Brian Hyland – The Joker Went Wild

Brian Hyland

Listen/Download – Brian Hyland – The Joker Went Wild

Greetings all.

When I was picking a track to feature this week for Funky16Corners and Iron Leg, it didn’t occur to me that there would be a link between the two.

Brian Hyland was a dependable pop hitmaker for the 1960s, with his first mark on the charts in 1960 and his last (and biggest) hit in 1970.

That last hit was a cover of the Impressions ‘Gypsy Woman’, written by the mighty Curtis Mayfield, who is the featured artist at Funky16Corners this week.

That said, the track I bring you today comes from right in the middle of Hyland’s hitmaking years.

I first heard 1965’s ‘The Joker Went Wild’ on a 1966 aircheck from WOKY in Milwaukee, WI. I have no idea how I’d never picked up on the song before, with all of the oldies radio listening I do, but when I heard it I dug it right away.

As it turns out, there were a few reasons the tune resonated with me.

Initially, it struck me as the kind of thing that – with a little more kick –  would have been a Northern Soul outlier, the kind of four-on-the-floor pop song that the soulies dig (especially with the vibes accents).

Second, the arrangement rang some bells, which is because the record was arranged by no less a light than Leon Russell, and produced by Russell and Snuff Garrett.

‘The Joker Went Wild’ sounds like it would fit on any of the Russell-arranged records by Gary Lewis and the Playboys from around the same time.

Written by Bobby Russell, who also composed ‘Sure Gonna Miss Her’ (for Gary Lewis), as well as the huge hits ‘Little Green Apples’ (for OC Smith) and ‘Honey’ (for Bobby Goldsboro), ‘The Joker Went Wild’ was a significant hit in the summer of 1966, making it into the Top 40, and Top 10 in many markets.

Though Hyland is thought of as a “teen” pop singer, he made an effort to record more mature material as the 60s moved on.

It’s a groovy track, and I hope you dig it.

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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If you dig what we do here or over at Funky16Corners, please consider clicking on the Patreon link and throwing something into the yearly operating budget! Do it and we’ll send you some groovy Funky16Corners Radio Network (and related) stickers!

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

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The Care Package – The World of Thursday Morning

The Care Package

Listen/Download – The Care Package – The World Of Thursday Morning

Greetings all.

Today’s selection is one of those records by a group that appears to have materialized exclusively in a studio and never ventured elsewhere.

The Care Package recorded three 45s in 1966 and 1967, all under the auspices of one Tash Howard (aka Howard Tashman).

Howard was also the man behind the Peels, writing the oft-covered novelty hit ‘Juanita Banana’ as well as the Northern Soul fave ‘Time Marches On’.

I haven’t been able to figure out who was actually part of the Care Package, so I have no idea if Howard just wrote/produced the record or actually sang in the group as well (the picture above is from an Italian picture sleeve I found online).

‘The World of Thursday Morning’ exists at the intersection of the Mamas and Papas, Spanky and Our Gang and the New Seekers, leaning in the direction of a kind of mainstream harmony pop/folk rock, with a “clean” enough sound that one might think they were aiming at the straighter end of the pop spectrum. The record is nicely arranged, with some groovy chord changes and cool group harmonies.

Interestingly, the song was covered in the early 70s the UK by a group called the Settlers.

If you look at the collective discographies of the song’s writers, Howard, Henry Hoffman, and Bob Kirin you see a lot of middle of road (i.e. decidedly un-hip) pop, which is not to damn the sounds (which are fine) but rather to separate them from the rock-ier side of things.

What little information I’ve been able to find about Tash Howard indicates that he passed away fairly young.

If anyone has any additional information about the Care Package or Tash Howard, please drop me a line in the comments.

Until next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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If you dig what we do here or over at Funky16Corners, please consider clicking on the Patreon link and throwing something into the yearly operating budget! Do it and we’ll send you some groovy Funky16Corners Radio Network (and related) stickers!

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #84

Why hello there!

Playlist

Definitive Rock Chorale – Mirrors of Your Mind (Philips)
Definitive Rock Chorale – Get On With It (Philips)
Definitive Rock Chorale – Picture Postcard World (Philips)
Definitive Rock Chorale – Variations On a Theme Called Hanky Panky (Philips)
Anthony and the Imperials – In the Mirrors of Your Mind (Veep)

Definitive Rock Chorale – I Love You (Bell)
Definitive Rock Chorale – The Five Seventeen (Bell)
Flanagan – Spin Spin Spin (Smash)
Other Voices – Hung Up On Love (Atlantic)
Daily News – The Groove (Parrot)
Daily News – I’m In the Mood (Parrot)

Fuzzy Bunnies – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore (Decca)
Fuzzy Bunnies – Heaven Is In Your Mind (Decca)
Billy Harner – Magic Carpet Ride (Unreleased)
Hardy Boys – I Hear the Grass Singing (RCA)
Hardy Boys – Those Country Girls (RCA)

Hardy Boys – Good Good Lovin (RCA)
Hardy Boys – My Little Sweet Pea (RCA)
Hardy Boys – Let the Sun Shine Down (RCA)
Ellie Greenwich – (It’s Like a) Sad Old Kind of Movie (Bell)
Dusty Springfield – What Good Is I Love You (Atlantic)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #84 – 170MB/256kbps

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It’s Iron Leg Radio time again!

This month we have a very groovy show indeed, devoted to the sounds of Ellie Greenwich and Mike Rashkow’s Pineywood Productions.

There are a bunch of Pineywood 45s, some Greenwich/Rashkow songs, and a couple of interesting extras.

Dig it all, and make sure to subscribe to the show as a podcast in iTunes.

Click here to subscribe to any of the Funky16Corners Radio Network shows!

See you next week!

Peace

Larry

 

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If you dig what we do here or over at Funky16Corners, please consider clicking on the Patreon link and throwing something into the yearly operating budget! Do it and we’ll send you some groovy Funky16Corners Radio Network (and related) stickers!

_______________________________________________

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Leslie Uggams – Is That All There Is

Leslie Uggams

Listen/Download – Leslie Uggams – Is That All There Is

Greetings all.

The record I bring you today is an unfamiliar version of a very familiar song, that also happens to be one of my favorites.

I wrote a few years back about my deep and abiding love for Peggy Lee’s version of ‘Is That All There Is’, a record that drilled its way into my ears when I was a child and was the root of so much musical growth over the years.

The version by Leslie Uggams predates Lee’s hit by a year, and comes from a very interesting album indeed.

As you know, I am also a devotee of Leiber and Stoller, and when I found out that they had done an album with Leslie Uggams in the late 60s, I set out to find a copy.

Uggams had already had been appearing on TV since she was a child, and was on the verge of her own TV series when she went into the studio with L&S.

‘What’s an Uggams’ is an interesting, sophisticated pop LP, flirting with soul in places, but sounding as if L&S were trying to emulate Burt Bacharach and Hal David (in fact, Uggams covers no less than four B&D songs on the album).

‘Is That All There Is’ is one of the most unusual L&S tunes. It sounds nothing like the work of the guys that created R&B masterworks for the Coasters, leaning more in the direction of cabaret.

Uggam’s version runs closer to the arrangement of the odd, original recording by New York DJ Dan Daniels than it does to the epic reading by Peggy Lee, but even with the sprightly musical backing, the song doesn’t lose much of its bittersweet edge.

Uggams still speaks the verses over a great arrangement by Pat Williams which incorporates banjo and tack piano with lush horns and strings.

The album as a whole makes for great listening.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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If you dig what we do here or over at Funky16Corners, please consider clicking on the Patreon link and throwing something into the yearly operating budget! Do it and we’ll send you some groovy Funky16Corners Radio Network (and related) stickers!

_______________________________________________

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Two by Malvina Reynolds

Malvina Reynolds

Listen/Download – Malvina Reynolds – The New Restaurant

Listen/Download – Malvina Reynolds – I Don’t Mind Failing

Greetings all.

If the name Malvina Reynolds isn’t a familiar one, you’ve probably heard her music before. Her song ‘Little Boxes’ has had a second life in commercials and as the theme song to the show ‘Weeds’.

Born in 1900, Reynolds herself was a pioneering singer songwriter, leftist/feminist, having worked as a musician before getting her masters and doctorate in the late 1930s, and only really devoting herself to music (again) in her late 40s.

Pete Seeger popularized ‘Little Boxes’ her paen to the deadening uniformity of suburbia, and she went on to record her first LP for Folkways in 1960, and then her most popular album (from whence today’s selections come) for Columbia in 1967.

‘Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth’ is a quiet, low-key (yet razor sharp) masterpiece of poetic social commentary.

The first few times I listened to the album I found my brain trying to wrap itself around the music, and continually slipping off, until – that is – I figured it out.

I walked into the listening session expecting a ‘folk singer’, which in some basic ways, Reynolds is, yet the content of the music reveals her to be so much more.

Here we have a woman, well into her 60s, presaging an uncompromising take on what would soon be labeled ‘singer/songwriter’ music.

Yet Reynolds, really – if not sui generis – is far enough out that the group of musicians she belongs to is almost imperceptible unless you cast your net wide enough to include the likes of Jake Thackray.

Her songs are literary, in an almost Raymond Carver-ish way, ironic, symbolic and philosophical.

The two songs I picked to bring you today are ‘The New Restaurant’ and ‘I Don’t Mind Failing’, both in their own ways, meditations on modern society.

‘The New Restaurant’ is an almost circular song, singing the praises of the fancy, superficial accoutrements but always coming back to the idea that in spite of all the flash the restaurant has failed at its most basic mission, i.e. FOOD.

‘I Don’t Mind Failing’ is a testimonial to the power of just living your life, a cry against Trumpism 50 years before it’s rise.

Malvina Reynolds may not be for everyone, but I find the more I listen to this album, the deeper it gets.

I hope it works that way for you, too.

See you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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If you dig what we do here or over at Funky16Corners, please consider clicking on the Patreon link and throwing something into the yearly operating budget! Do it and we’ll send you some groovy Funky16Corners Radio Network (and related) stickers!

_______________________________________________

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

The Cowsills Meet Connie Stevens

The Cowsills and Connie Stevens

Listen/Download – The Cowsills – Most of All

Listen/Download – Connie Stevens – Most of All

Greetings all.

If you follow Iron Leg (the blog or the podcast) you will already know that I am a huge fan of the Cowsills.

A few years back, during a dig in Pittsburgh I was lucky enough to put my hands on copies of all of their little-heard but excellent pre-MGM 45s.

The band (when it was just the boys) had built up a head of steam as local favorites in New England,and recorded some excellent records for Johnny Nash’s JoDa label and then a few for Mercury’s Philips subsidiary.

One their early records that really caught my ear was the tune ‘Most of All’.

Written by Gary Geld and Peter Udell (who wrote Bryan Hyland’s ‘Sealed With a Kiss’ and the Walker Brothers (and the Carpenters) ‘Hurting Each Other’), ‘Most of All’ is a groovy little pop number that is redolent of that transitional period when the Beatles were spurring all kinds of groups to drag earlier pop styles into the 60s.

The chord changes are interesting, and the Cowsills vocals are (typically) excellent.

When I started to dig for information on the record I discovered that the song had gotten around, also having been recorded by Connie Stevens.

Her version of the song is a sugary sweet pop confection, with any and all rock feeling of the Cowsills version stripped away. This is not to say that it’s bad – which it isn’t – but in her hands it’s a different kind of record entirely. It was also produced by Dick Glasser, who produced many of the Apollas’ 45s.

The information I’ve found suggests that the Cowsills version was released shortly before Stevens’ (by a month) and outperformed hers significantly, charting in a number of Northeast markets (where Stevens doesn’t appeared to have charted anywhere,  having had her last significant hit the previous year with ‘Now That You’ve Gone’).

The good thing is, that if you dig either of these records, they’re both inexpensive.

I hope you like them, and I’ll see you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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If you dig what we do here or over at Funky16Corners, please consider clicking on the Patreon link and throwing something into the yearly operating budget! Do it and we’ll send you some groovy Funky16Corners Radio Network (and related) stickers!

_______________________________________________

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Piccola Pupa – Break Away

Piccola Pupa with Dean Martin on the Hollywood Palace

Listen/Download – Piccola Pupa – Break Away

Greetings all.

Today’s selection is a record that I had been in search of for years, before finally scoring a copy a few months ago.

‘Breakway’, written by Jackie Deshannon and Sharon Sheeley is best known via the 1964 version by Irma Thomas, where it appeared on the flipside of her epic ballad ‘I Wish Someone Would Care’ (and appeared on the LP of the same name).

Deshannon also recorded a demo version of the song but that remained in the can until the 1994 ‘What the World Needs Now…’ collection.

The version I bring you today is a 1965 recording by the oddly named Piccola Pupa.

Born Giuliana Coverlizza, in Italy, Piccola Pupa (translating as Little Doll) came to the United States as a protégé of TV comedian Danny Thomas.

She appeared on the Danny Thomas Show a number of times, as well as all manner of US variety and dance party shows (including Hollywood A Go Go, Shindig and American Bandstand) and appeared in ‘The Ghost In the Invisible Bikini’ singing ‘Stand Up and Fight’.

Though it’s hard to find a lot of info on her, it would appear (going by her vinyl releases) that the initial idea was to present her as a teen idol-type, which eventually morphed into ‘international singer’ (her sole album, from 1967 is almost entirely sung in Italian).

She recorded ‘Break Away’ (sic) in 1965 with a killer arrangement by Perry Botkin Jr.

Though Pupa wasn’t a terribly strong singer, she does a bang up job on ‘Break Away’ managing to work in bits of girl group, 1965 LA pop and even a little bit of soul.

I suppose a lot of this is testament to the greatness of the song itself, but the different arrangement and the great production by Gil Garfield (who had written and produced for Robin Ward) makes this version stand out.

Piccola Pupa pretty much retired from the music industry by her late teens, returning to Italy where she still lives today.

I hope you dig the track and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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If you dig what we do here or over at Funky16Corners, please consider clicking on the Patreon link and throwing something into the yearly operating budget! Do it and we’ll send you some groovy Funky16Corners Radio Network (and related) stickers!

_______________________________________________

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.