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