Preston Epps

There are not too many rock / pop / R&B headliners who are percussionists. The only other one I can think of offhand is Mongo Santamaria.

I’m not referring to drummers here; I am referring to those who play all those instruments that you smack, but aren’t part of the drum kit. Epps’ specialty seems to have been bongos, but one thinks also of the tabla, tambourine, cowbell etc.

As for Preston Epps, I have both of his hits.

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Preston Epps:

• Bongo Rock – The use of bongo as a lead instrument is very rare. Much later Santana's use of percussion was a major part of their arrangements. But here it’s up front and centre. This is from the summer of 1959. Redone by The Incredible Bongo Band in 1973.
• Bongo Bongo Bongo – More bongo. From the summer of 1960. I wouldn’t mind hearing Cowbell Cowbell Cowbell.

The Flamingoes

Did the group really perform entire concerts standing on one leg?

This collection, called The Best Of The Flamingoes, which I picked up at the Grande Bibliotheque, has 8 of their 11 hits. Missing are I Was Such A Fool (To Fall In Love With You) from 1960, The Boogaloo Party from 1966, by which time they had changed from End records to Phillips, and Buffalo Soldier, a Polydor release from 1970.

I Only Have Eyes For You appears on the Amercan Graffiti soundtrack.

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The Flamingoes:

• If I Can’t Have You – You listen to this and you can hear Frank Sinatra doing it, and then you realize then how much this group brings to this otherwise mundane romantic statement of exclusivity. The vocal swoop and sore, the lead is so idiosyncratic that he avoids all romantic clichés, the lyrics notwithstanding. Not the Yvonne Elliman song.
• That’s My Desire – A hit for Frankie Laine, and covered by Dion & The Belmonts, this song transforms desire into something purely emotional. Or it tries to; I don’t really think that they’re fooling anyone.
• Golden Teardrops – This one seems to inhabit some emotionally complex territory. It’s about how we treasure the sadness that someone feels on our account.
• Jump Children – An old fashioned jump blues, new fashioned…
• Dream Of A Lifetime – This one really goes all out with the romance.
• Kokomo (I Love You So) – A hit for The Crew Cuts in 1955 and I have that version, a hit for Perry Como also in 1955 and I don’t have that version. But this was a remake, a hit in the spring of 1961, though it sounds much older. Not, needless to say, The Beach Boys song.
• I’ll Be Home – Not the Randy Newman song. A hit for Pat Boone in 1956, and his version was ok you know, nice ballroom dance, but these guys put soul into it.
• A Kiss From Your Lips – How a kiss changes everything – one kiss. The Everly Brothers did Till I Kissed You, The Drifters did This Magic Moment, same idea. It’s so silly, but the music and the singing is such that you believe every word. • The Vow – Marriage as the ultimate romance. “I believe,” he says, “true love never dies.”
• The Ladder Of Love – This is really, in its own idiosyncratic way, a song about how we all have different needs. “Some want a little,” they say, “some want a lot, some folks are happy with what they’ve got,” in their best Pirkei Avot manner.
• Lovers Never Say Goodbye – This song hit my head every time I tell someone “please wait.” For years I only knew the Sha Na Na version, which closed their The Golden Age Of Rock And Roll album, which I got in Fargo, ND, when I was about 15. And that year the Canadian dollar was actually worth more than the USD. Piece of trivia. But the song… Maybe the best ever about a reluctant parting. It’s not just a goodnight song, no. This is about a prolonged separation, and it’s sweet. “There’s no reason to cry.” This is from the winter of 1959. (We missed it, didn‘t we?)
• Love Walked In – What you’d expect. From the fall of 1959.
• I Only Have Eyes For You – Some song lyrics speak of how love brings heightened awareness of the world around; others, like this, do the opposite. The world disappears. From a therapeutic point of view, it’s totally not healthy. But unless you’re Jackson Browne, songs aren’t written from a therapeutic POV. From a let’s dance POV, it’s marvelous. This was their biggest and best know hit, and it’s from the summer of 1959. Art Garfunkel did a remake a few decades later.
• Goodnight Sweetheart – Not to be confused with Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight (aka Goodnight Sweetheart It’s Time To Go) by The Spaniels, or Goodnight My Love my Jesse Belvin. And this isn’t as good as those other ones, but that’s stiff competition…
• Mio Amore – They don’t do Italian like Dean Martin, that’s for sure. Actually this is in English, apart from the title. From the summer of 1960.
• Nobody Loves Me Like You – And what do I get out of this relationship? From the summer of 1960.
• Your Other Love – The Beatles took the theme, and did This Boy. In fact there are dozens of songs like this, Forget Him by Bobby Rydell is one of my favourites. It’s all useless, he can save his breath, she’ll do what she wants. From the winter of 1961.
• Time Was – Not the Canned Heat song. This song about nostalgia was from the summer of 1961. Nobody, though, did nostalgia like The Statler Brothers.

Carl Dobkins, Jr.

This guy had 4 hit records, 2 big, and 2 not so big. They all came out in 1959 and 1960. Wikipedia says that he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame but it doesn’t say why, and there is no obvious reason.

I got these 2 singles off of singles.

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Carl Dobkins, Jr.

• My Heart Is An Open Book – On the surface it’s a straightforward love song, but there’s tension here. “Don’t believe all those lies” says Carl, as he protests his honesty and openness. From the summer of 1959.
• Lucky Devil – The religious imagery of heaven and hell, the devil and the angel, all shrunk down into an innocent love song. From the winter of 1960.

James Darren

As a singer they say that James Darren was a good actor, but it could be that as an actor he was a good singer. I never saw his movies; he was in Gidget, among others, with Sandra Dee. The TV series came later; it starred Sally Fields.

This is a real cobbled together collection, singles, albums, you name it. Darren had a handful of hits between 1959 and 1962, then a fluke hit in 1967 and another in 1977.

Not to be confused with Bobby Darin.

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James Darren:

• Gidget – There’s always something alluring about teenage girls, and so these older guys like to sing about them. And remember, for most of this time period, in most places, you weren’t an adult until you were 21. Meanwhile our hero paints a fairly vivid portrait of his love, her clothes, her height, her character, it’s all here. Gidget was a TV show with Sally Field, before The Flying Nun, and before that it was a movie, a series of movies really, with Sandra Dee, and, who else, James Darren. This is Darren’s first hit, from the summer of 1959.
• Valerie – Not The Monkees song. This was actually the A side of something, but it wasn’t a hit. The song speaks of how meaningless his relationships were, until he met Valerie. I wonder what his former loves would think of that.
• Goodbye Cruel World – This cartoon cliché gets the best possible cartoon treatment. Jimmy is heartbroken, so he formulates a plan that will afford him the only possible cure, which includes getting shot out of a cannon. The circus trolliope (I made that word up) theme here was used again by Leo Sayer, then by Three Dog Night, in The Show Must Go On,. From the winter of 61 / 62.
• Her Royal Majesty – Characterizing the one who breaks your heart as royalty is surely one way to cope. From the winter of 1962.
• Conscience – The inner conflict between the desire to be selfish and the need to be thoughtful and caring. There’s a lot going on here under the silly exterior. From the winter of 1962.
• All – An adult ballad, the closest he gets to the other Darin. From the winter of 1967.

Ray Peterson

Ray Peterson, that sounds like an accountant, not a pop singer. But a pop singer he was. He had a handful of hits in the early 60s, and I have his 3 biggest.

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Ray Peterson:

• The Wonder Of You – It happens sometimes in a real relationship, a healthy relationship, that we look at our partner, and we are amazed that at our luck, at the wonderfulness of the person we are looking at, at the comfort that he or she brings to our life. And plain and simple, that’s what this song is about. It was a hit for Peterson in the summer of 1959, but Elvis remade it as a live recording in 1970, and he swept the proverbial floor with old Ray.
• Corinna, Corinna – Joe Turner did this as a fusion of mean jump blues and R & B, and it swings. Dylan did this as a folk based dirge. And Taj Mahal did it. And so did etc etc. Peterson does it as a kind of teen idol number. I’ll Take Big Joe. From the winter of 1961.
• Tell Laura I Love Her – There was this TV special, some kind of rock concert, I was 13. I was watching it with various family members, and a girl from LA whose name was Barbara. She had lots to say about everything, Barbara did. Anyway I remember Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, and Sha Na Na. And when Sha Na Na broke into “Laura and Tommy were lovers,” our friend Barbara said “Tell Laura I Love Her!” I’d never heard the song. But I remember how they hammed it up, making up a steeple with their hands when they sang about the chapel. Very camp, but endearingly so. The song itself was a classic example of the strange death rock phenomenon of the early 60s, which was rock music’s first attempt to tackle “serious” subject matter. By any objective standard it failed miserably. But we don’t use objective standards to measure songs like this, so let’s just say that it’s very very silly, but transcendent in its own special way. This was from the summer of 1960.

Johnny & The Hurricanes

Immortalized by The Kinks in One Of The Survivors, Johnny & The Hurricanes were an instrumental “combo” that put 9 records into the top 100 over a 3 year period, beginning in 1959.

I got 2 albums, collections. The second was not that exciting, but it was fairly comprehensive. It was called Juke Box Giants, which was a title used for a number of different collections by different groups, and the cover always looked the same. The only other one of the series I remember getting my hands on was by The Shirelles.

The other was just called The Best Of Johnny & The Hurricanes. I picked it up at Pyramid Records, way back when, in their first ever location. It was a budget reissue, on Birchmount, and the cover featured an attractive young woman, on her knees, sort of, holding a saxophone, and clad only in tin foil, and not much tin foil. Those types of budget reissues belong to such a remote era, now, it seems, that it’s difficult even to explain the marketing thinking behind them. So be it.

My collection is a merging of the 2 LPs. I have all their hits.

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Johnny & The Hurricanes:

• Red River Rock – A rocked up version of Red River Valley, which is where I was born and raised, though there is more than one Red River Valley, and I’m betting that this is about another one. From the fall of 1959, their biggest hit, and the hit for which they are best remembered.
• You Are My Sunshine – They don’t take the chirpiness out of this, which is too bad. The song was written, and originally recorded, by Governor Jimmy Davis. A hit for Ray Charles, among others. From the winter of 1960 / 1961.
• Ja-Da – This is one of those tunes you recognize, but you don’t know why or where from. Their last hit, from the winter of 1961.
• Rockin’ Goose – Just to drive the point home there’s a honking sound throughout. From the fall of 1960
• Revival – When The Saint Go Marching In. I don’t know why they changed the title. From the fall of 1960. The B side of Revival
• Whatever Happened To Baby Jane – There are vocals on this – a female chorus singing the title over and over.
• San Antonio Rose – A rocked up version of the country classic, originally performed by The Sons Of The Pioneers, and a hit later for Floyd Cramer, and recorded by dozens, nay, hundreds.
• Like … Rock – Like… cool!
• Teensville Tonight
• Bye Bye Blackbird – An old standard. My favourite rendition is by Joe Cocker.
• Buck Eye
• Lazy
• High Voltage – This is Frankie And Johnny. It’s anyone’s guess as to why they changed the title.
• Traffic Jam – Not the James Taylor song.
• Come On Train
• Reveille Rock – Rock and roll, and you can dance to it, based on a military wake-up call. I’d put this closer to Hendrix’s ripping to shreds of The Star Spangled Banner than to The Beach Boys doing Be True To Your School. From the winter of 1959 / 1960.
• Down Yonder – From the summer of 1960.
• Sheba – Presumably a place. I mean, you’ve heard of the queen of Sheba, right?
• Time Bomb
• Walkin’
• Mr. Lonely – Not the Bobby Vinton song.
• The Sheik Of Araby – An old standard. There are a few early recordings of The Beatles doing this.
• Crossfire – From the summer of 1959, their first hit.
• Beatnik Fly – The Blue Tail Fly, rock and roll. From the winter of 1960.
• Storm Warning

Ronnie Hawkins

A wild man from Arkansas lost in the jungles of Toronto, a big fish in a small pond – that was Ronnie Hawkins, who built himself a rock and roll empire that few knew about outside TO the good.

He may be just as famous for giving the world The Band as he is for his own music. For someone with his legendary status, he didn’t figure all that prominently on the radio or on the charts; he only had one top 40 hit, and a couple more on the top 100. The Toronto chart shows 12 songs, which makes sense.

This is a Quality release called Greatest Hits, 10 tracks, plus Home From The Forest from a reissued single.

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Ronnie Hawkins

• Ruby Baby – A hit originally for The Drifters, and done more famously by Dion, Hawkins spits out basic R & B about unrequited love. I got a girl, he sings, but she don’t love me. Does he have her or not??
• Odessa – If you see Odessa, Ronnie asks of some unnamed party, tell her I’m coming home. He can’t tell her himself? And why is her name Odessa, anyway? This song has nothing to do with The Bee Gees.
• Forty Days – Chuck Berry rendered this as Thirty Days, but it’s the same song. From the summer of 1959.
• Clara – I’ll dedicate this one to my father. Clara is my mother. Only song I know by that name, though Gilbert O’Sullivan did Claire. Not the same.
• Bo Diddley – Confusing, I know, but this isn’t Bo Diddley at all, it’s Hey Bo Diddley. Meanwhile he does the Bo man proud. From the winter of 1963. • Mojo Man – The legend of the all powerful alpha male, he can control the weather, single handedly defeat armies, do all manner of magic, and even “make you fall in love with me.” That’s what it’s all about isn’t it.
• Baby Jean
• The Ballad Of Caryl Chessman – Here in Canada we abolished capital punishment eons ago. There was still a bit of controversy for a while but it faded away, and it’s a, forgive the pun, dead issue. The Americans may catch up in a century or so. This song, about the character portrayed so ably by Alan Alda in the movie, and the cause célèbre he inspired, makes a better plea for the abolishment of capital punishment than all the treatises you could read. “Let his soul be judged on judgment day” indeed. From the winter of 1960
• Who Do You Love – Another Bo Diddley piece, and on this one the competition is fierce: Tom Rush, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Juicy Lucy, Jesus & Mary Chain. Hawkins himself does a standout version on The Last Waltz
• Mary Lou – From the fall of 1960, a story about a car stealing woman.
• Home From The Forest – Gordon Lightfoot’s tale of poverty and how it brings down the noble soul of man is done honour by Hawkins, who put an otherwise overlooked song into the Canadian top 40 in the winter of 67 / 68.