The Go-Betweens: Unreleased songs in the ASCAP database

The ASCAP database contains a number of Robert Forster/Grant McLennan compositions that the duo copyrighted but never released.

If any of these songs were recorded, they might appear on the forthcoming Go-Betweens box set that will compile the group's albums Liberty Belle & the Black Diamond Express, Tallulah, and 16 Lovers Lane along with unreleased recordings and B-sides from that period.

The copyright registrations contain some interesting curiosities in addition to revealing the existence of these unreleased songs. Some examples: 

• The full registered title of "Right Here" from Tallulah is "Right Here (Her Song)"
• "Spirit of a Vampyre" from Tallulah is registered as "Spirit of a Vampire"
• "Reunion Dinner" is registered as "Reunion Dinners"
• The early outtake "Serenade Sound" is registered as "Serenade"
• The song that is listed as "I Know What It's Like Without You" on the bootleg album The Botany Sessions is registered as "I Know What It's Like"

Among songs on which Grant is listed as the sole composer, "All Her Songs" is registered as "All Her Song" (must be a typo), and "Bathe (In the Water)" is registered simply as "Bathe."

Unreleased Forster/McLennan compositions

"A Trip to Saturn"

"Ace of Spades"

"Analogue Rock"

"Anastasias Revenge" [sic]

"Before the Thrill"

"Do You Believe in Me" (Coincidentally, the Go-Betweens' "Streets of Your Town" appeared on a compilation that included Eric Gadd's "Do You Believe in Me," a Gadd original.)

"Down Through Fortune"

"Memory Lie Down" (The title might have come from this unpublished Yeats poem. Click to enlarge.)

From Druid Craft: The Writing of the Shadowy Waters

"Nightman"

"Outlaw" (Baby You Know, the group in which Forster's wife Karin was a member, recorded a song called "Outlaw" on their 1992 album Clear Water.)

"Rainbow Burn"

"Stone"

Terrifiers: 10 frightening clowns on old album covers

"Everybody loves a clown," sang Gary Lewis & the Playboys in 1965, but do they really? 

It's clear that a lot of people fear clowns, judging from the popularity of clown horror films. 

The 2017 remake of Stephen King's It, with Pennywise the Dancing Clown, became the highest-grossing horror film of all time, and that's just one example. 

So many clown horror movies have been made that a clown car couldn't hold them all. Terrifier, Clown Kill, 31, Stitches, 100 Tears, Killjoy, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Insane, and the highly anticipated (by me) Clownado are just a tiny sample of what's available. 

Digging through the vinyl bins, you might occasionally be startled to find one of these jolly fellows looking back at you.

Eddie Zima & His Orchestra – Circus Polka (Dana, 1953)

The duck does most of the killing for him.

Merle Evans & His Circus Band – Circus in Town! (Decca, 1958)

 

Possibly too drunk to be dangerous.

Hank Sylvern featuring Robert Q. Lewis – The Magic World of Circuses and Clowns (Lion, 1959)

The look of contentment after a big meal of children.

Clarabelle, the Norman Paris Trio – Clowns with Jazz (Golden Crest, 1957)

"Hey kids, wanna see what's in my basement?"

Antal Dorati Conducting the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra – Petrouchka (Mercury, 1955)

"How can you kill me? I'm already dead."

Charles Mingus – The Clown (Atlantic, 1957)

On oxygen after being shot several times by the cops.

Leo Arnaud & His Orchestra – Carnival in Rio (Liberty, 1956)

With arms like that, children are never out of reach.

Jimmy Bryant – Laughing Guitar, Crying Guitar (Imperial, 1966)

He laughs when they're dead, cries when they escape.

Pinto Colvig, Alan Livingston, and Billy May – Bozo Sings (Capitol, 1948)

The last thing you see when he strangles you.

Carl Stevens & His Circus Band – Music from the Big Top (Mercury, 1956)

The scary thing here is that John C. Reilly looks exactly like this when he wears clown makeup.

1972 Joe Dowell newspaper ad for "Christmas in Ann Arbor"

This 1972 advertisement from Chelsea, Michigan's Chelsea Standard promotes Joe Dowell's single "Christmas in Ann Arbor" as a premium for customers who open a Christmas savings account at Ann Arbor Federal Savings. (Click on the ad to enlarge it.)

The text of the ad says:

Joe Dowell is the nationally famous recording star whose "Wooden Heart" was number one in the nation in nineteen sixty one. And now, Joe Dowell has written and recorded "Christmas in Ann Arbor" exclusively for AAFS Christmas Club members. When you open your AAFS CHRISTMAS CLUB, you will receive your 45 rpm record, "Christmas in Ann Arbor," with "Patapan," a French Christmas Carol on the reverse side.

When I interviewed Dowell, he didn't remember the precise date on which he recorded and released "Christmas in Ann Arbor" on his own Journey Records label, and the record itself doesn't have a date, so this ad places it at either 1972 when the ad ran or 1973 when customers received the record (if it hadn't yet been manufactured when this ad was published).

Dowell also recorded a six-song 7" EP of folk songs that was issued as a bank premium by both Ann Arbor Federal Savings and Second Federal Savings and Loan Association of Cleveland.

I've written quite a bit about Dowell on this blog, because I wrote liner notes for and helped compile the 2004 Bear Family CD Wooden Heart, which collected most of Joe's Smash Records recordings from the early 1960s. 

At the time that the CD was being prepared, Dowell (who passed away in 2016) gave me a lot of interesting ephemera from his career, so I've shared much of it here. I had never seen this advertisement until today, though.

Dowell, as the ad copy mentions, had a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Wooden Heart" in 1961. He then went on to record mostly religious music and commercial jingles in the 1970s and '80s. 

Apart from a 1963 folk album that he convinced a furniture-store owner to release and a 1966 single for Monument Records, all of Dowell's recordings after he left Smash Records were either self-released, commercial jingles, or promotional recordings for organizations such as the Church World Service and Boy Scouts of America.

I previously posted some of Joe Dowell's commercial jingles here and here.

I've also posted a discography of his recordings and a lengthy three-part interview with him that starts here.

And here are both sides of this bank-premium single:

Joe Dowell – Three commercial jingles for Elias Bros. Restaurants (late '60s/early '70s)

A while back I uploaded some of Joe Dowell's commercial jingles from the 1970s. 

Dowell, as most readers of this blog know, was a teen idol who scored a #1 hit with "Wooden Heart" in 1961 and then went on to record mostly religious music and commercial jingles in the 1970s and '80s.

I've also posted a discography of his recordings and a lengthy three-part interview with him that starts here. I conducted that interview while writing the liner notes of the 2004 Bear Family CD Wooden Heart, which collected most of Joe's Smash Records recordings from the 1960s and is still available.

The video link above contains three more of his long-lost commercial jingles. Recorded for Elias Brothers Restaurants in the late 1960s or early 1970s, these jingles would have played on the radio in the Michigan, Ohio, and/or Ontario area where Elias Bros. operated. (Elias Brothers was a franchisee of Big Boy Restaurants from the 1950s until 2000.) 

These rare jingles were copied from scratchy acetates in Joe's personal collection that were, to my knowledge, the only copies in existence. They're presented here for posterity and for the enjoyment of Joe's fans.

"The Diarrhea Song": A playground rhyme for the ages

Not a link. Don't be fooled by the "play" icon.

Something made me think of that old favorite playground song of children everywhere, "The Diarrhea Song," which is also remembered as "Diarrhea Ch-Ch," "Diarrhea Cha Cha Cha," "Diarrhea Uh-Uh," and "Diarrhea [fart sound] [fart sound]," all of which are either permutations of the same song or variations on a theme that really resonates with young 'uns in every decade.

For many kids, the memory of the struggle to control one's physical functions is still fresh, and for others, the fight still goes on. Maybe that's why they find a song about uncontrollable diarrhea so hilarious. On the other hand, the out-of-control human body is a common trope in slapstick comedy, so maybe everyone enjoys a good diarrhea joke from time to time. 

The diarrhea song probably originated in the 1950s or 1960s (if not earlier), but it exploded onto the playgrounds of the world in the 1970s. I say that because most people seem to remember it from the 1970s, as I do. 

The seismic waves were felt internationally, with former children reporting having heard the song all across the US and on other continents.

The peaks of the song's commercial success were probably when it was featured in the 1989 film Parenthood and again in the animated series Bob's Burgers (and its soundtrack). Search YouTube for "diarrhea song" and you'll find a lot of user-uploaded content.

The baseball-themed version that I learned in Muncie, Indiana, in the late 1970s went something like this: 

Diarrhea ch-ch, diarrhea ch-ch
Going up to bat and my pants are getting fat 

Diarrhea ch-ch, diarrhea ch-ch
Going on to first and my pants are 'bout to burst 

Diarrhea ch-ch, diarrhea ch-ch
Going on to second and my pants are getting infected* 

Diarrhea ch-ch, diarrhea ch-ch
Going on to third and out pops a turd 

Diarrhea ch-ch, diarrhea ch-ch
Heading toward home and my pants are full of foam 

Diarrhea ch-ch, diarrhea ch-ch

*This is a miserable rhyme, a fact that I recognized even as a child.

Many kids tried to add their own verses, but, being mere children, failed to produce rhymes on the caliber of those that had been passed down through the oral tradition. 

Let's be honest: The verses we remember were most likely crafted by irresponsible parents and transmitted to their children in an effort to make the brats laugh hysterically instead of doing whatever awful thing they otherwise would be doing. 

In my mind, the diarrhea song is part of a cycle of children's songs that includes "Mary Had a Steamboat" (which I previously wrote about) and "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts," which was later adapted into a "legit" song by Aesop Rock. 

You might like to believe that diarrhea isn't a topic for serious, adult-oriented music, but if you search Discogs for diarrhea songs and look through the 900+ compositions, you'll quickly come to a different understanding. My favorite song title, at a glance, is "Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy." There was, until recently, a great band called Diarrhea Planet. Reddit even has a subreddit for diarrhea music, but it appears to be inactive. 

Perhaps these adults who write and record diarrhea songs were once children like you and me who sang "The Diarrhea Song" on their elementary school playgrounds while swinging, playing hopscotch, and trying to make it to the restroom on time. 

The music of Gidget 1957-1988

In 1957, Frederick Kohner published the novel Gidget: The Little Girl With Big Ideas and set in motion the surf craze that swept America in the 1960s. Based on his teenage daughter's real-life adventures as a California surfer, the book was a pop-culture sensation that sold a half-million copies. But Gidget the character outlasted the fad for surf music and beach movies and has lived on to the present day through books, films, television, and—today's topic—music.

Kohner wrote eight Gidget books, the first of which was made into a movie in 1959, starring Sandra Dee as Gidget and teen idol James Darren as her love interest, Moondoggie. It was Hollywood's first surfing film.

The film's original theme song, "Gidget," was released on singles by both Darren and the Four Preps, who also appear in the film. The Four Preps sing the theme song over the opening credits and appear in a beach party scene in which they perform "Cinderella." Their versions of "Gidget" and "Cinderella" were released on 45 by their label, Capitol Records. Darren's version of "Gidget" and the song "There's No Such Thing," which he sings to Gidget in the film, were released on 45 by Darren's label, Colpix Records.

These were the most commercially successful songs from any of the Gidget movies, but that's not saying much—Darren's version of "Gidget" peaked at #41 on the Billboard pop chart, and the Four Preps' "Cinderella" reached #69, so they weren't major hits.

The music in the Gidget films, it's worth mentioning, wasn't merely grafted onto Kohner's story. Music was ever-present in the Gidget novels too, with references to artists such as Fats Domino, quotations of song lyrics, and the inclusion of musician characters. Gidget herself is a folk music fan who becomes romantically interested in a folk singer in Gidget Goes Hawaiian (the book; in the film he's a dancer), expresses a preference for the Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte in The Affairs of Gidget, and, in the same book, spends a lot of time listening to Mozart and Wagner in the home of a divorced dentist.

The musical content of the Gidget books and movies anticipated the beach movies of the 1960s, like Beach Party (1963) and Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), although those films—unlike Gidget—had so much music that they're often categorized as musicals. And some of the actors from the Gidget movies, such as Deborah Walley and Joby Baker, went on to appear in beach, bikini, and/or Elvis movies.

After the first Gidget movie, two more feature films followed: Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963). In an odd reversal, these two movies weren't based on Kohner's books—the corresponding books were based on the movies. Ruth Brooks Flippen wrote the screenplays, and Kohner—who was a screenwriter—wrote novelizations of the screenplays. 

Despite this arrangement, the quality of the books didn't suffer; the novelizations read like Kohner's other Gidget books, in part because Kohner took many artistic liberties with Flippen's stories, making substantial changes to plots and characters. Flippen was probably tapped to write the screenplays because Kohner's second Gidget novel, Cher Papa (1959), featured Gidget's father as the main character. It was an odd entry in the series and might not have worked as source material for the second Gidget film.

Darren appeared in all three of these Gidget films, but a different actress played Gidget each time. After Sandra Dee in the first film, Deborah Walley played Gidget in Gidget Goes Hawaiian, and Cindy Carol took the lead in Gidget Goes to Rome.

Darren, as much a singer as an actor, also sang in all three films. In Gidget Goes Hawaiian, he sang the title song and "Wild About the Girl," which is directed at Gidget but doesn't mention her by name. In Gidget Goes to Rome, he sang "Gegetta" (the Italian-accented pronunciation of Gidget's name) and "Grande Luna Italian (Big Italian Moon)."

Darren's label, Colpix, released the songs on singles, but none of them were national hits. Darren put out an album called Gidget Goes Hawaiian: James Darren Sings the Movies, which included his two songs from the movie along with songs such as "P.S. I Love You" and "Because They're Young," and it was a #132 hit on the Billboard album chart. The one hit single that resulted from Gidget Goes Hawaiian was Duane Eddy's rendition of the theme, which was the B-side of his 1961 Jamie Records single "Theme from Dixie" and "bubbled under" the Billboard Hot 100.

As for non-hit cover versions, Carlo Gerace covered Darren's "Wild About That Girl" for Chancellor Records in 1961 without success. Leroy Holmes included "Gidget," the theme from the first film, on his 1962 album Movie Themes for Teens.

Gidget the television series launched in 1965 with Sally Field as Gidget, and the theme song, "(Wait Till You See) My Gidget" by Johnny Tillotson, was released as a single by MGM Records but wasn't a hit. (The flip side, "Our World," was a minor chart item.) Darren's label, Colpix, tried to stay in the Gidget game by releasing a competing version of "(Wait Till You See) My Gidget" by Billy Carr and met with similar commercial indifference.

Some well-known composers and arrangers worked on the musical score for the series: Dave Grusin, Stu Phillips, Charles Albertine, and Hugo Montenegro. And Ruth Brooks Flippen, the screenwriter of Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Gidget Goes to Rome, wrote a number of episodes.

The TV series ran for two years, but after its end, Gidget soon graced the small screen again in the made-for-TV movies Gidget Grows Up (1969) and Gidget Gets Married (1972). Gidget Grows Up starred Karen Valentine as Gidget and actor-turned-teen-idol Paul Petersen ("My Dad") as Moondoggie. (Petersen, incidentally, had been one of James Darren's label mates at Colpix Records in the early 1960s.)

The theme song of Gidget Grows Up, "Growing Up," was sung by Jean King (AKA Jeanie King) of the Blossoms/Phil Spector fame. This song doesn't appear to have been released on record.

Gidget Gets Married starred Monie Ellis as Gidget and former child actor Michael Burns as Moondoggie. The theme, "Good Morning Love," was cowritten by Jack Keller, the composer of "(Wait Till You See) My Gidget."

Also in 1972 appeared Gidget Makes the Wrong Connection, an animated Gidget movie that was produced by Hanna-Barbera and aired as part of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie lineup. Kathy Gori performed the voice of Gidget in a story about Gidget dealing with gold smugglers. Moondoggie was nowhere in sight. This was likely a pilot for an animated series that never happened.

That was the end of Gidget for a while. More than a decade later, the character was revived for the 1985 TV movie Gidget's Summer Reunion, which picked up where Gidget Gets Married left off: Gidget was married to Moondoggie and dealing with adult problems and a niece, Kim, who wanted to take up surfing. Gidget and Moondoggie were played by Caryn Richman and Dean Butler (AKA Almanzo from Little House on the Prairie). Kim was more like the teenage Gidget character of old than the adult Gidget was.

Gidget's Summer Reunion was essentially a pilot for the series The New Gidget, which ran for 44 episodes from 1986-88 and starred Richman and Butler from the TV movie but replaced niece Kim with niece Dani, played by future soap-opera star Sydney Penny. The theme song didn't mention Gidget or provide any exposition. It was one of those bland feel-good songs of the sort that was commonly used as a television theme in the 1980s.

The New Gidget was the last of the Gidget television shows, but Gidget didn't disappear. In 1999, Surfer magazine named Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the real-life Gidget, the seventh most influential surfer in history. The original Gidget novel was reprinted in 2001, and Kohner Zuckerman was the subject of the 2010 documentary Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget.

Outside of the official Gidget movies and television shows, Gidget occasionally has been referenced in music. A few examples include the Suburban Lawns' song "Gidget Goes to Hell" (1979), the Swingin' Teens' song "Gidget's Bitchin' Beach Party" (1987), and the cover of the band Good Riddance's 1993 EP Gidget.

Unfortunately, all the Gidget novels except for the first one have been out of print for decades and can be expensive to buy on the collectors' market. They're fun and well-written books, though, and deal more frankly with sexuality than you might expect from young adult novels of their time. Like the TV movies, the books follow Gidget into adulthood as she gets into romantic entanglements and navigates her rocky on-again, off-again relationship with Moondoggie, but in the books she never marries or goes all the way with any of the guys.

Gidget movies and television shows

Gidget (1959)

Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961)

Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)

Gidget (TV series) (1965-66)

Gidget Grows Up (TV movie) (1969)

Gidget Gets Married (TV movie) (1972)

Gidget Makes the Wrong Connection (animated TV movie) (1972)

Gidget's Summer Reunion (TV movie) (1985)

The New Gidget (TV series) (1986-88)

Note: If you'd like to watch these in the best quality, some releases are better than others. Sony Pictures released the first three movies on DVD as The Complete Gidget Collection, but the movies are cropped. You can get the first film in beautiful widescreen HD on Twilight Time's limited-edition Blu-ray, and all three films are presented in widescreen on the Australian DVD set Gidget: The Movie Collection. (The Australian set also includes Gidget Gets Married, although that is not widescreen because it was made for TV. You'll need an all-region player in order to play these DVDs.) Gidget Gets Married is also available separately as a print-on-demand DVD-R. The entire 1960s Gidget TV series is available on DVD for dirt cheap. Gidget Grows Up, Gidget Makes the Wrong Connection, Gidget's Summer Reunion, and The New Gidget have not been officially released on DVD, but you can find at least some of them from unofficial sources.

Commercial recordings of songs from the Gidget movies and shows 

The Four Preps – "Cinderella" b/w "Gidget" (Capitol F4078, 1958)

James Darren – "There's No Such Thing" (Colpix CP 102, 1959)
James Darren – "Gidget" (Colpix CP 113, 1959)

James Darren – "Gidget Goes Hawaiian" b/w "Wild About That Girl" (Colpix CP 189, 1961) 
James Darrren – Gidget Goes Hawaiian: James Darren Sings the Movies LP (Colpix CP 418, 1961)

Duane Eddy – "Gidget Goes Hawaiian" (Jamie 1183, 1961)

Carlo Gerace – "Wild About That Girl" (Chancellor C1080, 1961)

Leroy Holmes and His Orchestra – "Gidget" on Movie Themes for Teens LP (MGM E3979, 1962)

Billy Carr – "(Wait Till You See) My Gidget" (Colpix CP-791, 1965)

Johnny Tillotson – "(Wait Till You See) My Gidget" (MGM K13408, 1965) 
Johnny Tillotson – "My Gidget" on Johnny Tillotson Sings LP (MGM E4328, 1965)

"My Gidget" TV theme – Television's Greatest Hits Volume II LP (TVT 1200, 1986)

Frederick Kohner's Gidget books

Gidget: The Little Girl With Big Ideas, AKA The One and Only (1957)

Cher Papa (1959)
Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961)
The Affairs of Gidget (1963)
Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)
Gidget in Love (1965)
Gidget Goes Parisienne (1966)
Gidget Goes to New York (1968)

Kohner's non-Gidget books (incomplete?)

Early Pleasures: Memoirs of a Sensual Youth
The Continental Kick (1962)
Mister Will You Marry Me? (1963)
The Gremmie (1967) (A "surfing and sex" paperback intended to appeal to the Gidget audience)

Kiki of Montparnasse (1967)
The Magician of Sunset Boulevard: The Improbable Life of Paul Kohner, Hollywood Agent (1977)

IMDb has a long list of screenplays that Kohner wrote or cowrote.

"Sick" sound: The craze for amateur girl singers in 1960-61

Kathy Young

An odd musical craze swept the nation in 1960-61. Billboard called it the "sick" sound, characterizing it as "not necessarily true to pitch." It was a brief string of hits by amateur teen girl singers whose voices weren't, let's say, quite as polished as radio listeners were accustomed to.

Cathy Jean

Writer and future music publicist Ren Grevatt wryly described this "interesting new kind of artist" in a 1961 Billboard article about the influx of inexperienced teenage girl singers into the pop charts: Kathy (Young) & The Innocents, Cathy Jean & The Roommates, and Rosie & The Originals.

In all cases, the vocalists were 14- or 15-year-old girls with novice singing ability, and all enjoyed major hits in 1960-61: Kathy Young with "A Thousand Stars" and "Happy Birthday Blues," Cathy Jean with "Please Love Me Forever," and Rosie with "Angel Baby."

Rosalie Hamlin of Rosie & the Originals

In addition to their similar sound, Grevatt remarked on the similarity in their names:

"With a flourish of informality, these thrushes may also set a new pattern in using only their first names, as in Cathy Jean, Rosie, and now one who calls herself simply, Connie. Connie and the Cones are out this week with 'No Time for Tears' and 'Take All the Kisses,' on Roulette." 

 

Connie Sue Landers AKA Connie Dee
of Connie and the Cones

(To be fair, Connie of Connie and the Cones was like those other artists in name only. Connie Sue Landers, AKA Connie Dee, was actually an excellent vocalist.)

Another new "sick" act that Grevatt mentioned was the Creschendos, whose single "Take My Heart" and "My Heart's Desire" was picked up for national distribution by Gone Records in 1961. The female vocalist wasn't named on the label, but as Grevatt snarkily added, "in the current furor for this kind of performance ... she cannot long remain anonymous." In fact, the vocalist was Wanda Burt, the only African-American artist to get lumped in with the sick scenesters. She was older than the others, having been about 18 when the record was recorded. 

Wanda Burt of the Creschendos/Crescendos/
Casual Crescendos

Even though Grevatt singled out girl singers, the boys had some purveyors of the sick sound too. The most obvious example is Fabian, who was signed to a recording contract on the basis of his looks. He had no innate singing ability—as his first record, "Shivers," shows—but plenty of hits.

Maybe listeners found this kind of guileless, unsophisticated singing relatable and down-to-earth, but if so, their enthusiasm didn't last long. Cathy Jean, Rosie, and Kathy Young had no further hits on the Hot 100 after 1961 (although Young nearly had a hit in 1964 with "All You Had to Do," a duet with Chris Montez that showed some improvement in her vocal technique). Interestingly, Fabian's run of Billboard chart hits, which began in 1959, ended in 1960, so his career as a hit-maker died out around the same time as those of his female counterparts.

Fabian

In the years since the heyday of the sick sound, amateur young singers have scored pop hits on occasion, but the records have tended to be novelties or topical songs of some sort (like Sharon Batts' 1985 hit "Dear Mr. Jesus") rather than teen love songs. Now that a seemingly infinite number of amateur singers can be heard on YouTube, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, etc., the novelty of hearing them on the radio is greatly diminished.