The Homer & Jethro Project #31

#31

Phew.
One full month into it.

November 1955 - RCA 47-6322 - Nuttin' For Christmas / Santy's Movin' On

Still the middle of April and it's Christmas again.

A side an original song by the songwriting duo, Tepper & Bennet, who were also behind "Naughty Lady of Shady Lane" (see H & J #29) and "Red Roses for a Blue Lady" (wait for H&J # 51) and a number of terrible songs used in Elvis movies that even he hated singing.

B side a holiday rewrite of the Hank Snow song they already did back in H & J #14.

That's all I have to say.

 

November 1955 - RCA 47-6342 - Sifting Whimpering Sands / They Laid Him in the Ground

A side started life as a very very fucking weird collaboration between Easy Listening schlockmeister Billy Vaughn and the Ken Nordine, the originator of "Word Jazz" who made a series of really odd spoken word records in the 50's that were probably just way too strange even for a beatnik stoned on reefer. Just like, waaaaay out there, daddy-o.

Homer & Jethro are a lot less weird and that's Ok. Sometimes you need it like that.


B side is of unknown origin, though signs point to either it being a new song for Homer & Jethro or a much older bluegrass song of which I can't find any older recordings of. Either way it's got some good lines in it. Use topically.

The Homer & Jethro Project #30

#30

Keeping it real.
Keeping it going.

1955, fuck yeah!

June 1955 - RCA 47-6178 - Ballad of Davy Crew-Cut / Homer & Jethro's Pickin' And Singin' Medley No. 1

For 1955 while a few adults were still perhaps indulging themselves with the mambo, for the mostly male underage set a Disney made 5 episode TV miniseries about Davy Crockett was the shit.  It turned into a regular mania that set fear in the heart of raccoons everywhere wondering if they'd be next with a post mortem date with a milliner.

 It's theme song became a minor triumph when for the first time in who knows how long, people actually remembered the Alamo. 

Into this Americana frenzy Homer and Jethro sent out this missive in the hopes of gaining a touch of reflected glory on the phenomenon to little or no avail

The flip is them stringing together a medley of turn of the century western songs into a tight two minute record side including snippets from:

"My Pony Boy" here sung in 1909 by Miss Ada Jones
"Cheyenne" by Billy Murray
"San Antonio" also by Billy Murray 
and
"Pride of the Prairie" yet again by Billy Murray

(I don't know what you're getting out of this, but I'm learning a shit load about music putting this stuff together. It's cool as fuck.)

September 1955 - RCA 47-6241 - Yaller Rose of Texas / Listen to the Gooney Bird


Without fearing for their own safety and with reckless abandon Homer & Jethro went and recorded a rewritten version of the beloved song "The Yellow Rose of Texas" (linked here to a version by the Texas Troubadour himself, Ernest Tubb) Which has been a favorite among the "Confederate Flag is muh Heritage" set (who heavily identify with the losing side of history then and now) going all the way back to the time the South was failing to rise the first time around.

The song itself dates back to a mid-19th Century Minstrel show by Christy's Minstrels and first published as "Christy's Plantation Melodies. No. 2" with the first verse beginning:

"There's a yellow girl in Texas
That I'm going down to see
No other darkies know her
No darkey, only me..."

So there's that.

Homer and Jethro's Yaller Rose though is a peach of song which has nothing whatsoever to do with any other nonsense than itself. 
Enjoy it as such.

B side is fortunately an original tune without any additional historical baggage and therefore can be enjoyed guilt free and gluten free, and in this case, free.

The Homer & Jethro Project #29

#29

So we're closing in on the point where we hit Lps and things switch over to an every other day posting schedule. Aren't you the lucky ones.

But first...

May 1955 - RCA EPA-595 - Let Me Go Blubber

After a busy end of the year previous, for better or worse, there's nothing new from our heroes until May of 1955 when they dropped the mic on this four song elongated player of contemporary hits.
And our six month Homer and Jethro-less national nightmare was over.

1. "Let Me Go, Lover" A pregnant Joan Weber introduced the song on the TV on 1955 to scored her One Hit but the song itself is a rewrite of a previous song encouraging temperance "Let Me Go, Devil" first recorded by Wade Ray who sounds like a real stick in the mud. But such is how bad relationships are in either version.

Homer and Jethro have other issues in their relationship with someone who might politely be referred to as a BBW.

2. "Over the Rainbow" Recorded again and not dissimilar to previous recording in H & J Project #2.

3. "Mister Sandman" the Chordettes earworm that's already sticking in your head just by reading the title. That "bum bum bum bum bum" crap is like mental napalm.


4. "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane" Here we go again with the Ames Brothers and a novelty song that couldn't possibly be more soulless and suburban. No panties were dampened by the original.

 And while certainly not my favorite source material for a Homer and Jethro parody they certainly make something much more entertaining out of it.

January 1955- CAS-948(e) - Songs to Tickle Your Funny Bone - 04 - Malady of Love

From the pretty comprehensive sessionography compiled here it seems like this was recorded on January 17, 1955 with the other four songs on the above EP but not released at the time. It finally makes an appearance in 1966 in "electronically reprocessed stereo" on a cheap budget compilation.

The song started life in 1903 as 'Mélodie d'amour' Op. 600 by Hans Engelmann. A nice syrupy light classical piece that you could play at the piano recital and make your grandmother cry.

And there it languished until Billy Vaughn took a crack at it with his orchestra and had a  surprise hit. (It surprises me anyway since it's a terrible song.) Being a hit instrumental meant that somebody had to write some lyrics pretty damn fast so that it could be a vocal hit as well. That task fell to Tom Glazer and then the Four Aces scored with their dreary rendition.

With so much treacly bullshit going around it's no wonder that Homer & Jethro took time out of their busy schedules to make their own recording which they chose not to initially inflict on the public at the time. Which is kind of too bad since it was a pretty good take down.

Oh well, you can enjoy it now at least.

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.