I Got Rhythm

The Trowells

I Got Rhythm
(Gerschwin)

La Ru Ha Records
819 Brookhurst Drive
Charlotte, N.C. 28205
1974

Here it is :  the La Ru Ha Records response to Tamla-Motown produced at Arthur Smith Studios.  Karen, Edith and Ellen Trowell are three sisters from the Carolinas singing the old Gerschwin classic song from 1930.  That's all about I known. 

Rockroleville

Lynn Taylor

Rockroleville

Lincoln Chase, Music Of Today, Inc. (BMI)

Coral 9-61726

⧫

Lynn Taylor was born Patricia Elaine Foutty (or Fowdy) in 1937.

Lynn Taylor had sung in public as a teenager in Philadelphia; she had just this single on Coral in 1956 and frequented jazz clubs during the 1950s, performing at popular nightspots like the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village and Birdland in the heart of N.Y., in addition to singing for the Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich bands in '57 and '58.   

Strictly speaking, Taylor---aside from her recordings with the Rooftop Singers--- made one-and-third LPs, for she appears as a guest jazz vocalist on a recording by US TV comedian Ernie Kovacs. 

There was one full album which came on "Grand Award Records" ("I See Your Face Before Me") in 1957 as a result of the son of songwwiter Arthur Schwartz.   Jonathan Schwartz was friends with Taylor and it was he who introduced her to his father's music and caused the album to be recorded. 

In November 1961 Lynn Taylor married Skip Weshner a radio DJ prominently involved in early 1960s New York folk scene.  In 1962,  she was a founding member of The Rooftop Singers: the other members being Erik Darling and Bill Svanoe.   The trio were an American progressive folk singing group   best known for the hit "Walk Right In". Even though the Rooftop Singers were a trio, the real star here, at least in the sense that she sets them apart from scores of other guitar picking folkies, is Lynn Taylor.

After the group's hit single "Walk Right In" in early 1963, Lynn moved with her husband to California and never recorded again, as far as I known.

Lynn Taylor, according to her daughter, shot herself in the head April 21rst 1979.  But biographical details are scarce and vague, notably the exact circumstances of her suicide.

What was your secret, foxy lady?

Note: Lynn Taylor on Clock, Hawk and Jua-Thel Records is a different artist

The Rooftop Singers : Froggie Went A Courting

Come On Way Down South

Elzworth Brooks
Come On Way Down South

Enterprise Records

1963

Houston recording.  1963 is a late date for a label whose all other recordings were released between 1957 and 1959 . I've seen the label frequently listed as a Beaumont, Texas label, but I've also seen the following address :Enterprise Records, 6158 Westheimer, Houston, Texas

All songs released by the label were published by Adair (BMI).  Is there a possible label ownership by oil well firefighter.Red Adair ?

With The World At My Feet

Gini Eastwood

With The World At My Feet
Arthur Resnick, Kris Resnick
T.M. Music, Inc.

Prod & arr  Richard Wolfe
Tower 249 (1966)

Gini Eastwood, biography from IMDB :

Lovely and captivating brunette actress and singer Gini Eastwood had an interest in acting and singing ever since she was a little girl. Gini made her stage debut at age four as a bonbon to the Sugar Plum Fairy in a dance school production of "The Nutcracker Suite." She took dance, violin, guitar, and acrobatic lessons while attending this school. Her parents sent her to a drama camp summer theatre run by Columbia Pictures at age twelve. Eastwood was added to the Talent Farm Stable and spent two additional summers perfecting her craft with lessons, performances, and a backstage apprenticeship. Gini released the modestly successful single "With the World at My Feet" on the Tower Records label while still in high school in upstate New York. Eastwood went on to tour with the 60s folk group the New Christy Minstrels and recorded a couple of albums with the psychedelic rock band the Hobbits [Decca Records].   Moreover, she portrayed Mary Magdelene in the original concert tour of the hit musical "Jesus Christ, Superstar," acted in a May, 1972 Broadway stage production of the rock opera "Hard Job Being God," and worked as a studio session singer (she was even the golden voice for McDonald's). Eastwood made her film debut in the obscure feature "The Wanted Ones," which was shot in Spain in 1968. Gini gave an excellent and compelling performance as intense, brooding and mysterious hippie chick Maureen in the wonderfully offbeat and original one-of-a-kind 70s drive-in cult oddity "Pick-up." After tackling her sole lead role in "Pick-up," Eastwood did more session work in the music industry as well as sung and wrote commercial jingles. Gini Eastwood still occasionally acts in community theatre and works as a singing aerobics instructor.

Let's Face It

Joe and Ursula

Let's Face It

Imperial 5371
1955

This is Joe Morris and Ursula/Ursala Reed

Ursala Reed was discovered by band leader and R & B arranger Joe Morris when she was a promising sixteen year old singer hoping to go out on her own in the music business.  Her first big break came as part of the New Year's Eve, 1953 show in New York City. The show was a combination of R & B and modern jazz performers that included Thelonius Monk, J.J. Johnson & His All Star Combo, The Orioles, and the Joe Morris Blues Cavalcade with whom Ursala vocalized. She appeared intermittently with the Joe Morris band for much of the year. Her very first record session did not take place until mid 1954 when the new Old Town label paired her with the label's new singing group The Solitaires on #1001 (the label's second release) and "Ursala's Blues" and "You're Laughing Cause I'm Crying". In late September of that year Reed records for Herald Records, the label that Morris had moved to after leaving Atlantic. Their first release for the label was #440 - "Tying Up The Time" and "Blue And Lonely". Ursala goes out on the road with the touring Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame Show which does a series of one nighters throughout the Midwest. Besides Morris and his band which also features Al Savage and Faye Adams, The Orioles, Amos Milburn, and The Spiders are part of the show. The tour stops in Chicago and becomes part of the "Jam With Sam" show with local deejay Sam Evans.

During 1955 Ursala continues to be part of the Joe Morris company touring the country and recording. In March Herald #444 is released. The songs are "All Gone" and "You Hurt My Pride". Ursala Reed as a recording artist does not do well nationally and so Herald drops her and Joe Morris follows suit. They continue to tour and make in person appearances throughout the country, and by the latter half of the year find themselves on Imperial Records in Los Angeles. Imperial #5371 is issued late in the year as by Joe and Ursala, and the songs are "The Good Book" and "Let's Face It". The following year finds Ursala continuing on with Joe Morris and his band. They join Charlie & Ray, The Diabolos, and Manhattan Paul for a week's stay in Cleveland in March. During the summer a touring unit consisting of Joe, Ursala, and singer Larry Birdsong embarks on a series of one nighters in the South including an extended stay at The Palms in South Florida. Reed continues for a few months into 1957 with Morris, but by now she has realized that the music world has greatly changed and that her possibility of success is severely limited by the new Elvis / American Bandstand driven 'latest things'. Not too much more is heard from Ursala Reed, and in less than two years Joe Morris would pass away. But - the evidence remains - Ursala Reed was a part of the passing parade during the R & B fifties.

Source : http://home.earthlink.net/~jaymar41/ursala.html
Ursula/Joe picture from Marv Goldberg

You Mention My Name

Terri North

You Mention My Name
Willie F. James - Gene Brooks
Arthur Music (ASCAP)

Preview 1501
1968

This is actually Teri Thornton, a jazz singer turned song poem singer at the end of the sixties after her career was seriously damaged when she started to lose an ongoing struggle with alcohol addiction.  Only decades later she was discovered to have been singing on records in Los Angeles under various pseudonyms for the Preview Records and MSR labels, where she was the Rodd Keith label mate for a couple of years.

On MSR she was Teri Summers.  I've collected for you ten of her songs issued on various MSR albums.  The archived file can be found HERE

Tracklist

Teri Summers & The Librettos  
A Dreamy Waltz 
City's Hospital Patients      
I Cross My Heart
Lonely Heart
Nativity
Season's Greetings
The Evening Is Approaching

Teri & The MSR Singers
I've Found My True Love
More On Ode To Billy Joe

Teri Thornton, born Shirley Enid Avery in 1934 (or 1936).

She was born in Detroit, where her parents, Robert Avery, a Pullman porter, and Bernice Crews Avery, a choir director and singer who was the host of a local radio show, encouraged her to study classical music. Thornton began her singing career in 1956 with an engagement at Cleveland's Ebony Club before going on tour and playing and recording in Chicago. Her debut recording session in the winter of 1960/1 found her teamed with several notable jazz musicians including Clark Terry, Britt Woodman, Earle Warren, Seldon Powell, Wynton Kelly, Freddie Green, Sam Jones, Jimmy Cobb, and Sam Herman.  

 She had a 1963 hit with "Somewhere In The Night", the theme from a popular television show, The Naked City. Her popularity opened doors for her but an opportunity to tour Australia as an accompanying artist to Frank Sinatra was mishandled and lost. Her early success was still further and more seriously damaged when she started to lose an ongoing struggle with alcohol addiction. Apart from damaging her career, this also blighted her personal life and she went through three divorces, a long and arduous spell outside music, during which she drove a cab for a while, and a term of imprisonment.


She had records (including four albums) on Riverside (1961), Dauntless (1963), Columbia (1963-1965) Mother's (1967) and Verve Records in 1999, her first album (on CD) for more than 30 years.  In 2000, few months later, after her last release, she died, finally losing her battle with cancer.

Mule Skinner Blues

Danny Kidd
and The Valley Countrymen

Mule Skinner Blues
Jeree 111177
1977

"Mule Skinner Blues" is perhaps one of the most recorded songs in the history of country music.   A.k.a. "Blue Yodel #8" or "Muleskinner Blues", the song was written by Jimmie Rodgers and George Vaughan.and first recorded by Rodgers in 1930.

"George Vaughn", a pseudonym for George Vaughn Horton, is sometimes listed as co-author. Horton wrote the lyrics for "New Mule Skinner Blues", Bill Monroe's second recorded version of the song

Here is another version by Beaver Falls artists Danny Kidd and The Valley Countrymen, regular performers in the Beaver County, Pennsylvania.

The record is dedicared to "Gabby" Waite.   

Gloria "Gabby" E. Waite (1931-2008) was born in Ellwood City was the owner and operator of "La Scala's and then of  "Gabby's Lounge" both located in Beaver Falls for many years.

Jeree Records

In the 1970s when the mills of Beaver County were pouring out raging hot molten steel a music factory near the banks of the Beaver River began pouring out molten hot music. Jeree Recording Studio, located in a large Victorian House on picturesque tree lined 3rd Avenue in New Brighton, Pa, was the Western Pennsylvania’s version of Hitsville.  Pittsburgh’s best rock, pop, and jazz acts came to Jerre’s to record their demos and albums on their way to national success.

The founders of Jeree Studio, Jerry Reed and Don Gavin, have been recognized for their important role in the Western Pennsylvania music scene by their induction into the Beaver County Musicians Hall of Fame in 2012. Jerry and Don also released recordings on three labels that they founded Jeree, Green Dolphin, and Candy.

The Fountainhead Record Company

Does anyone known anything about this label, The Fountainhead Record Company?

Vocal credited to Ella Cohen and music to "The 4-4 Tiimers".  A side is numbered 900 while the flip is numbered 901, with song "A-E-I-O-U" .

I am specially interested by who owned and designed the label.   Leave a comment if you can help. Thanks

So You Walked Out On Your Baby

Lucille Hutchinson

So You Walked Out On Your Baby

Lucille E. Hutchinson, Greek Music BMI
Alpha 633
1970

Song published by Greek Music, a John Greek publishing company. Yes, the John Greek original member and founder of The Fabulous Wailers in Tacoma, now turned mixer (and studio musician) at the Artists Recording Studio located in 1648 N. Cherokee Avenue, Hollywood. 

The studio was created in 1966 by Alex Furth.and Alpha Records was the in-house label providing an outlet for artists willing to pay the price.at some occasions, like that was the case for Lucille Hutchinson, I think.

Xocquitumi

Ada Maria

Xocquitumi

A.C. Pena, Poco Loco Music

Flamingo Records #5002
late sixties?

Xocquitumi was copyrighted on 1 Aug 1968 by Flaco Music Co. and was also recorded by Ray Avila on the El Monte label (see 45cat)

There was an early Flamingo label (also pink, not surprisingly) in the West Coast (Kim and Grim, Flamingo 501,  1965)   but probably a different label.

Poco Loco Music, as were Padua Music and Tamkoda Music, was part of Faro Music Publ'g owned by Edward L. Davis, better known as Eddie Davis

Crown Heights Pogrom

The Crown Heights riot was a three-day racial riot that occurred from August 19 to August 21, 1991 in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York City. It turned black residents and Orthodox Jewish residents against each other, causing the deterioration of already tense racial relations. The riots began on August 19, 1991, after two children of Guyanese immigrants were unintentionally struck by an automobile in the motorcade of rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Chabad, a Jewish religious movement. One child died and the second was severely injured.

In its wake, several Jews were seriously injured; one Orthodox Jewish man was killed; and a non-Jewish man, apparently mistaken by rioters for a Jew, was killed by a group of black men. ...more

Crown Heights Pogrom

Sylvia Lipson

(from WFMU's Incorrect Music Archive)

Fran Owens, waxmate of the month

Fran Owens was born in the small town of Bingham, Maine. She was on stage at the age of four.   She continued doing variety shows in the state of Maine until the age of 12.  She studied classical piano, tap dancing, twirled batons, sang and got parts in school plays, all the way through high school.

At the age of 15, started singing with a 5 piece band at proms and Lakewood theater, in Lakewood, Maine.   After high school, she married and started a family. She moved to Portsmouth, NH and sang at Jimmy Cante's" Fisherman's Pier". She got a contract in Nashua, NH and moved there for 8 years. She then moved to Salem, NH where her girls graduated high school.

She has traveled extensively, and has performed in Las Vegas, Reno, Laughlin, NV, Lake Tahoe, CA, Branson, MO, Nashville, TN at the Grand Ole' Opry, South Florida, New York, Boston, South America, the Caribbean, Barbados, Canada, New Orleans, LA, and Atlantic City, NJ.

"Many Sides Of Fran Owens" is presumably her only vinyl album. It was recorded in the seventies for Fleetwood Records (BMC 5101), with Charles Beckler on piano, Jim Snow on drums and arranger Ronnie Des Marais, on guitar.  The back cover included praise from critics, among them Ken Mayer, Boston Herald-Traveler :

"This gal packs a throaty sound in a well curv'd container, and with proper spotting, could make it big.  She screams sex. "  ...

Today, a Miss Senior America pageant, Fran is still performing today and has dedicated her singing career to nursing homes, adult day cares, assisted livings and senior centers.  She performs in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts

Fran Owens website