So it was with The Temptations, a white doo-wop group who put exactly one record into the pop charts, only to have Motown foist the better known Temptations on the world a few years later.
Interesting, because the English Drifters had to become The Shadows (The US already had The Drifters), and decades later, the American group Bush had to call themselves BushX when members of the long-defunct Canadian group Bush obtained an injunction against another Bush in Canada.
But The Temptations, nobody made a fuss, and now any mention of The Temptations brings to mind My Girl, Papa Was A Rolling Stone, Psychedelic Shack, Ain’t Too Proud To Be, that kind of thing. Any reference to the other Temptations has to be qualified with “white group,” or “New York group” or “the group that did Barbara.”
I got their one and only hit from The Doo Wop Box.
The Temptations:
• Barbara – This is a text book example of doo wop. I don’t know how authentic it sounded when it was a hit in the summer of 1960, but now it could serve as a stand in example of the genre, except for one thing – the lead singer has a Nashville accent. I had a classmate in grade 6 named Barbara. She was contemptuous of me at first, but we were friends by the end of the year. In grade 7 she was in an all girls’ class, and after that she left the school, and I never saw her again. “Barbara my love…
Burton Cummings dreamed of Brenda Lee; he sang about it on Dream Of A Child. That must be worth something.
Wikipedia, more unhelpful than usual, suggests that the Dante of Dante & The Evergreens (real name Donald Drowty) went on post-group to a successful award-winning songwriting career, but it fails to enlighten us further. What songs did he write? He doesn’t even have his own write-up. Google isn’t even helping me on this. So I can’t help you.
This is an abridged version of a box set called The First Lady Of Song. I did the abridging, and I still have 180 minutes of Ella.
I found both albums, Liberace’s Greatest Hits, and The Best Of Liberace, at Pyramid Records at around the same time, and I couldn’t decide which one to keep, so I kept both, and here they are. The only song that both collections had in common was I’ll Be Seeing You, and one was vocal and one instrumental, so not even that counts.
Cassettes were always a bit flaky, even in the predigital age. They were subject to hiss, which was largely, but not entirely, eradicated by the Dolby B noise reduction system, they were subject to (get this) wow and flutter, a term to measure (often not so) miniscule speed variations (as you can guess, wow was when it slowed down, flutter when it sped up), and the mechanism could deteriorate – the tape could tear or get caught in the spindle of the tape deck, the little spongy thing that held the tape in place would come lose, and, if used with equipment that was not maintained properly, the tape would get magnetized and the sound would deteriorate.
I have a Pink Panther tie. I don’t remember, now, where I bought it. Comic ties were big around 15 years ago, more. The first one I remember seeing was a Mickey Mouse tie worn around the neck of a rather dysfunctional colleague whom I shall refer to as Martin Block. He had bought the tie at Harry Rosen and he paid about $65 for it.
I like the idea that Buster Brown’s real name was Buster Brown. Whoever wrote the Wikipedia article speculated that it was so. People seem to be able to find these things out; I wonder why the information for Mr. Brown is not available.
The first LP I ever got was The Beatles’ Second Album. One of the tracks was Money (That’s What I Want). I was 7 years old, and I thought that was pretty wild, nestled among all those love songs was a song of what seemed to unmitigated greed, a plain-spoken paean to materialism-on-steroids.
I happen to own every top 40 recording that Dorsey Burnette did, which is one song, and there are two others that made the hot 100 but not the top 40, and I don’t have those.
How can anyone remember a guy with a name like Jimmy Jones? Maybe that’s why his chart career only lasted about a year, and only 2 of his 4 top 10 records reached higher than number 83, (top 10).
The Dinning Sisters were a recording group who had some hits in the 40s, and they had a brother named Mark, who had 4 top 100 records in the very early 60s, one of which reached number 1 and 3 of which never made it past the top 60. I got his one big hit from the American Graffiti soundtrack, where it sits safely ensconced between Chantilly Lace and Crying In The Chapel.
I no longer have a membership at the CSL Library, and I no longer own a 2003 Montana (or any Montana, or any vehicle). But last winter I had both those things, and I used my library card to borrow The Essential Miles Davis, a 2 CD set featuring highlights of the career of jazz legend Miles Davis.
I was going to write that this is an obscure album by an obscure group, but googling it and finding several references has convinced me otherwise. Apparently Bill Black’s Combo still lives (though I bet you’ve never heard of them) and so does the early 60s best of collection, called Bill Black’s Greatest Hits.
