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.
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| From NEMS (defunct site) |
There is not much to be found about The Improper Bostonians. They were a quartet, and we have the line-up, but so far I have found nothing more on their biographies or the band's history. (I might be looking in all the wrong places, but I've looked in a lot.)
Their eight tracks were all produced or co-produced by Bill Walsh. He 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 he could even have been the label's owner. Joe Ahern still has five compositions registered at BMI as Thomas J. Ahern (spelt Ahearn on the Coral single) but again, 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.
