Connie Hall

Artist: Connie Hall

LP: Country Songs

Song: "Daddy Doesn't Live Here Anymore" 
[ listen ]

Here's something nice for a cool, clear late September evening from a country cupcake called Connie Hall. Born in Walden, Kentucky in June of 1929, Connie had a short string of top 40 country hits between 1959 and 1963. Never quite cracking the top ten, her biggest hit was "Fool Me Once" which peaked at #14. She hasn't made any music during my lifetime as far as I can tell, but according to Wikipedia, she resides in the Louisville area today. So, Connie...time for a comeback? 

[ Connie Hall ]

Camillo

Artist: Camillo

LP: 7" single

Song: "Sag Warum (Oh Why)" 
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Song: "Dein Zug Fährt Ab" 
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"It's a lovely Sunday afternoon for playing the piano," I thought to myself. But first I had to clear all the records out of the way that had accumulated on top of and around the thing since the last time I played it. This 1959 4-track Camillo single is one of the things I discovered while digging out my Czerny "finger dexterity" sheet music, op. 740. More melancholy autumn-time mood music, if you ask me—Camillo, I mean...not Czerny.

[ Camillo Felgen: November 17, 1920 — July 16, 2005 ]

Norrie Paramor

Artist: Norrie Paramor and His Orchestra w/ Patricia Clark

LP: Autumn

Song: "Autumn Leaves" 
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I know autumn doesn't officially start until the middle of next week, but it's my favorite season so, like Fred Meyer with the holidays, I can't help getting an early head start. Somehow I've ended up with both a mono and a stereo copy of this 1960 LP in which Mr. Paramor celebrates this most glorious time of year while simultaneously supplying its soundtrack. I've used my mono copy for the front cover photo (the stereo copy cuts off part of the picture) and for the recorded track included here, but the images and notes below are from the back of my stereo copy since that cover is in much better shape. You can read all about Norrie Paramor here and here, and I tried to hunt down information about the tantalizing and intriguing Patricia Clark whose ethereal vocals float in and out like a modern-day Ariel, but her biography is missing. Anyway, to me autumn means sweaters, horror movies, pumpkin pie and flurries of wind-blown leaves. What does it mean to you?

[ Norrie Paramor: May 15, 1914 — September 9, 1979 ]

Wolfe

Artist: Wolfe

LP: Wolfe

Song: "Time Is Money" 
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Song: "Funny, Funny" 
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Last weekend I met up with some friends at Vera's Restaurant for brunch here in Ballard. That's just around the corner from Sonic Boom Records, so I decided to pack a bunch of LPs into the car and take them in for trade after our meal to see what I could get for them...but not before we went strolling through Ballard's lovely Sunday Street Market! 

 
Well they gave me a lot for my records, and I spent hours (not one, not two, not three, not four) digging through the bins and ended up leaving with some real neat stuff. Just when I thought I'd finished looking, I came across two crates in the corner filled with Japanese pop albums from the '60s, '70s and '80s that someone had brought in—priced at just $2.49 apiece! I'll hopefully be posting some of those here soon. 

This 1972 Wolfe LP was another one of the things I found at Sonic Boom. There isn't much info on the web about the group, but there's a terrific review on the Bite It Deep blog here. Another review, a shorter one, can be found here, where additional musical experts have weighed in with their own opinions of the record. Someone called 'cosmowombo' gives the LP just two stars out of five and reports, "I don't like it"; 'daspmusik' also rates the record two stars and calls it "Below Mediocre"; 'Kanto_Sho' gives the album a single star and says, "Terrible - bro in the band wouldn't help." I don't know what that means, but I do know that those folks must have really shitty taste in music.

McKendree Spring

Artist: McKendree Spring

LP: McKendree Spring

Song: "Morning Glory" 
[ listen ]

Song: "If the Sun Should Rise" 
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I just got back from the Williams Family Campout! We gathered at the lush and lovely Coho Campground (Loop B) by Wynoochee Lake in the Olympic National Forest. We had lots of good wholesome family fun. It rained about half the time, but we're the ones who decided to camp in a rain forest, so what did we expect?

Four days with no shower (not even a sponge bath) wasn't enough to keep me from making a public appearance in Olympia when I re-entered society on my way home, whereupon I raided Rainy Day Records and picked up all sorts of cool stuff. I wasn't there for just one hour and I wasn't there for two. Not even three. Not four. Anyway, this 1969 debut LP by McKendree Spring was one of the things I found; according to the price tag it had been languishing in their bins since March of 2013. All the tracks are keepers, but I was especially eager to hear their cover of Tim Buckley's "Morning Glory," which was immediately a teenage-new-waver-Alex favorite when I first heard it on This Mortal Coil's "Filigree & Shadow" LP back in 1986. You can read a bit about McKendree Spring here, and go here to visit their website, where you can get a copy of "Recording No. 9," their first new studio recording in over 30 years!

Incomplete.

Why do people sometimes consider someone to be incomplete just because they

side one:
01. Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft - Carpenters
02. Somewhere In the World - Boney M.
03. Rock & Roll Candy Man - Bloodrock
04. You Make Me Come to Pieces - Essra Mohawk
05. Magic Love - Michele
06. Intermezzo In A-Major—Op. 118, No. 2 - Johannes Brahms 
      (piano: Håkon Austbø)
07. Does Anybody Love You - Cass Elliot
08. A Dream of You and Me - Future Islands
09. Neighbor, Neighbor - Maya Angelou
10. The Man I Love - Helmut Zacharias and His Magic Violins
11. Love Plus One - Haircut One Hundred
12. No More Honey - Blonde Redhead
[ listen ]

side two:
01. Master Booty - Fatback
02. Brando - Scott Walker + Sunn O)))
03. All Out of Love - Air Supply
04. Sí, Mama Mama - Il Balletto Di Bronzo
05. I Wonder (Departure) - ABBA
06. What You See - Seapony
07. Rembihnútur - Sigur Rós
08. The Bottle Turned Into a Blonde - Liz Anderson
09. Beautiful Love - The George Shearing Quintet with Brass Choir
10. My Love Needs Company - Little Royal
11. Polyesterday - GusGus
[ listen ]

Bloodrock

Artist: Bloodrock

LP: U.S.A.

Song: "Rock & Roll Candy Man" 
[ listen ]

Wasn't sure what to post today, so pulled this one randomly from my collection. It'll do. Bloodrock U.S.A. is the group's 4th LP, released in 1971, with the "Rock & Roll Candy Man" single released in 1972. According to Wikipedia, Bloodrock is one of a number of significant bands to emerge from the Ft. Worth, TX music scene in the early-to-mid 1970s. I wonder what number they could be referring to.

[ Bloodrock ]

Patty Brannen

Artist: Patty Brannen

LP: From Alaska With Love

Song: "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" 
[ listen ]

This autographed LP from Alaskan singer Patty Brannen (presented with special thanks to one Dr. Rosandele) is another of the records I acquired earlier this year from the collection of David Lloyd Whited of Vashon Island. "From Alaska With Love," as everyone now knows thanks to a once-rather-popular-and-wildly-entertaining-yet-extremely-frightening politician, is practically just like sending love from Russia. I was hoping I'd run into Patty on my Alaskan cruise earlier this year, but it did not happen. You can listen to more of Patty's album here, thanks to her granddaughter Angela, who posted it on YouTube.

[ Patty Brannen ]

Eddie Dean

Artist: Eddie Dean

LP: Eddie Dean Sings

Song: "I Dreamed of a Hillbilly Heaven" 
[ listen ]

Song: "Katmandu" 
[ listen ]

Song: "Impatient Blues" 
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The country western section of my record collection has reached full capacity, so I've started sorting through it to see if there's anything I can get rid of to make more room. One of the gems I discovered in the process is this collection of songs by Eddie Dean, released on the Crown label—which of course means no liner notes, since they've got a bad habit of filling the entire backside of their album covers with Crown Records catalog listings. 

Born in the rural Texas community of Posey in the summer of 1909, Eddie got his start performing on radio in Chicago and South Dakota with his brother Jimmy. He then moved to Hollywood and appeared in movies throughout the 1940s, where he was usually called upon to present a few numbers. "I Dreamed of a Hillbilly Heaven" was a hit for Eddie in 1955, though the song gained even more favor with the public when Tex Ritter released his version in 1961. All ten songs on this LP are terrific, but my favorite is "Katmandu," on which the handsome Texan crooner warbles on about the exotic mysteries of far-away places, a musical sub-genre I think ought to be termed 'country eastern music.'

Eddie Dean, whom both Roy Rogers and Gene Autry named as the best cowboy singer of all time, passed away at age 89 on March 4, 1999, after which he was finally able to march forth into Hillbilly Heaven, taking his place amongst the stars. There's more to read about the life and career of Eddie Dean on Wikipedia here and I've included a clip from one of his movies below. 

Eddie Dean on YouTube:
[ "Ain't No Gal Got a Brand On Me" ]

[ Eddie Dean: July 7, 1909 — March 4, 1999 ]

Daliborka Stojšić

Artist: Daliborka Stojšić

LP: 7" single

Song: "Moja Čežnja Za Tobom" 
[ listen ]

When I picked up this 1975 single by Daliborka Stojšić at Georgetown Records a few months ago, I had no idea that the lovely singer had been a runner up in the 1968 Miss Universe pageant and that she was voted "Most Photogenic" in the interplanetary contest. In fact, she was the first-ever contestant to represent Yugoslavia in one of these pageants! Obviously, Daliborka went on to a singing career, but she eventually retired from public life when the time seemed right. Nowadays she is active on the computer, has mastered four languages, and enjoys hanging out with friends and listening to all kinds of metal music. You can read more here. Admittedly, it's been quite a few years since I myself mastered each of the Slavic languages, but I think "Moja Čežnja Za Tobom" translates to English as "Why Are Gay Men In Seattle So Fucking Boring?"

[ Daliborka Stojšić — most photogenic woman in the universe, 1968. ]

The Equals

Artist: The Equals

LP: Baby, Come Back

Song: "Laurel and Hardy" 
[ listen ]

I've got my good friend Ryan, as well as R&B singer/guitarist Barbara Lynn, to thank for leading me to this 1968 LP by The Equals. Ryan, who's way more connected to what's going on in our city than I am, invited me to join her and a few other friends to see Barbara Lynn perform at the Light In the Attic label's warehouse just a few blocks from my place. It was a sensational show—Ms. Lynn was fantastic! Not only that, but she's a real sweetheart. It was her very first time in Seattle!

The show was part of Light In the Attic's Second Annual Summer Spectacular, for which they'd arranged food trucks to surround the place and had vendors on hand for a record fair too, which is where I found The Equals. The group features Eddie Grant, aka. Eddy Grant, who's the same guy who rocked down to Electric Avenue about 15 years later, in 1983. "Laurel and Hardy," which peaked at #35 on the British singles charts, was the group's follow-up to "Baby, Come Back," a #1 hit in Britain that peaked at #32 in the USA. You can read more about The Equals here. Thanks again, Ryan, for inviting me to the show. I would have really missed out without you!