So Long, Frank Lyle Buck

A little follow-up to last week’s post.

 

Last week I wrote a little about Globe, the Nashville-based studio that pumped out hundreds of song-poems and vanity projects by singers including Sonny Marshall and JoAnn Auborn, working under a variety of different names. I mentioned that I owned a copy of a song-poem 45, on Frank Lyle Buck Records, credited to The Mystery Girl, one of JoAnn’s many pseudonyms, and that on  that particular disc she and Marshall appear accompanied by pianist Al Auborn, who I guess could either have been her husband or her brother.

 

Well, here are both sides of that disc, One, Two, Three Play and Tipsy Ippsy.

 

Frank Lyle Buck had been writing songs for a number of years, with little or no return. His first efforts – the inspired Tune Number 1 and Tune Number 2 – were copyrighted in 1949: the following year he wrote Yours To Love,  which Sammy Marshall would record in 1962, the same year as One, Two, Three Play and Tipsy Ippsy appeared.

 

The single was listed in Billboard on 2 June 1962 as possessing ‘limited sales potential’. The lack of interest did not put our amateur auteur off: in 1962 alone he released four singles – all made with the Globe Recording Studio – on his own Frank Lyle Buck label. One, the aforementioned Yours To Love, was reviewed by Cash Box in April 1963 (they called it ‘a soulful, Nashville-oriented reading… with a funky shuffle beat’) and even after these all flopped he continued unabated. Letter From College came along in 1964; along with the rather wonderfully-monikered Peaceable Smith, he penned Just Another Day in 1966.

 

Frank Lyle Buck – or more correctly Frank Lyle Buck Junior, was born on 4 December 1898, in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Frank Lyle Buck senior (or Big Frank, perhaps?), was 23 at the time and his mother, Irene McGunigle, was 20. Frank Junior married Mabel Harriet Lande on 8 June 1918, in Brooklyn and they had five sons. Baby Eugene, born in 1919, died before he was one year old; then came Frank Theodore (1920), another Eugene (1921), Robert (1924) and William Lyle (1926). Sadly all of the Buck children have now passed on too.

Frank died on 10 December 1989, in Middlefield, Otsego, New York, at the age of 91.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Play HERE

Download Tipsy HERE

A Sound Reputation

I’ve finally begun the arduous task of digitising my entire song-poem collection. It’s a job that will take months – I have hundreds of song-poem 45s and dozens of albums – but I reckon it will be worth it, for it’s already throwing up some great stuff that, as far as I am aware, has not been shared on the internet before now.

 

Today’s offering is the first of the fruit of that labour.

 

Sammy Marshall was the go-to male singer at the Globe recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee, and it is he who performs the two tracks I’ve selected for you today, both sides of a disc issued – one can safely assume – in early 1964: The Ballad of John F Kennedy and Physical Fitness.

 

I love this disc, especially the biro scribbles on the A-side label, warning the disc jockey: ‘Do Not Play’, ‘Don’t’, ‘Never Play’, and, simply, ‘No’! Poor David Fitzgerald, who composed the lyrics for the two songs, would have been heartbroken if he had ever seen that. The flip is simply described as a ‘bomb’. Now usually the phrase ‘it’s a bomb’ means the same as ‘it’s a smash’, but in this case I’m assuming that whoever wrote that word wanted to convey another meaning! It’s not a bad song, but severely dated for 1964.

 

Sammy Marshall performed under a series of different names, including every-so-slightly altered versions of his own moniker - Sonny Marshall, Sonny Marcell, Sonny Maracel, and even the exotic-sounding Le Son Y Marshall – as well as Ben Tate (usually for Ronnie Records), Chuck Jones and Johnny Evans. There are many more. His laid back, slick lounge style was perfectly suited to the average song-poem offering, although there are a few offerings where he achieves a perfect teen sound, aping any of the endless number of toothy blond pop sensations of the late 50s or early 60s.

 

JoAnn Auborn was Globe's first female vocalist. She also appeared under the names Joan Auborn, Kris Arden, and Damita (not Damita Jo). I have a song-poem 45, on Frank Lyle Buck Records, credited to The Mystery Girl, another of JoAnn’s pseudonyms. On that particular disc (the flip side of which features Sammy Marshall) she is accompanied by Al Auborn on piano. Her husband, or her brother? After JoAnn’s tenure, a singer called Mary Kaye (not the same singer who fronted Vegas-based recording act the Mary Kaye Trio) took the mic for the later years of Globe's run.

 

As well as operating their own demo recording facility and small label, Globe recorded hundreds of sides for vanity releases on custom labels, as well as operating a lucrative song-poem business. Operated by Jim and Glenna Maxwell, Globe tended to work for what Phil Milstein, at the American Song-Poem Music Archives, calls ‘individual customers who wanted to pretend to be a record company for a little while, handled occasional overflow work for some of the larger song-poem companies, such as Air and Preview, and contracted out record pressing for Halmark. Because their work pops up under so many different names and so rarely under their own, they have become something like the Zelig of song-poem concerns.’

 

So, here are The Ballad of John F Kennedy and Physical Fitness, performed by Sonny Marshall. Oh, and why did I choose to title today’s post ‘A Sound Reputation‘? That was Globe’s motto, which appeared as part of the company logo.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download JFK HERE

 

Download Physical HERE