Inside Cat Record Reviews

When did you take Driver’s Ed?

For me, it was a summer towards the end of the last century. Stuck in a stuffy classroom in my high school, with kids I didn’t normally see, and a combination of three teachers I definitely wasn’t excited to spend summer vacation with. I’m pretty sure we watched videos, but I don’t remember any gruesome crash movies or silly songs by alt-rock musicians.

What I do remember, though, is the day I had a freakout while driving, afraid I was going to hit a kid. It was weird. I was overcome by a fear that I was going to back over a small child. It made no sense. Until later at home, when I was telling my mom about this, and she sort of scrunched up her face and said, “I wonder if that’s because you were hit by a car when you were little.” A moment blocked from my memory. Yep, that’s probably where that fear came from. Maybe if I would have had a nice, educational folk song to sing while driving, it would have calmed me down.

One of the strangest records I have in my collection is Chevrolet Sings of Safe Driving and You. This was an album made for driver’s education classes in the 1960s. Various dates are attributed to this title online, spanning 1964-1969, and no date is stamped or printed on the album.

Most of the songs are toe-tappers, designed to give young driver’s driving tips carefully disguised as folk songs. There are spoken words peppered throughout, emphasizing the important skills trying to be taught. I like the idea of this marketing/public service tool, creating a very specific genre, for an extremely specific audience, without concern over airtime or making it into the top 40 songs. It is simply to engage with youth, in a way that’s dorky, but also fun. Does that make me a dork?

I have to wonder how a Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran driver’s education album would go over with today’s students. Would I have paid more attention if Gavin Rossdale had screamed at me to drive slowly during bad weather? Um, yeah. I think I would have. (Evidence of a dork.)

This is a fun album that collectors of weird recordings seem to have and want to blog or pod about. It’s enjoyable, and there’s a bit of mystery to it as well. The songs are cheesy, awkward, and rumored to have been recorded by a very young Carly Simon.

I’m not convinced it’s her. Listen to Chevrolet Sings of Safe Driving and You, then listen to her first album, self-titled Carly Simon. The Chevy album sounds like an older Simon, but it would have been recorded a few years before her first solo release. Carly Simon is a recording of a younger voice, not the harsh and pointed voice instructing drivers.

Of course, there are any number of reasons why an album recorded 6 years earlier could sound like an older voice (seasonal allergies, illness, hangover, lack of sleep combined with screaming at your neighbor’s dog to stop barking all night), so who’s to say? I’ve reached out to Simon’s team to confirm if it is her voice on the album, but I haven’t heard back. If I ever do, I’ll post an update. Because it would be nice to have confirmation of some kind, and not just repeat an internet rumor.

The musicians who ARE named on the album are two men: Lou Adessa and Vince Benay. I did consider that one of these men might be the female-sounding vocalist, but I don’t think they are. In fact, I don’t think that the male voice on the album belongs to one of these men either. I think they’re just the writers. The band, known only as The First Team, could be anyone.

If you know who the vocalists are on this album, please let me know! I’d love to see some proof. We can speculate all day, but I haven’t been able to find anything tangible.

If you aren’t lucky enough to find Chevrolet Sings of Safe Driving and You in a $1.00 parking lot sale at your local record store (I felt like Grandpa Joe when Charlie tells the family he won a golden ticket!), then you can listen to this album on Spotify or YouTube (not my links, so thank you to those who have already shared copies of this glorious album with the world). Enjoy the spoken word/singing combinations!

See my favorite line from each song below:

Track 1, “An Exciting Thing” (Driving A Car)
Favorite line: “The hand that steers better know how to do it!”

Track 2, “Grown-Up Baby” (Driving Psychology)
Favorite line: “A silly so and so, who thinks he has to show how loud his tires squeal.”

Track 3 “Cities and Towns” (Driving in City and Heavy Traffic)
Favorite line: “A moment’s hesitation and a little consideration might be just the thing to do, to keep the city from driving you.”

Track 4 “Nowhere Fast” (Observance and Enforcement)
Favorite line: “When the light is green, that is the only time to go.”

Track 5 “Gentle Things (Adverse Driving Conditions)
Favorite line (and the line you’ll walk away humming): “The smart driver always stops.”

Track 6 “When the Wrong Thing Happens” (Stopping Distance)
Favorite line: (Very dramatic spoken word) “Cars don’t stop on dimes.”

Track 7 “The Natural Laws” (Laws of Motion)
Favorite line: “The force that helps you go and turn in any direction, it’s a thing called friction.”

Track 8 “Man-Made Laws” (Common Sense Driving)
Favorite line: “For the good of all concerned, we have many driving rules, and we’d be a lot of fools if we ignored them.”

Veering Off Course

I tumbled down quite a rabbit hole while researching Adessa and Benay. There isn’t a lot available on them, but I did find another Chevy album listed with their names paired together, called Swinging Chevy Circle. The A side is “Camaro,” recorded by The Cyrkle (of “Red Rubber Ball” fame), and the B Side is “SS 396” by Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Bonus Review!

Vince Benay also released a single in 1959, with “Puppy Love” and “Joan.” Look, I love music, and I love weirdness, but if I heard “Joan” on the jukebox, I’d get the heck out of there as fast as I could. Preferably with a trusted friend as an escort. Joan, girl, I hope he didn’t really follow you home. A song that opens with footsteps down an alley? No, thanks!

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you own this unique Chevrolet record.