Your Cheatin' Heart

 

Joey Bishop
Your Cheatin' Heart

ABC (1968)

From Joey Bishop Sings Country Western, album issued by ABC Records in 1968. The full album is available HERE

The album is featured in the book The Worst Rock-and-Roll Records of All Time (A Fan’s Guide to the Stuff You Love to Hate) by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell (1991).  I quote :

Highest chart position: did not chart outside of Las Vegas

At this point we’d like to recommend Golden Throats: The Great Celebrity Sing-Off, a wonderful compilation album Rhino Records put out in 1988. It includes popular songs of the sixties («Proud Mary,» «Like a Rolling Stone,» etc.) as attempted over the years by actors-who-wanted-to-sing like Eddie Albert, Sebastian Cabot, Joel Grev, Andy Griffith, Jim Nabors, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Jack Webb, and Mae West. The record is a splendid horror, a joy for those who revel in bad pop, and an (unheeded) warning to future television stars to not get above their raising. Philip-Michael Thomas, don’t you pay attention to anything?

One of the most bizarre of such attempts—and one of the few colossallv bad ones of the sixties not included in Golden Throats—was deadpan comedian Joey Bishop’s attempt to become a country music star. Bishop was a minor member of Frank Sinatra's infamous Rat Pack and was also known as a second-rate Borscht Belt comic and failed late- night TV talk show host. ABC Television featured him in one of their periodic attempts to unseat Johnny Carson. They should have known from the start that "The Joey Bishop Show was doomed to failure: on the first show, guest Ronald Reagan showed up late and another guest, Debbie Reynolds, injured announcer Regis Philbin while showing how to help someone who is on fire. The only thing in flames that night in April 1967 was Bishop’s television career. Not only were his jokes deadpan, but so was his audience.

Probably still under contract to ABC, Bishop moved to their records division. Figuring that his buddies Frank, Sammy, and Dino had the pop-schlock field cornered, he decided to take on country schlock. As Ernie Freeman writes on the back cover ofJoey Bishop Sings Country Western, Joey «approached this album with the same intensity and search for perfection that he brings to his comedy Alas, this is true. And since apologist Freeman is credited as the producer, arranger, and conductor of the record—and as such probably had points on it—it was in his interest to perpetuate the lie that this was a genuine country record. 

Although Bishop predates Kinky Friedman as the original Texas Jewboy, there is nothing outrageous about this album, nothing to indicate that someone known for his alleged sense of humor is the featured artist. Bishop is simply ill-suited for vocalizing. His voice isn’t merely soft; once it touches a word, it evaporates. His off-key singing has zero presence; it sounds like he had so much trouble reading the words on the cue cards that he never got a chance to figure out what the songs meant. And with the responsibility of singing some of the greatest country songs ever (most of them written by or associated with Hank Williams), you can’t get by putting them across in a narcotized fashion. Freeman’s ridiculously overblown arrangements (he makes Billy Sherrill seem like Swamp Dogg) don’t cloak Bishop’s ineptitude. Instead, because there are massive holes in the mix for Bishop’s voice, they just augment the nonsinger’s nontalent. 

It’s hard to tell these ten songs apart, but there is no moment more bizarre than the one at the end of "Your Cheatin’ Heart’ when Bishop drops his high-register whisper and speaks, «Nobody likes a cheatin’ chick,» trying to take a Sinatra-style ad lib. Not only does this mean- spirited comment (he all but spits the words; it’s the only alive moment on the whole album) come out of nowhere—it has no relation to the song—but it exemplifies how Bishop’s smarmy, Vegas/Hollvwood attitude has no relation to the honesty of Hank-stvle country. Joey Bishop Sings Country Western is a record about Bishop’s ego. I’m such a star, he thinks, I can get away with anything. I’m more important than these stupid hillbilly songs. Forget that I can't sing—I’m Joey Bishop!

 

Women Of Music Volume 5

 

Another volume of female singers including at least one real killer record.  According to Wikipedia, on June 29, 1966, in the excitement and celebration of the event of the release of Velva Darnell first recording, her father, age 59, had a massive heart attack and died while listening to the record.

The Janis Martin cover My Boy Elvis by Sharon Rayton has been the first track of a compilation called British Rock 'n' Beat Volume 4 A Tribute To Diana Dors. I can't find anything about that artist and the original release could be taken out of a 45 issued in UK, but I don't know the original label (South Africa ?).

That's Bette Kirby on the cover above.

 Women Of Music Volume 5

Tiger Man

 

Bob Vido (self-portrait)
detail from his LP cover

Tiger Man

This is from his mid-seventies album "One Man Band Bob Vido" 

Robert Zaprian Tchomoneff Vidoloff, aka Bob Vido, a mysterious outsider artist and musician.

On August 4th, 1995, an 80-year old man died in his tiny, old-style Hollywood bungalow. The same place he'd been living for nearly 50 years. He had no children and he was not married. He left a checking account with a few hundred dollars, a couple small parcels of land in the desert, a rusted 1971 Toyota with 4 flat tires, and a $45 dentist bill (for a restored post and crown). He was born in 1915.

Some bio found here

Charlie & Charles and The Guitar Rockers

 

Water Dog

Chicken Thief

Listed at Rockin' Country Style. No clips, no date, no location, not compiled. This 45 continues to resist my research.

No copyright found. Dorrough Publications, publisher of both songs, is still a mystery and can't be found anywhere or on another record. Only few clues :

The sawtooth lines, part ot the label design, appears to have been used (exclusively?) by Co-Service Printing Company from Newark, N.J. and these lines are found on East Coast labels (Upstate New York and New York City, from the most part).

Masters numbers W 157/W 158 seem to belong to a list named K series / W series listed here at 45cat, That would indicate a 1963 pressing.

Hevrin name is uncommon. Most people with this name (of Irish descent) in the USA are from New Hampshire and Connecticut.

The only other band named "Guitar Rockers" was the Ricky Coyne band, from Boston, Massachusetts, but I don't think there is any relation.

 

Crossword

 

Too late for submit your answer and win a free 1-year subscription to Yesterday's Memories. But have fun anyway. Crossword concocted by Ron Weinger.

Get Thee Behind Me Satan

 

Arnold Silva

 Get Thee Behind Me Satan 

The religious Sunshine Records was rather prolific with most of the releases featuring Bud Chambers and his wife Darlene. This Arnold Silva (only?) record is probably from the seventies.

Bud Chambers at Gloryland Jubilee

https://www.discogs.com/fr/label/801931-Sunshine-Records-24

 

Women of Music Volume 4

 

Shirley Serban on cover
and some labels too...

A lumber truck hitted Frances Cannon in 1979, an event which was not without consequences : she soon began to levitate objects spontaneously over hundreds of miles. And this was not the least of the wonders accomplished by Frances. For example, she predicted Marie Osmond's remarriage on The David Letterman Show.  Star’s Ghost is from from Frances Cannon and The Extraterrestrials « The Singing Psychic » issued by Crystal Ball Productions, out of Dallas, Texas.
More on her prodigies at https://worldsworstrecords.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-singing-psychic.html

Also from Texas (Ft. Worth) came Pam Norton who issued at least three singles on the Stargo label operated by Charles E.  DeFrance (1929-2019). Charles started investing in real estate when he was in his early 20s and worked for Bell Helicopter in 1963 and retired in 2002. He enjoyed recording music in his spare time.

Spare time, Shirley Serban had quite a few. While bored during covid pandemic lockdowns, one middle-aged New Zealander school principal took to creating parodies of popular songs and sharing them to her YouTube account. Shirley Serban wanted to use some comedic relief to spice things up during an otherwise dark and desolate time around the world.

Around the world, that's where the Duncan Sisters (Los Angeles-born Vivian and Rosetta)  took their show Topsy and Eva when it closed in New York, playing England, France, Germany, and much of South America. In 1923, the Duncan Sisters had created that show a musical adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. On December 11, 1959, while driving home from a nightclub engagement at Mangam's Chateau in Lyons, on the outskirts of Chicago, Rosetta Duncan's car struck a bridge; she died three days later.

From California were Westphal Records (in Fontana, Jeannie Emerson), Far-Dell (in Riverside, Jolene) and Toppa (in Covina, Nancy Kaye). 

And Ohio was the home of Perry (Linda Burnette), Arizona was the home of LHI, (Linda Owens), from Louisiana came Margaret Lewis, while Shirley Faye hailed from Georgia and Tena Quick from Arkansas.
 

Women of Music Volume 4 

 

Astronote Blues

 

Big John

Astronote Blues

Astrol Records PB-764 (Capitol Records custom pressing)
1963

Tiny Memphis label. They are only two other records on Astrol Records, all from 1963 : Calvin Newborn and Johnny Scott (later owner of the Portra label). Who was Big John, I don't know. 

But the guitarist on his record is certainly Calvin Newborn, a member of the Newborn jazz dynasty. He played on BB King's vinyl debut "BB's Boogie" on the Bullet label. That's Calvin on guitar with father Finas (or Phineas) Newborn Sr. on drums and brother Phineas Jr. on piano. The family band held down the floor at Memphis' Flamingo Room every weekend (where young Calvin often beat Pee Wee Crayton in legendary after-hours "Battles of the Blues") and even hit the road as Ike Turner's band with "Rocket 88"  

Ike Turner taught Calvin how to drive - in return, Calvin taught Ike his first guitar licks. Calvin also taught Elvis Presley how to gyrate, using his own "Calvin's Boogie" as inspiration for hip-shaking.