Obscure Originators (35): Johnny Yukon

From my website's front page series about lesser known artists who performed the original versions of Australian or NZ records.

See also: the full collection of over 30 Obscure Originators features. 

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Johnny Yukon's real name was Ben Gabus. He was from Texas, born in Galveston in 1931, but later lived in Lafayette, Louisiana where he could be heard regularly at the Jury Room Lounge. His composition Ride Away (With A Song In Your Heart) was released by Slim Whitman in 1954.

As Johnny Yukon, Ben recorded his own composition Made To Be Loved (1959). It didn't make him famous, but it charted #25 in Italy, and it had a good run Down Under through local cover versions.

In 1960 it was recorded twice in Australia: by top Sydney deejay John Laws, and by a new young talent called Adam, an alias of Ian B. McLeod, the enduring country music artist, producer and record label owner from Warragamba NSW.

Neither of those records was a commercial success in Australia, but in New Zealand it was recorded by The Keil Isles, also in 1960. They were a popular Auckland rock'n'roll band formed by Samoan-born Olaf Keil and his cousin Freddie Keil with a line-up that included other members of the Keil family.

Chart placings are hard to pin down for New Zealand in the 1960s, but Warwick Freeman's retrospective chart places The Keil Isles' version of Made To Be Loved at #3 New Zealand.

Ben Gabus released Made To Be Loved again in 1964, this time as Ben Gabus. This is sometimes mistaken for the original version, partly because of confusion between two record labels with the same name and catalogue numbers.

In his later years Ben lived in Lexington, South Carolina and ran the Ben Gabus Tree Service. 

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For more about the song and Johnny Yukon, see The Keil Isles - Made To Be Loved. 

Bigger in Oz (21): Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans (1964) and 7 others

Bigger in Oz: tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin.

See also: Only in Melbourne.

21. Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans (Trevor Stanford [known as Russ Conway])

Composition also known as Spartacus or Spartacus (The Spartans) 

Columbia single (UK) #DB7239 April 1964
Columbia single (Australia) #DO4447 June 1964

British charts: #30

Australian charts: #3 Melbourne, #10 Brisbane | #5 Australia

 

Also released in USA and Canada.

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Footage of Sounds Incorporated opening for The Beatles in Australia on their 1964 world tour makes it clear why they got the gig. This rocking, mainly instrumental, six-piece band from Kent are still a joy to watch, even if the video quality isn't terrific.

 

They expertly played saxophones, flutes, guitars, keyboards and drums, with an act full of energetic physical moves and comical dance sequences. They knew how to put on a show, and their stage experience came from backing pre-Merseybeat American stars touring Britain, including Eddy Cochran with whom they also recorded.

 

Apart from the quality of their work, Sounds Incorporated were the ideal band to open for The Beatles. Audiences of Beatlemaniacs might have fidgeted through a lesser vocal-and-guitar group, while they waited impatiently for the biggest vocal-and-guitar group ever. Sounds Incorporated were something altogether different, and so entertaining that I'm guessing nobody even thought of yelling out, "We want the Beatles!"

 

Both bands were managed by Brian Epstein. Sounds Incorporated supported The Beatles again in 1965 in the US and Canada, and members of Sounds Incorporated formed the brass section on the Beatles track Good Morning, Good Morning on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).  

 

The Spartans was the first Sounds Incorporated record to chart in both Britain and Australia. In Britain it was followed by one other, but in Australia it set off a series of charting singles that lasted into 1965. 

 

Here are all the charting singles (Top 75) by Sounds Incorporated in Britain and Australia. 

Britain
April 1964 The Spartans #30
July 1964 Spanish Harlem #35

Australia
July 1964 The Spartans #5
Aug 1964 Spanish Harlem #22
Aug 1964 Rinky Dink #22
Sept 1964 William Tell Overture #2
Sept 1964 Maria #2
Jan 1965 Light Cavalry #71
March 1965 Cast Your Fate To The Wind #20
March 1965 Hall Of The Mountain King #58 

 

I have written before about Australians' fondness for an instrumental track. It helps to explain why Sounds Incorporated records did so well in Australia. It is also fair to assume that the impression they made on the trendsetters at the Australian Beatles shows would have played a role.

The Spartans was written by Russ Conway (b. Trevor Stanford 1925-2000), a star British pianist and composer who had nineteen Top 40 hits 1957-1963 including Side Saddle (1957 #1 UK) and Roulette (1959 #1).

Sounds Incorporated rearranged The Spartans to feature the alto flute as lead instrument after listening to a demo recording. Saxophonist-keyboardist Barrie Cameron told Disc magazine in 1964 that they were emulating a sound developed on stage while backing Brenda Lee on tour in the UK.

Composer Russ Conway performed The Spartans himself on stage in April 1964 in a benefit concert for the son of recently deceased singing star Michael Holliday, a longtime friend since their days together in the Navy. It was released in July 1964 on an album, Tribute To Michael Holliday. The YouTube post of the track includes the full liner notes.

Conway's performance offers a contrast to the Sounds Incorporated version. It has a majestic feel, not unlike a theme for an epic historical film (it reminds me a little of piano duo Ferrante & Teicher). It is still stirring, but in a different way.

The composition's US copyright registration adds an alternative title, Spartacus. The title Spartacus (The Spartans) is seen on a more guitar-based German single by Liverpool band Ian & The Zodiacs (1965) and on German issues of their album Star-Club Show 7 (1965). A re-orchestrated track by Les Reed And His Orchestra on their album Love Is All (1969) is also Spartacus (The Spartans).

An Australian footnote: Essex-born Trevor White had been a member of Sounds Incorporated when the band broke up in Australia in 1971. He stayed on to become a permanent Australian resident, first becoming known here for his starring role in the original Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar (1972). White was not in Sounds Incorporated for the Beatles tours or charting singles 1964-65, as he did not join the band until 1968 upon Barrie Cameron's departure.

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Chart positions
• Britain: from The Guinness book of British hit singles (1983)
• Melbourne and Brisbane: as calculated retrospectively by Gavin Ryan
• Australia: from Grant Dawe's Top 100 Singles site.  

Selected sources:
• "No vocals for us, say Sounds Inc.", Disc, 9 May 1964 (Barrie Cameron on recording The Spartans)
• "Sounds Incorporated", Record Mirror, 9 March 1968 (Sounds Incorporated's new organist Trevor White will be joining the group when Barry Cameron leaves in mid-March ...)
(Links are to digitised copies at WorldRadioHistory.com) 

  

Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans (released April 1964, recorded in January) 

 Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans live on Beatles tour, Australia (July 1964)

Russ Conway - The Spartans, live in concert (June 1964)

 

Ian & The Zodiacs - Spartacus (The Spartans) (1965)

  

Les Reed And His Orchestra With The Eddie Lester Singers - Spartacus (The Spartans) (1969)

"How To Dance Properly" by Ze Frank

American humorist Ze Frank posted How To Dance Properly at his website in 2002. 

I laughed almost to the point of injuring myself when I first saw it. That was about 20 years ago, going by my email archive, and I mentioned it in my 2008 blogpost Top 3 amusing go-go videos. 

Ze Frank's website is now defunct but the Internet Archive snapshots of the page still enable clicking on the panel of 10 dances. 

It is initially a bit slow to load but you can also sample it through Harsh Singh's YouTube video of a 35-second click-through of all the dances. 

Obscure Originators (34): The London Knights [The Four Sights]

From my website's front page series about lesser known artists who performed the original versions of Australian or NZ records.

See also: the full collection of over 30 Obscure Originators features.

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Go To Him by Ray Brown & The Whispers (1965) may be the B-side of their hit Fool, Fool, Fool (#3 Australia), but a B-side like this was a bonus for anyone who bought the single.

Retrospectively, Go to Him has taken on a life of its own. As the Milesago website puts it, Ray Brown & The Whispers’ track is 2m 30s of pure sonic adventure, one of those rare and extraordinary B-sides that almost eclipses the main event … Alec Palao included it on the Ace Records/Big Beat collection Hot Generation! 1960s Punk from Down Under (2002).

Tracing the original of Go To Him, I found a version by American band The London Knights on Mike, a minor New York label. One respected source had placed it in 1966, but it turned out to be from 1965, about three months before Ray Brown’s cover.

I tried to find out more about The London Knights. They had released only this single and they left no traces of their history that I could find.

Web searches unexpectedly led me to the website of British musician Tim Airey who had been in a 1960s Leicester band, The Four Sights, aka The Foursights. He recalled two recording sessions for Decca in London in 1963. The band released one unsuccessful single, and there were songs for another single that was never released in the UK.  However, as Tim explained, … [the single] was supposed to have been released in the States under the name of The London Knights … 

The Four Sights then heard nothing more about any American release.

Well, not until some 40 years later when I emailed Tim in 2003 to point out that there was indeed a London Knights US single, from 1965, with a track called Go To Him that credited Bess Coleman as co-writer.  

Bess was a sister of Four Sights guitarist Bill Coleman, and she had written both sides of the Four Sights’ Decca release.

When I sent an mp3 of the London Knights recording to Tim he was adamant that it was one of the lost tracks from the Four Sights’ London sessions. He identified the distinctive voice of Four Sights drummer and lead singer David Lindsay, and David himself subsequently had no doubt at all that he was listening to his own voice on the London Knights track. David later sent me further evidence that supported this.

The case made by Tim and David was compelling, and I had no reason to doubt them, but I still could not explain some aspects of the "London Knights" single.

The writer credits on the label are to Bess Coleman with Artie Wayne, Bess's American collaborator whom she met in the US early in 1964. Bess is also credited as producer, for Artie’s production entity AWK.

When I asked Artie about it, he recalled recording Go To Him in New York as The London Knights with Bess and her brother Bill Coleman from the Four Sights, and I assume the label credits on the Mike single mistakenly reflect that session.

The mystery remains around the exact pathway of Go To Him from the Four Sights in London to Mike Records in New York, with an unreleased re-recording along the way. My best guess is that there were two recordings, one from London and one from New York, and they were somehow mixed up at the New York end.

You can read the rest of what I know by clicking on the link below. Or you could just mentally file it under O for Obsessive Fans of Obscurity and move on.

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For more about the song and The London Knights [The Four Sights] see Ray Brown & The Whispers - Go To Him. 

Obscure Originators (33): Bobbie & Dude

From my website's front page series about lesser known artists who performed the original versions of Australian or NZ records.

See also: the full collection of over 30 Obscure Originators features. 

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Country and pop singer Maria Dallas was a star in New Zealand. Her first single Tumblin' Down (1966, #11 NZ) won the prestigious Loxene Golden Disc Award, but her most successful single in NZ was Pinocchio (1970, #1), her fifth to chart Top 30 there.

In Australia, though, Maria's biggest hit was with Ambush (1967, #16), recorded in Nashville where she went after working in Australia for a while. The song stood out for its unforgettable rhythmic line at the end of verse and chorus: Your kissin’ leavin’ good-time days are dead. It was later recorded by Teresa Brewer (1975) and by Australian country artist Craig Giles (1993), but Maria's was the original release.

Ambush had been copyrighted a few months earlier by its composers, two sisters from the small Texas town of Moody, near Waco. As it happens, Maria Dallas was also from a small town, Morrinsville in New Zealand.

Bobbie Jo and Elizabeth Ann Brown had been singing from an early age in The Brown Sisters, a solidly booked country-gospel trio with another sister, Bettie.

Montreal, 1967

By the time of Ambush they were a duo called Bobbie & Dude. The stage name Dude was adopted by Elizabeth because it seemed to go better with Bobbie. They toured widely, and performed during Expo ’67 in Montreal where their only single had some radio airplay. As far as I can see they did not record Ambush themselves.

For a long time I knew almost nothing about Bobbie & Dude apart from their writing credits for Ambush and a few other songs. I was puzzled by the addition of Elizabeth Ann Brown to co-writer Dude Brown's name in Ambush's copyright registration, but I had never thought of searching for "bobbie and dude" in quotes.

As I have often typed here, Eventually, someone emails. This time it was someone who knew Elizabeth Ann well, and their tantalisingly brief words gave me the clues I needed.

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For more about the song and Bobbie & Dude see Maria Dallas - Ambush. 

Hal Saunders: songwriter, playwright, printmaker and more

Hal Saunders (1904-1991) was born James Hallett Saunders in Armidale NSW. He was a prolific songwriter who made a name for himself writing radio serials from the mid-1930s before going into the music business in the 50s and 60s. He was also a visual artist specialising in etching and printmaking. 

On his retirement from Festival Records in 1965 (noted in Billboard and Cash Box), Saunders was referred to as a producer, composer, arranger and musical director. That is a good start, but it leaves out lyricist, adapter, jingle-writer, scriptwriter, A&R man, pianist and bandleader. 

Michael Looper has tracked Saunders' job titles at Festival from 1954 to 1960: musical director, musical consultant in charge of local recording activities, recording supervisor and assistant A&R manager. He was a prominent office-holder and advocate in songwriters' associations including APRA in the late 40s-early 50s. 

Women's Weekly 6 June 62 [source]

Anyone who digs into the history of Australian popular music will come across Saunders' name in songwriting credits. In 1949, when he was President of The Australian Composers and Songwriters' Association, the Sydney Morning Herald called him Australia's most prolific songwriter who had copyrighted about 1,000 songs from the previous 15 years.¹ He often worked behind the scenes, for example when he produced Lucky Starr's hit I've Been Everywhere (1962) without any credit on the label. 

In the first half of the 1960s he wrote and (mainly) co-wrote for the latest crop of young pop stars at Festival. Frequent among his collaborators were influential Festival A&R man Ken Taylor and the multi-talented Franz Conde, at this time time a musical director at Festival. 

With Taylor, Saunders wrote or arranged for Vic Sabrino, Johnny Devlin and Ray Melton. With Conde, there were a lot of adaptations: traditional children's songs, a Christmas EP for Noeleen Batley, and an EP of traditional celebration songs for Col Joye. 

As an adapter, Saunders also contributed to Jimmy Little's hit version of the old gospel song Royal Telephone (1963), and he wrote the English lyrics for Noeleen Batley's Little Treasure From Japan (1964) from the Japanese song Konnichiwa Akachan. April Byron, Judy Stone, Patty Markham, Noeleen Batley, and Lana Cantrell all recorded tracks with credits to Hal Saunders as writer, co-writer or adapter.

It is hard to say where Saunders contributed as composer or lyricist in his collaborations, but he was capable of either. 

As a pianist in the 1930s he had led a swing quartet, Hal's Vagabonds, for at least one gig in Northern NSW, and his job descriptions at Festival included arranging and musical direction. Besides, his solo compositions confirm that he could write lyrics and compose music. 

As for lyrics, when Peter Scriven produced Tintookies (1956), his well-known marionette musical for children, Saunders wrote the book and the lyrics. 

For Nex'Town (1957), a musical devised and produced by Scriven, Saunders co-wrote the music and lyrics. His collaborator on Nex'Town, Iris Mason, later co-wrote the music for Saunders' own work for marionettes, Tales From Noonameena: an Operetta for Children (1973), staged at the opening of the Sydney Opera House. 

Saunders' ability as a lyricist is unsurprising. He had started earning a living as a writer for Sydney radio during the 1930s when he wrote advertising copy and lyrics for jingles, but he went on to become one of the top radio playwrights in the country. 

Nov 1935 [full story]

He is often identified with his popular serial The Black Spider (1935), a mystery set in Sydney that was first aired on 2KY, later on 3XY and other stations. A novelisation was published by Magpie Books in 1945.

A Sydney newspaper story in November 1935 announces the final episode of The Black Spider, but plugs a forthcoming comedy by Saunders, Gambler's Luck, as well as his Sunday morning adventure serial Jack Strong's Gold Reef. A few weeks later 2KY was airing Saunders' true-crime-based serial Sydney's Crime Sheet (early 1936), apparently commissioned in response to a similar show on another station.

This activity signalled a boom time for Australian radio that would last into the 1950s, an era when Australian variety and drama dominated programming. As Will Newton puts it in an overview of the period, I have always thought that Australian radio drama came into its own thanks, largely, to Hal Saunders. 

Away from the performing arts, the Australian Prints + Printmaking website has information about Hal Saunders, a print-seller, printer, printmaker, publisher, and writer, noted for his etchings. 

A reader might not guess that this is Hal Saunders the A&R man or the writer of The Black Spider, but the connection is made clear in a February 1937 Wireless Weekly article. Saunders talks about a medical crisis that forced him to abandon an earlier career in the legal profession. After recovering, he studied Art, and in 1928 he "toured New Zealand on behalf of the Commonwealth Government with paintings and etchings by Australian artists".

At the time of the Wireless Weekly article, Saunders had just written Hotel Revue, a musical comedy for radio with music by pianist Cliff Arnold. 

Saunders says he "brought along half a dozen melodies" to the first meeting with Arnold but confessed his "knowledge of music was non est". Perhaps this meant that he lacked knowledge of musical technicalities, or perhaps he was being modest, or just building a narrative. Whatever the explanation, by December of 1937 he knew enough to handle the piano in Hal's Vagabonds, and by 1954 he was a musical director at Festival Records. 

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1. It is hard to verify the reporter's figure of about 1,000 songs in 15 years, but a song every 5½ days or so seems doable. Besides, Saunders' voluminous output as a radio playwright shows that he had the drive and ability to work quickly and prolifically.

Sources
• Many newspaper and magazine articles at Trove.com.au, Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchives.com, so allow for reporters' errors and recycling of promotional material. See links in the text and email me for more.
• Discographic data at 45cat.com, 45worlds.com and Discogs.com.
• Nancy Bridges, Wonderful Wireless (1983) pp 48-50
• Will Newton. "Wonderful World of Wireless: Golden Years of Radio", Sutherland Shire Historical Society Inc Quarterly Bulletin, February 1993
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The Black Spider premières, October 1935 [source]

   To-night at 6.45. the first episode in “The Black Spider,” a 2KY mystery thriller, will be presented. Written by Hal Saunders, 2KY Playwright, “The Black Spider,” is a gripping story of crime and murder set in and around Sydney. The ingenuity of "The Black Spider" and his gang tests to the utmost the skill of Inspector McMillan and his colleague. Martin Purlow, the famous detective.  Besides the intense and exciting action which permeates the whole of this story, the author has introduced a generous splash of mystery, which makes it safe to assume that right until the final episode the true identity of "The Black Spider" cannot even be suspected.  In the presentation of this original all-Australian serial. 2KY is definitely making radio history, for this is the first occasion on which a serial of this type has been featured by any Australian broadcasting station. Included in the cast are: Dan Weldon, George Jennings, Harry McDonald, and Sylvia Post Mason.

February 1936: Sydney's Crime Sheet [source]

September 1940: The Secret of Smokyville [source]

Obscure Originators (32): The Meantime

From my website's front page series about lesser known artists who performed the original versions of Australian or NZ records.

See also: the full collection of over 30 Obscure Originators features.

Johnny Farnham's cover version of Friday Kind Of Monday (1968) was a hit in Australia (#6) and New Zealand (#11).

The original version from 1967 was by The Meantime, a group that came out of nowhere, released this one single that failed to chart Top 100, and that was it.

This looks like a clear case of obscurity until you follow the lead in the writer credits. Friday Kind Of Monday was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, one of the most successful songwriting teams of the 1960s, and a married couple from 1962 to 1965. 

 

As Billboard announced (above), the lead singer on the Meantime single is Ellie Greenwich but, more than that, the whole recording is a studio project by Greenwich and Barry.

They had previously written and recorded as The Raindrops whose seven singles 1963-65 included He's The Kind Of Boy You Can't Forget (1963 #17 Bb, #15 CB) and What A Guy (1963 #34 CB). They charted moderately in most Australian cities, but in Adelaide they had hits with Kind Of Boy (#4), and That Boy John (1963, #12).

When you listen to a Raindrops record, you are most likely hearing Greenwich's voice double-tracked, with Barry's bass vocals and prominent drumming. For live appearances and for photos of a trio, other personnel were recruited.

This reminds me of Leiber and Stoller's view that We don't write songs. We write records

The Meantime was a similar project, a Raindrops for the late 60s, created in the studio by Barry and Greenwich. There is a cryptic clue in the group's name: think Greenwich Mean Time. 

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For more about the song and The Meantime see Johnny Farnham - Friday Kind Of Monday.