Big Hair

Artist: Big Hair

LP: 7" single

Song: "Puppet On a String"

[ listen ] 

Last weekend Jan and I decided to go for a Sunday drive to West Seattle for breakfast (the big West Seattle Bridge is out of commission since it's evidently cracked, so we had to go the long way around). We ate at Easy Street Café, then I suggested we browse in the record store to practice for our upcoming trip together to Minnesota. I've got quite a few record stores on my list in Minneapolis and St. Paul, so I wanted to be sure we'd manage.

I'm happy to report that things went well! Also, I found some pretty amazing records. Someone had brought in a nice bunch of early '80s (1980 to 1982) British goth/new wave 45s, similar to the earliest releases on 4AD, but on other labels that were also around at the time. One of them is this incredible version of "Puppet On a String" by Big Hair, released on Fresh Records in 1980. Discogs doesn't list any other records by Big Hair, which is unfortunate for my collection...but I suppose it's good news for my pocketbook.

[ Easy Street Records and Café in West Seattle ]

Doris Day

Artist: Doris Day

LP: Love Me Or Leave Me

Song: "Stay On the Right Side, Sister"

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Song: "Love Me Or Leave Me"

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I loved Doris Day...but she left me anyway. If Doris hadn't died in the spring of 2019 (or anytime thereafter), she would be celebrating her 99th birthday today! Is anyone else taken aback by the fact that James Cagney's ham-fisted turn in "Love Me Or Leave Me" was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 1955, whereas Doris' moving and highly dramatic performance as singer Ruth Etting was ignored? It's preposterous! Happy Birthday, Doris Day. You deserve the gold.

[ Doris Day: April 3, 1922 — May 13, 2019 ]

Kathy Barr

 Artist: Kathy Barr

LP: Follow Me

Song: "Bye Bye Blackbird"

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Song: "I Know He's Mine"

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Introducing Kathy Barr...and a fond farewell to this lovely volcano of tenderness while we're at it. This is one of my favorite kinds of records to find—one where the liner notes wax on effusively about what an incredible new discovery is being presenting to the public...but nowadays the name of their sensational new superstar is completely unfamiliar to just about anybody at all. 

 

Often, as is the case here with Kathy Barr, the record is very good, or excellent even, and there seems to be no reason besides dumb bad luck and a fickle American public that the singer didn't skyrocket to the stars alongside famous others of their time. This 1957 LP is the only solo recording by Ms. Barr from the 1950s; she did appear again with Giorgio Tozzi the following year to present highlights from THE DESERT SONG, and then popped out one more solo LP in 1964 before leaving her music career behind to focus on raising a family. Kathy Barr died in 2008 in Hollywood... Florida. She was 79 years old.

 

[ Kathy Barr: June 4, 1929 — June 21, 2008 ]

Alberto Vazquez

 Artist: Alberto Vázquez

LP: Rock y Baladas con Alberto Vázquez

Song: "16 Toneladas"

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Song: "Olvidalo"

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Song: "El Hombre Araña"

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Does everyone remember my Alberto Vázquez post from back in April of 2017? Great! Well, here's another one. I was thrilled...THRILLED, I tell you, to find another of Alberto's LPs last week, this one at Daybreak Records over in Fremont. This 1974 offering is yet another delectable mixture of cover songs, in both English and Spanish, along with (I'm fairly sure) some original tunes thrown in too for good measure. 

 

There are still tons (16 toneladas, to be exact) of Alberto Vázquez records to be on the lookout for, as you can see for yourselves at his discography listing on Wikipedia here. Alberto was 77 when I last featured him here on the blog, and now...well, next month, he'll be turning 81! Here's to many more years of good health, happiness, and music from Sñr. Vazquez in the decade to come. 

 

PS. Earlier this week was "National Women's Day," which I had every intention of celebrating here...yet so far all I've posted are records by people named Oscar and Alberto. I promise this will be rectified in the days to come.

 

Liberace

Artist: Liberace

LP: Christmas at Liberace's - Vol. III (7" EP)

Song: "Ave Maria"

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 Song: "Star Bright"

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I hope you've all had a lovely Christmas...but not TOO lovely, like the ones the Liberace family used to have. If you did, then you're probably one of those billionaires I heard about on the news who recently became an octillionaire during the COVID-19 pandemic, making money hand over fist while millions of Americans all over the world are struggling even to pay their rent! Shame on you!! ...unless you festooned your holiday celebration with a bunch of fabric and decorations you found in the attic, from the days when you were still only a billionaire, the way the Liberaces used to do back when the kids were young.

Wouldn't it be fun to have been included as one of the guests at the Liberace family Christmas party...back in the days when Angelina was still just Liberace's sister, and not his personal secretary?

[ Liberace: May 16, 1919 — February 4, 1987 ]

St. Nick (Performed by Just For Laughs Players)

Artist: St. Nick (Performed by Just For Laughs Players)

LP: 7" single

Song: "Jingle Bells (Laughing All the Way)"

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I can't really think of anything to say about this 1981 holiday single I found at Golden Oldies a few months ago...except maybe "hee hee," "ha ha" and, of course, "ho ho ho."

Charley Pride [1934-2020]

 

Artist: Charley Pride

LP: Christmas In My Home Town

Song: "Christmas In My Home Town"

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Song: "Santa and the Kids"

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Song: "O Holy Night"

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Country music legend Charley Pride died earlier this week from illness related to COVID-19. Reading about his career on Wikipedia just now, I learned a number of things (the number 4) about Charley that I hadn't known before: 

 

1.) Before his music career took off, Charley Pride played professional baseball! He pitched for teams in places like Memphis, Tennessee; Boise, Idaho; Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; Louisville, Kentucky; Missoula, Montana. When Charley was let go from the team in Missoula...

 

2.) Charlie Pride and his family lived in Helena, Montana for a number of years (the number 9), from 1960 to 1969, where Charlie did hard labor in a smelter during the day, while pursuing his dreams of a career in the arts at night (sound familiar?). 

 

3.) Though I knew Charley Pride was black, of course, I'd never before considered what it must have been like for him to have to face a crowd of (it's safe to assume) mostly all-white country music fans who may not have been aware of this fact in the early days of Pride's success in the mid-to-late 1960s. According to Wikipedia: In the late summer of 1966, on the strength of his early releases, [Charley] was booked for his first large show, in Detroit's Olympia Stadium. Since no biographical information had been included with those singles, few of the 10,000 country fans who came to the show knew Pride was black, and discovered the fact only when he walked onto the stage, at which point the applause trickled off to silence. "I knew I'd have to get it over with sooner or later," Pride later remembered. "I told the audience: 'Friends, I realize it's a little unique, me coming out here — with a permanent suntan — to sing country and western to you. But that's the way it is.'" 

 

4.) Charley had 30 hits that reached the top of the country music charts in the USA, and one of them, "Kiss An Angel Good Mornin'," was also a top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 pop charts, reaching #21 in early 1972.

 

Charlie Pride's one and only Christmas album was released in 1970, and I found this pristine copy earlier today at Golden Oldies Records in Wallingford. The New York Times obituary for Charlie Pride can be found here.

 

Charley Pride

[ March 18, 1934 — December 12, 2020 ]

We will miss you, Charley.

José Melis

 

Artist: José Melis and His Orchestra

LP: Christmas With Melis

Song: "Jingle Bells"

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Song: "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"

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Song: "The Story of Christmas"

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So here's a Christmas question for ya, or even a Christmas conundrum, if you will: When someone places themselves under the mistletoe during the holiday season, do they become fair game for kissing? For anyone? Like me, for example? Especially nowadays, with the "Me too!" movement and everything, we all need to proceed with an extra level of caution when dealing with the mistletoe situation, don't you think? 

According to the LP liner notes (included below), José Melis has a wife and two kids...yet there he is on the front of my LP, gazing forth with provocative bespectacled bedroom eyes from underneath the mistletoe. Rrrrrroooowww! 

Agh-hem. Anyway. José Melis was the musical director on "The Tonight Show" from 1957 to 1962, when it was hosted by his good friend Jack Paar. (Unfortnuately, Paar was openly hostile and disrespectful to the LGBTQ community in the 1960s and '70s. No mistletoe kisses for him!)

[ Jack Parr, Hugh Downs, & José Melis on "Jack Parr Tonight Show" in 1960 ]

According to Wikipedia, part of Melis' regular routine on shows with Paar was "the telephone game," where he would "improvise a musical number based on the last four digits of an audience member's telephone number." I love this. I wonder what José would have made of "3214!"

"Christmas With Melis," released in 1958, is a popular holiday favorite in my humble Ballard apartment each year. For a little more information about the spectacularly talented Mr. Melis, you can read his 2005 New York Times obituary here.

[ José Melis: February 27, 1920 — April 7, 2005 ]