Mike Thomas – "Bubbly, Bubbly Root Beer" (1977)

 

Donald Archibald copyrighted three songs in 1977: "Bubby, Bubbly Root Beer," "Victory Rock, Rock, Rock!" and "The Lullaby of the Clouds." Only the first one, as far as I know, was recorded. 

Archibald sent his lyrics to Tin Pan Alley, a song-poem company that was founded in New York in 1941, according to songpoemmusic.com, and then relocated to Sarastota, Florida. 

The song-poem industry, if you don't know, was a peculiar area of the vanity recording industry in which musical hopefuls would send their lyrics to companies who advertised in the back of magazines. These advertisements gave the impression that the song-poem companies were mainstream music entities looking for up-and-coming lyricists to supply words for future hit records, but in reality, the companies were bottom feeders who flattered applicants and coaxed them into sending money to finance recordings of quickly and cheaply arranged songs in independent studios, resulting in records that were pressed in very limited numbers and had absolutely no chance of achieving the commercial success that the companies suggested was a possibility.

"Bubbly, Bubbly Root Beer" was performed by Mike Thomas, a stalwart musician of the Tin Pan Alley label who in this particular performance sounds like an Australian singer to me, but his other performances on other Tin Pan Alley recordings sound completely different.

As an enthusiast of song-poem recordings, I think "Bubbly, Bubbly Root Beer" is one of the better efforts in this field. The stanza about moonwalks is questionable, but the rest of the lyrics are pretty solid, and the song itself expresses nostalgia for dad's homemade root beer as well as national brands such as Mason's (a childhood favorite of mine) and Hy's. The minimalist guitar/bass/drums arrangement by Mike Thomas lends the song an appealingly unpretentious garage-rock quality.

I don't know anything about Donald Archibald, but maybe one of his friends or relatives will comment on this post and we'll find out what inspired him to send his hard-earned money and sentimental root beer poem to Tin Pan Alley and commision this song. Whatever his motivation, the combination of his heartfelt lyrics and Thomas's simple vocal/instrumental arrangement resulted in what, as far as I'm concerned, is really a high-water mark in the weird world of song-poem recordings.