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:: Jamie – Fifty Nifty United States ::

You never know what you'll wind up with when you steal a record like this one. Could be funny, boring, "interesting", or good.

Jamie Burghardt was 9 when he cut this hot slab of wax in '74. In the almost always well-appreciated spirit of separation of church and state, side one is devoted to devotional music, while side two is loaded with patriotic nuggets. All the typical numbers: I Am A Yankee Doodle Dandy, You Are A Grand Old Flag and Battle Him of The Republicans (ha ha). At the nucleus of the concise organ and piano arrangements is Jamie's voice; a loud and clear boy-soprano gifted with (as the liner notes claim) "exceptional diction".

Even though his parents came from Canada, Jamie was born in the OC and is as American as . fuck. At the time of this recording, Jamie and his parents were living in Palm Springs, so hey, Jesus knows whatever happened to them? As someone once said, "no one ever gets out of here alive", or something like that and you know how it was in the '70s, with angel dust and shit like that. Poor kid.



Right about now we need a really good reason to feel great about our country, don't we?. What better way than to name check each and every state of the union during the course of a single 3 minute song?

Fifty Nifty United States was written by Ray Charles. What's up with all the Ray Charles shit?!


Mike

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 22, 2005 at 8:47 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.