Prelude to Milli Vanilli: Other artists who didn't play on their own records

Giving credit to people who don't deserve it is a time-honored tradition in music. 

Even artists who deserve accolades, like the Beatles, get undeserved credit for things like inventing varispeed recording or being the first group to change time signatures within a pop song. 

In music, whenever people declare that an artist is "the first" at anything, they should immediately qualify it with the phrase "that I know of." 

If you remember the Milli Vanilli scandal, it was pretty ridiculous. When it was revealed that they didn't actually sing on their records, they were forced to give back their Grammy Awards, and member Rob Pilatus died several years later of a drug overdose.

Their hits—which were massively successful and perfectly fine radio fodder—were really the brainchild of producer Frank Farian. The two Milli Vanilli figureheads, Pilatus and Fab Morvan, were essentially live billboards for the records. Kids probably wouldn't have gotten as excited about a Frank Farian record.

Frank Farian

People were outraged and acted like it was the first time that music listeners had ever been taken in by records that didn't scrupulously reveal who was the actual creative force behind them. 

But in dance music, in particular, producers had been creating fake group and artist names to slap onto their studio creations forever. So when Milli Vanilli was revealed to be a manufactured group like the Archies, I was like, so what? 

(It's true: The Archies' records weren't actually created by the comic book and television cartoon characters.)

Today, Music Weird looks at a handful of early Milli Vanillis: artists who received credit for records that they had little or no involvement in.  

Lawrence Welk

Lawrence Welk was a talented guy with a vision. His vision was for extremely vanilla middle-of-the-road entertainment, though, so he doesn't get tons of respect. 

I've read both of his autobiographies, and I really like some of his recordings—especially his Dot recordings from the 1960s. 

In the 1960s, Welk's old formula—accordion-and-harpsichord waltzes and polkas—wasn't exactly tearing up the charts, so he often turned his recording franchise over to his band's arranger and conductor, George Cates. Welk went off and attended to his entertainment empire while the young'uns in the group did their thing in the studio. The resulting so-called Lawrence Welk records, which include rock instrumentals like "Zero-Zero" and "Breakwater," are more similar to Billy Vaughn's music than to Welk's old "champagne music." 

Sheb Wooley

Actor and country star Sheb Wooley is best remembered for his novelty hit "Purple People Eater," but he also appeared in the classic Western film High Noon, recorded country and novelty music for decades, and had many hits, including the country chart-topper "That's My Pa" in 1961 and some song parodies as his comedy alter-ego, Ben Colder. 

When "Purple People Eater" became a #1 hit in 1958, Wooley's label, MGM Records, wanted to exploit it further, so MGM put together an instrumental EP titled The Purple People Eater Plays Earth Music. Wooley wasn't expected to perform on it at all, even though the label was going to release it under his name. 

Wooley didn't love that idea, though, so he brushed up on his guitar playing so he could at least sit in on the sessions. He's somewhere in the background of those recordings, inconspicuously strumming along. At least MGM kept things vague by saying that the record only featured Wooley. Yeah, it featured him, but barely. 

Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason, the star of television's The Honeymooners and the blockbuster film Smokey & the Bandit (the #2 film of 1977, after Star Wars), also lent his name to a series of mood music albums, many of which featured acclaimed trumpeter Bobby Hackett. 

Some of these albums are really great, if you like orchestral mood music, and they sold like crazy. His album Music for Lovers Only holds the record for spending the most weeks on the Billboard Top 10 pop album chart. 

Gleason's level of involvement in the albums is disputed, though. The Wikipedia article on Gleason says that, according to Hackett, Gleason's only contribution was to pay the musicians. 

You might say, "But wait, Music Weird. This album cover says only that Gleason presents the music." True, but a lot of his albums just said "Jackie Gleason." 

Ace O'Donnell, and countless other honky-tonk pianists

Old-timey honky-tonk piano instrumentals became a craze in the 1950s. Budget labels cranked out albums by cigarette-smoking, derby-wearing, black-armband-sporting saloon pianists with colorful names like Knuckle Fingers Joe, Fingers Mahoney, Hap O'Hallihan, Crazy Fritz, Puddin' Head Smith, and Knuckles O'Toole. 

Most of those artists didn't really exist. The labels would hire an anonymous pianist to bang out parlor songs on an out-of-tune piano, and then the marketing department would take it from there.  

The budget label Tops Records had on its roster the alleged Ace O'Donnell, who was portrayed by different models on "his" album covers.

The honky-tonk genre had some real stars, too, like Crazy Otto, Frankie Carle, and Big Tiny Little, so the made-up pianists' names were often similar to those names. (An effort to confuse record buyers, I'm sure.) 

But a lot of the budget labels didn't only make up the artists' names—they also repackaged the same album over and over again under different names. 

If, for some reason, you decide that you want to start collecting budget-label honky-tonk piano albums from the 1950s, expect to end up with many copies of the same album attributed to different artists. 

The Crystals

Some of the Crystals' Phil Spector-produced hits, such as "He's a Rebel" and "He's Sure the Boy I Love," were actually performed by Darlene Love and the Blossoms. Frank Farian probably took a page from the Phil Spector playbook. Darlene Love said that, to Spector, the singers were no more important than the third violin or the second engineer. 

Tobin Matthews

Music Weird devoted a whole post to Tobin Matthews of "Ruby Duby Du" fame. There was no actual Tobin Matthews when that record became a hit in 1960. Willy Henson became Tobin Matthews thereafter, but he was not involved in any way with "Ruby Duby Du." 

Franklyn Baur

Baur's name doesn't ring any bells with you? His 1927 single "Hallelujah" is credited to Cass Hagen and His Hotel Manager Orchestra, with Franklyn Baur on vocals. But jazz cornetist Red Nichols, who played on the session, said that the vocals were actually performed by actor Charles Kaley.  

This isn't an exhaustive list, of course. These are just the examples that I could think of on a Saturday morning. Add more in the comments!

A taste of deception: The war over "A Taste of Honey"

We've all heard about how corrupt the music industry was back in the '50s and '60s: artists not getting paid, songs being stolen, payola scandals implicating some of the industry's biggest names, etc. Not at all like today. 

The intrigue didn't end there. Some cloak-and-dagger-style shenanigans surrounded the jazz-pop hit "A Taste of Honey" in 1962.

Reprise Records and Liberty Records both had competing versions of the song. Reprise's version was by Eddie Cano, and Liberty's version was by Martin Denny. 

Reprise's national promotion manager at the time was Ernie Farrell, and Liberty's was Bob Skaff. 

Farrell sent fraudulent telegrams, under Skaff's name, to radio stations and the press, telling them to play the B-side of the Denny record, "The Brighter Side," instead of "A Taste of Honey." If disk jockeys flipped the record, it would knock out the competition from Denny so that Eddie Cano would get the airplay for "A Taste of Honey." 

But Skaff found out about the chicanery when people called him to ask why Liberty wanted to push "The Brighter Side." 

Liberty traced the telegrams to their source and discovered that they had come from Reprise. 

Skaff quickly sent his own flurry of telegrams to ask everyone to disregard the previous message and keep playing Denny's "A Taste of Honey." 

Billboard remarked that the stunt inadvertently attracted more attention "than an on-purpose promotional stunt has created in many a moon," but was it really inadvertent? 

At the moment that Farrell's fraudulent telegrams were going out over the wire, Farrell was having dinner—with Skaff. They were longtime friends. And, by all accounts, a couple of jokesters. 

Denny ended up having a bigger hit than Cano despite the stunt, and practically everyone recorded "A Taste of Honey," including the Beatles. 

Jack Argent from Leeds Music, a publishing company in Australia, told Billboard in 1967 that 231 versions of "A Taste of Honey" had been released in Australia alone. 

Skaff and Farrell were certainly characters, though. 

When Skaff died in 2012, his obituary on Cleveland.com quoted radio programmer Mel Phillips as saying, "Bob Skaff had the charisma to be a star in whatever field he chose." 

It also said that Skaff tried to sign the Beatles before Capitol did but was vetoed by his boss. 

Bob Skaff

Frank Sinatra hired Ernie Farrell to be his national promotion director in 1959 when Sinatra started Reprise Records. 

Farrell even released a single on Colpix, "Candy Camera," in 1965 as Ernie Farrell and His Paper Music Band. 

Music Weird interviews Frank Gari, teen idol and TV theme composer

Frank Gari's "Utopia" is one of those great, early '60s teen idol hits that should have been even more successful than it was. A Top 30 hit in 1960, "Utopia" is a beautifully arranged pop song that is similar in tone to Frankie Avalon's "Venus." 

Gari had a couple of minor follow-up hits—"Lullaby of Love" and "Princess"—but went on to much greater success as a composer and producer of television themes, including the themes of Good Morning, America and The Oprah Show. 

I interviewed Gari in 2001 when I was working on Hard to Find 45s on CD, Volume 7: More Sixties Classics for Eric Records. I was able to use only a snippet in the booklet, so here is the full interview. 

Different sources give your birth year as 1942 or 1944. Which one's correct? 

1944. On April Fool's Day. 

Did your parents have any ties to the entertainment industry? 

My mother was a classical pianist, not professionally. My father was a guitar player, not professionally. My sister was a prima ballerina, professionally. So I had music and dancing going on around me through all my early years. It rubbed off. 

How did you break into music? 

It was very interesting. I had been singing in school, and I had a local band of my own. I was determined to become a rock 'n' roll star, so I put on my white buck shoes, I wore a white sweater, I had my pompadour hairdo, and I stood out in front of 1619 Broadway, which is the Brill Building in New York, which was the music capitol. I was just sending out vibrations to anyone who was walking in that building in hopes that maybe someone would recognize me and think that I had the right look. 

Sure enough, a gentleman by the name of Jimmy Crane came up and said, "Who are you?" and I told him, and he said, "Can you sing?" I said yes, and he said, "Well, I have a record label called Ribbon Records, and my record company is upstairs in the Brill Building. Come on up and let's hear what you sound like, and maybe we'll cut a record with you." To make a long story short, that's exactly what I did.

He had a producer working for him by the name of Gerry Granahan, who produced my first record, which was entitled "Lil' Girl." It wasn't a hit, but I did a lot of record hops. 

Down the hall was a gentleman by the name of Sy Muskin, and Sy Muskin had a record company called Crusade Records and this track entitled "Utopia." He said, "Boy, I love the way you sing, I wish you could record this for me, but you're tied up with Ribbon Records." 

Anyway, I was released from the contract with Ribbon and quickly signed with Sy Muskin and Crusade Records and recorded "Utopia." It took six months to a year of doing record hops and promoting the record to start to get it to really make some noise. Sure enough, it started catching on, and hit the charts on Cash Box. 

The owner of the record company, Sy Muskin, was also my manager, and he got me with the William Morris Agency, who got me quickly booked on some very big shows: The Steve Allen Show, The Merv Griffin Show. American Bandstand with Dick Clark, I did many times. The old American Bandstand show in Philadelphia. 

My second record came out, called "Lullaby of Love," and I followed up with a third hit record, called "Princess." 

That's kind of how it went. I got married, had two wonderful children, decided to quit being on the road and singing and fall behind the scenes as a writer and producer. I worked for Bobby Darin's publishing company, TM, which stands for Trinity Music, and worked for Bobby for a while. 

My wife was originally from Cleveland, Ohio. We went to Cleveland on a vacation, and I fell in love with the countryside. Having the two kids, and feeling that New York City was no place to bring up children, we decided to move to Cleveland, which we did. I formed a jingle company in Cleveland, and we soon became the largest jingle company in the Midwest. We did about 3,000 jingles for phone companies, fast food companies, car dealers. 

What were some of your best-known jingles? 

We did Smuckers jams and jellies: "With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good." We did McDonalds: "You deserve a break today." Just lots of things. 

That led me into a television station in Cleveland, channel five, WEWS. They said, "Boy, you do some great jingles. Will you write a song to promote our television station?" We wrote a song called "Catch Five," and "Catch Five" became a huge success in Cleveland. 

(Here's the WEWS "Catch Five" spot)

Channel eight across the street, a CBS station, said, "You wrote such a great song for channel five, could you write one for us?" And they started to do very well in the ratings. And then the NBC station, channel three, called up and said, "You did such a great job for channel five and channel eight, can you write one for us?" And we did, and that was a success, and I found myself producing music for television stations, and now we are the leaders in news music. We write and produce music for some 300-and-something television stations in this country alone. 

We do the theme music for Good Morning, America; for CBS This Morning; for all the ABC news, eyewitness news; the Oprah Winfrey theme. We do all the Fox News, a lot of NBC news, many programs on HBO and Discovery Channel. We just finished doing music for the National Geographic channel. So I'm still deeply involved in music. 

My son, Christian Gari, and my daughter, Kimberly Gari, are basically the head of the creative department and run what is known as Gari Communications. They've been with me for 17 years. 

That led me to California, where I now reside with my family, and my company is here, and we also have studios and an affiliate office in Atlanta. And that's the story. Married 40 years. 


You haven't done any commercial recordings since the '60s?

No, no more recording. But I'm in the studio every day producing theme music. 


Any other anecdotes about "Utopia"? 

Yeah, when I was still on Ribbon Records and I was still under contract, and I became friendly with Sy Muskin, Sy said, "Gosh, I'd sure like to have you sing this song." And I said I was still under contract to Ribbon Records but I'd really love to. He said, "Do you have any friends that sing as well as you do?" So I sent all of my buddies from Paramus High School [in Paramus, New Jersey] to audition, and he auditioned about a half-dozen of my friends. In the meantime, I ended up getting out of my contract with Ribbon. 


So none of your friends went on to greater fame? 

I don't know [laughing]. I lost track. I don't know. Not with "Utopia." 


You compose theme music now, but you didn't compose any of your Crusade sides [Note—Gari is credited as a cowriter of the "Lullaby of Love" b-side, "Tonight Is Our Last Night"]. Were you writing songs back then? 

Yeah—not polished enough to turn into a record, but I honed my skills through the years. 


Talk about some of the package tours you did. 

I did the Alan Freed, Brooklyn Paramount theater; the Murray the K, Brooklyn Paramount; and Brooklyn Fox. I worked with Frankie Avalon and Fabian and Etta James and James Brown and Jerry Lee Lewis and Jackie Wilson and Tony Orlando and the Capris, the Shirelles. 


Did you become friends with any of them? 

Yeah, Tony Orlando became a very good friend of mine. And we were on the road together quite often. That was long before Dawn. 

Gari's Crusade and Ribbon discography

Lil' Girl b/w Your Only Love (Ribbon 6903, 1959)

Utopia b/w I Ain't Got a Girl (Crusade CR-1020, 1960)

Lullaby of Love b/w Tonight Is Our Last Night (Crusade CR-1021, 1961)

Princess b/w The Last Bus Left at Midnight (Crusade CR-1022, 1961)

There's Lots More Where That Came From b/w You Better Keep Runnin' (Crusade CR-1024, 1962)

The Lil' Hospital: An interview and retrospective

The Lil' Hospital was so good. 

I'm an unabashed lover of twee pop, and the Lil' Hospital delivered the goods. Adorable, naive, catchy, and obscure, Lil' Hospital embodied all of the best qualities of twee pop. 

I met the guy behind Lil' Hospital, Kevin Alvir, at NYC Popfest in 2009 when he performed with his subsequent band, Knight School. Knight School was noisy, but Lil' Hospital was cute. I remember telling Kevin that Knight School should mix its vocals louder, like he did with the Lil' Hospital records. I like it when the vocals are way out in front. 

That's Kevin in the middle of the photo above. 

Kevin also started a band called the Hairs with Alex Naidus from the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. The Hairs have outlasted Knight School, but Naidus isn't in the group anymore. 

At first, the Hairs were noisy like Knight School, but then something wonderful started to happen: every once in a while, the Hairs would sound just like Lil' Hospital! Like on their 2013 EP The Magic's Gone. A couple of those songs sound just like Lil' Hospital. 

Mmm.... Lil' Hospital. 

A short history of the "band": 

Kevin is from Virginia, like GWAR, and moved around from Fairfax to Arlington to Philadelphia to New York, but Lil' Hospital was associated with the DC pop scene. Now he's in Brooklyn. 

Active from 2000-2008, Lil' Hospital released three albums and three EPs, beginning with the self-released, home-recorded cassette Meet the Lil' Hospital. The band name was a reference to the Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers song "Hospital." 

I asked Kevin to relive his Lil' Hospital glory days with Music Weird, and he generously obliged. Here's the interview, from February 25, 2014. 


Is my Lil' Hospital discography (below) missing any compilations or other releases? 

I think that pretty much covers the Lil' Hospital discography. I think there have been some compilations that I was on that I cannot remember now.


How did you get the earliest Lil' Hospital recordings out there? Did you send demos to Popgun? Did you advertise or do mail-order for your self-released cassette? Did labels come to you or did you go to them?

The earliest Lil' Hospital recording is Meet the Lil' Hospital. I used to make tapes from my four-track cassette recorder to a tape deck. I would take that tape with the collection of songs and just run copies of it. Then I would make individual packaging for it and send
it around to people. Mainly friends in college, who I don't know if they really dug those twee jams. I was half ashamed, half pompous about it.

I went to the Athens Popfest of 2000, when that was the big thing. I met a lot of likeminded people that I'm sort of in touch with still. One of them was Chris Adolf of Bad Weather California and the Love Letter Band. He encouraged me to send my tape out to get released.

Raoul de la Cruz of Popgun Recordings responded when I sent him a demo. He really loved the songs but didn't like my production style. He told me to take off all the reverb. The songs were super slow and echoey like Galaxie 500. So I sent him a four-song EP, recorded with no reverb, called Me & My Beatbox. Which was a bit more rambunctious. And it came out on September 11, 2001.

As far as advertising, I would leave messages on message boards to come see about the Lil' Hospital. I would just send tapes to people in bands that I liked. Thankfully, they would give it a listen and I've been in touch with them for a long time too. But I never had a label
approach me for Lil' Hospital. That was just me emailing labels if they would put out something by me. I was just motivated to have albums and such. I am surprised that a lot of them were so accepting and I didn't have to beg.


The band was just you in the early days. When did you first perform as Lil' Hospital, and when did you put a band together for it? How many times did Lil' Hospital perform live? 

I first performed as the Lil' Hospital during the winter of 2001 or 2002? I asked this friend named Dan if the Lil' Hospital could perform in his basement. And we kinda made a party for it. I had performed in high school doing open mics. But this was the first time I had something to stand behind and a tape to sell—that Me & My Beatbox tape. So I felt kinda legit. It was just me and my friend Niko on drums. On recordings I played with a Casio keyboard preset drum machine.

Gradually, we got our friend Lynne to play bass. She didn't really know how to play bass, so we kinda taught her. Then again, I didn't know how to play bass myself. Then I just kept adding people and sometimes people left. By the end of the Lil' Hospital, I was living in New York and I was playing with Mat and Frank of the band called Shumai. And then the Lil' Hospital kinda crumbled.

The Lil' Hospital played a ton I remember. I was from the Washington DC area and I was surprised we got to play so often. We were one of three bands at the time that was kinda poppy and fun. I think I counted the amount of shows a few years ago—I think we played over 100 shows? Some of them I did solo. There was a summer tour I did in 2002. I played, like, five shows across America. All of them were solo and in a different time zone. No one knew of me—and how could they? The internet was not what it is now. But I was excited that I could do it and that I actually did do it.


Lil' Hospital doesn't really sound like anyone else. Did you see yourself as being like any other bands?

Wow. That's a really nice compliment. On one hand, I was really influenced by certain bands at the time. I loved Of Montreal, Television Personalities, and the Aislers Set. I think I set out to sound a lot like them. But at the same time, if it sounded too much like any particular band, I would scrap it. I would hear the playback and just think, "Who the fuck is this poser?" I just tried to sound like myself, and I suppose that is hard to do. I think I might've tried to bend backwards, style-wise, in order to get the Elephant 6 crowd or the more twee-pop crowd or the indie-rock crowd. But overall, I just had to do what seemed right at the moment.

As for being like any other band, I wanted to have a style that was like that of Dan Treacy from Television Personalities or Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal. They had a certain voice. But I didn't want to do all the things that they did. I mean, the Lucksmiths were a super-popular indiepop band to be akin with, but at the same time, I knew I wasn't them either. I don't know if I can clearly answer this. It's like I wanted to be liked as much as other popular bands, but I couldn't live with myself doing something that seemed out of my own character
or capabilities.


What was the greatest or most surprising success that Lil' Hospital achieved?

Honestly, doing this interview feels like a great achievement. The Lil' Hospital has been dead for quite some time now. I always thought it went unheard, and it was really loved by a few twee pop fans out there around the world. I think the first time I was interviewed by the Washington DC Washington City Paper, I felt "achievement." But that went away. Ha!

I think opening for the Lucksmiths was cool. I think about the times that we played with other bands or for other people, and the mix of people really getting it versus the people that were like, "Uhhh.....well.....you guys seemed like you were having fun."

I don't know—I think I'm glad that the Lil' Hospital lasted as long as it did and that
people remember it. Oh, I also got a crushing review of Heavy Metal by some website. It was like, "This guy can't sing, can't write songs, and can't play instruments, so why does he even exist?" That bummed me out, but I just wanted to still do it. So I'm glad that I survived
that.


The video for "Big Sister in Hollywood" is a pretty lavish production. How did that come about?

"Big Sister in Hollywood" was filmed in a day or two in Philadelphia. My friend Jayme of Snow Fairies, et cetera, put together a DVD compilation of indiepop bands that would most likely not have a music video. That was called No Parachute. He set me up with his friend Rich Wexler. We discussed the idea over the phone and I agreed to everything. It was fun. I can't watch it, really. But it was a fun song and a fun video to make.


I love the recent Hairs EP The Magic's Gone because the title track sounds just like Lil' Hospital. A lot of your recent stuff with Knight School and the Hairs has been noisy, though. Have you lost your softness and innocence and become cynical and angry?

Have I lost my innocence? I suppose so. I think once you get to The Universe Sucks, which was at the end of the Lil' Hospital arc, I started going to therapy. I started realizing some things. I mean, I have some embarrassment in thinking about the Lil' Hospital now because I was a lot younger and naive. Sometimes I hear it and I think about how I was this closet-case gay guy that was terrified of himself and everyone else. I came from a pretty conservative town and family. I didn't think there was much hope for me to be accepted. So I just lost myself in music. I have come to terms with a lot of things and I think that's what I hear in doing the Hairs or Knight School. I think I still have my poppy side. But I think I've been trying to merge that with the actual person that I am. Before I got into making music, I mainly listened to Sonic Youth.

The "Big Sister in Hollywood" video:

Discography

Meet the Lil' Hospital (Self-released, 2000; Rub-a-Dub Tape Club, 2004)

• Pet Rock / Muscles / Wish You Would / Grow to Be / Local Heroes / Gone Gone Gone / Namby Pamby / Hello America

Me & My Beatbox EP (Popgun, 2001)

• Always Buggin' / Pet Rock / In Your Room / Nambly Pambly

Pretty Kissin' (Popgun Recordings, 2003)

• Pretty Kissin' / London 1-2-3-4 / Young and Restless

I Wanna Be Well (Best Friends Records, 2003)

• Busybee / Summer Reading / Kampus & Katy / Muscles / Oh My Days / Pretty Kissin' / Don't Cry No Tears / It's a Mad, Mad World / Hugless / Casios Know / There Could Be Girlfriend

Hey! Where'd the Summer Go? (Humblebee HBR003, 2004)

• Various artists. Includes Lil' Hospital's "Pretty Kissin'"

Total Gaylord Records Presents Cwistmas Twee (Total Gaylord, 2004)

• Various artists. Includes Lil' Hospital's "Dear Scrooge" 

Heavy Metal (Total Gaylord, 2006)

• Heavy Metal / Why, Why, Why (The Means) / Big Sister in Hollywood / Hey Crow / The Floods / I'm a Little Hospital / His Magic Guitar / Lost the Night / Office Rock / Henry Linquist / With the Wolves / Fast Learners

The Universe Sucks (Hugpatch, 2008)

• Universe / Nothing Like a Car Crash // Kip Is a Dick / A Bug's Life / The T-Rex

Music Weird interviews Merv Benton, early Australian rock 'n' roller

For eight years I hosted a thematic oldies radio show called Rhythm Ranch, on which I played mostly '50s and early '60s pop, rock, country, rockabilly, and R&B. Occasionally I interviewed artists, but I never otherwise published the interviews or did anything with them. Whenever I find time to transcribe them, I'll post some of them on Music Weird. Here's my interview with early Australian rock 'n' roller Merv Benton. 

Merv Benton

As rock 'n' roll spread around the world, early Australian rockers like Johnny O'Keefe, Johnny Chester, Col Joye, and New Zealander Johnny Devlin led the charge in their part of the world. Some of their records were even released in the US in the early '60s. None of them was very successful here, but if they had been, the US could have had an Australian Invasion before the British Invasion! 

Merv Benton was one of Melbourne's entries into the rock 'n' roll sweeps, and he charted several regional and national hits in Australia in the early-to-mid '60s. His single "Yield Not to Temptation" was released in the United States on Marvel Records in 1965. 

After Benton semi-retired from music, his career took him to Arizona, which is where he lived when I talked to him on February 2, 2003. 


In Australia, '50s-style rock 'n' roll seemed to live on into the '60s longer than it did in the US and England. 

It still does, actually. There's a really hardcore audience over there for early rock 'n' roll, and they're all purists. If you go over there and fool around with one of the songs, and you rearrange it or something, they don't like it. They like it in its original form. 


You were there when rock 'n' roll came to Australia.  

The first real thing that grabbed me was Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel." Even to this day, I don't believe that there has been another record that turned the music industry around as much as "Heartbreak Hotel" did. It was just such a diversion from the music at the time. And with Presley, the guy just exuded something onstage. You only have to hear his voice and you know it's Presley. There aren't many people around who can say that. He was unique. 

Anyway, when "Heartbreak Hotel" came out, it was like night and day, as far as I was concerned. I remember when they first released "Heartbreak Hotel," a lot of the radio stations in Australia hesitated a little bit because they thought that he was black. You know, those early recordings of Presley's—a lot of it was early black music. 

So then, all the Presley hits were coming out, and rock 'n' roll became the thing. Everyone was walking around with blue suede shoes with crepe soles, the peg pants with the 16-inch bottoms, the Canadian jackets and white t-shirts. And at that stage, of course, I couldn't grow sideboards, but if I could've, I would've! 

I saw one of the first shows that came to Australia, which was Haley, the Platters and Freddie Bell & the Bellboys. Freddie Bell & the Bellboys sang this song, "Giddy Up a Ding Dong," and they just whipped that crowd over in Australia into a frenzy, and I was there. I think I was about 14 at the time. It just blew my brain, and I thought, "That's what I want to do." 


How did you get started? 

I did a talent quest one night. A guy called Graham Howie, a keyboard player, had been trying to get me to sing for ages. In those days, I was very shy and really didn't fancy the idea of getting up in front of an audience. Anyway, one night at this talent quest at the Canterbury Ballroom, unbeknownst to me, they put my name down to sing a song. Then they called my name. 

I made a beeline to the back door, but they already knew that I would do that, so they had two people waiting there for me and wouldn't let me out, so they took me up on stage. The first song I ever sang was "Don't Leave Me This Way," which was an old Ricky Nelson song. As luck would have it, I won on that night, and I met a guy there called Brian DeCoursey who later became my manager. 

Later, I'd been doing a few dances with the Chessmen, and John [Chester] had heard a few shows that I was doing, and apparently he and Brian suggested that we see if we could get a recording contract. In those days in Melbourne, the only people who would take a chance on local talent were W&G [Records]. Particularly if you were Melbourne based. They organized for me to go in and do a demo tape. I did that demo tape, Johnny Chester produced the record, and I did it with the Chessmen, and I think the four songs that were recorded were "Baby, Let's Play House," "Endless Sleep," "A Lotta Lovin'," and "Rocky Road Blues." 


How did Johnny Chester come to produce the demo sessions? 

I think he wanted to have a go at [producing], and also, his band the Chessmen were playing [as Benton's backing group]. I think that the actual producer, as far as W&G was concerned, was a guy called Lindsay Morehouse. He was one of those guys who, whenever the needle went into the red, turned it down. So, we arranged for Lindsay to go out for a meal, and then we recorded the tracks, and John produced them. 

You changed your name to Merv Benton. 

The reason my name changed from Merv Bonson to Merv Benton was, when I started work when I was 16, I worked in a bank. In those days, banks were very staid places, and they frowned on a person working for the bank having two jobs. So, that was the reason I called myself Merv Benton—so they wouldn't find out. And then one day, after "Baby, Let's Play House" had been released and was climbing up the charts, some young ladies who were walking past saw me in the bank, and they came in and just about wrecked the place. The bank turned around and said, "What are you doing to do?" And I said, "So long. See you later." 

"Cincinnati Fireball," which was a hit for you, sounds like a late '50s rocker, but you recorded it in, what? 1964? 

'64, I think. '63-'64. Well, a lot of that had to do with the recording companies. To a certain degree, they worked on the idea that if a song was known, then it was liable to get played, and if it was liable to get played, then it was liable to sell. They were very much along the lines of making the bottom line look good, and that was the way that they felt. It wasn't until around about '64, after the Beatles, that a bunch of younger groups got involved and started recording their own material with other recording companies opening, like Mushroom Records.


So you weren't able to choose your songs? 

Pretty much, in most situations, we picked the songs. In those days it was a little bit like England when rock 'n' roll started to come up. The record labels were mainly only interested in doing cover versions. They didn't have a comfort level with original material, and with some of them, there was a couple of times when they did interfere and said, "We want you to try this other record." 

That was [the case] with one called "Be Sweet," which was originally called "Shake Hands" or something and came from a German production company. I think their main reason was that they had interest in the recording rights and the publishing. So we had to rewrite the words, and "Shake Hands" became "Be Sweet." I never liked that record. I've never sung it live. 

The biggest problem we had in the second recording session was trying to get that girl-group sound. If you listen to "Shimmy Shimmy," they seem like screaming banshees. We just could never get that vocal backing sound. And yet, with the male vocal backing, like on "Don't Leave Me Now," there was a group called the Thin Men, who very much in those days did sound like the Jordanaires, and we could get that type of sound. But we were never successful with the girls. 

"Cincinnati Fireball" knocked Elvis out of the #1 spot on some charts. 

That was exciting. When we recorded that, "Cincinnati Fireball" was to be the B-side. The A-side was to be the Ral Donner thing, "I Got Burned." And, while "I Got Burned" took off in Melbourne, "Cincinnati Fireball" was the first record that took off for me nationally in Australia. 


What about the rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney? 

Johnny O'Keefe, Col Joye–they were out of Sydney. At that stage there was a lot of competition between Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne had John Chester and a guy called Bobby Cookson, but the heights that Johnny O'Keefe had and Col Joye had far surpassed anything that we had in Melbourne. I mean, their records were released Australia-wide, and it was always hard to crack the Sydney market if you were from Melbourne in those initial days. 

O'Keefe, at one time, I think, came to America and recorded in America. A song called "She's My Baby," which was released over here, also went to, I think, #1 in Australia. He was rather a phenomenon. Johnny, he didn't have the greatest voice in the world, but as a showman, you couldn't beat him. They used to always put him on when overseas artists came and did the tours with Lee Gordon. John was always on the shows, and they found it very hard to follow him. I mean, his act onstage was unbelievable. He was just a showman through and through. 


You had the right look for pop stardom. 

Al Martino was on Sydney Tonight. Each of the states—like, there was Sydney Tonight and Melbourne Tonight—had nighttime variety shows along the lines of Leno and Letterman these days. Al Martino was there, and I sang this old Bobby Darin number, "Somebody to Love," and when I finished, I came off and Al Martino said to me, "Forget singing, son. Get your head over to Hollywood!"


You recorded some country music later on. 

Yeah, I've always been into that type of music. I would much prefer to sing that, or really solid rock 'n' roll. 

Talk about your country "comeback" album, Great Country Songs, from 1970.

I enjoyed that album. I enjoyed doing it. Surprisingly enough, it sold reasonably well and got good reviews. 

Why did you retire from music? 

I had polyps in the back of my throat. You either get them or you don't—they weren't from singing. Promptly, I went and had opera lessons, actually, and the teacher said one day, "You're not enjoying this, are you? What do you want to sing?" I said, "I want to sing rock 'n' roll!" She said, "See you later. So long. Go off and have a nice life." 

Anyway, I had these growths on the back of my throat and they had to be removed. There was no such thing as laser surgery or anything in those days, and they used to burn them off. They could have gone through the throat [with the surgery], but they went through the mouth and serrated the vocal chords. I couldn't talk for around about four or five months. Then it was around about eight months before I could sing or get back into a rhythm. At that stage, the music industry was changing so dramatically, there wasn't a lot of interest in what I was doing. It was like, been there, see you later, you've had your fifteen minutes. So, rather than try to push something uphill that I thought wasn't going to work, that's when I got out of the business. 


Talk about your return to performing. 

Basically, a chap and his partner came to me in 1988 and asked me to do a show. I'd stayed out of all that—going back and doing the reunion shows—purely because everyone expects you to come out in a black pants, red shirt with an orange tie and white shoes, and be overweight, and do a few rock 'n' roll songs, and that's that. I was never like that. My thing was, if I'm going to do a show, I'm going to do it properly. Most of the other promoters at that stage turned around to me and said it won't work, you can't do it that way, this is the way it's got to be done, and I just said, well, leave me out of it. 

When these two came and approached me, I said I'm only interested if I can do it the way I want to do it. And that is, be professional.  I said I want rehearsals, I want the sound to be good, I want to do it in such a way that, when we're finished, people have really enjoyed the show, and the musicians as well as myself know that we've done a good show. 

Fortunately, they said let's do it. So I did that show, I think it was in '88, and then I didn't do another show until about four years after that. Then I've gone back every two years. The last show we did in August was, to me, the most pleasing one, because I reunited all the Tamlas, who were my backing group from those days. We were sitting around talking and we said, "Do you realize there's about 380 years of rock 'n' roll onstage here tonight?" It was crazy. If I go back and do any shows now, I won't do them without the Tamlas. After last August, the show was so good that I don't want to do anything without them. 


Canetoad Records released two CDs of your '60s recordings. 

I was delighted with the job David McLean from Canetoad did on my CDs. I mean the sound, to me, was exactly as I remember it in the studio. It used to be a very frustrating thing to me that when we heard the record on playback on the radio, I knew that they didn't sound like that in the studio. I really have no idea why we lost so much of the quality and the presence when W&G pressed them, but with these [CDs], I was absolutely delighted, because I thought, wow, that's as I remembered it. David himself told me that the only enhancement they did was a little bit of bass. 

I was really happy that, with the first one, he allowed me to do the liner notes. They said can we get someone to do them, a historian, but most of the historians who are around that they had access to are 35 or 40. I'm not putting any of them down for being 35 and 40, but they weren't there, and I felt that I could put a few words together in such a way that it would be an honest history of what I actually felt at the time of the records and of what was happening. 

The music of Scott Baio

This is a photo of my grandmother with actor Scott Baio of Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi fame. And, later, Charles in Charge fame.

When I was a kid, a framed copy of this photo was nestled among the family photos in the family room of my grandparents' house. The grandchildren, including me, thought it was hilarious that a photo of Scott Baio was in the middle of our family's photos. 

The photo sat there for so many years that Scott Baio became kind of like a member of the family. The successful, good-looking family member who never calls, writes, or visits. 

I wasn't particularly interested in Scott Baio back then. I liked Happy Days well enough, I guess, and I met actor Donny Most, who played Ralph "The Mouth" Malph, at a car show. I got his autograph and immediately lost it. 

This photo of my grandmother seemed to provoke some interest in Baio among my extended family, though. My cousin, for example, bought a copy of Scott Baio's self-titled RCA album from 1982. I asked to borrow it, and she gave me a weird look. I think she was afraid that I wanted to make fun of it rather than genuinely and unironically enjoy the music contained within. If so, she was right—I just wanted to make fun of it. 

Baio actually recorded two albums for RCA in 1982-83. They're not good enough to be good, or bad enough to be "so bad they're good." The production is standard sterile-sounding early '80s shlock, over which Baio delivers his wobbly vocals.   

A few moments are funny. Like on the first album when Baio goes out of tune on "How Do You Talk to Girls" and "Midnight Confessions." Or on the second album's remake of Johnny Kidd & the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over," in which the unforgettable guitar riff from Kidd's version is performed on a rinky-dink keyboard. 

Baio's TV fan base bought enough copies of his debut album to keep it on the lower rungs of the Billboard album chart for four weeks, where it peaked at #181. RCA advertised the album as a "major market breakout" and claimed that its single—"What Was in That Kiss"—was a hit, but that was only wishful thinking on RCA's part. 

Sales of the album were robust enough for RCA to give Baio a second chance, so his second album, The Boys Are Out Tonight, was released in 1983. It was a total flop. The album didn't chart and didn't get much press either. 

Baio promoted it, though. He even appeared on American Bandstand to pal around with Dick Clark and perform "Some Girls" and "She's Trouble" from the album.  

To Baio's credit, his vocal performances were stronger the second time around. He'd probably been practicing. 

The second album's single, "Some Girls," is notable in that it was written by Chinnichap: Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, the production team behind all those glam hits by Suzi Quatro, Sweet, Mud, Smokie, etc. "Some Girls" was a song that they originally offered to Blondie, but Blondie turned it down, so the British group Racey recorded it in 1979. I think I'd rather listen to Baio's version than Racey's. 

As far as I know, these albums were never released on manufactured compact discs, but now you can get them as print-on-demand CD-Rs at Amazon.

Weird trivia: The poster for Scott Baio's first album appears in the 1983 X-rated film Daughters of Discipline. It's seen in the background here but also is shown in a close-up shortly afterward:

Discography

Singles

What Was in that Kiss (stereo) b/w What Was in that Kiss (mono) (RCA JH-13256, 1982)

What Was in that Kiss b/w Looking for the Right Girl (RCA JH-13256, 1982)

Wanted for Love b/w same (RCA JH-13356, 1982)

Some Girls b/w Heartbreaker (RCA PB-13553, 1983)

Albums

Scott Baio (RCA Victor AFL1-4342, 1982)

• Wanted for Love / What Was in That Kiss / Runnin' Out of Reasons to Go / How Do You Talk to Girls / Half the World // Woman I Love Only You / When You Find Someone Who Loves You / What Am I Supposed to Do / Looking for the Right Girl / Midnight Confessions

The Boys Are Out Tonight (RCA Victor AFL1-4696, 1983)

• I'll Take You Back / Fingerprints / See How the Love Goes / Some Girls / The Boys Are Out Tonight // Can't You See That She's Mine / Shakin' All Over / Heartbreaker / Don't Talk / She's Trouble

6 songs about Abraham Lincoln for Lincoln's Birthday

Today is Abraham Lincoln's birthday, so Music Weird presents six songs about Lincoln that apparently are so obscure that most of them can't be found on YouTube. Nevertheless, these songs are all too real, and a couple of them were even chart hits! 

Johnny Horton - "Young Abe Lincoln (Make a Tall, Tall Man)"

Johnny Horton became the king of the so-called historical folk song after he hit #1 with "The Battle of New Orleans" in 1959. Producer Don Law* reportedly was so overcome by the awesomeness of Horton's performance in the studio that he cried. Law wasn't alone in his opinion; the record wasn't just a #1 hit—it was the smash record of the year. To this day, it's the biggest crossover country hit in the history of the pop chart. 

Afterward, Horton recorded a number of other songs in a similar vein, none of which was nearly as successful. "Young Abe Lincoln" is one of them. 

*Or maybe it was Horton's manager, Tillman Franks. I can't remember. This anecdote is from the book that comes with Bear Family's Johnny Horton box set, 1956-1960. 

Don Cornell – "Young Abe Lincoln"

Same title, different song. Don Cornell doesn't seem to be particularly well-remembered these days, but maybe that's just my perception. He had a lot of hits, though, and was a musical chameleon, sort of like Bobby Darin but earlier. He recorded traditional pop, folk, rock 'n' roll, etc. 

Cornell's "Young Abe Lincoln" on Coral was a moderate hit and is a rousing number in the "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" style. Hugo & Luigi also recorded this song for Mercury and saw a little chart action. 

Fess Parker – "Abraham Lincoln"

Fess Parker, known to an entire generation as television's Davy Crockett, and later as TV's Daniel Boone, recorded an album of songs about figures from American history. His song for Lincoln includes timeless couplets such as "honest Abe Lincoln / he set the world to thinkin'." 

Bear Family Records reissued this album on CD (with a different title and cover), and it's a fun album if not always historically accurate. 

Carl Mann – "Burning Holes in the Eyes of Abraham Lincoln"

Here's an unusual song. The first time I saw this title, I didn't know what to expect. "Burning Holes in the Eyes of Abraham Lincoln" is a late-career flop single by Carl Mann, who's remembered for his 1959 hit "Mona Lisa." 

"Burnin' Holes," a Carl Mann original, is about a heartbroken man's conversation with a five-dollar bill as he dejectedly burns out Lincoln's eyes with a cigarette. 

"Old Abe Lincoln Came Out of the Wilderness"

In 1964, LIFE magazine released an interesting album of presidential campaign songs that was titled Sing Along with Millard Fillmore. (A jokey reference to those Mitch Miller Sing Along with Mitch albums.) 

The artists were anonymous, but the production values were high and the songs were fun. The style is somewhere between historical folk (like Johnny Horton) and commercial folk (like the New Christy Minstrels). Lincoln's entry on the album is "Old Abe Lincoln Came Out of the Wilderness," a song that was also featured in the 1940 film Abe Lincoln in Illinois. 

Dion – "Abraham, Martin and John"

A million-selling Top 5 hit in 1968. Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and Moms Mabley also recorded hit versions.