a copy went for almost $120 on eBay recently it might have to wait until a cheaper route appears. I also need to find a copy of Gary S. Paxton's The Big "A" = The Big "M", which UglyRadio calls “a cheerful anti-abortion song that manages to make Lil' Markie's Diary of an Unborn Child seem tasteful by comparison.” I can’t wait.

But today I’m bringing you two of my new favourites.

WWR visitor Matthew Gilbert was kind enough to introduce me to the first, (I'm) Football Crazy by Giorgio Chinaglia. Says Matthew: “The Welsh-Italian World Cup 'star' (he sat on the Italy subs bench at least once during the 1974 tournament) launches into a beautiful ditty about how he's the best footballer of them all, and how he looks forward to the occasions when the manager allows him to have sex.

“Yes, it really does contain the line 'trainer says some love tonight, allll right'. It is just immense on so many levels. Brilliant backing singers as well.”

He’s right of course; this is an immense find. Although born in Italy, Giorgio Chinaglia grew up and played his early football in Cardiff and began his career with Swansea Town in 1964. A year the 19-year old Chinaglia returned to Italy to play, first for Massese, then Internapoli and finally joining Lazio in 1969, scoring 98 goals in 209 league appearances and earning 14 international caps with Italy. In 1974, the same year he played for Italy in the World Cup, he released his one and only single, (I’m) Football Crazy, from the film The Referee.

In 1976, Chinaglia left Lazio to sign with the New York Cosmos, a team in the North American Soccer League. He retired in 1983 as the NASL's all-time leading scorer with 243 goals. In 2000, Chinaglia was inducted into the United States National Soccer Hall of Fame and was named the greatest player in Lazio's history during the club's centenary celebrations. However six years later Italian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Chinaglia and eight others for attempting to influence the price of Lazio shares, and in 2008, he was charged with acting as a front for the Camorra crime organization in its attempt to acquire the club for money laundering.

Don’t you just love it when a god boy goes bad? Thank you Matthew; thank you for introducing me to this horror.

Today’s second track comes courtesy of WWR visitor (and regular poster at the excellent Music for Maniacs) Windbag. I had already picked up the track in question via Music for Maniacs but it had slipped my mind. Thanks to his prompting I happily present it here for you today.

As he says of the brilliantly awful Ray Odom 45 I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love with You: "The label says 1972, Wooten Recording Company, Memphis. I can't get anything on this label, but Ray Odom can't carry a note nor get the timing.” Kind of says it all really.

Odom was a hugely important on the nascent Country circuit, but not as a vocalist. He began his career as a DJ in 1946, starting by training at the Cambridge School of Radio Broadcasting in New York whilst still in the Navy. He graduated with honours and went on to work at KSTA in Coleman, Texas as a disc jockey, sports reporter and newscaster, moving to KRBC-TV to report on local football and basketball matches. He moved around a couple of other radio stations before ending up working in radio and TV in Phoenix, Arizona. Over the years he built up an impressive career, doing loads of voice-over work for companies as diverse as Dodge, Coca Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Ray served as Director of the Country Music Association for two terms and is credited with launching the first Country music station, KMOP in Phoenix, in 1957. Much loved on the country scene, Ray was the regular presenter of Saturday night country gigs, known as the Arizona Hayride, at Phoenix’s own Madison Square Garden.

But dear God, no-one should ever have let him anywhere near a recording studio. But they did; not once, but twice. Ray followed this monstrosity with a second 45, the Cowboy’s Prayer, a horrid, schmaltzy piece of Christmas hokum which I may well bring you at a later date. But for now here’s Ray Odom with the truly terrible I Can’t Help It If I’m Still in Love with You.

A Little Help?

2011-09-23T13:52:00.001+01:00

Hey everybody - I need your help. I started the World's Worst Records blog on September 28 2007, almost exactly four years ago. For a special anniversary posting I'd like to know the record you'd rate as the World's Worst (or just a favourite bad record) and that I've not yet featured on the site. The one that gets the most votes - or the one I like best - will be posted next weekend.

You can comment here or on the Facebook page. Thanks!

Mayhams Mayhem

2011-09-23T13:23:00.001+01:00

Now, you all know how much I love song poems, but there are few people I love more in this shady world that the god-like genius that was Mr Norridge Bryant Mayhams. In a career which spanned from the late 30s until his death in 1988 Mayhams – usually under his nom de plume Norris the Troubadour - authored a body of work that Phil Milstein of the American Song-Poem Music Archives rightly calls: “staggering in its scope, quality and general strangeness, with a fast-and-loose approach to crediting his work that confounds discographical comprehension.”

It’s a long and complicated career. Norridge began playing in coffee shops and on the college circuit; he worked with Chick Webb and even Gypsy Rose Lee and he went on to cut a handful of 78s – a curious mix of originals, covers, religious pap and bawdy blues – with his group the Blue Chips for a number of different outfits including Melotone, Decca and Oriole. He even authored a booklet – Experiences of a Collegiate Singer, in 1947 (reissued in 1973). During his recording sessions Norridge would usually sing lead, but the man had no shame, often roping in his rapidly expanding family to help out on backing vocals and occasionally co-authoring songs with his daughter Betty. It was this paring that gave Norridge Mayhams his first and lone bone fide hit: We’ll Build a Bungalow, later recorded by a number of artists including Johnny Long, who had a top 30 hit with the song in 1950 and even Lucille Ball – who sang the song along with then-husband Desi Arnaz on their hit TV show I Love Lucy in 1952.

The Success of We’ll Build a Bungalow inspired Norridge to form his own label Co-Ed Records. And it’s here that his troubles started. First he got stiffed for the royalties on his hit (it took him until 1978 to finally sort this issue out) and then he was forced to abandon Co-Ed when another company of the same name sued. But he never gave up, forming a new label, Mayhams (later Mayhams Collegiate), a publishing company Sorority Fraternity and, realising perhaps that his own singing style was out of step with what the kids wanted in the 60s and 70s, employing a number of song-poem outfits to either re-record his old material or perform new compositions

Cataloguing Norridge’s recordings is a nightmare: he used the names Norridge and Norris interchangeably, and the names of other family members including wife Shirley, daughter Betty and the name Smalls - his wife's maiden name thinks Milstein – pepper his writing credits. The same songs turn up time and time again, sometimes re-recorded, often not, with slight variations in title. More than this employing a simple alpha-numeric numbering system was beyond him and his command of English language is random to say the least, dropping and adding apostrophes willy-nilly, misspelling words like ‘potatoe’ and even miscrediting himself on his own records. Just when you think you’ve found everything another odd variant turns up: at least five different discs exist which all use the catalogue number Mayhams 1958, for example.

I could pull out almost anything from Norridge Bryant Mayhams’ bizarre, bewildering and brilliant catalogue; it’s all good. But today I’m going to give you one of my all-time favourites - a song which, unsurprisingly, he recorded on at least two occasions and at least 20 years apart: Mary Ann McCarthy. A traditional song more often sung to the tune of John Brown’s Body, Norridge decided to update the lyrics and provide it with a wonderfully peculiar backing all of its own, complete with fuzz guitar, odd keyboard effects and a vocalist (not Norridge on this occasion, although he did perform the earlier version on Co-Ed) who struggles to keep up with Norridge’s tongue-twisting words.

Enjoy!

On a Wing and a Prayer

2011-09-17T10:54:00.002+01:00

A regular visitor to the World’s Worst records, Mark Lammas, wrote to me recently and reminded me that I’d yet to post anything by Wing. Let’s put that right this instant.

The New Zealand-based Wing Han Tsang, known simply as Wing, was born in Hong Kong in 1960. She took up singing as a hobby after emigrating to New Zealand, entertaining patients at nursing homes and hospitals in and around Auckland. Despite her unconventional style she was encouraged to record an album and, after receiving a grant from Manukau City Council she released her debut – Musical Memories of Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera - a selection of popular easy listening and show tunes to the accompaniment of a programmed electronic keyboard. To date she’s released 18 – yes, 18 – albums in all (including such titles as Wing Sings the Carpenters, Wing Sings AC/DC and, the latest, Wing Sings For All the Single Ladies and Raps for all the Safe Parties) and shows no sign of slowing up.

More Madame St Onge than Mrs Miller, Wing came to international prominence in 2005 when she starred in episode three of the ninth series of South Park: co-creator of the series Trey Parker received a letter of thanks from her for the sales boost she enjoyed as a result of the show. Two years later she made her US concert debut and, in 2008, she performed at Radio 1's Big Weekend festival. Since then she’s successfully toured the US (in the cheekily-titled Wing Over America tour) and has buddied up with Seattle-based nerdcore rapper Rappy McRapperson for the thoroughly bizarre single Safe Computer: "Jam on it! Jam on it! Wiki wiki wiki wikipedia!"

Says Mark: “She sounds like some species of mouse trying to sing loudly, but failing utterly. Her voice seems to be entirely in the high register. Her attempts to sing AC/DC songs are gobsmacking, and she must rank among the worst Beatles cover artists ever, with her version of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” Personally I think Wing’s version of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds is on a par with the brilliant William Shatner version, and her take on I Want To Hold Your Hand is hysterical..

She seems to be a genuinely lovely, humble lady, and it takes a lot of guts to stand up in front of an audience not knowing if they are laughing with you or at you; it’s such a shame that when she opens her mouth she sounds like someone boiling a cat. Still, I like her; with her fractured diction and strained English she’s not a million miles away from early Shonen Knife, and I absolutely love them.

So, here for your delectation, I present a track from the amazing Wing culled from her 2006 album Dancing Queen – her rather off-kilter version of the Abba classic Mamma Mia (oh, if only Meryl Streep had sung it like this!) If you want to hear, and buy, more, visit her website – where you can even get her to record a phone message for you or have her sing a very personal Happy Birthday.

You Think I'm Psycho, Don't You?

2011-09-09T11:55:00.004+01:00

Hello everybody. Well, we’ve spent a lot of time in America and in the UK, and have so far visited Spain, Canada, Liberia, Germany and France in the search for the World’s Worst Record. Our travels are far from over, but today we take a trip to Greece, an island of culture, history and extraordinarily good food (except doner kebabs, of course), to catch up with one of the most atrocious examples of 80s synth pop foolishness it’s ever been my misfortune to possess.

The Greek band Psycho was formed in early 80s by vocalists Dora Antoniadi and Stefanos Kotatis, the pair releasing their first album, Montage Fatal, in 1982. The album was preceded by a single – and the track I present for you today – their ‘unique’ version of the Talking Heads classic Psycho Killer.

Not an obvious choice for a cover, the duo struggle with the English lyrics, and when it comes to the French section poor Dora fails miserably, her efforts much like those of Joey from Friends.

The group’s odd mix of European rock music, ethnic Greek instrumentation, 80s keyboards and operatic vocals did little to stimulate sales, although the single was also released in a few other European countries, including Portugal and Holland: I picked up my copy, a Dutch pressing, in around 1984. As Talking Heads’ original had just missed the top ten in that country it’s hardly surprising that someone in the record company thought they could have a minor hit on their hands. Sadly, they didn’t.

Almost all of the instruments on the album – including both acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, electric piano, bouzouki, mandolin, synthesizer and autoharp – were played by Stamatis Spanoudakis, who went on to have a phenomenally successful career in New Age/Classical music and who has written the scores for several TV and movie projects in his native country. The one exception seems to have been veteran musician Gary Wright, former member of Spooky Tooth, who played keyboards on the track The Prisoner. Gary has had his own illustrious career: he’s the man who played piano on Nilsson’s version of Without You; he appears on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album and, more recently, has toured (in 2008 and 2010) with Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band. He also enjoyed a couple of US top five hits of his own, most notably Dream Weaver.

Psycho followed Montage Fatal with a second album, 40 days, in 1987. Unfortunately I know little else about them apart from the fact that Stefanos Kotatis later went into the business side of the music business, working as a sales manager for Warner Music Greece before moving to EMI Greece as a marketing manager. He’s currently the marketing and sales manager for the company Lights International. Still, for now, enjoy their unbelievable version of an incredible song.

Oh Lord, Why?

2011-08-30T10:39:00.002+01:00

Paul McCartney, Beatle, is responsible for some of the most outrageously beautiful songs of all time – Yesterday, For No One (quite possibly my favourite Beatles song ever – certainly in the top five), Hey Jude and Eleanor Rigby for example; he also wrote some of the Beatles’ best rock tracks, including Helter Skelter, Get Back, Paperback Writer and the greatest opening track to a debut album ever, I Saw her Standing There.

However, James Paul McCartney is the author behind the worst of the Beatles’ canon: the insufferable Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, the truly execrable Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and that one man ego trip that was Let It Be…Naked. The Love album aside (which I think is a remarkable, beautiful achievement) I don’t think you should mess with a body of work; once a recording is out there it no longer belongs to the artist, it belongs to the paying audience. Let It Be…Naked was wrong in exactly the same way that the 40th anniversary Doors remasters were wrong. We all know Jim was censured, that his words were adulterated, but we’ve lived with the ‘official’ version of Break On Through for 45 years now – why change it? Let It Be…Naked may have unearthed a new version of Don’t Let Me Down, but it should never have existed.

Anyway, no matter how bad the worst of McCartney’s Beatles compositions were, they are nothing compared to the worst excesses of his solo and Wings years. You could easily fill a double CD with some of the bollocks he’s produced since the greatest band that ever walked the planet split. The world can get by quite happily without one version of Oobu Joobu: it certainly does not need six! And as for certified turds like Morse Moose and the Grey Goose, Wonderful Christmastime, Bip Bop, Spies Like Us, the stupid The Other Me (with its ridiculous opening couplet ‘I know I was a crazy fool for treating you like I did, but something got a hold of me and I acted like a dustbin lid’), Move Over Busker, that awful bloody Frog Chorus garbage and almost all of his moronic vanity projects, such as the Thrillington album (instrumental versions of the hugely underrated Ram), the Country Hams, Rockestra and so on, the world would be a better place without them.

He’s been producing garbage for more than 40 years, but nothing quite as awful as this. Today, ladies and gentlemen, for your enjoyment the World’s Worst Records presents Paul McCartney dragging down the career of another one-time great with the nadir of his solo work, Ebony and Ivory.

Everything about this half-assed project is wrong, from the fact that the two of them didn't even record their parts at the same time or in the same studio to the wretched cover (above) with a whimsical Paul leaning against an oversized keyboard and a crappy photo of Stevie tacked on as a last-minute sop to the co-creator of this pap. It's horrible, horrible, horrible. Lord knows how it managed to get to number one in the UK, US, Canada, Japan, Norway and Germany. Still, not everyone was fooled: the song was named as the tenth worst song of all time by Blender magazine and was cited as the worst duet in history by listeners of BBC 6 Music.

I love the Beatles...but I hate this.

Cannon and Bawl

2011-08-20T14:18:00.002+01:00

My thanks once again to Ross Hamilton for bringing this early 80s clunker to my attention. This is for anyone in the UK who has fond memories of spending Saturday nights sat in front of the television. Or better still, everyone - like me - who looks on that period of their lives with heartfelt thanks that its over. Britain has a long history of comedians making records - the Goodies became major chart stars a decade or so before this dross was released - but its unlikely Cannon and Ball Together will ever be considered as one of the greats.

Comedy double act Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball originally met in the early 1960s in Oldham, Lancashire. Apparently they began working the northern club circuit as singers (not that you'd know that from listening to this drivel), switching to comedy after being told that comics earned more money.

Their first TV appearance was in 1972 in the variety show The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, but it wasn't until 1979 that they became known to anyone outside of the North, when the now-defunct LWT offered them their own series, The Cannon and Ball Show - which continued right through until 1988, despite their shtick (imagine a violent, unfunny Morcambe and Wise) being usurped by the up and coming alternative comedy scene - I always thought the violence of Ade Edmundon and Rik Mayall's Dangerous Brothers was influenced by the bullying of poor little Bobby by the thuggish, heartless Tommy - and their appearance in the dreadful feature film, The Boys in Blue, a piss-poor update of the Will Hay classic Ask a Policeman.

Despite a complete lack of interest in their dated routines, and a major falling out between the duo which saw them hardly speak to each other offstage for a number of years, they are still touring today - splitting their time between end of the pier shows and gospel revues. Tommy and Bobby (that's the shorter one, who can currently be seen in Sky's new comedy drama Mount Pleasant) are devout Christians: Ball became a born-again Christian in 1986 and Cannon in 1992, their conversion having a lot to do with the re-kindling of their broken friendship (according to Wikipedia).

I'm glad they're talking to each other again. I just hope they don't start singing.

Here, to spoil your weekend, is the entire Music for Pleasure (seriously?) album Cannon and Ball Together, featuring the stand out tracks Crying, Bandido and Everybody's Making It Big But Me, which references Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and includes the statement 'You're a poofter!' Ahh, memories.

Enjoy!

http://www.divshare.com/download/15566944-4b7

For those of you who don't want to download the whole album but would still like to sample this claptrap, here's Everybody's Making It Big But Me

And Honey, I Hate You

2011-08-13T11:31:00.003+01:00

I've always hated Bobby Goldsboro.

Now I'm sure he's a fine, upstanding man - kind to children, gives to charity, goes to church - but he is responsible for some of the most mawkish, maudlin pap to ever trouble the pop charts. Take the multi-million selling Honey, with it's insipid lyrics about some bint who dies after doing a spot of gardening, the risible Summer (the First Time) with its dodgy intergenerational plotline or the winsome Watching Scotty Grow (ignoring it's post-ironic use in The Simpsons) a song about a dyslexic four year old, with its pay-off 'Me and God, watching Scotty grow'. Bleugh!

But these horrors pale into insignificance when compared to the truly awful A Butterfly For Bucky a song I must admit had completely passed me by until I was introduced to its awfulness thanks to BBC4 screening vintage episodes of Top of the Pops.

It's vile: the story of a child born sightless who, wouldn't you know it, gets his vision back in the last verse through the power of prayer. Actually, vile isn't a strong enough word to describe this stinker: it's an audio abomination. If you think I'm being overly dramatic just have a look at the words to the opening verse:

Buck was born on a beautiful morning, and I felt very proud
Lets just say its not every day that you see me cry out loud
Hair like Sunshine, a smile as warm, and the prettiest eyes you'll find
One day last spring my lady and I found out those eyes were blind

Someone pass me a bucket; I'm going to be sick.

Bobby Goldsboro's musical career began in 1962, when he became the guitarist for Roy Orbison, releasing a couple of 45s under his own name including the minor hit Molly. In 1964 he enjoyed his first proper success as a solo artist, with the top ten US hit See the Funny Little Clown; other successes included a version of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David oddity Me Japanese Boy, I Love You. His biggest hit was 1968's Honey, which topped the US charts for four weeks, reached Number 2 in the UK Singles Chart in both 1968 and again in 1975 and made number one in Australia. After a couple of dozen US hit singles Goldsboro retired from performing full-time in the 1980s, although he continued to dabble in music, writing the the soundtrack to the Burt Reynolds sitcom Evening Shade and an American kid's TV show amongst others. Nowadays, outside of the occasional concert appearance, he spends most of his time painting, selling the results (an unusually high number of which feature butterflies) on his website.

What really makes me hate him though is the lack of emotion in his delivery; every song sounds the same, as if it were sung by a slightly wobbly automaton. The constant references to God and the sickening sentimentality are major turn offs too. Still, make up your own mind for here, for your enjoyment, is Bobby Goldsboro and A Butterfly For Bucky.

Oh Jesus

2011-08-05T16:48:00.003+01:00

Another horror from the Father Pat Berkery school of 60s spoken-word gospel nonsense; A Soldier's Plea, which appeared on King records in the US in 1969, is yet another of those godawful anti- and/or pro-Vietnam waxings that America was so keen on. Clearly it was easier for the country to listen to this rubbish than face the reality of that particular senseless waste of human life.

This execrable garbage is credited to Bishop J M Smith and the "Evangelist Choir" (their speech marks, not mine), who released at least one further 45 on King, God Is Already Here c/w Step Out On Faith and an album, also called A Soldier's Plea (some copies appear to be credited simply to the Smith Evangelist Choir), both in 1970. Born in 1933 and based in Greenville, South Carolina, Bishop Johnnie Smith has had a long, distinguished career: according to his biography he was the first black man ever to be elected to a state office in the Republican Party, becoming second vice chair of the state in 1989, and in 1997 was awarded the Order of the Palmetto, the highest award available to a civilian in South Carolina. The Bishop, ever the philanthropist, also set up the Johnnie Smith Ministries, an Evangelistic Temple foundation.

All sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately the good Bishop has been a bit of a naughty boy of late and, under his full name of Johnnie Morris Smith (please, no jokes about zookeepers and talking Bristolian elephants) he's listed as a registered sex offender, having been found guilty of statutory rape - making the beast with two backs with a girl of 13 - in 2005. How very Jonathan King.

Still, I hope the Bishop's sexual pecadillos do not spoil your enjoyment of the terrifically turgid A Soldier's Plea

Absolutely opus

2011-07-29T15:20:00.000+01:00

Another find courtesy of our good friend and WWR field rep Ross Hamilton, this has to be one of the most insane things ever committed to vinyl.

Released by Decca records as the b-side to Desperate Dan, the follow up to Lieutenant Pigeon's worldwide smash (and UK number 1) Mouldy Old Dough, Opus 300 features a distorted drum beat (sampled directly from Mouldy Old Dough by the sound of it), the word 'mother' repeated ad nauseum, a short calypso bridge which features the bizarre lyric: 'get your shoes from the menders and don't be late' and a spot of manic, Python-esque laughter.

As if that were not enough, this little piece of insanity was put out by a group which consisted of three hairy blokes from Coventry - Rob Woodward, Nigel Fletcher and Steve Johnson - and Rob's mum Hilda! It's totally nuts, yet still somehow managed to help propel its a-side to number 17 in the UK charts.

Lieutenant Pigeon are still around today, of sorts, having reformed in the early 90s, although none of the original members take part in its current incarnation. In 2001 the band released a follow up to Opus 300 entitled Opus 400 which lasts for over half an hour. No thank you; two minutes and seven seconds of this nonsense is more than enough for me.

Enjoy!

Go with the Flo

2011-07-22T13:23:00.003+01:00

Narcissa Florence Foster, better known by her married name of Florence Foster Jenkins is, for lovers of bad music, where it all starts. Sure there were appalling performers before her but none have left behind the recorded legacy she has - less than a dozen (nine, according to Wikipedia, but I believe I have 10) tracks of light opera and lieder all recorded before the mid 1940s and all in her inimitable style. If you thought Mrs Miller was where it was at, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Born in Pennsylvania to a wealthy family young Florence had, as did most young women of the time, received music lessons as a child, However, when she expressed a desire to go abroad to continue her studies her father refused and so she eloped to Philadelphia (soon to be home of the estimable Grace Pauline Chew) with Frank Thornton Jenkins, who she married in 1885. Flo, again like Grace, earned a living as a music teacher and pianist, and in 1908, six years after her divorce from Frank, began living with St. Clair Bayfield, an actor with whom she would spend the rest of her life.

Upon her father's death in 1909, Florence inherited a sizable sum of money and set off on her singing career, giving her first recital in 1912. Her mother's death 16 years later gave her even more money and more opportunity to pursue her dreams of a career on stage.

The shame of it is that Florence had little sense of pitch and rhythm and, God love her, was barely capable of sustaining a note. In spite of this, some would say because of this, she became tremendously popular - audiences loving her for the amusement she provided, her stoicism in the face of failure and her staunch belief that she was indeed a great artist. She compared herself to the renowned sopranos of the day and dismissed the laughter which often accompanied her performances as coming from rivals consumed with jealousy. No fool, in her later years she was quoted as saying: "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing."

'It is too bad', wrote Francis Robinson, Assistant Manager of the Metropolitan Opera and the author of the liner notes to one of her posthumous collections, that 'she did not record her favorite encore, Clavelitos, a number she invariably had to repeat. A contemporary account describes Madame Jenkins as appearing in a Spanish shawl, with a jeweled comb and, like Carmen, a red bloom in her hair. She punctuated the rhythmic cadences of the song by tossing tiny red flowers from her pretty basket to her delighted hearers. On one occasion the basket in a moment of confusion followed the little blossoms into the audience. It too, was received with spirit.

Before she would do the repeat, her already overworked accompanist, Cosmé McMoon, had to pass among the jubilant groundlings and retrieve the prop buds and basket. The enthusiasm of the audience at this point reached a peak that beggars description.' Florence reminds me here of another hero of mine, Robert 'Romeo' Coates, recognised as the worst actor ever to grace the world's stage: a man who so enjoyed Romeo's death scene that he would play it again and again. And again.

After an accident involving a taxi in 1943 Florence was thrilled to discover that she could sing "a higher F than ever before." Instead of suing the taxi company she sent the driver a box of expensive cigars as a thank you. One year later, at the ripe old age of 76, she performed at Carnegie Hall. So great was the demand for tickets that the event sold out weeks in advance. Jenkins died a month later at the Hotel Seymour in Manhattan. Some naysayers would later claim that her death was the result of a broken heart, however the critic Robert Bagar wrote in the New York World-Telegram: "She was exceedingly happy in her work. It is a pity so few artists are. And the happiness was communicated as if by magic to her hearers."

Here, for you delectation, is the hysterically brilliant Like A Bird, one of the few existing pieces co-authored, with Cosmé McMoon, by Florence Foster Jenkins herself. Enjoy!

Kisses, kisses, kisses

2011-07-16T19:04:00.001+01:00

Welcome to the mad, mad world of Josmar Gerona, a peculiar, androgynous Spaniard born in 1975 and troubling Mediterranean TV audiences since the mid-90s.

A precocious child, by the age of 12 young Josmar knew that he was to dedicate his life to this business we call 'show'. By 16 he was presenting his own programme on a local radio station and within two years he had moved on to regional TV, working as a technician at Television Costa Brava.

He first came to prominence when performing as a singer on Semaphore, a nationally-televised programme from Spanish broadcaster TVE and before long Josmar was popping up all over the place, his highly animated performances becoming a highlight of early evening television. After all, what self respecting Spaniard wouldn't want to nibble on their tapas whilst watching a hulking great bloke prance around a TV studio dressed in litle more than a fringed leather jacket and a swimming costume? Unsurprisingly the raven haired, scantily dressed chubbette started to attract the attention of record producers, releasing his first single, Black and White, in 1998.

Since then Josmar has split his time between his nightclub act (Divine would have been proud), radio and TV appearances, and has continued to release the occasional record, including Spanish camp classics Hot Boy and Girls. The Hot Boy video has to be seen to be believed: Josmar eats yogurt out of a Tupperwear box before cavorting on his (sadly) single bed with a toy rabbit, undressing and enjoying a bubble bath. It's like something out of an Almodovar movie. A failed Eurovision attempt notwithstanding, Josmar is still at it today, probably prancing around a Spanish stage as I type this.

Today I present to you one of Josmar's recent forays into the world of music, Kisses, along with the truly awesome Hot Boy video. Enjoy!

Do You Like Eeephing?

2011-07-04T12:07:00.001+01:00

I don't usually post 'novelty' records here, as you well know, but I'm going to make a rare exception for this particular 45, one of the very few instances of a US hit record featuring the peculiar eeephing (or eefing) art form.

Jimmie Riddle (sometimes listed as Jimmy Riddle) was an American performer who found fame of the US television show Hee Haw, a kind of redneck version of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, which ran from 1969 until 1997 - a total of 585 one hour episodes.

Jimmie was born in Tennessee in 1913 and by the age of 16 was already performing locally. He moved to Texas in 1939, joining country singer Roy Acuff's group in 1943 as harmonica and piano man. Jimmie had his first taste of chart success in 1963 when he was featured on Joe Perkins' minor hit Little Eeefin' Annie, but it wasn't until the first episode of Hee Haw aired that he gained national recognition, forming a duo, the Hambone Brothers, with guitarist Jackie Phelps - 'hamboning' for those not in the know, is a rhythmic slapping of the thigh. To listen to Jimmie explaining how to make the kind of hiccoughing, rhythmic wheeze you need to eeeph go to http://youtu.be/75qIdhCO2DQ

Within a year Jimmie has released his first, and only, solo hit single: Yakety Eeeph (which many of you will recognise as Yakety Sax, the Benny Hill Show chase music) and its b-side Wildwood Eeeph, both tracks featured below. In the early 1980s he joined Boxcar Willie's touring band, again as a harmonica player.

Jimmie died in Nashville in 1982, but his legacy lives on: as Lurleen Lumpkin's father would attest.

download problems

2011-07-04T11:17:00.001+01:00

I understand that some of you have been having problems downloading tracks posted here at the World's Worst Records. That was because too many people wanted to share in my love of audio atrocities and I kept exceeding the free download limit. Well, I've shelled out a few bucks (it's an American company, so forgive me but I genuinely did pay in dollars rather than pounds) and upgraded my Divshare account, so you should now be able to download to your heart's content.

Simply click on the Divshare or Kadco logo on the right of the embedded player and you should be taken straight to the download page for that track. Let me know if you're still having problems and I'll get on the case.

New music coming later today!

Hamsters for Jesus

2011-05-31T15:06:00.001+01:00

Oh please....

Alvin and the Chipmunks (or Pinky and Perky if you prefer) have got a lot to answer for. Charlie the Hamster along with his cousins Stanley and Huey, made a series of God bothering albums along with their human handler Floyd Robinson in the late 60s-early 70s before Ross Bagdasarian Jr - the son of Alvin's creator David Seville - sued Robinson in 1977 for plagiarism and copyright infringement. Robinson and his record companies quickly agreed to cease immediate production, distribution and sale of all of Robinson’s Charlie the Hamster records. Clearly 'thou shalt not steal' was one of the 10 commandments Charlie and Floyd decided could safely be ignored, as the pair produced some 14 albums of inane Christian caterwauling. Only Little Marcy the singing evangelistic dolly 'recorded' more christian crap than these critters.

It's an unpleasant blemish on an otherwise reasonably distinguished career. Born in Nashville in 1938, Floyd Robinson was barely in his teens when he formed his first band, had regular shows on Nashville's WLAC and WSM radio stations whilst still in High School and toured with George Jones, Jim Reeves and others. In 1958 he wrote the novelty song The Little Space Girl for his cousin Jesse Lee Turner, who scored a top 20 hit with the song in 1959, the same year as Floyd scored his own top 20 debut with Makin' Love. Active throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s as a session musician, producer and engineer, more recently he has published two books, the instruction manual Guitar Playing Made Easy and the novel The Guitar. Nowadays Floyd has all but turned his back on music: he owns a used car dealership.

So here are a couple of Charlie the Hamster tracks for you to enjoy, both taken from 'his' Teaches Bible Stories album: It's Fun to Live for Jesus and The B-I-B-L-E

Grace Pauline Chew, I Love You

2011-05-07T14:19:00.001+01:00

Following leads given by various WWR readers after I posted two earlier 45s penned by the gloriously inept Grace Pauline Chew, I recently tracked down (again, courtesy of GEMM) another hysterically awful single from a woman who has, for me at least, become the goddess of bad records.

This particular pair of peculiar ditties, Could You Would You and Moon Crazy was released on Bingo Records in 1958. Bingo was, unsurprisingly, registered at the same Philadelphia address that was home to Art Service Music, the distributors of both the Musicart and Silver-Song labels, and home too to Grace Pauline Chew, her husband and son. The Planets, the act credited with this dreadful, positively atonal performance, are clearly Hank and Jimmy, who had previously performed Grace Pauline Chew's seminal Your the Only One For Me on Musicart.

Both sides are perfectly dreadful. On Could You Would You The Planets are listed as being accompanied by 'Cha Cha, solovox and piano'. Whatever the 'Cha Cha' (their capitals, not mine) was, it appears to be mercifully silent; the solovox was a primitive, three-octave monophonic keyboard which employed vibrating metal reeds and an oscillator to create a vibrato effect. I love the fact that, although the unnamed solovox player makes several mistakes during this recording, no-one bothered to put him straight or decide that a second take was necessary. Given the quality of the sound coming out of the piano it has to be the same, discordant instrument employed on nearly every other one of Grace Pauline Chew's masterpieces. You have to wonder if the great lady herself sat at this omnipresent instrument during these obviously chaotic recording sessions.

The b-side, Moon Crazy is, for me, the prize: woeful, out of tune vocals from a pair of male singers often singing completely different words to each other; someone kicking a bass drum out of time; what sounds like a pair of castanets (possibly the missing Cha Cha from side one?) being thrown about with gleeful abandon and, to cap it all, a whistling solo so tuneless and inept that it would make Roger Whittaker turn in his grave (if he were dead, of course!)

I've said it before, and no doubt I'll say it again, but truly this has to be one of the worst records ever made if not The World's Worst Record. And god, I love it.

Enjoy!

Pray for Father Pat

2011-05-01T13:04:00.001+01:00

The following album – yes, a whole album’s worth or terrible music – comes our way via long-time WWR contributor Ross Hamilton, who, by bringing one of the tracks to my attention recently, inspired me to search for the entire work. Thanks again, Ross, for your tireless work at the coalface of mediocrity.

Released on Glasgow Records (but not in Glasgow – I can just imagine how this rather bizarre preaching style would have gone down in the Gorbals), Father Pat Berkery appears to me to have been channelling the spirit of a not-quite-dead-yet Jim Morrison when he recorded his utterly peculiar 1969 album Prayers For a Noonday Church, reciting his cosmic, quasi-religious poetry over a trippy, psychedelic backing provided by a band named Spur. Father Berkery’s deadpan, some have called it ‘expressionless’, delivery adds to the absolute wrongness of the recording.

One of the six children of James and Mary Kelly Berkery, Patrick Berkery was born in Brooklyn, New York where he contracted polio at a very young age and was treated in and received his grade school education at St. Charles Hospital, in Port Jefferson, New York. The nuns who cared for him did such a great job that he was able to enter the seminary and pursue college and graduate studies. After ordination, Father Pat was sent to Rome to obtain his Doctorate in Philosophy. While there he majored in Scholastic Philosophy, and upon completion of his doctoral studies, returned to teach in the Connecticut seminary where he prepared for the priesthood. The author of more than 20 books on religion, he taught philosophy in various seminaries throughout the US and wrote extensively on the spiritual life before passing away in 2010, in Connecticut, at the age of 70 – his last year on God’s earth spent suing the Archdiocese for failing to pay him his pension.

Prayers For a Noonday Church was not Father Pat’s only foray into the recording studio: in 1974 he came up with the concept and was the principle researcher for the album The Rite of Exorcism (Crunch Records) although mercifully he seems to have kept his mouth shut this time during the recording process.

Enjoy!

http://www.divshare.com/download/14718789-9fa

Letter to an Unborn Child

2011-04-09T10:36:00.000+01:00

Dear God, how vile is this? It’s another of those awful, maudlin spoken word things – like The Shifting Whispering Sands or Deck of Cards – which America couldn’t get enough of. Everyone was doing it: Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, Telly Savalas – we’ve even had examples of it here with Red Sovine and Orson Welles. Today if you can’t sing your producer simply pumps your caterwauling through autotune. Back in the 50s and 60s there was no such gimmick available, and the world had to endure dozens of spoken word atrocities.

Letter to an Unborn Child is performed by Scott Muni, a US radio DJ who, during the 1950s had been a member of the United States Marine Corps where he made his broadcasting debut reading "Dear John" letters on Radio Guam. After leaving the Corps Muni began a massively successful career on the air, starting out in 1955 in Akron, Ohio and carrying on until early 2004, when he was forced to retire following a stroke. He died the same year. Hugely influential at a time when radio really mattered, a friend to John Lennon (Muni spent the vast majority of his career working in New York) and a champion of the British music scene, God only knows why he chose to record this piece of junk.

What makes this even more distasteful, for me at least, is that the original 45 appeared in a picture sleeve which announced – falsely, of course – that ‘this letter was found on the body of an unknown soldier during World War II’. How sick is that? Coming out at the height of the Vietnam conflict, how many grieving family members were conned into buying a copy? Not many, thankfully, as the single failed to trouble the charts. One has to wonder why, when it was so obviously pitched at blissed-out hippies celebrating the summer of love. Maybe it was the b-side, a woeful reading of the 23rd Psalm.

Enjoy!

Hoopy Hey Hey!

2011-03-26T14:00:00.000Z

Welcome to the 100th World Worst Records post.

I wanted to give you all something a bit special for this centennial posting, so I’ve compiled a CD’s worth of song poems – 28 in total – just for you. There have been a number of song poem compilations issued over the years, but none of the 28 songs included here have, to the best of my knowledge, appeared on any of these collections – although a few have appeared in this blog over the last four years.

Now, 28 terrible records would probably be a bit much, so this compilation mixes the truly terrible with some of my all-time favourites. In other words, not every track in this collection deserves the epithet ‘world’s worst’, but I thought you’d rather a cross-section of song poems than almost eighty minutes of brain-deadening awfulness.

The collection, which I've named Hoopy Hey Hey (if you listen to the track Tipsy Ippsy you'll see why) features some of the titans of the song poem world: Rodd Keith, Dick Kent, Cara Stewart, Ralph Lowe, Bob Storm, Sammy Marshall and Gene Marshall among them. The Full track listing is as follows:

Happy Inside of Me – The Rave Ons (From one of the many Columbine The Now Sounds of Today albums)
Who’s Going to Kiss You – Lance (Tin Pan Alley 45)
My Wife Ain’t Lazy – The Downtowners (Rodd Keith) (Preview 45)
Jenny Beloved – Dick Kent (MSR 45)
Fly With Me My darling on a Rocket to The Moon – Gene Marshall (Preview 45)
Oh, Oh, Baby – The Downtowners (Rodd Keith on lead vocals) (Preview 45)
Just Remember I Love You – Dick Kent (Songuild 45)
It was God’s Love – Dick Lee and the Singing Strings (Action 45)
Space Gyronpacer – Lisa Donovan (From a different Columbine The Now Sounds Of Today collection)
Tipsy Ippsy – Sonny Marcell (aka Sammy Marshall) (Frank Lyle Buck 45)
Life – artist uncredited (probably Mary Kimmell) (Halmark 45)
Peacepipe or Tomahawk – Sammy Marshall (aka Sonny Marcell) (Sigmar 45)
Jubilee (In The USA) – John Fluker (Columbine EP)
Three Little Children – Carolyn Boyle (Nu-Sound 45)
I Saw Jim Reeves Up There – The Country Swingers (Blu-J 45)
Bringin’ Back the Twistin’ – Buddy Raye (aka Dick Kent) (from one of the many Sunrise Records Hollywood Sessions albums)
Marinella – Larry London (Jody 45)
I’ll Ask God to Save You Some Wings – Mike Thomas (Tin Pan Alley 45)
What Time Does the Last Moon Leave? – Cara Stewart with the Lee Hudson Orchestra (Advance 45)
I’m the Cat – Ralph Lowe (Columbine 45)
Too Many Tigers – Rodd Keith (Preview 45)
The Barbershop – Singin’ Jack Curran (Dolly-O 45)
Better Than Gold – Sue Romm (Columbine EP)
Pan Handling (A Big City Man) – Bob Storm (Halmark EP)
An Ode to Our Lady – artist uncredited (probably Jack and Mary Kimmell) (Halmark EP)
Phoney Tony – Debbi Davis (MSR 45)
The Gipsy in my Soul – Rodd Keith (MSR 45)
Foolish Heart – The Rave Ons (From the same Columbine The Now Sounds of Today album as the opening track)

Download them (it's a big file, mind, almoss 100Mb), cut them to CD, print of the little insert I’ve knocked together for you too and enjoy.

http://www.divshare.com/download/14411435-b82

Please, Please Help Me

2011-02-27T12:29:00.001Z

A mega post today – a full dozen tracks for you to enjoy (if that’s the right word), many of them once again provide by long-time WWR contributor Ross Hamilton, and all of them in honour of George Harrison’s 68th birthday. Yes, I know that was on Friday, but indulge me.

All together in one handy zipped file, The World’s Worst Records present the World’s Worst Beatles covers. Such are the number of appalling attempts to disembowel the Fab’s finest I’ve no doubt that there will be a volume two at some point. The twelve tracks are:

Norwegian Wood by the Folkswingers, a cut from the studio band’s 1967 album Raga Rock (which also featured awful versions of Hey Joe and Eight Miles High). Ross and I would both like to know how the cow got in on the act.

Help by Cathy Berberian – an operatic soprano who carved out a weird career for herself covering hits of the day (especially Beatles’ tunes) opera style;

I Am The Walrus by Lord Sitar, from the album Lord Sitar which also includes his mangling of Blue Jay Way and Eleanor Rigby as well as a handful of other pop standards;

Eleanor Rigby by Chim Kothari from the 1966 album Sound of Sitar on Deram;

Ticket to Ride by Cathy Berberian;

Help (again, sorry) by the fabulous Madame St Onge (read more about her here);

Day Tripper by the Beatle Barkers from a mad-as-you-like early 80s album full of synthesised animals ‘doing’ the Fab Four;

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds by William Shatner. If you haven’t heard this before where have you been?

She’s Leaving Home by Big Jim Sullivan, a London-born session guitarist who has been around since the late 50s and has worked with everyone from Marty Wilde and Tom Jones to Elvis Presley and is reputed to have played on George’s Wonderwall album (although he, like many others including Peter Tork of the Monkees and Ringo Starr, is uncredited);

When I’m Sixty Four by Keith Moon. Many of you will already know Moon the Loon’s dreadful take on In My Life from his one and only (thank God) solo album, but this more obscure cut comes from the soundtrack to the movie All This and World War Two, made up entirely of bad Beatles covers;

Can’t Buy Me Love by Cathy Berberian (and I promise, this is the last you’ll be hearing from her for a LONG time) and finally

Strawberry Fields Forever by Balsara and his Singing Sitars, bizarrely originally released as a double a-side single with his version of Penny Lane on the flip.

Anyway, have a great weekend, and I hope you enjoy.

By the way, the next WWR post will be my 100th. I’ll have to dig out something VERY special for you!

http://www.divshare.com/download/14177832-8bc

Let It Roll: Songs by George Harrison

My America

2011-02-19T10:58:00.000Z

Greetings fellow bad music-ophiles, and welcome to the latest instalment of The World’s Worst Records. Next week I’ll be bringing you, courtesy of fellow bad music-lover Ross Hamilton, a whole raft of murderous Beatles-inspired monstrosities, but for today I would like to introduce you to one William Howard Arpaia, and his song-poem/vanity hybrid label Vandalia.

William Howard Arpaia has a long and distinguished career outside of music, first as a US naval officer and later practicing law for four decades in Michigan and in New York. But here at WWR we love him for his singularly unique musical output, and for the many, many songs he composed in spite of having had no more than eight music lessons in his life.

The Flying Flag Forever, written and recorded to mark America’s bicentennial in 1976, is just one of the 30 45s and five or more albums issued by Vandalia, all in all more than 100 songs all written by William Howard Arpaia, which were put out between 1974 and 1980. Not bad going for a man who admitted to composing his first song ‘purely as a lark’ on his 61st birthday in October 1969, but a mere drop in the proverbial ocean compared to the 2,500 or so he claimed to have composed by the time he issues his first album. Most (but not all) of the 45s contained a vocal track on the a-side and an instrumental (invariably a polka or a march) on the B-side: the Vandalia albums which are known to exist are split 50/50, with vocal tracks on side one and instrumentals on side two. Vandalia was named after the town in Michigan where William and his family resided; he had previously had compositions released by another song-poem outfit, Windy-City, before establishing his own company.

It’s unusual, but not unheard of (as in Listen Mr Hat, which has appeared on a couple of song-poem compilations, including the essential American Song-Poem Anthology) to find William performing his own lyrics. Often he would enlist the help of one of the better-known song-poem outfits to bring his vision to life – which is why you’ll more likely see 45s on Vandalia credited to Sonny Marcell (aka Sammy Marshall), Rod Rivers (aka Rod Rogers, aka Rodd Keith, aka Cleveland Becker…), Lance Hill, Damita and so on than William himself. In fact The Flying Flag Forever and Listen Mr Hat are the only known vocal performances by the composer.

It’s clear to me, listening to this, that William’s vocal performance was recorded at a later date and in a different ‘studio’ to the rather jolly background music. That, and his rather peculiar delivery, adds to the otherworldliness of the recording.

Enjoy!

Bass: How Low Can You Go?

2011-02-12T11:32:00.005Z

This only arrived this morning, but it is so horrendous I just had to share it with you, my loyal partners in crime, as soon as I could.
All Alone, performed here by Phil Celia, comes from one of my all-time favourite song-poem outfits, Tin Pan Alley. Busy since the early 50s, and gaining a bit of a reputation among doo-wop collectors for the quality of some of the company’s earliest output, Tin Pan Alley churned out hundreds of singles over the next three decades – so many that no-one has yet managed to pull together a complete discography: given the company’s confusing cataloguing system that’s hardly a surprise.
Tin Pan Alley was founded, initially as a sheet music operation, in 1941 by Jack Covais a songwriter who, unable to hook up with an established publisher, wound up self-publishing instead. By 1943 he was already dabbling in song-poem publishing, and by 1953 Tin Pan Alley had become a full-blown song-poem operation - their first release came out on both 10” 78 and 7” 45 a year earlier, with both sides penned by Covais himself. It didn't seem to both the Brooklyn-based Covais that there was already an outfit called Tin Pan Alley, run by Frank Capano in Philadelphia, which issued its first recordings in 1946. For a full history of the company, go to Phil Milstein’s essential song poem website where you’ll also find a decent stab at a discography (although I have or know of several TPA releases which are unlisted there, including this one).

Like many of the Tin Pan Alley releases this 45 must have been recorded in just one take and in one hell of a hurry. No attention has been paid to the finer details of the recording process: Phil is out of tune, the band come in late, the bassist is woefully inept (he must be the same useless bass player who plucks the terribly out-of-tune bass line on one of my other favourite TPA releases Who’s Going To Kiss You by “Lance”) and that accordion player clearly wishes he was somewhere else. And before you ask yes, it IS playing at the right speed. The b-side, included here for completeness’ sake, is almost as dreadful: Forward Into Peace is a dirge (and that’s putting it nicely) about an unnamed war, I’m guessing Vietnam considering the approximate release date of 1965, employing the same useless bass player but thankfully not the accordionist.

Incidentally there is another Phil Celia still actively recording today. At least I assume it’s a different Phil Celia, as our hero began recording for Tin Pan Alley around 1956 – 55 years ago – and the jazz singer of the same name only turned 50 a few years ago. I wonder if it’s his dad though?

Enjoy!

Everybody's Talkin' 'Bout...

2011-01-29T11:04:00.000Z

Regular WWR followers will know that I am a huge Beatles fan, and probably also know that John Lennon is my all-time musical hero. There are other bands and musicians – Andy Partridge of XTC, David Gedge of the Wedding Present, Peter Buck of REM and dozens more – that have been (and still are) massively important and influential, but truth be known if my house was burning down and I could only save one CD it would probably be more likely to be John Lennon Plastic Ono Band than Apple Venus Volume One, Seamonsters or Up.

But I’m not blind to the fact that there are some horrendous tracks in the Beatles’ sacred canon (Maxwell’s Silver Hammer being an obvious example), just as I am not so blind as I cannot see that Mind Games is a pretty shitty album: okay, so it’s got a couple of decent tracks, but seriously, Mind Games is the nadir of John’s solo output.

Anyway, this preamble is my way of introducing you to the fact that today I bring you not one, not two but three terrible cover versions of one of John Lennon’s most iconic compositions: Give Peace a Chance.

A true classic, the modern-day We Shall Overcome, Give Peace a Chance was John’s first solo single, recorded on his extended honeymoon in 1969 and reaching number 2 in Britain and number 14 in the US. None of the three versions I present for you today troubled the charts in any country (unless you know better that is).

First up we have Mitch Miller and the Gang’s recording, released as the closing track of their 1970 Atlantic album Mitch Miller and the Gang Peace Sing-Along. One of the most influential figures in American popular music during the 50s and 60s, Miller was head of A&R at Columbia Records, a best-selling recording artist and had a popular NBC television series to boot, but his sanitised version of Lennon’s counter-culture hit is as bland as they come.

Next it’s Louis Armstrong – yes, Louis Armstrong – with his perverse rendition. I really don’t know what to make of this one at all; it’s just bizarre. Released on his 1970 album of pop covers Louis Armstrong and Friends, this recording was actually released as a posthumous UK A-side (on Phillips in 1971) with a re-recording his huge hit What a Wonderful World on the flip.

What’s interesting about these two versions is that they both make the same mistake in the lyrics, replacing the phrase ‘ism, ism, ism’ at the end of the first verse with ‘isn’t it the most’ and the word ‘masturbation’ with ‘mastication’. This happened because that’s the way the lyrics appeared in the original sheet music, having – in the first instance - been transcribed incorrectly. Lennon himself admitted that he altered masturbation for the less offensive word to try and get it past the censors. The Mitch Miller version has several howlingly bad lyrical transpositions, my favourite being when Mitch sings ‘rabbits’ instead of ‘rabbis’. Lay it in there, man!

Finally, for now at least, is the Hot Chocolate Band’s take on Give Peace a Chance. Released on the Beatles’ own Apple Records in 1969 (Apple 18), it’s abominable; a cod-reggae mess with stupid lyrics and idiotic, fake-patois vocals. Who could have guessed that with a slight name change the group (as Hot Chocolate) would go on to score at least one chart single every year in the UK between 1970 and 1984 and make some of the best-loved pop singles of all time?

Anyway, have a great weekend, and I hope you all enjoy. And by the way, the records might be awful but the sentiment is still as valid today as it was in 1969.

I Chew Chew Choose You

2011-01-14T16:31:00.000Z

Just before Christmas I introduced you to Grace Pauline Chew, American voice teacher, soprano and song composer, and the author of a number of releases on the Philadelphia-based Musicart label during the 1950s. No doubt you’ll remember Mamie Watson’s dirge-like You Don’t Remember Any More and Hank and Jimmy’s ridiculous You’re The Only One For Me, with its spectacularly inept hand clap solo.

Well, today I present some more of Mrs Chew’s compositions for you, again issued by Musicart, and again equally moronic.

First up is I Don’t Know Where I Stand With You, performed by Phyllis Moore and the Magictones from a circa-1954 45. Now I do not know who Phyllis Moore is (or should that be was?), but I’m guessing from her delivery, especially with the throwaway line right at the end, that she was some sort of Vaudeville performer. It’s certainly not the same Phyllis Moore who has released a number of gospel recordings in more recent years – well, not unless she’s in her 90s that is. The recording was described as “soprano with organ backing in an amateur sounding effort” by Billboard in February 1955. Says it all, really. There’s a quote from a Phyllis Moore in a 1943 edition of Billboard where she calls herself a “concert hula dancer” and says that when she works “in nightclubs the waiters are the only ones applauding”. I’d love it to be the same person.

I’m also including its B-side, Helpless by Richard Rossiter and the Nightingales, for completeness’ sake. Banal and dated, even for 1954, it sounds to me as if its come from an early 30s musical, and the cinema organ accompaniment drag it back to the days before the talkies. The odd rumbling noise you hear from time to time and the distortion when Richard hits a high note are all present on the disc itself - maybe there was someone in the next studio banging on the wall, trying to make him stop.

I’ve also managed to pick up another Musicart 45, the 1952 release by Bud Brees with Art Smith, It’s Just Because I Love You backed with an Art Smith-performed instrumental entitled Will You although it’s just boring, rather than truly dreadful, notable perhaps for the fact that the A-side is credited to Chew-Brook – the first instance I’ve come across of anyone apart from Grace Pauline Chew receiving a writer’s credit on a Musicart release.

So, for now, enjoy (if that’s the word) more from the febrile mind of Grace Pauline Chew

Mistletoe and Whine.

2010-12-24T15:26:00.000Z

Looking for some new sounds for your annual Christmas compilation? Look no further, for I bring you (aided and abetted by the always generous Ross Hamilton) a whole bunch of new music especially for the festive season.

First up, and a real treat for all of you Star Wars fans, is Little Johnny Bongiovi (before he stole his sister's hair and reinvented himself as Jon Bon Jovi) singing R2-D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas. Jon’s first ‘real’ recording is taken from the rather rare ’concept’ album Christmas In the Stars, which was released in 1980 but soon vanished from the shops when the company which put it out RSO, went into long and protracted litigation with its star act the Bee Gees. John Bongiovi was (still is, I guess) the cousin of Tony Bongiovi, who co-produced the album with Meco (who had earlier had a hit with a primitive electronic version of the Star Wars theme) and ran the studio at which it was recorded and where John worked at the time. “Star Wars and Christmas don't mix and this is a case in point,” Ross says. “The whole album is terrible and must be heard to be believed.”

Then we have the horrific car crash that is Billy Idol’s hash at White Christmas. Taken from his rarely-seen 2006 album Happy Holidays (and which also contains anodyne versions of Frosty the Snowman, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Auld Lang Syne amongst its 17 rotten tracks), it’s hardly the former William Broad at his lip-curling best, is it? As Ross says: “I might not have kept up with Billy's recent career (and when I say recent, I mean anything after 1988) but this was a major shock. It reminded me of a drunk pub singer going through one last number at the piano before closing time on Christmas Eve.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

And finally, and again with unending thanks to Ross Hamilton, I bring you Is There Really A Santa Clause from Red Sovine – who regular visitors to the World’s Worst records will remember for the execrable Teddy Bear. For more on Red, click here. I may be running a Red Sovine Special soon, but until now enjoy this slice of miserable Country hokum.

Happy Christmas one and all! See you in 2011.

Chew Chew Ch'boogie

2010-12-18T15:17:00.001Z

I know, I know, I know. I promised you a festive feast for December and I haven’t delivered. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa, but I promise you all there are good reasons for the apparent inactivity. I will be back later this week with the promised Christmas bundle.

But today, in an attempt to redress the balance, I bring you not one but two recordings, both sides of a 45 which I genuinely believe to be one of the worst, if not THE worst records ever pressed. In fact so obsessed have I become with this dreadful waxing that I have spent as much spare time as I have had in the last week tracking down as much info on the writer, performers and company as I could and ordering (via GEMM) several other discs from the same company.

The two tracks I present to you today, You’re The Only One For Me and You Don’t Remember Any More (sic) come from the Philadelphia-based Musicart label and appear to have been released around 1956 – the height of the rock ‘n roll era. There were several other companies called Musicart operating at various times, one which seemed to license a lot of its material from South America and was operational during the 60s and 70s, and a more recent outfit specialising in Goth material, but this particular company appears to have put out the majority of its material between 1950 and 1956. Both of today’s songs were written by one Grace Pauline Chew, as was pretty much everything else put out by the company (or so it appears). Certainly of the 15 sides I’ve managed to trace to Musicart so far Grace wrote or co-wrote the majority of them.

So who was Grace Pauline Chew? Born 1898 in Camden, New Jersey, Grace Pauline Chew was an American voice teacher, soprano and song composer. Her father, James Buchanan, was a concert and operatic tenor. Educated in New York and Philadelphia, she married Walter C. Chew in January 1917 and they had one son, Walter Chew, Jr. (1917-42). She made a number of concert and radio appearances during the 40s – principle of which was an extended run on radio station WSNJ (New Jersey) in 1945 – and published her first songs, Music In the Sky and Still In Love With You, in 1949 (both issued on vinyl by Musicart in 1950). She also wrote a pamphlet entitled Know How: Information for the Singer who Wants to Become Professional, in 1953. Oh, and apparently she had blue eyes. That’s it.

With regards to the performers of these two ditties, there’s little I can tell you. Mamie Watson performs the funereal You Don’t Remember Any More with the ‘Musicart Ensemble’ – an out-of-tune piano and a kind of reed instrument I cannot quite put my finger on (maybe some sort of harmonium). There was a Mamie Watson who appeared on the British stage in the 1920s and a Mamie Watson also appeared in the US-produced short film His First Car in 1930, but I’ve no idea (yet) if this is the same person or these are three individuals who all happened to share the same name. As for Hank and Jimmy, the performers of You’re The Only One For Me, their accompanists (listed as Rhythm Duo on the disc), appear to be one person playing an out-of tune village hall piano while a second clicks his fingers, kicks at the studio floor in an approximation of an attempt at keeping time and then provides a spectacularly inept hand clap solo. Awesome.

I love everything about this record; I hope you do too.

Rockin and Rollin

2010-11-25T15:57:00.002Z

Keen followers of The Worlds Worst Records will remember Wesley Horning of old - back in March I brought you the great Frank Perry with another or Wes's compositions, Dig That Beat.

As a little pre-Christmas favour I present to you today what has to be one of the single most peculiar recordings I have ever come across, W L Horning's performance of his own composition Rockin and Rollin.

It's insane; there's no other word for it. And no, that's not a skip you can hear on the record or a bad edit - it actually sounds like that. Basically what you have here is the backing track to Wesley's earlier composition Kiss Me, Kiss Me Baby sped up and played over three or four times with Wes singing the words to his latest 'hit' over the top. Kiss Me, Kiss Me Baby only lasts for a little over a minute at its normal speed, which is why in this crazed, hyperventilating version Wes is forced to skip the needle back to the beginning of the track time and time again.

The man is either nuts or brilliantly inventive - I know which description I prefer.

From next week, along with my faithful fellow bad music sleuth Ross Hamilton I'm going to be bringing you a collection of dreadful Christmas-inspired music, a new song each week through December, but for now enjoy the ramblings of Mr W L Horning and Rockin and Rollin

Here Pussy Pussy

2010-11-20T12:30:00.013Z

A two-for-one today, thanks to another contribution from the always reliable Ross Hamilton, who writes: "I have heard about this album down the years but never found a copy of my own until now.

I don't know too much about it I am afraid, but it comes under the category of adult albums like (those by) Kay Martin and her Bodyguards, full of double entendres and sexually suggestive lyrics."

I too have come across this before, its always cropping up on those 'bad album art' sites, but had never heard any of its contents until Ross passed these two cuts on to me.

There are just 10 tracks on the Beacon Records album My Pussy Belongs to Daddy, subtitled For Adults Only - Spicy Songs Sung By Outstanding Artists. Four artists are credited, none of them outstanding. The title song, credited to Faye Richmonde, is fairly mediocre and like so may of these simpering, sniggering, so-called 'adult' albums, aimed at the stag party market, but the other track I'm sharing with you today - He Forgot His Rubbers, performed by Angelina - is great; it reminds me of the wonderful Davy's Dinghy by Ruth Wallis, a Dr Demento standard and one of my favourite comedy records of all time. Co-incidentally Davy's Dinghy was recorded in 1956, just one year before My Pussy was released.

It seemed that Beacon began by specialising in these kinds of releases. Their first album, Hot Pepper, featured the same line up as My Pussy Belongs to Daddy (augmented by Nancy Steele) and included such 'classics' as I'm a Virgin, But I'm On The Verge, It Was Hard When I Kissed Her Goodbye and, not being the kind of outfit to let anything go to waste, the album also includes an earlier outing for My Pussy....cheapskates!

Still, enjoy these classic slices of 50s cheesecake:

Will.I'm.Not

2010-10-25T16:14:00.001+01:00

I had heard of William Hung before, but he'd pretty much passed me by. That was until the other week when, bored and flicking through the hundreds of TV channels we now have access to (thanks to Sky), I came across one of those terrible 'worlds worst auditions' compilations - you know the thing, a cheap repackage of some of the audition stages from those loathsome search for a star programmes, fronted by a blonde TV bimbo-in-limbo whose career has been reduced to presenting QVC at 3am - and I was reintroduced to his 'charms'.

For those who don't know, William Hung auditioned for the third season of American Idol, the US version of Pop Idol, in 2003. He belted out a screamingly awful version of the Ricky Martin song She Bangs, panned by Simon Cowell with the words "You can't sing, you can't dance, so what do you want me to say?", to which Hung replied "I have no professional training of singing and dancing." Cowell's scornful retort: "No? Well that is the surprise of the century" dismissed Hung and he should never have been heard of again. But truth is often stranger than fiction: a William Hung fan site recorded over four million hits in its first week; Hung was asked to appear on several television programs and he was featured in several national magazines and newspapers; he was parodied on both Saturday Night Live and Celebrity Deathmatch and, to cap it all, the tuneless wonder was offered a $25,000 advance on a record deal, releasing three albums in 2004 and 2005.

Oh, those albums. Each is sprinkled with a few of William's own 'inspirational thoughts' - a few seconds of the lisping idiot telling his fanbase that if they believe in themselves then anything is possible. It's audio vomit of the highest order, and almost worth the price of purchase alone.

It feels a bit unkind, laughing at someone as deeply untalented (and clearly a sandwich or two short of a picnic) as William Hung, it's almost like kicking a cripple. But I guess I shouldn't worry; the boy has clearly made a few bucks for himself (certainly enough to drop out of school) from his karaoke crooning and appears to all intents to be having a great time. Good for him.Here, for your delectation, is William Hung strangling (for my money, improving) I Believe I Can Fly.Enjoy!

Blood and Mud

2010-10-15T09:24:00.000+01:00

Apologies for having spent the last month missing in action, but I'm back with a real belter for you, Elton Britt's missive to the blood transfusion service, Korean Mud. A real rarity, this 78 (originally backed with a track called The Unknown Soldier) is one of the scant few songs released about America's involvement in the Korean war - and one of a surprisingly small number to deal with the subject of donating blood.But Elton Britt, who he? James Elton Baker, to give the man his full name, was born in 1913 in Arkansas. A sickly child, Elton was plagued by illness all his life, so much so that his parents didn't bother to name him until he was a full year old, giving him the middle name of Elton after the doctor who had spent so much time keeping him alive. The Bakers were a musical family: young Elton started playing guitar at age ten and later, greatly impressed by the records of Jimmie Rodgers, he also taught himself how to yodel. His first chance at stardom came in 1930 when he joined the Beverly Hillbillies, a popular group (rather than the 60s TV show), acquiring his new surname on the way. An unlucky soul, his first wife, Margaret (who he married in 1934) died in an automobile accident less than a year into their marriage. The following year he wed Jeannie Russell, who died two days after the birth of their second child in 1937. Luckily his third and fourth wives seemed to have been made of stronger stuff and did not meet such unpleasant ends.

In 1937 Britt signed with RCA Victor, where he remained until 1956. During this time he cut something like 600 tracks and released more than 60 albums; he appeared in a couple of movies - The Last Dogie (1933) and Laramie (1949). In 1960 he retired from music to stand for the Democratic Party although Britt returned to the entertainment world shortly after. He died in 1972 after suffering a heart attack while driving.

Still, here's Elton at his very best - or worst - singing Korean Mud. Enjoy

Tap Your Little Feet Out Sweetheart

2010-09-13T15:40:00.000+01:00

"A daring, madcap romp right from the pansy patch," went the advertising blurb for the oddity I share with you today, Byrd E Bath's Homer the Happy Little Homo. I wonder what a certain yellow skinned Homer would make of it?

With tap dance solo by Rodney Dangerfield (no, not THAT Rodney Dangerfield), this peculiar disc comes from the Camp Records stable, a company which put out a dozen 45s and two full-length albums in the mid 60s available almost exclusively through a certain type of men's publication and marketed variously as out-and-out comedy records or as novelties for the underground gay market. This was during the dark years before the Stonewall riots and gay liberation, you understand, and gay men and women were still persecuted and even imprisoned for their sexuality.

There's so little known about the company, the artists involved or the writers of these songs, but for sound clips to more recordings from the Camp closet, plus much more detail on the history of the company, check out the page on the Queer Music Heritage site.

I love it, as I love many of the other recordings Camp issued. But it is rubbish, hence its inclusion here. It's almost impossible to find, although the albums - the Queen Is In The Closet and Mad About The Boy - do turn up on eBay occasionally: I've managed to track copies of both down but have yet to win an auction for any of the 45s.

Still, enjoy the innocent humour, and not so innocent wink-wink innuendo, of Homer the Happy Little Homo by Byrd E. Bath & the Gentle-Men

Would Jubilee've It?

2010-08-26T16:20:00.002+01:00

Depression, recession, inflation....welcome to the depressing world of the American farmer as voiced by John Fluker (also occasionally credited as John Fulker), now a respected Christian/R&B musician but once one of the many vocalists who plied their trade in the song poem studios.

Fluker is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Music where he studied voice and piano, although I'm guessing that he paid for his studies by recording dozens of mediocre musical monstrosities for the Columbine company. As musical director and accompanist for Gladys Knight, John has traveled the world even visiting Oslo, Norway for a performance during the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize awards. His collaboration on the 2006 Grammy winning One Voice: Gladys Knight & The Saints Unified Voices included "Did You Know", a duet with Gladys, as well as co-arranging several tracks on the album. He's produced recordings for other artists as well as releasing several albums in his own right - in fact our man has come a long way since singing the drivel I present for you today, Jubilee (In The USA) by the little known Lucille Alston, author of the equally dreadful The Tree Of Eternal Life on Hollywood Artists.

I love this record, it has just about everything a really bad record should have: inept vocals, stupid and often nonsensical lyrics (John insists in singing the line 'when we will ever learn' instead of the obviously correct 'when will we ever learn', for example), a ropey accompaniment and an appalling production. It's just ace, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Support Your Local War Criminal

2010-08-19T10:27:00.005+01:00

A special post this week, a three-for-one offer just for you in celebration of the notorious American war criminal Lieutenant William Calley, the army officer found guilty of ordering the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. Exactly the right sort of subject for a hit single or two, surely?

Or three. For today's selection not only features an execrable rewrite of John Brown's Body in that dreadful Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler style, but two song-poems from the Preview stable, both performed by the always reliable Gene Marshall (aka John Muir, real name Gene Merlino).

The John Deer recording on Royal American is particularly interesting because it is, in fact, a cover version of a single released in 1971 by the group C-Company Featuring Terry Nelson (an Alabama-based radio DJ), which sold over two million copies and hit number 37 on the US Billboard charts. Unsurprisingly, neither of the Gene Marshall recordings troubled the charts.

I love the way in which the songwriters have tried to create a folk hereo out of this man - if you don't know the Calley story, you can read all about it here, including the tale of the revolting man's feeble attempts to con money out of the British media, but for now enjoy!

The Battle Hymn of Lt William Calley:

The Ballad of Lt William Calley:

The Story of William Calley:

Easy, Deasy

2010-08-05T11:20:00.000+01:00

I found this little gem on another site (thank you so much Jukebox Mafia) and felt compelled to share it with you. After listening to Mike Deasy singing God Hates Queer (sic) I'm sure you'll understand why.

What I found most amazing, or possibly troubling, about the religious zealot's tirade was discovering the number of records in my own collection that the man who declares himself 'one of the most recorded guitarists in the history of music' has appeared on: virtually the entire Monkees' discography, classic albums by the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, Tiny Tim, Ella Fitzgerald and others. Unsurprisingly God Hates Queer is notable for its absence from the god-bothering Mike Deasy's own discography (you'll find that here).

These days Mike makes most of his money from pandering to America's ever-growing Christian Music audience through touring, preaching the good word via his Mike Deasy Ministries programme and recording dreadfully anodyne paeans to the old man in the white beard who lives in the sky. Pleasingly, for fans of the ridiculous and for those of us who like our saviour supporters to have a bit of Jim and Tammy Bakker about them, the man is also running his own song-poem outfit. Saltmine records not only produce tracks by Mike and his missus Kathie but will, for a fee of $100, put your poem to music - and for a further $250 record a demo for you. How generous. I wonder how much of that ends up in the collection plate?

Unfortunately there is no composer credit on the label for God Hates Queer so we'll never know for sure if Mike wrote it himself or if it was submitted to his song sharking enterprise, although the latter is doubtful. Every other song-poem record which has ever been pressed credits the songwriter; what would be the point otherwise?

Mike, you may want to forget this little slice of bigotry, but I'm afraid the World's Worst Records feels obliged to out you.

Enjoy!

I Said Captain, I Said Wot?

2010-07-27T15:47:00.001+01:00

Captain Sensible, founder member of one of the most important acts of the last four decades, The Damned, all-round stand-up guy (by all accounts) and the purveyor of a slew of interesting, occasionally terrible but often highly enjoyable solo releases - including the UK number 1 Happy Talk and it's follow up, the rather wonderful Wot? What's not to like?

This, that's what (or Wot)! A frightful and totally pointless cover version of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood classic Relax, even more appalling than the red beret-wearing Raymond Burns' terrible take on Elton Motello's Jet Boy Jet Girl (later reinterpreted by Plastic Bertrand as Ca Plane Pour Moi). And that's not even mentioning his piss-awful (although charity-inspired, folks) recording of the Hokey Cokey, his snooker quiz show theme tune or his grave-stomping remake of Smash It Up (parts 1, 2, 3 AND 4, for Christssake).

This particular crime against the ears turned up on his eighth solo single, the November 1984 (that's just a few months after the original FGTH version was a hit) release One Christmas Catalogue.

The Captain has been responsible (or at least partly responsible) for some of the greatest records of the punk and New Wave era - the original Smash It Up, New Rose, the remarkable Strawberries album and so on, and The Damned hold the distinction of being the first punk band to release a single (New Rose), an album (Damned Damned Damned), to have a hit in the UK charts and to tour the United States. Splitting up and reforming on a number of occasions with varying lineups (and varying success) the Captain is once again a member of the band and they're still touring and recording to this day.

Kudos to anyone who can survive 35 years in this industry and still turn up on stage every night to play, but his solo career has hit some unbelievably dismal low points - including this one. Anyone who can squeeze the phrase "What d'you fuckin' want, shithead" on to the a-side of a hit single is alright with me, but in the case of Relax I've got to say 'Hey Ray, put a beret in it!'

I Got Me A Bilpie

2010-07-18T15:04:00.000+01:00

Ugh. Is there anything more loathsome than comedy country records? What is it with these people?

Today's shameful exhibit comes from Buzz Cason - a respected name in music with a long and illustrious career as a singer, songwriter, producer and author. So how did he come to write and record this turd, a laugh riot (not!) about a hillbilly groupie, or Bilpie?

Cason was a founding members of The Casuals, Nashville's first rock and roll band. In 1960 he began his solo career under the pseudonym Garry Miles, securing his first Top 20 hit the same year with Look For A Star. He was also a backing singer for Elvis Presley and Kenny Rogers. His biggest hit (as co-writer) was with Everlasting Love, originally recorded by Robert Knight but which became a Number 1 hit in the UK for The Love Affair in 1968. he also co-wrote Knight's follow up, the brilliant Love On A Mountain Top, another huge UK hit.

In 1970, he founded the Creative Workshop recording studio, where Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, The Judds, The Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris and Olivia Newton-John have recorded material. Now 70, Cason is still writing and producing songs and his book, Living the Rock 'N' Roll Dream (2004), is about the events and careers that shaped the early days of rock and roll. His latest album, Working Without A Net, was released recently.

Buzz, I could forgive you just about anything for having a hand in writing songs as great as the Robert Knight singles, but this is just horrible. Welcome to the World's Worst Records - on the strength of this sorry song you deserve to be here.

I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do...

2010-07-10T13:00:00.001+01:00

Today's dreadful, sub funk cacophony comes to you courtesy of Buddy Raye and originally appeared on one of Sunrise Records' many Hollywood Sessions song poem collections. Written by one Tommie L Spencer (who also penned the equally atrocious He's Not At Home on the same album), I Need You is pretty standard song poem drivel heightened only by Buddy's whiny monotonous delivery and the wonderfully out of tune guitar intro.

So, what can I tell you about Buddy Raye? Well, keen readers of the World's Worst Records will already know that Buddy Raye is the nom de plume for Elmer Plinger, who also recorded for other song-poem companies as Dick Kent, Dick Castle, Sonny Cash and Richard House. As Buddy Raye Elmer recorded almost exclusively for the Sunrise label, a company which put out literally hundreds of albums in the Hollywood Sessions series during the early to mid-80s and which seems to have finally shut up shop around 1988.

During his time at Sunrise Buddy/Elmer put his vocal cords to good use, performing on in excess of 1,000 recordings for the company - songs like the fantastically awfiul Gymnasium Girl, 10 O'clock is Boogie Time, Bringin' Back the Twistin' and a fatuous ode to Ronald Reagan titled We Have the Right Man in the White House. I haven't done the math, but I think its a safe bet that if you add all of the Buddy Raye, Dick Kent et al recordings together his output is probably even greater than that of Gene Marshall/John Muir and of song-poem warhorse Rod Rogers/Rodd Keith. Mindblowing: what it must have been like to have spent a decades-long career being forced to sing rubbish like this.

Anyway, enjoy Buddy Raye's performance of I Need You

Hommage a Cowell

2010-07-02T10:49:00.000+01:00

Happy July everybody!

Today's bottom of the barrel-scraping tune comes courtesy, once again, of occasional contributor Ross Hamilton, although I'm sure many of you are familiar with the genesis of this particular poptastic track. Personally I can recall, working as the singles buyer for HMV in Gloucester at the time of its release, the seemingly endless number of free copies of this single foisted upon us in an effort to help it climb the charts.

Let me hand over to Ross: 'Another piece of trash that I re-discovered the other week. I remember this mostly from a guy I use to hang around with in the mid 1980's who only owned about three records....and this was one of them. I use to love it but, in those pre-eBay days, could never find my own copy - even though, when you are 10, I don't suppose anyone looks too hard for anything! I never forgot the track though, and on one quiet work afternoon (no doubt a Friday) I was looking through eBay and put the title in as a bit of a laugh. A copy was available and I bought it.

Playing it brought back some memories but little did I know that the person who had originally plugged this hit (it reached the top 40 back in 1982) was none other than the wrecker of music Simon Cowell.'

It's true! Basically Cowell, in his early days as a record plugger, heard a track by a German 'artist' by the name of Harry Thumann, who produced a song that sampled dogs barking and called it Ruff Mix. Tumann wasn't the first, or last, producer to do this. Stiff/Virgin Records in the UK released a single by the Singing Sheep (which I have somewhere and will post at a later date), and I used to have an entire album of Beatles tunes covered ala Ruff Mix credited to the Beatle Barkers. Cowell, who was a partner in the British outfit E&S Music with his former boss at EMI, Ellis Rich, acquired rights to the song and began promoting it, crediting it to Wonder Dog. Simon actually dressed up as Wonder Dog and appeared on a handful of UK kids TV shows to promote the song.

Fittingly E&S, who scored several hit records traded from offices in a converted gent's toilet in the NCP car park on Brewer Street in London's Soho.

If you haven't seen the footage on one of those 'before they were famous'-style compilation programmes that ITV put out every couple of months, here it is in all its glory. Listen carefully to the voice....

Ross continues: 'Cowell has been responsible for other novelty recordings travesties featuring the likes of wrestlers of the World Wrestling Federation, Teletubbies, Zig and Zag and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers but this is the first. By the time those other songs came out, I had become a bit older and a bit wiser with my record purchases.'

Thanks Ross, for reminding me of this travesty.

Enjoy!

Without, please, Without

2010-06-19T09:16:00.001+01:00

I'm off on a short, but much needed, holiday today but I wanted to leave you with something, as they say, for the weekend.

It's a bit of a cop out, as this particular recording has never been released on vinyl, rather it comes from a US TV special: ABC's 1977 all-star extravaganza The Beatles Forever, featuring such top ranking performers as Tony Randall, Bernadette Peters, Diane Carroll, Paul Williams, Mel Tillis, Ray Charles and Anthony Newley.

And it's Anthony Newley we look to today for his outrageously awful reading of the George Harrison classic Within You, Without You. The whole programme sucks, especially the two dreadful Beatles' medleys performed by the majority of the cast, but Newley (ex-husband of Joan Collins) really should have known better. No stranger to the pop charts, Newley had enjoyed a successful career as a vocalist, beginning in 1959 with the UK top 5 I've Waited So Long, followed by a sting of hits including Personality, Why (originally a 1959 U.S. hit for Frankie Avalon) and Do You Mind, written by Lionel Bart. He even won a Grammy in 1963 for the self-penned What Kind of Fool Am I, wrote the lyrics to Goldfinger, the Nina Simone classic Feeling Good and wrote or co-wrote a shed load of musicals, including Stop the World - I Want to Get Off and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, nominated for an Oscar for Best Musical Score.

So how did someone with such a pedigree get involved in such dross as this, especially in the same year that he was voted the Male Musical Star of the Year in Las Vegas? The mind boggles.

Why is he living?

2010-06-12T15:25:00.004+01:00

Today's piece of sheer hokum comes from the world's cheesiest pop star, the inimitable Jess Conrad, with the flip side of his 1961 release This Pullover - an all-time classic bad record Why Am I Living?

Born Gerald James in 1935 (although for many years his official biography would claim that he was born in 1940), young Jerry held down a variety of jobs before deciding that acting was what he wanted to do, scoring extra work in some late 50s British movies, a spell in repertory (when he settled on his stage name), the lead in a television play Rock-A-Bye Barney, about a rock and roll performer.

The legendary promoter Jack Good encouraged Jess to go into the studio to cut some sides, even though singing was not one of the rising star's strong points. The song chosen for his first recording, a cover of Skip And Flip's US hit Cherry Pie crept in to the bottom of the Top 40, but his third single, Mystery Girl, managed to break Top 20 in 1961. Jess managed to scrape into the charts with one more 45 the following year, but after that his chart career was at an end - although he has since managed to carve out a very unique career for himself. This very track appeared in the film Rag Doll (1962), a crime drama (released in the US as Young, Willing and Eager) in which Jess played the role of Shane. In 1963 he landed a major role in TV series The Human Jungle, a weekly drama which starred later Pink Panther actor Herbert Lom in the lead role of psychiatrist Doctor Corder. In the second episode of the series Corder was called in to deal with the problems of rock and roll star Danny Pace, played by Jess. Several numbers were recorded specifically for this programme, released as a Decca EP in 1963. These days Jess is still active, appearing regularly on TV, on stage (he's played Jesus!) and even at the occasional rock'n'roll or 60s revival show. He's also recorded albums with a bunch of pals under the name The Showbiz XI, the same name of his long-running (more than 40 years now) charity football team.

The recording I present for your delectation today is the b-side to his fourth Decca single. Many of you may think you already know it, featured as it was on the late, great Kenny Everett's Worst Records album, but the three Jess Conrad cuts on that compilation were in fact later re-recordings. This is the original, and the best (or worst!).

Enjoy.

Sharing that last cigarette

2010-06-07T09:14:00.004+01:00

A real slice of prime Country ham for you today, and a record I find it impossible to listen to without hearing Lurleen Lumpkin squealing in my ear.

Nancy Jo Garton, who scored a minor radio hit with her cover of Big Blue Diamonds in 1975 (actually the flip side of I Like What I Got), drawls out this tortuous ballad about a couple battling against poverty in their two-room hovel, one pair of shoes between them, nothing to drink but water in such a fashion that I can't help thinking that the authors of the yellow-skinned songstresses one big hit Your Wife Don't Understand You, But I Do must have heard this first.

I'm sure there are nuances that are passing me by, but to me it sounds exactly like every other depressing Country record I've heard over the years. God, life must be tough in Redneckville.

There's not a lot else I can tell you about this: Nancy Jo seems to have had a short-lived career in the music industry, recording a few sides and at least one album (with the equally unknown Ken Holiday - who produced this cut - titled, with a huge amount of originality, Ken Holiday and Nancy Jo Garton) for Nashville outfit G-Bar between 1975 and 1978 before vanishing into obscurity.

Nancy Jo's career as a Country minstrel may have been short and to have born little fruit, but it does seem that Ken and Nancy Jo managed alright for themselves, as a Ken and Nancy Jo Garton (if we assume that Holiday was nowt but a stage name) now own and run the G Bar Ranch (come on, that has to be more than a coincidence!) in Depew, Oklahoma.

It's immensely satisfying to know that, even if the couple in this horrible record didn't make it, Ken and Nancy Jo did. And good luck to them!

Getting Irie

2010-05-16T08:53:00.004+01:00

I hesitated a while before posting this. Not because it isn't brilliantly awful, but because it's not strictly a record. Still, you deserve to hear this.

This is another excellent find from my occasional WWR co-conspirator Ross Hamilton, who writes: "Back in the 1980s my Dad owned a recording studio and not all of the sessions that he recorded were of the highest quality." This particular track came from a cassette (remember those?) which Ross recently re-discovered; one which his "father decided to keep as a reminder of those days."

Ross sent me two tracks from the cassette and today, with his permission, I'm posting the first of those cuts: a fine slice of slow-tempo reggae called I've Lost my Love by Rasta Rudi. "He turned up at the studio with someone else's backing track and recorded his own interesting vocals over the top," Ross explains. "He also brought in his own fan club which consisted of a couple of dancers who would shake their stuff whilst the music played, forgetting that only the producer was watching them in disbelief. I don't have any further information on this guy I am afraid because he seems to have only turned up for this one session. As far as I have been able to find out, this track has never been released in any format."

If anyone knows anything about Rasta Rudi and his stillborn career as a lovers rock singer I'd love to hear from you. But for now, here he is with the jaw-droppingly terrible I've Lost My Love.

..and the winner is

2010-05-15T09:02:00.004+01:00

Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the worst record I have heard in years - possibly in my life. It encapsulates everything that is wrong with 'music' today. I cannot begin to describe how nauseous this makes me. It sounds like C3P0 vomiting into a Melodica.

It's just shit.

Once upon a time the sporadic use of a Vocoder could be justified, but to have your entire output passed through Autotune - which only exists to enhance the voice of people who can't sing in the first place - is pathetic. People who buy this dross - and, apparently, millions have done - should be shot.

End of polemic; back tomorrow with another super slab of incorrectness courtesy of the excellent Ross Hamilton

The Lovely Linda

2010-05-01T15:23:00.005+01:00

A recent Ebay purchase that only arrived a couple of days ago, but one which I had to share with you immediately. This is another fabulously mundane performance from Frank Perry, the poor man's Rodd Keith, pressed on yet another of Sandy Stanton's many, many song-poem-cum vanity imprints Opossum.

Opossum, it appears, existed primarily to release songs penned by Bob Petersen and his occasional cohort John Pulignano, the man who had previously "composed" What Is A Mother which appeared on yet another Sandy Stanton label, the much better known Film City. Bob, under his full name Robert E. Petersen, was also the author of Girl Friend Blues which, in 1963, was recorded for but unreleased by (apart from an acetate recording credited to Cowboy Bob) the semi-legit Cowtown Records.

There's not a lot else I can tell you here that longtime WWR followers won't already know (or can't look up elsewhere on the site), so for now just sit back and enjoy the ridiculously banal I Need Your Love, Linda by Frank Perry with the "Swinging Strings".

Who Are The Rave Ons?

2010-04-19T12:49:00.007+01:00

I'm utterly shocked with myself for not having posted this, one of my all-time favourite song-poem performances, before. So annoyed in fact that today I'm giving you not one but two tracks from this utterly dreadful album.

Over their many years in the song-poem field, Columbine Records issued dozens upon dozens of compilation albums under the title The Now Sounds of Today; if their catalogue is to be believed there could be as many as 300 or more. Each of them contained anything up to 20 different tracks, all from aspiring hit makers who really should have known better. Packaging these albums in dull, generic sleeves (often with different catalogue numbers printed on the sleeve and disc) saved both time and money, but budgets were non existent; musicians did not see the cue sheets for the songs they were singing before entering the studio. Even taking note of the ridiculous rate that Columbine churned this material out many of those musicians - consummate professionals and song-poem stalwarts like Kay Weaver, John Muir (aka Gene Marshall) and Ralph Lowe - managed to do a half-decent job, but when a band of no-hopers under the name The Rave Ons was brought in to do their thing - as they did for the first 14 albums in the series - their inadequacy and amateurism shone through.

It's beyond belief that anyone at Columbine could have sanctioned the release of this drivel; yet more proof if you needed it of the contempt that these outfits had for the people stupid enough to send them their hard-earned dollars. The singer 'performs' in a garbled, high pitched whine racing through the lyrics at speed, clearly wishing that he wasn't there while the rest of the Rave Ons (keyboards, bass and drums) play the same basic tune on all of the cuts on the album, never managing to rise above the mediocre. All in all, they sound to me like the school band of my nightmares.

So, two cuts from Columbine CRH-9 (or, if the label is to be believed USR 6171): Happy Inside of Me by Harry Booms and Foolish Heart by Lottie Ankey performed, as only they could, by The Rave Ons.

Lex, David and Ric

2010-04-10T13:49:00.007+01:00

Over at the rather wonderful Music For Maniacs there's been a bit of a debate going on recently about the origins of the disc I present for your enjoyment today, a 45 from Ric King entitled The Return of a Soldier.

To cut a long story short the Capitol Records 45 (catalogue number 5845, fact fans) The Return of a Soldier, was co-written by one Lex De Acevedo a name which, through no fault of Mr De Acevedo (occasionally - as in this instance - spelled Azevedo, one would assume to make it easier to pronounce) himself, was mistakenly believed to be a pseudonym of the writer/producer David Axelrod. This erroneous 'fact' wasn't helped by Capitol when, in 2006 they put out the compilation CD Introducing the Four King Cousins and included the following in the liner notes: "Produced, arranged, and conducted by David Axelrod using the pseudonym Lex De Azevedo." Silly record company!

The simple truth is that Lex De Acevedo and David Axelrod are two different people. Lex is a cousin to America's famous King Family (hence his credit on the Cousins album) and Ric King is his brother, Ric De Acevedo who is now a member of the post-Lettermen vocal act Reunion. David Axelrod and Lex recorded for Capitol at the same time during the mid sixties, so perhaps that's where the mistake came from - apparently, according to Lex's daughter, their offices adjoined too. De Acevedo is a Mormon musician and still active as a composer today, as is Axelrod - active, I mean, not a Mormon (at least not that I know of) - most famous for his work with the Electric Prunes and Lou Rawls.

Now this has little or nothing to do with the record I present today, apart from offering a bit of interesting background and the thought that if record companies cannot credit their artists correctly what chance have we got some 40-odd years later?

If you know Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler's mawkish mid-60s hit Ballad of The Green Berets you'll have some idea of what to expect, although Ric King's addition to the pile of Vietnam-inspired releases is particularly insipid and tasteless, dealing as it does with the post-life experiences of a freshly-deceased young man.

Hey, what's not to like?

Take Her Away

2010-04-04T12:04:00.006+01:00

This came from a batch of song-poem 45s received just yesterday but, such was my urgency to share this little treasure with you, I decided to forgo my Easter egg eating and waste no time in transferring this to MP3.

Many regular visitors to The World's Worst Records will already know about Rodd Keith, possibly the greatest of all the song-poem artists: multi-instrumentalist, arranger, singer, writer and producer of countless cuts for Film City, Preview, MSR, Circle-D and a dozen other outfits under a variety of different names.

But no matter how well you think you know Rodd you will not have heard anything like this. You'll have heard Rodd sing in falsetto before, on the two versions of I'm Just the Other Woman for example, but the voice he uses here is quite extraordinary. Written by Paul Beshears, Pretty Boquet (and that's their spelling, not mine) is sung by Rodd in a bizarre high-pitched whine which makes him sound like a cross between the Bee Gees and Tiny Tim.

I'm not quite sure what to make of it; at first listen I thought it was about a bride who died on her wedding day, but subsequent spins show that hopw was little more than a product of my damaged mind and warped sense of humour. As it turns out its simply a grotty little piece of sentimental slush with few redeeming features outside of Rodd's freakish performance.

There are a few others in the same batch will will no doubt make an appearance at some juncture, but for now enjoy the peculiar Pretty Boquet (sic).

Sunshine Bottyman

2010-03-26T13:24:00.005Z

I really don't know where to begin.

One of my earliest, and fondest, musical memories, is of a summer at the very beginning of the 70s (yes, I am THAT old) playing my elder sister's record collection on a portable record player in the family back garden. It's a really powerful memory, and I can clearly recall many of the records that she had and that I played that day. I know it had to be the 70s because one of those records was Let It Be, the Beatles' last UK 45 (well, until 1976, anyway), which was released in 1970; other discs included Gene Pitney's 24 Hours From Tulsa, the Small faces Itchycoo Park, a whole bunch of great Motown singles and Donovan's Jennifer Juniper.

Consequently I've always loved those records and, even though I know he's a raging old hippy who spends his life trading on the fact that he knew The Beatles, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for old Donovan, especially his sun-drenched post the-next-Dylan recordings.

So it came as a bit of a shock to discover this appalling little turd in his oeuvre. Originally featured on the Cosmic Wheels album (1973) and released as the b-side to the Maria Magenta single of the same year, there's very little I can say about The Intergalactic Laxative, apart that is from asking the question 'what the hell was he on?' A song about astronaut's bodily functions? FFS!

Have a listen, I dare you. Just in case you fancy singing along to this jaunty little ditty here are the great poet's lyrics:

I was impressed like everyone,
When man began to fly,
Out of earthly regions,
To planets in the sky.
With total media coverage,
We watched the heroes land,
As ceremoniously
They disturbed the cosmic sand.

In awe with admiration,
We listened to the talk.
Such pride felt they,
Such joy to be
Upon the moon to walk.
My romantic vision shattered,
When it was explained to me,
Spacemen wear old diapers
In which they shit and pee.

Oh, the intergalactic laxative,
Will get you from here to there.
Relieve you and believe me,
Without a worry or care.
If shitting is your problem,
When you're out there in the stars,
Oh, the intergalactic laxative
Will get you from here to Mars.

They don't partake like you and I,
Of beefy burger mush.
Their food is specially prepared
To dissolve into slush.
Absorbed by multi-fibers
In the super diaper suit,
Otherwise the slush would trickle
Down inside the boot.

Oh, the intergalactic laxative,
Will get you from here to there.
Relieve you and believe me,
Without a worry or care.
If shitting is your problem
When you're out there in the stars,
Oh, the intergalactic laxative
Will get you from here to Mars.

You may well ask now what becomes
Of liquid they consume.
A pipe is led from penis head
To a unit in the room.
The water is recirculated,
Filtered for re-use.
In case of anti-gravity
Pee gets on the loose.

Oh, the intergalactic laxative,
Will get you from here to there.
Relieve you and believe me,
Without a worry or care.
If shitting is your problem
When you're out there in the stars,
Oh, the intergalactic laxative
Will get you from here to Mars.

Wherever man has conquered,
On the quest for frontiers new,
I'm glad that he's always had to do
The number one and two.
It makes it all so ordinary,
Just like you and me,
To know the greatest heroes,
They had to shit and pee.

The intergalactic laxative
Will get you from here to there,
For cosmic constipation
There's none that can compare.
If shitting is your problem
When you're out there in the stars,
Oh, the intergalactic laxative,
The intergalactic laxative,
The intergalactic laxative,
Will get you from here to Mars.

http://rapidshare.com/files/368382110/The_Intergalactic_Laxative.mp3

stools, schools, dunces and fools

2010-03-19T09:13:00.006Z

The world of the song-poem is littered with inane, and quite often insane, lyrics, but these are some of the most banal I've come across recently. Even the genius multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer that was Rodd Keith fails miserably to inject some life into this pile of dross.

The words of To The Person were written by the wonderfully-named Melchor Carnate Jr, and you really have to ask yourself if English was his first language; he seems to have no idea of how to construct a sensible sentence. Melchor's words really are nonsensical:

To the person who is in love
But cannot say so from above
Come golden words in your sleep
Untold words you now can speak

To the person who's not in love
And can say they're not from above
Come Cupid's arrows, who are you fooling
Their pushin' will give you some schoolin'

To those who aren't in love
And cannot say from above
Comes a scolding because you are a fool
A scolding and a dunce's stool

To the person who is in love
And can say they are from above
Comes a blessing because you are wise
True love is your prize

To those who aren't in love
And cannot say from above
Comes a scolding because you are a fool
A scolding and a dunce's stool

To the person who is in love
And can say they are from above
Comes a blessing because you are wise
True love is your prize

...fabulously dreadful. This appears to have been Mr Carnate's only foray into the song-poem world, although I'd lay money on there being some more of his rotten poetry around somewhere - maybe preserved for posterity on a local newspaper letters page, or in one of those vanity anthologies that bad poets are always paying to be included in.

Anyway, enjoy Rodd's soulful rendition of Melchor's words and have a great weekend