Styx - You Better Ask (1973)
The Believers - Original Cast Recording - Side One (1968)
Sometimes people would include things in their vinyl records shipments that I didn't order. Someone sent me this. I think it's good, and pretty obscure, too. Liner notes by Sidney Poitier. This show ran for about a year off-Broadway.
Sam Chalpin - Leader of the Pack (1966) Here is a great article on Spectropop you will not read about this whole sad episode. But here is a brief section:
The engineer: "Sam could not read English very well, maybe not at all. If he could read, then he couldn't see. If he was taught the lyrics, he'd forget them. The melody and meter? He had two chances of getting in the vicinity of either one - slim and none. Slim done took the train. Supposedly, he'd learn the song, then Ed [Ed: His son] would bring him in and we put the head phones on him. I think we actually had to tie them on him - he didn't like it. We'd start trying to overdub him by a): feeding him the old vocal in the cans; b): not feeding him the old vocal in the cans; c): letting him listen over and over again to the line or two he was going to yelp at, and d): Ed standing next to him waving his arms and threatening him with violence.
I swear on my children's lives that Ed made his father cry at least once, maybe more, during these sessions. It was terrible for me to watch, and possibly criminal to be involved in. Today, Ed would be arrested for Elder Abuse, and I would be the one who dropped the dime on him.
If we did one punch-in on a song we did 100. I did so many punch-ins, trying to get a single chorus done, that when the record was complete I was punch drunk. This is not exaggerated. The poor old man couldn't sing, couldn't read, couldn't remember and, most of the time, didn't have a clue what was going on. I may make it sound funny, but truly it was an awful thing for one person to put another person through, let alone a son to his father."
The Split Level - Right Track (1967)
Troy Hess - Please Don't Go Topless, Mother (197?)
"My name is Ron Hellard. I am a writer in Nashville for the last 35 years. One day a secretary at the publishing company I was signed to, asked me to write a song for her son, Troy. I did, as a favor to her, knowing that nothing would come of it. it was just a custom deal.
I sat down and wrote this extremely tongue in cheek crap in about five minutes. I slapped it on a cassette and gave it to her.
The best thing you can say about the record was that it was round.
Showland Records (owned by troy's dad) probably pressed a thousand copies at most. I thought that would be the last I heard of this joke. But thirty years later it shows up on web sites and play lists here and across the great pond. I am amazed. I've read that the writer of this "song" must be a hick, and a lousy writer. That bothers me. as I said, it took ten minutes out of my life and it was a JOKE.
I am a pro writer with cuts by dozens of legit artists and have enjoyed success as a viable composer, but this thing sticks to me like glue. The original publisher was Acoustic Music, the catalog has been sold several times since.
I should clarify. One reviewer assumed that "Topless" was an attempt to write a serious country song, and slammed the writer for it. That's what got to me, it was meant to be, and most certainly is, a parody of country music.
regardsRon Hellard" 2005
Just Think [The Teenline 424-5700] (1985) Boston Hip-Hop PSA
Styx - Movement For The Common Man (1972)
Sam Chalpin - Satisfaction (1966)
Rodd Keith - The Ballad Of Juan Rio (197?)
My hero Phil Milstein: "Thomas J. Guygax Sr., late of Springfield, Missouri, is credited as lyricist of 10 known song-poem recordings, all cut either by MSR Records or their subsidiary label, Songuild, and each a standout for its broken-field appropriation of accepted English syntax. While poetic license is always conceded to the artist, Guygax consistently goes one better by seeming to ignore the mea
