Thursday, May 5, 2011

Bray Slips and Uniwrongs

John Fred
The song Judy in Disguise by John Fred and His Playboy Band has always fascinated me a little bit. Of course, growing up as a child of the 60s, that’s fine. But the fact that after 43 years it still fascinates me, well, frankly, that’s a tad embarrassing! The bottom line is I just think it’s a pretty cool song. (See player below.)
I’m not sure what it is about Judy in Disguise that captivates me most. Maybe it’s the fact that you can’t really understand all of the words. Or, maybe it’s the psychedelic ooh-ah-ooh-ah vocal interlude used before the first and last verses of the song, as well as the use of a sitar toward the end. Or, maybe it’s because when I saw them perform the song on American Bandstand back in 1968, Harold Cowart’s electric bass looked like a powder blue toilet seat with a guitar neck and strings attached! (It really did -- although I can’t for the life of me explain why I remember that.)
The lyrics are definitely hard to understand, and I remember as a kid wondering what the words “Keep wearin’ your bray slips, and your uniwrong” meant. I discovered later that the actual words were “Keep wearin’ your bracelets, and your new rara.” And even though I understood what bracelets were, I had absolutely no idea what a new rara was. (I’ve since come to find out that a rara was a short dress with ruffled layers that was popular in the 60s. Who knew?)
Down through the years, I’ve also come to learn that song itself was written as a parody of The Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Legend has it that John Fred (who co-wrote the song with fellow band member Andrew Bernard) misunderstood the Beatles’ lyrics as Lucy in disguise with diamonds, so when he wrote the parody, he used the word disguise instead of the skies. (I know -- this is just way too much information and way too interesting, but bear with me!) The fact that the song was a parody also explains the use of the psychedelic interlude (as well as the sitar used at the end of the song), giving the song a Lucy in the Sky kind of feel.

As far as why Harold Cowart would play a bass that looked like a toilet seat, I have absolutely no idea! I've exhausted my search capabilities, and just can't find a picture of it anywhere. But believe me, I'm not making it up.
As a side note, I must mention that, as a kid, American Bandstand was one of my favorite television shows. The show, which originally aired from Philadelphia before moving to Los Angeles in 1964, was hosted by Dick Clark and broadcast on Saturday afternoons at 1:00 p.m. I hardly ever missed watching it -- except when I had to go to my Saturday afternoon ballroom dancing class! I’ll write more about that later, but for now suffice it to say that, as a young boy, having to take a bath, put on a suit, and spend a perfectly good Saturday afternoon in a stuffy church fellowship hall learning to foxtrot and tango -- well, that was just about all the torture I could handle!
But, again, that’s a story for another time…