Monday, November 17, 2014

Chick Chick

 
Little Bob and his electric uke


B&L 2
1966
Seattle, Washington

 
This is Robert Hrvatin (1932-1973).  He resided in Burien (Washington State) at the time of his death.
 
His previous record on the same label, "Rock That Uke", is listed at the Rockin' Country Style website here 
 


Saturday, November 15, 2014

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Besame Mucho


Sherri Malinou


Vassar 326

1962

 
Was issued with a picture sleeve. The new "Spillane Dame" is presented on the back of the sleeve by her future husband, the crime novelist Mickey Spillane
 
Great things can happen by accident.  When Sherri Malinou posed for the back cover photo of my latest book THE GIRL HUNTERS,  I discovered not only a beautiful model, but one of the greatest voices I ever heard.  Now, on top of recordind single records and albums for Vassar Records, she'll be featured in my Mike Hammer motion pictures produced by Fellane Productions.

Although just entering her twenties, Sherri's dancing career goes back to age five and the vaudeville stage.  She sang and danced her way into the Bell Telephone Hour, the Ray Bolger Broadway hit ALL AMERICAN, the award-winning off-Broadway show Riverwind and the Oldsmobile Show.

A throroughly trained and talented singer, Sherri Malinou's voice has an incredible range and calibre.  She can inspire musicians and listeners alike.  Arranger, Lew Douglas sweeps her into new dimensions of song and sound destined to thrill music lovers of all ages.
Note : she was not featured in "The Girl Hunters" movie and I can't find evidence of further recordings by Selma (Sherri) Malinou.


Sherri on the book cover
photographied by Mickey Spillane 
(1972)

Her marriage ended in divorce (and a lawsuit) in 1983.  She found work later with Ruth Webb, a talent agent, as casting agent in her Scandal Agency  : 
Although Ms. Webb chats plenty on the phone, she spends most of her day up in her bedroom, with her 1,500 stuffed raccoons, typing out her memoirs. Ms. Spillane and another agent, Scott Stander, appear to be the real worker bees. Each morning, they plow through a list of available roles, looking for spots for their clients.
Casting agent for pimps, athletes connected to violent crimes and "actors" who are associated with athletes connected to violent crimes, Sherri Spillane.says that her job is really good old-fashioned charity work.

"I help people,"
she said about the scandalous (or as she prefers to call them, "high-profile, controversial") client list she recently developed at the Ruth Webb talent agency here. The first was the figure skater Tonya Harding, who was stripped of her national championship for her role in the attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan, last year. [1994)

Since signing Ms. Harding eight months ago, Ms. Spillane has also picked up Sydney Biddle Barrows (who ran a high-end prostitution ring several years ago and wrote "The Mayflower Madam"); Jennifer Young, the roommate to another madam, Heidi Fleiss, whose clothing line she markets; Tammy Faye Bakker; Randal Tamayei, a Judge Lance Ito look-alike, and her personal favorite, Joey Buttafuoco, the auto mechanic whose romantic trysts with a Long Island teen-ager, Amy Fisher, resulted in a bullet wound to the head for his wife, Mary Jo, and, thanks to the agency, a few tickets to the Academy Awards ceremonies.
And just what qualifies Sherri Spillane for this scandalous task?

Well, according to the company's press release: "Sherri's own scandal, dating Sammy Davis Jr., while still married to world famous mystery writer, Mickey Spillane, has given her all the experience she would need dealing with the media blitz that follows every major scandal . . . Sherri recognized an opportunity in an uncharted market and found her niche."


Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Swingin' Ring


Flora Belle Singer


Star-Star Selections 524


Ed Rudy produced it.

Ed Rudy started in show business as “The Milkman” on 1010 WINS in New York City. He later worked at WMGM and WABC in the city. He did both syndicated and live radio and also worked as a newspaper columnist and a record producer. It was his broadcasting for INS Radio News, Radio Pulsebeat News and UPI Radio that put him in contact with The Beatles in 1964. He traveled with The Beatles on their first American tour. The Beatles tolerate him at best.

Ed Rudy claimed to be the only "reporter" to follow the group for the entire tour, a boast that he parlayed into a weird souvenir album from the period : The Beatles - The American Tour with Ed Rudy.  Cheaply packaged, with rubber-stamped printing on a white cover, this was one of the first Beatles exploitation interview albums, a industry that amazingly continues to thrive.   


Singer, the singer
possibly born in 1937 in Pennsylvania ?
no info

Monday, November 10, 2014

School Bus Blues


Jim Harris
and
Bobby Albright's Boot Hill Express


Empire Records


Out of Lubbock, Texas from, I guess, the early seventies


Friday, November 7, 2014

He's Gone


Pearl Reaves
with Paul Farano Trio


Pearlsfar 101
1958

Pearl Reaves, a singer originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, moved to Rahway, New Jersey in the late 40s. After winning some local talent shows, she started singing at the Palace Blue Room, owned by bandleader/drummer Paul Farano. She not only sang, but played guitar with the Paul Farano Trio there for two years (and ended up marrying Farano).  She mostly limited her career to singing with her husband's band.

For more info, see The Concords, article by Marv Goldberg here


The Lovely & Incomparable Pearl Reaves
and Paul Farano Trio

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

The Frog


 The Constellations


 Impel Records
Shelby, NC
mid-sixties

Over the course of three decades beginning in the late 1950s, David Lee, this unheralded songwriter, musician, producer, and entrepreneur released fourteen 45s and two LPs on his Impel, Washington Sound, and SCOP labels, run out of his Washington Sound record shop in Shelby, North Carolina.


The Constellations had 3 records on Impel

More on David Lee here

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Please Don't Play On That Guitar


Calvin Cheek


wr. Calvin Cheek, Chuck Huffman

Tally 103
From Bakersfield, California, with Bill Woods on fiddle.

I can't tell you much about Calvin Cheek.   He and Chester "Chuck" Huffman also wrote three songs listed in the BMI database (Sweet Lovin Ways, With Or Without You and Wood Man), so after all this wasn't perhaps his only record.