Thursday, April 30, 2009

Ballad of Justice Blind

Here's a rather amazingly bad late period Tin Pan Alley 45. It's labeled on both sides as being by Mike Thomas, and I guess it could be him, although it sounds somewhat different than the other Mike Thomas records. In fact, only when he speaks on the first side shared here does it sound like it's even a male singer. Otherwise, I'd have thought this was a woman singing. On the other hand, the spoken section makes up THE LAST TWO MINUTES of the three minute song!

It's called "Ballad of Justice Blind", although having listened to it several times now, I cannot find anything in the lyric which indicates if the man in jail was guilty or not. That's on top of the barely competent musical backing. A true train wreck of a record, which I'm sure you'll enjoy mightily: 

Play:


The B-Side, while not nearly as memorable, is interesting for the fact that the song-poet appears to have only written one short verse, a problem which the folks at Tin Pan Alley solved by having the verse sung twice, between which they had the band simply play the chord changes (with NO soloing), managing to pad a 45 second song into a two minute performance. That instrumental section is fairly amazing for its banal nature. Enjoy!

Play:


 

3 comments:

Sammy Reed said...

"Springtime" isn't working.

Sammy Reed said...

"It's called "Ballad of Justice Blind", although having listened to it several times now, I cannot find anything in the lyric which indicates if the man in jail was guilty or not."

The song starts out with the man already serving his prison term. With 7 years to go, they sent him to the baby's funeral, where he tried to escape.
The ones who paid "for something she did not do" were his wife and baby.

Timmy said...

Sounds to bruise your ear drum... THANX!