Jerry Wallace

A collection of hits I got from Pyramid Records. You could get anything at Pyramid Records. It was amazing.

Wallace, a pop singer whose records had a very mild country flavour, had 13 records on the top 100 between 1958 and 1972. My collection has 7, and they weren’t all from the Greatest Hits collection; I had to get some others separately.

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Jerry Wallace:

• Shutters And Boards – Not only is the marriage over and the dream dead, but the house is all boarded up. I wonder why they couldn’t just sell it. And it’s all his fault. Of course. From the winter of 1963.
• There She Goes – Another it’s-all-my-fault song. This was a favourite among country singers, but Wallace was the only one to have a pop hit out of it. That was in the winter of 1961. Patsy Cline did it as There He Goes. She would.
• Am I That Easy To Forget – A hit by Debbie Reynolds, then later by Engelbert Humperdinck, but not for Jerry Wallace.
• San Antonio Rose – Another chestnut. This was a hit for Floyd Cramer, without words, and we have versions by Patsy Cline, by The Sons Of The Pioneers, by etc.
• I Can See An Angel – This is another song of lost, or perhaps unrequited, love. It has a swinging jaunty attitude, replete with whistling, but it’s not a swinging jaunty song.
• Blue Jean Baby – Not a rock and roll song, its title notwithstanding. It’s basically like all his other stuff. The tune is very close to that of I Can See An Angel.
• Angel On My Shoulder – Now we’re hearing a lot about angels, but this is just a song about looking for a true love. Gary Lewis & The Playboys did a song with this title, on the Listen! album, but this isn’t it.
• You’ll Never Know – Another standard, this time from the pop world. Not to be confused with You’ll Never Never Know by The Platters. Seems we haven’t encountered it yet, but keep reading…
• That’s All I Want From You – Not much, I guess. It’s never quite how we think it is, though, is it…
• Swingin’ Down The Lane – This is just cheap Primrose Lane redux. It’s from the summer of 1960, and it only reached number 79 on Billboard, which makes sense, because probably the only people who bought it were confused about which song it was.
• Life’s A Holiday – More Primrose Lane redux, this time usurping the actual lyrics. This take on the happy side of life was a small hit in the spring of 1961.
• How The Time Flies – His debut hit has a bit more of an R & B feel than his usual fare, a bit of sax, a bit of groove, like he hadn’t quite settled into his pop – country style yet. From the fall of 1958.
• Primrose Lane – Finally, the big hit. Primrose Lane, a song about some wonderful suburban street, was one of those songs about domestic bliss. A hit in the fall of 1958.
• In The Misty Moonlight – Moonlight is always romantic, isn’t it. Isn’t it? Well, ask Van Morrison. This was a hit in the fall of 1964, and Dean Martin did it in 1967, and his version didn’t do as well, but it’s probably better remembered.