Month: April 2022

1982 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – Hooked On Classics (Parts 1 & 2) 

The British arranger Louis Clark trained at Leeds College of Music. He played bass for a group after schooling and then began working with ELO. Louis played keyboards and arranged and conducted music for several of the group’s albums.

In 1982, Jeff Jarrett and Don Redman produced an album for K-Tel Records called Hooked On Classics, using Louis as the arranger and conductor. The album featured music from the history of classical music performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, set to a disco beat. In some countries, the album even used the title Disco Classics. The first five minutes of the album included a medley of over five minutes of music from over a dozen classical pieces.

An edit cut the song down to 3:48, a length that is more radio-friendly. It included the first five pieces, skipped the next five, and then included the rest of the classics. 

The single reached #10 on the Hot 100 and remained there for two weeks before fading off the chart completely. The record also reached #8 on the Adult Contemporary chart and peaked at #2 on the UK chart.

A series of Hooked On Classics albums followed, but there were no additional singles that charted. 

Other unrelated artists also released records that used the phrase “Hooked On” that year with less success.

While he continued working with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, he also arranged and/or conducted music for a wide variety of acts, including America, Asia, Kiki Dee, Roy Orbison, and Ozzy Osbourne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Clark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooked_on_Classics

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1981 Frankie Smith – Double Dutch Bus 

Frankie Smith attended college in Tennessee, working towards a degree in elementary education with a minor in music.

In 1972, he recorded a song entitled Double Dutch for the Omega Records label in Philadelphia. An updated version of the song got released by Paramount Records, but neither version seems to have sold well.

Frankie began working as a songwriter for Paramount, working primarily with funk and soul artists. He also began collaborating with fellow songwriter/producer Bill Bloom.

The pair left the label by 1980 and proposed recording a song for the label WMOT Records (the initials stood for We Men Of Talent). The label gave them some leftover recording time at the end of recording sessions for other musicians each week. 

Frankie had been turned down when he applied for a job as a bus driver, and he included a rap that included profanity that attacked the bus company. After some complaints, he rewrote the lines without cursing.

By the end of a month, the duo had put together a demo for Double Dutch Bus that the label accepted. 

A local jump rope game also inspired some of the lyrics in the song using a version of Pig Latin that had become popular in Philly. Kids inserted “iz” into the middle of words and sometimes “izzle” replaced some letters at the end of words. After its use in Frankie’s new song, the slang later became popularized by Snoop Dogg.

They brought in some locals and instructed them on what to say or chant as part of the recording. They split the recording into two songs; the A-side became Double Dutch Bus while the B-side became Double Dutch. I couldn’t find any details about whether Frankie’s 1972 recording influenced anything more than the title for the B-side.

For a brief time, it was nearly impossible to avoid hearing the song on the radio, but mercifully, it vanished quickly. The single peaked at #30 on the Hot 100, but somehow reached the top of the R&B chart in 1981.

Frankie performed on both American Bandstand and Soul Train with his hit, which sold over two million copies. He also released two albums and many singles, but never charted again. 

A surprising list of artists sampled his hit record on their own recordings, including Missy Elliott, Kylie Minogue, and Madonna. Raven-Symoné released a cover version of the song in 2008.

Frankie died in 2019.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-izzle
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/frankie-smith-mn0000437983/biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Smith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Dutch_Bus
http://elaine5.blogspot.com/2005/12/special-interview-with-bill-bloom.html

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. I priced a special eBook at only 99 cents!

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1980 Mickey Gilley – Stand by Me  

Mickey Gilley grew up in a small town in Mississippi. His cousin Jerry Lee Lewis lived just across the river in Louisiana, and the two often played together with another cousin, Jimmy Swaggart. Jerry Lee taught Mickey his style of playing the piano. After the success of Jerry Lee’s early music on Sun Records, Mickey also began work on a career in music.

Mickey began appearing in clubs and recorded Room Full Of Roses, a song written by Tim Spencer of the Sons of the Pioneers. Astro Records released the single in 1974 with national distribution on Playboy Records. The record reached the top of the Country chart and Playboy Records signed Mickey to a long-term recording contract.

Mickey’s single also reached #50 on the Hot 100. Three more of Mickey’s singles later reached the Hot 100. All of them simply covered earlier pop hits, but two of them did not become successful enough to reach the top forty on the Hot 100.

In 1978, the owners sold Playboy Records to Epic Records, and Mickey moved to that label. He then made an effort to record pop-Country records similar to records other Country artists had recorded that were crossing over to the pop charts.

Mickey’s cover of the Ben E. King would classic Stand By Me appeared on the soundtrack of the 1980 film Urban Cowboy, and that broke him into the top forty on the pop charts. In 1980, the single easily topped the Country chart. It also reached #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #22 on the Hot 100 in 1980.

The single was the second of six consecutive number one records on the Country chart (a single that broke the streak only reached #3). By 1983, another four singles topped the Country chart. Over a half-dozen more singles reached the top ten before the hits ran out in 1989.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Gilley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Gilley_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_by_Me_(Ben_E._King_song)

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

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1979 Randy VanWarmer – Just When I Needed You Most 

Randy VanWarmer grew up in Colorado until his father’s death in a car accident when he was 15 caused his family to move to Cornwall, England. Eight years later, in 1978, he signed with Bearsville Records and moved to Woodstock, New York.

Two events led Randy to write Just When I Needed You Most: a breakup with his girlfriend and the breakdown of a car he loved that he had driven for years.

Two years later, he finally recorded the song for his first album. John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful played the autoharp solos on the record, which became his first single. 

The single topped the Adult Contemporary chart in 1979. It also reached the top ten on both the Hot 100 and the UK singles chart.

As a precursor to his later success as a songwriter, Just When I Needed You Most also reached #71 on the US Country chart. Alabama later recorded two songs written by Randy that each went to the top of the Country chart!

Randy recorded ten more albums but never reached the top forty again, although two of his singles reached #77 and #55 on the Hot 100 in the early eighties. He also released two other singles that reached #53 and #72 on the Country chart in 1988.

They diagnosed Randy with leukemia in 2003 and he died the next year at age 48.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_VanWarmer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_When_I_Needed_You_Most

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. I priced a special eBook at only 99 cents!

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1978 Daryl Hall & John Oates – It’s A Laugh

Daryll Hall and John Oates were roommates in Philadelphia several years before they started producing music together. They released their first album on Atlantic Records in 1970. The single She’s Gone from their second album in 1973 was their only charting single until they moved to RCA Records in 1975.

Sara Smile reached the top ten on the Hot 100 in 1976, and following that with a re-release of She’s Gone gave them a second consecutive top ten hit. That established the pair as a success, and 1977 delivered the chart-topping Rich Girl. The follow-up single (Back Together Again) did not fare nearly as well and Hall & Oates went through some hard times.

Perhaps the duo was having trouble doing well on the charts because they weren’t creating disco records; the late seventies were difficult times for rock and soul performers. Their next two singles barely reached the top eighty and the single after that didn’t even get into the top 100.

Their seventh studio album came out in 1978 and the lead single from the album was It’s A Laugh.

Live versions of the song often ended with more intricate guitar work, but that didn’t help the record get any higher than #20 on the Hot 100 in 1978.

It was 1980 before the release of their ninth studio album, Voices, produced a string of hit singles that really launched their career into the heights that have made them the most successful duo of the rock era.

The original version of this article is now included in LOST OR FORGOTTEN OLDIES VOLUME 2: Hit Records From 1955 To 1989 That The Radio Seldom Plays

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_%26_Oates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_%26_Oates_discography

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. I priced a special eBook at only 99 cents!

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1976 Cyndi Grecco – Making Our Dreams Come True 

Some songs are neither lost nor forgotten, simply because they were the theme songs for popular television shows that will appear in reruns about forever.

That doesn’t always translate into airplay.

The 1976 television show Laverne & Shirley spun out of Happy Days in 1976. The main characters were more than a little bit different from their first appearance on the parent show, but the new show quickly became a ratings hit.

Cyndi Grecco sang the theme song, Making Our Dreams Come True. Backup vocals on the song came from the Ron Hicklin Singers, a group of studio singers whose biggest claim to fame came from their performances on The Partridge Family.

Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel wrote Cyndi’s single, and Charles produced it. The record reached #25 on the Hot 100 and #13 on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1976.

The next year, ABC tried to spin another show out of Happy Days. Nancy Walker appeared on the show as a relative of the main family, and a week later she starred in the show Blanksy’s Beauties. They again called on Cyndi to sing the theme song, I Want It All.

This time, things did not go as well. The show only lasted 13 weeks, and Cyndi’s song simply didn’t get much notice. In fact, her career completely stalled: she never reached the charts again. 

Scott Baio appeared on the show, but -not- as Chachi. After the show got canceled, Scott moved to Happy Days and became a teen idol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyndi_Grecco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Our_Dreams_Come_True

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. I priced a special eBook at only 99 cents!

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1975 Ray Stevens – Misty 

Ray Stevens started releasing his own brand of comedy songs beginning with Rang Tang Ding Dong in 1957. He finally reached the top forty in 1960 with Jeremiah Peabody’s Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills. The song only reached #35 on the Hot 100 but held the record for the longest record title on the Hot 100 for more than a decade.

Ray’s biggest hit came with the release of Everything Is Beautiful in 1970. The single topped both the Hot 100 and the Adult Contemporary chart. For the first time, Ray also reached the top forty on the Country chart (even if it only spent one week at #39).

Erroll Garner looked out the window of an airplane he was on and saw a rainbow in the clouds of a thunderstorm. That inspired him to compose a song, Misty. After Johnny Burke wrote lyrics for the melody, Johnny Mathis released the song as a single which reached #14 on the Hot 100 in 1959.

Ray released a cover version of Misty in 1975 that took the song back to #14 on the Hot 100. His single also shot up to #3 on the Country chart.

Ray won his first Grammy award in 1971 for Best Contemporary Male Vocalist for his performance on Everything Is Beautiful. He received his second Grammy award for Misty, but not for writing or singing! That award was for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s).

Ray released In The Mood as the Hen House Five in 1977 and reached #40 and then took I Need Your Help Barry Manilow to #49 in 1979. That was the end of his pop hits. Five more records reached the Country top forty through 1985 before his success faded there as well.

Incredibly, 60 years after Ahab The Arab rose into the top ten on the Hot 100, Ray is still pumping out new music. His latest album, which came out in 2021, has the painful title Ain’t Nothin’ Funny Anymore. The album included songs about Covid, gas prices, the border, and social media. Fortunately, the humorous, non-current events song Hoochie Coochie Dancer also appears on the album. As you would expect, Ray even created a video for the song.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Stevens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Stevens_discography

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. I priced a special eBook at only 99 cents!

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1974 Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells 

Mike Oldfield grew up in England and first began playing the guitar at about age ten. He left school to avoid getting a haircut at age 15 and pursued a music career instead. He played in a folk duo with his sister from 1967 to 1970.

H then began work on Tubular Bells, a composition that sufficiently impressed Richard Branson to earn Mike a contract with Richard’s new label, Virgin Records. The label released the album in 1973 with few hopes for sales.

The entire song consisted of an instrumental that covered both sides of an LP, lasting nearly 49 minutes. Beginning at about 19:48, we hear from Vivian Stanshall, a narrator who chimes in to announce the arrival of nine different instruments. The last announced instrument is the tubular bells, which commence at about 22:50. Part one ends at 25:25; I doubt I ever listened to part two on the b-side of the album more than once.

A single version of the song simply included little more than the first three minutes of the song, the section that played over the beginning of the film The Exorcist. That unsettling music over the beginning of the surprisingly successful horror film led to the sale of over two million copies of Mike’s album.

That single reached the top ten on the Hot 100 in 1974. Mike did not authorize that edit of the single release, and he edited his own single for release in other countries, Mike Oldfield’s Single. 

The album ignited Mike’s career and helped the New Age music movement reach prominence in the seventies. Since then, Mike has recorded at least two dozen albums, nine of which have reached the top ten in the UK. None of his subsequent singles have charted on the US Hot 100. 

Mike rerecorded his album using more modern techniques with John Cleese as the narrator (Vivian had died) and released it in 2003.

His most recent album release came out in 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Oldfield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Oldfield%27s_Single

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. I priced a special eBook at only 99 cents!

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1973 Blue Haze – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes 

 composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach wrote the song Smoke Gets In Your Eyes for the musical play Roberta in 1933. Several recordings failed to click with listeners.

Paul Whiteman and his orchestra recorded the song with featured singer Bob Lawrence and their single reached the top of the pop charts in 1934.

Many artists recorded the song, but it was the Platters who took the song back onto the singles chart in 1958. Their version also reached number one.

Johnny Arthey played piano during his British military service and later became a successful arranger and conductor during the sixties and seventies. His work included songs by Petula Clark, Mary Hopkin, Engelbert Humperdinck, and many other artists in the UK.

After arranging strings for several reggae recordings, he began leading the Reggae Strings. He then formed a studio group with Phillip Swern and recorded a reggae cover version of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

The resulting single used the group name Blue Haze. It stalled at only #32 in the UK but reached #27 on the US Hot 100 and #5 on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1973.

A few more singles followed during the next year, but none of them reached the charts.

The Johnny Arthey Orchestra then released instrumental versions of popular songs, but those also had little impact. Johnny conducted broadcasts for the BBC and also led the orchestras for a few Eurovision contests in the seventies.

Johnny died in 2007.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_Gets_in_Your_Eyes#Blue_Haze_version
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Arthey  [Blue Haze]

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. I priced a special eBook at only 99 cents!

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1972 Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose – Don’t Ever Be Lonely (A Poor Little Fool Like Me) 

Rose Cornelius began singing in the sixties and did well enough to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967. She was touring with a group called the Gospel Jazz Singers in 1970 when her mother convinced her to return home and form a group with her brothers, Carter and Eddie. Their younger sister, Billie Jo, joined the group as well but died before their recordings reached the charts. They signed with United Artists and began recording in 1971.

Eddie wrote the group’s first singles, which were arranged by Mike Lewis and produced by Bob Archibold. Treat Her Like A Lady reached #3 on the Hot 100 in 1971. Too Late To Turn Back Now managed to reach one spot higher the next year and also reached #5 on the R&B chart and #6 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

 

The label credited Carter as a co-writer of their third single. Don’t Ever Be Lonely (A Poor Little Fool Like Me) stalled at #23 on the Hot 100 and only got to the high-twenties on the R&B and Adult Contemporary charts. 

Near the end of the year, the group released a fourth single from their album, but perhaps it was a single too far: I’m Never Gonna Be Alone Anymore only reached #37 on the Hot 100 but still peaked at #10 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

The group’s fortunes floundered after that. Their last appearance on any chart came when they reached #15 on the US Dance chart in 1974 with Got To Testify (Love).

The group disbanded in 1976 and two of them began making religious recordings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Brothers_%26_Sister_Rose

I have collected older articles about Lost or Forgotten Oldies in my books.

Please visit my author page on Amazon where I sell my paperbacks, eBooks, and audiobooks. I priced a special eBook at only 99 cents!

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