Bum Deal

Pat Campbell’s album, Just a Quiet Conversation, is everything a bad music enthusiast could hope for. Overwrought narration with folksy, clip-cloppy Country and a good dose of God-bothering on the side. Just a Quiet Conversation would spawn the classic single The Deal, which almost made the UK Top 30 and has the honour of sitting alongside Red Sovine’s Teddy Bear in the Kenny Everette-curated pantheon of bad records.

it’s Epic: an absolute masterpiece.

Pat Campbell had been a member of the '50s Irish harmony group The Four Ramblers, together with a young Val Doonican. While Doonican left for solo stardom, the group continued for a short while, releasing one 10” album, The Emerald Isle, and a couple of singles before Pat gravitated to the industry side of the music business, first as a DJ for Radio Luxembourg (he’s there, presenting his own Late, Late Show in 1959) before becoming involved in label management.

After a stint working for Decca, where he oversaw the licensing and release of many of the post-mortem Jim Reeves albums and singles (Reeves label, RCA, was a subsidiary of Decca before setting up their stand-alone UK operation), by 1968 Pat was working for Phil Solomon’s Major-Minor Records, an Irish record label based in north London that licensed a lot of its material from abroad: we’ve already featured such horrors as the Equipe 84 single Auschwitz and Freddie “Parrotface” Davies’ Cynthia Crisp. While at Major-Minor, Pat had recorded a couple of vocals for label mate Mike Mercardo, a keyboard player known as 'The Swinging Monk', for his album The Power and The Glory.

The Irish have always had a soft spot for Country & Western music, and one of the artists Major-Minor was interested in was our old friend Red Sovine. Major-Minor do not appear to have released any of Old Red’s albums here in the UK (he was licensed to London for much of this period) although they may have had a hand in promoting some concerts. Pat, it seems, became very enamoured of Red’s storytelling style… which is where the inspiration for Just a Quiet Conversation comes from.

Referencing his regular C&W slot on Radio Luxembourg, the album’s sleeve notes wax lyrically about his credentials: “Pat Campbell was born in Ireland, but it might just as well have been Nashville. He's been there many times and he's welcomed as a friend by the biggest names in the world of country music. On each visit he brings a little piece of Nashville home with him, but also leaves a little of Pat Campbell there in return.” However, Pat’s recitations are more Terry Wogan than truck driving man. Still, The Deal, the first of two singles issued from Just A Quiet Conversation managed to spend five weeks on the UK singles chart, peaking at a respectable number 31 shortly before Christmas 1969.

After his brief shot at pop chart immortality, Pat returned to spinning discs for a living, rather than making them himself, eventually working as a DJ for Radio Two, where he presented a show called Country Style. 

Sadly, Pat passed away in 2006. His family and friends remember him as a happy man who was always pulling practical jokes. Perhaps Just A Quiet Conversation was one of those. I’m sure he’d appreciate just how much fun people are still having, listening to his album half a century after it was recorded.

Here are a couple of tracks for you: Pat’s cover of Red Sovine’s Giddy Up Go and his hit single, The Deal. If you like this you can find the entire album, plus the two Swinging Monk tracks, at WFMU.

Enjoy!

Download Giddy HERE

Download Deal HERE

Shake Me, I Prattle

Little Beverley Bunt, from the village of Indian Queens in Cornwall, was just seven years old when she recorded her first - and so far only – EP for His Master’s Voice back in 1959. 

According to the sleeve notes, even at that young age Bev was already something of a veteran, having won several singing competitions including the Junior Vocal Championship of Cornwall.

Arranged and conducted by Ron Goodwin, the four songs on this release are just lovely: The Queen’s Highway attempts to teach children how to cross the road safely, and predates the Tufty Club and the Green Cross Code Man by years. Open Up Your Heart has also been recorded, notably by Little Marcy, as Let The Sunshine In. 

Me And My Teddy Bear had been recorded by dozens of artists before, including a pre-Little Marcy Marcy Tigner, on her one-off EP for Angelus, which I featured on this very blog back in 2013. My Choc’late Rabbit, credited on the disc as having been written by a gentleman by the name of Pascal Marks was, in fact, co-written by American songwriters Gerald Marks, the author of All Of Me and Milton Pascal. The song had previously been recorded by Rosemary Clooney in 1950, the year before she hit the big time with Come On-a My House

Bev did not release a record under her own name again, although she did pop up in 1968 in the regional heats of a Miss Cornwall competition, and she also appears to have done some session work at Roche Studios in Cornwall in the late 1970s.

The name Indian Queens, incidentally, seems to have come from an 18^th Century public house and rather than Pocahontas or Queen Victoria, the one-time Empress of India.

Here are all four tracks from this charming little release. Enjoy!

Download Teddy HERE

Download Heart HERE

Download Rabbit HERE

Download Highway HERE

It's The Jesmonds

Love Is All, the only EP release from lounge act the Jesmonds, comes from the same label that brought you the wonderful Joanne Duo, Eron.  

Issued in 1980 “to satisfy the demands of their innumerable fans” (it says here), the Jesmonds were another woeful cabaret trio made up of brothers Kevin (keyboards) and Andy Hyde (drums) who, according to the sleeve notes, “had played together for about five years and won outright at an 'Opportunity Knocks' show and later, at a Butlins talent competition.” In September 1979 they took on vocalist Roy, who the brothers at another Opportunity Knocks show (my assumption is that these were regional talent shows, rather than the TV version), where Roy and the brothers tied for first place.

Managed by the brothers’ father John Hyde, by the time they came to record their EP they were “one of the most popular acts in Kent at hotels, clubs and at dinners,” apparently. that’s something I find hard to accept, although having listened to most of the Joanne Duo’s output it’s fairly obvious what passed for entertainment in the hotels and social clubs of Kent in the late 70s and early 80s. there’s very little (read: no) information about the trio online, although according to the sleeve notes their act was full of “energy and dynamism” as well as showcasing their “excellent visual presentation and their likeable personalities.”

I’ve found a listing for the trio playing a summer season at Romney Sands Holiday Park in 1983, but that’s all I’ve got, I’m afraid. The usual shout out for anyone who may have more information about the band, but until then here are a couple of tracks from the EP: Cracklin’ Rosie and Love Is In The Air.

Enjoy!

Download Love HERE

Download Rosie HERE

 Thanks to Conrad Zimmer for the info!

Wheely Great

Not much is known about the two young men behind the insanely rare Wheelz of Steel Volume One, brothers Raymond and Richard Markowski of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But what follows is what I been able to glean so far.

Born in 1961 and 1962 respectively, the brothers were born with Muscular Dystrophy, an inherited genetic condition that gradually causes the muscles to weaken, leading to an increasing level of disability. Unable to get around without assistance, the boys were not going to let their situation get the better of them, and with commendable good humour and a certain irony (and a nod, no doubt to British NWOBHM band Saxon), named their band Wheelz of Steel after the wheelchairs they were confined to.

Issued in 1983, the self-funded and self-released album features the brothers swapping guitar and bass duties, with vocals handled by Richard. Throughout they are accompanied by their trusty Roland drum machine, credited on the reverse of the sleeve as “T.R”. All eight songs were co-written by the boys themselves.   

It’s a dreadful record, but you have to admire their spirit. How many of us in a similar situation would have been able to write, perform on and release our own LP? Not only that, but they even performed live, entering into a local Battle of the Bands competition and winning. Admirable stuff.

Sadly, both of the Markowski brothers are no longer with us: Raymond passed away, aged just 32, in 1993. Richard died in September 2011 aged 49 after power was lost at the Milwaukee home he shared with his mother in an overnight windstorm, cutting off the electricity supply to his ventilator. Richard’s mother, Beverly, called 911 when his ventilator started to beep, but she told emergency personnel that she had backup batteries, so they left. She called 911 again shortly afterwards because her son was struggling, and the alarm was beeping again. He later died at a hospital. According to the county medical examiner’s report, Mrs. Markowski believed that the batteries had a longer life. A sad end to a short, but accomplished, life.

Have a listen to a couple of tracks from the brilliant Wheelz of Steel Volume One here: Outerspace Man and Mad Man. If you want more, the whole thing is available on YouTube,

Enjoy!

Download Outerspace HERE

Download Mad HERE