Weird Scenes Inside the Birdhouse

Quirky Florida-based country duo Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan scored several hits in the late '60s and the first half of the '70s, exemplified by the deeply strange novelty tune "Tennessee Bird Walk" from 1970, but by 1975, the hits had dried up and Blanchard & Morgan were at the beginning of a long fallow period. As a companion to the hits 'n' more collection Life and Death (And Almost Everything Else), Omni Records has unearthed some rare and unreleased material from 1973 to 1976 on the more sober Weird Scenes Inside the Birdhouse. While Blanchard & Morgan don't entirely neglect the oddball tunes that made their names — witness the dance tune "The Cockroach Stomp" and the quirky "Cows" and "Molasses in the Moonlight" — most of Weird Scenes Inside the Birdhouse consists of lush countrypolitan tunes with swelling orchestral sections, choral backing vocals, and weepy steel guitars behind Morgan's sweet, underrated voice. Highlights include "Something on Your Mind" and the epic "Here Today and Gone Tomorrow." But when all the buzz in country music was about the more rock-influenced, stripped-down outlaw movement, this material (more in keeping with Bobbie Gentry's late-'60s/early-'70s work) was just a few years out of date. In retrospect, however, Weird Scenes Inside the Birdhouse sounds pretty swell.