House!

It’s been a while since we had a song-poem, so here’s a pip from the dying days of the Preview label for you, starring Barbara Foster. Bingo and Just for You are two fairly predictable slices of Country cheese, until you scratch beneath the surface.

The A-side tells the story of a bored husband whose wife is always out with the girls playing housey housey. On the flip, the protagonist talks about painting their face, wearing a mini-dress and giving the family home an interior makeover to make it look like a bar. What makes this fascinating (well, to me at least) is that on the plug side Barbara is singing from a man’s point of view, and on side two from a woman’s. That’s not exactly unheard of, but in this day and age you could look at it another way. Was author Michael R. Guesman an early trans pioneer who was gently outing himself through his song lyrics? Is he going to put on make-up and a mini to please his man, after the bar-hopping jackass has come back from a night with his fag-hag girl pals playing bingo?

Of course not. I’m just pulling your proverbial.

What does make this interesting is that Michael R. Guesman was a musician who gained some small amount of fame on the Country scene, so how did he end up writing for Preview? My best guess is that he simply paid to have these songs cut for use as a demo and that he wrote both words and music, rather than sending his poems in to have Preview’s staff set them to a mediocre melody.

Born on 7 January 1935, in Carmichael, Pennsylvania, Michael Guesman served with an Air Force crash and rescue team during the Korean War. He married his wife, Rachel, in 1955 and moved to Warren, Ohio in 1969. They had seven kids, four boys and three girls. For ten years he worked for the Packard Electric Division of General Motors.

A noted guitar player, in 1965 he wrote the music to a song called Rena by George A. Cole. Other compositions include Lonely Room (1976), Go Home, Virginia and Please Mr. Jukebox in 1977, and 1978’s The Many Loves of Mary, and the brilliantly-titled Your Clown Left Town.

According to his local newspaper, The Vindicator, Michael “was recognized in 1980 by the Country Music Association and the Grand Ole Opry as a country music pioneer for his songwriting, and was invited to participate in the family reunion of country music artists at the 9th International Country Music Fanfare in Nashville.” I’m not quite sure what that means, as I can find no record of this event, but the International Country Music Fanfare is now part of CMA Fest, a four-day Country fan convention, which has been running annually since 1972.

Michael passed away, aged 66, at his home in April 2001.

Download Bingo HERE

Download Just HERE