Frank Gutch Jr: John ‘Buck’ Ormsby: Maybe Out of His Tree, But Never Out of His League; Plus, Artists Who Should Have Made It (A Musical Roundup)

This morning was cold and wet with a chill that went to the bone, the clouds threatening, the rain off and on but somehow consistent.  I knew it would be.  Yesterday, my friend John Hicks had posted a message that Buck Ormsby had died.  No way, I thought, because I had had contact only a few days previous— just a note, but contact.  When I approached Hicks, he said that he had found out from Ormsby’s son’s page.  He sent me the link and there it was.  We are sorry to report… and the words became a blur.   While it hardly seemed possible, Buck was gone.  Is gone, for none of us will hear from him again and that is truly a sad thing.

Frank Gutch Jr: Three Noteworthy Reissue Labels Mining the Gold… and Silver… and Copper… and Tin… plus Notes

Music used to be all about hits, and before that, artists, and before that, publishing.  Recycling music was written into the process from the beginning, but when the LP came along, recycling became a way of life.  To be fair, early reissue albums were not reissues at all but were what they termed “budget” discs, a term also applied to albums of “generic” music by artists of little known or unknown cachet.  Labels such as Harmony and Pickwick and Design once filled drug store racks with albums of dubious distinction, filled with either deep tracks of a popular artist or tracks by bands put together in the studio to recreate hits of the day.