Gene Lewis, "Too Young To Settle Down" c/w "Close," Josie 45-819 (rel. 5/1957)

More computer problems have plagued my morning. I can no longer use Google Chrome for reasons unknown and unknowable. A Windows "help" person, Matthew, became tiresome and shame-lectured me; I backed off and so I'm stuck with Microsoft Edge, which bites balls, but that's all I've got for the time being.
    All that aside, here's a record I found lying on the front counter of a record store I frequent. "Is this anyone's?" I inquired.
    "Someone didn't like it," the guy behind the counter replied.

    Fine! The Josie label is almost always a guarantee of something good, especially in this era, with the Daliesque logo like something out of the dream sequence in Hitchcock's 1945 film Spellbound. The store has a tester turntable, most often hogged by some elfin guy with a two-foot stack of 12" dance-remix singles. He was not present that day, so I hopped in and had a listen. Whoa-boy!
    Crazy-hyper rockabilly guitars making quite the divine racket. All controls set to 11.5! West Coast-sounding affair something like Jimmy Bryant but hot him. Perhaps Roy Lanham? The band is Foy Willing's; the singer, who made a few rockin' singles, never had his photo taken. Gene Lewis sounds like somebody's dad on a wee bender who insists he needs to sing in public.
    Those geetars are so hoppin' that Lewis' laconic approach--he makes Sanford Clark sound like Joe Strummer--seems more absurd than it might in other settings. His voice is so NOT rock 'n' roll. He's an easy-goin' country crooner. The disconnect here makes it impossible to focus on what he's singing the first time around. But the results are messed up in a divine level that few records achieve.
    What were they thinking? It's a wonderful quirk of fate that "Too Young to Settle Down," a het-up song about a horny teenager who's leery of gittin' hitched, is sung by such a not-sexy voice. That unintended contrast is the essence of The Saturday Club Record, which merits a genre all its own.

 

Cash Box had no problem with a deep-voiced daddy in front of a caffeinated rockabilly group. Anything was game in 1957, the year rock 'n' roll went mainstream!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cnorvb3nk8e5ztzgunm85/2163a.mp3?rlkey=xbsvoaox17nhnpvi3b7q06i98&st=bs9rtcrn&dl=0

"Close" is ye olde 1950s rockaballad, brought to life by those gallopin' guitars, and with Gene Lewis sounding like he's at last ready for some heavy petting. "You bring out a strange desire/one I can't deny," he croons as he leans in for that Brylcreem-scented attempted smooch. Whether he succeeded or not is lost to time.
    Without the crack band behind him, "Close" could become wearying fast. But those guitars! A year later, such a record would've been sunk by a heavy vocal chorus. That missing element frees both sides and lets them be appealing rather than the utter misfire they might have become.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2hz5nw8yklfs112dyxbxz/2163b.mp3?rlkey=yaa0dfav15s1l93z15rvea5uz&st=i47rzbfi&dl=0

Lewis is best-known for his in-demand R-Dell Records single "Crazy Legs," where he gets a bit more into the rock 'n' roll mannerisms but doesn't lose the dad-on-a-spree vocal vibe. What happened to him isn't known. Ain't nothin' on this guy except a handful of records. And that's the way it goes!

Tomorrow: one-record-wonders The Chestnuts blow the roof off with a searing 1954 Mercury Records r&b platter. For fans of tribal percussion!