Sunday, February 3, 2019

Her Phone Number On The Wall




I'm only able to confirm what said Mr. Fab six years ago on his blog "Music For Maniacs" : There is almost no info on Tony Fabbri on the 'net, but all you need to know is that this is seriously some primo outsider awesomeness

Anthony Fabbri (Tony Fabbri, Tony Fabry) was born in 1925.  Out of Hollywood, Tony Fabbri operated, starting from 1961,  Fabbri Records, A Flat & F Sharp Records and Fanum Fortune Records.

In 1977, Tony performed "The. Phone Booth," on the Gong Show, a song he called "an unusual disco original song".  The Gong Show was an amateur talent contest created and originally produced by Chuck Barris, known for its absurdist humor and style, with the actual competition secondary to the often outlandish acts presented.


Too bad, the album Love & Inspirational Songs International posted by Mr. Fab is no longer available.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Kinsey's Book


Frank Wilson
The 4 Horsemen and the Wild Azeleas

Fenway 45-2000
1953

To conduct the groundbreaking sexology research, Kinsey and his colleagues interviewed more than 18,000 men and women. Their questions touched upon subjects like sadomasochism, extramarital relations, frequency of masturbation, and number of partners of the same or opposite sex. Once all the data had been gathered, Kinsey was able to break down sexual trends by age, socioeconomic status, and religion to assemble a portrait of human sexuality. The study demonstrated that some practices (like homosexuality, for example) that were considered socially unacceptable were actually quite common. Alfred Kinsey became a household name following the release of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), two books that are together known as the Kinsey Reports.


. . . .

Despite his success (or perhaps because of it), Kinsey attracted more than his fair share of angry critics during the 1950s. Scandalized conservatives claimed he was supporting a communist agenda by eroding sexual morality and family values in America. The controversy surrounding his name hasn’t let up since Kinsey’s death in 1956. One area of research in particular, his findings on sexual behaviors in children, remains the subject of intense scrutiny today. He gathered the information used in these sections from interviews conducted with a serial child rapist. The man agreed to speak with Kinsey under the condition that he wouldn’t be turned in for his crimes. In a possible move to protect his subject’s identity, Kinsey credited his data on children to many sources instead of just one, undermining the integrity of his work in the eyes of many scientists.
Billboard article, 17 October 1953

Good old Phil Milstein has gathered in session 418 six Kinsey songs including one from Jamaica (Lord Lebby, Kalypso Records)



Sunday, January 27, 2019

Pain Set To Music


Pain Set To Music


*

Original release before the ABC-Paramount release in February 1962.  On the flip side is Last Blast Of The Blasted Bugler.  Both tracks on the original are notably longer (and currently unavailable on YT or anywhere on the net)

According to Fred at 45cat:
This release coincides with the release of the movie, SERGEANTS 3, which is the only movie to feature the entire Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop). The movie was released February 10, 1962.

The premise of the movie was basically an updated re-write of the 1939 classic, GUNGA DIN. The 1939 movie (released February 17, 1939) was about 3 British Sergeants (played by Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) sent on a mission to defeat a Thugee uprising that took place in 19th Century British-India. Sam Jaffe played the title character, loosely based on the Rudyard Kipling poem.

In the 1962 movie, Sinatra, Martin, and Lawford were the three Calvary Seargents involved in a similar situation, only this one taking place in the 1870's American West. Sammy Davis Jr. played the trumpeter this time around who meets the same fate as Jaffe did in the original.

While the extent of the recording far outlives either movie showing of the situation, it more befits a later movie tribute played by Peter Sellers in the opening shot of THE PARTY, released April 4, 1968.

The SERGEANTS 3 connection is solidified by the review of this record in Billboard on February 24, 1962, and even moreso by a similar spoof recorded on MR. PEACOCK Records by Lord Didd, "Gunga Didn't" being reviewed in that very same issue. It was revealed in that same issue (or later) that Lord Didd was in fact NY DJ (at the time), Pete Meyers, otherwise known as "Mad Daddy".
For reasons that have been lost to history, Frank Sinatra rerecorded The Last Blast Of The Blasted Bugler on June 10, 1966, adding his own voice to the brief introductory narration and using the sound effects from the 1962 single.  Was Sinatra considering some sort of dramatic or sopken-word series for Reprise?  The track has only been issued on two very rare semiprivate, collectors-only CDs, Frankly Different and Sinatra Unreleased [*]

Philip Cammarata, the producer, has been art director for True Police Cases, Startling Detective and other (pulp) magazines and has published five books of photographs with humorous (?) captions.


Photo from Who F*arted This Time?, a Phil Cammarata (hilarious?) book
 
Are you still there? If so, please find below a link to a zip of both original tracks