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