Cardboard Records: A Part of this Balanced Breakfast (pt. 3)

Here are a few vintage tv commercials featuring ceral box records. Anyone remember these?

And... an excellent book with info on cereal box records and bubblegum music in general can be found Here

Cardboard Records: A Part of this Balanced Breakfast (pt. 2)

MP3 File
The Archies
Boys and Girls
Cardboard Cereal Box Record
1969-72?
This one is a lot more successful in terms of sounding like a real song. The sound quality is also much better. Check this link for a discography of cereal box records: Here

and go Here
for more info on the Archies.
p.s. Warning: Exremely Catchy Tune. Earworm Alert. Download at own risk!

Cardboard Records: A Part of this Balanced Breakfast (pt. 1)

The Sugar Bears
You Are the One
Cardboard Cereal Box Record - Song #2
1972

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These are fun. Remember those little cardboard records you used to cut from the box of your favorite breakfast cereal? Well, me neither, actually, but here's one from The Sugar Bears. The record indicates that this is song #2 (among 5 that you could collect) and remarkably, it actually rose to #51 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in 1972. The Sugar Bears are also known for employing Kim Carnes of "Bette Davis Eyes" fame. I found a few of these recently (more to come soon) and I must say that they are in surprisingly great shape for their age. This one is a rather bland but upbeat pop tune that sounds like is was written and performed by a commercial jingle company (probably not far from the truth.) The sound quality is decent, considering the source, although you can here the record slip occasionally. Pretty neat!
p.s. Check out the Internet Museum of Flexi Records in the links list on the right side of the screen for more examples...


p.p.s. Doobee Bear? (ahem)

Blast Off with Walt!

Nobel "Thin Man" Watts
Blast Off
Baton - 251
1958

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Apparently, Walt was a DJ at KJIM (Sherman, TX) and this was his theme song. I found this disc among a collection of radio promo discs, a lot of Atlantic stuff from the fifties/early sixties. I was intrigued by the grease pencil writing around the edge of the label. The other side is similarly marked, but says: NO over and over with a lot of X's. Pretty cool...

Mambo Baby

Jim Brown and the Four Bells
Mambo Baby

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This is an odd little number. It's a 7 inch 78, from Bell records. I've seen some of these Bell 7-inchers before and always thought they were kind of curious. Some of the later ones have color picture sleeves which feature some exceptionally great artwork, however the music is often rather lackluster. This one didn't come with a sleeve (that I know of) but when I played it I was surprised to find this nice, rollicking R&B tune. Very appealling... From 1954. For (much) more info on Bell Records go Here

Shootin' The Grease

Jesse Gresham Plus 3
Shootin' The Grease

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Wow, I don't know who the hell Jesse Gresham is and I've never seen the Head label before, but this is one seriously terrific track! This thing starts off strong and just keeps getting better and better as it goes along. Dig it!
p.s. the flipside is Robert Parker's "Barefootin'"

You Are So Rare!

The Three Haircuts
You Are So Rare to Me

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I first saw the above clip, from Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," on some music documentary that was discussing the cultural impact of rock and roll. In it, Sid Caesar, Karl Reiner and Howard Morris do their impression of what they think rock and roll is about. I love this bit, it's a classic. When I recently found this 45 I was surprised to learn that RCA actually released the song as a single in 1955.