▶︎ 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)

▶︎ 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 40 Obscure Originators features. 

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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.

 From 45cat.com's page about the release 

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.  

Not Col Joye! Columbia Records.

“Youth Opportunity Program” (Back To School) (USA 1965)

The Purple Hearts (Australia 1966)