Obscure Originators (31): The Fun And Games

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 34 Obscure Originators features.

The Grooviest Girl In The World was a #3 New Zealand hit in 1969 for Hutt Valley band The Simple Image.

The original version was released in the US in 1968 by The Fun And Games, a six-piece band from Texas with four members who had been band-mates since their high school years in Houston. They included the Romano brothers, Joe and Rock, who both went on to successful careers in various branches of the arts (there is a Wikipedia page about Rock).

The Fun And Games 1969 [link]

The Fun And Games version of The Grooviest Girl In The World was produced by one of its writers, Gary Zekley. He is partly known for singing, co-writing and producing on the single Yellow Balloon (1967 #25 USA) and the subsequent album by The Yellow Balloon. These later became artifacts of the retrospectively named genre of Sunshine Pop. 

The Simple Image were one of those fine New Zealand bands of the 60s-70s that topped the charts in New Zealand with records that were unfamiliar to most Australians. NZ artists such as The Simple Image, The Dedikation, The Avengers, and The Fourmyula had #1 or #2 NZ hits that never surfaced in Australia.

There's a twist to the story of The Grooviest Girl In The World that I discovered later. Although most Australians would not be able to hum the tune for you, a Boomer from South Australia might know it. The original version by The Fun And Games charted in Adelaide March-May 1969, peaking at #3 (in the US it reached only #78 Billboard). This is a surprising outlier which I suspect is down to radio airplay on Adelaide's 5AD. 

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For more about the song and The Fun And Games see The Simple Image - The Grooviest Girl In The World. 

Obscure Originators (30): Bob Wilson

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 34 Obscure Originators features.

In 1960 Bob Wilson released the original version of (And Her Name Is) Scarlet. A later version by The De Kroo Brothers was a #9 Australian hit in 1963

Bob Wilson's recording came out on LA label Era. It was written by Steven Howard, a pseudonym of Era's co-founder and owner Herb Newman (1925-1976). He had co-written The Wayward Wind, a hit for Gogi Grant on an Era single (1956, #1 USA).

Before The De Kroo Brothers got to it, Keith Colley had recorded Scarlet, again on Era (1962), and there had been a German version in 1961.

See full news item

This was interesting, and not hard to find out, but who was Bob Wilson? The trouble is that the world is full of Bob Wilsons, so his identity was infuriatingly difficult to search for. I discovered that even BMI, the US copyrighting outfit, had registered compositions by at least three different Bob Wilsons together under one name.

Eventually, someone emails. This time, it was a longstanding friend of Wilson who had much information about his life and career. Thanks to him and some further digging, I was even able create a passable Bob Wilson article at Wikipedia.

This Bob Wilson was a guitar virtuoso and singer-songwriter from Pleasant Hill, California. As a teenager just out of high school he recorded some singles on Era, then had a long career as a schoolteacher with occasional reappearances on record.

For example, he featured on an album by folk artist Janet Smith in 1968, and he released albums with Rick Shubb (the Shubb Capo inventor) in 1976 and 1999. In the mid-2010s his Bob Wilson Ensemble appeared at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. 

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For more about the song and Bob Wilson see The De Kroo Brothers - (And Her Name Is) Scarlet.

Obscure Originators (29): Drafi Deutscher And His Magics

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 34 Obscure Originators features.

In 1960s Germany, singer-songwriter Drafi Deutscher was a chart-topping pop star, but to most  Australian pop fans at the time his name would have been, well, obscure.

Johnny Chester's moderate hit Teeny (1963 #28 Australia), with English lyrics by Johnny himself, is a cover version of Teeny by Drafi Deutscher And His Magics.

More than that, Johnny is singing over the backing track recorded for Drafi’s single, and he repeats the procedure on the B-side with Do The Stomp, a cover of Drafi’s B-side Shu-bi-du-bi-do The Slop, again with Drafi's recycled backing track.

The following year, W&G did this again when Merv Benton sang new lyrics by Noel Watson over the backing tracks from both sides of Drafi's single Shake Hands / Come On, Let’s Go.

English translations or rewrites of songs are not unusual. The lady in Mark Holden's I Wanna Make You My Lady (1976) was an angel in the original Swedish hit Jag Ska Fånga En Ängel. You're My World came from Il Mio Mondo, and My Way came from Comme d'habitude.

The idea of recording vocals over the backing track of an original version is not unheard of either. Six months before Johnny Chester's Teeny, Ben E. King's 1963 hit I (Who Have Nothing) had used the backing track from Uno Dei Tanti (1961), the original version by Joe Sentieri.

Other double-sided covers exist, too. In 1957 The Diamonds covered both sides of The Rays’ single Silhouettes / Daddy Cool, and in 1964 Australian band The Cicadas covered both sides of The Marauders' British single That’s What I Want / Hey Wha’ D’Ya Say with some regional chart success.

But W&G's twofold use of the manoeuvre I like to call the double-sided cover version with English adaptation and recycled backing track must be unique.
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For more about the songs and Drafi Deutscher And His Magics see Johnny Chester - Teeny and Merv Benton - Be Sweet.  

 

When did that record come out?

Billboard singles reviews: useful for locating a record in time

1. Why? 

Knowing the absolute original version of a song is probably not important to many music fans. Blue Suede Shoes is an Elvis Presley song, and the fact that it was first recorded by Carl Perkins is of limited interest.

Similarly, unless they are pub trivia enthusiasts it is also enough for most listeners to know roughly which year a record was released. Give or take a year or two is probably good enough for historic or nostalgic context. Even, say, late 60s or mid-70s will do.

Some of us, though, cannot rest until we know who first performed or recorded a song. The sport of tracking down original versions often demands more than the year a record came out. We might need the month, or the week, or (surely not!) the day a record was released. 

Part of the urge is worthy, to give credit where it's due, credit to the original composers, arrangers and artists. I can't deny there is also the satisfaction of being the smart alec who has knowledge that everyone else has missed. 

At the back of the mind, too, is the hope that the undiscovered original version will turn out to be the best, an authentic gem that reveals the raw vision of the creator, unspoilt by the tinkering of the cover versions. That happens, but it often turns out to be the opposite, when the cover version has added something to the original work, even revealed something about it. 

As with fanatics of any sport, though, it is hard to explain to an outsider why we are so caught up in it. We keep looking, digging around the archives until we find even a tiny clue. Because the data is limited, though, you might still be left with an approximation or just circumstantial evidence.

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2. When did my canary get circles under his eyes?

Sheet music (clip)

My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes became known in Australia through the 1973 version by Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band which charted moderately around the country. 

It first appeared in 1931. Most sources will tell you that British bandleader Debroy Somers released the original version, but I believe the British release by American singer Marion Harris has a good claim to being the original. 

I can't prove it, and the evidence is limited and partly circumstantial, but the case for Marion Harris is enough to avoid calling either as the original release.

Both records came out in the period April-May 1931, so my aim was to narrow it down:

• In the limited number of British newspaper mentions of the records, only Marion Harris appears in April, and there are no mentions of Debroy Somers until May. (The flaw: I don't have access to the archives of every newspaper in the universe.) 

Jack Golden

• Composer Jack Golden had previously been accompanist to Harris, which may explain her early access to the song. It might even have been exclusive to her for a while before any records came out. (The flaw: circumstantial, not proof.)

• Harris appears on the cover of the sheet music. (The flaw: it's common but not necessary that the sheet music carries the song's originator.)

In the meantime, I did find evidence of Marion Harris performing Canary on stage and radio in the US in January 1931. After that there are no other mentions of the song in the news archives until April 1931 when Harris's record is mentioned. For the rest of 1931 the song title often pops up in various contexts. This was enough for me to call Harris as having the Original version: live performance, at least until contradictory evidence comes up. 

As I always say about the website, Eventually, someone emails. The page will stand until then. Or until someone comments here, I guess. It does happen.

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3. Where do I find out? 

Steven C. Barr dates the 78s

• 45s and EPs: 45cat.com.  and for other formats e.g. albums and 78s: 45worlds.com

• All formats but best for albums: Discogs.com

• Huge music magazine archive at World Radio History.

• Newspaper and magazine archives: Trove (Australia), Gale (mainly British), and Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchives.com (mainly USA, paid subs).

• Archived books and magazines at Internet Archive. Just search.

• Discographies by e.g Steven C. Barr (The Almost Complete 78 rpm Record Dating Guide), Martin C. Strong

The Originals book in English (link)

(The Essential Rock Discography), or Brian Rust (many, including The complete entertainment discography, from the mid-1890s to 1942). 

• Biggest and best original version sites: The Originals, Cover.info, and Secondhand Songs.

• 78s: Online Discographical Project (78discography.com) for recording dates (not release dates)

Sometimes naming a release date is down to speculation, or even an informed hunch. You might have to declare it a draw and let it rest. Disappointing, but we are working with imperfect data.

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Some of this appears in a different form at the About page of my site Where did they get that song? and at my page about My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes.  

Only in Oz (7) Joe & Eddie - There's A Meetin' Here Tonite (1963)

Another in my series of posts about tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin. See also: Only in Melbourne.

7. Joe & Eddie - There's a Meetin' Here Tonite
(Bob Gibson)
USA 1963
GNP Crescendo single (USA) #195GNP Crescendo album There's A Meetin' Here Tonite: Joe & Eddie In Concert
Vocalion single (EMI Australia) #V-1001
Australian charts: #4 Melbourne #1 Adelaide

I'd have sworn that this foot-stomper, this stirring rally to worship, was a genuine piece of meetinghouse gospel.

Then I followed the songwriter credit to the influential folk popularizer Bob Gibson. His 1958 original version turns out to be more in the hootenanny neighbourhood, a mainstream folk song with banjo accompaniment. Still, all credit to Gibson as writer, and to whoever saw that it could be reworked for Joe & Eddie in this way.

Joe & Eddie were Joe Gilbert and Eddie Brown. They recorded for Capitol and then for GNP Crescendo, where they issued several LPs before Joe's accidental death in 1966. Eddie Brown is still around, as a performer and producer, and he has a website at Joe&Eddie.com.

I'm surprised that There's a Meetin' Here Tonite wasn't a hit in the USA. At least where it did chart in Australia it was quite a hit. It charted in Melbourne (my neck of the woods) in May 1964, at the height of Beatle craziness. I remember the folkies at my school championing its cause over the likes of the Beatles ("This is real music!"), but even to a Brit Invasion fanatic like myself it was a fine record indeed.

A sidelight: In the early 70s, when two ex-Turtles emerged as Flo & Eddie, I assumed the name was a take on Joe & Eddie, something I can't now confirm. Perhaps it was just a nice coincidence: it had initially been The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie.

Someone has posted a nice clear video of There's a Meetin' Here Tonite at YouTube, where these days it seems you can find just about any song you search for.


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Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.

Only in Oz (3) P.J. Proby - Mission Bell (1965)

Another in my series of posts about tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin. See also: Only in Melbourne.

3. P.J. Proby - Mission Bell
(William Michael-Jesse Hodges et al)
UK 1965
Liberty album (UK) P.J.Proby, #LBY 1264;
Liberty single (USA, Australia) #55791.
Australian charts: #3 Melbourne, #7 Sydney, #4 Brisbane,
#2 Adelaide #3 Perth | #2 Australia

This 1965 rearrangement of a #7 US hit from 1960 is a jawdropper, especially if you're familiar with the pleasant but unremarkable original by Donnie Brooks. This is the quintessential example of a remake transforming the original and overshadowing it.

An expansive, dramatic recording, with soaring strings and brass orchestration, and an urgent, soulful female chorus, Mission Bell was produced in London by Ron Richards during P.J. Proby's mid-60s sojourn in the UK.

Born James Marcus Smith in Houston in 1938, P.J. Proby was more popular in the UK and Australia than he was back home in the US. In the UK he had ten Top 40 hits 1964-68 (including three in the Top 10), but in the USA Niki Hoeky was his only Billboard Top 40 record, at #23 (1967).

Mission Bell was one of Proby's biggest hits in Australia, but it remained an album track in the UK and the single didn't chart nationally in the US.

P.J. Proby's career was plagued by poor judgment and overexcited media attention of the worst kind: in Australia he became a figure of fun, sent up in Oz Magazine ("Probe me, P.J., probe me!").

Nevertheless, he often had the benefit of top notch producers, arrangers and songwriters, and his rich, idiosyncratically delivered baritone could rise to the occasion and produce the odd pop gem.

As well as Mission Bell, Ron Richards produced some of Proby's better-known records:

• his mannered hit versions of Maria and Somewhere from West Side Story;
• That Means A Lot, a Song The Beatles Gave Away, arranged & conducted by George Martin;

and such overlooked delights as:

• Just Like Him, an exquisite Jacki DeShannon song to be discovered on the B-side of Somewhere; and
• To Make A Big Man Cry, written by Pete Callander and Les Reed and delivered relatively straight by Proby in the style of the big-production ballad of the day (no surprise that it was also recorded by Tom Jones).

An EMI producer and A&R man, Ron Richards is best known for having signed The Hollies and for producing their biggest hits. He was also in on the earliest Beatles sessions at Abbey Road.

The unsung hero of Proby's Mission Bell is the arranger, who is uncredited on the record. Of all the unsung heroes of pop music, arrangers are even more overlooked than producers and songwriters (at least some of them have become famous names) and yet many a great pop record owes its greatness to its arrangement.

[Update: Having read a bit more about the career of producer Ron Richards, I'm guessing he was also the arranger.]

Naming the writers of Mission Bell isn't straightforward. William Michael is often credited alone as the writer (on the original Donnie Brooks label and on the US copyright), but Jesse Hodges also appears in some places (at BMI, for example) and there were contributions by others along the way.

William Michael had a day job in stockbroking. He submitted his original version of Mission Bell - then called Wishing Well - to Jesse Hodges, whose speciality was to quickly and economically work up and record songs by semi-professional or amateur writers. (In fact, we're just about into song-poem territory with Mission Bell.)

Hodges was a songwriter, producer, arranger and singer, an associate of Donnie Brooks since their days at the Fable label in the late 50s when Donnie was still known as as Johnny Faire.

Quoting Brooks, Greg Adams writes that Mission Bell was an example of how Hodges "would take songs, horrible songs by these amateur writers and rewrite them into something recordable."¹

Gary Myers, who interviewed Donnie Brooks in the late 70s, mentions contributions to the rewrite by Dorsey Burnette (whose Tall Oak Tree is alluded to in the final version), guitarist Scotty Turnbull, and probably the songwriter John Marascalco.² Howard Thomason, at Rockabilly Hall of Fame, has Donnie Brooks and Herb Newman of Era Records also contributing.

William Michael, the stockbroking songwriter, has 24 compositions listed at BMI. Wishing Well was extensively rewritten on its way to becoming Mission Bell but he was keen to have his name on the song, no matter what rewrites and percentages were involved. Can't blame him, really.

One more thing: there was a connection between P.J. Proby and the original version of Mission Bell. Before he was brought to the UK by pop TV producer Jack Good, Proby had worked around Hollywood for years, acting a little, writing songs, recording demos for Elvis, and making records under other names (Jett Powers, Orville Woods). Spencer Leigh, in The Independent's 2007 obituary of Donnie Brooks, writes:

In 1960, Brooks scored with Mission Bell, which included a jokey reference to Dorsey Burnette's hit Tall Oak Tree.
P.J. Proby had first met Brooks two years earlier, on a radio show in Hollywood. "We hung around with the same gang," Proby recalls, "the Hollywood Brat Pack of its day, which included Ricky Nelson, Johnny Burnette, Eddie Cochran and Sharon Sheeley. I liked Mission Bell very much and, when I did it myself, my version got to No 1 in Australia. Donnie said to me, 'How can you do this to me, Jim?' "

Let's not be picky: maybe it wasn't quite a #1 in all of those collections of radio playlists we like to call the Aussie charts, but for some of us down here it's still #1 in our hearts.

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Recommended reading:

Nik Cohn devoted a chapter to P.J. Proby in Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom (1969):

He was intuitive, fast, hysterical, paranoid, generous, very funny, hugely imaginative, original, self-obsessed, self-destructive, often impossible, just about irresistible and much more besides. Truly, he was complicated. (p.196)

Michael Lane Heath has a Proby appreciation and history at Perfect Sound Forever, Get Hip to My Conflagration:

...take the most outrageous, profligate, American loud-hearted-unto-operatic attitude, pour it into the hip-swing shing-a-ling of a Presley-shaped vessel, dress it up in Errol Flynn/Captain Blood pony-tailed pirate drag, multiply it by a thousand... and you still don't approach the maximum velocity of P.J. Proby.

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Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.

1 Liner notes to Hard To Find 45s on CD, Vol. 10 (Eric, 2007), cited by S.J. Dibai, post to Spectropop Group #40745, 12 September 2007.
2 Gary Myers, post to Spectropop Group #40742, 12 September 2007. See also post #40773, 14 September 2007 Re: quasi-legit song publishers by Phil Milstein, who has also given me further background on Mission Bell.

Only in Oz (2) Acker Bilk - The Harem (1963)

Another in my series of posts about tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin. See also: Only in Melbourne.

2. Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band - The Harem
(Dorothy Hodas-Mack Wolfson-Eddie Cooper)
UK 1963 
Columbia single (UK) #DB7129.
Columbia single (Australia)  #DO4447
Australian charts: #2 Melbourne, #4 Sydney, #3 Adelaide (#7 Australia)

I wrote about The Harem earlier, in connection with Time-out Instrumentals. Then, I said it was a standout amongst Acker Bilk's recordings, a stirring, whirling, percussive instro that builds to a climax.

This track is a bit of a mystery, not least because it is an outstanding instrumental by a popular artist that unaccountably failed to make the same splash on the British charts as it did in Australia.

Acker Bilk had ten Top 40 hits in the UK between 1960 and 1963, but this wasn't one of them. His Stranger On The Shore was a big hit everywhere (#2 UK, #1 USA) and he was popular in the MOR instrumental market. The odd thing is, Acker Bilk's countless albums and reissues have never been hard to find in the bargain bins, but I've never found The Harem on any of them.

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A 1963 single of The Harem by Don Costa and his Orchestra on US Columbia #42705 is the same work, and appears to be the original version.

The authoritative 45cat.com has Don Costa's US release at April 1963, Acker Bilk's UK release at October 1963. It is an American composition, copyrighted in the US in March 1963. [Updated 20 Dec 2016]

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We do know something about the writers' other works, thanks in part to ASCAP's database:

Mack Wolfson (aka Maxwell A. Wolfson) built up a fair repertoire in the 50s and 60s. He often wrote with the prolific Tin Pan Alley composer Eddie White (Edward R. White)*, for example on Happiness Street (Corner Sunshine Square), recorded by Georgia Gibbs and Tony Bennett (both versions charted in 1956); C'est La Vie, a much-recorded song that was a #11 hit for Sarah Vaughan in 1955; Crazy Otto Rag by Johnnie 'Crazy Otto' Maddox, a co-write with the famous Hugo & Luigi that was heard in the film Reds; and Smarty Pants, on disco group First Choice's 1973 debut album.

Eddie Cooper, not so prolific, also wrote with Eddie White: of his 13 compositions at ASCAP, 6 were co-writes with White. (There are 4 additional Eddie Cooper songs listed at BMI.)

Dorothy Hodas (full name Dorothy Gertrude Hodas) has only one other song in her ASCAP repertoire, Love Of My Life, and that was written with Mack Wolfson and, yes, Eddie White.

The Harem could be a faux-Eastern genre piece, but it sounds as if it could be based on a folk tune. I believe I hear something reminiscent of Hava Nagila.

(UPDATE: See the comment below from Anonymous who suggests the Turkish song Usku Dara as a source. Listen to Eartha Kitt's famous version at Youtube.)

ASCAP shows an alternative title, The Harem: Schoene Geschic, which may or may not be a clue. Could Geschic be a database or dialectic truncation of Geschichte? Schoene Geschichte means Beautiful Story.

There are at least two 1960s guitar versions of The Harem, by Rotterdam instrumental group The Explosions (1964), and by New Zealand guitarist Graeme Bartlett, better known as Gray Bartlett (1963 or 64).

Acker Bilk & His Paramount Jazz Band - The Harem.mp3

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Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.
*Could this be the same Edward R. (Eddie) White (1919-1996), a New Yorker listed at IMDb in some bit parts?

Dutch sleeveshot from plaatzegel.nl.

Slow versions

Sometimes you hear the original of a slow-burning song and find that it started out as something altogether peppier. The obvious example is Joe Cocker's revelatory version of With A Little Help From My Friends, which sounds just as convincing as a dramatic soul ballad as it does as the rhythmic kick-off to The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper.

Nothing prepared me, though, for Marvin Gaye's downright bouncy 1963 original of Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home). I'd already become attached to Paul Young's slow, haunting version from his 1983 album No Parlez.

In the same way, I'd got to know the 1924 Isham Jones-Gus Kahn song It Had To Be You through a slow version. It was on 'S Awful Nice (1958), an album by Ray Conniff, whose wordless-chorus-plus-brass arrangements were a big part of the soundtrack of our household when I was a kid in the late 50s and early 60s.

I heard enough slow arrangements of It Had To Be You to make me admire it in the same way as I admired Ray Noble's The Very Thought Of You, another slow, sweet and romantic song from songwriting's golden age.

I didn't hear Isham Jones's own recording of It Had To Be You until recently, and it turns out to be an upbeat Roaring 20s dance number in the vein of Tea For Two. For me it doesn't have the same allure as it does as a slow song.

It might depend on how you first hear a song, and I might need to soften my harsh opinion of jazzing it down.

Mad Dogs and Originals

Listening again to Joe Cocker's live album of the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, I was startled to realise that this is now a generation old, a bit over 35 years.

At the time it was a joy, and I still marvel at how far rock'n'roll had come since my early teens, when the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion took off. Joe Cocker wouldn't have been a star in 1963, he would've been laughed off the stage, and yet here he was in 1970, unkempt, idiosyncratic, unlikely and just wonderful.

I was thinking, as I do, about the sources of the songs, songs that were often reworked and transformed into something fresh. Apart from Cocker's (then) alarming delivery, credit is due to the arrangers, notably Chris Stainton - a member of Cocker's Grease Band - and Leon Russell, who produced Cocker in the studio and was the musical director of Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

Here's a list, with writers and original versions. I'm guessing that the Ray Charles versions of some of these songs would've been the significant ones for Joe Cocker.

Honky Tonk Women (Mick Jagger - Keith Richard)
The Rolling Stones, 1969.

Sticks and Stones (Titus Turner - Henry Glover)
Ray Charles, 1960.
Ray Charles had the original release: an earlier recording by co-writer Titus Turner was unreleased at the time. It was also recorded in the 60s by Billy Fury, Manfred Mann, The Zombies, The Righteous Brothers, and Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels and others.

Cry Me A River (Arthur Hamilton)
Julie London, 1955.
Slow burning torch song rocked up by Leon Russell.

Bird On The Wire (Leonard Cohen)
Judy Collins, 1968.
Recorded by Leonard Cohen himself (in 1969), among others.

Feelin' Alright (Dave Mason)
Traffic, 1968.
Writer Dave Mason was a member of Traffic, along with Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi.

Superstar (Leon Russell - Bonnie Bramlet + Delaney Bramlett)
Delaney & Bonnie, 1969.
Nothing to do with the rock opera, but a song originally issued as Groupie. More details at my own Superstar page at PopArchives.com.au.

Let's Go Get Stoned (Valerie Simpson - Nickolas Ashford - Josephine Armstead)
The Coasters, 1965.
Once again, Ray Charles had a version (1966), among others.

I'll Drown In My Own Tears (Henry Glover)
Sonny Thompson & Lula Reed, 1951.
Original title: I'll Drown In My Tears. Notably recorded by Ray Charles (1960) among others.

When Something Is Wrong With My Baby (Isaac Hayes - David Porter)
Sam & Dave, 1966, but hang on a minute:
The Originals gives the original to Charlie Rich, by a couple of months.

I've Been Loving You Too Long (Otis Redding - Jerry Butler)
Otis Redding, 1965.
Full original title: I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now).

Girl From The North Country (Bob Dylan)
Bob Dylan (with Johnny Cash), 1969.
On Nashville Skyline.

Please Give Peace A Chance (Leon Russell - Bonnie Bramlett)
A Mad Dogs & Englishmen original? I think so.

She Came In Through The Bathroom Window (John Lennon - Paul McCartney)
The Beatles, 1969.
On Abbey Road. Cocker had previously recorded this on the 1969 Leon Russell-produced album Joe Cocker!

Space Captain (Matthew Moore)
This is the original, here on Mad Dogs & Englishmen: Matthew Moore was one of the band. Matthew Moore's own version didn't appear until 1979, on his album The Sport Of Guessing. (The travel guide company Lonely Planet was named after co-founder Tony Wheeler's mishearing of lovely planet in Space Captain.)

The Letter (Wayne Carson Thompson)
The Box Tops, 1967.
Written by Nashville-based singer-songwriter Wayne Carson Thompson, aka Wayne Carson, whose demo version that 'sounded like the Everly Bros' was The Box Tops' source. Wayne Carson released his own version on Life Lines (1972).

Delta Lady (Leon Russell)
Joe Cocker, 1969..
Studio version on the album Joe Cocker! that predates Mad Dogs & Englishmen

More Kookies

Since I wrote here about A Kookie Little Paradise, Phil X Milstein has posted some Kookie audio treasures over at Probe is Turning-on the People!

There you can listen to two Jo Ann Campbell versions, one with a Tarzan call, one without; and what may well be the original version, by The Tree Swingers, along with the B-side.

Kees van der Hoeven (of John D. Loudermilk fame) was onto the alternative Jo Ann Campbell versions, at The Originals Problem-solving Forum: Original version had an Ape-call introduction. After release it was quickly withdrawn and re-issued with a decent no-ape version that became the OZ hit. (Post now deleted.)

Joop Jansen, also at the Forum, mentioned three other versions, all in languages other than English, now also listed by Phil.

Jazzing it down

Over the loudspeakers in the café there was a woman singing The Way You Look Tonight, slowly, as if she were in a nightclub past her bedtime, and the smoke and the dim lights and the Martinis were making her dozy.

To some people this sounds sophisticated, but that's only because they don't let kids into nightclubs. To me it sounds like missing the point of a classic song. Fred Astaire didn't sing it that way, and he was plenty sophisticated for a gawky looking guy.

Because a song like The Way You Look Tonight (Dorothy Fields - Jerome Kern) is romantic and has a sweet melody, it's a sitting duck for interpreters who think that means slow and dreamy.

If you listen to a lot of music from the 1930s (at the peak of what Alec Wilder called the age of The Great Innovators), you find that even the most tender of love songs could still have loads of rhythm: you could dance to them, and they kept their tenderness.

This was also the Swing Era, after all, and there was a lot of, like, swinging going on back then. (The Way You Look Tonight was first heard in a film called Swing Time.) It might've been the olden days, but they didn't spend all their time in the parlour, singing light opera ballads around the pianola. It's worth remembering the context of the song as Fred Astaire first sang it, in Swing Time (1936).

He and Ginger Rogers have had a tiff, and she's retired to the bathroom, shutting him out. Fred sings this meltingly lovely tribute to her, through the closed door, and she melts. In fact, she reappears, halfway through shampooing her hair.

The pace is brisk, Fred's delivery is assertive. Jerome Kern's melody conveys regret but Fred sounds positive, ready to move on but thankful just to have known her. In the studio recording the pace is enhanced by a foot-tapping rhythm section. [YouTube]

For me, this tension between regret and a more upbeat counting of your blessings is the point of the song: take out the rhythm and the song loses its backbone. And let's face it: some mournful, lovesick guy who sounds as if he's about to swoon all over the apartment floor was never gonna seduce Ginger.

In the 50s and 60s, when a rock artist took an old ballad and reworked it with a beat, it was called jazzing it up. Rockin' Rollin' Clementine was Col Joye's jazzed up version of Clementine. This sort of thing was sent up by Peter Sellers as a cockney pop star named 'Iron' (cf. Tommy Steele) who is interviewed by the BBC about his rockin' version of the Trumpet Voluntary.

And jazzing it down? That's what I call it when a fine, rhythmic song like The Way You Look Tonight is slowed down and given a lethargic jazz interpretation.

There was already a lot of this about when I was a kid in the 50s: ballad crooners, vocal groups, lush string orchestras and smoky nightclub singers, all trying hard not to sound like anything from the 30s.

My impression is that it started in the early 40s. The reasons are varied: swing bands lost personnel to the armed forces, wartime cutbacks affected touring, and the ASCAP boycott (1941) and the Musicians' Ban (1942-44) disrupted radio performances. Vocalists became the big stars and smaller comboes on independent labels got a break. 

By the late 40s and early 50s, sweet, swinging records from the 30s probably sounded old-fashioned anyway, a harking back to the pre-war years and the outbreak of war. Certainly, radio in the late-40s and early 50s was full of mediocre novelty songs and cowboy music. That's what happens in pop music: things pass their use-by date.

Nowadays, though, when sophisticated jazz is mentioned, you can be sure there's a spot of jazzing it down in the offing, and it doesn't always make me melt.

Only in Oz (1): Jo Ann Campbell - A Kookie Little Paradise (1960)

The first in a series. These are records that were more popular in Australia than in Britain or the USA where they originated. They took the fancy of someone at an Australian radio station, got some airplay, and charted well in some major Australian cities where they are remembered as golden oldies. Back in their home countries their chart history was lukewarm, and some of them ended up as obscurities. More than this, they're records that could have been hits anywhere, they were good enough, but this was not to be. See the whole series here: Only in Oz. See also: Only in Melbourne.

1. Jo Ann Campbell - A Kookie Little Paradise

(Bob Hilliard, Lee Pockriss)

USA 1960

ABC single (USA) #45-10134.

W&G single (Australia)  #WG-S-1023

Australian charts:  #5 Sydney, #5 Adelaide, #7 Melbourne, #7 Brisbane

Out there at Jo Ann Campbell's Kookie Little Paradise
the kids are out of control: swingin' about in the trees and bellowin' like Tarzan the Ape Man, drivin' fast cars down the beach without a speed limit, livin' on ice cream and pizza...

The record, from 1960, starts with jungle bird sound effects and a full-on Tarzan call (a sample from a movie soundtrack?), then it's the boys in the chorus, direct from the Riverdale High Glee Club: Dip... dip... dibba-dip-dip-dip. Kookie, huh?

This is Archie and Jughead territory: free juke boxes in the jungle, no school, junk food, sport cars and making out. It's a sugary and sticky kind of paradise:

Soft drink bubblin' down a mountain,
To the Carribean sea...

Ice cream - loaded with bananas -
And there's always pizza pie.

Jo Ann Campbell's record, on ABC, wasn't a hit in the US, but down here in Australia we really liked it: #5 in Sydney and Adelaide, #7 in Melbourne and Brisbane.

A Kookie Little Paradise was composed by Lee Pockriss, and those wacky teen-oriented lyrics were by Bob Hilliard, born 1918, who'd been writing since the 1930s.

In similar territory, Pockriss and Hilliard also wrote Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Backseat, a US #9 in 1959 for Paul Evans. Pockriss wrote Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini with Paul Vance, Bryan Hyland's 1960 US #1.

There was also a version of A Kookie Little Paradise by The Tree Swingers on Guyden. The B-side, in keeping with the jungle theme, was Teaching The Natives To Sing, also written by Pockriss & Hilliard. I have a suspicion that it may've been the original, which would make Jo Ann Campbell's better-known record a cover version.

A British version by Frankie Vaughan charted #31 in the UK. Like Jo Anne Campbell, Frankie was in his early twenties - they were both born in 1938 - but you're never too old for ice cream loaded with bananas.

[See follow-up post.]

Owing it all to Pamela Brown

The happy guy in Tom T. Hall’s 1972 song Pamela Brown is a ramblin’ man, just roamin’ around the world and having good times.

He had a close shave all those years ago: if he’d married Pamela Brown, he’d probably be back home driving kids to school. He’s "the guy who didn’t marry pretty Pamela Brown", and he’s glad to be shot of all that.

You get a different slant, though, if you listen to Leo Kottke’s 1974 version of Pamela Brown on 1974's Ice Water.

The way Kottke tells it, the guy sounds kinda glum thinking about Pamela Brown. He might be trying to crack hearty, but it's clear that he regrets not marrying Pamela Brown: maybe he wouldn’t have minded driving kids to school after all. When he sings “I guess the guy she married was the best part of my luck” he doesn’t sound convinced.

There's a change of emphasis here between the two versions:

Tom T. Hall:
I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown
All of my good times and all my roamin' around
One of these days I might come ramblin' through your town
And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

Leo Kottke:
I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown
All of my good times - all my roamin' around
One of these days I might be in your town
And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

Tom T. Hall’s guy really sounds like a ramblin’ man, and the whole arrangement is more upbeat, introduced with a jaunty guitar bit that’s missing from Leo Kottke’s version.

Even TomT. Hall's guy might be protesting too much, because there’s irony enough in the song just as it was written. From the first line it’s clear that this is an anti-love song, about the guy who didn’t marry Pamela Brown. He's grateful to Pamela Brown’s husband for stealing the girl of his dreams, and he’s glad she dumped him because she saved him from the small town domestic round.

The trouble is, you can’t help catching a picture of what might be domestic bliss: driving pretty Pamela Brown’s kids to school mightn’t be all bad.

What's more, although the last verse has a final throwaway line, it shows the guy could still ache a bit at the thought of Pamela Brown:

I don't have to tell you just how beautiful she was
Everything it takes to get a country boy in love*
Lord, I hope she's happy 'cause she sure deserves to be
Especially for what she did for me

(*Kottke distances himself from the country genre here, changing the line to:
Everything it takes to get a guy like me in love.)

Leo Kottke has picked up on the wistfulness, dropped the carefree air, and made his guy sound sad about not marrying Pamela Brown, even jaded by his ramblin' lifestyle.

Because the original guy sounds so happy and carefree, though, you could think the irony is Leo Kottke's idea, but I'm thinking now that Tom T. Hall planted the ambiguity there from the start, and Leo Kottke ran with it

Red Sovine, Tom Waits and Big Joe: Phantom 309

Phantom 309 is a trucking ghost song, a 1967 country hit for Red Sovine (right), but written by North Carolina singer-songwriter Tommy Faile. It's about a hitchhiker who's picked up at night by a big-hearted guy called Big Joe in his semi, The Phantom 309. After he's abruptly dropped off at a truckstop, the hitchhiker finds out that Big Joe and The Phantom are both, well, phantoms.

It's more a recitation than a song, a narrative poem with an oldtime country backing: a foot-tapping rhythm, punctuated by guitar licks and some wistful fiddling.

I got to know it through Tom Waits's version (he uses its full title, Big Joe And Phantom 309) on his 1975 live album, Nighthawks at the Diner. Being Tom Waits, he tells it in that half-sleepy barkeep's voice, over an after-midnight jazz backing, and he takes his time: around 6½ minutes, compared with Red Sovine's under 3½. Tom Waits here is leisurely and conversational, savouring the story in that world-weary, regretful way he has.

Going back later and hearing Red Sovine's original recording is a revelation. The first surprise is how brisk it is, almost perky by comparison with Tom Waits's smokey nightclub feel (his album's title presumably refers to another late night scene, Edward Hopper's 1942 painting Nighthawks) .

Red Sovine gets in and tells the story in a straightforward and businesslike way, without much emotional display, letting the words speak for themselves. Where Tom Waits has a conversation with the audience, you can hear the rhyming couplets in Red Sovine's version, much as you would with a traditional bush balladeer.

Here's the part where the hitchhiker first mentions Big Joe in the truckstop, when he tries to buy a cup of coffee with a dime from Big Joe:

Red Sovine:
Well, I went inside and ordered me a cup
Told the waiter Big Joe was settin' me up
Oh, you coulda heard a pin drop, it got deathly quiet
And the waiter's face turned kinda white
Well, did I say something wrong?
I said with a halfway grin

Tom Waits:
So I walked into this stop
Well I ordered me up a cup of mud
Sayin' Big Joe's settin' this dude up
It got so deathly quiet in that place,
Yeah, it got so deathly quiet in that place
That you coulda heard a pin drop
And as the waiter's face turned kinda pale
I said, whassamatter, did I say somethin' wrong?
I kinda said with a halfway grin...

Sovine more or less states the last two lines: with Waits you can hear the sheepish grin in his voice as he looks around the diner.

On the page, too, you can see how Waits's embellishments and repetitions draw the tale out, and the way he plays with the structure of the lines in favour of a more conversational feel.

See how Waits adds repetition for dramatic effect in the closing lines:

Red Sovine:
Here, have another cup
And forget about the dime
Keep it as a souvenir
From Big Joe and Phantom 309

Tom Waits:
So here son, he said to me...
You get yourself another cup of coffee
It's..'s'on the house..
I kinda want you to hang on to that dime...
Yeah I kinda want you to hang on to that dime as a souvenir...(yeahmmm)...
I want you to keep that dime as a souvenir of Big Joe...
Of Big Joe and Phantommm...
Big Joe and Phantom 309.

You have to hear it, of course, to get the full impact: you can hear the hitchhiker's awe at the story, and Waits's awareness of the impact of the story on his audience.

When I first heard Tom Waits's version I was vaguely aware of the original, and I naturally suspected irony, but I don't think this is tongue-in-cheek, and I believe that Waits is sincere about the song.

Is it an improvement on the original? Waits has reimagined the song, seen further possibilities in it, and I prefer his version, but I can't say how I would have felt if I'd already been a fan of the original.

I can imagine that some fans of manly, forthright country style might think Tom Waits is making too much of an entertaining song, but for me he has turned it into a masterpiece.

A Kiss To Build A Dream On and... The Marx Brothers?

A Kiss To Build A Dream On was written by the notable Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood songwriting partners Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, along with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals fame.

It's probably better known nowadays since Louis Armstrong's recording from the 50s was used on the soundtrack of Sleepless In Seattle (1993) . That leisurely baritone, just rough enough around the edges, plays against the sweet melody in a wistful kind of way, and of course there's a trumpet solo that bursts onto the scene as a bonus at about 1 min. 30 secs. All in all, it's a satisfying result.

(It reminds me of the way John Lennon's delivery adds some edge to that sad, sweet love song Baby It's You, when compared with the original version by The Shirelles.)

I'd always assumed A Kiss To Build A Dream On was from the 30s (it sounds as if it's from the 30s), so I was surprised to find that its first appearance seemed to be in a 1951 film, The Strip, sung by Louis Armstrong. It does have a copyright date of 1935, but I could find no earlier versions.

But, as is often the case, Joop Jansen had an answer when I asked at The Originals forum.

It turns out that A Kiss To Build A Dream On was originally a song called Moonlight On The Meadow. It was written by Kalmar and Ruby for the Marx Brothers film A Night At The Opera (1935), but it was never used. Oscar Hammerstein took the song and wrote new lyrics for The Strip (1951), and that's when it became A Kiss To Build A Dream On.

Shelley Pinz (Rochelle Pinz)

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.

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Update 7 March 2020:
Essential reading!
JCM, another friend of Rochelle 'Shelley' Pinz, has emailed his memories of her:

❝ I was in my mid teens in Atlantic beach when i and a friend met 'Shelley' ..we would shovel her snow & she'd invite us in and make us herbal tea. Some days, we'd stop by & say hello, she'd make us tea.. we were kids...to me, why not? I came from an abusive home and was out on streets most days/nights alone...i had music in my blood from early on and was just getting really into guitar and sound engineering (i was head audio visual student tech in hs by this time). She had even showed me her early patent designs for some really innovative electronic musical devices/interfaces way before they came into what we would probably refer to today as our DAWs. She was ahead of her time too. On some occasions, i'd go knock on her door during the day or even evening and she would invite me in and she knew i loved music and had ambitions and she'd let me noodle on her guitar and piano and we'd talk music and my dreams of becoming a musician, songwriter, and have my own studio someday. Just for me, she took me out for a surprise one night; i mustve been 17ish... i wont lie, she was the most BEAUTIFUL woman i ever saw ..secret crush on her i always had! She had the warmest face, the loveliest smile; i can still see it. Oh, the surprise, she took me to my first REAL recording studio! I was floored! I got the bug! Another time, we went to a friend of hers in the west end of long beach who had a recording studio...she told me to bring my guitar, which was an ovation deacon/breadwinner that i still have and play. I played as best i could then on a song part and left it at that. I was a nervous wreck then and didnt know nothing but loud and distortion. I have many fond memories of her; she asked to call her Rochelle. rather than her professional name(s). I know she had pictures of me shoveling her snow and some other in warmer times. i moved out on my own at 19 and sadly lost touch. When i finally did try and find her, i think she had moved by that point in time. As i grew up, becoming an audio visual engineer, sound engineer, multi instrumentalist, leader of my own long island hard rock band, i tried to find Rochelle. To no avail. Gave up looking. Then my day job was a computer engineer and the internet and this thing called a search engine came into being! Some time later, still involved with music, i looked for Rochelle again; this time, I succeeded, but sadly, the reply i got was that she had passed on. I CRIED.. she was SO KIND to me. Those years earlier, she told me what she saw, to keep going and never give up. I never gave up. I went searching for her to thank her, to show her what I became. Now with my own recording studio and putting out my own music. During a recent mixing/mastering session on a song, one that i put everything into, i dont know why, but at some final moment of working on this song, at the end of it, in a brief spot at the end, i just blurted out, in song voice, jubilantly, 'I DID IT'. It stayed in the recording. When that moment happened, I couldnt help but think of how proud Rochelle would have been to see what became of me. the song has nothing to do with her or about her; its actually a warewolf song. But i was so proud of hearing it when it was finished that i put in the songs liner notes, 'For R.Pinz, thank you'. I wish i could thank her, see her smile again, that beautiful glowing face. I'd blush like the teenage love struck boy i was in 1976/77. If I could, Id have said, 'Thank you Rochelle for inviting me into your home, inspiring me so much; I always wanted to let you know how much those little things you did musically for me set me on my musical journey. You never knew how important those times were to me; they were EVERYTHING.' I miss you. I wish i had a picture of her for my studio. If anyone ever comes here, if you have any pictures of her, please contact me. NO, i'm not a loon, she was very pivotal to my future and would like a picture of her for my studio wall because one should be hanging in it; I owe it to her memory.

Thank you Rochelle,

JCM ❞

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

The Sound Judgment - Happy Without You.mp3

Label scan from Margaret G. Still, thank you.