Had a request for some Rodd Keith songs-poems. Song-poems, as extensivley documented on Phil Milstein's crucial American Song-Poem Music Archive, were lyrics sent in by anyone with the money to have them set to music by "today's top musicians and singers!" And Rodd Keith(aka Rod Rogers, Cleveland Becker, Lindon Bridges, etc) was perhaps the genre's greatest singer/songwriter of lyrics so awkward (or awful) that few mortals would even attempt getting a good song out them, much less actually succeedding. (Since the ASPMA has taken down their mp3s, I'll put up a few.)
Case in point, this well-meaning, if corny mid-'60s social statement that Rodd infuses with noir atmosphere:
Rodd Keith: Los Angeles City Lights
now available on a new Keith collection, "Saucers In The Sky."
From the sublime to the, well, you know...'60s electronics-a-go-go:
Rod Rogers and the Swinging Strings: That Martian Jubilee
Tragically, Keith died when he fell (was pushed? jumped?) from an LA freeway overpass on to traffic in 1974. Thanks to his son, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin for preserving his music. And, of course, thanks to the anonymous Middle Americans who forked over the 200 bucks or so to have their doggerel set to music, without which the song-poem phenomenon (or today's post) wouldn't have been possible.
2 comments:
hi, you can download some Gene Marshall-mp3s about Richard Nixon at http://www.songpoemmusic.com/mp3/ and you can find some more Rodd Keith at http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/07/american_song_p.html, the final MSR Madness, Volumes 5 and 6. does anybody know why www.songpoemmusic.com isn't updated since february 2004?
Excellent tips, thanks muchly!
I assume the reason that the archives haven't been updated is because Milstein is releasing song-poem albums now on Bar None records so he doesn't want to give them away anymore.
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