The Now Sounds of the Rave-Ons

Full disclosure: I have written about some of the tracks on this album before, but that was back in 2010, and the links to the two tracks are long dead.

 

Over their many years in the song-poem field, Columbine Records issued dozens upon dozens of compilation albums under the title The Now Sounds of Today; if their catalogue is to be believed there could be as many as 300 or more. Each of them contained anything up to 20 different tracks, most from aspiring hit makers but occasionally featuring one or two covers of standards from the American songbook, included no doubt to add a patina of authenticity to the company’s nefarious money-making scheme.

 

Packaging these albums in dull, generic sleeves (often with different catalogue numbers printed on the sleeve and disc) saved both time and money, important when the overall budget for each project was close on non-existent. It seldom mattered if the details on the sleeve were wrong, as customers were unlikely to know any better: on this particular volume, track five, I’ll Never Say No To You is credited to Rave-Ons but actually performed by Bob Grummer; the following track has no artist credit at all on the sleeve but does feature the band elsewhere referred to as the Rave-Ons.

 

The musicians involved would not have seen cue sheets for the songs they were being asked to perform before entering the studio, yet even taking note of the ridiculous rate that Columbine churned this material out many of those musicians - consummate professionals and song-poem stalwarts like Kay Weaver, John Muir (aka Gene Marshall) and Ralph Lowe - managed to do a half-decent job.

 

Several of the song-poem companies had their own studio band: Cinema, for example, issued hundreds of records credited to the Real Pros, a shifting collection of studio musicians which at times was nothing more than a one-man band (a la Rodd Keith) and at others a full-blown band fronted by Dick Kent, and Columbine had the Rave-Ons.

 

I believe that there were at least two different incarnations of the Rave-Ons. The band of that name that appears on side one of this album, for example, is a laughably inadequate three-piece who can barely put a tune together, led by a vocalist who simply cannot sing. On side two, the Rave-Ons are fronted by superior song-poem session singer Ralph Lowe. That’s Ralph on vocals on the brilliant Journey’s End, the rather pedestrian Heavenly Baby, and A Friend, a boring lyric only lifted above the mediocre by the fact that Ralph is singing from a woman’s point of view about his/her ‘soul sister’.

 

To call the (side one) Rave-Ons inept is putting it mildly, but the act appearing on side two are perfectly serviceable, and make a decent fist of things. The band credited as Rave-Ons on side one of this collection (and who appear on several other Columbine albums in my collection) are nowhere near as capable as Ralph’s backing act: they simply have to be a different set of musicians.

 

It's beyond belief that anyone at Columbine could have sanctioned the release of this drivel; yet more proof if you needed it of the contempt that these outfits had for the people stupid enough to send them their hard-earned dollars. The (side one) Rave-Ons’ singer 'performs' in a garbled, high-pitched whine racing through the lyrics at speed, clearly wishing that he wasn't there while the rest of the band (keyboards, bass and drums) play the same basic tune on all of the cuts on the album, never managing to rise above the mediocre. All in all, they sound to me like the school band of my nightmares.

 

Anyway, make up your own mind, for here is the entire album. All 19 tracks, split into the original two sides for your listening pleasure. Apologies for the jump on Erica Campbell’s Heartaches (track eight, side two), but this appears to be a pressing fault. Stand-out tracks are Ralph and the Rave-Ons with Journey’s End (side two, track three) and pretty much all of side one, but especially the exceptional opener Curse of an Evil Woman, Happy Inside of Me (track three) and the insanely awful My Only You (track seven).

Download Side One HERE

Download Side Two HERE

Close the Hearse Curtains, Please!

A record that was recently brought to my attention by blog follower Melody Loves Books, here for your enjoyment is the utterly mad May 1968 single Requiem (For a Girl Born of the Wrong Times).

 

Requiem (For a Girl Born of the Wrong Times) was recorded by singer Betty Barnes, a white soul/pop singer who issued several 45s in the late 1960s, recording first for RCA and then Kapp. Barnes’s best-known single is the Northern Soul classic Walking Down Broadway, but I cannot imagine anyone dancing to Requiem (For a Girl Born of the Wrong Times) at a Wigan all-niter. 

A Betty Barnes (from Austin, Texas) recorded a couple of hillbilly singles in the mid-50s for TNT and had some success as a songwriter (penning the November 1957 single for Jimmy Dee, Don't Cry No More), and a second singer by the same name (from Pittsburgh, according to Billboard) issued a single in 1962 on Bodway: see the comment below from Bob at Dead Wax for more details on those.

 

Composed by songsmiths Lor Crane & Bernice Ross, the flip side was simply an instrumental version of the plug track, with our Betty’s voice wiped: the demo copy features the same song on both sides. Ms Ross, who scored top ten hits in 1964 with the Danny Williams single White on White, and in 1965 with Don’t Just Stand There for Patty Duke, also wrote a Spanish version of the lyrics, but I’ve yet to track down a recording of that version.

 

The lyrics that Ms Ross came up with for the English version are simply astounding: ‘Dig that crazy caddy! She never rode in one of them before, it’s even got curtains in the back door…’ The Cadillac with the curtains is, of course, a hearse, and the girl being transported by the same vehicle is on her way to her own funeral. This odd little disc doesn’t quite know what it wants to be: it begins from the point of view of someone watching the hearse drive past, but by the end of the song (if you can call this wretched piece of musical excrement a song) the girl narrating the story is clearly doing so from inside the box.

 

Kapp clearly realised fairly quickly that they’d picked a wrong ‘un: Betty’s follow-up, Destiny’s Child, was issued in July and plugged mercilessly as her debut for the label. The powers that be at the company obviously wanted to forget that this particular slice of bad taste existed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in 2006 the track turned up on the Ace Records compilation Dead! The Grim Reaper's Greatest Hits.

 

Brilliantly creepy and completely mad, Requiem (For a Girl Born of the Wrong Times) was not a hit, and does not appear to have been issued outside of the USA and Canada. But here it is now, just for you.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Requiem HERE

My Yummy, Yummy Love Note Tree

A couple of tracks from a wonderful and rare song-poem album that I’ve owned for a number of years but have not blogged before, the wonderfully-titled Delick Records Invites You to Pick a Delick Record of “The 12 Most Unpopular Songs” in the Little Yellow House of Icka-Delick-Music. The 12 Most Unpopular Songs, to use the more popular short version of the rather unwieldy title, was produced for lyric writer Francis E Delaney by Lew Tobin’s Five Star Music productions company.

 

Most of the discs that emanated from Five Star – and its associated label, Sterling – feature full group performances: this album is different in that it features Five Star’s two best-known vocalists, Norm Burns and Shelly Stewart (Mrs Lew Tobin), accompanied by the solo piano of Mr Tobin himself. Tobin proves himself to be a more than capable pianist, and both Burns and Stewart are perfectly serviceable – if somewhat emotionless - vocalists.

 

The 12 Most Unpopular Songs was issued around 1968 on the tiny Delicks Records label from Icka-Delick-Music of Chicago Ridge, Illinois. The label also put out at least three 45s, Betty Bond’s wonderful Blinky, The Blue Nosed Snowdeer (1971), Shelly Stewart’s Gentle On My Body (backed with Yummy, Yummy, Dum-Dum, although I do not know whether that is the same version as appears on the album), and the 1969 single The Quiet Americans by the Chain Reaction. Three of the four tracks on the two singles were also written by Francis E Delaney, known to his friends as Frank, but whereas Blinky, The Blue Nosed Snowdeer is very much the kind of thing you would expect from our Francis after listing to this album, the Chain Reaction single is a slice of garage rock, with fuzz lead breaks, out-of-tune rhythm guitar and a plaintive vocal from a teenage male singer. The B-side, the rocking Only the Bleeding (Hey, Boy!) was penned by Raymond L. Lovato, presumably a member of the band.

 

A Raymond Louis Lovato worked in advertising, ran a tourist resort in Palm Springs and now writes fiction with lifelong friend Michael Black. I’ve no idea if that’s the same man, but as this one wrote and published poetry in high school and college I reckon it’s a fairly safe bet. Like Raymond, Frank – who was born in 1936 - also saw himself as a bit of a writer, self-publishing the 1978 book When Elvis Played His Music: (the World Began to Sing) and the 2006 collection Memories Minutes in Time: Poetry, Words and Music and Love.

 

Frank was born in 1936, to Martin and Mary Delaney. As he wrote, ‘My father met my mother at Marshal Fields during the depression. They got married and in three short years, she was the mother of five step-sons and two sons of her own… My six brothers were in the U.S. Army, Marines and the Canadian Air Force. I watched all my brothers go to war and watched them all come back alive. I was the lucky one I didn't have to go.’ Frank recalled that he ‘Graduated from Mount Carmel High School class of 54. I played cornet and piano. I started writing poetry and wrote my first song at age 21. From 1969-1971, I took a correspondence course with the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Didn't finish it, did 17 of 20 lessons. Wish I did finish it…’ He died in January 2023, at the grand age of 86.

 

As well as the album and singles, Frank wrote or co-wrote many other songs, some of which he seems to have sent Mr Tobin’s way, including 1977’s MOE (More of Everything), but for others - including Dance Your Cares Away, I’m Returning to Georgia, The Way you Wear Your Hair (all 1977), Love is Wanting, too! (1978), Real Live Toy (1979), and Tantalising Music Magic (1980) – he worked with other musicians able to translate his ideas. His songs appeared on at least one more album: Boots on the Floor, The Man in Me, and The Way You Look at Me all turned up on a 2000 CD from Nashville Records. His last known song was Ribbon on a Tree, a tribute to the victims of 9/11.

 

Anyway, here are a handful of tracks from The 12 Most Unpopular Songs, Norm Burns and Lew Tobin with My Love Note Tree, and The Hickory Kick, and Shelly Stewart and Lew Tobin with Stop It, Stupid and the ridiculous and misogynistic Yummy, Yummy, Dum-Dum.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Tree HERE 

Download Yummy HERE

Download Kick HERE

Download Stupid HERE