Les Bel-Air – Cupidon

Leapy Lee’s Little Arrows is a folk song in the vocal tradition as far as I’m concerned. That's because I learned it by repeatedly hearing it sung by a friend (Hi Irene!) years before I eventually heard his recorded version. Most people who know the song wince when they hear it mentioned: people who don't know it wait until they hear it before they start wincing. Maybe the sung-by-a-friend filter helped me get to like the song before the wince factor kicked in.

Here’s another filter: a foreign Language version, by Les Bel-Air, from Quebec. Who They? My translation skills are worse than Google's, but they seem to have operated in Canada from 1965 to 1969, doing original material and covers on English language pop hits, moving from mainstream pop towards country. There's also some sort of Johnny Halliday connection, (supporting? backing?) but my French vocabulary fails me.

Apart from the song itself, the most compelling thing about this recording is singer Eddy Roy's performance. Now that's what I call gusto.

Listen:

Download Les Bel-Air – Cupidon MP3 (rapidshare)

Duane Eddy & Lee Hazlewood – The Girl on Death Row

I've known for a long time that the late Lee Hazlewood produced Duane Eddy's great twangy guitar classics of the late fifties and early sixties. But I didn't know Lee actually sang on one of them. Here it is: The Girl on Death Row, a song with a morbid theme that suits the mood of Duane’s twang and Lee’s echo chamber.

I couldn't find a picture of the two of them together anywhere: if anyone out there has one, I'd love a copy.

Listen:

Download Duane Eddy & Lee Hazlewood – The Girl on Death Row MP3 (rapidshare)

Or watch Duane talking about Lee on YouTube here.

The Springfields - Island of Dreams

The Springfields were the epitome of the clean-cut, button-down, deodourised stuff that stood for folk music in the entertainment world, before the authenticists and the pinkos came in. Christopher Guest's 2003 film A Mighty Wind manages to show how deeply awful most of it was. Like proper showbiz types, siblings Tom & Mary O’Brien had stages names: Tom & Dusty Springfield. Of course, their tidy non-threatening music has been entirely eclipsed by Dusty's outstanding critically and commercially successful solo career.

And yet, I've never been a big fan of Dusty Springfield’s voice. I know, I know, I'm in a tiny minority here, but I do think her voice suits harmony singing much better than solo. I’ll avoid the quagmire of the sibling singers genes-versus-nurture debate here: I just find the voices on this example, Island of Dreams, more moving and sublime than any Dusty Solo stuff I've heard. Yes, I can appreciate her skill, on, say, Son of A Preacher Man or The Look of Love, but my appreciation is intellectual: Island of Dreams, like all great music, transports and transforms me. 

Listen:

Download The Springfields - Island of Dreams MP3 (rapidshare)

Or watch them perform it on YouTube here.

The Karl Denver Trio - Wimoweh

My pal Graham had a Vinyl Party last week (no snickering in the back there; vinyl records, not fetish gear). I brought along my Karl Denver LP and, though it wasn't a competition, Wimoweh was the hit of the evening. In my biased opinion anyway.

Words fail me when I try to describe Karl’s vocal technique: yodelling is part of it, but a tiny part. But you can tell he's from Springburn. 

Of course this is only a tiny moment in the songs winding, complicated life story, going from Solomon Linda’s Mbube in 1939 through Pete Seeger, The Tokens’ The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Tight Fit (spoonerism alert), to Disney’s Lion King movie. See here for the full, extraordinary story.

Conway Twitty – How much more can she stand

I first heard this classic example of the “Cheatin’ Song” in a brief clip on Hank Wangford's A to Z of C & W, Channel 4's eighties documentary series. Before that Conway Twitty didn't mean much more to me than his late-fifties faux-Elvis international hit It's Only Make Believe.

But he went on to a long successful country singer career, from the sixties through to the ninties, including this minor hit from 1971.

“There's a devil in my body, that I just can't satisfy...”

Conway's dead now, and I'll never get the chance to visit his gloriously tacky theme park, Twitty City in Hendersonville, Tennessee: it's been converted into a Christian music venue owned by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. All things must pass.

Richard P. Feynman - Orange Juice

He was a physicist (quantum electrodynamics, superfluidity, particle theory), lock-picker, prankster, juggler, painter: a ladies man, a friend of Tuva, a developer of the atom bomb, a translator of mayan hieroglyphics.

If you haven't worked it out yet, and haven't even noticed the title of this post*, I'm talking about the mighty Richard P. Feynman. Here’s an example of yet another talent: his bongo playing. And singing too.

The choice of title means his vocal sound strangely like Pamela Doove, A minor Reece Shearsmith character in the League of Gentlemen.

Update 28 May 2008: Here's a fine article from W. Daniel Hillis, on the coolness of Feynman.

*or maybe you think Edwin Collins wrote a song about RPF.

Listen:

Download: Richard P. Feynman - Orange Juice MP3 (rapidshare)

Annette Funicello - California Sun

I always found sixties beach movies pretty dull: though I love Buster Keaton, his appearances in them were pretty much the nadir of his career, I would say. So I would only really watch them in fast-forward mode, looking for the rare appearances of minor surf and garage bands. That's why I guess I entirely missed this song, from Pajama Party. I always associated the song with the Ramones, although I vaguely knew that it was a cover.

Update: I really should do my research before I post: turns out first hit version of California Sun was by The Rivieras, from South Bend, Indiana, and the original recording was by a guy called (showbiz Alliteration Alert) Joe Jones. Here's an article on the history of this song in, of all places, the Jewish World Review.

Listen:

Download: Annette Funicello - California Sun MP3 (rapidshare)

Carole King – Oh, Neil

Reading The NME Encyclopedia of Rock in the mid seventies, I first heard that Neil Sedaka's Oh, Carol referred to Carole King, and that Carole had recorded a reply record, Oh, Neil. More than thirty years later, I've finally tracked it down. Sounding suspiciously like she used a tweaked mix of the same backing track, Oh, Neil has some delicious lyrics, particularly when she rhymes "Mrs. Neil Sedaky" with "Chewing Tobaccy". A fabulous record, and well worth the wait.

Listen:

Download: Carole King - Oh, Neil MP3 (rapidshare)