Mostly Oblivious Boyfriends

A number of my old 45s contain songs that I, but for some overwhelming aspect of the other side, might have enjoyed hearing regularly. Wynn Stewart’s “Uncle Tom Got Caught,” for example, received so much play that “Wishful Thinking,” a very solid and smooth recording that turned out to be a huge country hit, almost never sat face-up on my turntable. (Incidentally, I bought a violin on Saturday, and the first thing I tried to play on it was the intro to “Wishful Thinking.” I hope this title doesn’t become too tightly associated with my attempt to learn to play a bowed instrument.)

Today’s song fits into the overshadowed category, but for a completely different reason. “Uncle Tom Got Caught” was too much fun; the flip of “Are You Trying to Tell Me Somethin’” by Mitch Torok and the Matches (Inette 105) scared the bejeebers out of four-year-old caithiseach. Even so, I couldn’t help playing it on a regular basis, but its reputation made me decide I didn’t need to hear the other side.

That’s too bad, because, as clichéd as the cheery side sounds now, I don’t know for sure that the theme of clueless-guy-meets-homicidal-girlfriend was overdone by the time this single reached the DJs. If so, it still manages to be a congenial tune, and the narrator is likeable enough to gain my sympathy.

As is often the case with the artists on my cutout 45s, this disc flopped, but Mitchell Torok had a reasonably successful career. Born in Houston, Texas in 1929 and ready to celebrate his 79th birthday on October 28, he picked up a guitar when he was 12 and took a shot at the Country scene. He gave music up to study art after struggling for a while, but his songwriting helped him turn the corner.

In early 1953, while Mitch was still studying, a song he had written (in hopes of selling it to Hank Snow) wound up on the radio. He seems to have heard it there before anyone told him it had been recorded, but that could be apocryphal information. At any rate, it wasn’t Hank Snow, but a relative rookie named Jim Reeves, who recorded “Mexican Joe.” It was Jim’s first chart hit, and it spent nine weeks at #1.

That brought Mitch out of retirement, and he worked out a recording contract with the owner of Reeves’s label, Abbott Records. That man, you may remember from an earlier post on Bobby Lee Trammell, was Fabor Robison. Mitch’s August, 1953 debut on Abbott was another Torok-penned tune called “Caribbean,” and that one went to #1 as well, spending six months on the Country chart. His follow-up, “Hootchy Kootchy Henry from Hawaii,” also climbed into the Country Top Ten in early 1954.

On the pop side, Mitch took “Pledge of Love” to #25, beginning the Top 40 run on April 29, 1957. Ken Copeland, soon to become televangelist Kenneth Copeland, charted the same song on April 20, 1957, and reached #12 with it. However, the song was written by Ramona Redd, a future songwriting partner of Mitchell Torok, and Mitch’s photo appeared on the original sheet music, so who got burned there?

A reworked “Caribbean” hit the Top 40 on August 31, 1959, and it peaked at 27. “Pink Chiffon,” which charted ten days before I was born, stalled at #60. And that was that, chart-wise. Mitch has registered more than 200 titles with BMI, including several he wrote with Ramona Redd, such as “Taco Bell” and “Take a Chance on Me.”

The “Take a Chance on Me” you are most likely to know was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the guys who co-wrote the musical Chess with Tim Rice. They also produced a lovely album of their compositions, as sung by Josefin Nilsson, called Shapes (1993). If I talk about female vocalists next year, she’ll be part of the deal. Benny Andersson was in a 1960s rock band called the Hep Stars, and Björn Ulvaeus led a folk group called the Hootenanny Singers. They recorded with other female vocalists as well.

But the Ramona Redd-Mitchell Torok “Take a Chance on Me” is not that song, and I can’t tell you anything about it. I can, however, tell you that Torok-Redd compositions made their way onto Dean Martin and Glen Campbell records, so they managed to do well for themselves. Mitchell Torok wound up recording as Mitch Torok and the Matches for Inette Records.

Today’s recording has a grumbly spot in it for the first 30 seconds, then it clears up nicely. I’m sorry about that. There is an amazing 4-CD Mitchell Torok compilation on Bear Family Records, Mexican Joe in the Caribbean. That set stops just shy of his time with Inette, which is why you get the scratchy 45.

For Inette, Mitch recorded at least two tunes that Ramona Redd wrote with Norris Green (clever, that), including today’s song. Ramona Redd has nearly 200 BMI songwriting credits, while Norris Green has 7. But whereas 0.52% of Ramona Redd’s songs gave four-year-old caithiseach nightmares, 14.3% of Norris Green’s managed to do that to me. And the song of nightmares, friends, comes Saturday and begins my countdown to Halloween. See you on the flip side!

Mitch Torok, Are You Trying to Tell Me Somethin’

Credibility Gap

After today's song post, please note the comments on the future of this blog. Thanks!

When three-year-old caithiseach was enjoying “Motorcyle” four years prior to his intersection with the trajectory of a hit-and-run Harley, there was another side to the single. There were also several facets to the recording career of the songwriter/lead vocalist of “Motorcycle.” I can without hesitation say that I was listening to this guy regularly years before even you fifty-year-olds picked up on him.

A brief aside: in that aspect, I was setting the tone for later music choices. In early 1978, on some alt radio station, I was introduced to the Cars, and people smirked at me when I brought them up. Ha! And when I trotted off to college, I took along the Blondie album Plastic Letters. No one would listen to it, but once “Heart of Glass” hit the airwaves, I was recognized as a music prophet. So it was with this “Motorcycle” guy, even if the song isn’t up to the caliber of his later material.

Mr. Motorcycle got his start in high school in Queens. There, he sang with a classmate. The two were named “Tom & Jerry” by their label, Big, and they reached #49 in early 1958 with “Hey, Schoolgirl.” Then came several years of very little success. Mr. Motorcycle wrote the song “Red Rubber Ball” under the pseudonym “Paul Kane” and “Motorcycle” under the name “Jerry Landis,” the name he used to record a #97 single, “The Lone Teen Ranger,” in 1963.

Jerry Landis was writing and producing for Amy Records when he discovered Tico and the Triumphs. He took these young people—Mickey Borack, Marty “Tico” Cooper and Gail Lynn—and had them learn some songs he had written. Gail left the act, and Jerry became part of the mix, along with Howie Beck. The group recorded “Motorcycle” with Jerry singing lead, and today’s tune, “I Don’t Believe Them,” features Marty Cooper on vocals.

A couple of years later, Jerry reunited with “Tom,” and they scored a recording contract with Columbia Records. They released a folk album that didn’t do so well, and Jerry went off to England to try his luck there. While he was gone, the producer of the album, Tom Wilson, remixed one of the tracks, adding electric instruments to what had been a folky acoustic piece. The pumped-up version went to #1 on January 1, 1966, and while Jerry muttered about artistic integrity and all that, he probably kept in mind that he had perpetrated “Motorcycle” with the same instruments and an out-of-tune sax to boot. He came home and started cashing royalty checks.

He and “Tom” started on their follow-up album, which included the electrified #1 version of that folk tune. I see that song as a prophetic statement about music in this decade when it says that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls.” The debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M., had been a slow starter, and Sounds of Silence, including “The Sound of Silence,” fared better, but not up to the standard of the later #1 albums.

For a staid record company like Columbia, signing Tom & Jerry under their real last names must have taken some soul-searching. But despite “Tom’s” long last name, Garfunkel, being known as Simon & Garfunkel didn’t hurt the duo as much as being associated with a cartoon cat and mouse might have.

And after his time with Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon went on to score 21 solo Hot 100 hits, including one #1, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and five other Top Ten hits. It’s funny that detailed compilations of his non-Simon & Garfunkel work fail to include “Motorcycle” . . .

I didn’t listen to “I Don’t Believe Them” a lot, because, well, you heard “Motorcycle.” Who needed another Tico and the Triumphs song in the rotation?

All the Tico information you could want is right at this page. I will now post the correct guesses. I should offer a reward to people who were able to pick out Paul Simon’s voice. I didn’t figure it out on my own; I did some reading about twenty years ago that clued me in.

Gee, I just checked my calendar. Monday is Paul Simon’s 67th birthday. Happy birthday, Paul.

Next week, we embark on a strange journey that will take us through the end of the month. First up is the innocuous side of an obscurity you probably have never heard. Then comes the other side, which will set the tone for October. As with some other posts, I have been waiting impatiently for a year for this series to have its turn. See you Wednesday!

Tico and the Triumphs, I Don’t Believe Them

Comments and a request: I want to note that the counter on my blog rolled over the 10,000 mark this week. I got the idea to use a counter from reading my friend whiteray’s blog, and the counter offered me a bit of reassurance that I was not the only person reading my posts (apart from whiteray, whom I pay $10 a month to read it). Reaching 10,000 hits means that I am topping 250 hits per week, or 125 per post. I am well aware that many music blogs receive several hundred more hits per week than mine does, but I always figured my collection of cutout 1960s 45s would attract a smallish niche readership. I would write it for even a handful of appreciative readers, and so I am grateful that I can, via the demographics, identify a satisfying number of regular, if mostly anonymous, readers. I know vaguely where you are, if nothing about who you are, and each time your city pops onto the counter, I thank you silently for coming back.

Now, we are getting to the end of 2008. A year ago, I sketched out 104 posts, which means I have 22 more to present this year. At that point, I will be virtually out of childhood 45s to discuss. I will not, however, be tired of writing about music I know.

So, I have been meditating for several months on what I might do next in this space. The blog title can be valid for whatever I do, since I will be breaking down the songs into their component parts, as I have been doing this year. I think, though, that I should not assume too much about my readership.

I always hope for more feedback about the artists and songs than I get, which is fine, but this time, I need some guidance. If something about three-year-old caithiseach and his box of vinyl intrigued you (even if you couldn’t tear yourself away, as when you witness a train wreck), but you don’t see any reason to read once I ring the curtain down on my old 45s, do let me know. If everyone bails, I’ll retire.

If you would keep reading, because it’s part of your routine or for any other reason, then you get to shape the blog so you’ll be glad you stuck around. In this U.S. election year, you get to vote for yet another thing: my Wednesday and Saturday topics for the start of 2009. I really need to know the blog matters to someone; I figure I’ll keep it going if I get at least ten opinions. Otherwise, I might start thinking that my sister is getting one of her hacker friends to jigger my counter to give me delusions of grandeur.

You can vote by leaving an anonymous comment on this post, but I don’t need the comment total to be prodigious or ostentatious. Therefore, you can also email me a thought at caithiseach at gmail.com. (You know how to put that together as an email address.) Doing it that way will be less anonymous, but I won’t start spamming you, so you’re safe.

Possibilities that my music collection allows (vote for all that you like; I’ll start with the top two, and I’ll switch topics when I run out of material):

1. Instrumentals, their writers and artists. 1950s on, maybe some older stuff.

2. Really old artists, 1890-1954. From Irish tenors to rock’s precursors.

3. Women. I could do a year on the women in my collection alone. I mean my music collection.

4. World music. My journalism has exposed me to some incredible world acts.

5. This day in the 1950s charts. I have the chart book, and there are loads of tidbits to discuss.

I’ll leave it there. Pick something, and I’ll write about it. Pick nothing, and I’ll stop altogether in January. Thanks!

Hit Me, Harley, One More Time

Have you ever been knocked unconscious? I don’t mean a faint from which you awoke, surprised, or a moment when you realized that maybe an hour had zipped by in a second, and you think that maybe you passed out. I mean flying through the air, landing with a clunk, and waking up sort of fuzzy.

Those TV shows where people wake up from being clobbered, and everything is blurry, and they get all squinty until the world becomes clear again, have it right. At least, I think I got all squinty, since the first thing I said was, “Where are my glasses?” Everything certainly was blurry.

No, my pre-Meltdown box of 45s did not fall on my head. I was riding my bicycle on a late spring afternoon, presumably a Saturday, since school was still in session, with my friend Bubby. (The lack of a comma indicates that I had more than one friend.) Bubby’s real name is James, but he went by Bubby when he was seven, and his twin sister was Sissy, and their older sister was Punky. (There were times when I thought it would be cool to have a nickname, but this was not one of them.) Now, I have my online name, caithiseach. That is, by the way, a word in Irish, not a scrambling of English letters.

So, Bubby and I were meandering along Dakota Street, and I am not using “meander” to be picturesque. I was, unfortunately, meandering, but a sixteen-year-old boy named K.A. was not meandering when he approached us on his Harley. No, he was driving straight and a bit fast for the conditions (sunny, dry, kids meandering in road). The accident was my fault, considering that I meandered into the left lane just as he, coming from behind, went into that lane to pass us. But the onus quickly fell upon K.A. when he kept on cruisin’.

I heard a thin “beep beep” that sounded very distant. Then, I woke up with everything blurry. I am glad my brain chose not to recall the actual ten-foot flight. I am glad my skull decided to absorb the impact without turning my brain to jelly. (Everyone who knows me must now stop saying “Are you sure about that?” or “Ah! That explains it!”) Seriously, it doesn’t take a lot to ruin your brain, so I do count my blessings, and I implore all of you to wear helmets when you ride anything.

The young lady who lived across the street from the accident site hopped in her car and chased after K.A., whom she did not know. Her sister came and stood beside Bubby, whereupon they both stared at me until I woke up all squinty. When I tried to get up, I think she told me to lie still. I crawled through the gravel to my glasses, which did not help my vision then.

She called my mom, who freaked appropriately despite her job as an ER nurse in a really rough hospital. I was transported home, where Bubby’s mom began a really rough scrubbing of my multiple road rash sites, including the ones on my head and the huge hole in my left knee that could not be sutured shut.

I had a headache, and my knee hurt, and I was lying on the living-room sofa when a sheriff’s deputy entered the house with a freaked-out K.A., who was told to look at what he had done to that poor scrawny seven-year-old boy. Man, I felt bad for him, being taken off by the cops and all that. I’m glad he was sixteen, because when I met a mutual acquaintance about fourteen years later, I learned that K.A. had experienced a brief difficulty when he was a teen, one that had passed and allowed him to mature without lasting issues. I’m glad.

My two lasting issues from the event involved music. I became rusty in my drumming, because I had to take a couple of weeks off. (Holy cow, I did miss a number of school days. Maybe that concussion was worse than I remember.) My other issue was that I temporarily lost my taste for one of my favorite 45s, “Motorcycle” by Tico and the Triumphs (Amy 835).

Golly, caithiseach finally divulged why he told this story. If the storyteller in me beat my internal editor to a pulp on this one, forgive me.

So, in 1963 I got a cutout 45 that had actually been a Hot 100 hit, achieving #99 for one week on January 6, 1962. (Whoa, when I looked up the details, I learned that my single would be worth $100 if it were in decent shape. Darn box with no dividers and no sleeves.) The song had previously been released on Madison 169 in 1961, and that one is worth $200. Dig through your box of 45s, friends.

I took an immediate liking to “Motorcycle,” because it was an upbeat tune with a peppy a cappella intro (if a cappella can include a motorcycle revving in the background). Apart from the short period of time when hearing the motorcycle engine growl made me wince, other features of the song have come to amuse me. The singer is a titch overenthusiastic about his motorcycle, and the sax solo is played on an out-of-tune contraption that only a vacuum cleaner could love. Even so, there is a charm to this number that would appeal to any three-year-old, especially a non-discriminating cutout-45 gourmet like caithiseach.

Amy Records was not as feeble as it sounds, considering that you probably don’t own any Amy 45s or LPs. It was one of those labels that printed silver ink directly onto the recording medium, rather than spring for the cost of labels. Amy was split off from Bell Records, which we all know from the Partridge Family and the 5th Dimension. Top 40 hits on Amy included “Keep Searchin’” by Del Shannon, “Working in the Coal Mine” by Lee Dorsey, and “Midnight Mary” by Joey Powers, one of my favorite singles that I forgot completely until it showed up on the sound system of a mall store. (There are a number of such songs.)

And the gentleman who waxes too poetic (somewhat stridently) about his motorcycle went on to have a career for the ages. Not as Tico, let me tell you. Many of you know who he is. For the rest of you, give the song a dozen listens or so, and report to me via the comment feature who you think the singer is. Don’t peek on Wikipedia or a search engine. I promise to let you in on the facts for my Saturday post, which will present the flip of the single and a lot more information about the singer of “Motorcycle.”

I have to approve all comments (an anti-spam step I took), so I will approve all wrong guesses, acknowledge correct guesses privately, and publish the right ones on Saturday, when my post goes up. Remember, if you guess wrong now, you’ll have a lot more fun if don’t look up the song and are amazed on Saturday.

I don’t have a pristine recording of the record; my 45 is somewhat gritty, and I have a RealAudio version that is considerably compressed. Take your pick for listening. And no peeking!

Saturday, the revelation and the other song. See you on the flip side!

Tico and the Triumphs, Motorcycle 45

Tico and the Triumphs, Motorcycle RealAudio

Semper Fi

God bless my cousin Jimmy. He is Aunt Eileen's elder son, and he and his brother, Bob, put up with my presence in their bachelor pad for close to two months in the summer of 1970. When the "Overture from Tommy" by the Assembled Multitude started getting airplay on WLS, Jimmy patiently explained to me that, in addition to the overture, Tommy had an underture. Another time, I was reading, and Jim took the book and closed it, then handed it back. Bob protested, but I thought it was a good exercise in always remembering to stay aware of the page you were on, in case you should drop the book or something.

And after I went back home in September, 1970, Jimmy challenged me: I was skinny, so if I would do as many sit-ups and push-ups as I could do, each day for a month, he would give me ten dollars. I was faithful to the task, and after thirty days, I could do 50 push-ups and 100 sit-ups. I showed Jimmy my chart, my dad verified it, and Jimmy paid me. I was, alas, still skinny.

But these memories have not had the enduring effect that an older experience has had on my music listening. One day, four-year-old caithiseach asked Jimmy to read him the title of a 45 Uncle Tom had recently brought over. Jimmy kindly obliged, and I went away thinking that I had a military song to pair with "General of Broken Hearts" by Marlin Greene. This new song's title was "Little Marine."

I already had a song about the Army, and I didn't know a lot about the Marines, so when I dropped the needle on the record, the Marine theme didn't entice me, and the chugging guitar didn't, either. As was always the case with unimpressive songs, this platter went into the Stack of Oblivion, and thereby it avoided becoming a Victim of the Great Vinyl Meltdown of 1972.

The issue I now have with that scenario is that the song's title is not "Little Marine." It's "Little Marie." The single (Chess 1912) was released by a guy named Chuck Berry, and while the song didn't crack the Top 40, it did enter the Hot 100 on October 24, 1964. I figured out the title a number of years ago, but I didn't bother to play the single to see if I liked the song better than I had when I was four.

I played it this summer, when I was digitizing the song for this post. I didn't figure the song would do much for me, though I enjoy Chuck Berry's other songs, many of which follow the same basic pattern (for better or for worse).

Imagine my surprise when "Little Marie" turned out to be a sequel to "Memphis," his 1959 composition that Johnny Rivers took to #2 in 1964. "Little Marie" uses the same melody, subject matter and characters from the story line of "Memphis." The song doesn't seem too contrived, but its release at about the same time that Johnny Rivers was riding high with Part 1 of the story makes it seem that the inspiration was an opportunity to mint some extra money.

Chuck Berry is one of the true icons of rock and roll, with 14 Top 40 hits to his credit between 1955 and 1973, including "Maybellene," "Roll Over Beethoven" (later covered by the Electric Light Orchestra), "Rock & Roll Music" (covered later by the Beach Boys), "Johnny B Goode" (referred to in Rick Nelson's "Garden Party"), "Back in the U.S.A." (covered by Linda Ronstadt and the obvious basis for a semi-parody by the Beatles, "Back in the U.S.S.R.") and "No Particular Place to Go." I won't bother to mention that Chuck's only #1 hit came in 1972 and was called "My Ding-A-Ling." No, I didn't mention that, and you can't prove that I did.

It also turned out that "Surfin' USA" by the Beach Boys was patterned so closely after Chuck's "Sweet Little Sixteen" that he is now credited as the writer of the Beach Boys classic.

Chuck Berry was born on October 18, 1926, which means he was 28 when his first Top 40 hit entered the charts. That makes him a late bloomer, but he is still going strong as he approaches his 82nd birthday. (I would have held this post until later in the month to acknowledge his birthday, but I have a series of related posts scheduled for that time frame.)

Chuck won the Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1984 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. He has created a whole lot of enjoyable music, and if I had known he was singing about a little girl, rather than some Marine, I might have given today's song more attention.

Here's a glimpse of Chuck's live performance style. No one is like him. In the middle of the song, he does his famous duck walk, which I see as a misnomer, since he does not resemble a duck.

I'm away from my home computer, and I can't remember what I have planned for Wednesday. Thus, no teaser. Just a request that you stop by to visit on Wednesday!

Chuck Berry, Little Marie