# 25
Finishing up 1953.
It was a pretty busy year for Homer & Jethro with a whole bunch of releases.
I wonder how 1954 treated them...
Stay tuned and find out.
November 1953-11 - RCA 47-5555 - Hey Schmo / You-Ewe-U
A side is yet another Boudleaux Bryant song, "Hey Joe" that was a hit for Carl Smith.
It is completely unrelated to the song of the same that every Tom, Dick and Hendrix recorded in the 1960s that is second on the list of terrible older folk songs made into endless shitty garage band fodder when they wanted to appear more serious minded. It comes right after "House of the Rising Sun".
B side "You You You" is another white bread easy listening favorite first made into a hit in the U.S. of A. by the Ames Brothers in 1953 in the days long before the Osmonds and Hanson were born, to bland up the airwaves with sibling harmonies and toothy grins.
With smarmy crap like cluttering up the airwaves it's no wonder Elvis sounded so raw and visceral when he grabbed the attention of the nations teenagers with his first single the next year.
It must have sounded to them like the first time I listened to the Sex Pistols in 1978...
November 1953 - EPA 499 - Assault the Top Pops - I'll Never Waltz Again with You
So another 7" elongated player with previously released material and one little brand spanking unreleased nugget to get the suckers to buy stuff they already have one more time and squeeze a couple more bucks out of them.
Worked on me anyway.
The bonus track is a take on "Till I Waltz Again with You" by Teresa Brewer who certainly looks like a very perky sort. I'm not a fan of perky. Perky needs to shut the fuck up and go chirp in another room. I'm busy.
February 1954 - RCA 47-5633 - Oh my Pappy / Swappin' Partners
A Side started life in German as a song about somebody's dead clown dad for a 1939 musical "Der Schwarze Hecht". A lyric in the Queen's English was made and it became another schlock hit for Mr. Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher as "Oh my Papa" and thus making Rock and Roll all the more necessary and inevitable.
Once again, Homer & Jethro outdo the original by at least making it bearable.
B side - I don't recommend typing "swapping partners" into Youtube at work. It's not going to come up with the original of the flip side of this single and might get you a visit from HR.
You want "Changing Partners" by Patti Page.
Another win for H & J vs. the kind of creepy and stalker-ish original as Ms. Page appears to be ready to reclaim her lost dance partner from "The Tennessee Waltz". One wonders if boiled bunnies are far behind...
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