I found this 45 at a local San Bernardino 'antique shop' run by a friendly old-timer. The guy has tons of 45's and I of course gladly looked through them. Wound up picking about a dozen records, some LP's included and this 45 was among them. I recognized the song as being performed by L.A. Rockabilly revivalist Pearl Harbor who does a storming version in her set (I've seen her 3 times in the past year). Now some info on Eileen Barton.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, she began her career singing on radio at age 15 and had her own program "The Eileen Barton Show" in the 1940s. She is best known for the apostrophic hit tune, "If I Knew You Were Coming, I would've Baked A Cake" (1950).
At 8 years old Eileen had her own daily radio program on WMCA in New York called Arnold's Dinner Club, where she would plug songs, singing five or six songs per show. She was also a radio actress on programs like NBC's Death Valley Days:
Eileen signed with Coral Records, a subsidiary of Decca, in 1951. Her first Coral release was a cover of Johnny Ray's Okeh hit, "Cry" (Coral 60592). Despite Ray's popularity, Barton's version did remarkably well; "Cry" reached the Top 10 and remained on the charts for three months.
During 1954 as the rock 'n roll juggernaut was gathering steam, Eileen Barton still managed to chart three times during the year. Her last charted effort was a good one with the song "Sway" (the flip side was "When Mama Calls") on #61185. The Coral release was a top 20 seller and spent six weeks on the charts. As the buying power of teenage America took over the recording industry, Eileen Barton's career as a pop music recording artist faded as did many others due to the massive changes in the trend of modern music. As a show business veteran since the age of three, she had a nice run during the first half of the decade of the fifties. "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked A Cake" is her signature song and her's alone, and for a time was a true icon of American popular music.
Eileen Barton passed away peacefully in her West Hollywood, California home on June 27, 2006, succumbing to a recurring bout of ovarian cancer.
