I The Dentist

 

Brook Arnold - I The Dentist

 
From Columbine Records NST 20 (The Now Sounds Of Today)

 

Ay Ya Ya Ya........

 

Repressed Hostility Blues

 

Katie Lee, The Grand Dame of Dam Busting, in 1957

 Katie Lee - Repressed Hostility Blues

From her album Katie Lee sings Songs Of Couch and Consultation issued by Commentary Records, a small company formed by Bud Freeman and his colllaborator Leon Pober in Hollywood .

Kathryn Louise Lee (1919–2017) was an American folk singer, actress, writer, photographer and environmental activist.

From the 1950s, Lee often sang about rivers and white water rafting. She was a vocal opponent of Glen Canyon Dam, which closed its gates in 1963, and called for the canyon to be returned to its natural state.
 

Allmusic:

Jazz saxophonist Bud Freeman came up with the idea for Songs of Couch & Consultation, a cult classic comedy album that pokes fun at psychoanalysis and psychiatric jargon. Freeman wrote a dozen songs' worth of lyrics, which Leon Pober set to music and Bob Thompson arranged. Katie Lee, an extraordinarily pretty folk singer who previously recorded an album for Specialty called Spicy Songs for Cool Knights, was brought in to sing and pose for the cheesecake album cover. The songs describe an assortment of neuroses and psychiatric conditions in a variety of musical styles, delivered with a heavy dose of hand-wringing self-scrutiny. There's ragtime, big-band blues, and even cowboy music as Lee coos her way through topics such as schizophrenia, repressed hostility, and maladjustment. "Hush Little Sibling" lampoons parenting manuals and the venerated Dr. Spock, and "The Will to Fail" identifies a drive Nietzsche missed. The irony is that the sophisticated humor targets an educated audience that is also the group most likely to embrace psychiatric jargon and theories. Reprise reissued the album with a less striking cover, so the original Commentary Records pressing is the one to find.

 

Mirror, Mirror

 

Miss Marian (Marian Hall)

 Mirror, Mirror

wr. Pete Beck, Mayon Music (ASCAP)
Produced by Hal Southern
Boxoffice 1128 N. Hobart, Hollywood, Calif., 90029 

1970

Marian Hall (1934-2006) : Marian deserves to be better known for her many accomplishments as a live television pioneer, resourceful and innovative steel guitar soloist, vocalist and songwriter. Marian became a familiar face on live TV in Los Angeles in the 1950s as part of the Town Hall Party cast along with “superpickers”, Joe Maphis and Merle Travis. Marian spent time gigging with Tex Ritter's Ranch Party, Tex Williams band, and even Spade Cooley's all-girl orchestra. [quote from the Steel Guitar Forum]

Interesting reading here at the Vintage Guitar Magazine website.

Learning To Rock

Joan Gardner
Learning To Rock
(Gardner, Mitchell & Halpern)

Hollywood Recording Guild 1024
1956

 

Joan Gardner (1928-1992)

Joan Gardner was an American voice specialist. Screenwriter, songwriter, actress, author and composer, educated at Los Angeles Community College. She began working in films in 1946, worked in television for seven years, and later joined the UPA studios. Joining ASCAP in 1964, her chief musical collaborators included Adelaide Halpern (her mother), and her popular-song compositions included "Learnin' to Rock", "Spelling Rock 'n Roll", "Good Ship Rock 'n Roll", "Toy Piano Boogie", and "Holly Time".

She wrote the screenplay of "The Beach Girls and the Monster" (1965) produced by her husband Ed Janis, and "A Man For Hanging" (telefilm, 1972)

Stairway To Love

 

Stairway To Love
(Aiken-Salisbury-Davis)

The Poka-Dotts

Modern 945

1954

Wooly Booly

Melveen Reed
Bernie Hal-Mann Orch.

Wooly Booly

Ligaya L-5002

Melveen Leed - born Melveen Ku'uleipuanani Leed, "Da Tida", was born and raised on the island of Molokai. She attended Kilohana Elementary & Intermediate School,Molokai, Radford High School, Honolulu (1961 grad.), Honolulu Business College,and Maui Technical School, Kahului, Maui (1963). As far back as her early childhood she liked the art of music and especially to sing. As she developed her talent for vocalizing, there were many avenues for her to follow. The music native to her people and the islands was foremost, but also she liked to delve into jazz, country, and mainstream pop music. During the mid nineteen sixties, Leed was honored as Miss Molokai and at about the same time began her "long and winding road" as one of Hawaii's premier performers.

Broken Down Ugly Thing

 

Billy Hines

Broken Down Ugly Thing

Ball Records 510
1961

Ball Records label launched by John Dolphin in 1957.  John Dolphin was killed at his record company in 1958 by a disgruntled songwriter. His wife, Ruth Dolphin, took over Dolphin's of Hollywood after his death.

Billy Hines has recorded for Tin Pan Alley, Ball and his own Wa-Tusi label. I'm unable to find much details on him (euphemism), he came possibly from Jamaica to New York in the fifties before finding his way to California.

Harper Valley P.T.A.

Bobbie Dee

Megatone #706
4-D Sound by Jack E. Downes
Hollywood, Calif.

Harper Valley P.T.A.

No info. Three references found about live performance by one Bobbie Dee :

• Bobbie Dee (The Brown Eyed Princess of Country Music) in Ontario
• Bobbie Dee The Country Vibrations (New Jersey, 1976)
• At The Frontier Lodge in Alaska (1980)

But perhaps none by the same artist. 

Tipsy Topsy Turvey

Lee Scott



Tipsy Topsy Turvey

Song-poem issued on Hollywood's Columbine Records on one of their "The Now Sounds Of Today" albums. The song has been also compiled on Songs in the Key of Z (volume 3).

Columbine Records made hundreds of different albums with this exact same title and cover art. They were never sold in stores. They only pressed 50 or so copies of each, which were only offered for sale to the people who actually had songs on them.  Columbine would also send a few copies to radio stations (as promised in their ads), who would always throw them away unopened.

From Philadelphia, Lee Scott made her initial appearance on records for the Wynne label in 1959 . She has appeared on radio and television in the Philadelphia area, and has also appeared in some of the leading supper clubs throughout the country.  Her musicial talents were not merely confined to vocalizing. She studied piano for many years and gained quite a reputation in her native philadelphia as a popular jazz and concert pianist.

She was also a songwriter herself.  Among the songs she wrote : Six Button Benny (The Nite Riders, Teen and Swan),  By Now (Billy Duke, Sound), Forget Me Not (The Fabulous Dials, D'n'B) and "The Conservative"(The Orlons, Cameo Records in 1962)

Her real name was Dollee Escourt, a name she also used for writing or recording songs.  (there was at least one record issued as by Dollee Escourt on the Malvern label)

Anna Caspelle, the composer of Tipsy Topsy Turvey, died in 2008 in Rapid City, South Dakota.  Also known as Natalie Leonesio, she copyrighted several songs and stories in the mid-seventies, "The Planet Crazoid Speaks" and "Star Gazer and Vega (The Blue One)",  just to name a few.

Above : Columbine Records ad

From Ebony Magazine, July 1981

St. James Infirmary

Dean Jones
Joe Leahy Orchestra


St. James Infirmary

88 Brand Records
1960

Dean Carroll Jones (1931-2015)

After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, Dean Jones got a job acting in a melodrama at Knott's Berry Farm. He was spotted by veteran composer Vernon Duke, who was planning a musical. The musical project fell through, but Duke enabled Jones an audition with Arthur Freed, the famous producer of MGM feature film musicals such as "Singin' In the Rain." It did not go as planned. "He's an actor, not singer!" Arthur Freed exclaimed.  Still, the studio signed Jones, and in his first credited role, he found himself acting opposite James Cagney in the 1956 drama "These Wilder Years." 

Dean had mostly small roles of a far grittier nature than his later Disney fare. "I played drug addicts, pimps, hard-cased killers, ex-cons and angry young men," he told The Times in 1995.

Beginning with 1965's "That Darn Cat!," Dean became closely identified with Disney family fare. In addition to the "Love Bug" and "The Ugly Dachshund," he was the leading man in "Monekys, Go Home," "The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit," "The Million Dollar Duck," "The Shaggy D.A.," "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" and other Disney feature films.

But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was leading an off-screen life contrary to his wholesome image. He had numerous affairs and was drinking heavily. "I had thought if I became a star I'd be happy," he said in a 1976 L.A.Times interview. "I had thought if I had a fairly large amount of money I'd be happy. I thought if I had a house on a hill I'd be happy. I thought if I had a Ferrari I'd be happy. One goal after another was accomplished. And with no fulfillment." Jones was able to keep his torment largely separated from his work life. Even the head of the studio was fooled. "I remember having lunch with Walt one day, and he told me, 'Dean, you're a perfect fit for these pictures. You're such a good family man!'" Jone's told the Pantagraph. "I wasn't a good family man," Jones said. "I was showing up at home smelling of perfume that wasn't my wife's.".

........More on Dean Jones at IMDb   

Swing Little Carmella

Two curiously similar instrumentals.  Both from the early sixties.

"Swing Little Carol" by The Renegades, a Butte, Montana band produced in Spokane Washington at Sound Recording Company. Lead Guitar – Cliff Champeau.

"Carmella" by the Tommy Scott band with Gaines (Jr.) Blevins on guitar on the Katona label out of Hollywood in the Starday custom series.

The Renegades


Tommy Scott Band

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.

My Lover

My Guy On Nine

Becky Cooper
Her only record?
1963


My Guy On Nine


Patiently

Red Tiger Shoes

The Century-Five

Red Tiger Shoes

From 1960 on the tiny Belmont label out of Hollywood, possibly owned by Steve Riggio.

Bread

The Players

Bread

Power 45-14214

1956

Lyrics by Ernest Torres Chavez, music by Irving Marcus.  

Biography of Ernest Chavez found at IMDb :

Date of Birth     31 August 1927, Watsonville, California, USA
Date of Death     19 September 1992, Palo Alto, California, USA  (brain tumor)

As a five year old boy, the story goes, Ernest Torres Chavez would scale a fence next to the family's first home in North 11th Street in San Jose, California, and quietly enter the house next door. The neighbors then would be surprised to hear the boy making noise on the guitars stored in the back room. The music stayed with him. He left San Jose High School at the age of 17 to join the National Guard, where he played tenor sax at his base in Tacoma, Washington. Released from active duty in 1947, Ernie joined the San Jose jazz combo called Three Bees and a Queen. He played around the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. The group, which also featured pianist Jose Castro and singer Treasure Ford, reached its high point in the early 1950's when it was given second billing at the London Palladium. In the 1950's he settled in Los Angeles, where he played for several years with Cuban-American composer Rene Touzet and his Latin jazz orchestra. He also worked as a member of the house band at the Band Box, a well-known comedy nightclub. It was there that Don Rickles often used Mr. Chavez as a straight man, hurling racial slurs at him while Mr. Chavez chuckled and the audience roared. One night Mr. Chavez came back with a swipe of his own, recalled Rita Chavez-Law who married Mr. Chavez in 1950. "Some day I want to be just like you, Mr. Rickles" he said. "How's that?" Rickles asked. "Vicious." said Mr. Chavez. The audience roared. Rickles never asked him back on the stage after that. Other LA stints included music arrangements for Nancy Wilson and filling in for recording sessions with band leader Harry James. He also had a one-time speaking role in "The Ring". Other bit parts included Musician roles in "strangers When We Meet" and a spot on the TV series "Bourbon Street Beat." After his divorce in early 1960's Mr. Chavez returned to San Jose. He played sax and flute for lounge combos around the Bay Area for 30 years. A working musician until health problems took him off the stage, Mr. Chavez developed a brain tumor and died in 1992.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Richard J. Gonzales, Jr.

Geneva's Blues

Geneva Vallier

Geneva's Blues

Cash Records 1009
1955

The flip is “Said You Had A Woman”, answer to the Ray Charles smash “I’ve Got A Woman.” available on several compilations and on YouTube

West Coast night club vocalist, Geneva Vallier was born Geneva Griffin near Crew Lake, Richmond Parrish in 1918.  She recorded with the Emanon Trio on Swing Time Records (1952) and with Clarence "Candyman" McGuirt  on Irma Records (1956).

Geneva died Geneva Phipps in Los Angeles County in 1982

The Power Of A Prayer

Teena Magin

and The Bystanders
The Power Of A Prayer
 Joe Lubin - Hal Roberts
Denn Mus. Co.
Demon FF-1502
1958

Here you have the full Teena Magin discography, one song, just one song, on the new Demon Records, formed by Joe Greene, veteran songwriter and arranger, most recently with Liberty Records.
This is a Joe Lubin production from 1956 which was actually first issued on his own Debb Records.

The flip is credited to Ray Johnson and The Bystanders.

According to Bruce Eder:

Joe Lubin was one of the very few traditional songwriters to find a lucrative career in rock & roll, even as he continued to write for vocalists such as Doris Day. His career ran from the 1940s through the '70s, and into publishing as well as songwriting, across several genres, and also bridged two continents. He was born Joseph Lubinsky in London's East End, in the middle of a World War I air raid, and showed an interest in music and singing from an early age, which led him into songwriting. He joined the Royal Air Force after the outbreak of the Second World War, but an injury returned him to civilian life in 1941, and he spent most of the war as an air raid warden. One night during a bombing raid, he found himself on Denmark Street in London, a center of the music business, and met Noel Gay, the composer/publisher -- amid falling German bombs -- who signed him to a contract soon after. He saw some initial success with "I'm Sending My Blessings," recorded by Vera Lynn, and Anne Shelton's rendition of "Till Stars Forget to Shine" (both 1944). His 1948 composition, "The Shoemaker's Serenade," was recorded by a young Petula Clark as well as the Five Smith Brothers and the Radio Revellers.   ..more info...

But who is/was Teena Magin ?  Did she recorded just this song ?

Kind Words

Wendy Andrews
Kind Words

Bertha Druding, Therese Music ASCAP

D.V. Records 901

 

No info.  Hollywood label certainly.  No other known releases on D.V. Records. 

Answers From The Bottle

Little Leon Payne

Hard Row To Hoe

Answers From The Bottle

 Geneni Records TG-003

 Arranged By Vic Lance

Producer T.V. Mikel's
  T.V. Mikel's Film Productions, Inc.
1966

This is Albert Leon Payne, son of Dusty Payne, His father recorded two collectible rockabilly singles in 1956-1957.  Little Leon started recording when he was 9 or 10, toured, played for years and.retired from music around 2000.  "Answers From The Bottle" was previously recorded by Sonny Leonard for Radco Records (produced by Dusty Payne, 1963)

Little Leon Payne Discography

DACO 701 : History Of Love / King Of The Hills (1962)
RADCO 703/704: Cindy Lou / I Like Girls (1962, With The Playmates)
GENENI 003-004 : .Hard Row To Hoe / .Answers From The Bottle (1966)
BEN HUR 711  : Hard Roe To Hoe / Angel Judy (as by Leon Payne, date unknown)

Vic Lance, the arranger, had the only other record known on the Geneni label.  Born in 1939 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA as Victor Lewis Lance, he was an actor and composer, known for Weekend Lovers (1969), Lila (1968) and The Exotic Dreams of Casanova (1971).  See imbd.com

Ted V. Mikels (born Theodore Mikacevich in 1929, in St. Paul, Minnesota) is a filmmaker primarily of the horror cult film genre. Movies that he has both produced and directed include Girl in Gold Boots (1968), The Astro-Zombies (1968), and The Doll Squad (1973).   One of his first movie, The Black Klansman (a.k.a. I Crossed The Color Line),  did well at the box office, and was successful enough for Mikels to start his own distribution company: Geneni Film Distributing.   Released in 1965 — a time when public interest in civil rights was at its peak — the film is about a black man who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan trying to learn who killed his daughter.   In true exploitation fashion, the film features plenty of interracial bed-hopping.

Billboard ad, 26 November 1966

Address of Geneni Records is the address of the MGM studios, where T.V. Mikels had an office

Rock And Roll Wedding

 

Bixie Crawford

How Big A Fool

Rock And Roll Wedding

Empire Records 45-102
1956

"Rock And Roll Wedding" was also recorded the same year by Helen Grayco (Vik Records), Ella Mae Morse (Capitol Records) and Sunny Gale (RCA Victor Records). 

Bixie Crawford was born Birdie Marjorie Hairston in 1921 in Guthrie, seat of the Logan County, in north-central Oklahoma just to the north of Oklahoma City.     She attended Fisk and Lincoln Universities, where she majored in music, studying the piano, the alto sax, and the congas. Benny Carter heard her singing at a picnic in a park one day and hired her the next day.

After about a year in Carter's band, she worked in the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra shortly before the leader died in 1947.

She did three months with Count Basie and gigged with Louis Jordan in 1949-1950, then became a schoolteacher in Los Angeles. When Count Basie reestablished his big band in 1951, she was invited to join and remained with him for about three years. 

Bixie Crawford recordings can also be found on Exclusive (with Buddy Banks orchestra, 1946), King (1949), RCA (1951), United (1953), C Note (1956) and Indigo (1960).

In the early sixties, she returned to school teaching.  She was then known as Bixie Crawford Wyatt.  She died in 1988 in Culver Cirty, California.

As Bixie Harris, she recorded "Patience and Fortitude" (a vocal duet with the leader) on 

Benny Carter's January 5, 1946 record date for DeLuxe (which took place in New York City).

 

 

Bixie Crawford, 1953