Mairsie and Marcy

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.

I’ve also been able to bring you almost-lost recordings by people such as the great Leona Anderson and the inestimable Mrs Miller, and lay claim to having rediscovered the genius of Grace Pauline Chew. But one thing I never thought I would turn up would be a previously undocumented release by one of the all-time giants of bad music: Marcy Tigner.

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.

Enjoy!

Download Shake HERE

Download Mairsie HERE

Download Teddy HERE