Christmas Time (Is Near)

Debra Ferrara
Walsh High Choir




Christmas Time (Is Near)

Deblyn D45-718
1965

Do I hear a Beatles influence here?

First release on Deblyn Records by five-year old Debra.  Her father, songwriter Jerry Ferrara, and Joe Fresco launched the label in November 1965 with headquarters at 380 Main, East Orange in New Jersey.

Debra Ferrara had another release on the Lynde label featuring a cover of "These Boots Are Made For Walking"

Debra (Deb) is still performing today, had written material for others, but also released her own pop-rock CD.

Debra Ferrare, then and now

Sitting Here Thinking

Ken Capehart




Sitting Here Thinking

Hart Record 45-966
1962

From St. Clair, Missouri, in the Starday custom series

Ken Capehart (1924-2013)

Kennneth Charles Capehart, known to all as Ken, 89, St. Clair, passed away Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013,
Ken was a Christian and longtime member of First Baptist Church, St. Clair.  During his working career, he was a member of United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Local 1839, St. Louis, where he worked on various projects as a carpenter through the union hall.  He was proud to have served his country in the U.S. Army during World War II..  Ken earned five Bronze Stars and a Good Conduct Medal for his participation in several campaigns in Europe, including Normandy and central Europe. He had a passion for music, playing guitar and singing in his band, Ken Capehart and the Carol County Ramblers.  He even backed up Loretta Lynn when she first started out. Ken also loved to fish.

Little Ishana Man

Eddie Daniels

and his Daniels Nine



Little Ishana Man

Eddie Mae's E-501
2720 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles

Written and produced by Jewel Akens and arranged by Miles Grayson.  

Creole with roots in Louisiana, Eddie Daniels was born in Watts, CA.  During Junior High School, he acquired the nickname, The Ghetto Baby. Eddie started in show biz in 1954 with a singing group called “Vernon Green and the Medallions”. The group had hit records like “Buick 59”, “The Letter”, “Maybe Yes, Maybe No”, and many more.  Eddie also played piano on Bobby Day’s “Rockin’ Robin” and Eugene Church’s “Pretty Girl”, and also played with Bob & Earl of “The Harlem Shuffle”.

Eddie took his first tour with bluesman Floyd Dixon. He recorded his first record, “Whoa Whoa Baby”, with Ebb Records in 1957. In 1958, he started singing with Jewel Akens. They recorded 8 songs together. They had a hit record called “Opportunity” that received good air play on the biggest black radio station at that time, KGFJ  

Having been taken advantage of by both Bumps Blackwell and Jerry Capehart, Daniels concentrated on touring as a vocalist and keyboard player with Bob and Earl during the ’60s. Then, in 1972 he hooked up with the Platters’ original female vocalist Zola Taylor, forming a lifelong kinship with her that lasted until her death in 1986.

He's A Devil

Lillay Deay



He's A Devil

Timely Records

Late 60s?

Lillay Deay is one of the Candidates for Immortality listed by Irwin Chusid at the end of his book "Songs In The Key of Z, The Curious Universe of Outsider Music.

Lillay Deay (or Lillay Daniels) was born about 1896 in Texas where she still resided in 1940 along with her husband William J. Daniels and two sons, Robert 17 and Dan 13.  That's all about I can find. Timely Records out of Tujunga was her own label active during the late sixties/early seventies.

Bewitching

The Snake

Prince Dan Igor Glenn & The Slap Bass Band




The Snake

From the EP Breakfast In The Afternoon
no label
1967

Born and reared in Alabama, Dan "Igor" Glenn began singing gospel music at a young age. By age five, he knew hundreds of hymns and songs by heart.  He moved to Arizona in the early 1960s with a passion for architecture.  After finishing up a residency at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West School he changed course to study music at Arizona State University.  He soon found Crazy Ed's, a jazz hot spot founded by Ed Chilleen, who also started Cave Creek bars the Horny Toad and Satisfied Frog.

He sang with the New Christy Minstrels as they toured the world and composed and arranged for many well-known artists. In addition to being an entertainer, he also publishes cartoons with a music theme.

Though “retired” he still books himself and his “Jazz Cowboys” anywhere from cruise ships to state fairs. He finds time to host a weekly American Folk Music Gathering at The Beatitudes in Phoenix where he and his wife Barbara live.

The Snake

"The Snake" is a song written by Oscar Brown in 1963. The lyrics tell a story inspired by Aesop's fable of The Farmer and the Viper.  (Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BC)

Oscar Brown Jr. (1926-2005) was an American singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, civil rights activist, and actor. He ran unsuccessfully for office in both the Illinois state legislature and the U.S. Congress. Brown wrote numerous songs (only 125 have been published), 12 albums, and more than a dozen musical plays.

The song tells the story of a kind and tender woman who finds a frozen snake on the ground on her way to work one morning. The snake begs the woman to take it home and take care of it. She obliges and takes the snake to her home and puts it by the fireplace with a silk blanket, some honey, and some milk. When she gets home from work later that evening, she finds that the snake is now warm and revived. Feeling happy for the snake's recovery, she picks it up and gives it a tight hug and kisses it on the head. However, the snake is actually vicious and gives the woman a bite, fatally poisoning her. She asks the snake why it bit her even though she took it in and cared for it, to which it responds: "Shut up silly woman! You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in!"

The song gained renewed attention during the campaign for the 2016 United States Presidential election. Republican candidate Donald Trump read its lyrics at several campaign rallies to illustrate his position on the Syrian refugee crisis, claiming that the decision to allow people claiming refugee status to enter the United States would "come back to bite us", as happened to the woman who took in the snake in the song.  The daughters of songwriter Brown – whose work has been characterized as "a celebration of black culture and a repudiation of racism"  – have asked Trump to stop using their late father's song, saying: "He’s perversely using 'The Snake' to demonize immigrants" and that Brown "never had anything against immigrants."

Here I Am Again

Vanita Lynn



Here I Am Again

P. Thompson - C. Thompson
Toltec Music BMI

Sound Tex 670209
1967

The Sound-Tex label was a subsidiary of the Texas Sound Studios in San Antonio.  Other in-house labels were Anthem, Horn of Plenty and Peace.

Located at 506 W. Hildebrand Ave., the studios were formed by Jeff Smith, a local Hi-Fi equipment dealer.(his Texas-TV shop was there in the early fifties).

Wired For Sound has posted six year ago an interesting (and recommended) article on the Harlem label which contains some info about Jeff Smith:

With only one or two exceptions, everything on Harlem, Hour, and related labels was recorded at Jeff Smith’s Texas Sound Studios, located on Hildebrand Avenue on the city’s North Side. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes collecting Texas labels is familiar with the “TSS” designation, etched into the run-off grooves of countless singles from the late 1950s until the early 1970s. But who was Jeff Smith?

“Jeff was like an old-style Chamber of Commerce guy,” Carr says. “You do business with him, he’ll go out and promote you. Jeff would take stuff out to the stations. And of course, if it was a Jeff custom pressed job, he’d get ‘em out there early in the day. Jeff was probably the most accommodating engineer I’ve ever met. (But) he had no knowledge of the music. And he was a little bit cautious with running the meters. I’m sure rock and roll killed him (from an aural standpoint). He got a little confused with the electric bass for awhile, particularly with the early stuff on Harlem. You can hear it on “Oh Please Love Me.’ It did knock the needles off the jukeboxes.”

Payday

Terry Richards

Payday

Rebel Records
1961

Another unknown artist and record on this small ㅡ  but quite collectable ㅡ  Rebel label out of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, owned by Bill Cooley.

McGibony, one of the songwriter), is Richard McGibony, born in Chattanooga, TN, 1934. After his discharge from the U.S. Army in 1957, he returned to work on the railroad and started pursueing his music.  After working with professionals such as Jack Bookout and Carol Smith, he started his first band called the Off Beats. Through Carol Smith he submitted his songs to Cliffie Stone, V-P of Capitol Records in Hollywood, CA. In 1959 Esquerita recorded three of his songs.    Johnny Cash recorded his  "Monteagle Mountain" and his music was also used in the movie "Layin' Track" that Johnny Cash starred in.

Whodunit

Willard Chamberlain

Whodunit

Citation Records
Early sixties

Willard Chamberlain (Saxophone) played in one of Johnny Winter first band : Johnny Macaroni and the Jammers.  Probably Edgar Winter on piano here.

This Citation label is out of Beaumont, Texas and unrelated to any other labels of similar names.

Popcorn Baby

Artie Picasso

Popcorn Baby

Hanover 4536

1959

Popcorn Baby was copyrighted in May 1959 by Norman "Red" Benson (words) and Leonard Levy (music). For some reason (payola?), the song on label is credited to one F. Botwin.

Norman (Red) Benson was master of ceremonies in mid-1950's for NBC-TV's Name That Tune and joined WPEN (Philadelphia)  in 1956.  Leonard (Len) Levy was the head of Hanover Records. Artie Picasso (a pseudonym perhaps) is unknown, possibly from Philadelphia , .  His lone record anyway under this moniker.

Colleen Lovett, Waxmate of the Month

I Married An Oil Man Of 75 But His Pumping Days Are Over

(from her Laff album, 1979)

★

Texas-born Colleen Lovett  was known as one of the Lovett Sisters, a singing duo with her sister Charlotte.

When we were very young teenagers, we began singing on the W.F.A.A. Sat. Night Shindig radio and T.V. shows, and later on the W.R.R. Big 'D' Jamboree in Dallas. It was during this time period that we were signed by a major record label, Imperial Records. 

In 1957, Colleen married bandleader Teddy Phillips, 22 years her senior.

In 1984, Colleen, now Dr. Colleen Phillips, Ph.D., Diet Nutritionist, founded Diet Doctors Medical Mgmt, a successful medical weight loss center in Canoga Park, CA.  In 2003, Colleen and Char once again hit the recording studios as the Lovett Sisters and released their double album "Wheels of Time".

Lovett Sisters

54 Imperial 45-8228Time Out For Love / No More Teardrops
54 Imperial 45-8233 Until I Lost You / I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire
54 Imperial 4X8262 Sometime, Somewhere / Behind My Back - 54
54 Imperial 4X8272 Bacon And Eggs / Little Dirty Face
55 Imperial X8286 Come Home To Me / Mexican Polka
57 Todd 1001 Won't Cha Squeeze Me? / Dear Daddy

Colleen Lovett (except when noted)

45s

58 Coral 62024 Colleen And Her Schoolmates
Mairzy Dotes / My Heart Is On A Merry-Go-Round

58 Brunswick 55099
Out For The Day / Blue Moon

59 Brunswick 55127
Goodnight Sweetheart / I'd've Baked A Cake

59 Stepheny 1836
Wishin' / Cla-Wence

62 Carlton 583 Cindy Rella And Her Stepsisters
He Don't Love Me Anymore / I Want Him To Come Back Home

63 Newport 1452 Colleen Lovett With Teddy Phillips Sextet
Teenage Blues / For The Birds

63 IRC 7919
Scubie-Dubie Scuba Diver / ?

64 Drum Boy 112
Bring Me A Beatle For Christmas / Cla-Wence

66 Dot 16832
Freckle-Faced Soldier / Go-Go Girl

66 Mira 226 Colleen And Teddy
Beachnut / Lonesome Blues

69 or later  P&L
Galveston / Omaha


LPs 


61 Teddy Phillips Quintet, Featuring Colleen Lovett                            
Five Men + 1 Girl   (Carlton 12131)

65 Teddy Phillips Orchestra, Featuring Colleen Lovett
Music You Want To Hear  (Drum Boy 1002)

68 Teddy Phillips /Colleen Lovett & Their Mexicali Brass
Tijuana Sounds (P&L 10357)

74 Colleen Lovett
Birds With Broken Wings (Era 605)

79 Colleen Lovett
Good Grief, It’s... Candy  (Laff A137)

More info here and here

Lunar Flip

Joann Thomas



Lunar Flip (vocal)

Lunar Flip (instrumental)

American Voices Records 1
1970

Recorded in Nashville and

produced by Ray Pennington

Joann Thomas and Gus, her husband

 

Singing duet Gus and Joann Thomas have been for many years, direct from the WWVA Original Jamboree in Wheeling. before coming to WWSM (Lebanon, Pennsylvania) where Joann has a show twice a week.