A week ago, I was deeply involved in the task of eradicating parking meters in St. Cloud, Minnesota’s Downtown. The dust has settled a bit in that area, and now that we have all of the merchants on the petition and an endorsement from the newspaper, all I have to do is wait until the petition hits the City Council agenda in a couple of weeks. For now, I get to write a post I have anticipated for a long time.
A bit over a year ago, I wrote a post about a favorite song from my childhood, “Washington Square.” Shortly thereafter, I was able to converse with the song’s composer, Bobb Goldsteinn. We have become friends, and frankly, hanging out with such an artist in his hometown, in an area (South Street in Philadelphia) that certainly contributed to his composition, makes listening to the song a whole new experience.
Beyond “Washington Square,” though, my source for most of my early Bobb Goldsteinn data was a website devoted to the GoldeBriars, a fountain of pre-Mamas & Papas sonic delight that is now known as Sunshine Pop. The website tells a bit of the story: how Curt Boettcher, Dotti Holmberg, Sheri Holmberg, and Ron Neilson left Minneapolis for New York, signed with Epic Records, released a couple of LPs, and went about their business, leaving as their legacy the prototype for the Mamas & the Papas.
The website also mentions that Dotti was a thorough diarist and archivist of the band’s triumphs and travails—and that she had collected everything into a multimedia ebook.
Some aspects of the GoldeBriars’ story linked into my personal music experience: Bobb Goldsteinn, of course, who produced some of their recordings, and Curt Boettcher, who, you may know, has been acclaimed as the most innovative and talented vocal arranger ever. Ask whiteray what he thinks of a Boettcher-arranged vocal classic, “Cherish” by the Association.
With that incentive, I ordered the ebook, The GoldeBriars’ Story: Whatever Happened to Jezebel?. I promised Dotti that I would review it on this blog. The time has arrived for me to make good on that promise.
Thanks (or no thanks) to several editorial jobs and my participation in publishing ventures, I have been exposed to a lot of raw book manuscripts, as well as published works not vetted by major New York publishing houses. In many cases, the result is a less-than-spectacular offering that is hard on the eyes and ears of someone with an editor’s mindset. Such is not the case with Dotti’s book.
The organization of her thoughts is compelling, with an essentially chronological chapter structure that is interspersed with observations about the milieu in which the GoldeBriars performed and recorded. Dotti’s creative control takes the book far out of the realm of canned music biographies and makes for a refreshing change in music-history literature.
Dotti begins by telling how she left Hugo, Minnesota and met Curt Boettcher, who was singing in a Minneapolis coffee house. Dotti, Sheri, and their brother, Gary, had their own group, but when they joined in on an audience sing-along, the coffee-house manager made them take the stage with Curt, and thus began the GoldeBriars.
After their first management screw, the GoldeBriars learned to live on rice, and from then until they reached New York with a Minneapolis-based manager who cared about them, that’s pretty much what they ate. One day, they acquired a mascot, a carved idol named Jezebel, who give the book its title. Jezebel went everywhere with the GoldeBriars after her arrival.
The story is told primarily in Dotti’s voice, but there are excerpts from Curt Boettcher’s diary, as well as scans of newspaper articles, artwork that includes Curt’s cartoons, and numerous photographs. One rarity is a sketch of Curt and Dotti singing that was drawn by Rolf Harris, the Australian singer who scored a #3 hit here with “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” on Epic shortly before the GoldeBriars signed a contract with that label.
The GoldeBriars began their recording sessions on November 21, 1963. On this day, Bobb Goldsteinn’s composition was #2 in the nation, thanks to the Village Stompers. Bobb and the GoldeBriars had not yet met, but as label-mates of the Village Stompers, Curt and crew would soon do so.
The next day, prior to their evening recording session, the quartet walked around New York and noted the grief on everyone’s face. That was how they learned that the president had been shot. Dotti evokes the day in her memoir with grace and candor; she goes on to say that the band showed up for their recording session that night, as they felt they had to go on with their lives.
Epic Records rolled out a solid promo campaign for their first LP in early 1964, only to find that new folk-pop acts were shut out of the public consciousness with a bang when the first Beatles recordings hit the airwaves. Their LP sold reasonably well, but it wasn’t the monster hit it could have been a couple of months earlier.
The act did make it onto ABC’s Hootenanny, and the video of their appearance is on the ebook CD. From there, they were introduced to Bobb Goldsteinn. As Dotti puts it, they were dropped in Bobb’s lap “and he didn’t stand up fast enough.” He polished their stage act, gave them songs to add to their repertoire, and took them to Miami to perform. Not a bad deal.
Their schedule led them to a huge stay in Charleston, followed by Milwaukee. Eventually, they disbanded. (There’s a lot left out there.)
Part of Curt Boettcher’s musical expertise stemmed from his background in Japanese kabuki, which he studied when he lived with his family in Japan. As a result, the GoldeBriars developed a love for, and were loved by, the Japanese people. Dotti’s book shows great respect for the group’s entire fan base, as the PDF file of the text appears in both English and Japanese.
This chronicle of life on the road, of being almost a national phenomenon, as told through the words of a naïve Minnesota girl, is a fascinating collection of thoughts that goes far more deeply into the world of underpaid and physically neglected musicians than any sanitized biography you will find on the shelves of bookstores.
Between the scans of photos, clippings, and memorabilia, adding in the video of their TV performance of “Saro Jane,” which shows just how creative Curt was at arranging vocals (and how talented Dotti and Sheri were at producing the sounds he wanted), this ebook is a true gem, and I recommend it to everyone who loves this era in folk and pop music.
You can see the overview of the GoldeBriars story on Dotti’s website. There you will find Bobb Goldsteinn’s foreword to Dotti’s ebook. The link to a tribute to her brother, Gary Holmberg, including four of his recordings, is here. You can acquire the folk-music film in which the GoldeBriars appeared, as well as a CD compilation of Dotti’s solo recordings, here. And, finally, do yourself a favor and obtain the ebook at the same page. No work I have ever read gives a better street-level view of life in the music world of 1963-65.
Some video to whet your appetite:
Here you can see how relentless Curt was in making the most of vocals on even simple melodies. Truly amazing.
Dotti, from her compilation, singing a song produced by Curt.
Dotti again. Here I detect a touch of pre-Paula Abdul vocal inflection (which is a good thing).
And "Tell It to the Wind," a song from their second album. Bobb Goldsteinn wrote it with Jeff Barry, and Bobb produced it.
For Saturday, it’s Week Nineteen of the Great 1950s Chart Meltdown. See you then!
GoldeBriars, Tell It to the Wind
Showing posts with label Jeff Barry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Barry. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Price of Obesity
Many of us have struggled with weight issues. My struggle was different from most. I overworked myself for a stretch of time during graduate school and found myself down to 102 pounds (46.5 kg or 7 stone, 4 pounds). When I realized that was not enough weight, the school dietitian put me on a 3,000-calorie diet. It was a lot of work eating all that food: breakfast consisted of a serving of oatmeal with wheat germ on it, milk and sugar; a banana; a serving of orange juice; an egg fried in butter with buttered toast; two waffles with butter and syrup; a serving of bacon, and fried potatoes. And a glass of milk with Carnation Instant Breakfast in it.
It took me a long time to eat those breakfasts, but they paid off, in conjunction with thousand-calorie lunches and dinners. In the four months I was on the 3,000-calorie diet, I gained a pound a week. But then I hit a plateau, and I dropped off the diet. But I did weigh 117 pounds. That was good, because with my body fat as low as it was, I was in greater immediate danger of organ failure than someone who was 100 pounds overweight.
Santa Claus seems to have the opposite problem. Although he is portrayed in the Rudolph special as being thin until he stocks up on fatty foods in late December, I have yet to see a photo of Santa in which he doesn’t have a pretty good heft to him.
Even so, it’s not kind of Augie Ríos to get in Santa’s face and call him ol’ Fatso, as he does in his other 1958 Christmas classic, “Ol’ Fatso” (Metro K20010). While many people have heard the A-side of this 45, in part because (as I neglected to mention on Wednesday) it reached #47 on the Hot 100, “Ol’ Fatso” didn’t chart, and it has not gotten the reissue attention that “¿Dónde está Santa Claus?” has.
That could be because Augie calls Santa a name and tells him to get his reindeer off the roof of Augie’s house. Augie seems to think that his presents appear out of nowhere, rather than from their true source, Santa. As a result, Augie gets no gifts the following year. He sings the song to let us know how badly he messed up. I, for one, am glad for the message, which prevents me from becoming too smug this time of year.
Though Augie paid the price for calling Santa fat, the experience of another kid shows that Augie’s description wasn’t inaccurate, just unkind. For, as Jeff Barry relates in a tune he composed with Artie Resnick in 1962, Santa was chubby enough to get stuck in his chimney. The result is that a whole bunch of toys aren’t going to get delivered. Jeff has to unload them on the neighbors, which can earn a kid great, though perhaps transient, popularity. The problem is that Santa will have to pay everyone overtime and buy the raw materials to remake all the presents for the kids who got stiffed because of Santa’s paunch.
That, my friends, is the true price of obesity.
Jeff’s version of the song is the unreleased demo, which you may not have heard before. Wendy Burton released the song on Columbia 42624 in 1962. That recording did not chart.
The writers of these tunes have been featured before. Jeff Barry, of course, is Jeff Barry, and Artie Resnick is one of his early mentors, whose credits include “Good Lovin’” (the Young Rascals), “Quick Joey Small” (Kasenetz blah blah) and, oh, “Under the Boardwalk” (Drifters).
“Ol’ Fatso” was the product of Gordon Irving, whose work I featured in the third post of the blog: “Mama from the Train.” Irving wrote a couple of other tunes for Patti Page, and he wrote the unforgettable “Unforgettable.”
Just so you know, “Ol’ Fatso” is the final childhood 45 I am sharing with you this year. The rest of the 2008 songs include one 78, a pair of childhood album cuts, and a single that was released in 1980. While I have new topics in the works for 2009, no music I discuss is going to be as dear to me as the songs I owned, then lost and recovered or salvaged at the time of the Great Vinyl Meltdown in 1972. On December 27, I’m going to run by you some descriptions of songs I can almost remember, in hopes that some will be part of your experience, and I can get them back into mine.
Since I discovered the WLS year-end countdowns around 1971, as well as the American Top 40 year-end gig, I have found such events worthy of my time. This year, I am going to do something similar on a far smaller scale.
I am going to list in a separate post all of the songs I have featured on the blog so far in 2008. (See below.) I request that you vote for your ten favorites, in order. Then, on December 31, which happens to be a Blogging Wednesday, I’ll post the resulting Top Ten for the blog year. If you must, leave your votes as a comment, but I would prefer that you vote secretly by email to me at caithiseach, so as not to influence others with your wise choices. Vote by December 22 to ensure inclusion of your opinions.
I will repost those ten songs on December 31. In the meantime, if you want to vote but missed some of the songs, let me know which ones you want to hear, and I’ll reattach old links on an as-needed basis.
I have composed a lot of countdowns over the years, but this one will actually have some lasting meaning to me, so I hope you’ll take a few minutes to work out your vote.
And while you wait for New Year’s Eve, enjoy whatever it is you eat this time of year. December is for socializing over food. February is for dieting.
Wednesday, I’ll bring you a child star of the 1950s who wouldn’t have gotten far today, amid the Mileys and Britneys. See you then!
Augie Ríos, Ol’ Fatso
Jeff Barry, Seventeen Million Bicycles
SONG LIST FOR COUNTDOWN IS BELOW THIS POST
It took me a long time to eat those breakfasts, but they paid off, in conjunction with thousand-calorie lunches and dinners. In the four months I was on the 3,000-calorie diet, I gained a pound a week. But then I hit a plateau, and I dropped off the diet. But I did weigh 117 pounds. That was good, because with my body fat as low as it was, I was in greater immediate danger of organ failure than someone who was 100 pounds overweight.
Santa Claus seems to have the opposite problem. Although he is portrayed in the Rudolph special as being thin until he stocks up on fatty foods in late December, I have yet to see a photo of Santa in which he doesn’t have a pretty good heft to him.
Even so, it’s not kind of Augie Ríos to get in Santa’s face and call him ol’ Fatso, as he does in his other 1958 Christmas classic, “Ol’ Fatso” (Metro K20010). While many people have heard the A-side of this 45, in part because (as I neglected to mention on Wednesday) it reached #47 on the Hot 100, “Ol’ Fatso” didn’t chart, and it has not gotten the reissue attention that “¿Dónde está Santa Claus?” has.
That could be because Augie calls Santa a name and tells him to get his reindeer off the roof of Augie’s house. Augie seems to think that his presents appear out of nowhere, rather than from their true source, Santa. As a result, Augie gets no gifts the following year. He sings the song to let us know how badly he messed up. I, for one, am glad for the message, which prevents me from becoming too smug this time of year.
Though Augie paid the price for calling Santa fat, the experience of another kid shows that Augie’s description wasn’t inaccurate, just unkind. For, as Jeff Barry relates in a tune he composed with Artie Resnick in 1962, Santa was chubby enough to get stuck in his chimney. The result is that a whole bunch of toys aren’t going to get delivered. Jeff has to unload them on the neighbors, which can earn a kid great, though perhaps transient, popularity. The problem is that Santa will have to pay everyone overtime and buy the raw materials to remake all the presents for the kids who got stiffed because of Santa’s paunch.
That, my friends, is the true price of obesity.
Jeff’s version of the song is the unreleased demo, which you may not have heard before. Wendy Burton released the song on Columbia 42624 in 1962. That recording did not chart.
The writers of these tunes have been featured before. Jeff Barry, of course, is Jeff Barry, and Artie Resnick is one of his early mentors, whose credits include “Good Lovin’” (the Young Rascals), “Quick Joey Small” (Kasenetz blah blah) and, oh, “Under the Boardwalk” (Drifters).
“Ol’ Fatso” was the product of Gordon Irving, whose work I featured in the third post of the blog: “Mama from the Train.” Irving wrote a couple of other tunes for Patti Page, and he wrote the unforgettable “Unforgettable.”
Just so you know, “Ol’ Fatso” is the final childhood 45 I am sharing with you this year. The rest of the 2008 songs include one 78, a pair of childhood album cuts, and a single that was released in 1980. While I have new topics in the works for 2009, no music I discuss is going to be as dear to me as the songs I owned, then lost and recovered or salvaged at the time of the Great Vinyl Meltdown in 1972. On December 27, I’m going to run by you some descriptions of songs I can almost remember, in hopes that some will be part of your experience, and I can get them back into mine.
Since I discovered the WLS year-end countdowns around 1971, as well as the American Top 40 year-end gig, I have found such events worthy of my time. This year, I am going to do something similar on a far smaller scale.
I am going to list in a separate post all of the songs I have featured on the blog so far in 2008. (See below.) I request that you vote for your ten favorites, in order. Then, on December 31, which happens to be a Blogging Wednesday, I’ll post the resulting Top Ten for the blog year. If you must, leave your votes as a comment, but I would prefer that you vote secretly by email to me at caithiseach, so as not to influence others with your wise choices. Vote by December 22 to ensure inclusion of your opinions.
I will repost those ten songs on December 31. In the meantime, if you want to vote but missed some of the songs, let me know which ones you want to hear, and I’ll reattach old links on an as-needed basis.
I have composed a lot of countdowns over the years, but this one will actually have some lasting meaning to me, so I hope you’ll take a few minutes to work out your vote.
And while you wait for New Year’s Eve, enjoy whatever it is you eat this time of year. December is for socializing over food. February is for dieting.
Wednesday, I’ll bring you a child star of the 1950s who wouldn’t have gotten far today, amid the Mileys and Britneys. See you then!
Augie Ríos, Ol’ Fatso
Jeff Barry, Seventeen Million Bicycles
SONG LIST FOR COUNTDOWN IS BELOW THIS POST
Friday, September 26, 2008
Post-Cursor to Greatness
Tommy Boyce established himself as a hero to three-year-old caithiseach as soon as his single entered my collection. Apart from “Sweet Little Baby I Care,” I owned only the flip, a self-penned tune called “Have You Had a Change of Heart” (RCA 8126), but Tommy’s songs earned my complete attention. I didn’t play today’s side quite as much, but I consider this single to be one of the strongest two-sided 45s I owned. Since the material hasn’t been released on CD yet (to my knowledge), I am very glad this 45 is a Survivor of the Great Vinyl Meltdown.
I was fortunate enough to have the Quintessential Valuable Commenter, Yah Shure, offer me some data from his Goldmine 45 price guide, which I need to acquire so he doesn’t have to rescue me. According to this impeccable source, Tommy released these singles through 1963:
1960
R-Dell 111.............Betty Jean / I'm Not Sure
Dot 16117.............The Gypsy Song / Give Me The Clue
1961
Wow 345..............Is It True / Little One
RCA Victor 7975....Along Came Linda / You Look So Lonely
1962
RCA Victor 8025....Come Here Joanne / The Way I Used To Do
RCA Victor 8074....I'll Remember Carol / Too Late For Tears
1963
RCA Victor 8126....Have You Had A Change Of Heart / Sweet Little Baby, I Care
RCA Victor 8208....Don't Be Afraid / A Million Things To Say
Only “I’ll Remember Carol” charted, but I would jump at the chance to buy a compilation of these sides. Tommy seems to have released a couple of albums on RCA as well, and I’ll be looking for them.
As was the case with most of Tommy’s other compositions, he had a co-writer on “Have You Had a Change of Heart.” B. Kelly had some hand in its creation, according to the 45 label. And guess who B. is? Betty Jean Kelly, the probable inspiration for Tommy’s first single, and who happened to be Tommy’s sister.
The production and arrangements appealed to three-year-old caithiseach, so I’ll take a moment to mention their source. The sessions were produced by Ray Ellis. He has a solid pedigree, having orchestrated the 1958 Billie Holiday album Lady in Satin, arranged “A Certain Smile” for Johnny Mathis, and written the theme song for the Spider-Man cartoons. He wrote background music for the Archie TV show, which solidifies the link between the Jeff and Tommy RCA singles. All that, and Tommy Boyce, too.
The arrangements on these sides were the work of Jimmie Haskell. Yes, the Jimmie Haskell who arranged Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor LP, played on Tina Turner’s Acid Queen LP, and came up with his own space-age pop LP, Count Down! He arranged Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” and Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now,” all of which earned him “Best Arranger” Grammys. His spectacular credentials are available at his website.
The top-notch help makes me think RCA was big on Tommy Boyce. While the RCA material didn’t pan out, the A&R people at RCA eventually got to pat themselves on the back for having good judgment, if not the best timing.
Not long after this single didn’t hit the charts, Tommy experienced a watershed moment in his career when he met up with Robert Harshman, a Phoenix native who was already a talented songwriter. One of their first assignments was to pen the theme song for Days of Our Lives, a U.S. daytime drama that has been on the air since 1965. Here is that theme.
The boys, with Robert taking the name Bobby Hart, began to write a string of hits for top artists, including “Come a Little Bit Closer” for Jay and the Americans and “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” for Paul Revere and the Raiders.
It may have been a right place, right time thing, but Boyce and Hart, the songwriters, were tapped to create music for a TV pilot that was intended as an American answer to the Beatles: The Monkees. From the theme song to “Last Train to Clarksville,” Boyce and Hart were the creative forces behind the act at its inception. They recorded the tracks, vocals included, then either wiped their vocals or mixed them out when Mickey Dolenz and pals came to sing.
And then, the flap occurred over the fact that the Monkees didn’t play their instruments, and the Monkees wanted to write their own songs, and Boyce and Hart exited in favor of Don Kirshner’s guru, Jeff Barry. Jeff was no slouch, as he brought in a little Neil Diamond composition, “I’m a Believer,” which topped the Hot 100 for seven weeks in 1967, despite Mike Nesmith’s assurances that the song was no hit.
When the Monkees (read: Nesmith) griped about Jeff as they had about Boyce and Hart, the source of the problem became evident. But the legacy of what Boyce and Hart accomplished musically with that foursome will not go away, and time has had a way of creating more respect for the Boyce/Hart productions.
Sometimes it works out that a pair of writers can create their own musical act. For Boyce and Hart, the results were pretty spectacular. They scored three Top 40 hits, including one of the best songs of the decade, “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite.” (The title spelling stems from an identically titled 1963 single by Barry & the Tamerlanes.) This song centers itself in its time frame, calling on all of the musical conventions of the moment: loud brass, chord progressions you could hear anywhere. And yet, the lyrics, especially the B part of the verses, about what friends never do, are some of the wisest and tightest to come to light in 1968, when the song peaked at #8. It’s a spectacular song; the duo sang as if they were brothers, and they obviously had a lot of fun making the record.
From there, they wound up paired with Dolenz and Jones in a Monkees reunion in the mid-1970s, and then things started to calm down. Tommy spent some time in the United Kingdom, then he took up residence in Nashville.
At some point, Tommy suffered a brain aneurysm, which exacerbated some depression issues he faced. Some of his best friends had died, including Elvis Presley and Del Shannon, who took his own life on February 8, 1990. Tommy had the courage to appear on talk shows to discuss his depression, a touchy subject even in the early 1990s. Finally unable to deal with the pain, Tommy shot himself in the head at his home on November 23, 1994.
Tommy’s sister, Betty Jean, dedicated a memorial bench to Tommy at Studio B in Nashville. Sidney Thomas Boyce was born on September 29, 1939. Monday will be the 69th anniversary of his birth.
For Wednesday, I will bring you what may be the first 45 I specifically requested as a gift. It was a big hit, too, for once. Until then, listen to Tommy’s other song, and watch him and Bobby get after “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite.”
Tommy Boyce, Have You Had a Change of Heart
I was fortunate enough to have the Quintessential Valuable Commenter, Yah Shure, offer me some data from his Goldmine 45 price guide, which I need to acquire so he doesn’t have to rescue me. According to this impeccable source, Tommy released these singles through 1963:
1960
R-Dell 111.............Betty Jean / I'm Not Sure
Dot 16117.............The Gypsy Song / Give Me The Clue
1961
Wow 345..............Is It True / Little One
RCA Victor 7975....Along Came Linda / You Look So Lonely
1962
RCA Victor 8025....Come Here Joanne / The Way I Used To Do
RCA Victor 8074....I'll Remember Carol / Too Late For Tears
1963
RCA Victor 8126....Have You Had A Change Of Heart / Sweet Little Baby, I Care
RCA Victor 8208....Don't Be Afraid / A Million Things To Say
Only “I’ll Remember Carol” charted, but I would jump at the chance to buy a compilation of these sides. Tommy seems to have released a couple of albums on RCA as well, and I’ll be looking for them.
As was the case with most of Tommy’s other compositions, he had a co-writer on “Have You Had a Change of Heart.” B. Kelly had some hand in its creation, according to the 45 label. And guess who B. is? Betty Jean Kelly, the probable inspiration for Tommy’s first single, and who happened to be Tommy’s sister.
The production and arrangements appealed to three-year-old caithiseach, so I’ll take a moment to mention their source. The sessions were produced by Ray Ellis. He has a solid pedigree, having orchestrated the 1958 Billie Holiday album Lady in Satin, arranged “A Certain Smile” for Johnny Mathis, and written the theme song for the Spider-Man cartoons. He wrote background music for the Archie TV show, which solidifies the link between the Jeff and Tommy RCA singles. All that, and Tommy Boyce, too.
The arrangements on these sides were the work of Jimmie Haskell. Yes, the Jimmie Haskell who arranged Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor LP, played on Tina Turner’s Acid Queen LP, and came up with his own space-age pop LP, Count Down! He arranged Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” and Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now,” all of which earned him “Best Arranger” Grammys. His spectacular credentials are available at his website.
The top-notch help makes me think RCA was big on Tommy Boyce. While the RCA material didn’t pan out, the A&R people at RCA eventually got to pat themselves on the back for having good judgment, if not the best timing.
Not long after this single didn’t hit the charts, Tommy experienced a watershed moment in his career when he met up with Robert Harshman, a Phoenix native who was already a talented songwriter. One of their first assignments was to pen the theme song for Days of Our Lives, a U.S. daytime drama that has been on the air since 1965. Here is that theme.
The boys, with Robert taking the name Bobby Hart, began to write a string of hits for top artists, including “Come a Little Bit Closer” for Jay and the Americans and “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” for Paul Revere and the Raiders.
It may have been a right place, right time thing, but Boyce and Hart, the songwriters, were tapped to create music for a TV pilot that was intended as an American answer to the Beatles: The Monkees. From the theme song to “Last Train to Clarksville,” Boyce and Hart were the creative forces behind the act at its inception. They recorded the tracks, vocals included, then either wiped their vocals or mixed them out when Mickey Dolenz and pals came to sing.
And then, the flap occurred over the fact that the Monkees didn’t play their instruments, and the Monkees wanted to write their own songs, and Boyce and Hart exited in favor of Don Kirshner’s guru, Jeff Barry. Jeff was no slouch, as he brought in a little Neil Diamond composition, “I’m a Believer,” which topped the Hot 100 for seven weeks in 1967, despite Mike Nesmith’s assurances that the song was no hit.
When the Monkees (read: Nesmith) griped about Jeff as they had about Boyce and Hart, the source of the problem became evident. But the legacy of what Boyce and Hart accomplished musically with that foursome will not go away, and time has had a way of creating more respect for the Boyce/Hart productions.
Sometimes it works out that a pair of writers can create their own musical act. For Boyce and Hart, the results were pretty spectacular. They scored three Top 40 hits, including one of the best songs of the decade, “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite.” (The title spelling stems from an identically titled 1963 single by Barry & the Tamerlanes.) This song centers itself in its time frame, calling on all of the musical conventions of the moment: loud brass, chord progressions you could hear anywhere. And yet, the lyrics, especially the B part of the verses, about what friends never do, are some of the wisest and tightest to come to light in 1968, when the song peaked at #8. It’s a spectacular song; the duo sang as if they were brothers, and they obviously had a lot of fun making the record.
From there, they wound up paired with Dolenz and Jones in a Monkees reunion in the mid-1970s, and then things started to calm down. Tommy spent some time in the United Kingdom, then he took up residence in Nashville.
At some point, Tommy suffered a brain aneurysm, which exacerbated some depression issues he faced. Some of his best friends had died, including Elvis Presley and Del Shannon, who took his own life on February 8, 1990. Tommy had the courage to appear on talk shows to discuss his depression, a touchy subject even in the early 1990s. Finally unable to deal with the pain, Tommy shot himself in the head at his home on November 23, 1994.
Tommy’s sister, Betty Jean, dedicated a memorial bench to Tommy at Studio B in Nashville. Sidney Thomas Boyce was born on September 29, 1939. Monday will be the 69th anniversary of his birth.
For Wednesday, I will bring you what may be the first 45 I specifically requested as a gift. It was a big hit, too, for once. Until then, listen to Tommy’s other song, and watch him and Bobby get after “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite.”
Tommy Boyce, Have You Had a Change of Heart
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Summer of Steed, Part 2
This Saturday post, coming on Sunday, is late because of out-of-town connectivity issues, and not because I was too busy primping for my 30th high-school reunion. Honest. Sorry about the delay. Before I start the post, I'd like to mention also that I am participating in the Vinyl Record Day blogswarm on Tuesday, August 12. You will find links to other participants here if this happens to be the music blog you check out first. And now, the Saturday evening post:
The summer of 1970 was waning when one of the best Eternal Summer singles hit the charts. Bobby Bloom's only Top 40 hit, "Montego Bay" (L&R/MGM 157), joined the rotation at WLS in Chicago just as the final echoes of "Lay a Little Lovin' on Me" faded from the air. I was home, back at school, when "Montego Bay" arrived on the scene, so I managed to get a copy of this gem while it was in the store.
I relate the song to Steed Records because Bobby Bloom worked with Jeff Barry at Steed, and Jeff co-wrote and produced the song. Bobby and Robin McNamara often contributed backing vocals to each other's songs.
If you're familiar with Jeff's production work beginning (perhaps) with "Iko Iko" by the Dixie Cups, you understand how important percussion has been to his overall sound, and especially Caribbean rhythms. (To paint the complete picture, I should note that Neil Diamond's version of "La Bamba," produced by Jeff and Ellie Greenwich, sounds pretty much like "Cherry, Cherry" and thus is not a successful foray into the world of Latin percussion.)
"Montego Bay" should, of course, have a Caribbean feel, and its authenticity owes a lot to the real-life experiences that led to the writing of the song. More on that in a moment.
As was the case with Andy Kim's "Baby, I Love You," Jeff recorded all of the percussion for "Montego Bay" one instrument at a time. The result is an extremely clean recording with great separation. He and Bobby Bloom recorded the song with no additional musicians at all.
What first attracted me to the song was the mention of an MG in the first verse. My dad bought a baby-blue MGB convertible in 1970, and we tooled around Northwest Indiana in that thing. I remember a trip to the Big Wheel restaurant at the Gary-Merrillville border for chocolate sundaes. We sorted out a lot of our relationship then, what it would be with my mother gone. The reality that you really needed two MGBs, one to drive and one to leave with the mechanic, didn't keep me from loving that car. And there was Bobby Bloom, singing about driving one in Jamaica.
Since I already owned a Jeff Barry single, finding his name on "Montego Bay" was an added treat. This knowledge, in fact, helped cement his position as my most admired songwriter/producer, coming as it did on the heels of "Sugar, Sugar."
The song itself doesn't strike me as a bubblegum tune, despite its link to two purveyors of the genre. Bobby Bloom and Jeff Barry were talking about experiences they had had separately in Jamaica, and Jeff helped Bobby mold specific real-life references into the striking visual imagery that makes up the lyrics. The song is catchy, but the discussion of deliveries of cool rum is not aimed at teens.
The song has an added feature, a promo clip that is actually one of the earliest modern-form music videos I have ever seen. By that I mean that the video doesn't merely show Bobby Bloom lip-synching the song on a stage; money was spent to put him (and a camera operator) in the water, Bobby in a canoe, paddling as he lip-synched. Very 1980s MTV, very beautiful surroundings. Check it out:
The events of Bobby Bloom's life were not always so beautiful. Born in 1946, by age 23 he was known as a recording engineer as well as a music producer and songwriter. He was a friend of Vini Poncia, who later produced work by Kiss. One of the songs he co-wrote with Jeff Barry, "Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha Na Boom Boom)," was turned into a Top 40 hit by the Staple Singers. Bobby contributed to the latter-day Monkees album Changes with the Barry-Bloom compositions "You're So Good to Me" and "Ticket on a Ferry Ride." He helped put Kama Sutra and Buddah Records together.
On February 28, 1974, he was shot to death "under mysterious circumstances." The shooting seems to have been accidental, but the culprit never was identified. The shooting silenced a good guy with a great voice.
We do have "Montego Bay." In case you are one of the dozen or so people who have not heard the song, here it is. And on Wednesday, I'll bring you the flip side of perhaps the last new single I ever bought. Look for the Vinyl Record Day post Tuesday as well. See you then!
Bobby Bloom, Montego Bay
The summer of 1970 was waning when one of the best Eternal Summer singles hit the charts. Bobby Bloom's only Top 40 hit, "Montego Bay" (L&R/MGM 157), joined the rotation at WLS in Chicago just as the final echoes of "Lay a Little Lovin' on Me" faded from the air. I was home, back at school, when "Montego Bay" arrived on the scene, so I managed to get a copy of this gem while it was in the store.
I relate the song to Steed Records because Bobby Bloom worked with Jeff Barry at Steed, and Jeff co-wrote and produced the song. Bobby and Robin McNamara often contributed backing vocals to each other's songs.
If you're familiar with Jeff's production work beginning (perhaps) with "Iko Iko" by the Dixie Cups, you understand how important percussion has been to his overall sound, and especially Caribbean rhythms. (To paint the complete picture, I should note that Neil Diamond's version of "La Bamba," produced by Jeff and Ellie Greenwich, sounds pretty much like "Cherry, Cherry" and thus is not a successful foray into the world of Latin percussion.)
"Montego Bay" should, of course, have a Caribbean feel, and its authenticity owes a lot to the real-life experiences that led to the writing of the song. More on that in a moment.
As was the case with Andy Kim's "Baby, I Love You," Jeff recorded all of the percussion for "Montego Bay" one instrument at a time. The result is an extremely clean recording with great separation. He and Bobby Bloom recorded the song with no additional musicians at all.
What first attracted me to the song was the mention of an MG in the first verse. My dad bought a baby-blue MGB convertible in 1970, and we tooled around Northwest Indiana in that thing. I remember a trip to the Big Wheel restaurant at the Gary-Merrillville border for chocolate sundaes. We sorted out a lot of our relationship then, what it would be with my mother gone. The reality that you really needed two MGBs, one to drive and one to leave with the mechanic, didn't keep me from loving that car. And there was Bobby Bloom, singing about driving one in Jamaica.
Since I already owned a Jeff Barry single, finding his name on "Montego Bay" was an added treat. This knowledge, in fact, helped cement his position as my most admired songwriter/producer, coming as it did on the heels of "Sugar, Sugar."
The song itself doesn't strike me as a bubblegum tune, despite its link to two purveyors of the genre. Bobby Bloom and Jeff Barry were talking about experiences they had had separately in Jamaica, and Jeff helped Bobby mold specific real-life references into the striking visual imagery that makes up the lyrics. The song is catchy, but the discussion of deliveries of cool rum is not aimed at teens.
The song has an added feature, a promo clip that is actually one of the earliest modern-form music videos I have ever seen. By that I mean that the video doesn't merely show Bobby Bloom lip-synching the song on a stage; money was spent to put him (and a camera operator) in the water, Bobby in a canoe, paddling as he lip-synched. Very 1980s MTV, very beautiful surroundings. Check it out:
The events of Bobby Bloom's life were not always so beautiful. Born in 1946, by age 23 he was known as a recording engineer as well as a music producer and songwriter. He was a friend of Vini Poncia, who later produced work by Kiss. One of the songs he co-wrote with Jeff Barry, "Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha Na Boom Boom)," was turned into a Top 40 hit by the Staple Singers. Bobby contributed to the latter-day Monkees album Changes with the Barry-Bloom compositions "You're So Good to Me" and "Ticket on a Ferry Ride." He helped put Kama Sutra and Buddah Records together.
On February 28, 1974, he was shot to death "under mysterious circumstances." The shooting seems to have been accidental, but the culprit never was identified. The shooting silenced a good guy with a great voice.
We do have "Montego Bay." In case you are one of the dozen or so people who have not heard the song, here it is. And on Wednesday, I'll bring you the flip side of perhaps the last new single I ever bought. Look for the Vinyl Record Day post Tuesday as well. See you then!
Bobby Bloom, Montego Bay
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Summer of Steed, Part 1
The second floor of my Aunt Eileen’s house in Gary, Indiana wasn’t a proper second floor. The ceiling rose and fell to match the contours of the roof, including alcoves for windows and slopes to keep the snow or rain from overburdening the rafters. White stucco walls blended into the white stucco ceiling not at sharp angles, but with smooth curves that gave the ceiling the feel of an upside-down ski slope. I slept in the alcove by the window facing Kentucky Street for most of July and August of 1970.
Sending me to Aunt Eileen was easier for my dad than making me fend for myself while he worked. My mom was dead, and Aunt Eileen was her sister. My teenage cousins, Bob and Jim, shared their room with me, and in the nighttime darkness, Bob played WLS at a low volume until we all fell asleep.
Probably to keep me from thinking too much, Bob developed a game where we would guess song titles as soon as we could from their intros. They call it Name That Tune on TV, but we called it . . . well, we didn’t call it anything. I held my own in the game, and this week, I am going to talk about two related songs, one that figured prominently in the summer, and another that came along in the autumn when I was back home and often sleeping in yet another house that was not ours.
The first song got a lot of airplay while I was at Aunt Eileen’s. “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” by Robin McNamara (Steed 724) joined the Top 40 ranks on July 18, 1970, peaking at #11, and it must have captured someone’s imagination at WLS, because I heard it every night during August. The song had a groove I couldn’t get out of my head during the day, which turned out to be a good thing. I loved the part where Robin called out: “Now just the girls sing it,” and all of the male voices disappeared. The singers turned out to be the cast of Hair, of which Robin was an original member. I knew about Hair, but I was not offered a chance to see it that year.
It was a good thing I remembered the song, because, by the time I got back home and could buy records, “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” had disappeared from the bins. I never heard the song, except in my memory, from October, 1970 until the mid-1980s, when Rhino came out with the delicious Have a Nice Day series. I never heard it in stereo until I grabbed Volume 2 of the Rhino set. And oh, I played that song over and over the first few days I had it.
That was when I connected it to Saturday’s song, another Steed single that I did manage to buy. That was also when I connected it to Jeff Barry, my musical hero. I was pleased rather than surprised to find Jeff had produced and co-written the tune, as he had Saturday’s song.
Falling asleep on sweltering August nights under the rafters of a house in Gary was a lot more pleasant because of that radio and this song. Anytime I play it, it transports me back there. I can’t escape that memory. I think I’m glad about that.
Robin McNamara is a Boston area native, and you can learn much about his past and his present at his website. There, among other things, you can find a clip of Robin singing “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” on TV, complete with a couple of pairs of hands clapping between the camera and Robin. Watch for a flub when one pair of hands expects a nonexistent clap.
Saturday brings a single by a guy with an amazing voice. See you then!
The site is buggy today, so I can't post a poll. Check back when you can. Thanks.
Robin McNamara, Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me
Sending me to Aunt Eileen was easier for my dad than making me fend for myself while he worked. My mom was dead, and Aunt Eileen was her sister. My teenage cousins, Bob and Jim, shared their room with me, and in the nighttime darkness, Bob played WLS at a low volume until we all fell asleep.
Probably to keep me from thinking too much, Bob developed a game where we would guess song titles as soon as we could from their intros. They call it Name That Tune on TV, but we called it . . . well, we didn’t call it anything. I held my own in the game, and this week, I am going to talk about two related songs, one that figured prominently in the summer, and another that came along in the autumn when I was back home and often sleeping in yet another house that was not ours.
The first song got a lot of airplay while I was at Aunt Eileen’s. “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” by Robin McNamara (Steed 724) joined the Top 40 ranks on July 18, 1970, peaking at #11, and it must have captured someone’s imagination at WLS, because I heard it every night during August. The song had a groove I couldn’t get out of my head during the day, which turned out to be a good thing. I loved the part where Robin called out: “Now just the girls sing it,” and all of the male voices disappeared. The singers turned out to be the cast of Hair, of which Robin was an original member. I knew about Hair, but I was not offered a chance to see it that year.
It was a good thing I remembered the song, because, by the time I got back home and could buy records, “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” had disappeared from the bins. I never heard the song, except in my memory, from October, 1970 until the mid-1980s, when Rhino came out with the delicious Have a Nice Day series. I never heard it in stereo until I grabbed Volume 2 of the Rhino set. And oh, I played that song over and over the first few days I had it.
That was when I connected it to Saturday’s song, another Steed single that I did manage to buy. That was also when I connected it to Jeff Barry, my musical hero. I was pleased rather than surprised to find Jeff had produced and co-written the tune, as he had Saturday’s song.
Falling asleep on sweltering August nights under the rafters of a house in Gary was a lot more pleasant because of that radio and this song. Anytime I play it, it transports me back there. I can’t escape that memory. I think I’m glad about that.
Robin McNamara is a Boston area native, and you can learn much about his past and his present at his website. There, among other things, you can find a clip of Robin singing “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” on TV, complete with a couple of pairs of hands clapping between the camera and Robin. Watch for a flub when one pair of hands expects a nonexistent clap.
Saturday brings a single by a guy with an amazing voice. See you then!
The site is buggy today, so I can't post a poll. Check back when you can. Thanks.
Robin McNamara, Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me
Friday, May 23, 2008
An Oldie, 1970 Style
My perspective on what constitutes an “oldie” has changed over time. When I was 11, the Chicago “oldies” station, WIND, played songs from ten to fifteen years before. That pretty much took things back to the beginning of the Rock Era, so there was nowhere else to go. Now, if you play fifteen-year-old songs, you’re talking Nirvana. To me, that doesn’t seem like an oldie.
I got a very fresh perspective on oldies today, Friday, May 23. My Spanish students were making videos of skits they had written as a final project. One pair included a long sequence that pictures them throwing a baseball around. They chose “Peace of Mind” by Boston for the audio. I found it a perfectly rational choice.
Today, the film’s director stopped by to check on his grade, and he mentioned that he and his partner had wanted to learn the song so they could play it themselves to impress me further. The other guy couldn’t get the acoustic guitar licks down, so they just used the recording. “It’s a pretty good song,” this student said.
The way he said it made me realize he had just discovered “Peace of Mind.” That reminded me of the day my brother Jeff, listening to Aerosmith in 1988, said, “I heard they had a few hits a long time ago.” And, no kidding, someone once said in my presence, “That’s the band Paul McCartney was in before Wings.”
For the first but not last time this year, I am going to visit the summer of 1970. The song I am presenting today isn’t from the summer; it was an “oldie” by then. In 1970 parlance, that means it had spent several months out of the rotation on WLS. Its final week in the Top 40 was February 21, 1970. It had reached #10 in its ten-week chart run, but I hadn’t paid it much attention, because my mind was focused elsewhere in the weeks following my mother’s death in January.
The song, “Jingle Jangle” by the Archies (Kirshner 5002), reached my ears on a hot August evening (you expected me to say “night”), and finally it registered with me as a song I would enjoy from then on.
1970 was a year of understandable turmoil in my world. As soon as school ended, my dad sent me to visit his sister in Loogootee, Indiana, a stone’s throw from Shoals, where his parents lived. My Aunt Jenny and her husband, Uncle Eddie, lived on a farm with their three sons. I learned about chickens, piglets, electric fences, and walking behind horses without letting them know you’re there. One of the boys owned “Sugar, Sugar,” so there was good music. I was there when the radio stopped playing “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and segued into the next Creedence hit, “Up Around the Bend.”
Then it was back to Gary to visit my mom’s mom for a while. I got terribly homesick while I was there, even though Grandma made me the best breakfasts I have ever had and was marvelous company. I was still there when Father’s Day rolled around, and I didn’t hear any music at all during that stretch.
The music scene picked up for me again at the end of July and into August, when I moved about ten blocks to the home of Aunt Eileen, her husband, Uncle Jim, and my cousins Jim and Bob. The boys slept upstairs on a wide-open second-floor; Bob’s bed sat in a cubbyhole with a window that overlooked Kentucky Street. It was all very cozy.
One week in August, I’ll go into the music Bob and I heard on WLS at night. He left the radio on when the lights went out, something I had never thought of before. He developed a game in which we competed to see who could name the songs first as they came on. Though Bob is five years older than I am, I did a pretty good job of guessing the tunes. Good enough that he recalled my prowess when I visited his house seventeen years later.
Among the songs WLS played a lot that won’t be part of the blog were “The Love You Save,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and “Hitchin’ a Ride.” Songs I associate particularly with that time were “Ball of Confusion” and the “Overture from Tommy” by the Assembled Multitude. I won’t forget “Big Yellow Taxi” by the Neighborhood, because Bob thought they were singing “Take down a bank, put up a parking lot.”
WLS had a very tight playlist, so I can recall just two oldies playing during those after-hours radio sessions. One was “Down in the Boondocks” by Billy Joe Royal, from 1965. I had never heard it before, so I thought it was new. Of course, they didn’t play it again. The other “oldie” was “Jingle Jangle.”
I remembered that song well, but it hadn’t given me as much joy as “Sugar, Sugar.” On that August evening, though, I recognized it from the first guitar chord, and I heard the song for the “second first” time. I could see that it had the same upbeat attitude as “The Love You Save,” a song I adored. My friends and I were amazed that a local group, the Jackson Five, had become so big. At this time, I was staying 19 blocks from the Jacksons’ former Gary home. Now, hearing “Jingle Jangle” from the perspective of having heard “ABC” and “The Love You Save” all spring and summer, I found merit in its cheeriness.
That one summer play as an “oldie” affected me enough that I bought the single when I got home later in August. I can see from looking at the label that, on one occasion in 1970 or 1971, I did another of my record censuses in which I wrote numbers on the labels so I could tell how many 45s I had. I may have alphabetized the records by this time, because “Jingle Jangle” was single number 3.
The song is a Barry/Kim composition, whereas the flip, “Justine,” is credited solely to Jeff Barry. Jeff is listed on the record as producer, with Don Kirshner as production supervisor. Donnie Kirshner’s career is pretty well-known, but maybe not to everyone: He was a key figure in the Brill Building heyday of the early 1960s, and his connections made him a natural choice to develop music for the Monkees. He brought Jeff Barry on board for that project, then they both moved on to create the Archies. He developed Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert for late-night TV around 1973, and he signed the band Kansas to his Kirshner label.
The recording was unusual for an Archies record. Ron Dante says the tune was originally meant to feature Toni Wine as the lead vocalist, so the track was recorded in her range. She sings the intro in her “Veronica” voice, but thereafter her voice comes to the fore only in counterpoint in the choruses.
What Ron did to get around the key difficulties was sing the verses in a whispery falsetto. By contrast, Jeff Barry used his deepest bass to sing “Oh, come on” in the bridge. Andy Kim is in there on the choruses, along with any number of his and Jeff’s usual suspects. I don’t have an exact list of who sang on “Jingle Jangle.”
Whenever I hear the song now, it transports me to my cousins’ bedroom in the Glen Park section of Gary. It’s dark, my cousin Bob has fallen asleep, and I am processing the changes in my world while the music flows through me. I have never been one (perhaps because I predate the video era) to like a song just because it’s paired with a great video. But sometimes my mind creates its own videos, and those images can put a decent song over the hump into the “essential” category. The decision by WLS to slip “Jingle Jangle” back onto the airwaves for one last play made all the difference for that song’s legacy in my memories.
After “Sugar, Sugar” and “Jingle Jangle,” I know some cynicism remains about the validity of cartoon bands. To counteract the sweetness of those two songs, I want to include the most serious of the Archies tunes. “A Summer Prayer for Peace” was not released in the United States, but it hit #1 in South Africa. Ron and Jeff went into the studio alone and put it together. With summer approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, save in Minnesota and perhaps Winnipeg, I’d like to repost this “oldie” that I used in a February essay. As I said then, you have to update the population numbers, but everything else is far too relevant.
Next week I will be celebrating the birthday of a jazz saxophonist you probably don’t know. He takes us back to the early caithiseach 45s after these past two weeks of Barry/Kim music. I’ll see you Wednesday!
Archies, Jingle Jangle
Archies, A Summer Prayer for Peace
I got a very fresh perspective on oldies today, Friday, May 23. My Spanish students were making videos of skits they had written as a final project. One pair included a long sequence that pictures them throwing a baseball around. They chose “Peace of Mind” by Boston for the audio. I found it a perfectly rational choice.
Today, the film’s director stopped by to check on his grade, and he mentioned that he and his partner had wanted to learn the song so they could play it themselves to impress me further. The other guy couldn’t get the acoustic guitar licks down, so they just used the recording. “It’s a pretty good song,” this student said.
The way he said it made me realize he had just discovered “Peace of Mind.” That reminded me of the day my brother Jeff, listening to Aerosmith in 1988, said, “I heard they had a few hits a long time ago.” And, no kidding, someone once said in my presence, “That’s the band Paul McCartney was in before Wings.”
For the first but not last time this year, I am going to visit the summer of 1970. The song I am presenting today isn’t from the summer; it was an “oldie” by then. In 1970 parlance, that means it had spent several months out of the rotation on WLS. Its final week in the Top 40 was February 21, 1970. It had reached #10 in its ten-week chart run, but I hadn’t paid it much attention, because my mind was focused elsewhere in the weeks following my mother’s death in January.
The song, “Jingle Jangle” by the Archies (Kirshner 5002), reached my ears on a hot August evening (you expected me to say “night”), and finally it registered with me as a song I would enjoy from then on.
1970 was a year of understandable turmoil in my world. As soon as school ended, my dad sent me to visit his sister in Loogootee, Indiana, a stone’s throw from Shoals, where his parents lived. My Aunt Jenny and her husband, Uncle Eddie, lived on a farm with their three sons. I learned about chickens, piglets, electric fences, and walking behind horses without letting them know you’re there. One of the boys owned “Sugar, Sugar,” so there was good music. I was there when the radio stopped playing “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and segued into the next Creedence hit, “Up Around the Bend.”
Then it was back to Gary to visit my mom’s mom for a while. I got terribly homesick while I was there, even though Grandma made me the best breakfasts I have ever had and was marvelous company. I was still there when Father’s Day rolled around, and I didn’t hear any music at all during that stretch.
The music scene picked up for me again at the end of July and into August, when I moved about ten blocks to the home of Aunt Eileen, her husband, Uncle Jim, and my cousins Jim and Bob. The boys slept upstairs on a wide-open second-floor; Bob’s bed sat in a cubbyhole with a window that overlooked Kentucky Street. It was all very cozy.
One week in August, I’ll go into the music Bob and I heard on WLS at night. He left the radio on when the lights went out, something I had never thought of before. He developed a game in which we competed to see who could name the songs first as they came on. Though Bob is five years older than I am, I did a pretty good job of guessing the tunes. Good enough that he recalled my prowess when I visited his house seventeen years later.
Among the songs WLS played a lot that won’t be part of the blog were “The Love You Save,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and “Hitchin’ a Ride.” Songs I associate particularly with that time were “Ball of Confusion” and the “Overture from Tommy” by the Assembled Multitude. I won’t forget “Big Yellow Taxi” by the Neighborhood, because Bob thought they were singing “Take down a bank, put up a parking lot.”
WLS had a very tight playlist, so I can recall just two oldies playing during those after-hours radio sessions. One was “Down in the Boondocks” by Billy Joe Royal, from 1965. I had never heard it before, so I thought it was new. Of course, they didn’t play it again. The other “oldie” was “Jingle Jangle.”
I remembered that song well, but it hadn’t given me as much joy as “Sugar, Sugar.” On that August evening, though, I recognized it from the first guitar chord, and I heard the song for the “second first” time. I could see that it had the same upbeat attitude as “The Love You Save,” a song I adored. My friends and I were amazed that a local group, the Jackson Five, had become so big. At this time, I was staying 19 blocks from the Jacksons’ former Gary home. Now, hearing “Jingle Jangle” from the perspective of having heard “ABC” and “The Love You Save” all spring and summer, I found merit in its cheeriness.
That one summer play as an “oldie” affected me enough that I bought the single when I got home later in August. I can see from looking at the label that, on one occasion in 1970 or 1971, I did another of my record censuses in which I wrote numbers on the labels so I could tell how many 45s I had. I may have alphabetized the records by this time, because “Jingle Jangle” was single number 3.
The song is a Barry/Kim composition, whereas the flip, “Justine,” is credited solely to Jeff Barry. Jeff is listed on the record as producer, with Don Kirshner as production supervisor. Donnie Kirshner’s career is pretty well-known, but maybe not to everyone: He was a key figure in the Brill Building heyday of the early 1960s, and his connections made him a natural choice to develop music for the Monkees. He brought Jeff Barry on board for that project, then they both moved on to create the Archies. He developed Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert for late-night TV around 1973, and he signed the band Kansas to his Kirshner label.
The recording was unusual for an Archies record. Ron Dante says the tune was originally meant to feature Toni Wine as the lead vocalist, so the track was recorded in her range. She sings the intro in her “Veronica” voice, but thereafter her voice comes to the fore only in counterpoint in the choruses.
What Ron did to get around the key difficulties was sing the verses in a whispery falsetto. By contrast, Jeff Barry used his deepest bass to sing “Oh, come on” in the bridge. Andy Kim is in there on the choruses, along with any number of his and Jeff’s usual suspects. I don’t have an exact list of who sang on “Jingle Jangle.”
Whenever I hear the song now, it transports me to my cousins’ bedroom in the Glen Park section of Gary. It’s dark, my cousin Bob has fallen asleep, and I am processing the changes in my world while the music flows through me. I have never been one (perhaps because I predate the video era) to like a song just because it’s paired with a great video. But sometimes my mind creates its own videos, and those images can put a decent song over the hump into the “essential” category. The decision by WLS to slip “Jingle Jangle” back onto the airwaves for one last play made all the difference for that song’s legacy in my memories.
After “Sugar, Sugar” and “Jingle Jangle,” I know some cynicism remains about the validity of cartoon bands. To counteract the sweetness of those two songs, I want to include the most serious of the Archies tunes. “A Summer Prayer for Peace” was not released in the United States, but it hit #1 in South Africa. Ron and Jeff went into the studio alone and put it together. With summer approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, save in Minnesota and perhaps Winnipeg, I’d like to repost this “oldie” that I used in a February essay. As I said then, you have to update the population numbers, but everything else is far too relevant.
Next week I will be celebrating the birthday of a jazz saxophonist you probably don’t know. He takes us back to the early caithiseach 45s after these past two weeks of Barry/Kim music. I’ll see you Wednesday!
Archies, Jingle Jangle
Archies, A Summer Prayer for Peace
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
It Never Got Better Than This
I love many kinds of music, and many songs that have nothing in common with each other. To be honest, the reactions of my easy-listening friends and my head-banger friends to music that doesn’t suit them disappoints me a bit. I don’t understand how people can develop such a rut that they can’t skip to another groove.
I am going to discuss a song that nearly everyone, regardless of age, level of musical sophistication, self-perceived musical superiority or affiliation with Rolling Stone can sing from memory. Everyone knows this song because there has never been a better pop song.
The song is “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies (Calendar 1008).
Any Major Dude, whom I respect as a champion of spectacular music, has not included this song in the Perfect Pop series on his blog. Maybe he won’t. But I can make a case, both technical and personal, for “Sugar, Sugar” as the definition of popular music, perhaps even populist music. From its misunderstood origins to its effect on the careers of its writers, the song has earned smirks from writers who could not stop humming it. I’m going to get militant as I tell you why a memorable pop song is not by nature a pop song to be avoided.
I start with the genesis of the song. Ronnie Dante says that Jeff Barry had encouraged Andy Kim to come up with something for the Archies to record. Andy got the idea for the first bit and presented it to Jeff over the phone. They developed the tune together, with Jeff providing the keyboard hook and some lyrics I’ll get to shortly.
Other writers and producers had created bubblegum music. “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” and “Chewy, Chewy” come to mind. Are they perfect pop songs? No. Why do I say “Sugar, Sugar” reaches that level?
Jeff Barry aimed a lot of his 1960s songs at young teens. In this respect, he was considerably ahead of his peers in understanding the intellectual power, and the purchasing power, of that demographic. Whereas the Ohio Express songs seek to combine a catchy melody with inane lyrics, Jeff’s songs were vibrant enough to energize the young and vital enough to impress music historians. It’s no accident that “Have I ever told you how good it feels to hold you” has been honored by the Library of Congress, while “I got love in my tummy and I feel like lovin’ you” has not.
The difference is that Jeff did not try to capitalize on the innocence of youth; he celebrated it. He still does. If you lament that children are now singing “Shawty need a refund, needa bring that nigga back/Just like a refund, I make her bring that ass back,” you are not alone, and it’s not age that makes one sad about where lyrics have gone.
When Jeff was asked by Don Kirshner to write for the Archies, Jeff did so with a goal of bridging the gap between kiddie pop and adult pop. Jeff risked his stature as a serious producer/writer when he took on this task. He and Andy Kim succeeded with “Sugar, Sugar,” above all other Archies tunes. Andy got it started, and Jeff knew this was a keeper.
The risk paid off commercially, but the intelligentsia, in the throes of psychedelia and Beatlemania, among other –ias, branded Jeff as a simplistic writer. A number of years later, one critic of this ilk asked Jeff why he didn’t write for adults. Jeff replied that recently he had heard a line by Rod McKuen: “I just can’t believe the loveliness of loving you.” The critic replied that Jeff should have written lines like that.
“Fuck you,” Jeff replied. “I wrote that. It’s from ‘Sugar, Sugar.’”
That is part of why “Sugar, Sugar” is a perfect pop song. It’s not about laughing all the way to the bank, like High School Musical 2. It’s about making music that neither shuts out kids nor sends their parents screaming from the room. Compare “Pour a little sugar on me, honey” with “Pour some sugar on me,” and tell me that the lyric Def Leppard echoed is really more adult than the Archies original.
The “Sugar, Sugar” recording session shows another level of sophistication that people tend not to hear. For the first fifteen or so unnumbered takes, Jeff couldn’t get his drummer, Gary Chester (born Cesario Gurciullo, 1924-1987), to match what Jeff was feeling for the song. Unlike the session for Andy Kim’s “Baby, I Love You,” Jeff persevered. He wound up standing in front of his drummer, swaying to the beat in his head to keep the tempo surprisingly slow. Jeff had no use for the frenetic pace of a kiddie tune here.
As the end of the second chorus approaches, Ron Dante sings “You are my candy, girl, and you got me . . . wanting you.” After “me,” he sucks in his breath, the way people do when someone attractive walks by. I asked whose idea that was, and Ron said it was Jeff’s. It is such a subtle touch that kids would never hear it, yet adults know what it implies. No need to say what “wanting you” means; the lyric stays kid-friendly and the breathing provides the subtext. I didn’t hear it as a kid, but I hear it now, every time, and I nod in approval of the tactic.
Did that mean Jeff controlled the song too much? Ron Dante himself came up with the “Whoa-oh-oh” part that leads out of the second verse. At that point the song crosses into soul music; counterpoint shouts of “honey” crop up, and after Toni Wine sings the low “Betty” version of “I’m gonna make your life so sweet,” she belts the high, Aretha-like “Veronica” version of the same phrase. She told me she crafted that pair of singing personalities.
Now, with a pretty good track ready for release, it was up to the kids to buy it once they heard it, right? Ron Dante said that, after two very kid-oriented singles, this third Archies release met with radio resistance simply because of the artist name. At last someone played it, and the listener response was so intense that the song could not be denied airplay. The result was a single that entered the Top 40 on August 16, 1969, spent four weeks at #1 starting September 20, and logged 22 weeks in the Hot 100. “Sugar, Sugar” was the RIAA Record of the Year for 1969. That consumer-driven success is what makes me call it a populist song as well as a popular one.
I have given you bio information on Jeff Barry and Andy Kim before, but I owe you Ron Dante and Toni Wine. Ron Dante, born Carmine Granito in 1945, sang the Archies hits, as well as “Tracy” by the Cuff Links. He also sang (but not the lead) on “Leader of the Laundromat” by the Detergents, a parody of “Leader of the Pack.” Everyone involved with the parody knew it would be subjected to a lawsuit for royalties by the writers of the original hit, among whom was Jeff Barry.
Ron Dante moved on from the Archies to production work for all of Barry Manilow’s records through about 1981. He sang background on “Mandy” and a number of other hits. He still performs regularly.
Toni Wine, born in 1947, wrote “A Groovy Kind of Love” when she was about 18, and she wrote “Candida” for Tony Orlando after she left the Archies. She and Robin Grean sang the backing vocals on “Candida” and “Knock Three Times”; don’t let Joel Whitburn fool you on this one. Ellie Greenwich didn’t participate in the Dawn recordings, but you can hear her on the Archies songs. Toni tours with Tony Orlando now.
While I’m at it, I should note that Gary Chester played drums on “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” as just the tip of his session-work iceberg.
And now it gets personal. As soon as “Sugar, Sugar” leapt onto WLS in August, 1969, I fell in love with it, along with the rest of the country. At home, I was the daytime caregiver for a very sick mother, and this song kept up my spirits. This one, and “Honky Tonk Women,” of all things.
I didn’t ask anyone to take me to the store to buy the 45, but I didn’t have to. I got a copy of it on the back of a cereal box. Four Archies tunes were featured on a cereal; I believe it was Sugar Crisp. I bought the cereal, hoping to get the right record (the songs weren’t named; you had to play them to know what you had), and on the third try, I had my song.
By 1969, though, my stereo tonearm had been snapped in two by rambunctious siblings, and finally the wires pulled loose. I bought a little record player from a neighbor for a dollar. Its drawback was that it played only 33 1/3 rpm records. So I played my Archies cereal box record at LP speed and imagined that it was playing faster. It was better than nothing. I would still have asked for the actual vinyl single, but it seemed sacrilegious to own such a cheery 45 when I was walking my mom to the toilet every couple of hours. I didn’t turn off the radio, though.
And yet, Mom rallied in late 1969. On November 12, she and I were watching the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, sitting together on the sofa, when Glen and the Lennon Sisters started singing “Sugar, Sugar.” My mom started swaying to the music, but I thought it was a ridiculous performance. If you wanted sacrilege, there it was. I snapped, “They should sing their own songs.”
My mom looked at me, her mouth open in shock, and I stomped off to my room. Fifty-nine days later, she died. And, you know, sometimes you can’t go back and apologize for screwing up a perfectly decent evening. She never asked me about it, and though I tried to make myself explain what had been going through my mind, I never could. That’s too bad, because she would have gotten it, after all those years of nurturing my musical tastes.
The day she died, “Don’t Cry Daddy” by Elvis Presley was #11, heading for #6. “Sugar, Sugar” had slipped out of the Hot 100 on December 20. That was a huge and unwelcome change in the radio landscape for me, but I still had my cereal box cutout, and I still played it at LP speed. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have left.
Saturday I’ll look at another Archies song, one that is evocative for different reasons. Thanks for reading. See you then.
Archies--Sugar, Sugar
I am going to discuss a song that nearly everyone, regardless of age, level of musical sophistication, self-perceived musical superiority or affiliation with Rolling Stone can sing from memory. Everyone knows this song because there has never been a better pop song.
The song is “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies (Calendar 1008).
Any Major Dude, whom I respect as a champion of spectacular music, has not included this song in the Perfect Pop series on his blog. Maybe he won’t. But I can make a case, both technical and personal, for “Sugar, Sugar” as the definition of popular music, perhaps even populist music. From its misunderstood origins to its effect on the careers of its writers, the song has earned smirks from writers who could not stop humming it. I’m going to get militant as I tell you why a memorable pop song is not by nature a pop song to be avoided.
I start with the genesis of the song. Ronnie Dante says that Jeff Barry had encouraged Andy Kim to come up with something for the Archies to record. Andy got the idea for the first bit and presented it to Jeff over the phone. They developed the tune together, with Jeff providing the keyboard hook and some lyrics I’ll get to shortly.
Other writers and producers had created bubblegum music. “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” and “Chewy, Chewy” come to mind. Are they perfect pop songs? No. Why do I say “Sugar, Sugar” reaches that level?
Jeff Barry aimed a lot of his 1960s songs at young teens. In this respect, he was considerably ahead of his peers in understanding the intellectual power, and the purchasing power, of that demographic. Whereas the Ohio Express songs seek to combine a catchy melody with inane lyrics, Jeff’s songs were vibrant enough to energize the young and vital enough to impress music historians. It’s no accident that “Have I ever told you how good it feels to hold you” has been honored by the Library of Congress, while “I got love in my tummy and I feel like lovin’ you” has not.
The difference is that Jeff did not try to capitalize on the innocence of youth; he celebrated it. He still does. If you lament that children are now singing “Shawty need a refund, needa bring that nigga back/Just like a refund, I make her bring that ass back,” you are not alone, and it’s not age that makes one sad about where lyrics have gone.
When Jeff was asked by Don Kirshner to write for the Archies, Jeff did so with a goal of bridging the gap between kiddie pop and adult pop. Jeff risked his stature as a serious producer/writer when he took on this task. He and Andy Kim succeeded with “Sugar, Sugar,” above all other Archies tunes. Andy got it started, and Jeff knew this was a keeper.
The risk paid off commercially, but the intelligentsia, in the throes of psychedelia and Beatlemania, among other –ias, branded Jeff as a simplistic writer. A number of years later, one critic of this ilk asked Jeff why he didn’t write for adults. Jeff replied that recently he had heard a line by Rod McKuen: “I just can’t believe the loveliness of loving you.” The critic replied that Jeff should have written lines like that.
“Fuck you,” Jeff replied. “I wrote that. It’s from ‘Sugar, Sugar.’”
That is part of why “Sugar, Sugar” is a perfect pop song. It’s not about laughing all the way to the bank, like High School Musical 2. It’s about making music that neither shuts out kids nor sends their parents screaming from the room. Compare “Pour a little sugar on me, honey” with “Pour some sugar on me,” and tell me that the lyric Def Leppard echoed is really more adult than the Archies original.
The “Sugar, Sugar” recording session shows another level of sophistication that people tend not to hear. For the first fifteen or so unnumbered takes, Jeff couldn’t get his drummer, Gary Chester (born Cesario Gurciullo, 1924-1987), to match what Jeff was feeling for the song. Unlike the session for Andy Kim’s “Baby, I Love You,” Jeff persevered. He wound up standing in front of his drummer, swaying to the beat in his head to keep the tempo surprisingly slow. Jeff had no use for the frenetic pace of a kiddie tune here.
As the end of the second chorus approaches, Ron Dante sings “You are my candy, girl, and you got me . . . wanting you.” After “me,” he sucks in his breath, the way people do when someone attractive walks by. I asked whose idea that was, and Ron said it was Jeff’s. It is such a subtle touch that kids would never hear it, yet adults know what it implies. No need to say what “wanting you” means; the lyric stays kid-friendly and the breathing provides the subtext. I didn’t hear it as a kid, but I hear it now, every time, and I nod in approval of the tactic.
Did that mean Jeff controlled the song too much? Ron Dante himself came up with the “Whoa-oh-oh” part that leads out of the second verse. At that point the song crosses into soul music; counterpoint shouts of “honey” crop up, and after Toni Wine sings the low “Betty” version of “I’m gonna make your life so sweet,” she belts the high, Aretha-like “Veronica” version of the same phrase. She told me she crafted that pair of singing personalities.
Now, with a pretty good track ready for release, it was up to the kids to buy it once they heard it, right? Ron Dante said that, after two very kid-oriented singles, this third Archies release met with radio resistance simply because of the artist name. At last someone played it, and the listener response was so intense that the song could not be denied airplay. The result was a single that entered the Top 40 on August 16, 1969, spent four weeks at #1 starting September 20, and logged 22 weeks in the Hot 100. “Sugar, Sugar” was the RIAA Record of the Year for 1969. That consumer-driven success is what makes me call it a populist song as well as a popular one.
I have given you bio information on Jeff Barry and Andy Kim before, but I owe you Ron Dante and Toni Wine. Ron Dante, born Carmine Granito in 1945, sang the Archies hits, as well as “Tracy” by the Cuff Links. He also sang (but not the lead) on “Leader of the Laundromat” by the Detergents, a parody of “Leader of the Pack.” Everyone involved with the parody knew it would be subjected to a lawsuit for royalties by the writers of the original hit, among whom was Jeff Barry.
Ron Dante moved on from the Archies to production work for all of Barry Manilow’s records through about 1981. He sang background on “Mandy” and a number of other hits. He still performs regularly.
Toni Wine, born in 1947, wrote “A Groovy Kind of Love” when she was about 18, and she wrote “Candida” for Tony Orlando after she left the Archies. She and Robin Grean sang the backing vocals on “Candida” and “Knock Three Times”; don’t let Joel Whitburn fool you on this one. Ellie Greenwich didn’t participate in the Dawn recordings, but you can hear her on the Archies songs. Toni tours with Tony Orlando now.
While I’m at it, I should note that Gary Chester played drums on “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” as just the tip of his session-work iceberg.
And now it gets personal. As soon as “Sugar, Sugar” leapt onto WLS in August, 1969, I fell in love with it, along with the rest of the country. At home, I was the daytime caregiver for a very sick mother, and this song kept up my spirits. This one, and “Honky Tonk Women,” of all things.
I didn’t ask anyone to take me to the store to buy the 45, but I didn’t have to. I got a copy of it on the back of a cereal box. Four Archies tunes were featured on a cereal; I believe it was Sugar Crisp. I bought the cereal, hoping to get the right record (the songs weren’t named; you had to play them to know what you had), and on the third try, I had my song.
By 1969, though, my stereo tonearm had been snapped in two by rambunctious siblings, and finally the wires pulled loose. I bought a little record player from a neighbor for a dollar. Its drawback was that it played only 33 1/3 rpm records. So I played my Archies cereal box record at LP speed and imagined that it was playing faster. It was better than nothing. I would still have asked for the actual vinyl single, but it seemed sacrilegious to own such a cheery 45 when I was walking my mom to the toilet every couple of hours. I didn’t turn off the radio, though.
And yet, Mom rallied in late 1969. On November 12, she and I were watching the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, sitting together on the sofa, when Glen and the Lennon Sisters started singing “Sugar, Sugar.” My mom started swaying to the music, but I thought it was a ridiculous performance. If you wanted sacrilege, there it was. I snapped, “They should sing their own songs.”
My mom looked at me, her mouth open in shock, and I stomped off to my room. Fifty-nine days later, she died. And, you know, sometimes you can’t go back and apologize for screwing up a perfectly decent evening. She never asked me about it, and though I tried to make myself explain what had been going through my mind, I never could. That’s too bad, because she would have gotten it, after all those years of nurturing my musical tastes.
The day she died, “Don’t Cry Daddy” by Elvis Presley was #11, heading for #6. “Sugar, Sugar” had slipped out of the Hot 100 on December 20. That was a huge and unwelcome change in the radio landscape for me, but I still had my cereal box cutout, and I still played it at LP speed. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have left.
Saturday I’ll look at another Archies song, one that is evocative for different reasons. Thanks for reading. See you then.
Archies--Sugar, Sugar
Friday, May 16, 2008
“Baby” Week, Part 2
When I think of Andy Kim’s version of “Baby, I Love You,” my mind pairs it instantly with his next Top 20 hit, “Be My Baby” (Steed 729). This pairing rivals the connection I make between Donnie Elbert’s back-to-back Motown covers from 1971-72. In Andy’s case, there was a minor hit between the two pillars of his Steed period.
I don’t think I link them because of the Ronettes connection. I don’t think it’s the “baby-baby” thing. It could well be that it’s because, like next week’s tunes, they are two songs by the same artist that bracket my mother’s death. One brought me joy before her passing, and one brought me comfort after it.
These two songs are joined so tightly in my mind that I made the biggest (known) factual error of my blogging year (so far) when I wrote about “Baby, I Love You.” Perhaps everyone else connects these two songs the way I do, because no one called me on the obvious, huge mistake. Or were you all too polite to step on my toes? I do hope not!
I said that “Baby, I Love You” by the Ronettes peaked at #2. Their #2 hit was “Be My Baby.” They took “Baby, I Love You” to #24 four months later. In essence, the success of the Ronettes’ versions and Andy Kim’s versions was reversed. And if I don’t stay focused, my success will be reversed. Sorry.
My experiences with the two Andy Kim hits were similar: amazement at the production, delight at the voice, love of the melody and the message. They had “Jeff Barry” written all over them, though it wasn’t until the spate of 1970 hits came along that I knew Jeff Barry was responsible for all this music. I knew what I was getting by the time of “Be My Baby,” which entered the Top 40 on November 28, 1970 and peaked at #17. Even so, I didn’t know what I was getting.
Christmas, 1970 was pretty bleak. No mother, a new babysitter who was starting to change how things ran for my family (often for the better, but not always), few prospects for presents. It sounds shallow when I say that, but one thing I always associated with my mom was imaginative and unexpected gifts. That era was done.
But I had the radio. My babysitter, a woman a few years younger than my father who would become my stepmother in a couple of years, loved pop music as much as I did, and the stereo in her living room was always tuned to WLS. I picture that console, and the wall behind it, and the avocado sculptured carpet beneath it, when I hear “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?,” “That’s Where I Went Wrong” and “Be My Baby.”
The difference among these songs is that “Be My Baby” got me to run to the stereo, turn it up if I was there alone, and press my ear to the speaker. As is surely the case with most of you, there are songs that reduce me to nothing but an ear-brain connection, one big auditory nerve. One of my hundred or so such songs is “Be My Baby” by Andy Kim.
The song’s production is a cousin of “Baby, I Love You,” from the big boom at the beginning to the energetic piano and the amazing bass line. The interwoven vocals in the chorus are what got me, and when everyone comes in on “Be my baby now,” I usually fall over.
But why this version, more than the Ronettes’ #2 hit? (Ha! Got it this time!)
By shifting the chord at the end of the second phrase of the chorus (“Be my little baby”) from the root of the relative minor to the major fourth (F minor to C# major in this case), Jeff and Andy made the chorus sound much happier to me. Around Christmas, 1970, I needed a happy song. Between Susan Jacks singing about being on a cold bus and some other dude moaning about raindrops falling on people’s heads (they were still playing that one), a lot of the radio music wasn’t helpful. Andy got me over the hump, even though the song didn’t get as much airplay as I would have liked.
It often happens that I have a jukebox story to attach to my 45s. In this case, I went roller skating sometime in early 1971, with a group that certainly was not my family. I took a break to get a drink, and I spied a jukebox. I had a dime for a song, so I was perusing my options when a luscious 16-year-old appeared over my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “Play that one, okay?”
She was pointing to “Be My Baby.” I gladly agreed, as it was the song I was after. Her friend, who must have known what a manipulative minx she was, called over to me not to listen to her; that I could play whatever I wanted. I replied that I was happy with that choice, and so I played “Be My Baby” for an older woman I never saw again. Then I went back to skating.
On this cut, the band is back, as the musicians seem not to have disappointed Jeff this time around. The interesting suggestion has been made that Jeff sped up some of Andy’s recordings, which put them into an uncomfortable key for live performances. I doodled with “Be My Baby,” and if you lower the pitch by a semitone, Andy’s voice sounds like the Andy of “Rock Me Gently.” Further evidence is that “Be My Baby” reached us in the key of G sharp, whereas G is a much easier key for recording. If you drop the pitch of “Baby, I Love You,” Andy sounds sluggish. Thus, I can believe Jeff sped up “Be My Baby,” but not “Baby, I Love You.” At least he sped it up exactly one half-step; it would be terrible if the song were out of tune to everyone’s guitar or piano. (I am including the slowed version below.)
I don’t know if this song would have even more resonance if it had arrived during the early caithiseach days, but it certainly filled a void in my soul at a time I needed one filled. The two Andy Kim songs I featured this week also serve as bookends to a huge helping of musical comfort food that helped me weather January, 1970; that song will get its due on Wednesday, at which point I’ll be a year older. See you then!
Andy Kim, Be My Baby original pitch
Andy Kim, Be My Baby lower pitch
I don’t think I link them because of the Ronettes connection. I don’t think it’s the “baby-baby” thing. It could well be that it’s because, like next week’s tunes, they are two songs by the same artist that bracket my mother’s death. One brought me joy before her passing, and one brought me comfort after it.
These two songs are joined so tightly in my mind that I made the biggest (known) factual error of my blogging year (so far) when I wrote about “Baby, I Love You.” Perhaps everyone else connects these two songs the way I do, because no one called me on the obvious, huge mistake. Or were you all too polite to step on my toes? I do hope not!
I said that “Baby, I Love You” by the Ronettes peaked at #2. Their #2 hit was “Be My Baby.” They took “Baby, I Love You” to #24 four months later. In essence, the success of the Ronettes’ versions and Andy Kim’s versions was reversed. And if I don’t stay focused, my success will be reversed. Sorry.
My experiences with the two Andy Kim hits were similar: amazement at the production, delight at the voice, love of the melody and the message. They had “Jeff Barry” written all over them, though it wasn’t until the spate of 1970 hits came along that I knew Jeff Barry was responsible for all this music. I knew what I was getting by the time of “Be My Baby,” which entered the Top 40 on November 28, 1970 and peaked at #17. Even so, I didn’t know what I was getting.
Christmas, 1970 was pretty bleak. No mother, a new babysitter who was starting to change how things ran for my family (often for the better, but not always), few prospects for presents. It sounds shallow when I say that, but one thing I always associated with my mom was imaginative and unexpected gifts. That era was done.
But I had the radio. My babysitter, a woman a few years younger than my father who would become my stepmother in a couple of years, loved pop music as much as I did, and the stereo in her living room was always tuned to WLS. I picture that console, and the wall behind it, and the avocado sculptured carpet beneath it, when I hear “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?,” “That’s Where I Went Wrong” and “Be My Baby.”
The difference among these songs is that “Be My Baby” got me to run to the stereo, turn it up if I was there alone, and press my ear to the speaker. As is surely the case with most of you, there are songs that reduce me to nothing but an ear-brain connection, one big auditory nerve. One of my hundred or so such songs is “Be My Baby” by Andy Kim.
The song’s production is a cousin of “Baby, I Love You,” from the big boom at the beginning to the energetic piano and the amazing bass line. The interwoven vocals in the chorus are what got me, and when everyone comes in on “Be my baby now,” I usually fall over.
But why this version, more than the Ronettes’ #2 hit? (Ha! Got it this time!)
By shifting the chord at the end of the second phrase of the chorus (“Be my little baby”) from the root of the relative minor to the major fourth (F minor to C# major in this case), Jeff and Andy made the chorus sound much happier to me. Around Christmas, 1970, I needed a happy song. Between Susan Jacks singing about being on a cold bus and some other dude moaning about raindrops falling on people’s heads (they were still playing that one), a lot of the radio music wasn’t helpful. Andy got me over the hump, even though the song didn’t get as much airplay as I would have liked.
It often happens that I have a jukebox story to attach to my 45s. In this case, I went roller skating sometime in early 1971, with a group that certainly was not my family. I took a break to get a drink, and I spied a jukebox. I had a dime for a song, so I was perusing my options when a luscious 16-year-old appeared over my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “Play that one, okay?”
She was pointing to “Be My Baby.” I gladly agreed, as it was the song I was after. Her friend, who must have known what a manipulative minx she was, called over to me not to listen to her; that I could play whatever I wanted. I replied that I was happy with that choice, and so I played “Be My Baby” for an older woman I never saw again. Then I went back to skating.
On this cut, the band is back, as the musicians seem not to have disappointed Jeff this time around. The interesting suggestion has been made that Jeff sped up some of Andy’s recordings, which put them into an uncomfortable key for live performances. I doodled with “Be My Baby,” and if you lower the pitch by a semitone, Andy’s voice sounds like the Andy of “Rock Me Gently.” Further evidence is that “Be My Baby” reached us in the key of G sharp, whereas G is a much easier key for recording. If you drop the pitch of “Baby, I Love You,” Andy sounds sluggish. Thus, I can believe Jeff sped up “Be My Baby,” but not “Baby, I Love You.” At least he sped it up exactly one half-step; it would be terrible if the song were out of tune to everyone’s guitar or piano. (I am including the slowed version below.)
I don’t know if this song would have even more resonance if it had arrived during the early caithiseach days, but it certainly filled a void in my soul at a time I needed one filled. The two Andy Kim songs I featured this week also serve as bookends to a huge helping of musical comfort food that helped me weather January, 1970; that song will get its due on Wednesday, at which point I’ll be a year older. See you then!
Andy Kim, Be My Baby original pitch
Andy Kim, Be My Baby lower pitch
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
"Baby" Week, Part 1
I conceived this blog as a place to bring attention to the oddest and least-selling 45s you might ever hear. Last week, the Bob Keefe songs fit that mission perfectly. I have decided at times to feature very successful singles and artists, though, when the song or the singer played a large part in the musical milieu of my 45-spinning years.
I’m going back to some pretty big hits this week and next. I have a personal connection to each song, but I have also managed to get authoritative back stories for all four tunes, so I’ll share some of that. Parts of the stories deserve to be developed in a larger forum, and I’ll let you know when said forum comes into being.
This story starts for me with a song, but it starts for the singer with a dream and the determination to follow through on his goals. In early 1968, a fifteen-year-old boy caught a train from Montreal to Manhattan with the intention of meeting his songwriting hero. He made his way to 1650 Broadway, and with some persistence he managed to meet his icon.
The boy was Androwis Jovakim. The songwriter was Joel Adelberg. What followed their meeting was the fruitful songwriting/production collaboration that led to a successful solo career for Andy Kim and an RIAA Record of the Year in 1969 for Jeff Barry and Andy Kim.
By the time Andy Kim came into my world, he and Jeff had been working together for a year, and Andy had two Top 40 hits under his belt. His third Top 40 hit and first Top Ten smash was “Baby, I Love You” (Steed 716). The Ronettes’ #2 version was just six years old when he took the song to #9 in the fall of 1969. The decision to have Andy record the song, and the recording process itself, make for interesting reading.
At the time, Jeff Barry’s label, Steed Records, was a busy but not yet hit-laden enterprise. Jeff and Andy had already reached the Top 40 for Don Kirshner with their first Archies hit. Andy was in Jeff’s office, and Jeff stepped out for a moment.
Andy came across the sheet music for “Baby, I Love You,” which was a still-warm girl-group classic. Andy had never heard the song, and he started strumming his guitar to the chords on the sheet. Jeff came back and said, “That’s not how it goes.”
Jeff says that the idea of “cross-dressing” songs intrigues him, and Andy’s approach to “Baby, I Love You” merited consideration. Soon, they found themselves in the studio. They had assembled the usual group for the recording, but, perhaps because everyone knew the Phil Spector production of the song, it wasn’t coming out as Jeff and Andy heard it in their heads.
So they sent everyone home.
With nothing on tape, Jeff and Andy set to work. Jeff isn’t a drummer, so when he laid the drum tracks, it really was “tracks”: he played each drum individually. He played the bass drum by hand, crashed each cymbal on a separate track, everything. Andy played the guitars; Jeff played the keyboards. Once the backing track was in place, the singers could follow the plan. Among them was Ellie Greenwich, Jeff’s frequent songwriting partner and ex-wife. “Baby, I Love You” was one of their collaborations, with additional input from Phil Spector.
Spector collaborated with engineer Larry Levine to create the Wall of Sound that made Spector an icon. I learned a few minutes ago that Levine died on his 80th birthday, May 8. The Ronettes’ version of “Baby, I Love You” was selected for the U.S. Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2006, which is about as high an honor as a recording can receive. Even so, a number of people call Andy Kim’s version of this song the definitive recording. I am reporting, not opining, but I have to admit a great fondness for Andy’s take on the song, thanks to my life circumstances in 1969.
When my mom was hospitalized and I went off to summer camp in July, 1969, Andy was rocketing toward his #9 peak. Thus, “Baby, I Love You” was in heavy rotation on the camp radios during the week of July 20-26. I knew the Ronettes’ recording, but this fresh, noble take on the tune had me swaying on my cot when we were sitting in our cabin, listening to WLS out of Chicago. Every song I associate with camp has a special place in my heart, but few top Andy’s hold on me at the 1969 version of Good Fellow Camp.
I didn’t go into Andy’s biography at the beginning of the post, because his legacy is well-known, and he remains a relevant performer. You will get bits of his history here this week and next. I do think I should direct you to his website and suggest you spend a bit of time seeing what he’s up to these days. Say hi to caithiseach on his forum, if you don’t mind.
Not all performers remember where they got their start, but Andy made it clear to me that he has not rewritten the history of how he got to where he is. He was effusive in his praise of Jeff Barry, and he has pointed out numerous ways in which Jeff made his career possible. Even so, we all know Jeff could not have orchestrated a career for Andy if there had not been a hard-working, talented performer waiting to be developed.
It would be hard for me to write a cold, objective piece about Andy Kim, because he is too close to the center of my musical universe and far too kind-spirited a human being for me to pretend that I could do so. Thus, I won’t even try to sort it out. Andy gave me music I love, especially Saturday’s upcoming 45. “Baby, I Love You,” which is right about now enjoying the 39th anniversary of its release as a single, prepared me for the sonic delight I’ll offer then.
For now, let me say that I’m glad Andy took the train to New York when he was 15, and that I am looking forward to Saturday’s story. See you then!
Andy Kim, Baby, I Love You
I’m going back to some pretty big hits this week and next. I have a personal connection to each song, but I have also managed to get authoritative back stories for all four tunes, so I’ll share some of that. Parts of the stories deserve to be developed in a larger forum, and I’ll let you know when said forum comes into being.
This story starts for me with a song, but it starts for the singer with a dream and the determination to follow through on his goals. In early 1968, a fifteen-year-old boy caught a train from Montreal to Manhattan with the intention of meeting his songwriting hero. He made his way to 1650 Broadway, and with some persistence he managed to meet his icon.
The boy was Androwis Jovakim. The songwriter was Joel Adelberg. What followed their meeting was the fruitful songwriting/production collaboration that led to a successful solo career for Andy Kim and an RIAA Record of the Year in 1969 for Jeff Barry and Andy Kim.
By the time Andy Kim came into my world, he and Jeff had been working together for a year, and Andy had two Top 40 hits under his belt. His third Top 40 hit and first Top Ten smash was “Baby, I Love You” (Steed 716). The Ronettes’ #2 version was just six years old when he took the song to #9 in the fall of 1969. The decision to have Andy record the song, and the recording process itself, make for interesting reading.
At the time, Jeff Barry’s label, Steed Records, was a busy but not yet hit-laden enterprise. Jeff and Andy had already reached the Top 40 for Don Kirshner with their first Archies hit. Andy was in Jeff’s office, and Jeff stepped out for a moment.
Andy came across the sheet music for “Baby, I Love You,” which was a still-warm girl-group classic. Andy had never heard the song, and he started strumming his guitar to the chords on the sheet. Jeff came back and said, “That’s not how it goes.”
Jeff says that the idea of “cross-dressing” songs intrigues him, and Andy’s approach to “Baby, I Love You” merited consideration. Soon, they found themselves in the studio. They had assembled the usual group for the recording, but, perhaps because everyone knew the Phil Spector production of the song, it wasn’t coming out as Jeff and Andy heard it in their heads.
So they sent everyone home.
With nothing on tape, Jeff and Andy set to work. Jeff isn’t a drummer, so when he laid the drum tracks, it really was “tracks”: he played each drum individually. He played the bass drum by hand, crashed each cymbal on a separate track, everything. Andy played the guitars; Jeff played the keyboards. Once the backing track was in place, the singers could follow the plan. Among them was Ellie Greenwich, Jeff’s frequent songwriting partner and ex-wife. “Baby, I Love You” was one of their collaborations, with additional input from Phil Spector.
Spector collaborated with engineer Larry Levine to create the Wall of Sound that made Spector an icon. I learned a few minutes ago that Levine died on his 80th birthday, May 8. The Ronettes’ version of “Baby, I Love You” was selected for the U.S. Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2006, which is about as high an honor as a recording can receive. Even so, a number of people call Andy Kim’s version of this song the definitive recording. I am reporting, not opining, but I have to admit a great fondness for Andy’s take on the song, thanks to my life circumstances in 1969.
When my mom was hospitalized and I went off to summer camp in July, 1969, Andy was rocketing toward his #9 peak. Thus, “Baby, I Love You” was in heavy rotation on the camp radios during the week of July 20-26. I knew the Ronettes’ recording, but this fresh, noble take on the tune had me swaying on my cot when we were sitting in our cabin, listening to WLS out of Chicago. Every song I associate with camp has a special place in my heart, but few top Andy’s hold on me at the 1969 version of Good Fellow Camp.
I didn’t go into Andy’s biography at the beginning of the post, because his legacy is well-known, and he remains a relevant performer. You will get bits of his history here this week and next. I do think I should direct you to his website and suggest you spend a bit of time seeing what he’s up to these days. Say hi to caithiseach on his forum, if you don’t mind.
Not all performers remember where they got their start, but Andy made it clear to me that he has not rewritten the history of how he got to where he is. He was effusive in his praise of Jeff Barry, and he has pointed out numerous ways in which Jeff made his career possible. Even so, we all know Jeff could not have orchestrated a career for Andy if there had not been a hard-working, talented performer waiting to be developed.
It would be hard for me to write a cold, objective piece about Andy Kim, because he is too close to the center of my musical universe and far too kind-spirited a human being for me to pretend that I could do so. Thus, I won’t even try to sort it out. Andy gave me music I love, especially Saturday’s upcoming 45. “Baby, I Love You,” which is right about now enjoying the 39th anniversary of its release as a single, prepared me for the sonic delight I’ll offer then.
For now, let me say that I’m glad Andy took the train to New York when he was 15, and that I am looking forward to Saturday’s story. See you then!
Andy Kim, Baby, I Love You
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Bonus Post: Back to Washington Square!
Note: The Friday post about Big 6 Records that you expected to see is right below this special Sunday post.
On February 15, I wrote about “Washington Square” by the Village Stompers. I mentioned how much I enjoyed the song, and that I heard it only at my grandparents’ house in Shoals, Indiana. I gave you some background on the song and its composer, Bobb Goldsteinn. Here is the link to that post: Washington Square.
Well, Bobb Goldsteinn wrote to me on Thursday. I almost made a double post for Friday, but I decided to add an extra post this week so I wouldn’t overload you on any particular day. Mr. Goldsteinn was kind enough to allow me to share the information with you, but I’m going light on actual quotes because he has a very juicy (in the historical sense) book in the works.
First of all, I would have looked very clever if I had noticed that Bobb Goldsteinn, writer of one of the iconic instrumentals of my childhood, wrote two excellent songs with another caithiseach icon, Jeff Barry. Those two songs are “Falling from Paradise,” recorded by “Bobby Brown,” and “Tell It to the Wind,” which was recorded by the GoldeBriars. More on them in a moment. I have also found a composition, “Unhappy Birthday,” credited to this pair by Warner Chappell Music, but a search on the BMI site says Jeff Barry’s co-writer on “Unhappy Birthday” is Bobby Goldsboro.
Mr. Goldsteinn was kind enough to say that the “blog entry on my song is wonderful, and most of your facts are accurate as I know them. Your few errors do little to change the important truths, and that's great.”
I certainly don’t want to change important truths, and I don’t have much interest in proliferating errors, either. We’re going to revisit the subject with help from this primary source, rather than the secondary sources that misled me a bit in the first place. If that makes me a solid secondary source, that suits me fine.
Bobb Goldsteinn, known then as Bobby Goldstein, held a staff songwriting position with Leiber-Stoller for a year, during which he collaborated with Jeff Barry on the two tunes I listed. Though he wrote “Washington Square” while he was in high school, he didn’t turn the tune in to Jerry Leiber because he had learned to be wary of what happened to songs created under contract.
“Washington Square” blends three musical genres: the folk intro, a taste of jazz after a key change, and the Dixieland climax. The Dixieland part was conceived by Joe Sherman, the producer, and Duke Niles, who published the song through Rayven Music, to kowtow to the Rule of Threes. While Bobb Goldsteinn had the first two aspects of the arrangement in mind when he brought the song to be recorded, Sherman and Niles seem to have claimed the whole concept for themselves.
The chart timing of “Washington Square” may have kept it from reaching #1. It climbed to #2 for the week ending November 23, 1963, but after the assassination of President Kennedy, “Dominique” by the Singing Nun shot from #9 to #2 for the week of November 30. The national consciousness was clearly seeking comfort, and it seems to have found it in a religious song by a Catholic nun. Another musical casualty of the murder was the career of Vaughn Meader, whose comedy LP The First Family sold 7.5 million copies before the assassination and about two copies afterwards.
There seems to be some mislaid credit for the recording of “Washington Square.” Joe Sherman used leading studio musicians for the recording, but they did not receive credit. Mr. Goldsteinn recalls two: Bucky Pizzarelli and Doc Goldberg. The group listed in the Whitburn books and mentioned in my February post were assembled by Duke Niles for a tour. Mr. Goldsteinn wanted to call the act the Saints of Bleecker Street, but Village Stompers prevailed. At least part of the touring group had worked as Frank Hubbell and the Hubcaps, and as the Village Stompers they recorded eight albums for Epic. In my original post I said they had recorded “a pair of albums.” That irks me, because I lost control of a fact I knew. Sorry about that.
As successful as “Washington Square” was in the United States, Mr. Goldsteinn is very fond of the people of Japan, who kept the song and its album at #1 for six months, setting a sales record that stood until Michael Jackson’s Thriller surpassed it. When you realize that the Beatles were on their way, and they never overtook “Washington Square” in Japan, you have to take a moment to let that sink in.
In February I read, but did not mention, that there are lyrics to “Washington Square.” Bobb Goldsteinn wrote them after his publisher, seeing how the song was climbing the charts, said that either Bobb or someone else would write a set of lyrics. The Ames brothers recorded the song (Epic 9630) in 1963, but it was after Ed left his brothers to pursue a Broadway career and do such silly things as toss a tomahawk at Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. One problem that arose with the Ames version of the song was that the people at Columbia thought the final verse of the song, which was the climax of the message—just as the Dixieland arrangement was the climax of the instrumental—was “too Communistic.” And so, the Ames Brothers didn’t record the payoff verse, the 45 tanked, and the Ames Brothers were essentially finished. The song lyric didn’t gain any traction, either, thanks to the censorship.
I love it when the people associated with the songs I profile have back stories and connections to other projects. In my February post, I alluded to a few of Mr. Goldsteinn’s other accomplishments, but I didn’t go into them deeply. He shared more details, and they are fascinating, so I’m passing them on.
I said in February that he designed the zipper cover for the Rolling Stones LP Sticky Fingers. It turns out that, while the image wound up there, it was intended as the album cover for a different Warhol project.
Warhol’s film Lonesome Cowboys included (in the main version) a title song composed by Bobb Goldsteinn. Bobby Bloom (later to do significant work with Jeff Barry) sang lead, and Sissy Spacek sang backup. Mr. Goldsteinn describes the tune as a “sound sandwich.” (A song that shares both stylistic and temporal proximity is “MacArthur Park.”) The dance beat of “Lonesome Cowboys” was several years ahead of its time; the Donna Summer version of “MacArthur Park” would be a good example of a tune that played off this template.
Another credit associated with the song is the horn arrangement, which came from the mind of one Meco Menardo. The Pennsylvania-born Domenico Menardo went on to have a couple of hits of his own as Meco, including that Star Wars thingy.
I had read that Craig Braun, who designed the tongue/lips logo for the Rolling Stones, had translated Bobb Goldsteinn’s zippered-jeans idea to the Sticky Fingers cover, complete with working zipper. Mr. Goldsteinn designed the image without a real zipper, knowing what the metal would do to cardboard. Whoever translated it (and it seems not to be Craig Braun) created that record-store nightmare. As for Craig Braun, he won a Grammy for designing the Tommy package for the Who. He has appeared as an actor on ER, Law and Order and The Practice. Look him up; you’ll recognize him.
It’s important also to note Mr. Goldsteinn’s link to the GoldeBriars, the California Sound (“Sunshine Pop”) act he co-produced shortly after leaving “Washington Square” behind. If you don’t know this Minneapolis folk act, you can see the GoldeBriars website and read their history, excellently set down by Arthur Wood in the Folkwax Ezine: Part 1 and Part 2. You can also purchase the ebook memoir of the GoldeBriars by singer Dotti Holmberg, with an introduction by the co-producer of their second and (unreleased) third albums, Bobb Goldsteinn.
Arthur Wood points out that the GoldeBriars put together the sound of a male lead with two female harmony parts before they met John Phillips. If you listen to the 1963 recording at the end of this post, you’ll see the shape the California Sound was taking three years before the first hits for the Mamas & the Papas.
Mr. Goldsteinn knows where that sound had its genesis: in the mind of GoldeBriar singer Curt Boettcher. As Mr. Goldsteinn writes in the introduction to Dotti Holmberg’s book, “As sublime as was Curt’s sense of musical composition, even his loveliest songs dimmed before the radiance of his greatest gift: The ability to arrange music for the pop voice in a way that had never before been heard out of heaven on earth. It is the sound of angels playing around in the air. It is the sound of “Cherish.”
Curt Boettcher’s spectacular production and arrangement work with the Association was complemented by his work for Tommy Roe, who called him “a genius with harmonies.” As if that weren’t enough, Brian Wilson told Bobb Goldsteinn in 1996 that he worshipped Curt’s arrangements for the human voice. Curt Boettcher, who now has a larger following than when he was a star, died in 1987 at age 43.
It’s worth mentioning as well that David Shire, who owns some of the writing credit for “Washington Square” in a peripheral way, has scored a number of films, including The Conversation, directed by his brother-in-law Francis Ford Coppola. Other credits include scores for All the President’s Men and 2010. He was married from 1970 to 1978 to Talia Shire, whose maiden name is Coppola. She played Yo, Adrian! in the Rocky films, which have a Philadelphia connection. There’s a Washington Square in Philadelphia, but the one referred to in the song is the Washington Square in Greenwich Village.
And that proves you can go a long way from “Washington Square,” but you always come right back to it.
Bobb Goldsteinn said the following, which sums up my reasons for putting this blog together:
“Thanks for the great job. I know history is written by the winners, but I think those winners have a responsibility to—at least—try to tell the truth.”
I found the lyrics to the song online, but I don’t know which source is original. I changed a couple of words to match up with the Ames Brothers’ recording, but I don’t know if the Brothers followed the sheet music. The final, unrecorded verse is in italics. More commentary and sound links after the lyrics:
WASHINGTON SQUARE
Bobb Goldsteinn and David Shire
From Cape Cod Light to the Mississip, to San Francisco Bay,
They're talking about this famous place, down Greenwich Village way.
They hootenanny all the time with folks from everywhere,
Come Sunday morning, rain or shine, right in Washington Square.
And so I got my banjo out, just sittin', catchin' dust,
And painted right across the case "Greenwich Village or Bust."
My folks were sad to see me go, but I got no meanin' there.
So I said "Goodbye, Kansas, Mo, and hello, Washington Square!"
Near Tennessee, I met a guy who played 12-string guitar.
He also had a mighty voice, not to mention a car.
Each time he hit those bluegrass chords, you sure smelled mountain air.
I said, "Don't waste it on the wind. Come on to Washington Square."
In New Orleans, we saw a gal a-walkin' with no shoes,
And from her throat there comes a growl. She sure was singin' the blues.
She sang for all humanity, this gal with the raven hair.
I said, "It's for the world to hear. C'mon to Washington Square."
We cannonballed into New York on good old US 1,
Till up ahead we saw the arch, a-gleamin' bright in the sun.
As far as all the eye could see, ten thousand folks were there,
And singin' in sweet harmony right in Washington Square.
So how's about a freedom song, or the old Rock Island Line?
Or how's about the Dust-Bowl crop, or men who work in a mine?
The songs and legends of our land is gold we all can share,
So come and join us folks who stand and sing in Washington Square.
Excellent stuff. And now I want to mention a point I made in my February post. I said I always associated “Washington Square” with Depression-era music. It turns out that the final verse mentions Depression issues. I have to wonder how it happened that I felt that connection.
Thanks for joining me on this odyssey into the hidden story of “Washington Square” and Bobb Goldsteinn. I loved going there, and I hope you enjoyed the ride. My thanks to Bobb Goldsteinn for sharing the information and trusting me to paraphrase accurately. I would have been glad to post his letter verbatim for the sake of accuracy.
A note about the music. I am including samples of the two Barry-Goldsteinn compositions, but I can’t bring myself to post “Tell It to the Wind” when it’s so readily available. I did include the Amazon link for a cheap mp3. The Ames Brothers version is not easily found; I got it from a Japanese site, and now you can hear what they did with it.
Snippet of “Tell It to the Wind”
Buy “Tell It to the Wind” at Amazon mp3 for 99 cents
Snippet of “Falling from Paradise” by Bobby Brown (not that Bobby Brown)
Ames Brothers, Washington Square
On February 15, I wrote about “Washington Square” by the Village Stompers. I mentioned how much I enjoyed the song, and that I heard it only at my grandparents’ house in Shoals, Indiana. I gave you some background on the song and its composer, Bobb Goldsteinn. Here is the link to that post: Washington Square.
Well, Bobb Goldsteinn wrote to me on Thursday. I almost made a double post for Friday, but I decided to add an extra post this week so I wouldn’t overload you on any particular day. Mr. Goldsteinn was kind enough to allow me to share the information with you, but I’m going light on actual quotes because he has a very juicy (in the historical sense) book in the works.
First of all, I would have looked very clever if I had noticed that Bobb Goldsteinn, writer of one of the iconic instrumentals of my childhood, wrote two excellent songs with another caithiseach icon, Jeff Barry. Those two songs are “Falling from Paradise,” recorded by “Bobby Brown,” and “Tell It to the Wind,” which was recorded by the GoldeBriars. More on them in a moment. I have also found a composition, “Unhappy Birthday,” credited to this pair by Warner Chappell Music, but a search on the BMI site says Jeff Barry’s co-writer on “Unhappy Birthday” is Bobby Goldsboro.
Mr. Goldsteinn was kind enough to say that the “blog entry on my song is wonderful, and most of your facts are accurate as I know them. Your few errors do little to change the important truths, and that's great.”
I certainly don’t want to change important truths, and I don’t have much interest in proliferating errors, either. We’re going to revisit the subject with help from this primary source, rather than the secondary sources that misled me a bit in the first place. If that makes me a solid secondary source, that suits me fine.
Bobb Goldsteinn, known then as Bobby Goldstein, held a staff songwriting position with Leiber-Stoller for a year, during which he collaborated with Jeff Barry on the two tunes I listed. Though he wrote “Washington Square” while he was in high school, he didn’t turn the tune in to Jerry Leiber because he had learned to be wary of what happened to songs created under contract.
“Washington Square” blends three musical genres: the folk intro, a taste of jazz after a key change, and the Dixieland climax. The Dixieland part was conceived by Joe Sherman, the producer, and Duke Niles, who published the song through Rayven Music, to kowtow to the Rule of Threes. While Bobb Goldsteinn had the first two aspects of the arrangement in mind when he brought the song to be recorded, Sherman and Niles seem to have claimed the whole concept for themselves.
The chart timing of “Washington Square” may have kept it from reaching #1. It climbed to #2 for the week ending November 23, 1963, but after the assassination of President Kennedy, “Dominique” by the Singing Nun shot from #9 to #2 for the week of November 30. The national consciousness was clearly seeking comfort, and it seems to have found it in a religious song by a Catholic nun. Another musical casualty of the murder was the career of Vaughn Meader, whose comedy LP The First Family sold 7.5 million copies before the assassination and about two copies afterwards.
There seems to be some mislaid credit for the recording of “Washington Square.” Joe Sherman used leading studio musicians for the recording, but they did not receive credit. Mr. Goldsteinn recalls two: Bucky Pizzarelli and Doc Goldberg. The group listed in the Whitburn books and mentioned in my February post were assembled by Duke Niles for a tour. Mr. Goldsteinn wanted to call the act the Saints of Bleecker Street, but Village Stompers prevailed. At least part of the touring group had worked as Frank Hubbell and the Hubcaps, and as the Village Stompers they recorded eight albums for Epic. In my original post I said they had recorded “a pair of albums.” That irks me, because I lost control of a fact I knew. Sorry about that.
As successful as “Washington Square” was in the United States, Mr. Goldsteinn is very fond of the people of Japan, who kept the song and its album at #1 for six months, setting a sales record that stood until Michael Jackson’s Thriller surpassed it. When you realize that the Beatles were on their way, and they never overtook “Washington Square” in Japan, you have to take a moment to let that sink in.
In February I read, but did not mention, that there are lyrics to “Washington Square.” Bobb Goldsteinn wrote them after his publisher, seeing how the song was climbing the charts, said that either Bobb or someone else would write a set of lyrics. The Ames brothers recorded the song (Epic 9630) in 1963, but it was after Ed left his brothers to pursue a Broadway career and do such silly things as toss a tomahawk at Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. One problem that arose with the Ames version of the song was that the people at Columbia thought the final verse of the song, which was the climax of the message—just as the Dixieland arrangement was the climax of the instrumental—was “too Communistic.” And so, the Ames Brothers didn’t record the payoff verse, the 45 tanked, and the Ames Brothers were essentially finished. The song lyric didn’t gain any traction, either, thanks to the censorship.
I love it when the people associated with the songs I profile have back stories and connections to other projects. In my February post, I alluded to a few of Mr. Goldsteinn’s other accomplishments, but I didn’t go into them deeply. He shared more details, and they are fascinating, so I’m passing them on.
I said in February that he designed the zipper cover for the Rolling Stones LP Sticky Fingers. It turns out that, while the image wound up there, it was intended as the album cover for a different Warhol project.
Warhol’s film Lonesome Cowboys included (in the main version) a title song composed by Bobb Goldsteinn. Bobby Bloom (later to do significant work with Jeff Barry) sang lead, and Sissy Spacek sang backup. Mr. Goldsteinn describes the tune as a “sound sandwich.” (A song that shares both stylistic and temporal proximity is “MacArthur Park.”) The dance beat of “Lonesome Cowboys” was several years ahead of its time; the Donna Summer version of “MacArthur Park” would be a good example of a tune that played off this template.
Another credit associated with the song is the horn arrangement, which came from the mind of one Meco Menardo. The Pennsylvania-born Domenico Menardo went on to have a couple of hits of his own as Meco, including that Star Wars thingy.
I had read that Craig Braun, who designed the tongue/lips logo for the Rolling Stones, had translated Bobb Goldsteinn’s zippered-jeans idea to the Sticky Fingers cover, complete with working zipper. Mr. Goldsteinn designed the image without a real zipper, knowing what the metal would do to cardboard. Whoever translated it (and it seems not to be Craig Braun) created that record-store nightmare. As for Craig Braun, he won a Grammy for designing the Tommy package for the Who. He has appeared as an actor on ER, Law and Order and The Practice. Look him up; you’ll recognize him.
It’s important also to note Mr. Goldsteinn’s link to the GoldeBriars, the California Sound (“Sunshine Pop”) act he co-produced shortly after leaving “Washington Square” behind. If you don’t know this Minneapolis folk act, you can see the GoldeBriars website and read their history, excellently set down by Arthur Wood in the Folkwax Ezine: Part 1 and Part 2. You can also purchase the ebook memoir of the GoldeBriars by singer Dotti Holmberg, with an introduction by the co-producer of their second and (unreleased) third albums, Bobb Goldsteinn.
Arthur Wood points out that the GoldeBriars put together the sound of a male lead with two female harmony parts before they met John Phillips. If you listen to the 1963 recording at the end of this post, you’ll see the shape the California Sound was taking three years before the first hits for the Mamas & the Papas.
Mr. Goldsteinn knows where that sound had its genesis: in the mind of GoldeBriar singer Curt Boettcher. As Mr. Goldsteinn writes in the introduction to Dotti Holmberg’s book, “As sublime as was Curt’s sense of musical composition, even his loveliest songs dimmed before the radiance of his greatest gift: The ability to arrange music for the pop voice in a way that had never before been heard out of heaven on earth. It is the sound of angels playing around in the air. It is the sound of “Cherish.”
Curt Boettcher’s spectacular production and arrangement work with the Association was complemented by his work for Tommy Roe, who called him “a genius with harmonies.” As if that weren’t enough, Brian Wilson told Bobb Goldsteinn in 1996 that he worshipped Curt’s arrangements for the human voice. Curt Boettcher, who now has a larger following than when he was a star, died in 1987 at age 43.
It’s worth mentioning as well that David Shire, who owns some of the writing credit for “Washington Square” in a peripheral way, has scored a number of films, including The Conversation, directed by his brother-in-law Francis Ford Coppola. Other credits include scores for All the President’s Men and 2010. He was married from 1970 to 1978 to Talia Shire, whose maiden name is Coppola. She played Yo, Adrian! in the Rocky films, which have a Philadelphia connection. There’s a Washington Square in Philadelphia, but the one referred to in the song is the Washington Square in Greenwich Village.
And that proves you can go a long way from “Washington Square,” but you always come right back to it.
Bobb Goldsteinn said the following, which sums up my reasons for putting this blog together:
“Thanks for the great job. I know history is written by the winners, but I think those winners have a responsibility to—at least—try to tell the truth.”
I found the lyrics to the song online, but I don’t know which source is original. I changed a couple of words to match up with the Ames Brothers’ recording, but I don’t know if the Brothers followed the sheet music. The final, unrecorded verse is in italics. More commentary and sound links after the lyrics:
WASHINGTON SQUARE
Bobb Goldsteinn and David Shire
From Cape Cod Light to the Mississip, to San Francisco Bay,
They're talking about this famous place, down Greenwich Village way.
They hootenanny all the time with folks from everywhere,
Come Sunday morning, rain or shine, right in Washington Square.
And so I got my banjo out, just sittin', catchin' dust,
And painted right across the case "Greenwich Village or Bust."
My folks were sad to see me go, but I got no meanin' there.
So I said "Goodbye, Kansas, Mo, and hello, Washington Square!"
Near Tennessee, I met a guy who played 12-string guitar.
He also had a mighty voice, not to mention a car.
Each time he hit those bluegrass chords, you sure smelled mountain air.
I said, "Don't waste it on the wind. Come on to Washington Square."
In New Orleans, we saw a gal a-walkin' with no shoes,
And from her throat there comes a growl. She sure was singin' the blues.
She sang for all humanity, this gal with the raven hair.
I said, "It's for the world to hear. C'mon to Washington Square."
We cannonballed into New York on good old US 1,
Till up ahead we saw the arch, a-gleamin' bright in the sun.
As far as all the eye could see, ten thousand folks were there,
And singin' in sweet harmony right in Washington Square.
So how's about a freedom song, or the old Rock Island Line?
Or how's about the Dust-Bowl crop, or men who work in a mine?
The songs and legends of our land is gold we all can share,
So come and join us folks who stand and sing in Washington Square.
Excellent stuff. And now I want to mention a point I made in my February post. I said I always associated “Washington Square” with Depression-era music. It turns out that the final verse mentions Depression issues. I have to wonder how it happened that I felt that connection.
Thanks for joining me on this odyssey into the hidden story of “Washington Square” and Bobb Goldsteinn. I loved going there, and I hope you enjoyed the ride. My thanks to Bobb Goldsteinn for sharing the information and trusting me to paraphrase accurately. I would have been glad to post his letter verbatim for the sake of accuracy.
A note about the music. I am including samples of the two Barry-Goldsteinn compositions, but I can’t bring myself to post “Tell It to the Wind” when it’s so readily available. I did include the Amazon link for a cheap mp3. The Ames Brothers version is not easily found; I got it from a Japanese site, and now you can hear what they did with it.
Snippet of “Tell It to the Wind”
Buy “Tell It to the Wind” at Amazon mp3 for 99 cents
Snippet of “Falling from Paradise” by Bobby Brown (not that Bobby Brown)
Ames Brothers, Washington Square
Friday, April 4, 2008
Lonely Lips Lead to Lyrical Longevity
On Wednesday, I began to chronicle the achievements of songwriter and producer Jeff Barry. Today, we’re still pinned to his recording career, via the B side of “Face from Outer Space,” “Lonely Lips” (RCA 47-7797). As with the A side, the song was co-written by Ben Raleigh and produced by Hugo & Luigi.
If you didn’t read the first part of this mini-bio on Wednesday, we’ll wait for you while you scroll down . . . ah, got it?
So, three-year-old caithiseach received this 45 for a nickel that he didn’t even have to spend, and the result was hours of sonic bliss. Let’s see, at five minutes per two-sided play, times 5000 plays, that would be 25,000 minutes of music, divided by 60, equals 416 hours I spent enjoying these two songs alone. And now that I have a CD of mp3s of about 200 recordings that Jeff Barry either wrote, sang or produced, I could pretty much stop listening to anyone else and still have a decent music collection.
But I won’t do that. Right now, I’m digging around to get as many songs from the 1890s and 2007 as I can. So the collection keeps growing.
“Lonely Lips” has a great piano part, nice guitar work, three key changes in the choruses, and everything else three-year-old caithiseach enjoyed. It would not be until 1970 that I noticed that Jeff Barry was writing many of the other songs I liked, but in the meantime, I was digging a lot of his work without knowing it.
After he produced Neil Diamond’s Bang recordings (you can hear Jeff and Ellie singing on “Solitary Man,” among others), Jeff was asked to take over production for the Monkees. This story will be told in more detail elsewhere, but the basics are that Jeff went to meet the Monkees, and he took a Neil Diamond demo with him. Three Monkees liked it, and one balked at it. They recorded it anyway, and “I’m a Believer,” with Jeff’s signature organ riff, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks in early 1967. So much for that Monkee’s judgment.
A bit later, a kid named Andy Kim wandered into Jeff’s office after taking the train down from Montreal. We’ll look at Andy’s singles in May, as well as some of his writing/production collaborations with Jeff.
Jeff then created his own label, Steed, on which he released several Top 40 hits we’ll also see, in August. After that, he was hired to produce a talented pianist named Peter Allen for A&M, and Jeff told Peter about a lyric he had in his head: “Maybe I hang around here a little more than I should.” Peter started doodling on the piano, they wrote the lyrics and recorded a demo. Artie Wayne says he took it to Olivia, who wanted to record it despite some label execs’ misgivings. The Allen piano part was so perfect they didn’t re-record it. And that’s how we got “I Honestly Love You.” The result was the Grammy for Song of the Year for 1974. Add to that the 1969 RIAA Record of the Year for “Sugar, Sugar,” and you would have to say Jeff has created a superb writing legacy, even if you don’t consider that his overall sales put him in third place all-time.
A mutual friend knew how much I admired Jeff’s work, and when I mentioned wanting an address where I could write to thank him for his art, I got something better: a phone call from Jeff. The next time I was in California, Jeff and I met in May, 2006. I have learned a lot about his career, and from the people with whom he has collaborated, I’ve learned that he is also an exceptionally kind, generous human being. It can be a huge disappointment if you learn that your idol is not so nice behind the scenes, but I have the good fortune to know this talented man and the comfort of knowing he is loved within the music world.
And that’s that for now. Check out “Lonely Lips,” and prepare for a sonic spectacle you have NEVER heard before on Wednesday!
Jeff Barry, Lonely Lips
If you didn’t read the first part of this mini-bio on Wednesday, we’ll wait for you while you scroll down . . . ah, got it?
So, three-year-old caithiseach received this 45 for a nickel that he didn’t even have to spend, and the result was hours of sonic bliss. Let’s see, at five minutes per two-sided play, times 5000 plays, that would be 25,000 minutes of music, divided by 60, equals 416 hours I spent enjoying these two songs alone. And now that I have a CD of mp3s of about 200 recordings that Jeff Barry either wrote, sang or produced, I could pretty much stop listening to anyone else and still have a decent music collection.
But I won’t do that. Right now, I’m digging around to get as many songs from the 1890s and 2007 as I can. So the collection keeps growing.
“Lonely Lips” has a great piano part, nice guitar work, three key changes in the choruses, and everything else three-year-old caithiseach enjoyed. It would not be until 1970 that I noticed that Jeff Barry was writing many of the other songs I liked, but in the meantime, I was digging a lot of his work without knowing it.
After he produced Neil Diamond’s Bang recordings (you can hear Jeff and Ellie singing on “Solitary Man,” among others), Jeff was asked to take over production for the Monkees. This story will be told in more detail elsewhere, but the basics are that Jeff went to meet the Monkees, and he took a Neil Diamond demo with him. Three Monkees liked it, and one balked at it. They recorded it anyway, and “I’m a Believer,” with Jeff’s signature organ riff, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks in early 1967. So much for that Monkee’s judgment.
A bit later, a kid named Andy Kim wandered into Jeff’s office after taking the train down from Montreal. We’ll look at Andy’s singles in May, as well as some of his writing/production collaborations with Jeff.
Jeff then created his own label, Steed, on which he released several Top 40 hits we’ll also see, in August. After that, he was hired to produce a talented pianist named Peter Allen for A&M, and Jeff told Peter about a lyric he had in his head: “Maybe I hang around here a little more than I should.” Peter started doodling on the piano, they wrote the lyrics and recorded a demo. Artie Wayne says he took it to Olivia, who wanted to record it despite some label execs’ misgivings. The Allen piano part was so perfect they didn’t re-record it. And that’s how we got “I Honestly Love You.” The result was the Grammy for Song of the Year for 1974. Add to that the 1969 RIAA Record of the Year for “Sugar, Sugar,” and you would have to say Jeff has created a superb writing legacy, even if you don’t consider that his overall sales put him in third place all-time.
A mutual friend knew how much I admired Jeff’s work, and when I mentioned wanting an address where I could write to thank him for his art, I got something better: a phone call from Jeff. The next time I was in California, Jeff and I met in May, 2006. I have learned a lot about his career, and from the people with whom he has collaborated, I’ve learned that he is also an exceptionally kind, generous human being. It can be a huge disappointment if you learn that your idol is not so nice behind the scenes, but I have the good fortune to know this talented man and the comfort of knowing he is loved within the music world.
And that’s that for now. Check out “Lonely Lips,” and prepare for a sonic spectacle you have NEVER heard before on Wednesday!
Jeff Barry, Lonely Lips
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Sci-Fi Invades caithiseach’s Life!
I might have saved this song for the last post of 2008, the way Casey Kasem used to count ’em down to Number One, but tomorrow is the singer’s 70th birthday, so today is the proper time to write about my lifelong relationship with the music of Jeff Barry.
Early on in my Uncle Tom’s provision of 45s, he gave me a couple of RCA singles that I enjoyed. All four sides got a lot of play from the beginning. I’ll talk about one of the records in September, but today I’m bringing you “The Face from Outer Space” by Jeff Barry (RCA 47-7797).
A surprising number of my 45s were not recent cutouts when Uncle Tom bought them for me. My Danny Kellarney 45 came from 1957, for example. I don’t know what path these records took from their label’s warehouse to the Big Top department store, where my uncle bought them, but some of them sat somewhere for up to six years, unbought and unplayed.
My copy of “Face from Outer Space,” which survived the Great Meltdown and somehow avoided being Ground to Dust despite thousands of plays, came at the same time as the other RCA single. That makes me think an RCA warehouse got a spring cleaning in 1963, and a couple of 45s from 1960 or so went into a truck for distribution at a very low price. Even with gas prices hovering around thirty cents a gallon, how could anyone make money off the sale of a 45 for a nickel? I’m glad RCA didn’t just recycle the vinyl, of course.
I always liked the concept of space travel, of aliens, of science fiction. My first concrete sci-fi experience was “The Face from Outer Space.” Though Jeff now says he doesn’t know what he was thinking when he wrote that song, three-year-old caithiseach loved it. No 45 I owned topped these two sides for plays or long-term appeal, up to the very end of the 45 era.
When Jeff was signed to his songwriting and recording contract, he was paired with a songwriting legend, Ben Raleigh. Raleigh (1913-1997) wrote such disparate works as “Midnight Mary” with Artie Wayne for Joey Powers, “She’s a Fool” with Mark Barkan for Lesley Gore, and “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” with David Mook for . . . Scooby Doo. Raleigh died in a terrible accident in his kitchen at the age of 83; he was cooking, and his robe caught fire.
While Jeff’s first chart hit was “Teenage Sonata,” which Sam Cooke took to #50 in 1960, Jeff and Ben Raleigh both got credit for Jeff’s first Top 40 hit, “Tell Laura I Love Her.” Jeff originally had the song’s protagonist die after being gored by a bull, and it was Ben Raleigh who said a car wreck would be more universal. The idea worked, as Ray Peterson’s version of the song reached #7 in 1960 in the United States, and Ricky Valance’s version spent three weeks at #1 in the United Kingdom.
“The Face from Outer Space” exists in a demo version that tells a longer story, and I’m sure the released version was cut down for radio. The RCA production/songwriting team of cousins Hugo (Peretti) & Luigi (Creatore) were in charge of this recording. Hugo & Luigi produced Perry Como, Sam Cooke, some guy named Elvis, “I Will Follow Him” for Little Peggy March, and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” for the Tokens.
Jeff’s writing career took off more than his singing career (and don’t let the vocals on this week’s songs fool you; he has a very versatile voice). He met up with a young songwriter named Ellie Greenwich, and they started writing with a guy named Phil Spector. The result was “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Baby I Love You” and “Be My Baby,” among others.
Then Jeff and Ellie were off to work with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller at Red Bird Records. Jeff and Ellie took a tune they had given to Phil Spector, “Chapel of Love,” and helped Leiber and Stoller turn it into the classic Dixie Cups version. Jeff’s production of “Iko Iko” for the Dixie Cups was stunningly ahead of its time, yet it managed to reach #20 in 1965.
In 1964, the year of the British Invasion, guess whose compositions still managed to chart six weeks at #1 via three different artists? Jeff and Ellie’s. Apart from the Beatles and the Supremes, no one else topped the Hot 100 more than once that year. “Chapel of Love,” “Leader of the Pack” and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” did it for them.
As part of their writing gig at 1650 Broadway (where many big names worked, near the Brill Building), Ellie brought to Jeff a young singer/songwriter named Neil Diamond. Jeff and Ellie produced the recordings Diamond made for Bang records. Jeff was also involved in the Van Morrison sessions for Bang, which were produced by the label’s owner, Bert Berns. When you listen to “Brown Eyed Girl,” at the end you hear another voice come in with the sha-la-la part. That’s because Bert Berns realized they needed one more “sha-la-la” after Van Morrison had already flown back to Ireland. So Jeff Barry put some grit in his voice and sang it.
There is a lot more to tell you about Jeff Barry’s accomplishments, as is fitting for the third most successful American pop songwriter of the pop era (behind Carole King and Lionel Richie). So I’ll give you more on Saturday, and in May, and in August. And there are tidbits I could give you here, but won’t, because they belong in a book rather than in a blog.
So, enjoy the two versions of “Face from Outer Space,” and be sure to wish Jeff Barry a happy birthday tomorrow. Look for the other tune on Saturday. See you on the flip side!
Jeff Barry, Face from Outer Space
Jeff Barry, Face from Outer Space demo
Early on in my Uncle Tom’s provision of 45s, he gave me a couple of RCA singles that I enjoyed. All four sides got a lot of play from the beginning. I’ll talk about one of the records in September, but today I’m bringing you “The Face from Outer Space” by Jeff Barry (RCA 47-7797).
A surprising number of my 45s were not recent cutouts when Uncle Tom bought them for me. My Danny Kellarney 45 came from 1957, for example. I don’t know what path these records took from their label’s warehouse to the Big Top department store, where my uncle bought them, but some of them sat somewhere for up to six years, unbought and unplayed.
My copy of “Face from Outer Space,” which survived the Great Meltdown and somehow avoided being Ground to Dust despite thousands of plays, came at the same time as the other RCA single. That makes me think an RCA warehouse got a spring cleaning in 1963, and a couple of 45s from 1960 or so went into a truck for distribution at a very low price. Even with gas prices hovering around thirty cents a gallon, how could anyone make money off the sale of a 45 for a nickel? I’m glad RCA didn’t just recycle the vinyl, of course.
I always liked the concept of space travel, of aliens, of science fiction. My first concrete sci-fi experience was “The Face from Outer Space.” Though Jeff now says he doesn’t know what he was thinking when he wrote that song, three-year-old caithiseach loved it. No 45 I owned topped these two sides for plays or long-term appeal, up to the very end of the 45 era.
When Jeff was signed to his songwriting and recording contract, he was paired with a songwriting legend, Ben Raleigh. Raleigh (1913-1997) wrote such disparate works as “Midnight Mary” with Artie Wayne for Joey Powers, “She’s a Fool” with Mark Barkan for Lesley Gore, and “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” with David Mook for . . . Scooby Doo. Raleigh died in a terrible accident in his kitchen at the age of 83; he was cooking, and his robe caught fire.
While Jeff’s first chart hit was “Teenage Sonata,” which Sam Cooke took to #50 in 1960, Jeff and Ben Raleigh both got credit for Jeff’s first Top 40 hit, “Tell Laura I Love Her.” Jeff originally had the song’s protagonist die after being gored by a bull, and it was Ben Raleigh who said a car wreck would be more universal. The idea worked, as Ray Peterson’s version of the song reached #7 in 1960 in the United States, and Ricky Valance’s version spent three weeks at #1 in the United Kingdom.
“The Face from Outer Space” exists in a demo version that tells a longer story, and I’m sure the released version was cut down for radio. The RCA production/songwriting team of cousins Hugo (Peretti) & Luigi (Creatore) were in charge of this recording. Hugo & Luigi produced Perry Como, Sam Cooke, some guy named Elvis, “I Will Follow Him” for Little Peggy March, and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” for the Tokens.
Jeff’s writing career took off more than his singing career (and don’t let the vocals on this week’s songs fool you; he has a very versatile voice). He met up with a young songwriter named Ellie Greenwich, and they started writing with a guy named Phil Spector. The result was “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Baby I Love You” and “Be My Baby,” among others.
Then Jeff and Ellie were off to work with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller at Red Bird Records. Jeff and Ellie took a tune they had given to Phil Spector, “Chapel of Love,” and helped Leiber and Stoller turn it into the classic Dixie Cups version. Jeff’s production of “Iko Iko” for the Dixie Cups was stunningly ahead of its time, yet it managed to reach #20 in 1965.
In 1964, the year of the British Invasion, guess whose compositions still managed to chart six weeks at #1 via three different artists? Jeff and Ellie’s. Apart from the Beatles and the Supremes, no one else topped the Hot 100 more than once that year. “Chapel of Love,” “Leader of the Pack” and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” did it for them.
As part of their writing gig at 1650 Broadway (where many big names worked, near the Brill Building), Ellie brought to Jeff a young singer/songwriter named Neil Diamond. Jeff and Ellie produced the recordings Diamond made for Bang records. Jeff was also involved in the Van Morrison sessions for Bang, which were produced by the label’s owner, Bert Berns. When you listen to “Brown Eyed Girl,” at the end you hear another voice come in with the sha-la-la part. That’s because Bert Berns realized they needed one more “sha-la-la” after Van Morrison had already flown back to Ireland. So Jeff Barry put some grit in his voice and sang it.
There is a lot more to tell you about Jeff Barry’s accomplishments, as is fitting for the third most successful American pop songwriter of the pop era (behind Carole King and Lionel Richie). So I’ll give you more on Saturday, and in May, and in August. And there are tidbits I could give you here, but won’t, because they belong in a book rather than in a blog.
So, enjoy the two versions of “Face from Outer Space,” and be sure to wish Jeff Barry a happy birthday tomorrow. Look for the other tune on Saturday. See you on the flip side!
Jeff Barry, Face from Outer Space
Jeff Barry, Face from Outer Space demo
Friday, March 28, 2008
No Pain, No Gain
I’ve mentioned before that few of my 45s were double-sided caithiseach hits when I was little. Among the artists I’ve profiled so far, only the Highwaymen single and the Marlin Greene single got equal A/B play in my world. Today’s 45 is a third: I flipped “La Dee Dah (Ha Ha Ha)” by Jerry Jackson and found “You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me” attractive as well.
My modus operandi when I feature both sides of a single on the blog has been to focus on the artist’s history on Wednesday and some other aspect of the 45 on Saturday. I’ve told you what I know about Jerry Jackson, one of the best singers to cross my platter when I was little. And now I get to discuss a couple of his songwriters.
Michael (Mickey) Gentile co-wrote “You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me.” He wrote tunes recorded by Barbara McNair and Marvin Gaye, including “I Wish I Liked You (As Much As I Love You).” He was a frequent collaborator with songwriter Jennie Lee Lambert, who recorded “First Summer of Our Love”/“Hey Mr. Scientist” for the Musicor label in 1961.
Mickey Gentile is credited vaguely with production work for Motown, but short of buying a bunch of CDs just to see the notes, I’m afraid I’m not coming up with much concrete information. There is, however, a Mickey Gentile connection about whom I know a bit more.
Gentile and Lambert co-wrote “Hey Mr. Scientist,” and one singer who covered it was a guy named Jeff Barry. Later, Jeff Barry co-wrote “You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me” with Mickey Gentile.
Now, depending on your depth of musical knowledge, either a billion bells are sounding, or you’re shrugging your shoulders. The rest of this post, and the next two, are for the shoulder-shruggers, but if you think you know Jeff Barry, I can still educate all but one or two of you, and you know who you are.
When I was first playing this Jerry Jackson recording, I couldn’t read the label. I depended on visual memory of each label to know which record I was playing. My parents gave me the name of the artist and the title of the song, and then, from age two on, I pulled the records I wanted to play from the stack almost without error. (I did make two serious mis-associations, but I’ll discuss them in September.)
Three-year-old caithiseach knew the artist and the title of his 45s, but he never asked what the names in parentheses (the songwriters) meant. I figured out their significance as soon as I learned that my uncle’s name was in the parentheses of one 45 I owned, but I left the rest of the little names alone until I could read them myself.
Once I did see that (Barry-Gentile) had written “You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me,” I didn’t connect it with Jeff Barry, who sang next week’s songs. But now, I know this song to be a somewhat early effort from the man who turned out to be the third-most-successful American pop songwriter of the rock era, behind Carole King and Lionel Richie.
Jeff Barry was born April 3, 1938 in Brooklyn. Signed to RCA records in 1958, he had little success as a recording artist for RCA, but he placed some compositions with hitmakers, including “Teenage Sonata” with Sam Cooke (#50, 1960) and “Tell Laura I Love Her” with Ray Peterson (#7, 1960).
While I adored the Jeff Barry songs I’ll feature next week, I also loved a few tunes I didn’t own on 45 but heard on the radio: “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You,” “Leader of the Pack” and “Chapel of Love.” They, along with “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” by the Beatles (yes, I DO know the real title now) and “Downtown” by Petula Clark, made up the soundtrack of my life between birth and kindergarten.
And, apart from “Downtown” and “She Loves You,” they were all written by Jeff Barry. I just didn’t know it.
Now you know it, too, and so I ask you to give this song a listen. There is so much more to say about Jeff as his 70th birthday approaches that his career, like Gaul, must be divided into three parts. See you Wednesday and Saturday with more details of Jeff’s career.
Jerry Jackson, You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me
My modus operandi when I feature both sides of a single on the blog has been to focus on the artist’s history on Wednesday and some other aspect of the 45 on Saturday. I’ve told you what I know about Jerry Jackson, one of the best singers to cross my platter when I was little. And now I get to discuss a couple of his songwriters.
Michael (Mickey) Gentile co-wrote “You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me.” He wrote tunes recorded by Barbara McNair and Marvin Gaye, including “I Wish I Liked You (As Much As I Love You).” He was a frequent collaborator with songwriter Jennie Lee Lambert, who recorded “First Summer of Our Love”/“Hey Mr. Scientist” for the Musicor label in 1961.
Mickey Gentile is credited vaguely with production work for Motown, but short of buying a bunch of CDs just to see the notes, I’m afraid I’m not coming up with much concrete information. There is, however, a Mickey Gentile connection about whom I know a bit more.
Gentile and Lambert co-wrote “Hey Mr. Scientist,” and one singer who covered it was a guy named Jeff Barry. Later, Jeff Barry co-wrote “You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me” with Mickey Gentile.
Now, depending on your depth of musical knowledge, either a billion bells are sounding, or you’re shrugging your shoulders. The rest of this post, and the next two, are for the shoulder-shruggers, but if you think you know Jeff Barry, I can still educate all but one or two of you, and you know who you are.
When I was first playing this Jerry Jackson recording, I couldn’t read the label. I depended on visual memory of each label to know which record I was playing. My parents gave me the name of the artist and the title of the song, and then, from age two on, I pulled the records I wanted to play from the stack almost without error. (I did make two serious mis-associations, but I’ll discuss them in September.)
Three-year-old caithiseach knew the artist and the title of his 45s, but he never asked what the names in parentheses (the songwriters) meant. I figured out their significance as soon as I learned that my uncle’s name was in the parentheses of one 45 I owned, but I left the rest of the little names alone until I could read them myself.
Once I did see that (Barry-Gentile) had written “You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me,” I didn’t connect it with Jeff Barry, who sang next week’s songs. But now, I know this song to be a somewhat early effort from the man who turned out to be the third-most-successful American pop songwriter of the rock era, behind Carole King and Lionel Richie.
Jeff Barry was born April 3, 1938 in Brooklyn. Signed to RCA records in 1958, he had little success as a recording artist for RCA, but he placed some compositions with hitmakers, including “Teenage Sonata” with Sam Cooke (#50, 1960) and “Tell Laura I Love Her” with Ray Peterson (#7, 1960).
While I adored the Jeff Barry songs I’ll feature next week, I also loved a few tunes I didn’t own on 45 but heard on the radio: “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You,” “Leader of the Pack” and “Chapel of Love.” They, along with “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” by the Beatles (yes, I DO know the real title now) and “Downtown” by Petula Clark, made up the soundtrack of my life between birth and kindergarten.
And, apart from “Downtown” and “She Loves You,” they were all written by Jeff Barry. I just didn’t know it.
Now you know it, too, and so I ask you to give this song a listen. There is so much more to say about Jeff as his 70th birthday approaches that his career, like Gaul, must be divided into three parts. See you Wednesday and Saturday with more details of Jeff’s career.
Jerry Jackson, You Don’t Wanna Hurt Me
Friday, February 8, 2008
There's Room for Everyone
Note: This is my second post of the day. The primary post follows this one.
The first music blog I ever read regularly was Echoes in the Wind, to which I was introduced by its creator, whiteray, after we met at a book club gathering. In my online searches for particular songs, I had previously bumped into music blogs, but they were all two-sentence posts with a song link attached.
Whiteray’s blog was different. He shared his personal feelings about songs and memories of when he heard them and how he acquired his recordings. caithiseach dug his style and became a daily reader. Eventually, inspiration struck me, and caithiseach became a music blogger as well.
The premise of my blog, as many of you know, is to share roughly 110 singles I have owned since the early 1960s in 104 posts, each Wednesday and Saturday in 2008. When I was doing what would pass for a feasibility study of the concept, I laid out a table and slotted the songs on my 45s into it. Once I got the song order to where I liked it (a matter of a couple of hours; I don’t know how it can take an artist two months to sequence twelve songs on an album. Good golly.), I decided to write a couple of trial posts, to see if my voice suited the medium.
After I wrote those trial posts, I realized that what I was writing was free of time constraints, a music history that could have been told at any point in the past 35 years. It is also, in a sense, a childhood memoir. It deals with loss, both of perfectly good 45s and of people who gave me that music. Since it is a 104-chapter life story, I want to make it robust and compelling.
To make it robust, I scour the internet for data on the artists, producers, songwriters and label owners who made up the pipeline that got the vinyl to my box of 45s. To make it compelling, all I can do is pray that my internal editor kicks in before I get too wordy, maudlin or flat-out boring.
Since I can write these posts in advance, I do write them in advance. First of all, the stories have been in my head for so long that they pour out in a matter of minutes. Second, it behooves me to write in advance, because each post takes close to three hours to write, by the time I finish my research.
caithiseach, like whiteray, is usually a deadline-driven writer. How I have been able to write this blog ahead of deadline is a question worth pondering. I’ve done it before; I wrote a 400-page novel from March to July of 2007 with no deadline. But the best college paper I ever wrote got written from 2am to 4am on its due date. It’s possible that some texts just want to come out so much that they allow themselves to be typed long before they’re due.
In contrast to the Great Meltdown posts, the posts for my Spanish version of the blog, La Gran Fusión, get written under deadline pressure. And thus it was that last Wednesday, January 30, I was so dizzy from sinus pressure on my inner ear that I didn’t write the Spanish version on time. It took me so long to feel well that I just combined the Wednesday and Saturday Spanish posts. As with most blogs, there was no economic downside to taking a day off, so I did what I needed to do.
Right now, I am glad I’ve written my posts through April 2, because I am working on a 24-HOUR scholarly presentation on the history of American music-chart hits for my school. I am also coordinating the National Spanish Contest interviews for the state of Minnesota. And my boss asked me this week to come up with a plan for a one-week summer Spanish camp for THIS summer.
I would surely be skipping posts now were it not for the ones I already have in the can.
I don’t think my approach is less valid for having prepared for lean time-times. Every word I write is written in the moment, just not this moment. When I wrote a lot of posts over Christmas break, it felt like February, then March, as I wrote. Mel Torme wrote “The Christmas Song” in July. I have no qualms about my pragmatism regarding this blog-to-memoir I am writing.
But whiteray takes a much more daring and exciting approach to music blogging: he lets his music collection tell him what to write the morning of a post. He has to improvise, associate songs and memories, and make it all work in a matter of minutes.
When you consider that his prose comes out at least as clean as mine, and more evocative on a daily basis, you know you’re witnessing superb writing when you read his blog. If he doesn’t need three hours to research his posts, it’s because he has so much more music history stored in his brain than I have available to me on Wikipedia. It’s no wonder that he won an Any Major Dude award this year.
With this on-the-edge approach to blogging, which in whiteray’s case produces professional-quality work, unexpected glitches can mess up a blog’s rhythm. It’s to his credit that his readers would be so hungry for his posts, and he so much a part of their reading routine, that they would gripe when illness or just plain busy-ness keep him from posting.
One thing you can’t do, though, is look to me as an example of consistency against which any other blogger should be compared. As I said, I already blew one Spanish blog deadline because of overstuffed sinuses. That’s the blog I write on the edge. If I ever do a more random blog of any type, I assure you that I will turn up missing from time to time. It’s the nature of the game, and within that game’s parameters, I know of no one as consistent as whiteray, both for quantity and quality.
While I’m at it, I want to thank the people who show up on my counter all the time: Pittsburgh, Toronto, Minneapolis, Adelaide, Sydney, Winnipeg, Poughkeepsie, St. Paul, Calgary, London, Denver, Aliso Viejo, Los Angeles, Lake Mary, Washington, Halethorpe, Green Bay, Heerhugowaard, Edinburgh, Lexington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and all the rest of the regulars. Seeing that you are still with me makes me glad I started the blog and keeps me writing and posting. I’m grateful, and I hope you’ll say hello sometime.
Since every post deserves a song, here’s one that seems appropriate for the theme of the blog. It’s obscure, well-loved by caithiseach and worth sharing. It’s a tune recorded in 1969 by Ronnie Dante and Jeff Barry. Just update the population numbers as you listen. The rest remains the same.
Thanks for reading this hot-off-the-press editorial. See you Wednesday!
Archies, A Summer Prayer for Peace
The first music blog I ever read regularly was Echoes in the Wind, to which I was introduced by its creator, whiteray, after we met at a book club gathering. In my online searches for particular songs, I had previously bumped into music blogs, but they were all two-sentence posts with a song link attached.
Whiteray’s blog was different. He shared his personal feelings about songs and memories of when he heard them and how he acquired his recordings. caithiseach dug his style and became a daily reader. Eventually, inspiration struck me, and caithiseach became a music blogger as well.
The premise of my blog, as many of you know, is to share roughly 110 singles I have owned since the early 1960s in 104 posts, each Wednesday and Saturday in 2008. When I was doing what would pass for a feasibility study of the concept, I laid out a table and slotted the songs on my 45s into it. Once I got the song order to where I liked it (a matter of a couple of hours; I don’t know how it can take an artist two months to sequence twelve songs on an album. Good golly.), I decided to write a couple of trial posts, to see if my voice suited the medium.
After I wrote those trial posts, I realized that what I was writing was free of time constraints, a music history that could have been told at any point in the past 35 years. It is also, in a sense, a childhood memoir. It deals with loss, both of perfectly good 45s and of people who gave me that music. Since it is a 104-chapter life story, I want to make it robust and compelling.
To make it robust, I scour the internet for data on the artists, producers, songwriters and label owners who made up the pipeline that got the vinyl to my box of 45s. To make it compelling, all I can do is pray that my internal editor kicks in before I get too wordy, maudlin or flat-out boring.
Since I can write these posts in advance, I do write them in advance. First of all, the stories have been in my head for so long that they pour out in a matter of minutes. Second, it behooves me to write in advance, because each post takes close to three hours to write, by the time I finish my research.
caithiseach, like whiteray, is usually a deadline-driven writer. How I have been able to write this blog ahead of deadline is a question worth pondering. I’ve done it before; I wrote a 400-page novel from March to July of 2007 with no deadline. But the best college paper I ever wrote got written from 2am to 4am on its due date. It’s possible that some texts just want to come out so much that they allow themselves to be typed long before they’re due.
In contrast to the Great Meltdown posts, the posts for my Spanish version of the blog, La Gran Fusión, get written under deadline pressure. And thus it was that last Wednesday, January 30, I was so dizzy from sinus pressure on my inner ear that I didn’t write the Spanish version on time. It took me so long to feel well that I just combined the Wednesday and Saturday Spanish posts. As with most blogs, there was no economic downside to taking a day off, so I did what I needed to do.
Right now, I am glad I’ve written my posts through April 2, because I am working on a 24-HOUR scholarly presentation on the history of American music-chart hits for my school. I am also coordinating the National Spanish Contest interviews for the state of Minnesota. And my boss asked me this week to come up with a plan for a one-week summer Spanish camp for THIS summer.
I would surely be skipping posts now were it not for the ones I already have in the can.
I don’t think my approach is less valid for having prepared for lean time-times. Every word I write is written in the moment, just not this moment. When I wrote a lot of posts over Christmas break, it felt like February, then March, as I wrote. Mel Torme wrote “The Christmas Song” in July. I have no qualms about my pragmatism regarding this blog-to-memoir I am writing.
But whiteray takes a much more daring and exciting approach to music blogging: he lets his music collection tell him what to write the morning of a post. He has to improvise, associate songs and memories, and make it all work in a matter of minutes.
When you consider that his prose comes out at least as clean as mine, and more evocative on a daily basis, you know you’re witnessing superb writing when you read his blog. If he doesn’t need three hours to research his posts, it’s because he has so much more music history stored in his brain than I have available to me on Wikipedia. It’s no wonder that he won an Any Major Dude award this year.
With this on-the-edge approach to blogging, which in whiteray’s case produces professional-quality work, unexpected glitches can mess up a blog’s rhythm. It’s to his credit that his readers would be so hungry for his posts, and he so much a part of their reading routine, that they would gripe when illness or just plain busy-ness keep him from posting.
One thing you can’t do, though, is look to me as an example of consistency against which any other blogger should be compared. As I said, I already blew one Spanish blog deadline because of overstuffed sinuses. That’s the blog I write on the edge. If I ever do a more random blog of any type, I assure you that I will turn up missing from time to time. It’s the nature of the game, and within that game’s parameters, I know of no one as consistent as whiteray, both for quantity and quality.
While I’m at it, I want to thank the people who show up on my counter all the time: Pittsburgh, Toronto, Minneapolis, Adelaide, Sydney, Winnipeg, Poughkeepsie, St. Paul, Calgary, London, Denver, Aliso Viejo, Los Angeles, Lake Mary, Washington, Halethorpe, Green Bay, Heerhugowaard, Edinburgh, Lexington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and all the rest of the regulars. Seeing that you are still with me makes me glad I started the blog and keeps me writing and posting. I’m grateful, and I hope you’ll say hello sometime.
Since every post deserves a song, here’s one that seems appropriate for the theme of the blog. It’s obscure, well-loved by caithiseach and worth sharing. It’s a tune recorded in 1969 by Ronnie Dante and Jeff Barry. Just update the population numbers as you listen. The rest remains the same.
Thanks for reading this hot-off-the-press editorial. See you Wednesday!
Archies, A Summer Prayer for Peace
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