Sunday, September 30, 2018

Playboy


Born in Memphis, Tennessee around 1935 Charles Jones, better known as Jeb Stuart, had a long musical career.  From the beginning of his career, Stuart seems to have oriented himself toward the white audience. He grew up idolising Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Elvis, Fats Domino, and Little Richard, and left Memphis to study at the Chicago Conservatory of Music under Frank Lavere, one of the writers of Nat King Cole's hit ''Pretend''.  This Zale single is missing from his various  discographies available online.


While in Chicago and before he came back to Memphis, he recorded these four singles :
My Dearest Treasure / My Silent Heart  ~ WING 90068 -1956 (As Charles Jones)
Bring Down The Curtain / Playboy  (As Charlie Jones)   ZALE 1301-21957
You Forgot About Me / All Broken Up ~ (As Jeb Stuart) MAESTRO 1004/5   1959
Ichaban Josan / What A Beautiful Face ~ (As Jeb Stuart) SHAR 2 - 1959
Also, while in Chicago, Charles Jones/Jeb Stuart managed Faith Taylor & The Sweet Teens (Federal and Bea & Baby Records).


More info:

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Wild



Recorded for the Mecca label, in West Seattle, by Joe Boles in 1959.  The Vanguards added the Du-ettes as vocalists, and performed together on the Seattle Bandstand TV show.  The Du-ettes (Bonnie Dee Sloan and Annie Laurie Sloan) were the daughters of Sterling (Bud) Sloan, owner of Mecca Records (920 3rd Avenue Seattle, Washington)
 



Wild

 

Monday, September 24, 2018

Crying Time


Maxwell-56 45-M200
Sara Jo with The Trovadores

Song written by Donald E. Teachout, also known as recording artist Troy Onteare and also owner of this tiny (three singles) Maxwell-56 label out of Wheeling, West Virginia. From 1964.


Honey Buggie


A former student of Millikan Junior High School, Linda Green of North Hollywood was discovered by Muriel Sanders and Jack Elton;  they've been coaching her for a couple of years when Ray Bolger (actor who played Scarecrow in MGM's classic The Wizard of Oz in 1939) was lucky to hear about her.  And 13-year Linda Green soon appeared in 1960 with Jerry Lewis and Ray Bolger in night club dates in Las Vegas. When she returned from a four-week stay in Las Vegas, pressure of recording and engagements soon forcing her to drop out of junior high and she attended Hollywood Professional School with such young recording stars as Cathy Young and Brenda Lee

Fred De Moss wrote "Honey Buggie".  From Yorba Linda, where Nixon was also a resident, Fred De Moss later wrote a pro-Nixon song, "Richard Nixon Is The Man".


Saturday, September 22, 2018

Jelly-Bean


Obscure group on the equally obscure Carthay label.  The Galaxys 45 is rare, that's all about I can say about them. 

Incorporated in January 1959, Carthay Records, first located at 1614 N. Argyle in Hollywood,  released their first release in April 1959,  an unreleased master recorded the previous summer by the thrush Mimi Harp and heavily promoted by KLAC radio. According to Cash Box, August 16, 1958
     . . . To help bring talent to the attention of record companies,
    radio  station KLAC-Hollywood, Calif, inaugurated a “Sun-
    day Scoop” series Sunday, Aug. 3rd, with a spin every 15
    minutes from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. of an unreleased master record.
    The first waxing to get the treatment was “Going To Heaven
    Ridin’ a Mule”, recorded by Mimi Harp. Total plays were 52 for the period.
Shortly after the first release, Carthay moved not too far at 1608 N. Argyle and issued five more singles in 1959 and 1960.  A last release, five years later oddly enough, were on a Denver, Colorado band, The Fogcutters, record which was leased to Liberty Records.



Carthay label discography

101      Mimi Harp    
A - The Morning After (The Night Before) (Winn, Gould, Lidville BMI)
B -  Goin' To Heaven (Ridin' On A Mule) (Joe Lilley, Mark Warnow ASCAP)
     Arranged And Conducted by Danny Gould
     Promotion :  Irwin Zucker
     Master purchased (but not issued?) by Ed Brown prexy of Mun Rab Records

102      Zola And His Horn
A - The Slide (H. Winn, Moonbeam Music Co. BMI)
B - Marching To The Coliseum (E. Alperson Jr., N. Malkin, Fairlane Music, Lansdowne Music (ASCAP)

103      The Galaxys
A - Jelly-Bean (Dwight Davis, Moonbeam Music Co.)
B -  A Lover's Prayer (Robert Robertson, Moonbeam Music Co.)

104      Mickie Adrienne
A -  I'll Remember Johnny (Walter Straub, Moonbeam Music Co)
B -  Mr. Heartbreak (R. Freed, B. Weber  , Fairlane Music ASCAP)

105      Johnny Prophet
A -  (I've Got) Two Arms (Winn-Gould, Lidville Music Co BMI)
B -  Find A Penny (Winn-Gould, Lidville Music Co BMI)
Arranged And Conducted By Danny Gould

110      Bob Grabeau (1960)
A - (I'm Gonna) Be You (Alperson-Winn, Fairlane Music Corp. ASCAP)
B - Passing By (Alperson-Winn, Fairlane Music Corp. ASCAP)

777      The Fogcutters (1965)
A - You Say  (Eric Karl Circle Seven BMI)
B - Cry, Cry, Cry!  (Don Cameron, Circle Seven BMI) 
           Leased To Liberty Records, Issued on Liberty 55793



Friday, September 21, 2018

Pianola Pete



Newark-born Harriet Kay by the time she was nine was singing "professionally" at weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc. At 12 she made her first TV appearance as one of Marie Moser's Starlets like Connie Francis among other young artists over Newark's WATV. 

Her first record was also the initial release on the Gibraltar label, which was part of Gibraltar Music, a publishing enterprise operated by Bill Harrington. Other records followed on Jubilee, Dawn and X, all released in 1955.  

In 1957 lots of things happened to her.  Firstly, she changed her name (she didn't like her old one). Her hair, once a wicked platinum blonde, was now just a semi-provocative honey blonde. And she was signed to a major company that issued on her about ten singles and one album between 1957 and 1959.



Thursday, September 13, 2018

Dark Glasses



Billy Joe Royal needs no introduction.  This is his second single for Boots Woodall's Fairlane label issued in January 1962. Both sides written by Joe South.


Billy Joe was earlier the featured vocalist with the Savannah, Georgia band of Buddy Livingston, The band once included Billy Joe Royal, Joe South and Ray Stevens.

Buddy Livingston was considered the Elvis of the Coastal Empire and played all over the area, including at the Bamboo Ranch in Savannah and the Barn.   Buddy played bass guitar and was the lead man for the band. They played almost every night at a club called "The Bamboo Ranch" and even had their own 30-minute television show on WTOC for a while.

They hired a young singer named Billy Joe Royal, and before long, the band was called "Buddy Livingston and the Versatones--- featuring Billy Joe Royal."







Wednesday, September 12, 2018

You Ain't Gonna Get It




Ellen Sutton  had relocated to the West Coast at age 17 in 1941 from her native Pittsburgh to appear on Gene Autry's radio show.  That year she also recorded for Columbia's Okeh subsidiary  as Ella Sutton.  In 1943, the young vocalist, reportedly 240 pounds, was teamed with The Prairie Pioneers for the Camel Caravan musical show which toured the Western States in 1943. 

Camel Caravan (in tribute to the sponsor's product, Camel cigarettes),  a regular series of country music tours to stateside military bases, was organized by Nashville promoter J.L. Frank along with Grand Ole Opry manager Harry Stone,.

In the early fifties, Ellen Sutton had several records with pianist Sir Hubert Pimm.  On this Kem recording from 1952
she's backed by Sam Weiss on drums, Buddy Cole on piano, Barney Kessel on guitar and Paul Sarmento on bass.  There was a last (?) record on Kem, "You Can't Buffalo Me" in 1953 also with the backing of Sir Hubert Pimm.

What happened to her after 1953 is not known.



Monday, September 10, 2018

My Lover


Sugar And Sweet

Cozette and Marshall Morris were Sugar And Sweet.  Besides that, I can't find much about this duet, despite some ten records issued in the sixties and seventies.   Their discography can be found here (n.b. the Excello single issued in 1956 is probably not by them).  Mel Alexander wrote both sides (and possibly produced the record), while James Carmichael was the arranger.

The duo was managed in the mid-sixties by Charles Cascales.  This is the same booking agent who, in 1974,  was accused in a federal indictment of passing off several female quartets as The Shirelles.  Part of the undoing began when the bogus Shirelles were playing in Phoenix and Omaha, while at the same time the real Shirelles were entertaining 20;000 fans packed into Madison Square Garden.  Most of the bogus groups were Mexican-Americans and sometimes a white was thrown in for good mesure. [see Jet Magazine, 18 April 1974)

"Cool It Baby", the flipside, can be found at YT.

Friday, September 7, 2018

Let's


Boston singer who had two singles on the X label, a RCA subsidiary in 1954-1955.  Other records are on Mood and Hub.  According to a snippet published by Jet Magazine (September 24, 1953) "Jan Strickland, Boston's gift to swooners over crooners, lives with his white manager and the daughters of the family regard him as a brother. "



Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Live Like A King


Teen-Beats
featuring Don Frassa
Las Vegas Strip Records
1962


From Billy Miller's article published in Kicks magazine #7 :

Don [Frassa] sez of their first record sesh in '61: "Me, Larry, and Lyle went to this little recording studio caled Chollie Music in Westside, the black part of town.  It was actually this guy Chollie Wright's house and we recorded in his bedroom which was covered with egg cartons.  We didn't even have drums there.  We used a Sparklette water rack, the metal part where the jug goes in.  We were so shitty!  It took us forever to record that thing.  "That thing, as Don Calls it, turned out to be a wailin' stomper called "Live Like A King", originally written by Chollie in 1957 for the famed LA R&B group the Twilighters who cut a rippin' version on Ebb.  Before relocatin' his "operation" to Las Vegas, Wright masterminded some legendary West Coasr group records on his own Cholly label. He's also to be saluted for the impossibly rare "Annie Kicked The Bucket" by The Nutones on the Hollywood Stars label.

Kicks full article (my scan)
Ah! That unforgettable sweet tar-odor printing ink!

Billy Miller, editor of Kicks Magazine and owner of Norton Records, died in 2016. See you soon, Billy...


Monday, September 3, 2018

Elvira

June LaSalvia


June LaSalvia, then June Dussia, was already a nationally recognized authority in age group gymnastics when she came from Florida to Nashville, Tennessee in the mid-seventies.  She is noted as one of the first yogis in the Nashville area.

She wrote some songs in the seventies recorded by country artists such as Charley Pride, Sammi Smith or Dolly Parton's younger sister, Stella. 

Aerobics music was the trend in 1982, as noted by Richard Harrington in an article published by The Washington Post (May 22, 1982) In Tone With the Music :
The fastest selling discs in any record store these days are not likely to be by Pat Benatar or Rod Stewart or John Denver; it's Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons, Joannie Creggains and Carol Hensel who are hot now.

What they're pitching are not Rocky Mountain highs, but sleek and sexy thighs. And, with the exception of Simmons, these newest recording stars aren't even singing, they're barking out instructions as direct as any marine drill sergeant: SHAPE UP! ...
And indeed, in 1982, June La Salvia recorded her own exercice program, backed by The Lean Jeans Band.  Her "Country Aerobics" album, "How The Waist Was Won", was produced by Sidney Singleton at The Singleton Sound Studios and issued on Plantation Records.



Saturday, September 1, 2018

Joe Therrien, Jr.

A country veteran from Springfied, Massachusetts, Joe Therrien Jr. was entering his late twenties when he converted to the rock and roll faith.  Therrien formed the Rockets in 1956 and toured the lowspots of Massachusetts and neighbouring Connecticut.  In 1957 his manager got him a one-shot recording session with Lido, a subsidiary of Bruce Records. The session was cut in a studio above the Satan Club in Times Square on March 25, 1957

For more info see Joe Therrien Jr, The Story That's Never Been Told by Jungle Jim Arslanian at RHoF website



Discography
Lido 505 - Hey Babe! Let's Go Downtown / Come Back To Me Darling (1957)
Brunswick 55005 - Hey Babe! Let's Go Downtown / Come Back To Me Darling (1957)
Brunswick 55017 - Wheels / You're Long Gone, Billboard 5 Aug 1957
Brunswick 55017 - Wheels / Rock-A-Billy Boogie
JAT 101 - I Ain't Gonna Be Around Anymore / Play Me A Blue Song (1959)
Sentinel 8905 - Tell Me / Siam (1961)