Missing While Surfin'

Tommy Dee

Missing While Surfin'

Little Bill Music BMI

Sims 260

1965

Tommy Dee, American DJ and country music producer and promoter, born Thomas M. Donaldson in Vicker, Virginia, died in 2007 in Nashville, Tennessee, around the age of 69-74. His birthday is variously stated as 7 July 1937, 15 July 1936, 1934 or 1933.

While his birth date is not certain, one thing is sure, he was not much a singer, but rather a narrator, specializing in tributes to dead people, preferably the one who made the page one of your newspapers  :

• Three Stars (Crest Records, 1959)  : Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens plane crash
•  Halfway To Hell (Pike 5906, 1961) : Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Cowboy Copas in another plane crash
• An Open Letter (To Caroline and John-John) (Three Star, 1963) : John F. Kennedy
•  Roger, Ed And Gus (America's Astronaut Heroes (Starday 802, 1967) :  Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee killed during a pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (then known as Cape Kennedy), Florida.

Although Tommy Dee never considered himself a singer, he appeared on Dick Clark’s “American Band­stand” three times and toured with Cochran and Conway ‘Twitty; accompaniment was often  provided by Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps and sometimes by (mysterious Columbia Recording artists) the Big Beats.    Said Dee, “My record was in the true sense of the word, a novelty record.   I was in the right place at,the right time.   Everything fell in place."

More info

Trivia :  I've found an early copyright for a song he wrote in 1952, "Red River Shore" which was probably recorded by Sterling Records, a song poem label owned by Louis (Lew) Tobin, out of Boston, Mass, where he grew up.

 

Bertha Breadsacker?

Bertha-BB, SingSnap member

* Bertha-BB
The Great Pretender



* Bertha Breadsacker
No Money Down

A little big mystery for you today.

1/ "The Great Pretender" has been found on http://www.singsnap.com a karaoke website (Register for free access to singing and recording thousands of karaoke songs, millions of recordings to listen to and entertainment that lasts a life time...)

The singer is Bertha-BB (that's her picture (?) on top of this post.  Her  real name is Bertha Breadsacker. Bertha is 76 years old (in 2009, I assume), is located in Louisiana / USA and has been a SingSnap member since September 9, 2009.

Her other karaoke songs can be found here

2/ "No Money Down", the Chuck Berry song, has been played on WFMU radio three times and credited to Bertha Breadsacker on Wholewheat Records.    I've not been able to find any evidence of  the existence of this record.  The singer sounds younger that Bertha BB and the recording, older

Are they real? Are both a joke?  Or only one is a joke? Then which one?  Your info or even just your opinion — as always — welcomed!

Cajun Baby

Ferne's Blackjacks
Vocal : Ferne Johnson

Cajun Baby

Tyme 9-435

1969

Cover by a Polk County, Wisconsin band of the Hank Williams, Jr. song (MGM Records)

Ferne Johnson

Zelda, Oh, Zelda

Foodlady Records 45-FL-000½

In 1962, KSO [Des Moines, Iowa] air personality and program director Dick Vance recorded a 45 RPM record entitled "Sharon oh Sharon" (Sor-Va Records). The song was promoted on KSO and charted locally in December 1962

Shortly after, Good Guy Doug MacKinnon from another DesMoines radio, KIOA, recorded a takeoff on "Sharon Oh Sharon" as Leroy Breadsacker. Adam Jones wrote the lyrics.  Pressed by King Records in 1963 on the Foodlady label, the record was sold for $1.00 each. The proceeds went to a charity.

A-side is the vocal side (part 2), B-side (same title)  is an instrumental (part 3). There is indeed no part 1.

Ready To Go Steady

TOALSON SISTERS

With Elmer Plotnik
Orchestra Directed By G. Clifford Prout

Ready To Go Steady

Bruce Spencer, Abel Music BMI

S.I. N.A. 709
Society For Indecency To Naked Animals
507 Fifth Avenue, New York

The Toalson sisters, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Toalson of Aldrich Missouri were already a singing trio at an early age. In 1955, while members of the Aldrich 4-H Club, they took first place in the Polk County 4-H Talent Night at Southwest Baptist College. They sang “Two Hearts.” The girls were accompanied at the piano by their mother. 

Thanks to The Bolivar Free Press (December 24, 1959), we also known their first names :

The Toalson Sisters Trio of Aldrich have just recently made a record that is making a hit wherever it is played over radio stations in the United States. The three talented sisters, Pauletta, 18, Carolyn, 16, and Kay, 14, are the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Toalson. The record, “Mau, Mau, Mambo” and “Ready to go Steady” were reviewed by the national record magazine Cashbox as being “very good.”

The Toalson sisters are featured in a homemade video from 1997 here and Kay, the youngest sister now Kay Wheeler, is singing "Stupid cupid" here

Bruce Spencer and Elmer Plotnik are just two of the multiple aliases of jazz drummer (and famous hoaxer) Alan Abel.  The Society For Indecency To Naked Animals was one of his numerous hoaxes and is perhaps the most well known.

According to Alan Abel :

A hoax, yes, but I did not initially create it as such. What I
perpetrated was a living social satire, an allegory cloaked with
the absurd purpose of putting panties on pets, half slips on
cows, and Bermuda shorts on horses. Thus, while SINA
succeeded in becoming an often discussed subject around the
house and in the office, its true intention failed because
hardly anyone, to my knowledge, recognized it as satire.
Almost everyone thought that SINA was seriously concerned
with the horrendous task of covering up animals.

 G. Clifford Prout, one of Alan Abel's friends, was the pseudonym of Buck Henry

But how three young girls from Missouri found themselves recorded by a New-Yorker joker is anybody's guess...

Reka Records

Reka Records

This is a re-up.  Original post here

294 Jimmy Lamberth : Rockin' And Reelin' 
295 Jo Haynes : So Long
296 Sonny Deckelman :  After You're Gone
297 Billy Childs : Call Me Shorty 
298 Hank Hankins : Blues Stay Away From Me / My Old Kentucky Home Rock [instr.] (60)

401 Kenny Owen : Come Back Baby / Wrong Line (64)

Baby, Cut It Out

The Floaters

Baby, Cut It Out

Audio Recording AR-122

1965

According to http://pnwbands.com/floaters.html, the Floaters were Bill Arnold, guitar, Bob McDermid, trumpet, Duffy Nightengale, keyboards, Ronnie Pierce, saxophone  and Arthur "Ben" Wise, drums.   There is no mention of a female vocalist heard on "Baby, Cut It Out". Who is she ?

The Floaters also recorded a quite rare album on the same label titled "See Blue At The Vault" with the following tracks :  Camel Caper -  Soul - 2nd Avenue Jerk -  Root Beer Float -  I Love You Girl - Mount Up - Bossa Nova Baby -  What Time Is It // I See Blue - Jerk Right - Mediterranean Go Go - Uptown Walk -  Subterranean Go Go - Luigi's Lasagne - Out Of Sight  (Audio Recording ARLS-1216).  Songs on the album were penned by Bob Deimid (McDermid?) or by Al Sweet, who may have been a Floater for a while.

Ronnie Pierce, a musician since the forties, also owned and operated The Vault, a rocking nightclub replete with go-go dancers, sailors and swingers, from 1962 to 1974.   An interview with Ron Pierce can be found here

Audio Recording was the in-house label of the recording studio owned by Kearney Barton