It was always great to find a new Beatles rarity in the local record bin. In the early years, most Beatle bootlegs were housed in white cardboard sleeves with a one page Xerox copied black and white cover. The song titles - many incorrect - had been quickly typed underneath a picture pulled from Nicholas Schaffner's book. Sound quality ranged from incredible to ... "What IS that in the background, McCartney's voice or a moose?"
Sometimes, you would get it home and find that you had struck gold, and perhaps you'd be treated to one or more of the band's many great BBC appearances (years before the Capitol release was a gleam in their eyes). Or maybe, you'd hear one of their handful of well recorded live shows.
But Other times, you had struck ... well, vinyl. Some unscrupulous bootlegger scammed you out of $4.50 to listen to the regular studio version of a song played through a mono speaker, garbled with some chatter, and labeled as a 'rare studio outtake'. Feh. Some of the more interesting situations that would happen occurred when a song by a band that wasn't even the Beatles would find it's way onto one of these 'collections'.
Here's one of those. The album "20x4" had a few revelatory bits on it when it came out back in the late 70s. But much of it was junk. One extremely interesting cut on the record was titled "Penny O'Dell" by the knowledgeable staff at 'Ruthless Rhymes Records'. It was a GREAT tune with an excellent hook, nice feel and great lyrics. The cover listed it as a Wings outtake from their 1974 Nashville sessions. It sure was McCartney-worthy ... but whose VOICE was on it, singing this tune about a homecoming queen who may ... or may not ... be named Penny O'Dell? It wasn't Paul. It wasn't Denny. The odds of it really being a Wings cut was quite slim. The recording on the LP is interrupted about 3/4 of the way through by an engineers voice muttering what seem to be the title. Then it restarts almost where it left off ... and trails off into a great bootleg mystery.
Over the years, Beatle fans have grown to love this mysterious tune - even though most of them have been wondering who the hell really recorded it. Wonder no further. A fine Nashville songwriter named KENNY O'Dell recorded this gem - actually titled 'Homecoming Queen" - in the early 70s. After a 25+ year search I was able to unearth the Kapp Records 45 of this great song through the wonders of the Internet. Breathe easier, fellow Beatle-people - as the great Inspector Clouseau would have said ... 'Ze meestairy ees a-soulved'. Dig it.
Homecoming Queen
2 comments:
Thank you! I have the 20x4 German Bootleg LP and never could figure this song out. (Actually, I sold the album to a record shop after I had digitized it). I really like this song, but could never accept the fact that it was a Beatles' song. Now I know the truth! Thank you for the detective work.
Glad I could help, Roger!! Thanks for visiting the blog. New posts to come soon!
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