Le Streak, C'est Chic

 A fun little disc for you today to round of the year… perfect for your New Year’s Eve party!

 

Born in Quasqueton, Iowa as Larry Lee Blankenburg, Larry Lujack was a US Top-40 radio DJ who worked throughout the States for almost 50 years. Beginning in 1958, in his then-hometown of Caldwell, Idaho, he would become best-known while living and working in Chicago, where he ruled the airwaves for almost 20 years. He retired in 1987, after his son was killed in an accident and he underwent heart bypass surgery, but he was persuaded to return to the microphone several years later, finally retiring for good in August 2006.

 

Larry’s sole single, The Ballad of the Mad Streaker came out in 1974, the same year that novelty records supremo Ray Stevens had an international hit with The Streak, that funk band High Voltage issued their single Streakin’ backed with Here Come's The Streaker, and that blues singer Arelean Brown released her 45 I Am A Streaker.

 

Just in case you were unaware, ‘streaking’ is the act of taking off your clothes and running naked through a public area – it could be for publicity, as a prank, a dare, or even as a form of protest. In the early 1970s streaking became associated with sporting events, and the press was filled with photographs of nude men and topless women (in Britain, Erica Roe earned a place in the nation’s hearts after streaking at a cricket *rugby* match in 1982), usually pursued by sporting officials or policemen.

 

For a short time records about streaking were everywhere. In the UK, Willie Flascher and The Raincoats issued (Everybody Wants To Be A) Streaker which, for some odd reason was retitled Everybody Wants To See A (Streaker) when it was reissued in New Zealand, and reggae trumpeter Bobby Ellis issued Streaker Disco. Controversial comedian Rudy Ray Moore released his album The Streaker around 1975 in the US, and many more would follow. Elephant’s Memory, famed for their association with John and Yoko and the Beatles’ Apple label, released Rock 'N' Roll Streaker, and I’m sure that none of you will be remotely surprised to discover that there are several song-poems about streaking, including Lee Scott’s The Streaker, and Ralph Lowe’s Harold, the Drag Strip Streaker.

 

The flip side of the Lujack 45, Music to Streak By, is simply a slightly extended instrumental version of the plug track that really does not work as a stand-alone, unless you have some perverse reason to perform the song karaoke-style, that is. Anyway, here are both sides of Larry’s 1974 single… just in case you do fancy streaking in a karaoke bar!

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Ballad HERE

Download Music HERE

Christmas Cavalcade 2021: Part Three

The big day is getting closer, but we still have time for a few more festive fails.

 

First up was suggested to me by my friend The Squire, over at the Squire Presents. Our annual Christmas chin-wag will be up for streaming soon, but here’s a little disc he thought you might enjoy, Marlene Paula and her 1956 single I Want to Spend Christmas With Elvis. Paula, aka Marlene VerPlanck, was the wife of jazz bandleader J. Billy VerPlanck, and once sang with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra.

 

This particular 45 was backed with the rather dull Once More It’s Christmas, but at around the same time that she was hoping to find Elvis the Pelvis under her tree, she was also claiming that I Got the Asian Flu for Christmas, in a spectacularly badly timed release aimed squarely at the children’s market. The Asian flu pandemic of 1956 to 1958 eventually resulted in the deaths of approximately two million people, nearly 70,000 of whom were in the US, and therefore lost potential customers for her discs. I’ve not been able to find a copy of that particular disc on the ‘net, but if anyone here has a copy they are willing to rip for me I would be incredibly grateful.

 

Next up is another disc brought to my attention by the Squire, its Reece Shipley and Santa Miss Those Missiles. Originally issued around 1960, at the height of the paranoia over the impending Cold War (and two years before the Cuban Missile Crisis) on his own Shipley records, the track was later compiled on the 2003 collection Tennessee Swing.

 

The third and final track for today is Honky, the Christmas Goose issued by Johnny Bower in 1965. Bower was goalkeeper for the Toronto Maple Leafs (surely that should be Maple Leaves?), and the flat as a pancake kiddie voice that accompanies him on this disc came from his son, John Junior. Recorded at the studios of CBC in Toronto on November 5 that year, the song was the brainchild of CBC producer Chip Young and composer Orville Hoover. Bower, apparently nominated for the role by his teammates, was the perfect choice for vocalist  - the veteran player regularly took on the role of Santa Claus at team Christmas parties, and he was enormously popular with young fans.

 

‘I told Chip the only singing I did was in the shower,’ Bower admitted in a 1992 interview. ‘But the challenge appealed to me and he talked me into it. He came over to the house and wanted to get my son, John Jr., who was about 11, involved in a little choir. So we all went down to the studio -- a bunch of neighborhood kids who couldn't sing worth a hoot and myself -- and we made the record.’

 

Enjoy! 

Download Elvis HERE 

 

 Download Santa HERE

 

 Download Honky HERE

Christmas Cavalcade 2021: Part Two

Over the years, I have featured a number of festive-themed, Beatle-related novelties during the Christmas Cavalcade. In fact, it’s almost become a tradition In It’s Own Write (see what I did there?) There are so many Beatle-themed Christmas songs out there, ranging from the wonderful to the totally awful; why not grab those that I have already featured, add them to the ones from today’s post and compile your own album?

 

First up is Santa Bring Me Ringo, the 1964 single from Christine Hunter. Co-written by Angelo Badalamenti (yes, Mr. Twin Peaks himself) in one of his first credited studio roles, and covered in Britain by Ray Alan and his tearaway schoolboy puppet Tich (as featured on this very blog last year). According to Discogs, at the time she recorded this, Christine was a member of Capella Cordina, an American early music ensemble founded in 1963 by Alejandro Planchart and disbanded in 1975.  It is, of course, perfectly possible that there were two Christine Hunters recording around the same time.

 

I’ve also included the flip side of the disc, the oddly-titled Where Were You Daddy (Q) (When Santa Got Stuck In The Chimney Chute). Both sides of the disc were arranged and conducted by Badalamenti, and although he did not take a writer credit for this tune, both sides were co-authored by Murray Semos, best known for having co-written the wonderful Busy Line for Rose Murphy, the Chee-Chee Girl.

 

Next up, and again from 1964, is Ringo Bells from the Three Blonde Mice. The lyrics, credited to record producer George T. Simon, have been set to the tune Jingle Bells (as if you hadn’t already guessed), and the flip featured a cover of the traditional carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. As well as working as a producer, Simon was a jazz critic and former drummer in the Glenn Miller Orchestra; the following year the Three Blonde Mice issued a Chipmunks-esque cover of the Ray Charles classic What’d I Say, again produced by Simon.

 

Last up is I Want a Beatle For Christmas, by Patty Surbey and the Canadian VIPs, issued like all of the above in time for Christmas 1964, the year that the Beatles made their big breakthrough Stateside. First brought to my attention last year by blog follower Brett Alan, this is the third different song with the same title issued that year, alongside The Fans and Becky Lee Beck, both of which have featured on the blog previously. It’s not a bad record at all, and is included here simply because it follows my theme; Patty and her VIPs would issue one more 45, Hey Boy!, the following year.

Enjoy!

Download Santa HERE 

Download Daddy HERE

Download Bells HERE 

Download Beatle HERE

 

Christmas Cavalcade 2021: Part One

Welcome, everyone, to the first installment of this year’s Christmas Cavalcade. Yes, it’s December already, which means that every blog post between now and Christmas day will be given over to the discussion, and appreciation, of terrible yuletide tunes.

 

And what better place to start than with a magnificent Christmas collection from song-poem giant M.S.R.?

 

For those of you new to, or with just a passing acquaintance to, the genre, song-poems are paid-for recordings, where amateur lyric writers are encouraged, usually through semi-display advertisements in the small ads, to send in their scribblings (alongside a rather meaty money order, naturally) to companies who promise to turn them into potential hit singles. M.S.R. (the initials stand for founder Maury S. Rosen) is one of the giants of the song-poem world, and alongside Preview, Columbine and Halmark one of the most productive of all of the song-poem stables, producing in excess of 3,000 45s and 300 albums over its lifetime.

 

The tracks today come from M.S.R.’s 1975 Christmas Album, 16 songs from thirteen different writers (Thomas Guygax Sr., Mabel M. Jost and Nana Smith all contribute two lyrics apiece) issued, unsurprisingly, in late 1975. Nana Smith, who clearly forgot to send in her photo alongside her cheque, is the only author not featured among the baubles on the cover. The tracks are performed by the Sisterhood, M.S.R.’s go-to all-girl vocal group, which consisted of regular M.S.R session singers including Bobbi Blake. She also recorded as Bobbi (or Bobbie) Boyle, but I‘m not sure if that’s the same Bobbi Boyle from Encino, California who recorded a number of songs and appeared on the soundtrack to the Incredible Two Headed Transplant.

 

I’ve chosen to share a few tracks with you today: to be honest, like most of the Sisterhood alums this collection is a mostly dull affair, with that horrid washy synth sound that permeates M.S.R. productions from this period, but here are three of my favourites, Earl Wyer’s silly Those Elves Have Got To Go (the highlight of the album for me), Thomas Guygax Sr.’s typically wordy and peculiar During Evening and the Christmas Wish, written by Ken Cummings.

 

if you like these and want more, obscure music collector Sammy Reed posted the entire album on his blog a couple of years ago and it’s still available to download.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Those Elves HERE

Download Evening HERE

Download Wish HERE