Carolyn Bennett, "So Sad To Bad [sic]" c/w "I Wonder," Sully 926 (rel. 1966)
This is the story of a record I know I've had for at least two decades. No idea where I got it, or when. It's always been there. It's moved forward four boxes as my collection has grown. Two decades ago, I couldn't find any information on it, and there was no YouTube video so I could hear it. Why didn't I put it on my turntable and play it? I have no answer.
Now and then, I'd come across it in its box, hold it up, take a look at it (it appears unplayed) and think, "yeah, gotta play this one sometime." Cut to a week ago; I bumped into it online and saw it going for three figures in clean condition. What I thought was just another innocuous teen pop record had something to it to demand such steep prices. Okay, okay--I'll give it a spin!
Within moments, I understood, and tsked myself for not having played the danged thing long before. But perhaps it was a surprise past me had set up for future me. Although past me couldn't have heard it...it is, as well, a perfect Saturday record, with loads of "huh?" and "...huh!" in its styrene grooves.
Now and then, I'd come across it in its box, hold it up, take a look at it (it appears unplayed) and think, "yeah, gotta play this one sometime." Cut to a week ago; I bumped into it online and saw it going for three figures in clean condition. What I thought was just another innocuous teen pop record had something to it to demand such steep prices. Okay, okay--I'll give it a spin!
Within moments, I understood, and tsked myself for not having played the danged thing long before. But perhaps it was a surprise past me had set up for future me. Although past me couldn't have heard it...it is, as well, a perfect Saturday record, with loads of "huh?" and "...huh!" in its styrene grooves.
Sully Records was operated by country songwriter Gene Sullivan, who, with his frequent partner Wiley Walker, penned several classic items in the limbic period between 1935 and 1945, when country music had lost its way and was corrupted by the mainstream pop style. It got...bland. All the rustic wildness of the 1920s became Velveeta-smooth processed crooning, with a Western theme and vanilla vocal harmonies, orchestral instruments...nothing to see here, folks.
A few hard-line performers like The Carter Family and The Delmore Brothers soldiered on in the heartier old-timey style, but they were the distinct minority into 1945, when the latter group sparked a radical change in country music with their r&b influenced hit "Hillbilly Boogie." Hank Williams' emergence in 1946 cemented this new sound, and country hit another peak period in the 1950s.
Sullivan and Walker wrote great songs, including the much-covered "Live and Let Live" and "When My Blue Moon Turns Gold Again," and performed as a harmony duet. Situated in Oklahoma, they were TV pioneers, performing in 1946 on local stations. Sullivan settled in the state and re-recorded their two smash songs for Sully Records, which began in 1959. Sully laster for almost a decade and attracted a range of regional talent, including rock 'n' roll. garage rock and, of course, country.
The label attracted producer-engineer Norman Petty from Clovis, New Mexico and Nashville man-of-many-talent Ray Stevens, who alternated as performer from the greeting-card pap of "Everything is Beautiful" and a series of super-cringe novelty songs with cultural stereotypes that were uneasy when songs like "Ahab the Arab" were new.
Stevens had a flair for girl-group style songs and productions, and specialized in them in Nashville. How he became the producer of Carolyn Bennett is lost to time. She made two singles for Sullivan, with her other disc on the short-lived Sölly imprint. which carries on the catalog numbers of Sully and seems to exist just to confuse record collectors. (There's a lot of that going on.)
On "So Sad To Bad" (their wording, not mine), she comes across as a feral alternative to Brenda Lee on a country rocker with steel guitar doing Chuck Berry-type licks and a distant vocal chorus.
A few hard-line performers like The Carter Family and The Delmore Brothers soldiered on in the heartier old-timey style, but they were the distinct minority into 1945, when the latter group sparked a radical change in country music with their r&b influenced hit "Hillbilly Boogie." Hank Williams' emergence in 1946 cemented this new sound, and country hit another peak period in the 1950s.
Sullivan and Walker wrote great songs, including the much-covered "Live and Let Live" and "When My Blue Moon Turns Gold Again," and performed as a harmony duet. Situated in Oklahoma, they were TV pioneers, performing in 1946 on local stations. Sullivan settled in the state and re-recorded their two smash songs for Sully Records, which began in 1959. Sully laster for almost a decade and attracted a range of regional talent, including rock 'n' roll. garage rock and, of course, country.
The label attracted producer-engineer Norman Petty from Clovis, New Mexico and Nashville man-of-many-talent Ray Stevens, who alternated as performer from the greeting-card pap of "Everything is Beautiful" and a series of super-cringe novelty songs with cultural stereotypes that were uneasy when songs like "Ahab the Arab" were new.
Stevens had a flair for girl-group style songs and productions, and specialized in them in Nashville. How he became the producer of Carolyn Bennett is lost to time. She made two singles for Sullivan, with her other disc on the short-lived Sölly imprint. which carries on the catalog numbers of Sully and seems to exist just to confuse record collectors. (There's a lot of that going on.)
On "So Sad To Bad" (their wording, not mine), she comes across as a feral alternative to Brenda Lee on a country rocker with steel guitar doing Chuck Berry-type licks and a distant vocal chorus.
As with his Nashville productions in this vein, Stevens tries for a wall-of-sound style that only adds to the recording's louche charm. It's an odd but entrancing hybrid with a swampy sound that seems just right for its content and performance. This is no bland teen pop item. I'm not sure who this was aimed at in 1966--not that it mattered. The record may have done well close to home, but Sully did no promotion of their product; there's nary a mention in the music magazines of the day. It has a grow-on-you quality and may be the only time Ray Stevens and Norman Petty shared the same work space.
"I Wonder," which opens with a gorgeous augmented chord by the steel guitarist, is more down-to-earth. It's quite the Brenda Lee wanna-be, but its put in a key that Bennett can't quite navigate. Her freakish performance--strained and warbled to a dramatic degree--gives this The David Lynch Effect™, as does a spoken-word interlude, which Carolyn delivers in the mien of a mentally-ill person talking to a phantom friend on a street corner. Is this the side that causes the high prices on this single? One wonders!
And done--played, presented and...something else that begins with P. Now to get on with the rest of my day. May yours be cool, calm and collected!
Tomorrow: Swamp-pop legends Cookie and The Cupcakes return with a barnstormin' bayou rocker, coupled with one their signature ballads, on 1962 performances issued by Louisiana's Lyric Records in 1964.
Carolyn Bennett voice sounds like someone was throttling her on and off while she did a back-and-forth Brenda Lee er Dolly Parton er Brenda Lee impression. Both these songs are actually well-written, well-played and well-recorded but, gosh, could she really NOT sing. All I could see is SCTV's Catherine O'Hara in her Lola Heatherton guise struggling to keep in tune. Like Patsy Cline's 1961 hit "Crazy" —"I Wonder" would have been a hit for her if she had been alive in 1966. I wonder if this 45 had ever got to a second printing that they would have corrected the weird typo of "Too Sad To Sad"? Say lah vee!
ReplyDelete