I was going over my Mixcloud archives and realized I'm achieving what I've been wanting to do without realizing, establishing a rotation of songs and bands in the fashion of the radio I grew up with. I love there's so many music podcasts and internet music stations, and of course terrestial college stations and WFMU -- and don't forget my new favorite internet streaming station, KPISS.FM -- playing music I appreciate. The Radio Garden app is a must, I gotta tell ya. There's so much content, you could never hear the same song, even the same band, twice.
I like to hear new stuff, but I also like to hear the same cool stuff over and over, so that'll be my focus with my KPISS.FM show (every other Saturday at 5PM EST). I learned with my previous CNQ podcast that it's real easy to only play new or new-to-me stuff, because there's so much of it. But a lot of bands and singles I hear deserve to be repeated, so I'm going to do so.
Uncle Bob got a re-mastered release of an older album out:
There's a Sunny and the Sunliners best of out, Volume 2. You see a lot of Sunny and the Sunliners 45s down here. San Antonio legend:
Yesterday I added a few new additions to our record collection. Here's what I picked up, as well as some other stuff I've been listening to (and one thing I haven't listened to yet).
The Fall - Slates 10" re-release from 2016. Originally an EP from 1981. I bought this without realizing -- this 2016 re-release doesn't contain the extra Peel sessions tracks that were added on a follow up re-release in 2021. The 2021 release is readily available and for the same amount I bought this one for. I'm ruined! Anyway, it's a great EP, and the linear notes are a typed letter from from former WFMU music director Brian Turner.
Gene Clark - Collector's Series Early L.A. Sessions. This is a remixed and re-released version of Clark's first album with the Godsin Brothers, remixed five years after it's release by Clark and producer Jim Dickson, and re-released on CBS in 1972. The record didn't sell upon original release, so now that country rock was finding more acceptance via bands like Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and Clark's former band The Byrds, CBS brought Clark in to re-record vocals and remix these songs. Glen Campbell and Leon Russell were on this album, too, along with the Byrd's Clarence White and Van Dyne Parks on keyboard. Anyway I have With the Godsin Brothers so I thought it would be neat to have this as a companion piece. And it does sound different. Also they took out "Elevator Operator" which I thought was a groovy jam but apparently Clark was embarrassed of it.
Clifton Chenier - Bon Ton Roulet! The King of the bayou, Clifton Chenier's 2nd album from 1967, on Arhoolie Records. All of the songs but one were recorded in Houston in '66, except "Ay Ai Ai," recorded in '64. Cool stuff. Zydeco blues. Arhoolie Records started in 1960 and is still around today.
Todd Rundgren's Initiation, from '75, Rundgren's fourth solo album. Rundgren was on an occult kick, so it's got a long proggy jam on the b-side about Theosophical, New-Agey occult stuff. Which, I'm into in theory, but I'm not sure how often I'll be spinning it, which I read on Wikipedia is sorta what Julian Cope said about it:
"When asked if Rundgren had influenced his music, with perceived influences of Initiation on Queen Elizabeth and Rite², Julian Cope responded that he and Thighpaulsandra loved "A Treatise on Cosmic Fire", "but we both bemoaned the fact that it was recorded so long before ambient music had been defined that Todd treated it as an ever-evolving, almost prog-rock piece. We both loved huge elements of that piece but found that we never listened to it. So we tried to build that Todd-like transcendence into our own piece of music [with Queen Elizabeth]."
The first side of Initiation is rockin' tho. Meanwhile, from Discogs:
"(Initiation) is a one of the longest running single disc LPs ever issued (1 hour, 7 minutes and 34 seconds; side B's total time is almost 35½ minutes). However, because of its fragility and reduced dynamic range, the following note was printed on the inner sleeve: "Technical Note: Due to the amount of music on this disc (over one hour), two points must be emphasized. Firstly, if your needle is worn or damaged, it will ruin this disc immediately. Secondly, if the sound does not seem loud enough on your system, try re-recording the music onto tape. By the way, thanks for buying the album" The final suite 'A Treatise On Cosmic Fire' was sped up by half a step to fit the disc with ease, this is why 'Prana' on the 'Real Man' 45RPM 7'' single sounds slower, as that was the speed that was intended to be heard, except all discs and CD reissues play the sped up version used for the original LP. To slow it to the correct speed, using software such as Audacity, reduce the speed by -5 percent."
Here's a 2015 remaster of a track off the first side, the rockin' "The Death of Rock'n'Roll." That's Rick Derringer on bass:
I've also been on a Julian Cope kick. Here's 30 minutes of his ambient project, Queen Elizabeth, mentioned in the Cope quote above:
Continuing with the noodly electronic theme for a moment, I also picked up a copy of Jean Michael Jarre - Equinoxe. From 1978, this is the follow up to Oxygene, which I have, and Jarre's fourth album. I was reading about these two albums under "Critical Reception" on Wikipedia, and apparently critics really didn't like the electronic stuff at the time. I dig it though, and certainly I'm not the only one, so those critics were wrong. Go figure! Here's a video for "Equinoxe 5":
I found a copy of the Secretly Canadian release of BLK JKS Mystery EP with "Lakeside" on it, I dunno if y'all remember that song from 2009? Neat atmospheric, indie/post-alt type of song, very groovy. They're from South Africa. Apparently they had an album out in 2021. They fell off my radar after "Lakeside." The rest of the Mystery EP is as great as "Lakeside" -- spooky, rockin'. There's some pretty wild psych guitar on the track "Mystery."
I had originally went to the record shop to pick up the latest Undeath album, It's Time...To Rise From the Grave, which is killer old school death metal from Rochester, put out by Prosthetic Records. The band really nails it. Here's the video for "Defiled Again." Brutal fun!
But I got home and I had the wrong album -- they gave me Mortuary Drape's latest, Wisdom-Vibration-Repent instead. Mortuary Drape is Italian death metal. I've listened to about half of this now, and it's good - competent, enjoyable:
I took the Mortuary Drape EP back and it turns out someone else who wanted Mortuary Drape got my Undeath album. So instead I picked up a copy of Captain Beefhart and the Magic Band's Strictly Personal, their second album.
This is The Fall doing "Beatle Bones 'N' Smokin' Stones" for a Peel Session in 1996. "Beatle Bones 'N' Smokin' Stones" is from Strictly Personal.
When we were driving to the record shop, the wife and I heard for the first time Accept's "Pandemic," released on Nuclear Blast Records back in 2010. Why wasn't this song playing everywhere the past few years??!?
Though I didn't buy it, we did look up this single when we got home. Wish I would've bought it! Lil Bastards' "Bitch Get A Job," from the halcyon days of 1992. Youtube comments mention this is the earliest work from a producer called Dougie Diamonds -- I'd never heard of him. This 12" put out on Livin' Large Records appears to have been Lil Bastards' only release:
I've also been getting into the Pastels. Here's "Yoga," from 1995's Mobile Safari. There's a video for this, but the only available version I could find was a shitty upload from someone taping MTV2.
Finally, not as poorly recorded but also not exactly hi-fidelity, check out Julian Cope and backing band pretending to do "I Gotta Walk" on Top of the Pops in 1994:
"I know what your father is saying right now...and he's wrong."
Hey check it out, I did a little Mixcloud show last night. Cribbing some stuff I've enjoyed listening to on the radio recently (via the Radio Garden app), and some recent and relatively recent CNQ faves from Bandcamp. An hour long, give it a listen -- if it's not hep enough, then you're too cool!
1. Love Hate Passion & War by Armstrong
2. Macho Music by "Blue" Gene Tyranny and Peter Gordon
3. Freak by Shanique Marie
4. Loretta by Ginger Root
5. Okeanos by Succumb
6. Thank The Universe by Thank
7. Kurious Oranj by The Fall
8. Oo Poo Pah Susie by Professor Morrison's Lollipop (Thanks to Suzie Hotrod at WFMU for playing this when I happened to be listening!)
9. Heaven Beat Iowa by Cub Scout Bowling Pins
10. Pop Cabecinha by Sophia Chablau e Uma Enorme Perda de Tempo
After 45 episodes, I've decided to put the podcast to sleep. You can still listen and download the shows on iTunes until the end of October, but they'll disappear at the first of November. It was a fun thing to do --essentially it was pirate radio. Thanks to everyone who listened and to all the bands and musicians who let me play their songs.
I'll probably decide to do another one down the road -- if/when I do, I'll post it to Mixcloud, I suspect, and share that link here and over on the Facebook page. Go follow CNQ on Facebook, if you're not already. How cool would it be if you did.
Meanwhile I'm going to put the blog on hiatus as well. I'd like to turn CNQ into more than just a music blog, and post about my other interests -- my shitty music project Occult Character, conversations about the weather, Madballs, headlines I saw but didn't read the article, lawn gnomes, etc. And maybe try to sell some of the paintings I've been doing here too. I've got a lot of paintings all of a sudden. I work in volume.
My thoughts are with anyone and everyone affected by the hateful word-vomit of our current President, and/or the hurtful policies of the administration. That orange demagogue's rhetoric is directly responsible for the Pittsburg massacre, the pipe bombs, the Kentucky grocery shootings, as well as countless other hateful acts of crime and violence. And if you voted for him, you're culpable for all this as well. What did you think would happen? And how do you sleep at night.
To all I say: stay safe, and, if you know as I do that this unstable circus peanut in an over-sized suit, the administration, and the Republican Party at large is absolutely unsafe for the stability of our Republic and the world at large, then please vote. I'm certain the two-party system is wrong, rigged, and needs to change, but for right now, there is a clear "lesser of two evils" situation and we can convert to Full Communism (or Full Collective Anarchism, or what-have-you) down the road. Maybe after the Singularity. For right now, I encourage you to just vote on whoever will place a check on Trump and his Republican sycophants.
The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, The MC5 & My Life of Impossibilitiesby Wayne Kramer. Hardcover, 304 Pages, Da Capo Press, $28.00
Loyal followers of CNQ (don't laugh, there's three or four, at least) know I'm not a critic or a reviewer -- as I frequently point out, I just share music I like here on the blog and on the podcast, and occasionally gab about this or that. I don't have anything against music criticism or reviewers. Being a critic's just not my bag is all. That being said, when I was contacted by Da Capo Press to review Wayne Kramer's new autobiography, I was like A) why is Da Capo slumming it with me, and B) hey, free book. So I got in contact with them and they were nice enough to send me an advance copy.
I was shamefully ignorant about Kramer, and the MC5. As a kid, reading SPIN and Rolling Stone in the early 90s, I'd read about the MC5 here and there, but never heard an album and all I knew was they were "proto-punk" and political, like Rage Against the Machine.
I remember seeing Jennifer Aniston in an MC5 shirt on an episode of Friends ("The One with the Lottery," back in 2003), and thinking, "I don't think that Rachael would be into that band." It was probably after that I sought out and listened to the song "Kick Out the Jams" (more than likely I downloaded it on LimeWire), and thought it was cool enough, but I have no memory of listening to anything else by them.
Fast forward to July 27 2018 when I received the book, right before I was going out of town on vacation to camp, hike, and drink in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho with my old college buddies. I had a lot of time to read and was able to finish the book in record time for me.
It helped that Kramer has an insightful, thoughtful, and conversational tone. Ranging from the first riot the MC5 ever played, to the type of soup he disliked as a kid (Campbell's Tomato Soup with rice added), to his life of hard drinking, drugging, and time in prison, he's a sharp, funny, sarcastic, introspective and progressive guy, and seems a reliable-enough narrator. His wry sense of humor and honesty shows up early in a particularly weird but humorous recounting of his first sexual experience that cracked me up, even though, technically, a ten year old Wayne was molested by his 16 year old babysitter. But, different times.
In 1965, when Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis joined Kramer, Fred Smith, and Rob Tyner, they got their hair and distortion levels right and the MC5 started in earnest with "Dope, Rock'n'Roll, and Fucking In the Streets" as their battlecry. Kramer was 19 and 20 when the MC5 hit their high water mark a couple of years later. He shares fond and not so fond memories and insightful thoughts about the 1967 Detroit Riots, the White Panther Party, how he avoided going to Vietnam, and the usually fun (sex, drugs, and rocking out) but sometimes not-so-fun (raids, arrests, angry radicals, and COINTELLPRO) chaos that seemed to follow the MC5 wherever they went.
After the MC5 broke up, Kramer began a downward spiral into a career as a drug and drink addicted criminal. His life was still chaotic, as it had been in the band, but the fun was eventually completely replaced by the sordid daily routine of addiction and the constant threat of violence that a criminal lifestyle engenders.
"Oh, man, Wayne, why are you doing this to yourself?" was my refrain through most of the book. Kramer's life story is one of almost uninterrupted self-sabotage. It gets grim as Kramer hits low point after low point, struggling with his drug and alcohol dependencies. But there are peaks amidst all the valleys. The occasions when Kramer rises above his addiction and gets to play great shows or work with other musicians he respects and admires are a joy to read, because he clearly enjoyed it so much. And he has a dry wit and observational sense of humor that helps balance the depressing parts, so at no point does he get so maudlin that it becomes difficult or a bore to read.
The Hard Stuff is part celebration of 1960s counter-culture in the way Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is, and part warning against the dangers of heroin (and heavy drinking/hard drug use in general), in the way Burrough's Junky and Naked Lunch are. It begins as a rock'n'roll coming-of-age in the '60s story, then becomes an addict's tale of degradation, crime and consequence, self-sabotage and eventual self-realization and atonement. The title of the book has multiple meanings. The Hard Stuff is certainly the sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, as well as his criminal enterprises and time in prison (hard time); but the hardest stuff of all was Kramer's decades long struggle to beat addiction, face who he was, and become the human being he wanted to be.
I teared up on the plane as I finished the book; it was some moving shit. Of course, I was reading and getting emotional after four days of high altitude camping, some intense (for me) hiking in the mountains, and heavy drinking with my buddies, and I had been drinking off and on since before I got on the plane that morning. But still, The Hard Stuff touched me in a very direct and personal way.
There was a lot about Kramer's life with which I directly identified. Like me, his childhood was spent enjoying comic books, sci-fi, rock music, and wondering about girls. Like me, he rejected Christian superstition and started to drink and party as a teenager. And these past several years, in my thirties and early forties, I've been struggling with my own drinking. Reading Kramer's story was as inspirational for me as it was entertaining.
As his bandmates and friends passed away, marriages and relationships ended, time and hard living took its toll on his mind and body. After decades of addiction, at least two ODs if I remember correctly from the book, and against some pretty heavy odds, Kramer seems to have come out of the woods sober, with a respect for life, and an understanding of his own ego, and what drove him to punish himself all those years. The Hard Stuff is a good read and should be regarded as an important first-hand account of a crucial moment in rock'n'roll and music history, as well as an instructional and testimonial for anyone struggling with addiction or self-destructive behavior.
On the plane and in the car ride out to the campsite, I rocked those three albums, Kick Out The Jams, Back In The USA, and High Time. It's good stuff, and I'm baffled why I never got into the MC5 before. If you haven't, go check out those three albums. The song Sister Anne, written by Fred Smith, is particularly bad ass. And definitely go buy The Hard Stuff when it comes out, August 14, 2018.
Da Capo was nice enough to allow me to do a giveaway for a hardcover copy of the book. Like and follow the CNQ Facebook page for details on that.
The T.A.M.I. Show was a big inspiration for teenage Wayne Kramer:
The Clash wrote this song about Kramer, and "Jail Guitar Doors USA" is also the name of the organization he founded with his wife and Billy Bragg that provides instruments, workshops, and prison concerts across the U.S.
Big long year-end show. Space disco and afro-funk from the 1970s, a little classic soul from the 60s, and rock'n'roll of all stripes, mostly new stuff from this year on bandcamp. Listen/dl from the embed above, or iTunes, or any fine podcast app.
Tonight I'll catch up a little more on new October releases from CNQ regulars, and hopefully do one more new releases post this week to get caught up before an upcoming special Halloween post from an old record.
This is from a new live EP from Swedish alt-rockers and CNQ fave Dog, Paper, Submarine, and Manx label Small Bear Records:
Dallas' own self-professed greatest emcee in the world has a new digital album available for $10 on bandcamp. We caught this cat live a few months ago, opening for Kool Keith and DJ Q-Bert, and he was really impressive. After you finish listening to the rest of the songs here you can go listen to the whole We Buy Gold album over at relevantmagazine.com.
Rippin' two song hardcore punk digital release from Spain's Orden Mundial and London label La Vida Es Un Mus Discos:
More punk rock from Dutch band Placebotox:
Rad 7" 1960s soul re-issue from Germany's Tramp Records:
It's been too long since I dipped into my 45 collection. Also I figured out how to record better, I think:
According to his Wikipedia entry, Sir Cliff Richard turns 75 this October 14, has sold more than 250 million records worldwide, and is the third-top-selling singles artist in UK Chart history, behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley. How is it I have never heard of this cat, nor ever heard a single song by him? Richard's career has spanned more than 50 years, but he never found much success in the States, which I assume is the answer to my question.
Richard and his band the Shadows were marketed as rebellious rock'n'rollers and were apparently top dogs in the UK pop/rock scene of the late 50s/early 60s, before the Beatles showed up. According to Wikipedia, John Lennon called their 1958 hit "Move It" the first British rock'n'roll record.
The Shadows split in '68 but Richard continued to record. He finally had a hit in the U.S. with "Devil Woman" in 1976. "Devil Woman" is a pretty cool song, with a chorus that ends with "she's gonna get you from behind." Is the Devil Woman going to sodomize me? Geeze, I will stay away from that Devil Woman then. October is approaching so put "Devil Woman" on your Halloween mix for sure.
Richard got religious, got knighted, the Shadows reunited in 2008; there was a sexual assault allegation against Richard after the Jimmy Savile scandal, but no charges were filed and as of June 2015 the investigation has been dropped. Looks like he might've just got caught up in a witch hunt.
This Epic release, 5-9691, has "Bachelor Boy" on the A-side and "True True Lovin'," on the flip. "Bachelor Boy" is from a 1963 movie musical called "Summer Holiday," starring Richard.
"True True Lovin'" was also the B-Side for "Constantly," which doesn't look like it was released in the States. This 45 was put out stateside by Epic in 1964, same year as the Beatles' first world tour. You can certainly hear the Beatles influence on "True True Lovin'." It's a fun, pacey rarity written by Bruce Welch of the Shadows and produced by Norrie Paramor.
As always, this track is presented strictly for educational purposes, and won't be up for very long.
From Small Bear Records, this is rad UK post-punk featuring members of a few different Small Bear Records bands, including The Bordellos and Postcode, longtime CNQ faves.
In April 1952 Specialty Records (who would release Little Richard's Tutti Fruitti three years later) released Lawdy Miss Clawdy. The single spent seven weeks at the number one spot on the Billboard R&B chart, and was named R&B Record of the Year by Billboard and Cashbox. It was written and sung by Lloyd Price (with Fats Domino on piano), was Price's first hit, and is a seminal piece of R&B and early rock'n'roll. Larry Williams (who had been Price's valet, per wikipedia), later reworked the song into Dizzy Mizz Lizzie. Lawdy Miss Clawdy has also been covered many times, but I think in my personal experience I've heard Dizzie Miss Lizzie more often.
Lloyd Price (born March 9, 1933) had more hits (Stagger Lee, Personality) and a long career in music and business. Price currently manages Icon Food Brands, which on top of Southern-style foods also features Lawdy Miss Clawdy clothing and collectibles. He's got a street named after him in his hometown of Kenner, Louisiana, and that city celebrates an annual Lloyd Price Day. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
Per Wikipedia, he and his wife live in New York and he continues to sing.
There's a couple of different recordings of Price doing this song on Youtube, but none are as upbeat as the one that's on his Millennium Collection. I assume that one on the Millennium Collection is the original single, and the others are re-stylings, like this 1969 version I present tonight, along with its b-side.
This electrical soul version was recorded for his own label, Lloyd Price's Turntable. Per Discogs, he opened an identically named Manhattan restaurant-nightclub the same year he started the label. The label design is particularly groovy and features a picture of Price looking sharp. The B-side is another funky soul reworking of one of his older songs, the Luther Dixon-penned Little Volcano.
I didn't find either of these versions after my customary quick Google search. I picked this up over at Josey Records, for $3.
As always, this is presented strictly for educational and historical purposes, and will only be up for a limited time.
I was reading the Wikipedia page for Marshalltown, Iowa, because I was like, what's up with there? And it said one of the town's notable exports is a band called Modern Life Is War, who I've never heard of, but this sounds cool:
Synchronicity: I read on Bremen's Sabotage Records newsletter that band Terrible Feelings new LP Tremors will be out in April, just in time for their tour with the aforementioned Modern Life is War.
Here's something else cool from Sabotage, coming out in March:
You can pre-order Limited Edition Red Shell Cassettes of this sweet action from Negative Fun Records, run out of North Carolina and New Hampshire.
Germany's Tramp Rec is in the habit of re-issuing awesome stuff on vinyl:
Life isn't complete without a Simo Soo track, this from 2011, but I just heard it for the first time, and it sounds fresh as all get out:
Today at Lucky Dog Books in the D I picked up a big hardback encyclopedia of Roman history for a cool $6, plus some old Who's Who In The DC Universe reader copies, a couple of Steely Dan albums, and this heavy metal sampler LP called Heavy Metal Thunder. Originally released on French label/distro Carrere in '82, the one I picked up has label and album print (except for title and band names) in Spanish, and it was released on Peerless in 1983. Neat stuff.
Among the 45s I picked up was this pop obscurity. Take A Good Look b/w Close To You by Johnny King, with The Singing Strings of Carl Cotner, released on a label called Monticello in 1960. I couldn't find out anything about Monticello via a Google search. This site puts the recording year of this seven inch at 1960. And the song was mentioned in a Billboard in mid-January, 1960, though I see a couple of other links that have it for sale put the year of its creation at 1959. There's a few copies available on Ebay.
Take A Good Look was written by one Al Stewart, but I don't think it was the Year of the Cat Al Stewart because he woulda been 13 and 14 in '59-60. My Google search turned up nada on the song. I prefer this track to the B side, Close To You.
Close to You was written in 1943 by Jerry Livingston, Carl Lampl and Al Hoffman, and has been covered three times by Frank Sinatra. And I guess once by Johnny King with The Singing Strings of Carl Cotner. Two of the three writers mentioned above - Hoffman and Livingston plus a guy named Milton Drake, wrote Mairzy Doats. My pet peeve is the words "can't you see" in a song. So cliche, and Close to You features it, but it's still okay I guess.
I couldn't find a dang thing about Johnny King. At least, no one named Johnny King who I think was the singer on these tracks.
Carl Cotner, who led the backing band on both sides of the vinyl, is more of a known entity than the shadowy Johnny King. Per Cotner's Discogs page, he was "Gene Autry`s longtime music director and movie stand-in," born in 1916 and passed on in '86.
So who listened to this stuff back in 1960? Was it for teens? The elderly? Babies? Thirtysomethings? I really don't know.
Al Casey is a famed session musician originally from Phoenix, Arizona. He played with Lee Hazlewood, Sanford Clark, played guitar on Jody Reynolds' awesome Endless Sleep, wrote Duane Eddy's Ramrod, and was an original member of The Wrecking Crew, the famous group of studio musicians in 1960s Los Angeles. Casey's guitar can be heard on Pet Sounds, Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," and a ton of other popular music from the 1960s and beyond. He was also a member of the band on the Dean Martin Show.
Thus was born The Exotic Guitars, which released several albums and singles through the late 60s and into the 1970s.
I Will Wait For You, was on the first Exotic Guitars self-titled album, and is the B-side to the single, a cover of Blueberry Hill, from the same LP. I Will Wait For You is the English version of a song from a French musical called The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The music was composed by famous French composer Michel Legrand, and the English lyrics are by American lyricist Norman Gimbel, who wrote Sway, The Girl From Impenema, Killing Me Softly with His Song, among others.
Casey puts a 60s surf spin on I Will Wait For You, and it's the most, man. The most.
The 45 label credits Al Casey on guitar, but says I Will Wait For You and the A-side were both arranged and conducted by Bill Justis, he of Raunchy fame.
Al Casey passed away back in 2006. A Youtuber has posted the whole self-titled Exotic Guitars album, but still, here's I Will Wait For You.
Princess Ramona, AKA The Cherokee Princess, is Ramona Kemp, and she was born February 9, 1925. Her Facebook page was last updated March 7, 2014. I've tried to contact her and a few of her contacts via Facebook, but I've come up short on replies.
This 45 is, as the label sez, "A Little Bit of Royalty." Both of these songs are great. "Lover For A Night" is a sultry, seductive slow jam, and "I Need All The Help I Can Get" is a fun B-side with some interesting guitar flourishes. I don't know if that's Princess Ramona on guitar also or a studio musician.
Before we hear the songs, here's all the information I could find on Princess Ramona:
Per her Internet bio I found on a couple of different sites, Princess Ramona has traveled the globe singing, yodeling, and spreading the gospel for more than 50 years. She is the daughter of Chief Frank Buckshot Standing Horse. Princess Ramona was the wife of producer and fellow musician Buddy Kemp. I couldn't find much else about Buddy Kemp other than the work he did with his wife.
Back in September of this year I did a post featuring Sammy Masters' "Say Yes Or No" b/w "When Fools Get Together" from 1966. Sammy Masters' song, "Say Yes Or No," was written by B. Kemp-R. Dale-S. Masters. I picked up both the Sammy Masters 45 and this Princess Ramona from the same place - The Record Parlour in Los Angeles. I'm not a hundred percent sure but I'm going to venture to guess that this B. Kemp was Buddy Kemp, Princess Ramona's husband, producer, and co-performer, and that the Ramona Dale who helped write "Say Yes Or No" and sang back up on both of the Sammy Masters tracks was, in fact, Princess Ramona.
As far as I can tell, the two songs on this 45 have not been shared with the Internet before. "Lover For A Night" was written by Oklahoma-born country songwriter Eddie Miller, who also wrote "Release Me," and, per his Wikipedia entry, "was the founder of the Country and Western Music Academy in Hollywood, as well as a co-founder of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (of which he served as the first president and also another term in the presidency)."
"I Need All The Help I Can Get" was written by Glen Garrison, a country singer-songwriter born in Arkansas.
On a final note, Princess Ramona's father, Chief Frank Buckshot Standing Horse, became a preacher late in his life and apparently had a keen interest in UFOs. He had his own contactee experience in 1959, in which he claimed to have been taken on a space ride across the solar system. He also founded the First Indian Spacecraft Convention in Sulpee, Oklahoma. Click here for the details on that.
