▶︎ Obscure Originators (38): The Improper Bostonians

The latest in my series about lesser known artists who performed the original versions of Australian or NZ records.

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

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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 owned by 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. 

Their eight tracks were all produced by Bill Walsh or co-produced (as on Gee I'm Gonna Miss You) with Barry Richards. Walsh wrote six of their songs, four of which were co-writes with Joe Ahern, including Gee I'm Gonna Miss You. In 1966 the Boston Globe gives "Bill Walsh of Columbus-Minuteman Records" as a contact for the band, and I wonder whether he could have been the label's owner. Joe 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. There was an Improper Bostonian room at Boston restaurant Your Father's Mustache in the 1960s. Later, there was a Boston lifestyle magazine The Improper Bostonian (1991-2019). 

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

▶︎ Obscure Originators (37): "Youth Opportunity Program” (Back To School)

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

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

Not Col Joye! Columbia Records.

Of Hopes And Dreams And Tombstones was covered by The Purple Hearts, a respected Australian band with R&B-blues influences. It charted in Melbourne and Brisbane in 1966.

Australian listeners might have been surprised to learn that the original version was recorded as part of a 1965 US government campaign. The aim was to encourage teenagers to stay in school, unlike the singer who is working three jobs a day and regrets quitting school too early.

The Youth Opportunity Back-to-School Campaign distributed the single free to American radio stations with a formal message on the sleeve from Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.

In spite of its origin, the record is a convincing piece of mid-60s popular music that was later adopted by Britain's Northern Soul movement. The vocals and the harmonica-led backing make it sound like a perfectly credible (even groovy!) rock record of the time.

The title of the project is printed on the label instead of an artist's name, so the singer goes uncredited. He was Jimmy Fraser, still a mystery although I have seen it suggested that this was a pseudonym. Columbia Records did reissue the track commercially as a Jimmy Fraser single, but that was the last we heard of him, at least under that name.

Credit for the song's credibility goes also to the composer, Joy Byers. She wrote, for example, Eddie Cochran’s C’mon Everybody, several songs for Elvis Presley and (with co-writer Clyde Otis) Timi Yuro's What's A Matter Baby (Is It Hurting You).

In 2002 The Purple Hearts' Australian version provided the opening track and the title of one of Alex Palao's excellent Ace Records (UK) compilations, Of Hopes & Dreams & Tombstones (Beat 'n' R&B From Down Under). For me, that just about confirms the song's groovy status.

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For more about the song and "Youth Opportunity Program” (Back To School), see The Purple Hearts - Of Hopes And Dreams And Tombstones. 

▶︎ Teresa Brewer's quirky Aussie trifecta

Back in her hometown, April 1952

Singing star of the 50s
Teresa Brewer's voice was familiar on radio and records throughout the 1950s. From 1950 to 1957 she made the Top 40 twenty-five times, beginning with Music, Music, Music (1950, #1 USA), also known for its familiar opening words Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon. 

Some of her songs, like Ricochet (1953, #2 USA), were in that perky post-WW2, pre-rock'n'roll vein of Music, Music, Music, but that did not confine her. 

A Tear Fell (1956 #5 USA) was on the pop charts while Ivory Joe Hunter's version was charting #15 R&B, and her cover of Sam Cooke's current hit You Send Me charted #8 USA for her in 1957. 

In the following years she proved her versatility by recording albums with jazz greats including Count Basie (The Songs Of Bessie Smith), Stephane Grappelli and Duke Ellington. On the 1973 album In London she recorded contemporary songs with Oily Rags, a younger band featuring Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock, soon to be stars as Chas And Dave.

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Teresa's versions of Australian hits
She clearly cast widely for material. Her cover versions even included three songs previously released by Australasian artists, songs that were familiar in Australia. 

There were Teresa Brewer versions of:

• Col Joye's Bye Bye Baby (1959, #1 Sydney #3 Melbourne #2 Brisbane #2 Adelaide #2 Perth; #3 Australia).
Covered on 1959 single using the alternative title Bye Bye Baby Goodbye.

• Patsy Ann Noble's Good Looking Boy (1961, #16 Sydney #6 Melbourne #13 Brisbane #8 Adelaide; #17 Australia).
Covered on 1961 single, song retitled Pretty Lookin’ Boy.

• Maria Dallas's Ambush (1967, #19 Sydney #12 Melbourne #4 Brisbane; #16 Australia).
Covered on album Unliberated Woman (1975)

All three of those songs had chart success only in Australia.

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How come? 
Teresa seems to have had no special connection with Australia or New Zealand, even though she covered these songs with clear Australasian credentials:  

• Good Looking Boy was an original version, recorded in Sydney by an Australian, Patsy Ann Noble. It was written by Johnny Devlin, a New Zealander residing in Australia, 

• Bye Bye Baby was recorded in Sydney by an Australian, Col Joye.

• Ambush was an original version, recorded by a New Zealander, Maria Dallas. The single did not chart in NZ, but NZers would have also known the song from the albums Maria Dallas In Nashville (1967) and Tumblin’ Down (1968).

However, two of the records have some American connections that might help to explain why they came to the attention of Teresa and her people.

• Ambush is an American composition, recorded in Nashville by Maria Dallas. RCA released it in the US as a single and as a track on Tumblin' Down (1968)

• Bye Bye Baby by Col Joye (c. May 1959) was itself a cover, the only charting version of a lesser-known American composition originally released by Sonny Williams (Sept 1958).* 

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*Col's single was also released in the US as Bye Bye Baby Goodbye in July 1959, but after Teresa Brewer's release in June.

Back at the website
• Song histories of Bye Bye Baby, (aka Bye Bye Baby Goodbye), Good Looking Boy and Ambush
• The Obscure Originators feature has articles about Sonny Williams who originally released Bye Bye Baby and about Bobbie & Dude, the sisters from Texas who wrote Ambush. 

Chart sources
Warwick Freeman (NZ), Dean Scapolo (NZ), Gavin Ryan (Australian cities) and Grant Dawe's site (Australia). US charts by Joel Whitburn: 1940-1955, 1955-2012 (via Internet Archive).

 
↑ Music, Music, Music (1950, #1), the first of many charting Teresa Brewer singles

↑ Known in Australia as a Col Joye song, this went back even further than that

↑ Good Looking Boy retitled Pretty Lookin’ Boy for Teresa's version

 ↑ Teresa covers an Australian hit for a NZ singer who recorded it in Nashville


↑ Teresa Brewer does Van Morrison with Oily Rag (1973)