▶︎ Bigger in Oz (18): Johnny Burnette - Big Big World (1961)

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

See also: Only in Melbourne.

18. Johnny Burnette - Big Big World
(Fred Burch - Gerald Nelson - Red West)
USA 1961
London single (USA) #F-55318
London single (Australia) #HL-2164

US Charts: #58 Billboard, #49 Cash Box
Australian charts: #38 Sydney, #19 Melbourne (Ryan), #14 Melbourne (Guest), #37 Brisbane | #37 Australia

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Not a dramatic case of Bigger in Oz, but the lower reaches of Australia's Top 40 do beat the lower reaches of Top 60 Billboard and Top 50 Cash Box. 

Johnny Burnette

Johnny Burnette's three biggest hits Dreamin' (1960), You're Sixteen (1960), and Little Boy Sad (1961) all charted at least Top 20 in the US, the UK, Australia, and NZ but Australia is the only one where Big Big World made Top 40. 

In 1961 I was listening to Melbourne radio, so I remember Big Big World as well as Burnette's better-known songs. Depending on the chart compiler, Big Big World charted in Melbourne at #19 (Gavin Ryan) or #14 (Tom Guest). (For a plunge into the metaphysics of retrospective charts see my post Toppermost of the poppermost: the charts.) 

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Big Big World evokes the feeling of searching for one person among millions and being defeated by the vastness of the city. 

In Snuff Garrett's production the elements meld perfectly, all contributing to the final effect: composition, arrangement, performances. There are no jarring distractions.¹  

I admire the way the story is told economically, in colloquial language, without any wasted words. It takes place in two locations, an apartment block - Nine one, 27th Avenue - and a phone box. 

At the apartments, where the searcher tells them he is just looking for a friend living in Apartment 10, he has no luck: You say she's gone. Please, how long has it been?

In the phone box, the futility of his quest is brought home to him when he consults the telephone directory. 

Joneses, Joneses
All I see, page 19 to 23

Big, big world can be unkind
The phone just took my last dime

I love the sound of Joneses Joneses. Every "s" has a /z/ sound, setting up a nice percussive effect with the repetition.  

This is a song of numbers: the address and the apartment number (Nine one, 27th Avenue... Apartment 10), the pages of Joneses (19 to 23).

I assume the numbers that open the song - Nine one, 27th - were carefully chosen, as they are perfect. 

I am reminded of that much-repeated story about the comedy writers on Sid Caesar's TV show deciding which number on a roulette wheel would be funniest. (The final choice was thirty-two). 

Big Big World isn't comedy, but I can imagine a similar process going on for Nine one, 27th, as well as for the numbers of the telephone directory pages 19 to 23.

Clearly, the rhythm of the words is a factor. And although the selection might have been intuitive, I wonder whether the result has something to do with the repeated sounds in nine one twenty-seven: the /n/, the short "e" (/e/) and the /w/?

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The composers of Big Big World are Gerald Nelson (1935-2012), Fred Burch (c.1932- ) and Bobby "Red" West (1936-2017).

Red West was a long-time associate of Elvis Presley from high school days, and a member of Elvis's entourage. He worked successfully as a bodyguard, stuntman, movie extra, actor, songwriter and artists' agent. West would be the most visible of the three writers of Big Big World, partly through the Elvis Presley connection, but also through his many appearances in films, sometimes uncredited but also credited alongside some well-known names. 

There are 138 Red West compositions listed by BMI at Songview. He wrote or co-wrote several songs recorded by Elvis including Separate Ways (1972, #20 USA) and If You Talk In Your Sleep (1974, #17 USA). He co-wrote I'm A Fool which charted for Dino, Desi & Billy (1965, #17 USA) but was first released by Rick Nelson (1964).

Gerald Nelson and Fred Burch were frequent collaborators. They were both from Paducah, Kentucky, where Nelson was in The Country Gentlemen, later known as The Escorts.  

 

Nelson and Burch started writing together when Burch was at the University of Kentucky in 1958. Their composition Tragedy charted for Thomas Wayne (1959, #4 USA), The Fleetwoods (1961, #10 USA), and Bryan Hyland (1969, #56 USA). A version by Paul McCartney appeared as a bonus track on a later reissue of Red Rose Speedway.

Fred Burch [right] was a prolific songwriter based in Nashville where he was a staff writer for Cedarwood Publishing Co. He collaborated, for example, with Marijohn Wilkin on Jimmy Dean's P.T. 109 (1962, #8 USA, #29 Australia).* 

On Perry Como's Dream On Little Dreamer (1965, #25 USA) Burch's co-writer was Jan Crutchfield. He was also from Paducah where he was in The Country Gentlemen-Escorts with Big Big World co-writer Gerald Nelson. Jan Crutchfield's brother Jerry, another songwriter, was in the group too.

Strange, recorded by Patsy Cline (1962, #97 USA), was a Fred Burch - Mel Tillis composition. Tillis was also contracted to Cedarwood Publishing and they wrote several songs together.

It didn't surprise me to read in the archives that Burch was a "student of journalism" who studied English at university before turning to professional song writing. Clearly, at least one writer who knew their way around words had a hand in Big Big World, and as a songwriter Burch seems to have specialised in lyrics. 

For example, it was Burch who started off Tragedy with some lines of verse.² Local press in Paducah (1962) gives him credit for being the lyricist of P.T. 109 and numerous other songs including Big Big World,³ although in the Tennessee press Burch himself acknowledges co-composer Marijohn Wilkin's role in polishing the lyrics of P.T. 109.⁴

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Selected sources, further reading:
1. I wrote something similar about Snuff Garrett's production of Gene McDaniels - It's A Lonely Town (Lonely Without You). That post also has a list of some of Garrett's notable productions.
2. "Burch, Helms on High Road": background on Burch & Nelson and the writing of "Tragedy", The Tennessean, Nashville, 12 November 1961.
3. "P.T.109... Former Paducah Man Writes Hit Song", The Paducah Sun, Paducah, Kentucky, 3 June 1962.
4. "PT 109: How It Came About", The Tennessean, 20 May 1962.

Item of interest:
"Composers Take Cruise": songwriters Marijohn Wilkin and Fred Burch with Wilkin's husband and son on a cruise trip to Paducah on the Wilkins' houseboat,  The Leaf-Chronicle, Clarksville, Tennessee, 7 August 1961.

*Don't confuse Fred Burch with Don Burch who wrote The Shields' hit "You Cheated" (1958) or John Burch who wrote Georgie Fame's "Preach And Teach" (1964) and "In The Meantime" (1965).

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Correction from Tony Watson, thanks  

▶︎ Bigger in Oz* (17): José Feliciano - Adios Amor (Goodbye, My Love) (1967, 1969)

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

See also: Only in Melbourne.

17. José Feliciano - Adios Amor (Goodbye, My Love)
(Tom Springfield - Norman Newell)
UK 1967, 1969
• RCA Victor single (UK) #1640, reissued on #1794 
• RCA Victor single (Australia) #101806: 1967, reissued 1969
• RCA Victor single (New Zealand) #60474 

UK charts: "Bubbled Under" Top 50 (= #51), Record Retailer, 22 Apr 69 
Australian charts: #4 Australia (Kent and Go-Set);
#2 Sydney #5 Melbourne, #26 Sydney, #2 Brisbane, #2 Adelaide, #7 Perth (Gavin Ryan)
New Zealand charts: #3 (Scapolo and Freeman)
* Again, a case of Bigger in Oz & NZ.  

USA charts: no single released

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Adios Amor (Goodbye, My Love): American artist, British record, Australasian hit.

It charted in Australia early in 1969 (mid-'69 in NZ), a few months after José Feliciano's breakthrough hit record Light My Fire (1968, #14 Australia, #16 NZ, #1 USA, #6 UK). 

Adios Amor was probably seen as a follow-up recording to Light My Fire (1968) but in fact Adios Amor came first. It was initially released in 1967 then re-released in 1969, presumably in response to Light My Fire's success. An ad for Adios Amor's reissue in Britain's New Musical Express in February 1969 overlooked its history and billed it as Feliciano's smash new single.

The two songs are quite different from each other. Light My Fire, released in July 1968, was a jazz-soul-flavoured reworking of The Doors' #1 US hit from the previous year. Adios Amor is a more conventional orchestration of an original ballad, but no less affecting for that, as Australasian audiences clearly found. Just read the heartfelt memories of the song from Australians at YouTube.

NME 15 Feb 1969 [link]

 

In spite of its Spanish title, Adios Amor has mainly English lyrics. (There are some spoken Spanish words at the very end, as the track fades out.)

It is a British composition, recorded in the UK during Feliciano's sojourn there in 1967, along with another single My Foolish Heart / Only Once.

Adios Amor was released in the UK (and in Australia, NZ, France, Germany and Spain) but there was no US single. As far as I can see, it has not been included on any American José Feliciano compilation, nor did it appear on any regular album at the time. It was on at least one compilation from Australia.

The entirely plausible story goes that producer and co-writer Tom Springfield first proposed Adios Amor as a song for The Seekers but the group turned it down. In later years Seekers lead singer Judith Durham (1943-2022) did perform and release the song, as did a latter-day line-up The Original Seekers (2019).

The José Feliciano we hear singing Adios Amor from a London studio in 1967 was yet to take off in mainstream markets, but he was already a popular Spanish-language artist amongst Latino audiences in the US and South America. He had also released three English-language albums of his own takes on standards, folk songs and pop hits on RCA Victor 1965-1966. 

One of those songs, Hi-Heel Sneakers, on The Voice And Guitar Of José Feliciano (1966), was recorded again to become Feliciano's second Top 40 hit in the US (1968, #25 USA, #24 Australia). The B-side, a cover of Dunn & McCashen's Hitchcock Railway, co-charted in Australia and later had its arrangement openly borrowed by Chris Stainton for Joe Cocker's well-known version (1971).¹

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The composers of Adios Amor, Tom Springfield and Norman Newell, were both English. Springfield also produced the record. 

Tom Springfield (Dion O'Brien 1934-2022) and his sister Dusty (Mary) had been in The Springfields who had hits with Silver Threads And Golden Needles and Island of Dreams. Tom produced and wrote hit songs for The Seekers including The Carnival Is Over, I'll Never Find Another You, and World Of Our Own.

Norman Newell (1919-2004) was a prominent record producer and songwriter from the post-war 1940s until his retirement in 1990. He worked mainly in the middle-of-the-road segment of the market, often collaborating with arranger and conductor Geoff Love, and often with such major names of post-war British show business as Shirley Bassey,  Russ Conway, and Des O'Connor. He had a hand in numerous hits, for Petula Clark (Sailor), Laurie London (He's Got the Whole World in His Hands), Adam Faith (What Do You Want?), Matt Munro (Portrait of My Love) and Ken Dodd (Tears). His obituary in The Independent gives a good overview of his varied career.

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British group The Casuals released a version of Adios Amor in February 1968 with an arrangement similar to the original. They would finally find success later in the year with Jesamine (#2 UK).

As an album track, Adios Amor was released by Vanity Fare on The Sun, The Wind, And Other Things (UK, 1969) and by Ed Ames on Sing Away The World (USA, 1970). See the list at SecondHandSongs.com.

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Thanks to Marc for clarification around British chart positions; details now edited to reflect his comments.

Footnote
1.  Chris Stainton tells about how he got to play on The Who's Quadrophenia [from RichieUnterberger.com]: "Pete (Townsend)… seemed to be very impressed by the piano riffs I was playing in (Joe Cocker's) 'Hitchcock Railway,' which I lifted from José Feliciano's version," says Stainton. "He never forgot it and years later asked me to play in that style on the Quadrophenia album." 

José Feliciano - Adios Amor (Goodbye, My Love) (UK single 1967, 1969)

The Casuals - Adios Amor (Goodbye My Love) (UK single 1968)

Judith Durham - Adios Amor (album Mona Lisas, 1996)

The Original Seekers - Adios Amor (album Back To Our Roots, (2019)

▶︎ Long Tall Texan: stops, breaks, and punchlines

A footnote to my previous post

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Philippe (correspondent in France) detects similarities between She's About A Mover by Texas band Sir Douglas Quintet (February 1965, #13 USA) and Long Tall Texan, and by golly I think he's right. 

Compare, for example, these verse-endings:

1. Murry Kellum - Long Tall Texan (1963)

Well people look at me and say (pause)

Hurrah hurrah, is that your horse? (instrumental backing resumes)

2. Sir Douglas Quintet - She's About A Mover (1965)

If you have love and conversation (pause)

Whoa, yeah, what'd I say? (instrumental backing resumes)

This way of pausing at the end of the verse is also heard in The Coasters' Searchin' (March 1957, #3 USA), written by Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller:

3. The Coasters - Searchin' (1957)

But I'm like the Northwest Mounties (pause)

You know I'll bring her in some day (instrumental backing resumes)

This appears to be a particular use of a musical device called stop time, also known as a break. It is heard in ragtime, jazz and blues compositions, sometimes as a series of breaks throughout a verse as in Muddy Waters' Hoochie Coochie Man, and in Elvis Presley's Trouble, another Leiber & Stoller composition. 

It was much used by Leiber & Stoller as a punchline (their word) at the end of a verse, for example in Coasters hits Charlie Brown, (1959, #3 USA) - Why is everybody always pickin' on me?- and Young Blood (1957 #8 USA, B-side of Searchin', written with Doc Pomus) - Look a-there Look a-there! Look a-there.

Michael Campbell, in Popular music in America : the beat goes on (2009), describes the phenomenon as it appears in Young Blood:

... breaks that showcase the Coasters' trademark humorous asides that drop down the vocal ladder, with bass singer Bobby Nunn getting in the last word ... 

In an episode of John Gilliland's Pop Chronicles featuring Leiber & Stoller, they discuss their writing process including

... the breaks and so on, especially with the joke material, you know, where the timing and the punch lines were so critical.

 

 

▶︎ Bigger in Oz (16): Murry Kellum - Long Tall Texan (1963)

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

See also: Only in Melbourne.

16. Murry Kellum - Long Tall Texan
(Henry Strzelecki)
USA 1963
M.O.C. single (USA) #45-653
US Charts: #51 Billboard, #51 Cash Box
London single (Australia 1964) #HL-2164
Australian charts: #7 Sydney, #7 Melbourne, #2 Brisbane, #45 Adelaide #6 Australia

On the B-side is Glenn Sutton - I Gotta Leave This Town.

Follow-up post: Long Tall Texan: stops, breaks, and punchlines

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In February 1964, when Murry Kellum's Long Tall Texan was peaking at #4 at Sydney station 2UE, two Beatles songs were at #1, and there were three other Beatles songs in the Top 10 plus one by The Dave Clark Five. 

The British Invasion was under way, but a lot of Australians were also going for a comical country song about a hick sheriff who sounds like a Wild West prototype for Private Gomer Pyle. 

Long Tall Texan charted Top 10 in our three biggest cities (converting to a #6 Australia) but in the US it peaked outside the Top 40 at #51 on Billboard's Hot 100 (21 Dec 1963), also at #51 on Cash Box's Top 100 (4 & 11 Jan 1964). 

'Hits of the World', Billboard, 14 Mar 64

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There are examples in the US newspaper archives of locally published surveys that have Long Tall Texan in their Top 10. See also, at ARSA, a #1 at KMEN San Bernardino CA.

Murry Kellum was not the first to record Long Tall Texan. The original version was a 1959 B-side, recorded in Memphis by The Four Flickers with composer Henry Strzelecki on lead vocals.

According to Billboard, in 1957 the 17-year-old Strzelecki encountered country star Tex Ritter in a diner in Bessemer, Alabama and was inspired to write Long Tall Texan. A further version was released by Jerry Woodard in 1960.

Although it was released in May 1963, Long Tall Texan did not enter the Billboard chart until 9 November 1963. In Definitive Country (1995), Barry McCloud suggests that in 1963 US radio stations declined to play Murry Kellum's record in the wake of President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. It is hard to judge how widespread that might have been, and it is easy to find examples of the song in record reviews or local surveys during the weeks after 22 November 1963. The story is certainly plausible when you consider that author John M. MacDonald changed the name of a major character from Dallas McGee to Travis McGee over similar concerns.  

Even if it was never a big national chart hit, Long Tall Texan became a much performed and recorded song in the US.

A 1968 Billboard tribute to Tex Ritter noted that Long Tall Texan, the song he inspired, had already been recorded some 28 times and … included in some five million dollars' worth of singles and albums sold.

The website Cover.info lists about 15 examples from the 1960s and 70s, including those by The Kingsmen, The Chad Mitchell Trio and John Denver. It was included in live sets by The Beach Boys, as heard on their album Beach Boys Concert (1964) and on other collections.

Searches of old US newspapers from the months following Kellum's release show examples of kids and other amateurs performing Long Tall Texan at local concerts and gatherings, a handy indicator of a song's familiarity in the community.

Lyall Lovett, Bob Luman and Conway Twitty all released versions of Long Tall Texan in the 1990s. It had clearly held its nostalgic appeal, probably amongst country music fans especially. As recently as 2011, Ben Folds included a live version from 2008 on his album The Best Imitation Of Myself: A Retrospective.

The Buffalo News 7 Dec 63

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Country singer-guitarist-songwriter Murry Kellum (1942-1990) grew up in Plain, a locality near his birthplace Jackson, Mississippi. His most successful single was Joy To The World (1971, #26 Billboard Country), produced by fellow Jackson musician Glenn Sutton who had occupied the B-side of Long Tall Texan. Kellum's  best known composition, written with Dan Mitchell, is If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band), a country hit for Alabama (1984, #1 Billboard Hot Country Songs). Kellum was still touring in 1990 when he died in a small-plane crash en route to Nashville.

The composer of Long Tall Texan was Alabama-born bassist Henry Strzelecki (1939-2014). Strzelecki is heard on lead vocals on the original version by The Four Flickers, a group he formed with his brother Larry along with Jerry Adams and Leon Ethridge. Henry became a respected studio and touring musician in Nashville where he was based from 1960. His name is badly misspelt on the Murry Kellum single and others as Stegelecki. See his repertoire of recorded songs at 45cat.com. 

 

 

Murry Kellum - Long Tall Texan (1963)

 

 

 

The Four Flickers - Long Tall Texan (1959) 

Song starts around 2:40 (second in a medley of two)

Clarion-Lesger, Jackson Mississippi, 2 May 1963