I Wish I Knew

Iona Mack

I Wish I Knew

McMackon Mack Records 55

★

1961 — McMackon 12
Tell Me Why You Act That Way You Do / That You Will Be Mine

1961 — McMackon M17  
True Love / Yes Daddy Let Your Love Be Mine

1962 — McMackon 17   
Love Me Again / You're Allright With Me

1962 — McMackon 26   
I Like To Dance With My Baby / It Is You Baby On My Mind

1965 — McMackon 35
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall / I Wish I Knew, I Wish I Knew

1967 — McMackon Mack 55
I Wish I Knew / Love Me Again

First releases had this address :

795 St. Nicholas Ave. New York

According to jukebox george at 45cat.com "795 St. Nicholas is an apartment building [50 or so units] in the Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill section of Harlem, about 2 km north of the Apollo Theater"

Later releases had no address, just a phone number :  JU 6-0499 New York

Mysterious Iona Mack, about her I wish I knew... more.  Was it a pseudonym? Did she had a previous and long career under another name?  That's what I like to think...

The Two-Minute Record

 

Cash Box Music Editorial
5 December 1953

   For years now, The Cash Box has been campaigning for two-minute records for juke box operators.  We have pointed out time and time again how important they are because the period in which an operator gets peak play is highly limited and records that run longer than two minutes cut drastically into his possible income.
  
   But now sevral disk jockeys, among them Joe Deane of Pittsburgh and Ed McKenzie of Detroit, have pointed out to us that the two-minute record is just as important to the disk jockey as it is to the operator.
  
   The demands upon a disk jockey's time today are enormous.  There are more records than ever being issued and each one is being promoted.  They are all being offered to disk jockeys for air play and a disk jockey has a terribly difficult time deciding what to play and what not to play.  One important factor which he considers when he is deciding is the lenght of the record.   If he has twelve minutes of available playing time, he would certainly rather play six two-minutes records than four three-minutes ones.

   Today, the disk jockey's situation is one in which the time available for playing records is strictly limited.  On most shows, sponsors' messages take up considerable space and must be considered before anything else.  Since many shows are highly packed with sponsors — a situation which is encouraged by both the station and the disk jockey, for after all, they are engaged in a commercial enteprise — messages sometimes cannot be spaced as far as three minutes apart so that the longer record cannot be played simply from a physical factor point of view.

   From every angle, it is obvious that the two-minute record has a better chance of being played and is therefore more in the interests of the record company, publisher, artist and everyone else connected with it than a longer record.

   Disk jockeys and opeattors together determine a great deal of what happens in our music business.  When they combine their interests and demands, they are irresistible.

   And here is one need with both of them share.

   If each will make his needs known vociforously to recording men of all capacities, it won't be long before the two-minute record is the rule rather than the exception.

Mary My Darling

Clarence Green

with the High Type Five

Mary My Darling

Old Grandpa

C and P #102
1959

Clarence Green (1934–1997)

 

Blues guitarist and band leader Clarence Green was born in Mont Belvieu, Texas, in Chambers County, on January 1, 1934. He was a versatile guitarist who should not be confused with the piano-playing blues singer Clarence "Candy" Green (1929–88) from nearby Galveston. Green, the guitar player, was a stalwart of the Houston scene who fronted a number of popular bands, the most famous being the Rhythmaires, between the early 1950s and his death.

This is his first record.

More info

C and P label discography

Happy Go Lucky Guy

Little Joanie Scott

Happy Go Lucky Guy

Andy Pace, Kodel Music Co.

Tonix Record Co. JS-340
196?

Born Joan Berger in New Jersey.

Joan had few friends and felt out of place. She reached a turning point in 1962. “Shelly Fabares came out with the song ‘Johnny Angel,’ and I started singing it. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a star,”   After her mother died, Joan moved in with her father and stepmother in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park. It did not go well.   As Joan told it, “I was almost 17, absolutely gorgeous and my stepmother thought I was kind of wild.  She was so high-strung. She’d sit down at the big baby grand piano, drink a glass of Chablis and then all of a sudden start singing, ‘Herman, I love you. Joan, I hate you!’”

So Joan moved in with her grandmother in Miami Beach, where she caught the eye of Morris Landsberg, a hotel owner with mob connections.  She began dating Landsberg, along with various New York Mafia types. After ten months, the excitement had worn off and she was ready to decamp. She thought of Irwin Koplan, a Georgia salesman she’d dated when she was living in Gramercy Park. “Irwin had asked me to marry him a week after he met me,” she explained. “So I called him up and said, ‘Do you still want to marry me?’ He said, ‘Of course I do.’ That night he packed his bags, drove down to Miami Beach and picked up my grandmother and me. He took us back to Georgia and we started making plans to get married. I think that was real nice of him.”

In 1984, Joan Berger-Koplan established JJK Security in Ringgold, Georgia.  For three seasons, she was the star of a reality show, Small Town Security, which traced the fortunes (and misfortunes) of JJK Security,

She barks orders, meddles in other people’s business, and revels in scatological humor. Her conversation is invariably studded with profanity, sarcastic quips and sexual innuendo. She is wildly and hilariously inappropriate, and she is worshiped by her team.

A cigar smoking, hard talking, wisecracking woman with smudged eyeliner and bright red lipstick, Koplan was an instant hit with fans of the show and an immediate subject of “why-we-love” listicles on the net.

During the third and final season of the show, which ran from July 2012 through June 2014, it was revealed she had developed a brain tumor. She was hospitalized several times and suffered many side-effects and health issues in the months afterwards, stemming from the surgery and radiation treatment. She died March 31, 2016;

Light In The Attic Records, an independent record label from Seattle, Washington released an old acetate discovered in Koplan’s attic : "Baby I Need Your Lovin' b/w Kansas City"

Joan had a small part in 1969 in a spanish (or italian?) Tarzan ripoff called Tarzán en la gruta del oro (also known as Zan, King of the Jungle or Tarzan in the Golden Grotto.

Johnny's Yo Yo

Nancy Ford
Johnny's Yo Yo

Jean JR-724

1972

In 1969,  Nancy Da Feo decided to take up the guitar as a hobby. She also was interested in country music. A friend, Wade Dawson, who led a country band, taught Mrs. De Feo a few chords and, after she had mastered them, offered to let her sit in with his group.

Using her maiden name, Nancy Ford, she joined a quartet called the Nashville Kats. In 1971, when the leader of the group left for Florida, Miss Ford took over the combo and, as Nancy Ford and the Nashville Kats, it has become one of the most active country bands on Long Island, where she was the vice president of the local Country Music Association.

Nancy Ford was the first act signed by the brand new Jean label launched by Alithia Records whose president Peter Kraljevich and vice president Vito Samela decided to enter the country field in 1972.

Alithia Records has been set up in 1971 by The King Insulation Co., North Bergen, New Jersey-based firm specialized in pipe and wiring insulation.  The singles lines kicked off with a record by Barbara English

Long Range Love

The Mack Sisters

Long Range Love

(Jack Wolf –Leon Carr)

Blossom Music ASCAP

Orchestra conducted by Marion Evans

1955

The Mack Triplets (1950)

Better known as The Mack Triplets since their singing careers debut in 1943.  The three sisters (not really triplets) Eileen, Charlotte and LaVerne were born McAuliffe.  They launched their professional singing careers quite inauspiciously in 1943 when their agent booked them at a nightclub in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood.

''Nobody in the audience paid attention to us. They were more interested in drinking,'' mused Charlotte, who recalled the trio received $15 - total - for the gig. ''Out of that we had to pay the agent's fee.''

But the future looked brighter in 1944 when the Mack Triplets went on radio with Phil Spitalny's Hour of Charm. They also toured with Spitalny's all-girl orchestra.

The Mack Triplets went with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on a three-week gig at Slapsie Maxie's in Hollywood,  played the London Palladium with Tony Martin and, for years, were performers in the live stage shows in Lowe's theater chain. They also did the first Phil Silvers TV show and made two appearances on the Milton Berle show among their scores of credits.
 

 The Mack Triplets doing promotion for the Senate beer (circa 1949)

Emil Coleman (left) with Ted Martin and the Mack Triplets (Eileen, Charlotte, LaVerne) performing in studio.
(DeLuxe Records session?)

The Mack Triplets produced a number of records with varied success. Their best sales were overseas, especially in Australia.   With the popularizing of rock 'n' roll, the entertainment world was changing drastically. And the sisters opted to retire from the stage in the late '50s.

''Besides, it had become tiring. I remember doing eight shows a day at Atlantic City's Steel Pier,'' said Charlotte said. ''It was time to get out and raise our family.''

Diana Darrin, Waxmate of the Month

Diana, as Theila Darin, on the cover of Frolic (1954)

Diana Darrin (born April 15, 1933 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American film actress and singer. She has made over 35 film and television appearances in her career. 

She spent the early years of her career appearing in several later Three Stooges films such as He Cooked His Goose, Shot in the Frontier and A Merry Mix Up.

Later appearances include a starring role in The Broken Land with Jack Nicholson, High School Confidential, Reform School Girls and Slither. She appeared on several television series including Bonanza and McHale's Navy.

Carbine Williams, the inventor of the M1 carbine rifle, brought her to Hollywood.

I first met Carbine, he was 50 at the time.  I used to stop by his 28-room mansion in New Haven (Conn.) on my way home from school to do my homework.  It was a pecaliar relationship. 

We fell deeply in love and I loved him because he made me feel secure.  He'd listen to me and I could relate to him.   He was married but separated from his wife the entire time I knew him.

When I decided to become an actress, Carbine brought me to Hollywood. 

After a 10 year affair with Carbine Williams, their relationship ended when Williams fell ill and returned to his family in North Carolina.

★

Discography

Magnet
1001 : Freedom Riders (1960 Pony Express) / All Accordin (1960) *

Virgo
1004 : Gimme A Little Kiss / I Love The Way (1961)
1005 : Little Gun, Little Me / Lost Love (1962)
1007 : Frankie Ace / He's Gonna Be Mine (1962)

________________

* A gold copy pf the Freedom Riders was presented to Pres. Eisenhower on December 2, 1960

According to Cash Box (Feb. , 1961), "Actress-singer Diana Darrin, pacted by Magnet Records topper, Jay Colonna, to wax an album tagged “Pink Mink,” which combines some new material as
well as old standards. . . . "  But no evidence of an actual recording or release has be found