Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders

Artist: Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders

LP: The Game of Love

Song: "Game of Love"
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Song: "Too Many Tears"
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I guess there were probably dozens of handsome young male quartets forming in Britain in the mid-1960s, each hoping to catch some tailwind from the fab four's outer-space rocket ship. Here's one of them. Wayne Fontana and his Mindbenders did catch a little wind—"Game of Love" was a #1 hit in the USA—but I think it's safe to say Wayne Fontana is not a household name today. He did once set a police car on fire with a policeman still inside it. That was eleven years ago. In 1965 he up and left The Mindbenders in the middle of one of their concerts. The group continued on with Eric Stewart at the mic and they scored another top ten hit. 

"The Game of Love" is one of only two records I picked up at Lakeshore Record Exchange in Rochester—the other was an old Johnny Cash LP. The Record Exchange is situated not on the shore of a lake, but in a trendy little nook of the city, with sidewalk cafes and such. The store seems more focused on 'new and cool' and not as much on 'interesting.' When I asked the salesmen to play samples for me from this Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders record, they had to interrupt the loud contemporary noise-rock they were listening to in the store. I definitely felt like I was cramping everyone's style. But they were still nice about it.

Someone named Julie evidently once owned this copy of "The Game of Love." She vandalized the back of it with notes proclaiming her affection for a John and a Frank—though Frank seems to have been her #1 priority.

[ Lakeshore Record Exchange — Rochester, NY ]

The Ink Spots

Artist: The Ink Spots

LP: The Ink Spots - Vol. 2

Song: "Paper Doll" 
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This old Ink Spots LP is one of the ones that survived The Great Ballard Apartment Flood of 2003. Fortunately, the album cover features a bunch of unsightly ink splotches all over it, so a little water damage just blends right in. The Ink Spots had a string of wonderful hits throughout the 1940s, like "Address Unknown" (actually 1939), "Maybe" (1940), "Do I Worry?" (1941) and "The Gypsy" (1946). But unfortunately, they're one of those bands where, when they split up in the mid-1950s, the two groups that splintered off started fighting and both called themselves The Ink Spots. Then things got really confusing. Both of those groups each told two friends, and then all of those groups told two friends, and so on and so forth. Anyway, over the past 60 years there have been over 100 different groups that have named themselves The Ink Spots. In 1967, a judge finally threw up his hands and declared The Ink Spots group name to be 'public domain,' meaning anyone could then use it without legal penalty. Why, now even YOU could start a group called The Ink Spots. You can read more about the groovy original hit-makers known as The Ink Spots and their many lineup changes on Wikipedia here. There's a nifty early music video of the group performing their very first hit, "If I Didn't Care" from 1939, at the link below.

The Ink Spots on YouTube:

[ "If I Didn't Care" ]

[ The Ink Spots ]

The Original Washboard Band

Artist: The Original Washboard Band

LP: Scrubbin' & Pickin'
Song: "Who Threw the Whiskey In the Well"
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Song: "The Glory of Love" 
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Oh shit. This reminds me I need to do laundry. The Original Washboard Band, from Brunswick, Georgia, used to entertain the stuffy 'old money' families that would occasionally retreat to a nearby Paradise Island off the Georgia coast to get away from all the horrible regular people who only had average incomes. While there, the families would sometimes amuse themselves by listening to local music being played on a variety of outdated household appliances still being used by the poor and needy—like the common washboard, for example (which simply can't be beat for getting tough stains out of trousers and shirts). The Original Washboard Band were reportedly a favorite of both the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts and thus were allowed to record a record for RCA in 1958. And here it is. Sadly, fame proved elusive (I found no evidence of a second LP), though the group did appear on the Garry Moore TV show in 1959, according to Jet Magazine.

[ Norman "Shorty" Feimster; Nathan Jones; Robert "Washboard" Ivory; Charles Ernest Jones ]
[ The Original Washboard Band ]

The Keller-York Quartet

 
Artist: The Keller-York Quartet

LP: The Keller-York Rendition of Popular Gospel Aires [10" EP]

Song: "Keep On the Firing Line"
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Song: "Climb Them Golden Stairs"
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Here's a neat rare 10" EP by The Keller-York Quartet of Terre Haute, Indiana, a group I featured here several years ago when posting from a Zondervan label compilation. (Incidentally, it seems the Keller-York Quartet were performing in western Florida about 61 years ago, according to an announcement I found from the February 25, 1954 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, included below.) I found the Keller-York's "Popular Gospel Aires" record today at the big downtown Seattle Goodwill after breakfast. I'd stopped there with my friend Theresa, since we had an hour or so to kill before I dropped her off at her friends' place on Beacon Hill at noon. All this took place just before I went to catch an afternoon matinee of the Oscar-nominated Mauritanian film TIMBUKTU, in which a troupe of Islamic fundamentalists arbitrarily comes up with a host of new laws for local townspeople to obey if they'd like to avoid being sentenced to death, whipping, stoning, etc. And just yesterday I watched video footage of 21 solemn young Egyptian Christian men in orange jumpsuits who were kneeling on the beaches of Libya before having their heads chopped off by Islamic radicals. What can you say. "Keep On the Firing Line?" "Climb Them Golden Stairs?" Thank god for religion. What on Earth would we do without it.

 [ The Keller-York Quartet in St. Petersburg, Florida — 1954 ]

 [ The Keller-York Quartet ]

The Very Merry Macs

Artist: The Very Merry Macs

LP: Sing Very Merry Melodies

Song: "This Is the Time of Day I Like"

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Song: "Hut Sut Song"

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My best friend, Edwardo, turned 30 years old this week. He invited me and a few other friends down to Las Vegas this past weekend so we could celebrate his birthday in style. Unfortunately, most of the celebration styles available in Las Vegas aren't ones I'm interested in...

...but we all had a wonderful time together anyhow. I visited two record stores while I was in Las Vegas and found some pretty great stuff. The thing about Vegas is that the entire city is designed to appeal to people with extremely general tastes. (Imagine a city of 600,000 without a single art-house cinema!) In order for something to be considered interesting in Las Vegas, it has to be sparkly, shiny, and new(d). When something starts to show its age, it will either get a facelift or simply be destroyed...DESTROYED...DESTROYED in order to make way for something new. This 1957 LP by The Very Merry Macs (evolved from The Merry Macs of the 1930s) is one of the neat old things I found at the first Vegas vinyl store I went to, Record City on Sahara Avenue. The store was having a sale for 25% off, the Very Merry Macs' "Sing Very Merry Melodies" LP was marked down 50% from its original price, and I have a feeling that just about everyone in Las Vegas is glad that it's gone. I'm just glad I got it out of town before somebody decided to implode it. Another vintage Vegas holdout still standing today is a 24-hour diner called Tiffany's Cafe.

I arrived at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but I ordered breakfast at Tiffany's, of course. 

While I was eating, I noticed a sign on the wall announcing that the cafe was going to be closed for a spell in April of 2005 so that a major motion picture could be filmed there. I asked what movie it was, and the cook told me it was something called "Lucky You" starring Robert DeNiro.

I'd never heard of it, but I found it at Scarecrow Video when I got home and watched it last night. It turns out the Robert in the movie is actually Duvall, and it would probably be more accurate to describe the film as a minor motion picture.

Robert Duvall does indeed visit Tiffany's Cafe at one point in the film, and so does Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana. In fact, one of the film's key scenes takes place between all three actors seated together in the booth in the lower left corner.

Unfortunately, I hadn't yet seen "Lucky You" (in which the Bellagio fountain seems to spring up behind Bana and Barrymore every time they kiss) so I didn't get to sit in the movie stars' seats at Tiffany's Cafe. I sat at the counter. But if you're ever in Las Vegas and you feel like visiting an old diner where you can sit where Robert Duvall sat nine years ago, I heartily recommend the place. They make a good omelet and the people there are nice. 

[ Record City on Sahara Ave. - Las Vegas, Nevada ]

The Gaslight Singers

Artist: The Gaslight Singers

LP: Turning It On!

Song: "This Life I'm Living"

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Song: "Thieving Stranger"

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Lots of folk music from the 1960s is really upbeat—about people wanting to teach the world to sing, or someone having the whole world in their hands, and stuff like that. The Gaslight Singers have some songs of that sort too, but something I admire about them is that they're brave enough and honest enough to also include a few songs on this 1964 LP that show that they've had it up to here with all the lovey-dovey stuff. They've entered the realm of shadows. In "This Life I'm Living," they accuse an old woman of lying and hope she dies. "Thieving Stranger" explores options for punishment like hanging a man from a tree by a necktie, sticking him in a well, or tying him up in the blazing sunshine til he's burned to a crisp. Now I'm not a violent person, but it's true that one eventually gets fed up with trying to make the world a better place with sunshine and love, and darker options do cross the mind. The Gaslight Singers are simply telling it like it is, whereas most folk groups of the era were living with their heads in the clouds. Martha Velez, the lovely female Gaslight Singer, has an exciting and unusual vibrato that's perfectly suited to folk music of the '60s, though it may have been a tougher sell in the decades that followed. (It's strange to imagine that a particular style of vibrato would go out of style, but it happens. Ask Jeanette MacDonald.) After releasing several solo LPs in the '60s and '70s, Martha went on to appear in film and TV. In fact, she had a primary role in director Miguel Arteta's debut film, STAR MAPS, which was one of the very first movies I watched in theaters after moving to Seattle back in 1997. You can read more about The Gaslight Singers on their website here, and go here to read more about singer and actress Martha Velez. Liner notes and photos from the back of "Turning It On!" are included below.

The Ravens

Artist: The Ravens

LP: The Ravens

Song: "Love Is the Thing"

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Song: "Don't Mention My Name"

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Song: "Come a Little Bit Closer"

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I took the day off work last Friday and drove down to Tacoma where I enjoyed a delicious breakfast at Marcia's Silver Spoon Cafe before going to see the incredible HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire In American Portraiture exhibit currently on display at the Tacoma Art Museum. My favorite portrait was the one made of candies ("untitled" by Felix Gonzalez-Torres), but the entire show provides a fascinating historical overview of the lives and works of artists and public figures who challenged gender and sexual norms in American society throughout the 20th century. If you're gonna' be anywhere near Tacoma between now and June 10th, you simply must go. I wasn't about to leave Tacoma without visiting a few record stores first; this collection of recordings from 1952-1954 by The Ravens is one of the wonderful things I found at Hi-Voltage Records. Formed in 1945 (or maybe 1946, it depends) by Harlem waiters Jimmy Ricks and Warren Stuttles, The Ravens had a string of hits in the late '40s and early '50s, starting an avalanche of R&B copycat groups also named after birds, including The Orioles, The Swallows, The Crows, The Swans, and The Wrens. The mellow bass voice of Jimmy Ricks (featured on "Love Is the Thing") and Joe Van Lon's glorious tenor (showcased on "Don't Mention My Name") offer a lovely variety on each of The Ravens' records, with the two lead singers backed here by Jimmy Stewart (not THAT Jimmy Stewart) and Warren Stuttles. I've also included "Come a Little Bit Closer" which has The Ravens bobbing along like a quartet of robins. You can read about The Ravens' National label recordings on the JazzWax website here, and find lots of terrific information about the history and lineup changes of the group on the Vocal Group Hall of Fame website here. The Ravens were inducted there in 1998, and they're my favorite musical discovery so far this year!

[ The Ravens ]