Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Monday, August 19, 2019

Tell Me Whad't I Say


Roger Rudy And The Pyramid



Tell Me Whad't I Say


Travelin' Band


According to Gary Myers
Roger Rudy of Wisconsin placed his records on jukeboxes and sold them at his mostly weekend gigs, usually within a 100-mile radius of home. Rudy started the band in 1968 and kept it going for 25 years. The Pyramids played live from the Empire Cafe in Chippewa Falls on WAXX radio in 1969, and from the Long Branch Bar in Black River Falls in 1972-73. Rudy first played piano and accordion as a child and, while living in Sacramento, CA in 1961, he played in his brother’s band there. Rudy left the music business in 1993 and opened the Bay Street Coin Shop in Chippewa Falls.

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Scatterbrain


Louise Tobin
with Orchestra conducted by Peanuts Hucko

Avant Garde #104
1965/1966



Scatterbrain

Louise Tobin has previously recorded this song in 1939 with Benny Goodman and his orchestra in September 1939.  You can listen to the 1939 version here

After a long hiatus spent raising her two boys, Tobin accepted an invitation from jazz critic and publisher George Simon to sing at the 1962 Newport Jazz Festival, where she met her future husband, clarinetist Peanuts Hucko.  They both recorded for the Vanguard Music's subsidiary Avant Garde Records, one of the "great unsung Christian psych" labels active between the years 1966 and 1972.

 







Mary Louise Tobin (born November 11, 1918) appeared with Benny Goodman, Bobby Hackett, Will Bradley, and Jack Jenney. Tobin introduced I Didn't Know What Time It Was with Benny Goodman’s band in 1939. Her biggest hit with Goodman was There'll Be Some Changes Made, which was number two on the Hit Parade in 1941 for 15 weeks. Tobin was the first wife of trumpeter and bandleader Harry James.

Swing-era singer Louise Tobin celebrated her 100th birthday party early, in Octobre 2018.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

The Church Bells Ring


Sterling Harrison




The Church Bells Ring


 

The King of The Wobble


Wednesday, July 10, 2019

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"