PopArchives: The Blog

Blood

2007-04-28T14:03:00.002+10:00

In 1995, the year the Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge Tour came to Australia, I had leukaemia, an exquisitely rare but treatable variety known inelegantly as 'hairy cell'.

It's been nearly twelve years, I'm doing fine, and I hardly ever think about it, but I came home at the end of last week, poured a glass of fine Australian semillon-sauvignon blanc, pumped up Exile On Main Street on the stereo, and there I was thinking about the Rolling Stones in concert and John the Haematologist, who always had the latest edition of a journal called Blood on his desk.

In April 1995, three months or so before I knew there was anything wrong with my blood, I sat in a bus shelter opposite our local supermarket in Toowoomba, and waited for the bus to the Stones' Brisbane concert, a couple of hours away in our state capital.

I'd missed the Stones in the 60s, and again in the 70s, who knows why, so this was like a piece of unfinished business for me. The press was full of stories about how old the Stones were, how they were surely on their last legs (little did they know!), and I had this feeling that it might be my last chance to see them. I kept thinking of Del Shannon, who'd come to our town and I'd passed, thought I couldn't afford it, and then he'd died a few months later. (Sorry, Mick, but you know what the Aussie press can be like.)

Okay, if I'd skipped school in '65 to see them, I would've also seen Brian Jones, as well as Bill Wyman, who had quit by '95, but Keef was still there, and Mick and Charlie Watts, so three out of five ain't bad and Woodie was a legend in his own right anyway...

At first, I wasn't going: the price of the ticket plus the bus fare was too much. Then the Stones were on in Sydney, and then Perth, and they were on the TV news every night.

The media were falling over themselves to point out how OLD these guys were, and why didn't they give up and grow old gracefully instead of making spectacles of themselves? Clearly, they'd never heard of Howlin' Wolf, on Shindig with the Stones in his fifties and in the studios with Clapton at sixty.

With every TV news story I was looking sadder, and in the end my wife said, "Go! Put it on a credit card! Anything!" and I rang up at the last minute and I was in.

So I got onto the bus, and the bus driver said he was sorry, but there'd been a stuff-up (probably because I'd booked late) and they didn't actually have a concert ticket for me, but when we got there he'd do his best to get me one. I sat on the bus for nearly two hours, not knowing whether or not I'd get to see the Stones after all.

The concert was at the ANZ sports stadium in Brisbane. After the bus was parked, I followed the bus driver down towards the ticket boxes. They were all shut, with signs saying SOLD OUT, and all around them were huge angry looking European guys in black suits, professional scalpers, shouting outrageous prices for tickets.

The bus driver was an old guy, with slicked back short grey hair, tailored shorts and long dress socks. "I'll see what I can do," he said, but I wasn't convinced.

“Wait here,” he said, and I waited while he wandered down the slope to the ticket boxes. I decided that if he didn’t get me a ticket there was no way I was going to sit outside in the car park and just listen to the wash-up from the Stones until midnight. I would walk back to the freeway and hitch a ride home.

The bus driver wandered up to a ticket box – I was gonna say waddled, but that would be unfair – and knocked on the window. When it finally opened, he seemed to be having a bit of a chat with the woman behind the grille: he was leaning on the little counter, just catching up, it seemed to me, probably sharing wry observations on the scene.

Around me, the scalpers were shouting louder, people were giving up and going home, and my fellow passengers had long disappeared through the turnstiles with their lovely tickets. Down the slope, the bus driver and the ticket box woman continued shooting the breeze.

I will be hitching home, I told myself.

Then the ticket box woman and the bus driver had stopped chatting, she’d shut up shop again, and he was ambling up the slope with my ticket to the Stones.

Did I embrace him in gratitude? You don’t embrace sixtysomething bus drivers in tailored shorts and long dress socks, you just thank them in a gentlemanly but heartfelt way and head for the turnstiles.

The Stones started their set with that Bo Diddley shave-and-a-haircut - two-bits rhythm, the drum beat from Not Fade Away. At first I thought it was part of the recorded music they’d been piping through the speakers in the intermission, but all of a sudden there was Charlie Watts, in motion, cruising onto the stage as if his drum kit were some kind of drummobile, a motorized drum buggy, and I realised the drumming was all Charlie’s work. That moment of realisation was pure joy: I was grinning and laughing and jumping about like a kid on Guy Fawkes night.

It turned out that my seat was pretty good, on about the same level as one of the stage’s side ramps, so that when Mick or Keef came along it they ended up only a few metres away. Mick, who was clearly fitter and more agile than most men his age, ran and leapt and danced and hardly stood still throughout the long set, making nonsense of the media’s digs at his age.

The audience was typical of the cross-section you see at oldies concerts these days: all ages from eight to eighty, from ageing baby boomers like me to curious teenagers, two of whom eventually ended up having sex in the row in front of me, just what you'd expect at a Stones concert.

The audience also included Wayne Goss, the State Premier of Queensland (think State Governor in the US). This would’ve struck as bizarre anyone who’d lived under his predecessors, ageing gents of my father’s generation who’d been in power for longer than they deserved. But there he was the next evening, our Premier, telling the TV news cameras how much he’d enjoyed Brown Sugar and Tumbling Dice.

Also in the audience, apart from the Premier and me and the rutting teenagers, was John, the haematologist I would meet a few months later when I started chemotherapy.

In August, at the clinic in Brisbane, when I mentioned the Stones concert to a nurse and she said, “Oh yeah, John went to that. He’s a big Stones fan,” there was a moment when I did a double-take, as if it didn’t add up. The guy who had my life in his hands, who was daily perusing my blood counts, and making judgments about my prognosis and medication and whether my spleen had to go or stay… this guy had also bought a ticket to Voodoo Lounge, he’d been somewhere in the audience.

In theory, John the Haematologist could have been the guy in the audience who yelled out at the top of his lungs, “KEEF, YOU LEGEND!” when the great man ventured out onto the catwalk near my hard-won seat… Or maybe that was the Premier of Queensland: nothing made sense any more…

Now, it seems like no big deal: now my GP looks a few years younger than me, and some of my colleagues are about the same age as my eldest son. At that time, though, this was a generational shift for me. Up until then, I'd thought of people like Premiers and medical specialists as being part of my parents' generation.

Maybe my double-take was an irrational moment of panic, as if I were putting my life in the hands of an ageing adolescent in a Stones audience, someone like myself. Maybe I wanted the haematologist to be somebody older. When you have an irrational illness with unpredictable outcomes you can find yourself given over to irrational thinking now and then.

It didn't last, though, and it gave us something else to chat about during the daily consultations that make up a course of chemotherapy.

Once, I brought up the subject of the Stones while I was under a light anaesthetic, a drug-induced haze that is supposed to eliminate your memory of what goes on, but it didn't stop me remembering next day that I’d asked John the Haematologist to name his favourite Stones album.

Back home, when I was over all that, I went out and bought my own copy. It was Exile On Main Street, the album I now associate with John the Haematologist and the Stones in Brisbane, not to mention blood, and Blood.

Shelley Pinz

2005-08-11T19:55:00.003+10:00

A first cousin of Shelley Pinz emailed last week to tell me more about the New York songwriter, poet and psychotherapist, born in 1944, who died last year.

As a songwriter Shelley Pinz is probably best known for the Lemon Pipers' 1968 hit Green Tambourine, written with her frequent collaborator Paul Leka. They wrote some follow-ups in a similar vein, including Rice Is Nice, Jelly Jungle (Of Orange Marmalade) and Pink Lemonade. This was was when Pinz and Leka were writing pop songs for Buddah, the Kama Sutra label's spin-off, and they continued writing together into the 70s.

In Australia, two other Shelley Pinz songs surfaced through local cover versions in 1968. She and Paul Leka also wrote You Are The One I Love, originally by Adam's Apples [listen], covered here by The Groove, and she co-wrote Happy Without You (this time with Kenny Laguna), originally by The Sound Judgment [listen] but remembered in Australia as a classic oldie by The Strangers. Both songs charted in Melbourne - the base city of both bands - and in Brisbane.

As Rochelle Pinz (using her full given name), Shelley Pinz was a psychotherapist specialising in the use of music, art and poetry. She held a Masters degree in social work, and in the late 90s she published a volume of poetry and lyrics, Courage to Think. WoodstockLive has some notes about this (although the audio link didn't work for me).

The best account I’ve found about Shelley Pinz the songwriter is in her own words from 1999 at StocksandNews.com (archived page), where she recalls how she got into the business while she was still a poetry-writing college student.

She tells about the inspiration for Green Tambourine, just before meeting with Paul Leka in the Brill Building precinct of New York:

In early Spring, 1966, while standing in front of the Brill Building I watched a man holding a tambourine begging for money. I wrote a poem about him and called the poem, 'Green Tambourine.' I added it to my lyric collection…. Sometimes I wonder what happened to the man in front of the Brill Building, holding a tambourine begging for money. I remember writing the lyric, ‘watch the jingle jangle start to shine, reflections of the music that is mine. When you toss a coin you'll hear it sing. Now listen while I play my Green Tambourine’ as if it were yesterday..; in the 60s, on the streets between Seventh Avenue and Broadway there was a magic one could only imagine.

Green Tambourine was a worldwide hit (#1 USA, Top 10 UK & Australia, #3 NZ), but Happy Without You and You Are The One I Love would be better known in Australia than in the US. The American originals are obscurities, although the Adam's Apples recording of You Are The One I Love has been given new currency by the Northern Soul movement.

Shelley Pinz is listed at BMI under four variations of her given name: Rochelle, Shelley, Shelly and Chele, but ‘Shelley’ seems to be the preferred spelling as a songwriting credit.

Adam's Apples - You Are The One I Love.mp3

The Sound Judgment - Happy Without You.mp3

Label scan from Margaret G. Still

Augie Rios - Ol' Fatso: an obscure Christmas novelty

2006-12-11T20:55:00.002+10:00

Augie Rios - Ol' Fatso.mp3

The main legacy of Augie Rios seems to be two Christmas songs issued in 1958 on the Metro label, Donde Esta Santa Claus (Where Is Santa Claus) and its B-side, Ol' Fatso. MGM also issued them on a single in 1964.

Ol' Fatso is about an unbelieving boy who jeers at Santa, Don't care who you are Ol' Fatso, Get those reindeer off the roof.

You can find the lyrics of Donde Esta Santa Claus on the Web, but until now Ol' Fatso's have been missing. You'll agree that this is a public service that just had to be performed, so here they are. As you can see, this is the old familiar story of scepticism overcome by self-interest:

CHORUS:
Don’t care who you are Ol’ Fatso
Get those reindeer off the roof
Don’t care who you are Ol’ Fatso
Get those reindeer off the roof
No you can’t fool me because
There ain’t no Santa Claus
There ain’t no Santa Claus And I got proof.

There was a little fellow
Who just wouldn’t believe
There really was a Santa Claus
Even on Christmas Eve
And when one Christmas Eve he heard
A clatter overhead
He opened up his window wide
And this what he said:

[CHORUS]

Though Santa Claus had brought him
A big bag full of toys
Enough of Christmas presents
For a dozen little boys
Some choo choo trains and cowboys
And a whole Apache tribe
The boy looked up and said,
Oh no! I ain’t taking no bribes

[CHORUS]

Well next year Santa came around
And brought a favourite toy
To everybody but a certain
Unbelieving boy
The moral of this story
Is very sad but true
If you don’t believe in Santa Claus
He won’t believe in you

Don’t care who you are young fellow
Keep those reindeer on the roof
Don’t care who you are young fellow
Keep those reindeer on the roof
Oh you fool no-one because
There is a Santa Claus
There is a Santa Claus
And I got proof.

Yes, there is a Santa Claus
And I got proof.

Spanish-born child actor Augie Rios released a handful of singles, 1958-64. Country Paul, posting to Spectropop in 2004, outlines Augie's career on stage, TV and record, citing several sources on the Net.

The Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers

2007-05-15T13:45:00.004+10:00

You never know what will pop up on that overlooked miscellany ABC2, the ABC's digital TV channel.

Last night they showed Festival, Murray Lerner's 1967 documentary about the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1966. It's a bit like a black-and-white Jazz on a Summer's Day. (In one sense especially: the crowd shots stay in the mind as much as the music.)

Every minute of it is full of interest, and everybody seems to be there: Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Odetta, Buffy Sainte-Marie. Peter Paul & Mary. Howlin' Wolf, and Son House, Dylan going electric. Bluegrass bands, jugbands, kids in the parking lot with home-made instruments. A marvellous old-time gospel choir called the Sacred Harp Singers.

But I wasn't prepared for this joyous slice of Americana. It's perfect: no commentary needed, just press Play... The Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers at YouTube

Timeout Instrumental hits

2006-04-08T07:10:00.001+10:00

In the previous post, I noted that Timeout Instrumentals weren't usually hits, and often came from from LPs, EPs and B-sides.

In a comment below, John G. suggested one exception, Love Is Blue (L'amour est bleu) by French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat (#1 USA, #12 UK, #1 Australia, #4 NZ). It was written by Andre Popp, initially as a 1967 Eurovision Song Contest entry sung by Vicky Leandros with lyrics by Pierre Cour.

No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In) by The T-bones (1966), and Classical Gas by Mason Williams (1968) were both hits (Classical Gas even has its own website), but I'd be surprised if they weren't also used as Timeout Instrumentals.

Another example, and a mystery, is The Harem by British clarinettist and bandleader Mr Acker Bilk (right) and his Paramount Jazz Band. It was a hit in Australia in 1964 (#2 Melbourne, #4 Sydney, #3 Adelaide) but failed to chart in the UK, and for some reason it's just about impossible to find on the dozens of easy-to-find Acker Bilk compilations. All Music Guide lists four pages of Acker Bilk songs, but doesn't mention it. It is, however, listed as a 1963 British single at 45-rpm.co.uk.

The Harem is a standout amongst Acker Bilk's recordings, a stirring, whirling, percussive instro that builds to a climax. It has a little "pip" on the clarinet a second or so before the end that always sounds to me like the first of the time pips that would've followed a Timeout Instrumental.

I'm wondering whether The Harem started out in Australia being played as a Timeout Instrumental and caught the attention of listeners, who turned it into a hit. Just a hunch, there, but I do remember it being played as a Timeout. (For more on The Harem, see Only in Oz (1).

The Spartans, by Beatles associates Sounds Incorporated (1964), was another British instro that did better in Australia than in Britain. This is a moody, brass-dominated piece that charted #5 Sydney, #3 Melbourne, #10 Brisbane, and peaked at #30 in the UK. It was written by the chart-topping British pianist Russ Conway, using his real name, Trevor Stanford.

Again, The Spartans was probably used as a Timeout Instrumental, but its success was no doubt helped along by Sounds Incorporated playing on The Beatles 1964 Australian tour.

The Timeout Instrumental

2006-04-04T19:15:00.002+10:00

At the end of the hour on Top 40 radio, just before the news, the last record would end, the deejay would talk for a bit, and then he would fade in an instrumental track that had been playing in the background. The instrumental would be cued up so that it finished right on the pips (the electronic countdown to the hour). This practice was common in the 60s, but it seems to have faded out during the 70s.

I asked radio historian Wayne Mac and former 2GB panel operator Gregg Sinclair if there was a name for it and they said, yes, it was called timing out, and the tracks were fillers or timeouts.

In my mind, these works have always formed an unofficial, unnamed sub-genre of the pop instrumental. Radio people in the 60s could identify it immediately, just by choosing something that sounded okay in between a bunch of hit records and the news.

I'm calling this musical sub-genre the Timeout Instrumental, just so it has a name.*

The Timeout Instrumental might have been something by Herb Alpert (right): maybe Bittersweet Samba or Up Cherry Street or Mexican Shuffle. It probably wouldn't be the latest Shadows hit, but it could be one of their B-sides or an EP track, something like The Miracle. You might have heard some album tracks, often by middle-of-the-road orchestras. I'm sure Dalilia, that space-age classic by Roger Roger & his Champs-Elysées Orchestra, would have been used: it was a favourite as background music on Australian radio and TV.**

As examples of likely Timeout Instrumental artists, Gregg Sinclair gives The Baja Marimba Band (associates of Herb Alpert), Bill Justis and Floyd Cramer. Raymond Lefèvre's Soul Coaxing is one track he recalls.

There was some skill in timing out: if the timeout track was 3 minutes long, it had to start playing, faded down, three minutes before the pips, while the last record was still playing. Gregg Sinclair writes:

The art of ‘timing out’ was made all the more interesting by the fact that most of the tracks supplied weren’t timed! Believe it or not, any panel operator worth his salt could look at a track and determine how long it ran. After a few years of experience, I could look at an album track and say: “that’s about a 2’45” job”! However, I always preferred to time them if I had the chance. Usually, I’d get in early and go through the ‘music log’ - radio talk for the playlist – and time the appropriate tracks prior to going on air.

There was a feeling in radio that using instrumental filler in this way sounded sloppy or out of date, so from the late 60s it was replaced by playing regular vocal hits up to the news.

For me, though, it lives on. Sometimes when I hear an old instrumental track I haven't heard before - maybe something by Cyril Stapleton or Sounds Incorporated - I find myself waiting for the pips, and I know I've stumbled on another Timeout Instrumental.

[For more on Timeout Instrumentals, see follow-up posts here and here.]

...................................................................................................
*As a genre, Timeout Instrumental is similar to Northern Soul in that (1) it is applied retrospectively and (2) works are included not strictly for being of one musical style. See also Bizarro Shadows World Down Under, which is applied retrospectively and is partly defined by geography rather than style.

**Timeout Instrumental intersects with what is now known as Space Age Pop (another retrospective genre). For more on Dalilia, see Only in Oz (9).

Eight Records on the Radio, Summer of 1966-67

2006-02-25T18:18:00.005+10:00

A list of songs that I heard on the radio December 1966-January 1967:

The Cryan' Shames - I Want To Meet You
The Innocence - There's Got To Be A Word!
Twice As Much - True Story
The Small Faces - My Mind's Eye
The Settlers - Till Winter Follows Spring
The Cyrkle - Please Don't Ever Leave Me
The Righteous Brothers - On This Side Of Goodbye
Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra - Summer Wine

This must be from the summer vacation of 1966-67, December or January, going by the release or chart dates of the songs. In Australia our summers begin in December, and the new school year starts around the end of January. I was sixteen, about to start my final year of high school.

For a few days, as I heard a new song I liked on the radio, I wrote it down on the back cover of a foolscap writing pad left over from the school year. If I knew the label I wrote that as well, probably because at the local music shop it was easier to order a record if you could tell them the label. I was in Swan Hill, a town on the Murray River in northern Victoria.

In reality, I couldn't have afforded even one-half of one of those records, let alone eight. It’s only recently that I’ve finally got hold of every song on the list, helped along by the coming of the Net, file-sharing, and emailing mp3s, as well as CD reissues of every other song ever recorded.

I've heard of kids back then keeping their own charts, their personal Top 20 of current favourites, complete with hit picks, new entries, and drop-outs, as they got hooked on a song then got sick of it. A guy from Delta, British Columbia, who uses the name Taliesyn, had his personal charts published in the local paper: nowadays he regularly posts them on Usenet.

I wasn't so organised. I just wrote a bunch of songs in Pentel Sign pen on the cardboard at the back of a writing pad. I didn't even manage to find the same coloured pen each time. Years later, I threw out the pad, but tore off the list for nostalgia's sake.

The list doesn’t include any huge international hits, and some of the artists are barely known, but they were being played on the radio, probably on small-town stations such as 3SH Swan Hill, 3BO Bendigo, 2QN Deniliquin and 2WG Wagga. Regional radio stations back then usually had their own eager young disc jockeys on their way to the big city, and they would have had some say in the music they played. Some of the songs might not even have been heard on big city stations like 3UZ in Melbourne.

The Righteous Brothers - On This Side Of Goodbye (Carole King – Gerry Goffin)
This is my favourite from the list, and the only one I still listen to regularly. It’s also my favourite Righteous Brothers song, a big production of a moody Goffin-King ballad, a bit in the vein of The Righteous Bros' earlier records with Phil Spector. I’ve never understood why this isn’t better known, or why it wasn’t a hit. (I also have a version by Alan Price that has a different arrangement, a different feel: not in the same league, as much as I like Alan Price.)

Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra - Summer Wine (Lee Hazlewood)
#2 Melbourne, #7 Brisbane #4 Adelaide
This is the only song on the list that was a hit in Australia (though not in the USA), recorded by seasoned producer-singer-songwriter Lee Hazelwood with his younger client, daughter of Frank Sinatra. Australians were nuts about this duo, especially in Melbourne and Adelaide, where they had seven charting records, compared with three nationally in the US.

The Small Faces - My Mind's Eye (Ronnie Lane - Steve Marriott)
#4 UK
Regularly included on Small Faces Best Of… collections, thanks to its success in the UK.

The Cyrkle - Please Don't Ever Leave Me (Susan Haber)
#43 Adelaide
American band, associates of The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel. Their best-known song was Red Rubber Ball (1966), written by Paul Simon with Bruce Woodley of The Seekers, a hit in the US and in Australia.

The Innocence - There's Got To Be A Word! (Don Ciccone)
#37 USA
The Innocence were Pete Anders and Vini Poncia, who also recorded as The Videls and The Trade Winds (New York’s A Lonely Town, 1965) and as a duo under their own names. They produced the original version of Zoom Zoom Zoom, by Our Patch of Blue, covered by Australian band Cam-Pact.

The Cryan’ Shames - I Want To Meet You (Jim Fairs)
Jaunty pop song with harmonies by Chicago band, popular in their home region, whose version of Sugar and Spice is on Nuggets 1. I Want To Meet You was written by Cryan’ Shames guitarist Jim Fairs.

The Cryan' Shames - I Want To Meet You.mp3

Twice As Much - True Story (Andrew Rose – David Skinner)
Recorded for Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label by duo Andrew Rose and David Skinner, who had a bit of a hit in the UK with Sittin’ On The Fence (1966, #25), written by Mick and Keith of The Stones. David Skinner is mentioned below for co-writing P.P. Arnold’s Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.

The Settlers - Till Winter Follows Spring (Kent, Jones, Fyffe)
Pop-folk song, pretty much in the vein of The Seekers, by group from Birmingham. This is on the anthology Autumn Almanac, one of the Ripples series of compilations of 60s British pop obscurities (The Settlers' Major To Minor is on Dreamtime, another in the series).

What does the list say about either my musical tastes at the time, or the playlists of the stations I was listening to? Let's face it, these songs are mainstream pop: no garage rockers or frantic r&b here, and the Righteous Brothers' nod to soul stands out amongst all that jaunty, sunshiney jingle-jangle and folk-pop harmonies. (Ah well, it was Summer, after all.)

One more thing I noticed: there are five American records, three British, and none from Australia. Sorry, mate.

The Town & Country Brothers: the definitive account

2009-09-11T22:03:00.028+10:00

After my recent post about The Town & Country Brothers and Sandy, Sandy, their 1963 Only In Oz hit, I heard from Ted Daryll, a member of the group and the writer of Sandy, Sandy.

Ted sent me his definitive account of the group. Not only does it retell the full recording adventures of Ted with Chip Taylor and Greg Richards, but it opens a fascinating window into a music business that no longer exists in quite the same form.

Rather than summarising it, I am giving you the whole document, a PopArchives exclusive, with Ted's approval.

Read the full story by clicking here (pdf).

The Town & Country Brothers: Ted (left) - Chip (right). 1962 photo taken at Adelphi Recording, 1650 Broadway, NYC (Image: Ted Daryll)

Only in Oz (14) The Town & Country Brothers - Sandy, Sandy

2009-07-17T21:14:00.058+10:00

Another in my series of posts about tracks that charted in Australia but not in their countries of origin.

14. The Town & Country Brothers - Sandy, Sandy
(Ted Daryll)
USA 1963
Tahoe single (USA) #2534 ("Distributed by London Records, Inc.")
London single (Australia) #HL-2123
Later anthologised on GAB (Sony) CD Hard To Get Hits Vol. 3, 1994
Australian charts: #7 Sydney (Gavin Ryan) or #2 Sydney (The Book) #1 Brisbane #29 Adelaide #17 Perth

I have some answers for anyone who has wondered about the identity of US group The Town And Country Brothers. They had a hit with Sandy, Sandy in 1963, but only in Australia. [listen]

Update: See my follow-up post for the exclusive, full story of The Town & Country Brothers as told by Ted Daryll, composer of Sandy, Sandy.

Let's start with Chip Taylor. Before he wrote Wild Thing, or Angel of the Morning or I Can't Let Go, that is to say, before he worked at 1650 Broadway writing songs for a long list of legends including Dusty Springfield, Baby Washington, and Evie Sands, and before he released his own singles including the original of Cliff Richard's On My Word...

Before that, back in the late 1950s, Chip Taylor and two friends formed a rockabilly-folkie-style trio called Wes Voight and the Town And Country Brothers.

This was also before Taylor changed his name from Wes Voight (and, of course, before his brother Jon, keeping the Voight, became a famous movie actor).

None of Chip Taylor's early singles was a hit in the US, not as Chip Taylor or Wes Voight, or with the Town & Country Brothers. In Australia, though, Sandy, Sandy did well and is remembered as a classic oldie by Aussies who were around then.

Sandy, Sandy was written by Ted Daryll (b. Teddy Meister), another member of the Town & Country Brothers.

The third member of the group was Greg Richards (b. Greg Gwardyak). Ted Daryll and Greg Richards also wrote together, notably She Cried, first recorded by Ted Daryll himself but later a hit for Jay & The Americans (1962, #5 USA).

Sandy Sandy was on Volume 3 of Glenn A. Baker's Hard To Get Hits CD series in 1994. At that stage (1994), Glenn was unable to give any background on The Town & Country Brothers, concluding that they had "eluded all pop scholars".

To read more on Chip Taylor, see Tony Wilkinson's Wes Voight-Chip Taylor page at Black Cat Rockabilly, Taylor's current label Train Wreck Records, and the entries at All Music Guide and Wikipedia.

The most detailed source, though, is the Spectropop interview with Chip Taylor by Norman Druker and Mick Patrick which starts way back, covers the obscurities as well as the hits, and brings it up to Taylor's later work in country music.

I've joined the dots between Sandy, Sandy, its writer Ted Darryl and his Town & Country Brothers bandmate Chip Taylor, but none of the above sources mentions Sandy, Sandy.

Town & Country Brothers - Sandy, Sandy.mp3

Thanks to Doug for asking about this one, and to Kees for further background.

Only in Oz (12) Bill Justis - Tamoure

2009-02-13T19:59:00.099+10:00

Another in my series of posts about tracks that charted in Australia but not in their countries of origin.

12. Bill Justis - Tamoure (with the Stephen Scott Singers)
(Heinz Hellmer - Wolf Petersen - M. Singleton - B. Everette; arranged by Bill Justis. Apparently based on a 1956 composition by Yves Roche)
Song also known as Tamouré (The Dance Of Love) or Vini Vini or Wini-Wini
USA 1963
Smash single (USA) #1812
Philips single (Australia) #BF-26
Australian charts: #1 Sydney #1 Melbourne #1 Brisbane #1 Adelaide #1 Perth

Strictly speaking, Tamouré has an acute accent over the 'e'. Most English databases - and the title printed on the 45 - leave it off, although it is restored on the record's sleeve.

In the annals of Only in Oz this is a classic case, an American record that made a big splash all over Australia¹ but only managed a ripple in the US: #7 in Chicago, #101 nationally.² As far as I can see it wasn't a hit in the UK, Europe, South Africa or even Canada where it peaked in the high thirties.

So, let's say Only in Oz.

Bill Justis (1927-1982) started out as a trumpeter, but from the early 60s he worked in Nashville as a producer, composer, arranger and musical director.³

To the record-buying public, though, Justis was probably best known for his earlier hit instrumental Raunchy (1957, #2 US), recorded at Sun Records in Memphis where he had been musical director before moving to Nashville. He played the sax on Raunchy and co-wrote it with the guitarist on the record, Sid Manker. It was the only single in Bill Justis's name to chart Top 40 in the US, but it has been much played and recorded over the years.

One notable Bill Justis enterprise in Nashville was his collaboration with keyboardist Jerry Smith as Cornbread & Jerry. Their first recording, made in Memphis before the move to Nashville, was Li'l Ole Me (covered in Australia by Warren Carr), but they later added a female chorus and put two singles onto the US charts as The Dixiebelles with Cornbread & Jerry: (Down At) Papa Joe's (1963, #9 USA) and Southtown USA (1964, #15 USA).

Bill Justis's Tamoure is an English-language version of a song known as Wini-Wini or Vini Vini. A version on German Polydor by Die Tahiti Tamourés, as Wini-Wini, was a hit in 1963 in Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium.

An earlier version, Vini Vini by Terorotua and His Tahitians, goes back to 1958, on their ABC-Paramount album, Lure Of Tahiti, with a writer credit to French composer Yves Roche. Arnold Rypens has a history of the song at The Originals ~~but, for now, he omits Bill Justis's Tamouré~~. Thanks, too, to Joop and Walter for lighting up this trail for me.

The writer credits on the German Polydor single are to Heinz Hellmer and Wolf Petersen, also credited on Bill Justis's single.

The other two writers on the Bill Justis Tamouré would be Bill Everette (he wrote Gitarzan with Ray Stevens) and - I'm guessing - Margaret Singleton, also known as Margie, first wife of Shelby Singleton.

Die Tahiti-Tamourés, 1963 European hit.

There was at least one further single in the US of this Tamouré, by Dick & Dee Dee, reverting to the title Vini Vini (1965), and another single on Almo by Manuia & Maeva, also entitled Vini Vini (1965), may well be the same song. Arnold Rypens at The Originals lists several other versions 1958-2005, including a 1963 hit in Italy for Betty Curtis.

The tamouré or tamure is a Tahitian dance, and there is no shortage of songs with variations of its name - or vini vini - in their titles,⁴ but I'm not about to research those in depth.

The sleeve of Bill Justis's single says THE FRENCH DANCE RAGE COMES TO AMERICA. Recordings by Les Kavika from 1962 are examples of the tamouré phenomenon in France: his 1962 EP on the French label Vogue Dansez le tamouré has four tamouré dance tracks, all arranged by Kavika-Barouh, including one entitled Tamouré Vini Vini. (See also the four tamouré compositions by Kavika on his 1962 EP Le Tamouré.)

Finally, a case of Not in Oz: Australians were also contrarian about Bill Justis's big hit, Raunchy (1957). It was a #2 on Billboard, #11 in the UK, but Australians preferred to put two cover versions - by Billy Vaughn and Ernie Freeman - onto the local charts. (Another version by Billy Strange popped up on our charts too, but not till 1965.)

Bill Justis - Tamoure.mp3

Die Tahiti Tamourés - Wini-Wini.mp3

Terorotua and His Tahitians - Vini Vini (1958).mp3

_____________________________________________
Footnotes:
1. Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books [store]. In this case the other chart books agree: The Book for Sydney and Thirty Years Of Hits for Melbourne both have Tamoure at #1.
2. The Smash Records Story at Both Sides Now.
3. Bill Justis biography at All Music Guide.
4. Just three examples of tamure/vini vini variations, different from the Bill Justis Tamoure:
(i) The Wikipedia article on tāmūrē (which seems to have been cut and pasted all over the Net, going by Google search results) mentions a post-World War II popularising version by Louis Martin.
(ii) As my friend Joop Jansen points out, there is a 1930s recording by Tino Rossi, Vieni Vieni [YouTube], also recorded, for example by The Gaylords in the 50s.
(iii) Les Kavioka's tamouré EPs on French label Vogue (1962), featured at Encyclopedisque.fr
5. Song history at The Originals by Arnold Rypens.

A few words from our lyricist

2006-06-02T20:01:00.004+10:00

I keep getting emails from people looking for lyrics, usually to some obscure local hit that's impossible to find at any lyrics site. The other day, someone was after Frankie Davidson's Ball Bearing Bird.

Really, I'm the last person to ask about lyrics. I'm a poor listener: I notice the beat, and the arrangement, and the vocals... but it's only the odd line or phrase that sticks in my mind.

It's not that I don't care about lyrics, but with many rock or pop songs I'm happy if the words just sound right: in fact I hate it when they don't sound right, whatever their meaning is.

If the vowels and consonants sound good with each other it doesn't matter so much if I don't take in the meaning, in the same way that Italian opera or Brazilian pop are incomprehensible but still enjoyable. Scat singers knew about that, and John Lennon's Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé always sounded fine to me: I mean, let's face it, goo goo g’joob!

I'm not, like, against lyrics, nothing extreme like that: I always dug Simon & Garfunkel's words, and you can't listen to Nick Drake or Joni Mitchell or Tom Waits without taking in the lyrics. It's just that it's mainly fragments I notice or remember, the odd line or phrase. Fragments like these:

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said,
Though I knew she was sleeping
Simon & Garfunkel - America (Paul Simon - Art Garfunkel)
On Bookends, 1968

So you think you’re having good times
With the boy that you just met
Kicking sand from beach to beach
Your clothes all soaking wet
Traffic - Paper Sun (Jim Capaldi - Steve Winwood) 1967
The lyrics are by Jim Capaldi. See the 2002 Usenet discussion about the second verse's pitching lips, heard (plausibly) by some as hitching lifts. (The 'Lindsay Martin' in the discussion is me.)

"C'est la vie," say the old folks,
It goes to show you never can tell.
Chuck Berry - You Never Can Tell (Chuck Berry) 1964
Neat use of assonance. Check out those vowel sounds: C'est-say; old-folks-goes-show; never-tell.
The whole song is a slice-of-life masterpiece, a short story writer's catalogue of everyday details.

You study 'em hard and hopin' to pass...
Chuck Berry - School Days (Chuck Berry) 1957

And so it's my assumption, I'm really up the junction.
Squeeze - Up The Junction (Chris Difford - Glenn Tilbrook)
On Cool For Cats, 1979.
The lyrics are by Difford, I believe. This is the final line of the song. See the annotated lyrics from SqueezeFan.com (now off-line: archived). First, there's the nice near-rhyme of assumption and junction. Second, it uses a word that is unexpected in a pop song: assumption. Third, I love a song that leaves the words of the title right till the very end, rather than chanting it desperately all through the chorus.

I don't like you, but I love you.
The Miracles - You've Really Got A Hold On Me (Smokey Robinson) 1962
Genuine use by William 'Smokey' Robinson of the oxymoron as a literary device (not just any old contradiction, which most people these days seem to believe is an oxymoron). Also recorded famously by The Beatles on With The Beatles, 1963

Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Elton John - Daniel (Elton John - Bernie Taupin)
On Don't Shoot Me I'm The Piano Player, 1973.
Words by Bernie Taupin. Puts a picture in my mind that sums up the song.

Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean,
Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen.
Elton John - Your Song (Elton John - Bernie Taupin)
On Elton John, 1970
Bernie Taupin again. British diffidence, summed up in colloquial language, and all the more romantic for it.

You stay home, she goes out...
The Beatles - For No One (John Lennon - Paul McCartney)
On Revolver, 1966
Routine language for a romance gone routine. For me the most perfect Beatles song, written by Paul, it's more like European cinema than a pop song. I was going to cut and paste the whole song, but see SongMeanings instead.

Here comes the twist:
I don't exist.
The Bonzo Dog Band - I'm The The Urban Space Man (Neil Innes) 1969
Produced by Apollo C. Vermouth, aka Paul McCartney.

Joneses, Joneses, all I see, page 19 to 23
Big big world can be unkind, the phone just took my last dime
Johnny Burnette - Big Big World (Fred Burch - Gerald Nelson - Red West) 1961
I know it ain't poetry, but it was on the radio a lot back then, and it tells a story, and it stuck with me.

South Silicon Way...
It's an address, right? Maybe in a suburb of some English industrial city?
Sooorry... It's a misheard lyric, one I was so convinced of at the time that I couldn't believe it was actually So Sally can wait. That's the line in Don't Look Back In Anger by Oasis, 1995, on (What's The Story) Morning Glory.

The Juanita Banana phenomenon

2008-04-03T22:16:00.068+10:00

The Peels - Juanita Banana
(Tash Howard - Murray Kenton)
Arranged & conducted by Charlie Fox.
A Howard-Smith Production
USA 1966
Karate single #522
Stateside (UK) single #513
Karate single in Australia (pictured) released through Astor

Juanita Banana is a comic song about a Mexican banana grower's daughter who makes it as a singing star in the big city [lyrics]. When "Juanita Banana" sings the chorus it is an operatic caricature, a worked-over version of Caro Nome, an aria from Giusseppe Verdi's Rigoletto.

The title echoes Chiquita Banana, the 1944 jingle about the cartoon mascot of the United Fruit Company, the international banana trader that evolved into the present-day Chiquita Brands International.

I first heard Juanita Banana when it was excerpted on a novelty record by Dickie Goodman, Batman And His Grandmother (1966). This was a cut-in or break-in record (a distant ancestor of the mashup), where a comedian would do a commentary as, say, a news reporter and snippets of current songs would be inserted to fit in with the story.

Although Juanita Banana has been reissued on the likes of 25 All Time Novelty Hits and Definitive 60s, Vol. 1 it never was a national hit in the USA, UK or Australia. Even on the sprinkling of regional US and Canadian charts posted to ARSA the best it manages is #16 at WIXY in Cleveland, and 30 Years of Canadian Charts has it peaking at #2 9.

So much for the Anglo world, where it seems to be one of those songs that has stuck in the memory longer than its initial popularity justifies. The extraordinary thing about Juanita Banana is the number of times it has been recorded in non-English-speaking countries. Even the Peels' original version was popular in The Netherlands, where it charted at #13.

When I started writing this post, I was going to compile a definitive list of versions, but I've given up that idea: the more I search, the more I find. Instead, here's a partial list. Some of the exact years are hard to pinpoint, but I believe these are all from the 60s:

The Peels (USA, 1966)
Henri Salvador (France)
Billy Mo (Germany)
Luis Aguile (Spain, by Argentinian singer)
Quartetto Cetra (Italy)
Het Cocktail Trio (Netherlands)
Mal Sondock (Germany, by US singer-deejay, 1966)
Georgie Dann (Spain, by French singer, 1966)
Los Beta (Spain, 1966)
J. R. Corvington (Argentina)
Los Tres Sudamericanos (Paraguayan group; on Spain's Belter label)
Raymond Boisserie (France, 1967)
Marcello Minerbi (Italy, 1966, #9 Austria)
German Moreno (Phillipines, 1968: he also appeared in a 1968 film called Juanita Banana. Details at IMDb are sparse.)
The Monks (single on Vogue. I don't think these are the Yanks in Germany we love so much, but a French band with J. C. Pelletier.)
Jean Bonal Et Son Orchestre (France)
Teddy Martin & His Las Vegas Boys (France?)
The Reels (Spain: not the Aussie band)

A completist would also include Huanita Banana:

7 Mladih (Yugoslavia, 1966)
Radmila Mikic Miki (Yugoslavia, 1967)

That's it for me, but if too much still isn't enough, feel free to browse the 41 000 hits at Google for "juanita banana" (and nearly 1000 for "huanita banana").

How about the small print?

The Mad Music Archive identifies co-writer Tash Howard as the
producer who put together The Peels, a studio group (not surprising, somehow), and gives some background about the business end of the song's publication.

Tash Howard (c.1941-1977), originally a drummer, had changed his name from Howard Tashman.¹ He has 147 compositions listed at BMI, including a follow-up single Juanita Banana Part 2 and (with Charlie Fox) its B-side Rosita Tomato on Karate #533. Between the two Juanitas was Scrooey Mooey on Karate #527, another Tash Howard song (registered title: Screwee Mooey) .

Murray Kenton has eleven songs in his BMI repertoire, the US Copyright Office gives his real name as Morris Temkin and that's about all I know. Howard's co-producer, Smith, is a mystery to me.

Arranger and conductor Charlie Fox is not Charlie Foxx of Mockingbird fame, but he does seem to be the songwriter and film composer Charles Fox, whose repertoire includes Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly, Jim Croce's I Got A Name and the Happy Days theme (all with lyricist Norman Gimbell).

You can read about Charles Fox's distinguished career at the Songwriters' Hall of Fame which - alas! - offers no further insight into his contribution to Juanita Banana.

The Peels - Juanita Banana.mp3
Verdi - Caro None from Rigoletto.mp3
(Maria Callas 1952 - excerpt)
Dickie Goodman - Batman And His Grandmother.mp3
(Juanita first heard at 21 secs.)

Henri Salvador - Juanita Banana.mp3 (French)
Billy Mo - Juanita Banana.mp3 (German)
Luis Aguile - Juanita Banana.mp3 (Spanish)
Quartetto Cetra - Juanita Banana.mp3 (Italian)
Marcello Minerbi - Juanita Banana.mp3 (Italy, in English; hit in Austria)

.....................................................................................................
Footnote: 1. For confirmation that Tash Howard was born Howard Tashman, see the comment below from Holly, who adds some background about the co-writer and producer behind Juanita Banana. (Also mentioned at the Joey Powers page of Harry Young and Larry N. Houlieff.)

Not-to-be-confused-with Dept: There is also a London Indie/Pop/Rock singer called Tash Howard (see her MySpace). Tash Howard is also a character played by Barry Van Dyke in an episode of The New Dick Van Dyke Show.... But now I'm getting silly (unless the naming of the character is some kind of in-joke). Oh, and this 21st Century Seattle band called The Peels is not the Juanita Banana group.

The US Copyright Office shows that in 1990 the copyright of Juanita Banana by Tash Howard & Murray Kenton (Morris Temkin) was transferred to Gary Knight aka Harold Temkin who, as Gary Weston, co-wrote Vacation, the 1962 Connie Francis hit (see BMI repertoires). Further research, anyone?

Thanks to Josef Danksagmüller for the Marcello Minerbi phenomenon.

Only in Oz* (6) Nick Lampe - Flower Garden

2007-10-12T08:54:00.008+10:00

6. Nick Lampe - Flower Garden
(Nick Lampe)
USA 1969
Cotillion single (USA) #44066
Cotillion album It Happened Long Ago
Atlantic single (Australia) #3740
Australian charts: #16 Melbourne #54 Go-Set Magazine

I've already written about Nick Lampe and Flower Garden in detail so I won't go over old ground. In fact, a Google search for "Nick Lampe" will usually give you this very blog at the top of the results.

~~Robert Thompson, Australia's no, the world's most dedicated Nick Lampe fan, has alerted me to a rare video of Flower Garden, at YouTube.~~ No longer available 11/08. See here for substitute. Update 06/09: The video of Nick has reappeared here, but the previous "slideshow" version has better quality audio.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books and Barry McKay's Go-Set chart collection.

*Did I say only in Oz? For an example of a regional US entry, see the WLAV Grand Rapids chart at Airheads Radio Survey Archive: #17 on 14 August 1970, Previous Week #9.

Only in Oz (8) Susan Christie - I Love Onions

2007-10-18T21:39:00.002+10:00

Another in my series of posts about tracks that charted in Australia but not in their countries of origin.

8. Susan Christie - I Love Onions
(Donald Cochrane - John Hill)
USA 1966
Columbia single (USA) #43595
CBS single (Australia) #BA-221298
Australian charts: #24 Melbourne

This is one of those songs that is remembered as a hit, and it may well have been in some neighbourhoods, but it was never a "hit" in the sense of making the Top 40 in the States, for example. I remember it because I was listening to Top 40 radio from Melbourne, the only major Australian city where it charted. Even then, it looms larger in my memory than #24.

Perhaps its reputation has something to do with its later appearance on collections of novelty songs, and it really is a novelty, with cute, screwy lyrics delivered in a breathy flapper's voice (or do I hear Marilyn Monroe?), backed by kazoo and tent show band. In the States, I Love Onions also became better known through the children's TV show Captain Kangaroo, which apparently gave it a good run.

There was a fair bit of this droll retro stuff around in the 60s. For some reason the jazz era was seen as a source of hilarity by some of the post-war generation, and there was a familiar line of ironic approximations of trad jazz, jugbands, Tin Pan Alley crooners and dancehall spruikers, a line that stretched at least from the Temperance Seven (You're Driving me Crazy, #1 UK 1961) to the New Vaudeville Band (Winchester Cathedral, #4 UK 1966) and beyond. Oh look: there was The Eggplant That Ate Chicago by Dr West's Medicine Show (1966), and Hello Hello by Sopwith Camel (#26 USA 1967).

You know the sort of thing I mean: slightly old fashioned music with its tongue in its cheek, and I usually adored it.

I don't know that there was ever a satisfying name for this tendency, but it was pervasive enough to be found in the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper - visually as much as musically - and in the op shop side of Swinging London fashions. The Beatles had quite a line of their own in retro schtick: the spoken intros to Honey Pie ("Now she's hit the bigtime...") and Magical Mystery Tour ("Roll up, roll up, step right this way.."), and whole songs like Your Mother Should Know and When I'm 64.

The 60s throwbacks were really a selective parody of the past, as if Rudy Vallee with a megaphone were the only singer from the old days. Anyone who actually explored the music of the pre-war years would have found a rich popular culture that easily matched the 60s for its innovation and influence. In the 60s we were entertained by a comic book version of the real 20s and 30s, lots of fun but a bit sloppy with its references.

About Susan Christie not a lot seems to be known. Some sources repeat the theory that she is the sister of Lou Christie, but I'm not convinced that this is true. She released an album in 1970, Paint A Lady, produced by John Hill who back in '66 had produced and co-written I Love Onions. Although Paint A Lady has been reissued by Finders Keepers Records Susan Christie has retained a low profile, as in no profile.

The notes on Paint A Lady at Finders Keepers are pretty much what you'll find around the Net. Bruce Eder at All Music Guide adds that Susan Christie, from Philadelphia, had been in a folk ensemble called The Highlanders and that she attended Boston's Berklee College of Music, but he also concedes that "she has been something of a mystery, as to her fate and career". The mp3 blog Weird, Obscure, Twisted & Bent includes the lyrics of I Love Onions.

Nothing at YouTube this time, although someone has posted Yesterday Where's My Mind? a 9-minute track from Paint A Lady. Don't get too excited: the video is mainly a shot of the album cover and some sepia artworks.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.

Only in Oz (9) Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia

2008-02-22T19:26:00.048+10:00

Another in my series of posts about tracks that charted in Australia but not in their countries of origin.

9. Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia
(Roger Roger)
France 19??
Festival single (Australia) #FK-296 (1962); re-released on FK-1680 (1967)
Australian charts: #8 Sydney #8 Melbourne #16 Brisbane

This spaced-out electronic instrumental was familiar in Australia during the 60s as radio filler and as background music on radio and TV. [Listen] I mentioned it in an earlier post as a likely Time-out Instrumental.

Roger Roger (1911-1995) was a prolific French composer for radio, TV and film whose music is often filed these days under Space Age and Library.

Dalilia seems to have started out as a "library" track, a ready-made theme or soundtrack piece, one of numerous tracks Roger Roger composed and recorded for the Chappell Music company's Mood Music series from the mid-50s.

At the time such albums would have been sold to radio and TV stations and film producers, but they are now collected by aficionados of Library music and have reappeared on CD: see, for example, the catalogue at MovieGrooves, which includes a Roger Roger collection (Roger Roger is to Library Music what James Bond is to spy movies...).

Some of Roger Roger's music (SpaceAgePop.com tells us) also fits into a further sub-genre, Test Card, since his work was often heard with test patterns on BBC-TV.

I suspect that the release of Dalilia as a single was an Australian initiative (although a US release, Delilah, could be the same track). The B-side was Cha Cha Charlie, an instrumental by Mel Young, another Chappell library artist.

Festival released the single twice, first in December 1962 on #FK-296, when it charted, and again in March 1967 on #FK-1680, again coupled with Mel Young. As I've pointed out previously, one thing Australians loved back then was an instrumental.

The Dalilia tune was used in 1963 for the British TV show The Desperate People, when it was known as The Desperadoes (Theme from Desperate People). Each title is registered to Roger Roger as a separate work at ASCAP, but they do appear to be the same composition. In Australia, The Playboys released a version as Desperado (1965). You can listen for yourself from the Playboys page at the excellent MusicPopHits.com.

I once heard another Australian version with vocals but I've had no success in remembering it or tracking it down this time around.

And the title, Dalilia? The only title resembling Dalilia amongst the hundreds of Roger Roger compositions registered at SACEM (France) is Dalila, the French form of Delilah. There was a Roger Roger single released in the US in 1963 called Delilah (TIME #1063) but, as far I can see, no Dalilia. The title Dalilia is, however, registered to Roger Roger at ASCAP, but so is Delila (another form of Delilah/Dalila). I'm wondering whether Dalilia might be an Anglo misprint for Dalila (Delilah).

Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia.mp3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.

References: 1. Roger Roger page at SpaceAgePop.com 2. Roger Roger biography (and photo) at Robert Farnon Society 3. Chappell Mood Music database. 4. Examples of Roger Roger's Chappell Mood Music LPs at Vintage Library Emporium and Sounds of Champaign (Side 2) 5. ASCAP Title Search 6. The Australian Festival Record Company... 1961-1969, label discography by George Crotty 7. Library Music catalogue and Roger Roger blurb at MovieGrooves.com. 8. Composer search at SACEM, the French performing rights organisation.

Only in Oz (11) Bulldog - No

2008-06-29T21:28:00.012+10:00

Another in my series of posts about tracks that charted in Australia but not in their countries of origin.

11. Bulldog - No
(Billy Hocher - John Turi)
USA 1972
Decca single (USA) #32996
MCA album Bulldog
MCA single (Australia)
Australian charts: #2 Melbourne #7 Adelaide #13 Brisbane #5 Perth
New Zealand charts: #17 NZ

No, the opening track from Bulldog's self-titled debut album, did chart in parts of the US, but it appears to have been a minor hit on some regional charts, not enough to push it onto a national Top 40. On the charts posted to ARSA (which aren't comprehensive) it shows up 27 times: the best is a #3 at WIXY Cleveland. In parts of Australia it was a genuine hit: #2 in Melbourne ain't bad.

No is a muscular but melodic piece of early 70s pop-rock, with that gruff style of white soul singing that was common at the time. It can sound mannered or forced coming from some singers, especially at this distance, but Billy Hocher pulls it off. Hocher wrote the song with Bulldog keyboardist John Turi, who would later be associated with Cyndi Lauper in the band Blue Angel and on sessions for her Night To Remember (1989).

Also in Bulldog were Dino Danelli and Gene Cornish, former members of The Rascals (earlier, The Young Rascals), one of the top American bands of the 60s that had a dozen or so Top 40 hits in the US 1966-1969, including three at #1: Good Lovin' (1966), Groovin' (1967) and People Got To Be Free (1968).

Promising credentials, but there was no follow-up with Decca/MCA after the first Bulldog album. Before breaking up, Bulldog did release a second album in 1974, Smasher, this time on Buddah. This July 2007 post at Robots For Ronnie has some hard-to-find background on this rarity, but sadly the downloadable file has expired.

Bulldog - No.mp3

Red herrings: For more than you'll ever need to know about songs called No No No or No No No No or even No No No No No,
see this page at my website.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books and Dean Scapolo's NZ chart data.
Further reading: Joe Viglione's review of the album Bulldog at All Music Guide.

Only in Oz (10) Julie London - I'm Coming Back To You

2008-02-23T21:22:00.045+10:00

Another in my series of posts about tracks that charted in Australia but not in their countries of origin.

10. Julie London - I'm Coming Back To You
(Arthur Kent - Ed Warren)
USA 1963
Liberty single #55605
Also on album The Wonderful World of Julie London
Australian charts: #34 Melbourne

Okay, to be accurate this should be "Only in Melbourne, Victoria" and (as a search of ARSA reveals) "also in Bakersfield CA" plus who knows what other US cities, towns and hamlets?

Even then, this hardly tore up the charts. Melbourne chart statisticians Gavin Ryan and Tom Guest agree on this one: Gavin has it at #34, Tom at #36. The KAFY chart posted to ARSA snapshots it at #27 in Bakersfield.

Let me plead sentimental value, then.

Probably because I grew up listening to those very Melbourne radio stations that nudged it into the local Top 40, I'm Coming Back To You has always been the song I associate with Julie London: not her famous hit Cry Me A River (1955, #9 USA, #22 UK, later reworked to good effect by Joe Cocker), and not Desifinado, her single that charted elsewhere in Australia (1962: #38 Sydney, #10 Brisbane).

Julie London's territory was always the adult-oriented album rather than the pop single: Cry Me A River was her only national Top 40 hit in the US, but she was a steady earner for Liberty Records with her LPs. She is also remembered for her acting, notably as Nurse Dixie McCall in Emergency (1972-1976), created by her ex-husband Jack Webb.

The opening "do-doo-doo-doo do-do do-do" from the girls' chorus [Listen] signals that the easy-going I'm Coming Back To You is more in a pop vein than much of Julie London's material, which tended towards sultry nightclub jazz.

The names of the producer and arranger-conductor here, Snuff Garrett and Ernie Freeman, are familiar credits on numerous pop records (including some by Johnny O'Keefe), and it shows. This is 1963, on the cusp of the British Invasion, and this style of nicely crafted pop production would just about sound dated within a year or so. The B-side is When Snowflakes Fall in The Summer,written by Brill Building greats Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

Arthur Kent and Ed Warren, the writers of I'm Coming Back To You, also wrote Take Good Care Of Her, the 1961 hit by Adam Wade (#7 USA), also recorded by Elvis Presley and Johnny Mathis, among others.

Arthur Kent wrote at least two well-known songs with Sylvia Dee: The End Of The World, Skeeter Davis's hit (1963, #2 USA), and Bring Me Sunshine, familiar to British comedy fans as the theme song of Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise, but also recorded by numerous artists from The Mills Brothers to Willie Nelson.

By the way, a search at the US Copyright Office confirms that Arthur Kent's co-writer on I'm Coming Back To You was indeed Ed Warren. Some sources - including All Music Guide - have wrongly assumed that the Warren in the writer credit belongs to the more prolific and famous Diane Warren, born 1956, who would have been about 7 years old at the time of I'm Coming Back To You.

Julie London - I'm Coming Back To You.mp3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books, with a glance at Tom Guest's Thirty Years of Hits 1960-1990: Melbourne Top 40 Research.

Further reading: Biographies of Julie London and Ernie Freeman at All Music Guide. Tom Simon's Snuff Garrett page. Review of The Wonderful World of Julie London by Greg Adams at AMG.

Only in Oz (13) Buzz Cason - Adam And Eve

2009-03-15T19:55:00.067+10:00

Another in my series of posts about tracks that charted in Australia but not in their countries of origin.

13. Buzz Cason - Adam And Eve
(James E. "Buzz" Cason)
USA 1968
Elf single (USA) #90015
Stateside single (Australia) #OSS-8456
Australian charts: #4 Melbourne #3 Brisbane #1 Adelaide

For once, no doubts about this being a pure example of the Only in Oz phenomenon: no local USA chart appearances at (the inelegantly named) ARSA, no sneaking into the outer reaches of the Billboard Top 100. Nothing in the UK, nor in Europe. In the USA, this song didn't raise even a tiny blip on the radar, but in parts of Australia we loved it.

Adam And Eve is a Bonnie & Clyde story of a couple from a Mississippi farm, their Garden of Eden, who drive into town to stick up a bank. [Listen] It goes badly wrong (the bank teller made a wrong move), and they end up doing time. The chorus goes:

We can never go back to the Garden of Eden.
Adam and Eve have sinned.
We can't go back again. Oh no no. [Lyrics]

There are echoes of Ode To Billy Joe, both in the music and the setting. As Andrew Bergey puts it, Bobby Gentry meets Harry Nilsson in a party hosted by Leo Sayer.

Buzz Cason has done a bit of everything in the music business: singer, songwriter, producer, publisher, label owner...

One of his notable writer credits is for Arthur Alexander's Soldier Of Love (1961), written with Tony Moon, later performed by The Beatles and by Pearl Jam.

Cason is better known, though, for having co-written (with Mac Gayden) the much-recorded hit Everlasting Love. It charted nationally in the US in versions by Robert Knight (1967, the original), Carl Carlton (1974) and Rex Smith & Rachel Sweet (1981).

I know of at least eight versions of Everlasting Love that have charted in various parts of Australia, including local hit versions by The Town Criers (1968) and Doug Parkinson (1974).

Buzz Cason was also the originator of these songs that were hits in Australian versions:

Saturday Morning Cartoon Show - Hayride (Buzz Cason - Mac Gayden, 1968) on Elf #90021, label co-owned by Cason;
Australian version: The Flying Circus (1969) #3 Sydney #1 Brisbane #13 Perth [PopArchives page]

Saturday Morning Cartoon Show - La La (Buzz Cason - Mac Gayden, 1969) Elf #90028;
Australian version: The Flying Circus (1969) #5 Sydney #4 Melbourne #1 Brisbane #1 Adelaide #9 Perth [PopArchives page]

The Four Fuller Brothers - Groupie (Buzz Cason, prod. Cason-Gayden, 1969) Decca #32450;
Australian version: The New Dream (1969) #2 Melbourne #19 Adelaide [PopArchives page]

Gary Lewis & The Playboys - Sugar Coated Candy Love (Buzz Cason - Mac Gayden, 1969) Liberty album track;
Australian version: The New Dream (1969, as Candy Love) #44 Melbourne #22 Adelaide #36 Perth [PopArchives page]

Buzz Cason started out with Nashville rock'n'roll band The Casuals who recorded for Dot in the late 50s and became Brenda Lee's touring band. Cason's one charting single as a solo singer, Look For A Star (1960, #16 USA), used the name Garry Miles (confusingly, this was a cover of a British record by Garry Mills that also charted in the US).

Cason went into producing with Liberty Records in LA, working with Snuff Garrett. He produced (They Call Her) La Bamba (1964) by the post-Holly Crickets, arranged by Leon Russell, and when the single charted in the UK, Cason fronted The Crickets on a 1964 British tour.

With Nashville singer-songwriter Bobby Russell and Monument executive Fred Foster, Buzz Cason formed Rising Sons, the label and publishing company that released Robert Knight's Everlasting Love.

In 1967 Buzz Cason and Bobby Russell started the independent Elf label and the publishing and production company Russell-Cason Music: they published Russell's compositions Honey (the Bobby Goldsboro hit) and Little Green Apples (O.C. Smith, Roger Miller).

Bobby Russell's 1432 Franklin Pike Circle Hero (1968, #36 USA) was on Elf, for example, as were the two records by Saturday Morning Cartoon Show covered in Australia by The Flying Circus.

Buzz Cason is still working in Nashville, and he recently published his autobiography. For an update on his career since the 60s, see his website at BuzzCason.com or his MySpace page.

Buzz Cason - Adam And Eve.mp3

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thanks to Paul Rivette for asking about this song. I'd forgotten it!

Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.

References, further reading: 1. Bio page at BuzzCason.com 2. Buzz Cason bio at Rockabilly Hall of Fame. 3. The Us Four on Rising Sons label at Garage Hangover. 4. Soldier Of Love song review at AMG. 5. Recent interview with Buzz Cason at Music Business Radio. 6. Adam And Eve lyrics at HotLyrics.net. 7. Adam and Eve: brief review at Andrew Bergey's Bursts of Flavor page. 8. Elf label discography at Global Dog. 9. Rising Sons label discography at Global Dog.

"Frank Avis's Memoirs of 42 Years in Radio"

2009-04-28T22:05:00.008+10:00

A highlight of John Pearce's radio memoirs (see earlier post) is his remote broadcast from a country dance for 3SH Swan Hill, probably some time in the late 1940s.

I've just found another entertaining account of a country dance broadcast, this time from Frank Avis in The Ball Broadcast, recalling his time at 2LF Young in the mid-1950s. Avis, best known as a radio newsman, is publishing his memoirs as a blog at FrankAvis.com.

Frank Avis started in radio at 2MG Mudgee, and his latest post (15 February) takes his career up to 2DAY-FM Sydney in the 80s and 90s. Along the way, he's worked at 2LF Young, 3BO Bendigo, 7HO Hobart, 3UZ, 3XY, 3AK and 3DB Melbourne, 6PR Perth, 3MP Mornington Peninsula, and 2GB and 2MMM-FM Sydney.

Frank arrived at 3BO not long after the young John Laws left, and he tells a couple of good yarns about Laws's time at the station.

Great stories from a radio insider: highly recommended.

2QN Deniliquin

2009-04-28T20:39:00.014+10:00

In the last post I mentioned 2QN Deniliquin, where John Pearce started in radio in the 1940s before moving on to 3SH Swan Hill.

When we lived in Swan Hill in the 60s, 2QN was one of the stations I could pick up clearly if I was roaming the dial looking for pop music. Another was 2WG Wagga Wagga. Like most country stations at the time, they had their moments of good Top 40 programming, presented by disc jockeys who could sound just as good as their big city counterparts. One of the 2QN announcers had an American accent, something unusual on Aussie country radio.

This Melbourne Argus story from 23 February 1945 (via the NLA's Australian Newspapers archive) shows how a financially weak 2QN nearly lost its licence to Wangaratta, a town in north-eastern Victoria. Click here for larger image.

Wangaratta didn't get its own commercial station until 3NE opened in 1954.

John Pearce at 3SH Swan Hill

2009-04-27T21:20:00.023+10:00

[The Argus, 1932]

For the Love of Mike, the memoirs of Australian radio announcer John Pearce, were published online a few years ago. His radio career starts just after the War, when he chanced upon a job at 2QN Deniliquin after he was de-mobbed from the RAAF. He went on to 3SH Swan Hill, 7HO Hobart, and to 2GB Sydney, where he was one of the pioneers of Australian talk-back radio.

Pearce's site is no longer online, but fortunately we can still access the whole work at the Internet Archive [title page, table of contents].

Being a radio fanatic from way back, I find this insider's view of radio irresistible, especially the chapter on 3SH, our local station during my teenage years. Pearce seems to have been at 3SH around the late 40s to early 1950s.

Pearce calls 3SH a "fun station", a "happy station", and this comes through in his reminiscences. There are plenty of endearing characters and entertaining stories: the outside broadcast at a local dance (how quaint!), hillbilly amateurs on the Christmas Appeal radiothon, grappling with a local politician to make sure he stayed near the mike, locking the duty announcer in the outside dunny while a three-minute song was playing...

The station manager at 3SH was Harry Lithgow, still there when we moved to Swan Hill in 1961. I believe Chief Engineer Bernie Walsh was still around then too.

Since For the Love of Mike has disappeared from an active website, and does not seem to have been published as a book, I'm posting the chapter on 3SH, which gives a great insight into the workings of a country commercial station in the pre-rock'n'roll era.

Victorians to the North:

Chapter 7 of John Pearce - For the Love of Mike

In the days when broadcasting meant radio, and not television and/or radio, the Victorian Broadcasting Network consisted of a head office in Melbourne and three country radio stations.

The main one was in Hamilton, the second best was in Sale and what was left went to Swan Hill, way north on the River Murray, the dividing line between Australia and Victoria. I got a job as an announcer at the latter. I can't remember how I got it, not even how I learned about it. Read it in the paper, maybe. However, it was mine; and I arrived after the adventure of the drive in my vintage Hupmobile...

Continued here...

Another Thane Russal track

2009-06-14T16:00:00.008+10:00

Soon after I wrote about Thane Russal and his only-in-Oz hit Security (1966), this song popped up on random play. It's even more garage than Security, right into Psychotic Reaction territory.

I Need You was a 1966 B-side written by Thane Russal himself. The A-side, a follow-up to Security, was Drop Everything And Run, written by Tony Colton and Ray Smith. They wrote Zoot Money's Big Time Operator, famously covered in Australia by Jeff St John.

Thane Russal - I Need You.mp3

Thane Russal

2009-06-10T17:10:00.025+10:00

Thane Russal's British version of Security (1966), a garage-style pop arrangement of the Otis Redding song, seems to have been popular nowhere except in Australia, where it was quite a hit (#7 Sydney #24 Melbourne #4 Brisbane #8 Perth). In fact, a lot of Aussie Boomers might even know it better than the original.

I left it out of my Only in Oz series, though, because it had already been given the full treatment by Glenn A. Baker in Hard To Get Hits, a CD series from the 1990s with a similar premise to Only in Oz. In fact, it was Baker, in his liner notes to Hard To Get Hits Vol. 1, who finally identified Thane Russal as Doug Gibbons.

Thane Russal's Security even inspired a 1976 dip o' the lid by Australian band Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, their first single. This gave me an excuse to write about everything I've ever been able to find out about Russal/Gibbons and his Security, over here at the website.

I can't recall seeing a photo of Russal/Gibbons until I saw this New Musical Express ad from March 1966.

Thane Russal & Three - Security.mp3

Images: New Musical Express, 4 March 1966, p.5

Kate & Keir on the radio in Melbourne

2009-06-02T19:22:00.023+10:00

Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall talk with Jon Faine and co-host Zoe Warne in this excerpt from The Conversation Hour on 774 ABC Melbourne, 2 June 2009. The full program featured three co-working couples around the theme of "Working with your partner".

Listen: Kate and Keir - Conversation Hour (excerpt).mp3 18 min 39 secs, 17 MB

Image: ABC Melbourne

Lee Haig

2009-05-25T19:04:00.008+10:00

Lee Haig was an announcer at 3SH Swan Hill around 1963. He later worked on-air at 3UL Warragul where I heard him one evening: his voice had matured, and he sounded great. After that I lost track of him.

Lee (Leyden) was our next-door neighbour's younger brother, so we often saw him at the time he started at 3SH. I was about twelve or thirteen, and he was probably about seventeen or eighteen, a cheerful, friendly, energetic kind of bloke.

My friends and I sometimes called him "Uncle Lee" because if he was on in the afternoons he would do the kids' show, so he would have to sign on as Uncle Lee. We were half-smart, cheeky young lads, and he must have found us pretty annoying.

Even so...

I was a radio nut: I used to stay up late picking up remote stations (they started to come in around sunset), and I would mark their locations on a map of Australia.

One Saturday I had a big length of aerial wire that I was trying to string up in the yard outside my window, but I couldn't get much height. Lee saw I was getting nowhere, so he grabbed the end of it and climbed up a tall pine tree, right to its skinny top so that he was swaying dangerously from side to side, and he tied my aerial up there. After that, I pulled in those after-sunset stations better than ever.

Two kinds of people: those who won't rest until they've solved the Whatever Happened To...? puzzle, and those who prefer to move on and stay pretty much in the present. I'm with the first group, who can't resist Googling old friends' names, or searching for them at FriendsReunited or Facebook.

Last week I was thinking about radio in the sixties, and about my aerial up the pine tree in the side garden. I wondered what had happened to Lee Haig, and I found him at the Herald-Sun's Tributes website. He died in Melbourne last October.

I was thinking: I'll write about him here, and anyone who ever Googles "lee haig" + 3sh or 3ul will easily find this page.