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)

I Thought I Told You Not To Tell Them

I Thought I Told You Not To Tell Them

Bluesy version of the Marie Knight R&B classic.  Mark El Jackson  wrote the song.

Dori Carrroll made her first television appearance in Bloomington, Indiana.  She toured with Bobby Helms and recorded a duet with him, issued on Kapp Records in 1966 (Kapp #777 - Things I Remember Most).

The only release on this Grand label?

You Make My Heart Sing Ah!

The Shadows




You Make My Heart Sing Ah!

Fraternity 795
1958

Young Elroy Peace and Paul White

The Shadows are Elroy Peace and Paul White. One of the most memorable songs of bandleader Ted Lewis  was "Me and My Shadow" with which he frequently closed his act.  Around 1928, he started to use a shadow mimicking his movements during his act.   Several Afro-American played the Shadow.  Elroy Peace and Paul White were two of them in the forties.

    Elroy first got steamed up about show business when he was seven years old. He won second prize imitating Cab Calloway on the West Coast and Elroy, under the tutelage of his aunt, Roxy Williams, took the plunge. He won a spot with a Major Bowes' unit and traveled about the country with the Major. He was a pro for real. Elroy was born in Kansas City, Mo., but his big break came when his family moved to Los Angeles.

    The late movie actor Ben Carter helped draw Ted Lewis' attention to the artistry of young Elroy and all that can be said is that Elroy has been walking in Lewis' shadow for eleven years.

Elroy Peace's first record was probably "Onion Breath Baby" for the Swing Time label in 1953. Followed a duet with Willie Mae Thornton on Peacock,   

After this Fraternity single, he was heard on West Coast labels such as Keen, Romeo, or Helga. In the early sixties, during a tour in Australia & New-Zealand, Elroy recorded at least two singles which were issued on local labels.

Elroy Peace was also a songwriter whose songs were recorded among others by Little "Butchie" Saunders And His Buddies (Herald), Gene La Marr And His Blue Flames (Spry) , The Bow Ribbons (his nieces) & Debra Lewis.

Speedy Gonzales

Solid Jackson

Candix 308

Speedy Gonzales

As "Little Speedy Gonzales" this song has been  performed by The Astronauts in the movie "Wild On The Beach" in 1965.  Film footage of the performance can be seen here

When I posted the flip side "East L.A." here six years ago, I had no idea who was Solid Jackson.  Today, I'm able to disclose the identity of the man behind the "Solid Jackson" pseudonym : this is Stan Ross, Stanley Ralph Ross, prolific writer, producer and actor in film and TV. Ross was first and foremost a writer. He penned more than 250 TV shows, including many episodes of "Batman," "The Monkees," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.."

Eventually he became an ordained minister who presided over the marriage of Burt Ward ("Robin" on the "Batman" TV series) to his third and present wife.

His real-life nickname, "Ballpoint Baxter," was also the name of a character he played on the "Batman" TV series.

Some interesting bits of bio thanks to the blurb written by Blanche, his mother, found on the back cover of his Del-Fi LP, "My Son The Copy Cat":

My Son Stanley is 27 years old, six foot six, and was born in Coney Island, New York, and you'll like him if you knew him.  He was a very pretty baby but had a lot of allergies.  We still can't figure out why he should be so tall because in my family we're all short. I'm five-five in my stocking feet and the tallest.  His wife, Neila (she should live and be well) is a beautiful girl who feeds my son well enough to make him gain 15 pounds since they god married 5 years ago, although she still has some trouble making blintzes.  Still you can't blame her because with the two children, Andy and Lisa, running around the house chasing the dog, how much time can she put in at the stove?  My friends tell me that the children are good-looking.

Stanley has been making records for a few years under a few different names because he didn't want me to know what he did for a living, so he used to tell me he worked for a advertising agecy.  You perhaps recall "Chaos!" a while ago?  He did it together with Bob Arbogast, a nice Unitarian boy who wrote the songs on this album with Stanley

 According to Mark Evanier and I believe what he says :

Stanley was the pushiest writer I ever knew and he was absolutely shameless about promoting himself. There are a lot of people in Hollywood who are like this but Stanley was the Beethoven of harassing people into giving you work. You said "yes" to Stanley because he made it too much work to say "no."

Stanley Ralph Ross (1935–2000)

Discography

58 Imperial 5543 The Ross Brothers
58 Imperial 5544 The Huskies
59 ATP 1001/Liberty  Arbogast And Ross
60 World Pacific 813 Stan Ross
60 Candix 308  Solid Jackson
62 Reprise 20119 Stan Ross
62 Warner-bros 5305 Tyrone A'Saurus And His Cro-Magnons
63 Del-Fi 4200 Stan Ross
63 Del-Fi 1233 LP "My son the copy cat" Stan Ross

Note: This Stan Ross shouldn't be confused with Stan Ross, the sound engineer or Stan Ross, the actor