Another Cup of Your Sugar

Another Cup of Your Sugar

Barry Tiffin is probably best known for "Candy Bars for Elvis", a recitation number; here he is on hiw own Sugar Records, out of Nashville, produced by Troy Shondell in 1970.

Thanks to Doug Firebaugh, who had an album produced by Barry Tiffin, I can bring to light some details about the man : 

The underbelly of Music City harbors countless hustlers and hucksters parlaying real or imagined music industry connections into “services” offered for a price to dreamers with a few bucks to squander. Often a grey area between sincere and scam, Barry Tiffin had just such a racket, but his father’s illness brought him home to Roanoke. A classified ad placed in a 1975 High Point, North Carolina newspaper reveals the angle: “For an appointment and additional information concerning the Professional Music Services of Tiffin Music Enterprises International, of Nashville, Tenn., please contact our office suite at the Ramada Inn in Roanoke, VA.”

Twenty-year-old Doug Firebaugh was referred through a mutual friend to Tiffin, but he entered the arrangement with eyes open. “We had an attorney involved in this,” recalled Firebaugh. Money was paid to have Tiffin to produce an album and contact record labels on the artist’s behalf. Three solid days in Roanoke’s K.A. studio resulted in an unadorned document of Firebaugh’s autodidactic style of songwriting. Firebaugh plays both piano and guitar throughout, with the only addition being an unnamed Nashville pedal steel player who drove six hours for the session before turning around going home. The clip-art cover of the resultant LP positions Tiffin’s Sugar Records imprint far more prominently than the artist’s name.

Also, an article from The Bee from Danville, Virginia (July 3, 1975) related:

Supervisors in Botetourt County may have succeeded in silencing a bigger-than-Woodstock rock concert planned for this historic Western Virginia community in September. the promoter had claimed the Sept. 19-21 weekend concert would draw 800,000 spectators and gross $20 million. Promoter Barry Tiffin said Wednesday he has all but given up on going through with promoting the three-day rock performance which he believes would have outdrawn the now famous Woodstock concert. Tiffin made the statement in the wake of an emergency ordinance quietly adopted by the board of supervisors May 21. He said the ordinance makes Refugees Get Senior the concert an impossibility. Tiffin, who promoted a concert at the Roanoke Civic Center last week, said he worked on plans for the Botetourt County rock festival for 18 months.

But Board Chairman Harold Wilhelm said Tiffin never approached him about the concert, and that he has never seen the promoter. He said the emergency ordinance was not directed at Tiffin's proposed concert; that the supervisors had been working on an ordinance regulatning outdoor musicals for some time

Not surprisingly, Barry Tiffin is one the Candidates For Immortality listed by Irwin Chusid in his book "Songs In The Key Of Z"

Easter Bunny Song

Easter Bunny Song

Baby Pam in the recording studio
 (1953)

In 1953, seven-year-old Baby Pam was already an experienced trouper. Before her debut as a singer with such catchy little items as "My Daddy Gave Me Choo Choo Trains for Christmas and Now He's Having Fun.", she was an accomplished drummer with a troupe of six-year-old musicians called The Rhythm Babies, who entertained Middle Western television audiences over a Chicago station. The Rhythm Babies broke up two years before during a legal wrangle over which tot was the leader of the band.


In 1953, the trend of recording young and very young artists has been noted generally with sympathy by various magazines and music trade papers.  A little less moved by the junior performances, a columnist from New York wrote:

They sing (if that is the word) not to other children but to adults. Not since the days of Shirley Temple, Bobby Breen and Baby Rose Marie have tiny tots and teenagers commanded such an impressive part of America's craze-ridden, fad-conscious entertainment industry. 

On television, radio and records they are lisping and sighing, screeching and crying their way through such musical gems as "Too Old for Toys, Too Young for Boys," "My Daddy is in Korea and Mommy Cries All Day," "Three and Four is Eight," and "God Bless Us All."

The youngsters ‒  Jimmy Boyd, 14, "Brucie" Weil, six, Gayla Peevey, eight, Baby Pam, seven, Charlie Applewaite, 13, and several implausibly named little dears, Molly Bee, six, Texas Sunshine Ruby, nine, Sonny Boy, five, Nelly Honey, of Missouri, seven, and Kansas Pete, who is alleged to be three ‒  now fill the airwaves from New York to San Francisco with their piping renditions of the latest of Tin Pan Alley's vocal nightmares. 

The most curious aspect of all this is that people are prepared to pay enormous sums for what many consider to be sheer punishment.

More potential punishment for your pleasure here

Rock 'n Roll Baby

Eddie Murray had a dance school for kids in New York since at least the thirties, at 116 W. 65th. and moving later upstairs from the Ed Sullivan Theatre.

Alan Lorber in "Benny Allen Was A Star", a work of historical fiction largely autobiographical, has this description of Benny Allen in his way to the Old Town Records office hearing the "Dancing-Kids" tapping their way to fame :

Hy Weiss's building, 1697 Broadway, on the corner of 53rd Street and 7th Avenue, is the sleaze-class of the three main music business buildings. (1619, 1650 & 1697 Broadway).

The tenants of 1697 are mostly cheap booking agents, cheap publishers, overnight record labels, and Hy Weiss' Old Town Records.  The building also house the Ed Sullivan Theater, where the Ed Sulliwan Show comes from, and from where the latter-day David Letterman Show is broadcast.

The building entry is next to the theater entrance on Broadway through a small corridor of filthy orange-marble walls. Press 11 in the self-service elevator and the doors reopen two minutes later.

Step out onto a dimly lit hallway where faded checkered linoleum floor tiles come loose with every step. Pass a dance studio with "Dancing-Kids" hand-painted on the frosted-glass door where from inside one hears little star-struck feet tapping their way to fame.

Pass a booking agent's open doorway and see bright-eyed young, hopeful singers, comedians and dancers, sitting on metal folding chairs, waiting for weekend work.

 In addition to dance teaching, Eddie Murray was a singer recording his self-penned songs which were issued on his own E-M imprint.  Eddie also had his own radio show on WHBI, a Newark station. For a few hundred dollars, just about anyone could buy their way on the air at WHBI.  Thanks to one station's listener, we have one of his show preserved on cassette.  See the whole story here

It was 3am and I was driving home to Brooklyn from Manhattan when I stumbled onto WHBI. I would often stop by there in the late hours because there were several leased access specialty shows that I found interesting. There was a Doo Wop radio show hosted by a concert promoter and a great reggae show (that was actually sampled on the Clash’s “Sandinista” album). The first thing I heard when I settled on the station was some weird kind of old style country music with an older sounding announcer speaking in an accent that sounded like it was from another planet. I was immediately intrigued and for the next half hour was completely transfixed by this radio show which was hosted by someone by the name of Don Val. He was playing (and constantly talking over) the music of someone by the name of Eddie Murray. The odd thing is that it was pretty obvious that Don and Eddie were one in the same. I’m thinking, this guy is a genius! He’s playing his own music but he’s pretending he’s a DJ playing all of these great songs. The fact that the music was some of the absolute worst music I have ever heard only made the show even more fascinating.

That's not quite the end of the "Rock 'n Roll Baby" story, as Eddie Murray managed to convince Joey Castle to record "Rock 'n Roll Baby" which was issued on E-M 100.   Joey Castle,  a rockabilly singer, had singles on RCA, Headline & Thanks! between 1958 and 1963 before moving to the Catskills region entertaining the crowds in the night clubs circuit, doing impressions of Boris Karloff, Humphrey Bogart and Johnny Cash among others.

 Discography

4063     Tonight The Stars Are Out / You Made Me Feel This Way 
4058     Montreal, Canada Blues  / Stepping High Dance
539       Rock 'n Roll Baby / When You Don't Care A Thing About Me
1222x    Baby Blues / For Love Is The Thing
1223      The Christmas Tree /  To Be Loved Is Beautiful
3090      Can't Buy My Heart  / My New York 

Rock 'N Roll Baby (E-M single)



Rock 'N Roll Baby (radio show excerpt)

Rock 'N Roll Baby (Joey Castle)