▶︎ Bigger in Oz (22) The Beach Boys - Hawaii (1963) and (23) Gene Pitney - Hawaii (1964)

 

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

These are two different songs called Hawaii, both recorded by popular American artists. They charted Top 10 in Australia within a few months of each other in 1964 but did not chart in the USA. 

 

22. The Beach Boys - Hawaii
(Brian Wilson)
USA 1963
Capitol album Surfer Girl (USA) ST-1981 September 1963
Columbia single (Australia only) CP-1551 January 1964

Australian charts: #2 Sydney, #5 Melbourne, #1 Brisbane, #7 Adelaide | #9 Australia
US charts: Not released as a single

23. Gene Pitney - Hawaii
(Al Kooper - Bob Brass - Irwin Levine)
USA 1964
Musicor single #MU 1040 July 1964
United Artists single (Australia) UA 1059 August 1964 (entered charts)

Australian charts: #8 Sydney, #5 Brisbane, #7 Adelaide | #6 Australia.
Co-charted with the A-side It Hurts To Be In Love which was a hit in all capital cities.
US charts: The A-side was a Top 10 hit but Hawaii did not chart in its own right.

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22. The Beach Boys - Hawaii

Written by The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, Hawaii was an album track in the USA. but it became the A-side of a single in Australia and, as far as I can see, nowhere else. 

That is not surprising. Hawaii is a surf song, and by January 1964, when the single was released here, Australia had a thriving surf music industry of its own. This is a country with a strong beach culture, and you didn't have to be a surfie to like the music.

It was also the summer of Beatlemania, and the British Invasion was under way. At Sydney radio station 2SM, Beatles records were at #1, #2 and #6, and there were already other British Invasion bands on the chart. Teen idols were shampooing out their hair oil, instrumental bands were recruiting singers, and the surf era was about to fade.  

On the 17 January 1964 Top 100 chart from 2SM,¹ the 50 highest charting records included:
7 British bands (9 records, 16%)
9 Australian singles (18%) all beach- or surf-themed
8 original Australian compositions.

Nine months later, the surf craze had passed. The 2SM Top 100 for 16 October 1964 still had Jan & Dean's Ride The Wild Surf, and The Hondels' Little Honda, from a surf music sub-genre about vehicles that had been around as long ago as The Beach Boys' B-side 409 (1962). 

16 October's highest 50 tracks at 2SM included:
11 British bands² (15 records, 30%)
2 Australian singles³ (4%)
1 original Australian composition. 

By October, even the Beach Boys had moved on from the sun, sand and surfing of Hawaii (and California). They appear  at #57 on the 16 October chart with When I Grow Up (To Be A Man). Its reflective lyrics and innovative arrangement hinted at their further development. Far from being set back by the British Invasion, their album Pet Sounds (1966), partly inspired by The Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965), would in turn be acknowledged as an influence on The Beatles' Sgt Peppers' Lonely Hearts Band (1967).

Footnotes
1. I have reservations about radio station surveys, but I use 2SM's chart as a reflection of what this prominent Top 40 station would have been playing. And a good source of its Top 100 charts is available at rateyourmusic.com. 
2. Even though they were not a British Invasion band, I counted The Shadows for being British.
3. There were two New Zealand records in the top 50: Ray Columbus & The Invaders - She's A Mod (#3) and Dinah Lee - Don't You Know Yockomo (#49) 

 
23. Gene Pitney - Hawaii

This is not a surf song, rather a romantic picture postcard about an emotional parting under the moonlight on O'ahu Bay: Love is right here in Hawaii, Must it end with a tear in Hawaii?

Gene Pitney released so many excellent and varied records that those you remember might depend on where you lived. I have previously posted about Billy You're My Friend (1968), popular in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, but not in Sydney, the US or Britain; and Mecca (1963), which charted  #12 USA and #7 Australia but didn't make the Top 75 in Britain. 

Hawaii was the B-side of Pitney's hit It Hurts To Be In Love. In Australia, both sides charted in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide, but the A-side alone was a hit in Melbourne, Perth, the US, and Britain.

This happened with Who Needs It (1964), a B-side that charted Top 10 in Australia. It had been forgotten by Pitney when he noticed Australian audiences calling out, 'Who needs it?' and realised they weren't heckling him but were requesting the song. 

For background on Hawaii, including its writers Al Kooper, Bob Brass and Irwin Levine, the best place is the detailed page on the song by Ray McGinnis at his Vancouver pop hits website. Hawaii comes in at #9 Vancouver, and I am impressed by Ray's thoroughness in mentioning the song's #8 Sydney. 

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Australian chart sources for this page:
2SM Top 100: Lists at rateyourmusic.com by user Badgerdarkness and collaborators.
Capital cities: Gavin Ryan's chart books. 
Australia: Grant Dawe's Top 100 Singles site. 

 

The Beach Boys- Hawaii (1963)

Gene Pitney- Hawaii (1964)  

▶︎ Obscure Originators (40) Unknown artist (Gary Shearston hit)

The latest 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 40 Obscure Originators features. 

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Australian singer-songwriter Gary Shearston became known in 1974 for his laid-back, guitar-strumming update of Cole Porter's I Get A Kick Out Of You, recorded in London ( #7 UK #19 Australia).

Nine years earlier, he had emerged from Sydney's folk scene and onto the radio with Sydney Town (1965), a topical song full of droll comments on Australian culture and politics. It charted modestly, in Sydney and Brisbane only, but I heard it often enough on Melbourne radio for it to have become familiar.

The writers of Sydney Town are Shearston with Frank Hardy, the Australian writer, activist, cartoonist and yarn-spinner whose major work is his novel Power Without Glory (1950). The sheet music credits words by Frank Hardy; additional words and music by Gary Shearston, as in the US copyright.

Hardy wrote the lyrics first then shared them with Shearston who worked them up further with whimsical references like Rinso: keep Australia white, linking White Australia immigration policies with a laundry detergent. That particular quip helped to get the song banned from Brisbane radio station 4BH.

Sydney Morning Herald 18 April 1965 [link]

Shearston must have been performing the song live before its release, because at least one verse on the recording had been suggested by an audience member. Hardy, apparently unimpressed, published his earlier lyrics in the folk magazine Australian Tradition as a song by Frank Hardy © Frank Hardy 1964, with the note This is the original version of Sydney Town as written by me. Folk singers and others who add new verses and variations do so at their own risk.

According to the liner notes to Shearston's 1965 album Australian Broadside, a friend of Hardy had given him a recording by a "calypso singer" of a song about the slums of Kingston town, the capital of Jamaica, and Hardy rewrote those lyrics for Sydney Town.

As an origin story for a song, this is unsatisfying. The liner notes, by academic and Shearston mentor Dr Edgar Waters, tell us nothing about the "calypso singer" or the original song, or its composer.

Nothing is clear. The word "recording" is ambiguous, as it could mean a released record or a private tape recording, and the song could have been an obscurity, orally transmitted with no known composer.

The trails have no doubt run cold, but I have been unable to find anything more about a calypso song, on or off record, that may or may not have been called Kingston Town. All in all, I'm inclined to treat the evidence for it as anecdotal.

And I can't help thinking about Frank Hardy, winner of Australia's 1967 Yarn Spinning Championship with 22 tall stories. Could he have been pulling someone's leg about a calypso singer and a song about Kingston, Jamaica?

US Copyright Office [link]

For more about the song's origins see Gary Shearston - Sydney Town.

▶︎ Obscure Originators (39) Val Martinez

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 40 Obscure Originators features. 

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You Make Me Happy (1964) charted Top 20 in Sydney and Brisbane for that versatile entertainer and TV star Jimmy Hannan. So, a moderate hit but a good example of Australian diligence in finding material for cover versions.

The original was by Val Martinez, a B-side on RCA Victor (1963, wr. Jimmy Curtiss). He recorded four singles (1962-63) for RCA at its Hollywood studios with some of LA's top session musicians.

Martinez's RCA records have been well-reviewed, sometimes in retrospect (alas!). They have been taken up by some Northern Soul enthusiasts and dealers (again, too late!), and although that term is carelessly thrown about, it's not nothing.

Martinez was not a prolific recording artist. Apart from the four RCA singles, he had released four previous singles on three other labels, beginning with two on Cincinatti's King Records back in 1954. That appears to be the extent of his discography, but he was a well-booked club singer in Las Vegas and Hollywood and I'm guessing record sales were never his bread and butter.

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In the 1920s and 30s another Val Martinez (1900-1943) released many Spanish-language records and performed daily on Mexican border station XER. 

He was the father of You Make Me Happy originator Val Martinez (1936-1998), and grandfather of the present-day Val Martinez who was once in a Four Seasons revival with Frankie Valli and now provides events and tuition through Val Martinez Music in Southern California.

I understand that the family tree goes back to yet another musical Val Martinez, the great-grandfather of the current Val Martinez, but that was beyond the reach of my research.

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The Australians weren't the only ones to spot the potential of You Make Me Happy. After Jimmy Hannan's release in March 1964, at least three versions of the song came out in other countries later in the year, including one by Bruce Channel in the style of his hit Hey! Baby.

For more about the song and Val Martinez, see Jimmy Hannan - You Make Me Happy.

  

Val Martinez (USA 1963)

Jimmy Hannan (Australia 1964)

Bonus track: Bruce Channel (USA 1964) à la Hey! Baby

▶︎ Obscure Originators (38) The Improper Bostonians

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 40 Obscure Originators features. 

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Gee I’m Gonna Miss You (1968) was one of seven Australian singles released  1966-1971 by British-born Brisbane singer Graham Chapman. It topped the charts in Brisbane and made the Top 20 in Melbourne. 

Christchurch singer Marc Antony (stage name of Pat Kearns) released a further version in New Zealand (1969).

The original version was by The Improper Bostonians (1967). It was one of four singles they released 1966-67 on Minuteman, a small Boston label that was a subsidiary of a local entity called Columbus Records. It was also issued nationally on Coral, but it seems not to have done much business anywhere, on either label.

From NEMS (defunct site)

The Improper Bostonians were a quartet from Lynn in Greater Boston who had a residency at the Ebb Tide, a nightclub in nearby Revere Beach. 

Gee I'm Gonna Miss You was produced by Minuteman's owner Bill Walsh with Barry Richards, vice president of Minuteman and Walsh's co-producer on five of the eight Improper Bostonians tracks. It was written by Walsh too, with Joe Ahern, his collaborator on four of the band's six original tracks. Ahern still has five compositions registered at BMI under his full name Thomas J. Ahern (spelt Ahearn on the Coral single) but details are elusive.

The band's name would have been recognizable in Boston from Proper Bostonians, meaning the well-established upper-crust families of Boston, also known as Boston Brahmins (at Wikipedia, for example). There was even a book, The Proper Bostonians (1947), which explains, "Everywhere the Proper Bostonian goes in his city he is likely to find that the magic of the Family Name pronounced will open virtually all doors ..."

As for Improper Bostonians, that was probably an inevitable coinage, used whimsically or when reporting unruly behaviour from Bostonians. There was an Improper Bostonian room at Boston restaurant Your Father's Mustache in the 1960s, and a Boston lifestyle magazine The Improper Bostonian (1991-2019). Newspapers have used improper Bostonians when reporting on boisterous Red Sox supporters and over-enthusiastic fans of movie star Elizabeth Taylor.

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For more about the song and The Improper Bostonians, see Graham Chapman - Gee I’m Gonna Miss You.

 

The Improper Bostonians (USA 1967)

Graham Chapman (Australia 1968)