One of the most enjoyable aspects of compiling music for
this blog has been discovering (or re-discovering) music, artists or companies
that are now all-but forgotten. In the song-poem field this happens all the
time: although the American Song-Poem
Music Archive is exhaustive it hasn’t been updated for almost a decade, and
collectors are constantly turning up new recordings. During the years I’ve been
collecting song-poems I’ve ‘found’ at least four companies not listed there or
on any other song-poem resource, including Circle-D
(with at least two Rod Rogers/Rodd Keith
releases), Globe imprints HFC and Kandee, and 50s New York outfit Vanity. I’ve also discovered UK companies who licensed song-poem
material – Emerald (a Decca imprint) and Polydor offshoot Nashville.
You all know Marcy
Tigner: she’s the Christian trombonist-turned vent act who releases a slew
(anything up to 40) albums under the Marcy
or Little Marcy tag. You know this.
You also know that before she was encouraged to take up ventriloquism that she
released a couple of instrumental albums under her own name.
Yet I doubt if many of you knew that, between her brace
of trombone albums and the first Marcy
release, she released a bizarre, three-track EP under her own name using her
own, odd, childlike voice rather than employing her later shtick of masquerading
as a wooden dolly. Get Googling: pretty much all you’ll find are links to the eBay
auction for the very EP I now own. None of the Marcy fan sites mention it: none of the weirdo music blogs I
frequent seem to have featured it. A genuine rarity: the real missing link. Dating from the very early 1960s I guess.
Here, in its entirety, are the three tracks from that EP:
Marcy Tigner’s version of the standard
Mairsie Dotes, plus Me and My Teddy Bear and Shake Me, I Rattle. None of the songs
are credited: Mairsie Dotes is a
novelty song composed in 1943 by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston;
Shake Me, I Rattle (written by Hal Hackady
and Charles Naylor) has been recorded a number of times, including in 1958 by
the Lennon Sisters and by Marion Worth in 1962. Me and My Teddy Bear (Winters-Cootes) has been recorded by dozens
of artists – including those as disparate as Mitch Miller and Peter Gabriel.
Wow, never heard the original version of Me And My Teddy Bear before. Thanks, Darryl! This blows The Gabe's cover version out of the water! ;-) If only Marcy Tigner had gotten to return the favo(u)r by covering Moribund The Burgermeister!
ReplyDeleteDreadful dreadful dreadful. (and ESSENTIAL)
ReplyDeleteIsn't it though?
DeleteOops, i wrote the first comment. Now i see this is not the "original" version of Me And My Teddy Bear (obviously). Sorry! (Still would have liked to hear Ms. Tigner's rendition of Moribund, or maybe Waiting For The big One, or even Solsbury Hill, etc...)
ReplyDelete