More Oddly-Shaped Balls

Following on from my previous post, I am indebted to my friend Huw Spink, curator of the Teatles Book – a magazine about the Beatles and their love for tea. Huw saw that post and kindly sent me a copy of the disc you are now (hopefully) enjoying, the solitary release from Maralene and Gareth. 

Gareth is, of course, Welsh rugby hero Gareth Edwards. Maralene was Maralene Powell, who later became Maralene Nash after marrying Welsh singer Ryder Nash.

 

Issued by Cambrian Records of Swansea in 1972, the A-side of the disc, Wyt Ti Weithiau (Do You Sometimes), is a Welsh-language version of the 1971 Lee Hazelwood-Nancy Sinatra hit Did You Ever, although the original composer of the song – Bobby Braddock - gets zero credit on the sleeve or the disc itself. Likewise the flip, Maralene’s solo performance of the country hit Rose Garden, sung again in Welsh as Gardd O Flodau (A Garden of Flowers), does not credit songwriter Joe South: the only composer credit on either side of the release is ‘geiriau’ (‘words’) ‘D. Elwyn Davies', and neither original publisher receives a credit either. Presumably, the team at Cambrian assumed that they would sell so few copies that they would get away without paying the piper, as it were. Naughty!

 

An aside, but one that my donor might find interesting: Joe Jones, the managing director of Cambrian, signed Welsh singer Mary Hopkin while she was still a teenager. Mary recorded several sides for Cambrian, but only issued by the company after the phenomenal success of her Apple Records debut, Those Were The Days. Between 1968 and 1971 several Eps and a 45 were released (none of which bore any credit for Apple), and in 1979 all ten of the tracks she recorded for the company would be licensed to Deca for the album The Welsh World of Mary Hopkin.

 

The backing act on Wyt Ti Weithiau and Gardd O Flodau is an unnamed, but eager, cabaret five-piece consisting of electric guitar, bass, drums, cheesy Farfisa-style keyboards and the most hyper tambourine player you’re ever likely to come across. My guess is that at least some of the players were members of Maralene’s family band, the 4 Ps, which included brother Aubrey Powell, sister Denise and brother-in-law John Price. Maralene has a pleasant early 70s pop voice, but Gareth should not have been let loose in a recording studio. God love him, he’s game for having a go, but he really should have stayed on the rugby pitch: the star player was the country’s youngest-ever captain, and formed a brilliant partnership with Barry John (see the previous blog post).

 

Between 1967 and 1978 Edwards won 53 caps for Wales, including 13 as captain, and during his tenure the Welsh side dominated the Five Nations Championship, winning the title seven times, including three grand slams. In 1969, Edwards was named Player of the Year in Wales, and in 1974 Edwards was named BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year. The following year he was awarded the MBE.

 

Maralene, who sadly died in 2011 aged just 60, released several recordings over her career, all in Welsh, either solo or with the 4 Ps. Luckily for us, Edwards would never sing (at least, not for general release) again.

 

Here are both sides of this wonderful little record. Enjoy!

 

Download Wyt Ti Weithiau HERE 

Download Gardd O Flodau HERE 

Oddly Shaped Balls

My command of the Welsh language is pretty much non-existent, as my many Welsh friends will attest to. But I do love Wales: I lived there for several years, have holidayed there extensively and we recently thought about moving there permanently. I would be happily living in the South Wales valleys right now had we found a house within our budget and with enough space and a decent garden for the dog.

 

I have a tremendous respect for the country and its culture, but even if that were not the case I would not normally attempt to extract the Michael from a language I do not understand. However, I am going to make an exception here, for the pompous spoken work passage in the title track to this obscure EP makes it, I reckon, a suitable candidate for inclusion in the World’s Worst Records.

 

Issued in 1971 by Welsh-language label Wren Records of Llandybie, Carmarthenshire, Barry John a Cherddi Eraill gyda Parti Menlli, to give this release its full title, translates as Barry John And Other Poems With Party Menlli, Parti Menlli being the name of the choir involved and Barry John being the title of their reworking of the Welsh classic Sospan Fach (Little Saucepan).

 

The EP consists of five songs, all Welsh classics with new lyrics (or poems, as the title suggests), with the choral group accompanied by renowned harpist Morfudd Maesaleg. The rugby-playing legend, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 79, does not actually appear on the record himself.

 

Parti Menlli were led by conductor Aled Lloyd Davies, a leading exponent of the traditional art of Cerdd Dant, the singing of poetry to harp accompaniment, where the harp plays one melody and the words are sung to a counter melody. Known also as Meibion Menlli (the Sons of Menlli), Parti Menlli came from Ruthin, and had previously won first prize at the National Eisteddfod in Llanelli in 1962 for male vocal groups with between eight and twelve singers. They issued five Eps between 1966 and 1971, with the five track Barry John a Cherddi Eraill being their final release.

 

If you like Welsh folk music, you’ll love this. If – like me – you enjoy sonorous spoken work recitals – you’ll love this too. Here are all five tracks from Barry John a Cherddi Eraill gyda Parti Menlli: I hope you enjoy them.

 

Download Barry John HERE  

Download Agor Grwn HERE  

Download Rheingerdd HERE  

Download Ronsyfal HERE  

Download Amen HERE  

All You Need is a Furtive Shake

Another song-poem coupling for you today, and a pair of absolute classics of the genre from the great Gene Marshall who, of course, also worked under the names Gene Merlino and John Muir amongst others. 

Here are both sides of the late 1977/early 1978 Preview release Shake Your Good Stuff backed with the utterly bonkers All You Need is a Fertile Mind.

 

The lyric to Shake Your Good Stuff was composed by Herman Earl, although why anyone would want to admit to writing this rubbish is beyond me:

 

I want you, baby, all night long

I’m gonna love you like a, love like a bone

Shake your good stuff all day long

I want you baby to come into this house

I’m gonna love you like a cat love a mouse

Shake your good stuff all night long

Shake your good stuff till the cows come home

Shake it all night long

Shake your good stuff

Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it

 

Just drivel. Copyright in these 140 seconds of utter nonsense was registered by Preview’s publishing arm Rivian Music in November 1977. I’ve not found anything else written by Mr Earl, but I would be surprised if this were his only attempt at pop immortality, and I would love to hear some of his other attempts at poetry or song lyrics.

 

I was always under the impression that the version of All You Need is a Fertile Mind that appeared on the Bar/None compilation The American Song Poem Anthology: Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush back in 2003 was dubbed from a substandard copy. Anyone who heard this album will know that the backing instrumentation on this particular track is muffled and distorted, and not up to Preview’s usual standard (if you can call it that). So imagine my surprise when I recently dug out my own copy of the 7” and discovered it was actually released like that.

 

The cut you have here has come straight from my personal collection, and it’s just as awful as the one Phil Milstein had access to when he was compiling The American Song Poem Anthology an essential collection, incidentally for anyone interested in the genre. It’s such a shame that the instrumentation is buried under the muddy production, as there’s a really interesting lead guitar break about 90 seconds in which is barely audible but well worth listening out for.

 

And those lyrics! Who couldn’t love a song that opens with the line ‘Wow! Look at all that pornography!’? All You Need is a Fertile Mind is one of the very few song-poems about masturbation, only in this instance the writer insists that your average onanist has no need to waste his or her (or their) money on porn magazines, a ‘material waste of photography’ apparently, when anyone with a dirty mind and a decent memory can knock out a quick hand shandy. Yeah! It doesn’t quite compare to the brilliance of the Who’s Pictures of Lily, but then what could?

 

All You Need is a Fertile Mind was written by Francis ‘Sonny’ Fernandes, with copyright in the song once again registered by Rivian Music in October 1977 and, like Mr. Earl, this appears to be the only one of Sonny’s lyrics to be given the full Preview package. A shame, as I’m sure there was much more in Mr Fernandes’s own fertile mind that was worth mining.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Stuff HERE

Download Fertile HERE

Rodd Keith Lives!

I can’t believe that it’s been two months since I last posted here but I have been finishing what will be my next book, due out next April, so hopefully you’ll forgive me.

 

A song-poem obscurity for you today, two early, jolly, Preview tracks from the great Rodd Keith from what would have been only the eleventh (or possibly twelfth, should a PV 1000 turn up) 45 issued by the company. This disc does not appear in Phil Milstein’s American Song-Poem Music Archives discography, so I’d guess it’s one of the harder-to-find releases from their early years. Although neither song is particularly spectacular, I’ve decided to share it with you because of its rarity.

 

The rather fun, upbeat coupling of My Heart Lives, backed with A Song For You was issued by Rodd Keith and the Raindrops sometime around February/March 1966.

 

The more pop-centric of the two tracks, My Heart Lives was penned by J.V Davidson. Jessie Davidson wrote or co-wrote several other song-poems, including at least one further song that was recorded by Preview, ‘Sweetheart Steve’, recorded by Bonnie Graham and issued sometime in 1967. Other titles include the rather magnificent False Love Has Thrown Our Hearts Out of Time, So Happy Together, Those Happy Days, and My Sweetheart, all copyrighted in April 1967. I would hazard a guess that My Sweetheart and Sweetheart Steve, both co-written by Preview staffer Gene Brooks, are the same song.

 

Jessie had form as a song-poet: she had previously sent her lyrics to Buddy Bregman Music Productions; in the summer of 1965 Bregman registered copyright in her songs Down the River, and Long Live Together. Jessie (again with Preview’s Gene Brooks) also wrote The River of Love that same year. A few years earlier there existed another amateur lyricist named J.V. Davidson-Houston: could this have been our Jessie too?

               

Bregman, like many involved in the song-poem trade, had a ‘proper’ career in music. The Nephew of songwriter Jule Styne, he worked legitimately as an arranger, producer, and composer, numbering productions with Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ethel Merman on his CV, and co-wrote two minor US chart hits in 1956.

 

The flip side, the vaguely bossa nova-ish A Song For You was written by Billie Colbert. Featuring some nice, Herb Alpert-inspired trumpet and a slightly discordant female backing vocalist, Billie had previously submitted the same song to Buddy Bregman in 1965. This leads me to ask, were Billie and Jessie friends, or was Bregman connected to Preview? I’ve not come across a connection before, but it seems too much of a coincidence to me. Another Bregman songwriter, Jewell Perry, also wrote the lyric to an early Preview 45, Gravy Train, so there may have been some crossover between the two companies in Preview’s early days… it definitely deserves some further investigation.

 

Anyway, for now, enjoy both sides of this rare Rodd Keith 45, and I’ll be back soon with some more terrible tunes for you to endure!

 

Download Heart HERE

Download Song HERE