ONE HIT WONDERLAND

Some of my favorite songs from the "vintage years" (50s and 60s) are OHWs. One Hit Wonders. Why do you think that is? I don't think of myself as a person who automatically roots for the underdog. But I do believe that a lot of pretty decent talent kind of withered on the vine. Maybe it was lack of decent material to record, or lack of decent promotion promotion by the label. Or lack of funds for payola. Anyway, this little number, "He's Mine", was a fave of mine back in 1963, and it still is today. Alice Wonder Land (sometimes written as Wonderland) was born Alice Faye Henderson. There's a story out there that Alice's discovery resembles that of the Little Eva with "Loco-motion" - being a maid and/or babysitter for a songwriter, or a friend of a songwriter, or...something like that. Both stories may be all or in part apocryphal, and for our purposes here, I don't think it matters. We just want to hear a great and maybe long-forgotten oldie, right?! Little Eva didn't stay a OH Wonderwoman. We also remember her for one of the great girl group smack-down songs of the era - "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby" which unfortunately, isn't on YT at all. That's a shocking omission I hope some YT channel member rectifies soon!





Anyway, I tried to come up with a photo of Alice, but between Alice Faye the actress, and the little blonde Alice of the book and the Disney movie, it wasn't happening, so I posted them instead. Also, the embedding for this video has been disabled, so I'll have to give you the YouTube link.
LINK to "He's Mine"





Alice in Wonderland photo from Wikimedia Commons
Alice Faye photo from www.classicmoviemusicals.com

A LIFETIME OF NUMBER ONE SONGS

A friend recently sent me a link to finding the number one song on just about any date in history. Well, make that modern, recent history. I don't think Billboard was around when the Spanish Armada was defeated. Anyway, as into oldies as I am, I must admit I didn't know what song was topping the Hit Parade the day I was born, so of course I looked mine up right away. I'm not posting this today because it's my birthday. That won't be until next month (I'm not getting old, it's only the 2nd anniversary of my 31st birthday!), but I just couldn't wait to pass this along to you. So here you go, now you can calculate the song that was playing on all the significant events in your life.

http://www.joshhosler.biz/NumberOneInHistory/SelectMonth.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number-one_hits_(United_States)


And here's what I found listed as the song on my day/year - "Heartaches" by the Ted Weems Orchestra. (I don't know why it says 1938 on the YouTube vid) - I was born in '47.







Video by YT member 240252
Photo at http://www.dewittco.com/storefront/xcart/images/T/73652_vintage_crafts_books_patterns.jpg

DOIN' THAT CRAZY HAND JIVE

Being a big fan of this song (and of bilateral symmetry) I have loved this dance ever since I first learned it (which took about 10 seconds). The hand jive is one of those dances that it's really pretty close to impossible to mess up. And you can add onto it just about anything you can think of. I've seen more complicated versions of it, particularly one rather raunchy version that made the rounds of the frat parties when I was in university, which may have been a lot closer to the original rhythm and blues original than we realized at the time. If memory serves, it was called the "Dirty Thirty from Chi-town." That's really all I can tell you today. Maybe it had 30 hand jive gestures, I never counted. Maybe it originated in Chicago, I never thought to ask.

Whatever it was in the early days, for me, the hand jive was always the classic version seen here in the first video embed which I found on YouTube. As you can see from the apparent age of the girls in this vid, the hand jive that I did in the late 50s through the 60s is still being done by contemporary youth. Like they say, rock and roll is here to stay! Warning, the video is four minutes long, but after the first 10 seconds, you've seen all of the moves; the girls don't go on to free-style it, so if you're pressed for time...



In looking for a vid of the acutal song, I found this terrific vintage footage of Johnny Otis performing his huge hit, complete with some very hip dancers (reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn in "Funny Face"). As you can see, their hand jive really isn't all that much about the hands. But I like it! Good old Wikipedia has more to say on the subject:

The Hand jive is a dance particularly associated with rock and roll and rhythm and blues music of the 1950s. It involves a complicated pattern of hand moves and claps at various parts of the body, following and/or imitating the percussion instruments. It resembles a highly elaborate version of Pat-a-cake. Hand moves include thigh slapping, cross-wrist slapping, fist pounding, chest slapping and pounding, hand clapping, elbow touching and hitch hike moves.The hand jive was particularly popularized by Johnny Otis's 1958 hit "Willie and the Hand Jive". Eric Clapton did a version of the song in 1974 that reached the Top 40.[1] It is also featured prominently in the Broadway musical Grease through the song "Born to Hand Jive"; in the movie adaptation of the musical, the song is performed by Sha Na Na.



Finally, I saw this on the news lately, and thought it was the perfect way to wrap up our hand jive coverage. This one is worth watching all the way through (3 mins exactly!) because there are virtually no repeats. It's about the best hand jive you could find that's done sitting down and not to music! And after you see this, I promise you you're going to look at Wolf Blitzer in a whole new light.



Videos top to bottom by YT members icecreamlover531, twobarbreak, wgn

FEATURE SONG: ABIGAIL BEECHER by FREDDY (BOOM BOOM) CANNON

My fellow baby boomers, is it just me, or was this song a harbinger of things to come, and we didn’t even know it? I mean, think about how frequently these days we hear of female teachers who massively overstep their professional bounds and have ‘affairs’ (that’s putting it politely!) with their young male students. How could such a thing come to pass? Well, it just so happens that I have my own (totally tongue-in-cheek, naturally) theory.

Think about the photos you’ve seen of some of these offending teachers. I can think of at least three who all looked to be in their mid-to-late twenties, all had long sleek hair, all looked appealing in a reality TV cookie-cutter blonde sort of way. Just the very thing an adolescent boy in the throes of a hormonal high tide would find distracting at the very least. Now think about the teachers you remember from your own high school days. Uh-huh. Even the younger female teachers looked middle-aged back then. It was the hair and glasses and styles. You could probably give those 1950s and 60s teachers a 21st Century makeover, and they might even look…dare I say it…hot? Well, maybe so, but that’s not my main point. What I'm saying is, here we have a song about a younger teacher in the 1960s, who roars into the faculty parking lot in a Jag, wears a sloppy sweater (what??) and a pony tail (seriously??) to teach in, and who makes the local policeman blanch. She can teach the required subject all right, but she throws in a couple of popular teen dance crazes, too. That’s not any teacher I ever saw. Furthermore, it seems that between classes, Ms Beecher is out in the halls playing guitar in sunglasses instead of monitoring student activity. And she showed up at a PTA meeting with a red surfboard! Well, no wonder the kids all dug her, but you have to think that it’s just a matter of time before she…oh let’s not even contemplate going there. It’s obvious that no one put a stop to this kind of thing, and now we are reaping the results today. For the most part, I like to stick up for vintage oldies. I don’t think of rock and roll as a social or moral evil. But there’s always that one exception







Video by YT member JBauder1948
Photo from http://ocw.mit.edu

IN SEARCH OF AN ANIMATED MOUSE TRAP…

Okay, let me start by saying that it had never been my intention that this blog should be anything more than a celebration of vintage music and memories, and therefore should not take a strong political or any other kind of stand. In addition, before anyone thinks that I’m singling out Islam here, let me add that, IMHO, there isn’t a fundamentalist division of any belief system on the planet that is known for its self-deprecating humor or its ability to take a joke. Having said both those things, I find I simply cannot resist the urge to fudge on my own “house rules” just a bit today, in light of the recently issued fatwa against Mickey Mouse. Yes, as you may have already heard, a Saudi sheik has denounced the Mickey as a “soldier of Satan” and an “impure corrupter,” and called for his death. As I understand it, part of that has to do with the cultural view Islamists have of mice in general, which is pretty much that they are the lowest life form on earth. I know they (mice) are pests, but still, I personally don’t object to them in principle. Of course other people are welcome to their own views, but I have to wonder about a death threat being issued to a cute little mouse that…let me see, how shall I best put this…. DOESN’T REALLY EXIST!!! Personally, if you’re going to pick on some poor animated critter as a bad influence, I’d go for Donald Duck. At least Mickey wears some pants.

Anyway, for all the baby boomers out there, here is a short (and therefore only minimally corrupting) video for the Mickey Mouse club, so we can remember the good old days.







Photo from Wikimedia Commons
Video by YT member kaijueguy

BACK IN THE SUMMER OF _____(insert year or sexual activity of choice)

My fellow blogger, Kat, over at Culture Clips for Gen-Xers did a post yesterday (Sunday, Sept 14) about a fave movie of hers from 1969 – The James Bond flick, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I responded with a couple of movie titles I recall from the same year, in different genres. Everybody has their own preferences, but what Kat’s post really made me think of is the Bryan Adams song, “Summer of 69.” Only whenever I listen to it, I’m mentally thinking “the summer of 65” since that was my senior year in High School, and really was one of the best times I ever had.

Since I like the song so much, I thought I’d feature it here at Papa Do Run. Why not – I mean, even if it was released in 1984, it’s about the joys of the vintage year 1969, right? Wrong. Well, sort of wrong. Let me be the first to admit that ever since I first heard this hard-rockin’ little tune, I have not doubted for a moment that it was about looking back to the good old days (and any numerical reference to anything else was purely coincidental). Never mind the fact that Bryan Adams was born in 1959, and thus would have been only 10 years old – if we are to think of this song as in any sense autobiographical, that is. Next, I decided to check out good old Wikipedia and see what they had to say. To my surprise, I discovered that this song that I have loved for over 20 years is not actually about the year 69. No, my friends, it’s actually about…ahem…that numerical coincidence after all…you know, the other definition. At least that's what Bryan Adams says he meant by it. Hoo-kay. But, my friends, Bryan Adams isn’t the sole writer of this song. It’s a collaboration between him and a fellow named Jim Vallance, and Jim says as far as he’s concerned, it’s just about the year. Well, I guess ultimately the meaning is up to the individual. For me, it’s still about ’65 anyway, and I don’t think that’s a nickname for anything racy.







Vid by YT member dito1981
Photo from Shutterstock

MY FALL RITUAL

Today is so nice, perfect combination of sun, low humidity and cool temp. It’s been so dry here that many of the leaves are curling and dropping before they have a chance to turn color, but I don’t care. It’s time for my annual fall ritual, now that the hot sticky days of summer behind us. So I fired up the O.C. – that would be my bright Poppy Red ’65 Mustang, fondly nicknamed Orange Crush – and went out for a spin with, like Chuck Berry, I had no particular place to go, and to heck with wasting a little gas; I didn’t drive it much this summer. Why not? Because with no A/C and those black vinyl seats, it’s just too too too hot. But now, everything's perfect, so I took my fall songs and headed out. They aren’t all true vintage tunes, but all sound great with the windows rolled down. Just plug the MP3 player to the radio, and roar off. So here it is, my fall 2008 playlist:


The Boys of Summer - Don Henley (play, repeat at least 3 times)
See You in September – The Happenings
Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand) – The Shangri-Las
Farmer’s Daughter – The Beach Boys
In the Parkin’ Lot – The Beach Boys
Little Lonely Summer Girl – David Box
Comin’ Home – Delaney and Bonnie




Gas photo at www.jalopnik.com

PAPA DO RUN REDUX

This post is in response to a question on the previous post from my friend and fellow blogger, Kat. She asked about the origin of the name of this blog – Papa Do Run. Well, Kat, both the blog title and the title of my book of rock and roll oldies trivia are taken from lyrics (and titles) that can be found in several oldies from what I call the vintage era. I have live links to YouTube for the songs on the book’s website, but sometimes they have to be removed, and when you click on them, the live links are "deceased.” So I'll take this opportunity to post fresh lively links here and hopefully they will stick around for a while, so we all can have a listen to these classic oldies. And if anybody ever comes across any other songs with Papa Do Run (or any variant spellings) in the title or lyrics, please contact me, I’d love to hear about it!

Here’s the three main songs:

New Girl in School– Jan& Dean, 1964
Teenage Love - Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, 1957
I Met Him on a Sunday – The Shirelles, 1958/66

Pappa Do Run – The Levettes, date unknown. This song isn’t on YouTube yet. I doubt it ever will; it’s some prit-tee obscure doo wop.

ANOTHER SONG ABOUT DRUGS?

I’m sure we all can easily name several songs from the vintage years that either unquestionably were, or were rumored to be, in whole or in part, about drugs. In case you haven’t had your morning cuppa joe yet, here, not in chronological order, are a few to get you going:

Undeniably Unquestionable – The Pusher, Don’t Bogart That Joint, Coming Into Los Angeles, Six Days on the Road (the original version)

Rumored (or maybe unquestionable depending on your viewpoint) – Puff The Magic
Dragon, Eight Miles High, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

Well, I think I found one more that’s suspect. A while ago I upgraded my Mamas and Papas Greatest Hits single CD to a more comprehensive 2 CD set. It was sure wonderful to hear a lot of the old album tunes I used to listen to back in the 60s, the ones that weren’t big hit singles, and thus never get played on most oldies stations. The song I’m referring to is “Straight Shooter.” Back in my student days, I was pretty naïve. I was also (and still am) pretty square. So I wouldn’t immediately have associated terms like “shooting” and “holding” with drugs, evening thought I’d heard them used in that context. In fact, I remember listening to this song in the (non-coed) dorm with some of the girls, giggling because we thought the line “…what your holding, half of that belongs to me” might mean…uh-oh…a baby! You know, like that freshman girl down the hall who suddenly had to drop out and, it was whispered, get married! Oh, those were different days all right. Anyway, I’ve never seen this song on anyone’s list of oldies about drugs, and even if I am right, it doesn’t change anything for me. It’s a wonderful vintage oldie, and real vintage Mamas and Papas too.
STRAIGHT SHOOTER (click for YouTube vid. It was recorded live at Monterey, and thus is not a perfectly balanced studio recording, but it’ll take ya back, guaranteed). Meanwhile, here's the lyrics; see what you think.

Don't get me mad; don't tell no lie.
Don't make me sad; don't pass me by.
Baby are you holding, holding anything but me?
'Cause I'm a real straight shooter, if you know what I mean.
You can bring me love; you can hang around.
You can bring me up; don't you bring me down.
Baby are you holding, holding anything but me?
'Cause I'm a real straight shooter, if you know what I mean.

I've been searching all night, just to find what I'm looking for.
Baby, baby, treat me right, or I won't come round your door
No more!
You can bring me love; you can hang around.
You can bring me up; don't you bring me down.
Baby are you holding, holding anything but me?
'Cause I'm a real straight shooter, if you know what I mean.

I've been searching all night, just to find what I'm looking for.
Baby, baby, treat me right, or I won't come round your door
No more!

Don't get me mad; don't tell no lie.
Don't get me sad; just get me high.
Baby, what your holding, half of that belongs to me.
'Cause I'm a real straight shooter
(Baby, don't you get me down...)
I'm a real straight shooter...
(I've been searching all night long...)
I'm a real straight shooter (baby) if you know what I mean -
If you know what I mean.