vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 31, 2015 0:58:16 GMT 1
The HotshotsThe Royal Guardsmen had already had a top 10 in Britain with their original version a few years before, but for some reason, in 1973, someone decided to do a ska cover version, and scored an unexpected top five. Who were The Hotshots? Well, there are two answers. 1. The Hotshots emerged out of Wild Country, whose lineup is on the youtube link; by the time they became The Hotshots only Keyworth and Balkwel remained, joined by John Jones and Malk Player and Danny Balkwel. You can see pics of them advertising the single on release. They morphed into Albatross, and in a nice avian twist signed to Gull Records. But you may think it somewhat odd that the Wild Country single sounds much more like Jefferson Airplane than ska. What prompted the radical change of direction? Let's turn to the other Hotshots. 2. The Hotshots were Clive Crawley on vox and Tony King on keyboards, with Alan Kanter on bass, Kelvin Purcell on drums and Pete Dye on guitar. They appeared on Top Of The Pops to promote the single. So not the act on the promotional photos. They morphed into The Hi-Shots and recorded a single with Cliff Bennett on vox - Crawley was a producer rather than a full-time singer. So, which one was on the single? Actually, neither. The recording of "Snoopy" was done by a Jamaican ska group called The Cimarons, who had been session men in Jamaica, and had come to London in 1967; by 1973 they still did not have a permanent vocalist, so producer Clive Crawley provided the vocals. Lightning couldn't strike twice. The same trick was tried with a pretty woeful version of Chris Andrews' " Yesterday Man", the original of which I commend to you. The Cimarons, having come to London, recruited Winston Reedy as vocalist and turned a number of LPs out under their own name, their debut is on youtube here. For chart posterity, in 1973 they were Franklyn Dunn (bass), Carl Levy (keyboards), Locksley Gichie (guitar), and Maurice Ellis (drums). So, there you go. A band on TOTP pretending to be another band which was pretending to be another band. And none of them really sounded like the hit...
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Post by Mic1812 on Feb 19, 2015 20:21:30 GMT 1
Going back on the radio 1 dj's. Im sure that Richard Easter was also responsible for a very minor hit by Bill called Car Boot Sale.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 17, 2015 23:14:02 GMT 1
Cry Sisco!
In the late eighties house boom, there was a seeming scattergun approach from labels and producers to try to score a hit; all sorts of one-offs made the upper chart reaches, such as Jack & Chill and LA Mix, and others were not so lucky. One of those that just missed out on the top 40 was Cry Sisco!, who had Jesus & Mary Chain and Living In A Box between them and a guaranteed Radio 1 slot.
The credits to the 45 would not have given you much of a clue who was behind it; the producers were listed as Chris Birkett, who had had a desultory career as a solo artist but had made his name as a studio boffin who had learned his trade under Tony Visconti, and Uno Hoo, who you wouldn't know who, unless you knew who.
Because the chap behind Uno Hoo had not had a hit single for a decade and a half - and his previous hits sounded extremely different. As different as Two Men A Drum Machine And A Trumpet sounded from the guitar section of The Beat.
As Cry Sisco! was actually a chap called Barry Green. Again, you probably wouldn't kno hoo, unless you changed the colour from green to Blue. Yes, it was the "Dancing On A Saturday Night" chap, making one more stab at the number one slot.
He would in fact come a great deal closer in 1996, as a songwriter for Dina Carroll; his co-written song "Escaping", which I don't remember at all, entered the charts at no. 3 that year, and topped the New Zealand listings for Margaret Ulrich. He has written songs for the likes of Pixie Lott so he may yet score a chart-topper. However I feel this was his best work...
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vya
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Post by vya on Jul 18, 2015 23:29:17 GMT 1
Afro-Dizzi-Act is great fun, one of many, many, dancey tracks that made the summer of 89 a great one musically....
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Post by ManicKangaroo on Jul 19, 2015 0:07:34 GMT 1
Agreed, and one I bought
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 17, 2017 20:21:14 GMT 1
Mr Bloe/Cool HeatA huge hit from the era of bubblegum, where groups bubbled out of the quantum chaos of session musicianship with such abandon that Tony Burrows ended up on Top Of The Pops three times on one episode with three different groups. And this was also a throwback to the fifties, in that this was a record done by someone in America that a British impresario had re-recorded to nab a hit record. In a dubble bubblegum bubble, the original track was done by another studio group, Wind, which featured not-yet-Dawn-with Tony Orlando. But a b-side track. The a-side was " Make Believe", a rather excellent brooding indie classic, with overtones of Righteous Brothers crossed with The Rubettes, which made the top 20 in Record World and Cashbox, but only 29 in Billboard. But when He Who Shall Not Be Named had the task of giving it a spin here, he played by accident the b-side. Which gives us the link into this. Stephen James, son of Dick "DJM" James, heard it, tried to get the rights for his dad's company, and failed. So he just re-recorded it. And who better to record it than Elton John? After all, he was signed to DJM, was kicking around a bit, and here was the chance of a quick hit record. Which he had not yet had. So, he tinkled the ivories, with his regular backing crew. Namely Dee Murray (bass), Roger Pope (drums) and Caleb Quaye (guitar). With a chap called Harry Pitch on harmonica. Harry Pitch? The chap who performed the theme tune to Last Of The Summer Wine... There was however a problem with the recording and DJM re-recorded it. With a different pianist. Zack Laurence, who arranged the track. Which annoyingly means this does not go down as an Elton John pseudonym. But it does go down as a Hookfoot pseudonym. Quaye et al decided to stick together after their quick session job and called themselves Hookfoot. Rather than Mr Bloe, which was a back formation from the track title. So this was a sort of hit for Hookfoot. Something they never achieved under their own name. (Incidentally, Pitch did not handle the mouth organ on TOTP - that was a chap with the splendid name of Ian Duck.) So where does Cool Heat come in? Well, once the cover had become a big UK hit (only stopped from topping the charts by the atrocious Mungo Jerry), Forward Records decided to release it in the States. But the name Wind was gone with the, er, wind. Instead they tried the monicker Cool Heat. Forward did score a hit with it, but only technically, staggering to 89 in Billboard and stalling in the nineties elsewhere.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Dec 17, 2017 23:32:04 GMT 1
Jamie HortonI've just put up this song. Gayla Peevey's plea for a hippo. In 1953, as a 10 year old, she had been invited to sing on Oklahoma City Radio, a television producer heard her, and invited her onto a telethon. The studio was called KYTV, which would raise a smile to those who remember Radio Active. Following that she became something of a child star, appearing with the televisual Chuck Wagon Gang around Oklahoma, and parlayed that into appearing on the Hoagy Carmichael show Stateswide. And off the back of that NBC signed her up, and had her perform the hippo novelty, with the Mitch Miller Orchestra. It was something of a success - it made no. 24 in Billboard's listings at Christmas 1953. It was Peevey's only chart hit - under her real name. She released a handful of singles over the next few years, but her non-showbizzy parents moved to San Diego to keep their daughter's feet on the ground. But after she turned 16 she started learning the guitar. And the music bug re-bit. She started writing songs. Her favourite was "My Little Marine", which she sent off as a demo to several labels, and a brand new label (Joy Records) picked it up. One thing they did on release though was to change Peevey's name. As a take-off of Johnny Horton, perhaps? He had just scored a gigantic chart-topper with " The Battle Of New Orleans". But it certainly distanced Peevey from her earlier success. Joy's publicity for her made no mention at all of her life as Gayle Peevey. Also perhaps Joy did not want to distract from their first signings; the Gorman Sisters, who were 13 and 7 at the time. To an extent it was successful, as "My Little Marine" returned her to the charts. Not very high; she only made 84 in the Billboard Hot 100 at the start of 1960, but it made 58 in Cashbox, so perhaps there was some room there for development. Alas for Peevey/Horton, it was a false dawn. Her only other charting single was a cover of Connie Francis' European hit "Robot Man", and then only in the Music Vendor charts; Cashbox bubbled it under and Billboard did not bother at all. So by the end of the year her chart career was all but over. All but, as "They're Playing Our Song" bubbled under in Music Vendor and Cashbox - again nothing from Billboard; airplay problems perhaps? - at the end of 1961. The upshot was that her chart career was over before she had even left her teens. She married in 1963 and soon after graduated from her new hometown's university with a teaching qualification. After teaching for a while she started her own company composing advertising jingles. And she's still alive, well, and composing, although now it is mostly for the church.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 27, 2018 22:22:24 GMT 1
Gerry Granahan
Starts off like Johnny Ray and then becomes a sort of Weird Al take on rock & roll. Granahan had been a DJ with an Elvis soundalike voice that was convincing enough for songwriters to ask him to vocalise their demos for sending to the King - one of which was "Teddy Bear". That parlayed into a deal (under the name Jerry Grant) which flopped hard. And then this self-penned novelty got him a one-off on the Dick Clark Show, and it went top 30.
As luck would have it, Granahan had penned another tune, of which Clark heard a demo, and liked enough to sign Granahan up to his label. For contractual reasons Granahan needed a new name. For some unearthly reason he went with Dicky Doo & The Don'ts...based on overhearing Clark on the telephone talking to his little son Richard.
...and had a second top 30 hit.
The Granahan name outlived the Doo name, which ran out of steam within two years, but Granahan's last serious chart tilt came in 1961, when yet another version of "Unchained Melody" bubbled under.
Granahan though had more of an impact than his brief chart career. President of Dot Records and Paramount Records, the boyfriend of Connie Francis for a while, producer of the likes of The Angels (albeit not their number 1 single) and Jay & The Americans, A&R for United Artists, and the 85 year old Granahan still performs and coaches other singers.
Granahan never troubled the UK charts, but one of his songs did. "Ne Ne Na Na Nu Nu", the second-biggest hit as Dicky Doo & The Don'ts (no. 40 in Billboard in 1959), became Bad Manners' breakthrough success.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Apr 23, 2021 15:25:25 GMT 1
Philly Dog
Who are these falsetto rock-funksters, seemingly being a British take-off of Canned Heat, signed up to Larry Page's Penny Farthing records?
Why, it's none other than those pop parodists The Barron Knights...
Seems to have been an attempt by Page to re-break them, as they hadn't had a hit single since 1968, and had them record non-comedic records to rebuild them as a proper band. Didn't work. After a run of half-a-dozen flops, Page tried the comedy route again, including a record with Luton Town, but they bombed too. Page tried a change of name, with an American flavour, to see if it was the reputation holding them back, but it did not work.
Three years later, Epic put out a medley over two sides of a single, called it "Live In Trouble", and they were back in the top ten...
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 16, 2021 0:05:39 GMT 1
Derek
In Britain, Johnny Cymbal is a one-hit wonder, his semi-novelty " Mr Bass Man" (with Ronnie Bright of The Valentines doing the bass man parts) making the lower reaches of the top 30, and the top 20 in the States, in 1963. Cymbal, born John Blair, was a transplanted Scot, who had a couple more very minor hits as a singer and a few more as a songwriter.
A few years later he demoed a song called "Cinnamon" that Atlantic Records' indie subsidiary Bang (the A in Bang standing for Ahmet Ertegun; the label was the early home of Neil Diamond and Van Morrison stateside, and topped the US charts with The McCoys) thought might be a hit. The problem was the name Johnny Cymbal had been basically tabbed as a one-off novelty. So Johnny just borrowed his brother's first name and went mononymous. The result? The biggest hit of his career, getting to numbers 9, 10, and 11 in Record World, Cashbox, and Billboard respectively.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 30, 2021 10:43:23 GMT 1
Scab Aid
Pretty much my view on superstar assemblage charity records. As retold by Chumbawamba.
Not the first time the Chumbs had done such a thing - their debut album was Pictures Of Starving Children Sell Records.
I f***ing hate Will Smith.
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