The Homer & Jethro Project #28

#28

Getting a jump on things here.

November 1954 - RCA 47-5903 - Santy Baby / The Night After Christmas

So it's Christmas in April.

This is one of those ideas like Halloween in January that are a veritable untapped market.

Also I'm not a fan of Christmas music. But here we have novelty songs of what are already seasonal novelty songs. The snake is eating itself.

A side is their version of "Santa Baby" as originally performed by the Eartha Kitt, the Catwoman with the sexiest voice and who sang "I Want to be Evil" That's how I want to remember her.

B side. I'm pretty sure you get the reference without me.

November 1954 - RCA EPA-524 - Seasoned Greetings



More parodies of well known holiday songs that you already know and I already loathe.

Go ahead. You want to listen to them.
It's Ok.

Your Mom and Grandkids will get a kick out of them on the Holiday Playlist.

The Homer & Jethro Project #27

#27

Middle of April.

July 1954 - EPA-580 - Hernando's Hideaway

Smack dab in the middle of 1954 this four song corker plopped out. Every song is a winner. You can hear every song, so by the magic of the transitive property you win also.

1. "Hernando's Hideaway" is another song from "The Pajama Game" (see previous post. I'm too lazy to link shit again.) Among the rewritten lyrics is a mention of Liberace who younger viewers may not be familiar with. Part of his schtick was always to have a huge candelabra on his grand piano. (I actually saw him live and in person in the early 80's. I also saw the original Misfits around the same time. Not many people can make that claim.)

Duncan Hines also mentioned in the song used to be a real person rather than a boxed cake mix for people too busy and on the go to mix four ingredients together themselves. He used to be the Guy Fieri of his time, only a lot less douchey. (which granted, is a pretty low bar to get over)

Here is  the real Duncan Hines on "To Tell the Truth" in 1957.

2. "Wanted" Hey look, it's Perry fucking Como again to sing and trade Jello recipes with you to go with that deviled ham salad at that Tupperware Party.

Here again, H & J best the original in every way and make a pretty funny song to boot.

3. "Secret Love" written for the movie "Calamity Jane" and introduced to the world by Doris Day. I like Doris Day. She sang some great stuff with Les Brown & his Orchestra. So put that on your dance card and fox trot to it.

This is another favorite Homer & Jethro track with a great pair of solos in the middle to frame the story of a love that best not speak its name.

4. "I Don't Really Want to Know" the only other version you really will ever need to be aware of besides this fine rendition by Homer and Jethro is Les Paul & Mary Ford.  Enjoy them both.

The Homer & Jethro Project #26

#26

It's been getting near one solid month of this nonsense for Spring 2018.
This is a friendly reminder that Summer is coming.
The equinox is on June 21.
And then we'll be done with this.

But until then let us continue...

 April 1954 - RCA 47-5708 - Crazy Mixed Up Song / That Tired Run Down Feeling


Sixty four years ago this original chicken nugget of brilliance and nonsense "Crazy Mixed Up Song" was recorded by Homer and Jethro and subsequiently slipped past the arbiters of taste and logic to be released upon an unsuspecting public. It appears that then popular stars of stage and TV, Mary Healy & her husband Peter Lind Hayes may have the first recording but I think that Homer and Jethro best it on many levels.

On the flip is an original song just for the boys which I relate to ever more as middle age takes its toll on my being.

October 1954 - RCA 47-5867 - Hey There / They Were Doin' the Mambo

A side is a take on "Hey There" from the Pajama Game which was a huge smash on Broadway in 1954. Rosemary Clooney released the pop hit version most associated with it many years before she was reduced to shilling for paper towels to make ends meet.

This is another of the songs that endeared me to Homer and Jethro, lo those many years ago and still makes me giggle. It's pretty damn funny.

B side - So in the middle of the 50's the United States got  swept up in a craze for the seductive Latin Rhythm of the Mambo.  Less forbidden than the Lambada and more physically demanding than the Macarena, Mambo Mania crisscrossed the country and made temporary stars of folks like Perez Prado (with the original "Mambo No. 5") {At some point I'm going to digitize by collection of Perez Prado Lps. Forewarned is forearmed. Isn't that how the phrase goes?)

Not being ones to sit on the sidelines H & J quickly jumped on that bandwagon to cash in with their keen powers of observation to note the number of folks caught up in the fad and watched the royalty checks dribble in.

The Homer & Jethro Project #25

# 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...

The Homer & Jethro Project #24

#24

Another little break in the flow of things with something a little different

1952-54 - Country All-Stars




The thing that it's always important to remember is that for all the jokes and stuff, Homer and Jethro were really really good musicians. The comedy wouldn't work as well if they weren't. So it's not much of a stretch to imagine that between H & J recordings they might find time to record some with Chet Atkins and the studio guys a few straight and instrumental tracks from days gone by. (They certainly seemed to have a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of vintage song) A sort of in studio early super group as it were.

 It's also not far fetched that they'd end up releasing these recordings under a different name to keep them a little separated from the funny stuff.

The Country All-Stars only released a handful of singles and a 10" record in their brief recorded existence collected here. (I don't have originals for these because they're pretty hard to find and already collected for me on this compact disc.)

They run through some small country combo versions of any number of jazz standards like "Stomping at the Savoy" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" with a light and effortless swing that satisfies like a smooth Chesterfield should and fill things out with a few more tracks of Homer singing other favorites from their youth in the 30's.

Later Homer and Jethro would go on to put out a couple Lps of instrumental recordings and an Lp of funny 30's hits under their own name, but until I get there in a few weeks you've got this to keep you busy.

So Square It's Almost Hip

Yeah, here's another of those weird posts that's a bit out of a lot of people's comfort zones.

Happy Days and Lonely Nights (1954)

This is the really square shit that your white bread grandparents listened to while the  meatloaf cooked and the TV was only in black and white and brought to you by cigarettes. And on that black and white set weekly would come the Perry Como Show the ultimate bland as vanilla, non-threatening, oatmeal flavored, cardigan wearing motherfucker as ever crooned a smooth pop song.
A man who made Lawrence Welk seem edgy.

And one of the acts that would regularly grace this beige fandango was the Fontane Sisters. A trio of moderately attractive young ladies who swung lightly without the lurid gyrations of concurrent rock and rollers and whom you might consider bringing home to meet your mother so they could share jello mold recipes.

Adorable (1955)

But then I find something kind of fascinating about this stuff. It's a time capsule.

And various flips reveal non-hip people aping hipness and failing, but in the same moment achieving another level of hipness in how absolutely square it ultimately becomes. This is just about as white as you can be before becoming translucent and in that there's a certain purity of form.

The B-side here is the winner with a nod to beatnik patois and a song called "Daddy-O"

Seventeen (1955)

This is my personal favorite of this trio of singles because nothing says teenage quite like a song written by a professional middle aged songwriters. It's a toe tapper.

Put it in context against a contemporary Elvis track and you can begin to imagine how raw and primitive his early material must have seemed to the teens of the day.

I like both.