Month: December 2021

1971 Chairmen of the Board – Pay To The Piper 

General Johnson was singing in his church choir at the age of six. When he was age twelve, he recorded songs with a group named the Humdingers. The group evolved over the next decade and changed their name to the Showmen.

In 1961, the group released It Will Stand with General singing lead. The record reached #61 on the Hot 100 when it was first released.

They reissued the record in 1965, and the single reached #80. They also recorded 39-21-46 Shape. The songs both hung around long enough to become core records for the Carolina Beach Music genre.

General left the group to pursue a solo career, but failed to make much progress. The Motown record producers Holland, Dozier, and Holland left Motown in 1967 to form their own record label. They encouraged General to form a group with three other singers, and the result was The Chairmen of the Board. General once again was the lead singer.

Their single Give Me Just A Little More Time sold a million copies and reached #3 on the Hot 100 in 1970. Two more singles each reached #38 that year and got inside the top twenty on the R&B charts.

Their final top forty record came when Pay To The Piper reached #13 on the Hot 100 in 1971. General co-wrote and sang lead on that single.

A few more singles reached the top forty of the R&B chart. By 1976, the group had broken up, and General was again chasing a solo career. He reformed the Chairmen of the Board in 1978 with original member Danny Woods and a slowly rotating group of other members. They formed Surfside Records and recorded and performed music aimed at the Carolina Beach Music market.

General died from lung cancer in 2010, and Danny died in 2018. New members have joined the group to keep it active.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Johnson_(musician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairmen_of_the_Board

This article is now included in Lost or Forgotten Oldies Volume 3 https://www.amazon.com/Rembert-N-Parker/e/B071Z4GXNT/

1970 Kenny Rogers and the First Edition – Something’s Burning 

After two top twenty hits in 1966 and 1967, the First Edition released the top ten again with the second single from their fourth album. Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town also reached the Country charts, but stalled at #39. The single reached #6 on the Hot 100 and featured the band’s new name: Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.

Mac Davis wrote the title song for the band’s 1970 album, Something’s Burning. When they released the single in the US in January 1970, many stations refused to play the song because they felt it had content that was too explicitly sexual in nature. The group found an interesting way to solve their problem.

The song also got released in the UK, so the band booked an appearance on the Tom Jones television show to promote their record. It got airplay and began to rise on the UK chart. More importantly, that episode of the show got played in the US and Canada, exposing the record to a North American audience.

Thanks to sales and requests from listeners, radio stations finally began playing the record. The single eventually peaked at #11 on the Hot 100 in May.

The group had two final top forty singles during the rest of 1970. They hosted their own television show and recorded several more albums, but found success only in New Zealand. By 1975, it was clear that the group’s brightest days were behind them. 

Members began finding work as session musicians or arrangers. Kenny finally left the group and moved to a solo career in 1976. His new career didn’t take off until the release of Lucille in 1977, after which he became a superstar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Rogers_and_The_First_Edition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something%27s_Burning_(song)

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1969 Peggy Lee – Is That All There Is? 

Norma Deloris Egstrom grew up in a small town in North Dakota. While still in high school, she began singing with a college dance band after school and Friday nights. She soon had her own 15 minute radio show and often sang for local radio stations.

Radio personality Ken Kennedy hired her to sing on radio station WDAY in Fargo, but insisted on changing her name; she began appearing as Peggy Lee.

In 1941, Peggy joined Benny Goodman’s Orchestra as their new vocalist. She immediately began making recordings with the band.

The 1936 song Weed Smoker’s Dream became a moderately successful jazz/blues number for the Harlem Hamfats. The song told the sad story of how using marijuana causing financial woes for a smoker. One band member rewrote the lyrics to focus on a man doing a woman wrong, and the result was Why Don’t You Do Right? Peggy and Benny recorded the song in 1942, and their recording got used in the film Stage Door Canteen. Their single sold over a million copies and reached the top of the pop charts.

Peggy returned to a solo career, recording on Capitol Records. She wrote over 270 songs and recorded over 1100 songs during her career. Beginning in 1965, her records chartered almost exclusively on the Adult Contemporary chart.

One last bright spot came when Peggy recorded Is That All There Is? Georgia Brown performed the song on a 1967 television special. The song was first recorded by WMCA disk jockey Dandy Dan Daniel. He played his recording on his show, but never released it commercially. 

 Randy Newman produced Peggy’s version of the song, which Capitol released as a single in 1969. The single reached #11 on the Hot 100 and topped the Adult Contemporary chart.

Peggy’s recording won the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for 1969. She continued to perform into the nineties.

Complications of diabetes led to a heart attack, and Peggy died in 2002.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Lee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Don%27t_You_Do_Right%3F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_That_All_There_Is%3F

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1967 Paul Revere and the Raiders – Ups and Downs 

Lead singer Mark Lindsay and producer Terry Melcher had written the group’s last single from the band’s 1966 album, The Spirit Of ’67. That song, Good Thing, became one of the group’s most successful singles, reaching #4 in early 1967. The pair then worked together to write and produce one more single to include on a greatest hits album scheduled for later that year. 

They created the song Ups and Downs, which came out in April. Unfortunately, the single stalled at only #22, their poorest reception for a single in over two years.

The group included Ups and Downs on their Greatest Hits album anyway, and then began work on new songs for their next album, Revolutions!

The first song from that album they released as a single was Him Or Me – What’s It Gonna Be? Mark wrote the song with Terry, who again produced the song. He even added some backing vocals behind Mark’s lead vocals.

To promote their Greatest Hits album, the band had numerous television appearances scheduled, making it difficult to get the band together with Terry in the studio for recording. As a result, the Raiders used the Wrecking Crew to provide backing instruments on the single, the first time they had to do that.

The result was excellent (the single reached #5 on the Hot 100), but the use of studio musicians angered some of the Raiders. Within a few short months, four of them (Drake “Kid” Levin, Mike “Smitty” Smith, Jim “Harpo” Valley, and Phil “Fang” Volk) left the group. Three later formed a new band called Brotherhood, which had no success at all.

The band had no problems with replacing the ex-members and continuing to produce hit records.

Smitty rejoined the band a few times beginning in the seventies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere_%26_the_Raiders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere_%26_the_Raiders_discography

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1968 Etta James – Tell Mama

Jamesetta Hawkins grew up in Watts (in Los Angeles) and lived in multiple foster homes. When she turned 12, she moved to San Francisco and soon started her own group, The Creolettes. Two years later, she met Johnny Otis, and he signed the group to Modern Records.

The group changed its name to The Peaches, and Johnny convinced her to change her name from Jamesetta to Etta James.

Their group recorded an answer song to Hank Ballard’s hit Work With Me Annie. Writing credit for the song included Hank as well as both John and Etta. Their song carried the title Roll with Me, Henry, but that had to be changed to The Wallflower to avoid the sexual connotations that came from the original title.

The record label credit read “Etta James and the Peaches.” They recorded the single in 1954, released it in 1955, and the record spent four weeks at the top of the R&B chart.

Georgia Gibbs recorded a cover version of the song titled Dance With Me Henry, which reached #1 on the Hot 100 in 1955.

Etta released a second top ten R&B single as a follow-up, but most of her singles for the next four years failed to reach any charts.

Chess Records signed Etta in 1960 and had her release some duets with Harvey Fuqua on Argo Records, one of their smaller labels. Her first album with the label included several R&B top ten singles, including At Last, a song from the 1941 film, Sun Valley Serenade.

Etta had ten top ten singles on the R&B chart between 1960 and 1966, but most of them did poorly on the pop charts.

Her biggest hit on the Hot 100 came in 1967 when she released Tell Mama. Clarence Carter wrote the song as Tell Daddy, but his version failed to find an audience. Etta’s single reached #23 on the Hot 100 and #10 on the R&B chart.

Etta’s next single stalled at #35 on the Hot 100, and she never reached the top forty again. By 1974, her records were no longer hits on the R&B chart either.

Her battle with drug addiction caused her to leave the music industry in 1978. She slowly began public performances again in 1982, concentrating on jazz-related events. She began recording new albums again in 1989.

Etta’s health became a struggle, and she died in 2012, three days after Johnny Otis passed away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etta_James
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etta_James_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wallflower_(Dance_with_Me,_Henry)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Mama_(song)

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1966 Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – What Now My Love / Little Spanish Flea 

Herb Alpert grew up in Los Angeles. Both of his parents were accomplished musicians, and when he was only eight years-old, Herb began playing the trumpet. While in high school, he played at dances and began experimenting with recording himself on rudimentary equipment.

While in the military, Herb played at various ceremonies. After the end of his military career, Herb briefly pursued an acting career. He quickly abandoned that idea and began concentrating on writing and playing music. He co-wrote and recorded the single Hully Gully in 1959, but nothing happened.

He produced Baby Talk by Jan and Dean, which reached the top ten in 1959. He also co-wrote Wonderful World, and Sam Cooke reached #12 with the song in 1960.

Herb and Jerry Moss formed their own record label in 1962. They initially called the label Carnival Records, but they renamed it A&M Records when they discovered that name was already in use. Herb attended a bullfight in Mexico and the mariachi band and the crowd responses inspired him to record a record. He played trumpet on the recording and used the Wrecking Crew studio musicians to record The Lonely Bull. He completed the song by dubbing a second trumpet track, and the single was mixed with that trumpet on one track and all the rest of the song on the other track. The single peaked at #6 on the Hot 100 in 1962 and helped the A&M label become established.

While the Wrecking Crew continued to play on most of his recordings, Herb recruited a team of studio musicians and put together a touring group that could appear with him as the Tijuana Brass. 

In 1965, he recorded an instrumental version of a song the Beatles had covered in 1963, A Taste of Honey. His version won three Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year. Three more singles followed from his next album, Going Places.

In 1966, he released the title song from his new album. For the a-side of the single, they decided to create a new recording of a song written in 1961, What Now My Love.

The b-side became Spanish Flea, a song from their 1965 album, Going Places.

At that time, Billboard still charted each side of a single separately, and when disk jockeys began playing different sides of the single, it kept either side from becoming a big hit on the Hot 100. The a-side peaked at #24 on the Hot 100, while the b-side reached #27 in 1966. The two sides swept up to #2 and #4 on the Adult Contemporary chart, which was more accepting of instrumentals. What Now My Love still won two Grammy Awards, but lost Record of the Year to Frank Sinatra’s Strangers in The Night.

Over time, Spanish Flea has become more well-known thanks to its use as the theme song on a television show (The Dating Game),

Herb has disbanded and reformed the Tijuana Brass a few times, but continued recording hits through 1987. He has also discovered and produced a long list of artists for the A&M label.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Alpert

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1965 Manfred Mann – Sha La La 

Three women in high school in Queens formed The Masterettes in 1961 and began releasing singles in 1962. After shuffling their lineup, the group recorded Tell Him, a song that they took to #4 on the Hot 100 in 1962.

The group never recorded another song that was a hit for them.

The South African keyboard player Manfred Mann and the British musician Mike Hugg (who played drums, vibes, and keyboards) formed the British band the Mann–Hugg Blues Brothers in 1961. The jazz/blues band added Paul Jones as their lead singer and rotated a few more musicians through the group. They also renamed themselves Manfred Mann & the Manfreds. The band signed with a label and their new producer insisted they simplify their name to Manfred Mann.

Several singles failed to produce the desired results, but then the band was asked to create a new theme song for the television show Ready Steady Go. They wrote and created the song 5-4-3-2-1. Exposure from the show helped the single to climb to #5 on the UK charts in 1964.

The Exciters had continued to release singles that failed to click. In 1964, they recorded a song written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Do-Wah-Diddy. Their single only reached #76 on the US Hot 100 early in the year. 

Manfred Mann somehow covered the song (with little if any changes) and their single topped the charts in both the US and the UK. The group had nearly a dozen more top ten hits in the UK, but had little success on the US charts: only three more of their singles even reached the top forty!

Their next single, Sha La La, easily took the band to #3 in the UK. Robert Mosley and Robert Taylor wrote the song, which only reached #12 on the US Hot 100.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Mann
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Mann_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sha_La_La

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1964 The Marvelettes – Too Many Fish In The Sea 

The Marvelettes scored Motown’s first number-one single on the Hot 100 in 1961 and then had two singles that reached the top ten or top twenty during the next year. While the group continued to do well on the R&B chart, they would struggle to find hits for the next two years.

The Marvelettes even turned down the chance to record Where Did Our Love Go in 1964. The Supremes recorded the song instead, and it yielded their first number one record.

The Marvelettes then selected Too Many Fish in the Sea as their next single, which only reached #25 on the Hot 100 in 1964.

That was the group’s last visit to the top twenty on the Hot 100 for nearly four years. While they had over a dozen top forty singles on the R&B charts during that time, all they did on the pop charts was two singles that stalled at #25 and #34.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marvelettes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Many_Fish_in_the_Sea

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1963 Robin Ward – Wonderful Summer

Jacqueline McDonnell’s father was in the military. While she was born in Hawaii, her family moved to Nebraska when she was very young.

At the age of eight, she sang with her two sisters and won a national talent contest. Her family moved to Los Angeles to pursue careers in the entertainment field. Television station KTLA hired her as Jackie Ward to sing weekly on Bandstand Review, a show reminiscent of Your Hit Parade. 

Jackie began singing on demo records and even some released music. One of her earliest roles found her singing the “la-la-las” on Pat Boone’s 1962 single, Speedy Gonzales.

The next year, at age 22, she sang on a demo recording of Wonderful Summer. The producer thought a younger-sounding higher pitch would fit the song better and sped up the record. He decided that the resulting recording was good enough to release as a single, and convinced Dot Records to put the record out for sale.

Jackie felt that a different name would be appropriate because of the re-pitching of the record, and they used her younger sister’s first name on the record label; the single credited Robin Ward.

Fans bought over a million copies of the single. It reached #14 on the Hot 100 in 1963. Jackie recorded an album and Dot released a few more singles, but that one-hit wonder turned out to be the ending of her initial recording career.

But Jackie was just getting started! Before long, she sang as a member of the Anita Kerr Singers, the Ron Hicklin Singers, and the Ray Conniff Singers.

She became one of the regular singers on Red Skelton’s and Carol Burnett’s television shows.

She sang the Rice-a-Roni jingle and on hundreds of other ads.

She sang on the television theme songs including Batman, Flipper, and Love, American Style. Even better, she became a singer on many of the Partridge Family songs.

She also sang on hundreds of other pop songs and she estimates that she also provided singing for about 800 films.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Ward_(singer)

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Here’s the original recording before it got sped up:

1962 Mar-kets – Surfer Stomp

Michael Z. Gordon taught himself to play the guitar, and then proceeded to collect a few musicians to create the band The Mar-Kets. Using a few studio musicians (including drummer Hal Blaine), the group signed with Liberty Records and created their first single, Surfer Stomp. The song was co-written and produced by Joe Saraceno, who could neither arrange music nor play instruments but had also found success producing The Ventures.

The instrumental fed into the growing surfing craze in the Western US. The single peaked at #31 on the Hot 100, but did much better in much of the US.

After a few failed singles from their first album, the band signed with Warner Brothers Records in 1963. They released another instrumental written by Michael, Outer Limits. The opening guitar riff was a very recognizable four notes from the theme song of The Twilight Zone, and a lawsuit from Rod Serling forced the group to change the name of the song to Out Of Limits. The single sold over a million copies and reached #3 on the Hot 100 in 1963.

It would take the group three years to reach the top forty again in 1966. Meanwhile, Michael also created another successful group, The Routers.

Michael eventually abandoned his music career and began writing and producing films and television shows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marketts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Limits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Z._Gordon

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