2022 album of the year

 

Tourist – Inside Out

Amazon Music

Apple Music

Bandcamp

Spotify

The year is only half over, but I'm calling it now. 

PS: Those aren't affiliate links--I just provided them for readers' convenience.  

10 old songs that became new hits

We tend to think of current hits as "the music of today," but sometimes today's hits are the music of yesterday. Today on the Music Weird, we'll look at 10 recordings that became hits years—or even decades—after they were originally recorded. Many of these hits reflect the power of disk jockeys and movies to pluck songs out of obscurity or to revive the hits of yesteryear.

Old songs that appear in commercials frequently become chart items in the UK, so this list of 10 recordings could easily be much longer than it is. Greatest hits collections often chart in the UK too; Vera Lynn recently had a Top 20 album hit in the UK with a collection of World War 2-era recordings.

 

1. Sheriff – "When I'm With You"

The Canadian rock band Sheriff had a major Canadian hit and a minor U.S. hit with "When I'm With You" in 1983. Six years later, Jay Taylor, a disk jockey in Las Vegas, started playing the song, and then Gabe Baptiste at KRXY in Olympia, Washington, started playing the song too. The song continued to spread nationally, reaching #1 in the US in 1989. Sheriff no longer existed at this point, and attempts to reunite the band to capitalize on its posthumous success fizzled. 

2. Benny Bell – "Shaving Cream"

Benny Bell's 1946 novelty song "Shaving Cream" is like the schoolyard rhyme "Mary Had a Steamboat" or "Bang Bang Lulu"; it sets up the listener to anticipate swear words that the song humorously fails to deliver. (Music Weird has a post about "Mary Had a Steamboat" here.)

In 1975, Bell's old 1946 version became a hit after the Dr. Demento show started playing it. Bell wrote the song, but Paul Wynn was the vocalist on the record, even though Bell is credited as the artist on some pressings. Jim Nesbit recorded a country cover version in 1975 that also became a minor hit. 

Trivia: In 1984, Atlantic Records wanted Jump 'n the Saddle to record "Shaving Cream" for the band's second album, which was supposed to be the follow up to their novelty hit "The Curly Shuffle." Jump 'n the Saddle begrudgingly recorded a version with new lyrics that criticized Atlantic, so the label refused to release the album and also refused to release Jump 'n the Saddle from their contract, effectively ending the group's career.

3. Ben E. King – "Stand by Me"

Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" was a Top 5 pop hit in 1961 when it was originally released and became a Top 10 hit again in the US in 1986 when it was used as the title track of the film Stand by Me. In 1987, it topped the UK chart after being featured in a Levi Jeans commercial.

4. UB40 – "Red Red Wine"

UB40's 1983 recording of Neil Diamond's "Red Red Wine" inched into the US Top 40 in 1984. Four years later, in 1988, the single was re-released in the US and became a #1 hit. The unexpected hit competed with UB40's self-titled A&M album, which was also released in 1988.

5. Spirit – "Mr. Skin"

"Mr. Skin" was a song from Spirit's 1970 album Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. In 1973, Epic Records released a greatest hits collection, The Best of Spirit, and reissued "Mr. Skin" as a single. Surprisingly, it charted in the lower rungs of the Billboard Hot 100. 

6. The Beatles – "Got to Get You into My Life"

The Beatles recorded Paul McCartney's song "Got to Get You into My Life" for their 1966 album Revolver. In 1976, Capitol reissued it as a single to coincide with the greatest-hits collection Rock 'n' Roll Music, and the song became a Top 10 hit. It would be the Beatles' last Top 10 hit until 20 years later, when the posthumous creation "Free as a Bird" hit the Top 10 on the US and UK charts. 

7. Danzig – "Mother"

"Mother" was included on Danzig's self-titled debut album in 1988. Almost six years later, the studio version—slightly remixed—barely missed the Top 40. The latter-day success of the recording resulted from Danzig including a live version of the song on the Thrall-Demonsweatlive EP. 

 

8. The Doors – "Break on Through (To the Other Side)"

The Doors' "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" is one of those oldies hits that is much better known than its meager chart position would suggest. When it was originally released as a single in 1967, it didn't even crack the Hot 100. When re-released 24 years later, it became a somewhat bigger hit in the UK but stalled at #64. 

 

9. The Belle Stars  – "Iko Iko (The Clapping Song)"

The Belle Stars' 1982 recording of the Dixie Cups' 1965 hit "Iko Iko (The Clapping Song)" was a moderate UK hit when originally released. In 1989, after the song appeared in the film Rain Man, it gained new life and went to #14 in the US. 

10. Ted Weems – "Heartaches"

Ted Weems' "Heartaches" is possibly the most dramatic example on this list. Weems recorded the song for RCA Victor in 1931 and again for Decca in 1938. In 1947, a disk jockey in Charlotte, North Carolina, started spinning the 1931 recording, and interest in the record started to spread. Both RCA Victor and Decca reissued their respective versions in order to meet the demand, and the 1931 recording sailed to #1 during its 16-week run on the pop chart. 

Download Jeopardy-style game show theme music for free

Here's a piece of copyright- and royalty-free music I recorded that you can use if you are looking for something similar to the Jeopardy game-show theme for training events, videos, PowerPoint presentations, etc., but can't use the actual Jeopardy theme for copyright reasons.

I posted the track on YouTube a while ago but am adding it to this page so people can find it more easily. To download the audio, click the download link below or use a YouTube-to-MP3 site to rip the audio directly from the video.

MP3 download link

(When you click the link above, a preview screen will appear. Click the download icon in the top right-hand corner to download the file.)

First appearance of "My Favorite Things" on a Christmas album? It wasn't Jack Jones

 

Jack Jones is often credited as the first artist to include the song "My Favorite Things" on a Christmas album, but Jones was beaten to the punch by several years by another artist: Pete King.

"My Favorite Things," from the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical The Sound of Music, wasn't intended to be a Christmas song at all. It contains some mentions of snowflakes and sleigh bells, though, and quickly became associated with the holiday.

The Sound of Music opened on Broadway in 1959, and that same year, the Pete King Chorale recorded an album of songs from the musical, which was titled The Sound of Music. The chorale's rendition of "My Favorite Things" was even released as a single. 

The following year, the Pete King Chorale included the song as the first cut on their 1960 Kapp Records Christmas album, Christmas Time. Kapp again released "My Favorite Things" as a single, this time with a holiday-themed picture sleeve. 

In 1961, Julie Andrews performed the song on a televised Christmas special. And then in 1964, Jack Jones recorded the version that is usually credited as the song's first appearance on a Christmas album. Within five years, the song had drifted into the Christmas category and soon appeared in mid-'60s Christmas albums by artists such as The Supremes and Kenny Burrell.

Pete King wasn't merely the first artist to include the song on a Christmas album—he also had a role in Jack Jones' recording of "My Favorite Things": King brought Jones to Kapp Records initially and arranged some of his early albums. King didn't arrange Jones' version of "My Favorite Things," though; that credit goes to Marty Manning.

The Pete King Chorale's Christmas album was a good seller and Kapp reissued it every year around the holidays in the early 1960s. The chorale's sound, if you haven't heard them, is more pop oriented than that of, say, the Robert Shaw Chorale. You can listen to the entire album in the video below.

 

King was an orchestral pop composer and arranger who was born in Greenville, Ohio, home of the famous Maid-Rite Drive-In Sandwiches shop. (King might have eaten there, because it's been open for more than 80 years!) King enjoyed about a decade of work as a bandleader, arranger, and recording artist until a stroke left him deaf and he was forced to retire from music. You can find his bandleading and arranging credits on many recordings by top-tier artists such as Doris Day, Dean Martin, and Julie London, and he has an extensive discography under his own name as well.

Clyde Otis, The Diamonds' "The Stroll," and the mysterious Nancy Lee (1957)

What if you wrote a #1 hit all by yourself but a music industry bigwig put his teen daughter's name on the song as your co-writer? And then she was featured in all the publicity for the song instead of you? That's exactly what happened to Clyde Otis in 1957 with "The Stroll." 

Song publishing was a big source of revenue in the music industry in the 1950s, so it inevitably became a bargaining chip for people in positions of power. Songwriters were often asked to give up a portion of their royalties and share the credit for their work in exchange for getting their song published, and practically no songwriter was immune to being exploited in this way. Both struggling and established songwriters fell prey to these arrangements, and one particularly egregious example involved Otis and "The Stroll."

Although Otis wrote the song, which was later recorded by the Canadian vocal group The Diamonds, the story actually begins with The Diamonds. 

Dick Clark, the host of TV's American Bandstand, tipped off The Diamonds to the fact that teenagers were doing a dance called “The Stroll” to “C.C. Rider,” sung by turban-wearing R&B shouter Chuck Willis. An opportunity existed, Clark said, for someone to create a song specifically for the dance, which was a laid-back line dance that Billboard described as a "rock and roll version of the minuet."

The Diamonds thought this was a great idea and asked songwriter Clyde Otis to write such a song. Otis had written his first Top 20 hit in 1956 for Nat King Cole ("That's All There Is to That") and then wrote a bunch more hits for Brook Benton in addition to becoming one of the first African-American A&R men at a major label, in this case Mercury Records, which was also The Diamonds' label.

By any measure, Otis knocked it out of the park with "The Stroll." It's a memorable song with a hypnotic rhythm that perfectly accompanies the dance it was designed for. Even though The Diamonds were Canadian and a little square, the record ended up having great crossover appeal for rock, pop, and R&B listeners. And the saxophone part was not just icing on the cake—it transformed a gentle stroll into something that sounded raunchy and dangerous.

The song seemed like an inevitable hit, and The Diamonds, Mercury Records, and the song's publishing company were all delighted. But in an odd twist, Clyde Otis—the guy who actually wrote the song—didn't receive as much glory (or money) for it as he should have, because he ended up sharing the composing credit with teenager Nancy Lee as part of a promotional scheme that was probably completely unnecessary.

Nancy Lee was the daughter of Jack Lee, an executive at Meridian Music, the company that published Otis's new song, and someone—possibly Jack Lee himself—had an out-of-the-box marketing idea: What if they claimed that his teen daughter had co-written the song? Wouldn't that be a great hook for radio and magazine stories? Music reporters and disk jockeys would be clamoring to learn more about this delightful teen upstart! And, of course, the record would sell well as a result.

You can look at this promotional campaign in a few different ways. Nancy's sudden appearance as the co-writer of "The Stroll" was either a) a fraudulent attempt to create interest in the song by claiming that it was written by a high schooler when it wasn't, b) a crass attempt to attach an executive's kid to a sure-fire hit so she could enjoy 15 minutes of fame, or c) an offensive attempt to whitewash the involvement of a black songwriter in a song that was recorded by a white vocal group. Elements of all these might have come into play.

Nancy Lee's alleged involvement in writing the song fueled the marketing campaign, and she appeared in a number of promotional photos with The Diamonds. Some of these photos were used for the sheet music of "The Stroll," and others accompanied magazine articles that profiled the teen.

What did Clyde Otis think about this arrangement with Nancy Lee? I don't know, but I doubt that he, as the sole songwriter, was overjoyed at being omitted from photos that supposedly depicted the writer of "The Stroll." A 1958 issue of Radio Mirror went so far as to refer to the song as Nancy's composition without even mentioning Otis. It's hard to imagine that all this exclusion was unrelated to Otis's skin color. 

In DISCoveries magazine in 2004, Andy Merey asked The Diamonds' Dave Somerville about Nancy Lee:

Who was Nancy Lee?: Curiously, on the original "Stroll" 45, Clyde Otis shares songwriter credits with the mysterious Nancy Lee. Upon examining the original legal songwriter document for "The Stroll", signed on November 17, 1957 by Meridian Music Corporation and the other parties involved, it reveals that Nancy Lee was seventeen at the time, too young to sign the contract on her own, so her mother co-signed as legal guardian.

 

It seems strange and unlikely that an established songwriter of the stature of Clyde Otis would team up with an underage, seventeen-year old schoolgirl in the big city of New York and collaborate with her in composing "The Stroll". I asked David Somerville about Nancy Lee and how did she come about co-writing "The Stroll". He said, "You wanna know something? She didn't write a damn thing. The song belonged to Clyde Otis. She was the daughter of one of the executives at the publishing company."

 

The songwriter share was divided up as follows: 66 2/3% for Clyde Otis who solely wrote the song, and 33 1/3% for Nancy Lee, er, Meridian Music Corporation. But such shenanigans shouldn't really come as a surprise, for they ran rampant within record companies and music publishing firms during the 1950s.

 

In the case of Nancy Lee, the misfeasance was unabashedly blatant. The sheet music for "The Stroll" featured a photo of Nancy Lee, identified as co-writer, flanked by The Diamonds in Stroll position. The British version featured a similar picture but with Nancy Lee in Stroll action as she is being observed by The Diamonds. But this was an imaginative and cute idea just the same. Most sheet music at the time simply featured a picture of the song artists; seldom were there any action shots.

So, adding injury to insult, Otis was not only excluded from the song's promotional campaign but also had to give up a third of the song's publishing royalties in order to maintain the publisher's ruse that Nancy Lee co-wrote the song. Yet Nancy couldn't even receive the money herself, because she was a minor, so a third of Otis's royalties went to Nancy's mom.

Here's a philosophical question: In exchange for giving up a third of his royalties and some name recognition, did Clyde Otis get any bang for his buck out of this Nancy Lee stunt? 

I don't think so. The song was probably on track to succeed no matter what, given the A-list artists and major label behind it and the endorsement of Dick Clark, who played a big role as a hit maker by featuring up-and-coming records and artists on his show. Whether or not the Nancy Lee marketing campaign made a difference, "The Stroll" became a smash hit on the pop and R&B charts (#1 in Cash Box!), and teens across the nation lined up to do the Stroll to this and other records in a similar vein, such as The Revels “Midnight Stroll” and Chuck Willis’s “Betty And Dupree.” 

Clyde Otis himself further capitalized on the craze by recording an EP of pop standards “in Stroll tempo” in 1958 (although his name was hard to find on the record). And Willis, for his part in all of it, became known as the King of the Stroll. Nancy Lee does not appear to have continued her music career beyond appearing in some photo shoots with The Diamonds.

 

Joe Dowell's rarest album: BGA Benefit Concert 2002

 

Joe Dowell, who scored a #1 US pop hit with "Wooden Heart" in 1961, released a number of obscure records after being dropped by Smash Records just two years later, but his rarest album isn't Joe Dowell Sings Folk Songs, the private-label album from 1964 that was pressed in an edition of 500, or Of Earth & Heaven, his self-released inspirational CD. His rarest album is BGA Benefit Concert, a live recording of a program he performed as a fundraiser for Bloomington Grove Academy in Bloomington, Illinois, in October 2002. 

I don't know anything about Bloomington Grove Academy other than that it is allegedly haunted. The live album didn't receive a retail release and doesn't even have a proper cover; it's just a CD-R with a paper label that Joe gave away to a small number of people. Joe gave me the copy above when I interviewed him for the liner notes of the Bear Family CD Wooden Heart. 

In the Bloomington Grove Academy concert, Dowell performs variously with live instrumental accompaniment and pre-recorded instrumental backing tracks and was joined by his wife and daughters on vocals on some songs. A guest singer, Ronnie Jones, sings "Old Man River" and possibly "It's More Than a Tattered Flag," which is sung by someone other than Joe. One of Joe's daughters sings "I Got the Sun in the Morning" solo. The second half of the concert includes instrumental renditions of a piece by Moritz Moszkowski, Santo & Johnny's dreamy guitar instrumental "Sleepwalk," and the country standard "Steel Guitar Rag." 

The only songs in the program that Joe had recorded before are "Wooden Heart" and "Jamaica Farewell," the latter of which he included on his 1964 folk album. Most of the songs are pop and folk standards, including an interpretation of Ed Ames' hit "My Cup Runneth Over." When I interviewed Joe, he told me that he wished Smash Records had allowed him to become an easy-listening vocalist like Ames instead of positioning him as a teen idol, which Joe believed sabotaged his career aspirations. He really disliked the label "teen idol."

The copy of the CD that Joe gave me has a note on the front that was written by Joe's friend Paul Dunn, a former disk jockey. At the time that we were working on the Bear Family anthology, Joe was lobbying hard for it to include an updated new recording of "Wooden Heart," which he was certain would become a #1 hit all over again and catapult him into the late-night television talk-show circuit. That didn't happen, but the note reflects some of that effort:

Hey, Greg,

Here is a rare copy of Joe Dowell's LIVE Bloomington Grove Academy Fund Raising CD. HIGHLIGHTS of the CD include Joe Dowell singing a great, updated version of "Wooden Heart" with his German wife and two daughters singing on the chorus. I wish that Joe's upcoming Bear Family CD would include a year 2003 version of Joe singing "Wooden Heart" with his family! Cuts #1, 2, 9 and 18 feature Joe doing Frank Sinatra songs with Frank's original orchestral backgrounds. Joe's voice really comes through strong on cuts #5, 7 and 10. You will also enjoy guest artist Ronnie Jones doing an a capella version of Showboat's "Old Man River"! 

Sincerely,

Paul Dunn

For those who would like to experience this rare concert program and hear what Joe sounded like 40 years after "Wooden Heart" went to #1, I uploaded most of the tracks to YouTube, and they can be heard below.

Halloween novelty hit "Monster Mash" becomes a cereal

 

Bobby "Boris" Pickett's 1962 chart-topper "The Monster Mash" is the daddy of all Halloween novelty records, and because of the song's renewed popularity on Tik Tok, General Mills is releasing a new limited-edition monster cereal this season called "Monster Mash."

General Mills says the cereal is being released to commemorate the 50th anniversary of their monster cereals, which were introduced in 1971, but I'm guessing that the Tik Tok popularity of "Monster Mash" influenced the direction that their anniversary celebration took.

Whatever the catalyst, the song "Monster Mash" is worth celebrating. It holds up to repeated listening better than a lot of novelty songs and inspired the great Mr. Show sketch "Monster Parties: Fact or Fiction?" Collectors of Halloween-themed novelties know that a lot of these songs are terrible, but "Monster Mash" is catchy, crackles with energy, and tells a story.

Although Monster Mash cereal is being branded as a new cereal, it isn't exactly new. It's a combination of pieces from all five monster cereals: Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry, Fruit Brute, and Fruity Yummy Mummy. The inclusion of the latter two cereals is interesting, because those varieties have been discontinued for years, and, apart from a brief return to the market several years ago, will be available for the first time in a long time in the Monster Mash medley. 

A caveat, though: If you fondly remember Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy from your childhood, don't get your hopes up about revisiting them in the Monster Mash mix, because they might be reformulated like the other three monster cereals. 

That's right—the monster cereals of today are nothing like they were when they were introduced. Back in the '70s, the monster cereals were made with oat flour, so the flavor and texture were similar to Cheerios. When the monster cereals started being offered only as seasonal items at Halloween, the recipes were reformulated, and now they're made with corn meal, like Cap'n Crunch. And also like Cap'n Crunch, the crunchy bits now have the same ability to shred the roof of your mouth as broken glass and volcanic rock.

Food quality aside, any addition to the monster cereals line is sure to excite cereal fanatics, for whom the monster cereals hold a special place in pop-culture history. The new Monster Mash box has an awesome retro 1970s look but at least one anachronism: The reverse flying-V guitar that Boo Berry is playing wasn't introduced until 2007.

A brief aside about Boo Berry: As a longtime fan, I miss the old recipe, so when Cheerios introduced a blueberry flavor a few years ago, I hoped it would be more like the original Boo Berry than the current Boo Berry is. Unfortunately, the blueberry flavor is subtle and the cereal has no marshmallows, which are an integral part of the monster cereal experience. However, if you removed the marshmallows from a box of modern Boo Berry and added them to the blueberry Cheerios, you'd end up with something more like the original Boo Berry than the current Boo Berry is. Someone should do this and let me know how it is.

It's worth mentioning that the monster cereal characters are no strangers to novelty records. In 1979, General Mills issued a series of flexi discs that featured the monster characters, including the classics "The Monsters Go Disco" and "Monster Adventures in Outer Space."