Still living and singing in the Phoenix area, I took a booking at the “Ice House” folk venue in Pasadena, California. While there, Leon Pober and Bud Freeman, writers of Jerry Lewis’s hit song “Sunday Drivers”, came to see my show. They offered me the opportunity to be the talent for a new album of spoof folk songs that they had written, entitled “Almost Authentic Folksongs”. Of course, I said “Yes” and the next thing I knew, I am at “United Artists Recording Studios” in Hollywood, recording an album for national release, and singing in front of a 23-piece symphonic orchestra.
Crazy! Someone pinch me! Then, a cut from this album, “Joe Bean”, which told the spoof story about a hanging of an innocent man in the old west, became the “pick hit of the week” by a very well-known disk jockey, on a very influential radio station, in San Francisco, Then, as fate would have it, my recording was banned from the airways by the FCC as “Inappropriate Material for Airplay” because of the current execution of mass murderer, Carl Chessman, (Talk about your censorship of the arts!)?
Anyhow, I have included this album in my collection of recordings because it is a very good album of very funny songs. It possesses much of the same qualities of Tom Lear’s recordings. Very funny and very dry humor. A classic and one of a kind.
The Balladeer
