Search - Dickie Goodman :: King of Novelty: Works 1956-1959

This guy STILL can't catch a break!!!

mackdaddyg | 02/21/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This cd is a bit of a disappointment. The material is great as always. Dickie Goodman (both with Bill Buchanan and on his own) made some mighty fine novelty records. Some work better than others, but there are classics a'plenty to be found in his repertoire. This cd takes a novel approach to his legacy. They include his break-in classics along with some of the musical acts he produced, plus some tracks that his former partner Bill Buchanan made without Dickie. Overall, it makes for an interesting compilation.



Here are the problems:



1. Packaging - In a sense, not much is known about Dickie, and the liner notes in the booklet leave a lot to be desired. What little biographical info that they bother to include in the essay amounts to little more than the dates of his birth and very untimely death. Sure, you can read about the historical relevance of these early novelty records, but you will learn NOTHING about the man, which seems to plague poor Dickie wherever I look. Years ago, there was a book written by his son called "Dickie Goodman - the King of Novelty" which ranks as the only book I've ever purchased and returned demanding a refund because it was so bad. I made myself read three chapters before realizing that the author had not bothered to hire a competent editor for the book, which made it very difficult to read. What was worse...I was learning NOTHING about Dickie, and to this day it still seems that way.



In addition, there is no discography of any sort in the booklet. If you want to know when any of these singles were released, buy yourself a 45 rpm price guide and you'll get much more information. Also, some of the information is wrong. For example, "The Creature" was NOT a Buchanan and Goodman track, but rather Buchanan and Ancell, and "The Thing" was a Bill Buchanan solo record, not Goodman and Ancell.



In other words, you will learn very little from the liner notes, and what you learn may be wrong!



2. Track listing - The running order of the tracks has a few issues. For example, "Meet the Creature" appears before "The Creature" which is putting the b-side before the a-side. That normally ain't a big deal, but it is a two part record of sorts, and the story (such as it is) makes no sense when heard out of order. Who's bright idea was it to program it that way?! Furthermore, it would have made more sense to put these two tracks back to back (in correct order). The same goes for the two Frankenstein tracks. In both cases, the tracks are a and b-sides that were meant to be heard one right after the other, pretty much because you would play the first side and then flip the record over to hear the second side. In both cases, the flow is interrupted on the cd.

The sound quality of the tracks is pretty good. Some are obviously taken from vinyl sources, and they may very well ALL be from vinyl sources, which is to be expected. I'm sure any sort of master tapes for these disappeared a long time ago. For the most part the sound is pretty clean but you will hear surface noise from time to time. The only beef I have is that in the case of "Santa and the Satellite" they used a version with a few song snippet remakes instead of the original version. For example, instead of hearing the Everly Brothers' original version of "Wake Up Little Susie" or Little Richard's "Keep a Knockin'" being used (like it was on the original B & G 45), you hear a remake of the song. Thankfully, this doesn't happen very often, but it is a bit of sloppiness on the compiler's part to not use the real deal. I doubt licensing was an issue, since you hear Elvis' voice all over the place on these tracks and he DEFINITELY don't come cheap!!



Here's the final word. If you don't have the Dickie Goodman break-in stuff already, this cd is probably worth purchasing. Personally, I had a lot of this stuff thanks to a two disc compilation that came out a few years ago, but it was nice to get this disc to fill in the gaps. I'm assuming the company plans on issuing more Dickie Goodman compilations in the future. If so, I really hope they do a better job next time around. It is surprising, given that the distributor Cherry Red Records usually puts out high quality packages, that there were so many disappointments with this cd.



Rest in peace, Dickie. Maybe someday somebody will do you right.

"