Cathy Carroll: The Drama Queen

Cathy Carroll

Among the female teen pop singers of the '60s, Cathy Carroll might be the most dramatic stylist of them all.

She didn't quite outdo Johnnie Ray in the histrionics department, but she did record Ray's signature hit, "Cry," in what I assume was a tribute to one of her spiritual forebears. 

I remember reading that producer Ken Nelson used to try to make Ferlin Husky reel in his overwrought performances. Husky was another singer like Carroll and Ray who really liked to pour his heart out. Fortunately, Carroll didn't have a Ken Nelson around to make her dial down the drama, so she was free to emote to the max. 

She was no novelty act, though. Like Ray and Husky, she could really sing. 

On Carroll's records, her performances were only one source of drama; many of the songs themselves were completely over the top. 

Like the unforgettable teen tragedy song "Jimmy Love" (1961), in which her boyfriend gets smashed by a tree. Or "Every Leaf That Falls" (1961), in which her teen heartache is so apocalyptic that the falling leaves of autumn might as well be nuclear bombs. 

Or "I Wish You Were a Girl" (1966), Carroll's final single, which would make any guy glad that he's not a girl. Unless he wanted to suffer and pray for death, that is. According to the song, that's what being a girl is like. 

It's hard to find any information about Carroll, let alone credible information, so today Music Weird will endeavor to inform. Someone out there knows a lot more about her than I've been able to find, and her family members occasionally comment on her YouTube videos, so I hope that someone will add info here in the comments. 

Her hits

In Billboard, Carroll had only one chart hit, but she had a lot more hits than that if you broaden your definition of a hit. 

Carroll's first national hit, "Jimmy Love," didn't register at all in Billboard but was a minor hit in Cash Box, where it reached #79 in 1961. The song was successful enough that Capitol's Jeanne Black covered it. 

"Jimmy Love" is notable not only for being a teen tragedy recording but also for its twist ending. The song leads you to think that it's about a wedding, but then you find out that the girl is actually at the funeral of her fiancé, who died when a tree fell on him during a storm. 

(Joe Dowell's 1963 Smash recording "My Darling Wears White Today" is another bait-and-switch wedding song that turns out to be a death disc.)

Carroll's version of "Jimmy Love" attracted much more attention than its meager-to-nonexistent chart showing suggests. It was a Top 10 hit in several cities, and newspaper columnist Jerry Osborne ("Mr. Music") claimed that the single sold 300,000 copies. Hard to believe, but I mention it here anyway. 

"Jimmy Love" came out on Triodex Records, a New York label that Bill Buchanan (of "The Thing" and Buchanan & Goodman) ran. I talked to one of the co-owners of Triodex years ago and wish that I could find my notes from the interview. 

On the Billboard chart, Carroll's only hit was "Poor Little Puppet," a recording of a song that first appeared on the B-side of Jan & Dean's 1961 single "A Sunday Kind of Love." Carroll's version peaked at #91 in 1962. 

Regionally, Carroll's version of "Poor Little Puppet" was a Top 10 hit in several cities, including Seattle, San Diego, Cleveland, and Vancouver.

This wonderful minor hit can be found—legitimately licensed and mastered from the original tape—on a compilation that I worked on, Teen Time, Volume 1: Love Me Forever. 

Billboard said that, despite Carroll's many good records, "Poor Little Puppet" was "easily her best." The background vocals were provided by the Earls, who had a hit of their own in 1962 with "Remember Then." 

Apart from "Jimmy Love" and "Poor Little Puppet," Carroll's singles had only regional success.

• "Every Leaf That Falls" (1961) charted in a number of Northeastern cities and saw some action in San Francisco. 
• "The Young Ones" (1962), Carroll's cover of the Cliff Richard song, charted on at least 10 radio stations across the country, particularly around Massachusetts. 
• "But You Lied" (1962) charted in Vancouver, Toronto, and Philadelphia. 
• "I'm Available" (1963), Carroll's remake of the 1957 Margie Rayburn hit, charted in Montreal. 
• "Here's to Our Love" (1965) charted in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. (That year she also released an unsuccessful answer song to Brian Hyland's "Ginny Come Lately," "Johnny Come Lately.")

Her life and times 

The Wikipedia article on Carroll says that she was born in 1939, but both Billboard and Radio Television Daily reported in 1963 that she was 17 years old, which means that she would have been born closer to 1946.  

I'm assuming that she came from somewhere around Massachusetts, because she had so much regional success there. Wikipedia also claims that her real name was Carolyn Stern.

In 1961, Billboard reported that Carroll appeared on the Bob Braun TV hop in Cincinnati to promote "Jimmy Love" and also traveled from Chicago to Detroit to Cincinnati to New York to pitch the record and to record promo spots for disk jockeys. 

In 1962, Carroll went to New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, with Roy Beltier (who had a swingin' version of "Summertime" out on Success Records) to appear on WNHC-TV's Connecticut Bandstand Show and to judge a twist contest at the Hartford Armory. 

Carroll moved to Philips Records in 1963 and signed with the cosmetics firm Coty to serve as "Miss Teen-Age America" in a 100-city tour. 

In 1965, she switched to the Musicor label. Billboard reported that when the head of Musicor's Italian distribution heard her first Musicor single, "Here's to Our Love," he requested that she record an Italian version. The Italian single was supposed to be released by the end of February 1965, but I haven't found any evidence that it was. 

Her stay with Musicor was short lived, and by the end of 1965, she had signed with the Rotate label, which was distributed by Bell Records. 

In 1966, she moved to Dot Records and cut her final solo single. 

Carroll married Bob Halley, the producer, arranger, and songwriter who wrote Nat "King" Cole's hit "Dear Lonely Hearts," among many other songs. Under the name Bob and Cathy, the duo recorded a single for Mercury Records in 1967, "Clyde and Dale" b/w "Just Imagine." "Just Imagine" is included on the 2009 Bob Halley Band CD Missouri Bluebird. 

In 1968, Billboard reported that Halley and Carroll had given birth to a son. 

That's all I know. There's a pretty good-sounding bootleg CD called The Cathy Carroll Story (Not Just a Poor Little Puppet) that has all of her recordings except for "Just Imagine." The liner notes say that she had a son and a daughter. 

More info, anyone?

Music Weird interviews LMP (La Musique Populaire)

LMP (La Musique Populaire) can rightly be described as "legendary," because popular myths have sprang up about them. 

Originally based in Champaign and Evanston, Illinois, LMP attracted particular attention for the 2004 release A Century of Song—a 6-disc box set on which they recorded a song from each year of the 20th century. Many of the songs that represented each year were unlikely choices, to say the least. The song that cemented my resolve to purchase the set was their choice of Hayley Mills' "Cranberry Bog" for 1962.  

Even though the box set was released in a hand-numbered limited edition of only 100, the scope and craziness of the set captured the imagination of millions. Or of more than 100 people, in any case. I'm the proud owner of #84. I bought it because Jeff Weiss, the former owner of Muncie's celebrated punk club, No Bar & Grill, recommended it to me.  

In addition to LMPs engrossing and inexplicable Century of Song project, the group has released two albums of original material: Aunt Canada and Love Conquers Alda. The latter, in particular, is a wildly entertaining synthesis of pop music clichés, pop music references, and radio-friendly melodies.  

There are so many bands that I love for various reasons and love to obsess over in one way or another, or that I want to see live or whatever. But LMP is a band that I want to be in. Guys, seriously—if you need a bass player or second guitarist....

LMP is Ryan Bassler and Eric Haugen. Music Weird interviewed LMP on March 13, 2014. 


The most pressing question on everyone's mind is: What's going on with the new album? What can you tell us about it? 

Eric: It's been finished for a while, and we'll finally be releasing it on vinyl this year. Twelve new songs, our usual mix of super-catchy songs and self-indulgence. It's called You Ain't Nuttin' If You Ain't Struttin'. The cover art is really fantastic—it was done by a guy named Sandy Hoffman, who illustrated some amazing album covers back in the day, like The London Muddy Waters Sessions and a bunch of others.


After your mammoth Century of Song project, rumors circulated about other similar LMP initiatives. Like, I remember hearing that you were going to record the entire Beatles catalog in chronological order. Were any of these rumors true? Did you work on anything like that? 

Ryan: That rumor made us laugh, but honestly we had nothing to do with igniting that. Pretty sure it started on our Wikipedia page, which we were frankly surprised to discover even existed. Honestly, us recording the Beatles canon would probably be boring.

Eric: We did actually have a project like this prior to Century, but the idea was to write all-original songs using the Beatles' titles. As though a band had finally come along who could write a better "Yesterday," "Strawberry Fields Forever, "Let It Be," et cetera. We recorded a fair number of good demos for that but never ended up releasing any of it.

Ryan: Typically over-ambitious LMP idea. See also the idea of recording 100 LPs in a year. We had all sorts of ground rules laid out: only x many comedy albums, y many ambient recordings, z many live albums and compilations, etc. Not sure we have the energy for projects like that these days. 


Your last album of original material came out 10 years ago. It followed your debut by 7 or 8 years? That's a relaxed pace, so how prolific are you? Do you write a lot of material that never gets out? 

Ryan: Independently, Eric and I tend to have separate writing bursts—when one's quiet, the other's inspired, and vice-versa. Whenever we have something promising, we'll typically send stuff to each other to help flesh out or evolve. So there's a crazy amount of demos stockpiled. I also have a side project with my friend and music teacher Bill Corrough. We've recorded 15 children's education albums under the name Green Bean Music.

Eric: We have a lot of interesting unreleased stuff—everything from lo-fi improvs to fully produced albums. I probably record about 5-6 hours of demos and fragments every year, and I send Ryan only the few that seem like potential gems. We've talked about starting some kind of archive series—potentially a podcast, or a limited physical release, possibly, just to document all the unexplored avenues. 

How often do you play, or have you played, live? Are you going to tour to support the new album? 

Eric: We were a live band for about 5 years back in the '90s. We were originally a four-piece, and grew into a rotating lineup with full string and horn sections, with, like, 18 people onstage at a time. The last gig we officially played together was a one-off in Minneapolis for a friend, and I remember it was 2001, because on the way home we heard Pink's "Get This Party Started" on the radio for the first time and it blew us both away. We'd love to tour the new album, but not sure it's going to happen.

Ryan: To me, playing live is ultimately a hassle, and almost impossible at this point since Eric's in LA and I'm in Chicago, but I guess never say never. We have some insanely talented musician friends we'd be able to corral if we got the itch, but honestly, once you've assembled an 18-piece band with strings and brass like we did back when we were in Champaign, it's all kinda downhill, expensive, and just a huge battle. 

You guys seem like gearheads. What are the most interesting instruments in your arsenal?

Ryan: Heh, tough one. We're definite gear nerds, with a pretty lucky track record of picking gear that's really uncool at the time but ends up becoming collectable, and thus unaffordable, much later on. It's hard to limit our favorite pieces to just a few…. Like, there are easily 100 pieces in the drum machine closet alone, which is admittedly ludicrous, but I guess you can't fake passion and/or OCD. The Baldwin Syntha-Sound is beloved—a super-rare, super-oddball monosynth from '73 that instantly sounds like Edd Kalehoff/"Price Is Right" incidental music. We even have a spare, just in case. A few years ago, I took a road trip up to northern Michigan to buy a 4-octave celeste, and that's probably the most special piece in the studio these days. I've slowly been writing an album of lullabies.

Eric: Ryan's the LMP gear ninja, without question. I think he has every Roland drum machine except an 808, which, to some people, is the equivalent of a master chef not having salt in the kitchen. We love oddball stuff like the MTI Auto-Orchestra, which can't really even keep a consistent tempo but just gives you these amazing happy accidents. Personally I'm more drawn to newer gear. Like, I love the Arturia Spark, Earthquaker pedals, Korg's Volca groove boxes.... Stuff that's easy to use and adds an element of unpredictablity. The middle ground between me and Ryan in terms of gear is probably Dimension C. 

You have self-released practically all of your stuff. You have exceptional songwriting and instrumental chops, though, so what kind of label interest have you attracted?

Eric: We've had some brushes with industry attention over the years. We had a video shown on an early Conan O'Brien episode, a Century mention in Rolling Stone, a couple of songs featured in a small indie film, but not much else, really. We've always thought that self-releasing our stuff is the only way to ensure it stays the way we want it, free from the influence of whoever's footing the bill, for better or worse.

Ryan: The last time we really ever shopped ourselves around was circa '96, the Aunt Canada period. There was virtually zero interest, so we said the hell with it, let's just keep doing it ourselves. Probably the closest thing we've gotten to major label attention was a cease-and-desist from a certain major right as the Century box was about to sell out. We responded to them by sending a demo cassette with a letter asking for a record deal. Never heard back, so apparently that's a good trick to stop the lawyerbirds in their tracks. 

Do you ever fantasize about being Brill Building-type songwriters and writing hits for current pop stars like Ke$ha and One Direction?

Ryan: Oh yeah, that's a dream gig right there. We were mildly obsessed with that writing team the Matrix for a while, just trying to determine how they even got to that level. In some ways, we've always viewed our albums as semi-polished demo sets for others to pluck from.

Eric: We both have a huge respect for pop songcraft, and while it's not fashionable to say so, we're not snobs about Top 40 music at all. Top 40 pop is our shared musical DNA. But we also always bring this self-aware "meta" mentality that quickly becomes "Archies-like duet between Katy Perry and Ron Dante." In which case, if that's what you're after, we're your guys.

Visit LMP on Facebook or at Polyholiday. 

The Diskettes: An interview and retrospective

Emily, David, and Maggie: The Diskettes

A lot of twee and indiepop groups had that naive, ramshackle sound that I love, but few of them could write melodies like the Diskettes did. 

If Beat Happening had existed in 1960, they might have sounded like the Diskettes. The Diskettes were cute and sweet but also wrote really durable songs with sophisticated melodies and vocal arrangements. I never tire of listening to their songs. 

Formed in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Diskettes seemed to suddenly explode in the mid 2000s across indie CD-R and cassette compilations with their twee/folk/punk confections that, for me, were a perfect amalgam of my musical tastes. Sometimes when I listened to the Diskettes I felt like they were making this music just for me!

For the sake of being needlessly provocative, I'll rank the Diskettes far above their fellow Canadian artists Ian & Sylvia and Wilf Carter, somewhat above Gordon Lightfoot and Bobby Curtola, and neck-and-neck with Hank Snow. I know that seems extreme, especially in view of Carter and Snow's decades-long recording careers, but I have to go with my heart. If we go by my iPod, then the Diskettes win by a mile. 

Music Weird interviewed former Diskette David Barclay on March 11, 2014. 

Can you help to untangle the chronology of some of your other projects and their relationship to the Diskettes?

The Diskettes were actually started in 2000, when Emily and I still lived in Victoria. We played one show—and therefore were a legit band by even the most demanding industry standard—opening for the Riff Randells at a community center with an audience that was mainly comprised of some sort of daycare and two of Emily's friends. 

By some amazing coincidence, both Emily and I moved to Montreal in September 2000 to attend different universities. During that time we played no music and put most of our efforts into adapting to university and adult life. Parka 3 started around then and played our first show in March, opening for Picastro and Tiger Saw, two bands that continue to this day!

The Diskettes started playing again after I wrote a song for a "bad teen poetry" night hosted by Olivia's 'zine Funtage at the Yellow Door. Leonard Cohen once played there. 

There is a rule that every time you mention the Yellow Door—Leonard Cohen used to play there—you must also mention that Leonard Cohen played there back in the day. 

I played the new song along with a song I wrote in high school for my solo band, the Yatchsmen [sic], about sailing, and a cover of the Halo Benders' "I Can't Believe It's True." I might have also covered Built to Spill's "Car."

After the resounding reception, I decided that the Diskettes should play and write a bunch of songs, which we did. The Diskettes and Parka 3 coexisted for a few years until John, the keyboardist and 98% of the group's musical talent, graduated a year early thanks to his International Baccalaureate transfer credits. 

At this point, New Jersey Greg joined, and the Parka 3 slowly morphed into La Guerre des Tuques (English translation: The Dog who Stopped the War) as Tim eventually graduated and moved back to his mom's house in Massachusetts. 

This group involved many friends, including Emily, and was a very pure expression of DIY and punk. At the same time, Maggie joined the Diskettes on the advice of JR from Ditch records in Victoria, BC, who said, "People like drums." 

We recorded a second album and toured and were pretty much as real as a band can be.

All of this stopped in 2005 when I decided to move to San Diego, California, to pursue a career studying noise. 

The Diskettes played twice more, when Emily visited, but we never managed to seriously continue the band, mostly due to geography and our growing accumulation of age, graduate degrees, and in Maggie's case, two beautiful children. 

I started La Guerre des Mitaines with my partner at the time and played a few poorly received shows. The main idea behind this band was that I would play keyboard instead of guitar, as I did in the Diskettes. Thanks to a horrible, inhumane, armageddon breakup, I changed the name of the band to the Endless Bummer. This was a dark time.

Thankfully, in 2012, I moved to St. John's, Newfoundland, where Coach Longlegs began, followed by the unfortunate news that I had a compelling professional reason to move again, this time to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 

Cape Cod turned out to be intensely boring, so I finally carried out the long-running joke idea to start Tool Time—a power trio of Tim Allen on guitar, Al Boreland on bass, and Wilson on drums that play songs about Home Improvement over backing tracks that are constructed solely of samples from the Tool discography. 

Thanks to my enduring connection to St. John's, Coach Longlegs continues to play. Emily and I still hang out. I spend lots of time with Tim from Parka 3 who lives in Massachusetts, although not at his mom's house.


The Diskettes appeared on quite a few compilations. Did you feel like part of an international scene? Which other bands did you see as your kindred spirits back then?

I never felt part of an international scene, but always felt very invested in the Montreal scene and to some extent the wider Canadian music scene. I felt kindred spirits with bands who expressed their view of how and why to play music, more than anything. 

Playing with the Unicorns in Montreal; the Port City All Stars in St. John, New Brunswick, and the Barcelona Pavilion in Toronto; Collapsing Opposites in Vancouver; My Two Toms in Bristol, UK; all felt like meeting long-lost step-siblings to me.


Can you talk about your interest in '50s and early '60s pop? That seemed to figure pretty heavily into the Diskettes.

The Diskettes songs were always reaching for simplicity and minimalism, inspired by doo-wop, vocal music, and R&B. 

On the same note, my favorite album by my favorite band was the reissue of the yellow album by Beat Happening. 

In high school I played in a garage band and really liked '60s Pacific Northwest stuff as well as non-MGM/Boston-sound orchestral pop, so that really just made me learn to play the guitar and write songs in that certain way.


If you could choose someone from that era to record some of the Diskettes songs, who would it be?

I would have the Left Banke record "Museum" or the Wailers record one of the instrumental tracks.


What do you think about "twee" as a label?

I think I found it embarrassing more than anything. We had a Christmas song on a comp called Cwistmas Twee and I had a hard time putting it out on the merch table at shows. I wanted the Diskettes to be a punk band.


Did the Diskettes perform much outside of Canada? What do you remember as the peaks and valleys of the Diskettes experience?

We toured a bit in the US and did one European tour, which was definitely a peak of the band. 

Mostly the peaks were all the fun we had playing shows and recording. The valleys were probably the tiny fights about where to eat or when to stop to go to the bathroom or if we should do another vocal take or whatever dumb shit we thought mattered at the time. 

For me, getting asked if we wanted to put out an album with Blocks was a huge peak. My personal valley was when we showed up for a show in Winnipeg, touring east to west, and found out that there was an early show across the street featuring this band from Vancouver that I had been hearing so much about called P:ano, touring west to east. We went and saw them and they were as great as everyone told me, so after the show I told them that we were playing across the street and that they should come. They didn't come, hence feeding the monstrous musical and "coolness" insecurity that threatened to consume me. Also, getting a speeding ticket in North Dakota was a pretty big low.


Coach Longlegs is your current group. What's your approach with that band?

The component of the band that extends the most from the Diskettes is that Coach Longlegs is about being in a band. We want to be a band that inspires other people to feel like they can do what they want to do, try new things, not be afraid to do things because others might think they are bad at it. We want other people to start bands, build community, and have the fulfilling musical experience of loving some song by a friend's band instead of the hollow feeling that comes from clicking on the latest track by whoever from wherever on whatever label reviewed by whatever website.


Are the Diskettes gone forever? Any chance of more recordings or a reunion?

There has been a long-standing idea of doing a Diskettes album of lieder, but we've seriously been talking about it for 10 years, so don't hold your breath.

Discography

Albums

Weeknights at Island View Beach (Blocks Recording Club, 2005)

• Get! Together! / Museum / 12345 / End Points / Jump Up / Party Girl / As It Happens / Elk Island Tundra / Cowichan Knit / Ss Dd / Ashcroft Deliver / Cabin by the Sea / Close Friends Go / Coastal Recordings

Split Tape with Port City All Stars (Pink Triforce/Yellow Mica, 2005)

• Best Song on This Tape / Do What You Need to Do / Second Best Track on This Tape / Ride On / Another Non Music Part / My Chinchilla (Live on CKUT) / Baby's Fire / Sample Heaven / Suicide Is Painless / THE END

The Diskettes (Humblebee/Asaurus, 2007)

• Come on Over / Art / Gossip / Bossa Nova Love / Pop Pop Beat / ABC's of Love / Gymnasium / Cardinals / Mr. Lee / Tradewinds / Girl with Sunglasses

Compilations

Finally Something to Replace Bowling (Asaurus ASA013, 2002)

• Includes the Diskettes' "Art"

Zip-Locked and Loaded, Vol. 4 (Popgun 050, 2003) 

• Includes the Diskettes' "Come on Over"

Cwistmas Twee (Total Gaylord TGR007, 2004)

• Includes the Diskettes' "Noel"

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

• Includes the Diskettes' "Pop Pop Beat"

Good Grooming for Girls (Permafrost FROST 009, 2004)

• Includes the Diskettes' "Come on Over"

Our Hearts Beat Out of Tune (Yellow Mica YMR 021, 2005)

• Includes the Diskettes' "Museum"

How Bizarre: A Tribute to the 90's by Various Artists (Blod-Zine BLD005, 2005)

• Includes the Diskettes' cover of "How Bizarre" by OMC

You Already Have Way Too Many CDRs (Asaurus, 200?)

• Includes the Diskettes' cover of "How Bizarre" by OMC

Yay 4 Cuteness (Valiant Death VD-045, 2006)

• Includes the Diskettes' "Do What You Need to Do"

Starting Anew (WeePOP! POP!026, 2009)

• Includes the Diskettes' "Do What You Need to Do"

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)