Who's Ron Dante?

Back in 1969 when I was in the seventh grade, the song Tracy by The Cufflinks topped out at number 10 on the Billboard charts. The song was a one-hit wonder – a fluffy, bouncy, bubble-gummy kind of tune that really isn't worth remembering.

But I remember it well because, at the time, one of my best friends had a crush on a classmate named Tracy. And I (good friend that I was) took every opportunity to chastise him by singing at the top of my lungs the words to the song every time we passed in the hallway at school.

Tracy, when I'm with you, somethin' you do bounces me off the ceiling.

Tracy, day after day, when you're this way, I get a lovin' feelin'.

Yes, that’s right, tough guy that I was, I harassed him by singing at him! – which, to be honest, is about as close as I ever came to anything even remotely resembling bullying behavior. Shocking, but true!

Ron Dante

Now, as far as the song is concerned, the truth of the matter is that the band, The Cufflinks, never really existed – not as an actual band, anyway. The song featured the vocal work of a session singer named Ron Dante, who multi-tracked his own voice for both the lead and background vocals, while being backed instrumentally by a handful of studio musicians. And, as if that’s not exciting enough (I really do need to get a life!), what’s really cool is that back in the spring of 1969, not only did Ron Dante have a top ten hit with the song Tracy, but, at the same time, was also responsible for all the vocals on the song currently at the top of the charts, Sugar, Sugar, by the Archies – yet another group that didn’t really exist!

I think that’s pretty cool: two concurrent top ten songs, credited to two different bands, neither of which really existed, sung by the same singer who, by the way, didn’t get any credit on either recording. I’m not sure, but I think that’s got to be some sort of record! (Nice play on words!)

To his credit, as a studio singer Dante sang on hundreds of records and commercial jingles, and was an equally prolific record producer, working with the likes of Barry Manilow, Cher and John Denver. Way to go, Ron!

Gotta Love Weird Al Yankovic

My daughters recently had me watch on YouTube an accordion parody of Ke$ha’s Tik Tok, after which I felt compelled (out of my own need to show them how cool I am!) to share with them a video version of Weird Al Yankovic’s My Bologna. (See player below.) The song – a parody of the Knack’s My Sharona – was one of Weird Al’s early fores into the pop song parody world, of which he has, of course, become king. My daughters enjoyed it, by the way, and were particularly intrigued (translation: embarrassed) when I told them that in my mid-20s, I bore an uncanny resemblance to Weird Al. (I really did!)

Listening to My Bologna brought back memories of Sunday evenings during my sophomore year in college, when my roommate and I had a standing date with The Dr. Demento Show, a nationally syndicated radio program, broadcast locally in Philadelphia on WYSP. Although he wasn’t really a doctor (and, in fact, Demento was not his real name – surprise, surprise! – it was actually Barret Eugene Hanson), Demento was an authority on obscure and novel songs, which were featured weekly on his show.

One of Dr. Demento's claims to fame is that he can be credited with discovering Weird Al Yankovic, who in the mid-seventies began sending Demento home-made tapes of his song parodies, which at that time featured Weird Al singing the lead vocal while accompanying himself on the accordion. The result was an amazingly lame, but absolutely hilarious, song parody style, a prime example of which can be heard on Yankovic’s My Bologna, produced in 1979.

For the next 30 years, Weird Al produced numerous song parodies/videos, including hits like Eat It, Another One Rides the Bus and Amish Paradise, all of which are impeccably produced, and single out Weird Al as the master of his genre.

Of course, as good as Weird Al is, I still have a warm spot in my heart for the music of an earlier song parodist, Allan Sherman (Hello Mudda, Hello Fadduh). I grew up listening to his record albums, and to this day can sing by heart the words to many of his songs. But more on Allan Sherman another time…. Do you remember him?

Lookin' Out My Back Door

One of my great regrets in life is never seeing Creedence Clearwater Revival live in concert. I absolutely loved their music when I was growing up, and, in fact, the song Green River was one of the first 45s I ever bought. John Fogerty’s one-of-a-kind voice, his signature guitar sound, and his talent as a producer – well, it all made for some great records!

Without a doubt, my favorite CCR album was Cosmo’s Factory. And, as a teenager, I spent hours not only listening to the music, but also staring at album cover, which, for some reason, really captured my attention. It was so random: John Fogerty seated on a motorcycle; drummer Doug Clifford perched atop a ten-speed bike; bassist Stu Cook and guitarist Tom Fogerty just sort of lazily lounging around. I remember thinking at the time, “If this is what rock and roll musicians do when they’re just hanging out – then sign me up!” (The the title of the album, by the way, refers to the Berkeley, CA, warehouse where the band rehearsed, nicknamed “The Factory” by drummer Doug Clifford, a.k.a. Cosmo. Yeah, that’s right. Cosmo. Just like Seinfeld’s Kramer!)

In the band I played with in high school, not only did we do a cover of the quintessential CCR hit, Proud Mary (along with every other band in the world!), but we also did a version of Lookin’ Out My Back Door – a great tune with some pretty off-the-wall lyrics!  Of course, not having the vocal range of John Fogerty, I had to pretty much squeak out, best I could, the song’s lofty refrain: Doo, doo, doo, lookin' out my back door. I got it, though. Although, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do that now!

On a side note, Fogerty recently donated his “slugger” guitar (a guitar that’s shaped like a baseball bat) to the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, NY, performing during the induction ceremonies his baseball classic, Centerfield, one of my all time favorite tunes…

Air Supply? You've Got to be Kidding!

I have a friend who recently shared with me that she really likes the music of Air Supply. “What?” I exclaimed! “Air Supply? Are you kidding? How could you possibly like Air Supply?” She went on to say that she knows by heart all the words to their songs, has her iPod loaded with almost every tune they ever recorded, and absolutely is a dyed-in-the-wool fan. I looked at her with just one thought on my mind: Unbelievable! (Not really, I just like giving her a hard time!)

Australian-based Air Supply was a veritable giant in the soft rock business back in the early 80s, producing such classics as All Out of Love, Lost in Love, and Two Less Lonely People in the World. The group’s signature sound was a result of the collaboration between songwriter Graham Russell and lead singer Russell Hitchcock, who met in the mid-70s while performing in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Back in the early 80s, when Air Supply came on the music scene, I was working at a small hardware store in Wilmington, Delaware, where all day long we listened to an adult contemporary radio station. And no exaggeration, I bet that station played an Air Supply song about once every hour – placing them high in the rotation with other soft rock superstars of the day like Barry Manilow, Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers. Boy, those were the days!

I remember the first time I heard the Air Supply song, The One That You Love, and wondering if the lead vocal was sung by a man or a woman. (Check out the player below.) The voice sounded so high – at least for a man! Now granted, there have been plenty of males in the pop music industry with high voices – running the gamut from Neil Sedaka and Wayne Newton, to Steve Perry and Vince Gill – but something about Hitchcock’s voice seemed different to me. So much so, that I wrote a song parody, which included the following lines:

Here I am, the one that you love, waiting for my voice to change.
Understand, the one that you love, sings in a woman’s vocal range!

These days Russell and Hitchcock can be seen in a 30-minute infomercial, pitching a soft rock CD set for Time-Life. You know, they both look pretty good – unlike oldies icon Bobby Goldsboro (Honey, Watching Scotty Grow), who I also saw not long ago in an infomercial for Time-Life, wearing, without a doubt, the worst hairpiece I’ve ever seen in my life! But more on that another time….

What do you think? Am I being too hard on these guys?

Tommy James and the Hanky Panky

I remember being a young boy at summer camp in 1966 when the Tommy James and the Shondells’ song, My Baby Does the Hanky Panky, was a huge hit. I owned a little black AM transistor radio that I carried around with me most of the day, listening to a local top 40 station that seemed to play the song at least once an hour, along with other pop hits of the day like Little Red Riding Hood and Sweet Pea. Being just nine years old at the time, I thought the phrase “hanky panky” referred to a dance – you know, sort of like the hokey pokey. I was so naïve!

I do recall, however, just how much I liked the song – its overall twangy-ness, the steady, rocking rhythm of the instruments, the slightly out-of-tune background vocals, the crappy guitar solo – it was all good! I just never gave any real thought to the underlying meaning of the words, that’s all. Still, it was a pretty good tune.

Several years later, when I was in the sixth grade, some friends of mine and I formed a band to perform at a school talent show, and we chose to play another Tommy James’ hit, Crimson and Clover – yet another song the meaning of which completely eluded my still young and naïve brain! How good we all must have looked wearing our bellbottom pants, polyester shirts and matching neck scarves. Sort of a Greg Brady thing, I guess.

The coolest thing about doing the song, Crimson and Clover, was that in order to get the warbly effect for the vocal at the end of the song, we had to borrow from a friend a guitar amplifier that had a tremolo unit built in. (Actually, it was a small, internal fan placed in front of the speaker.) By attaching a microphone to the amp, we were able to copy perfectly the sound on the record: Crim-im-im-im-son-on-on-and-clo-oh-oh-oh-ver-er-er-er… O-oh-oh-oh-ver-er-an-and-o-oh-oh-oh-ver-er-er-er! The only difference was that our singer sang the song an octave higher than Tommy James! Sort of a Peter Brady thing – but hey, we were just 12 years old…

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Baby!

When it comes to drum solos in rock music, few are more memorable than the one offered up by Ron Bushy on Iron Butterfly’s 1968 classic, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. (Check out the player below.) The 17-minute long song (which basically repeats the same two-bar riff over and over again) was a “must play” at parties and school dances in the late 60s and early 70s, and featured a long, extended solo for Bushy, one of the first of its kind on a rock album.

According to legend (which is sort of like rumor, only with a little more credibility), the title of the song, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, originally was supposed to be In a Garden of Eden, but, during the recording of the song, the group’s somewhat inebriated keyboardist and singer, Doug Ingle, mumbled his way through the lyrics so that they came out sounding to Bushy like “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The band actually liked that name better, and so it stuck. Another version of the story suggests that it wasn’t Ingle, but Bushy who was intoxicated, and, unable to hear the lyrics correctly, named the song according to the words he thought he had heard. (Of course, I guess it’s just slightly possible that both men were intoxicated – although what would the likelihood of that be!) Either way, it’s makes for a pretty good story.

During my high school years I played drums in a local rock band, and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was one our favorite songs to play at school dances and coffee houses, giving me a chance to show off a little bit – something that drummers seldom do, being that we are such shy and modest people, avoiding the limelight at all costs. (Seriously, most drummers I know have egos the size of Texas, and love to draw attention to themselves, which is one of the reasons why we’re willing to drag all of that equipment around!)

Back in 1969 I was fortune enough to hear Iron Butterfly live in concert at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, about 30 minutes from where I grew up. I remember well Bushy’s drum solo, which was loud and impressive, and must have lasted a good half an hour! I also remember the smoke at that concert being so thick you couldn’t even see the other side of the arena. Remember those days? I guess it was cigarette smoke, but now that I think about it…

Go Cat, Go!

Whatever happened to Cat Stevens? Do you remember him? You know, the British folk rock star of the early 70s who brought us two really great albums, Tea for the Tillerman (Wild World, Where Do the Children Play, Father and Son), and Teaser and the Firecat (Morning Has Broken, Moodshadow, Peace Train). Whatever happened to him?

Well, as you might know, in the late 70s Stevens converted to Islam, and, as part of the process of becoming Muslim, changed his name from Cat Stevens to Yusuf Islam. (I guess only changing his name halfway, to something like Cat Islam, wouldn’t have quite done the trick! Oh, well…) In order to focus fully on his faith and pursue peaceful and philanthropic causes, Stevens also gave up his music career for the next 30 years, before finally returning in 2006. His choice – and nothing wrong with that. But, still, I have to wonder where his career might have gone had he not taken such a long hiatus.

I’ve always liked Stevens' music, and back in the early 70s I remember thinking what a cool sounding name “Cat” was, and wishing that I could be nicknamed “Cat.” But, alas, the name had already been taken. (As a child I did briefly go by the nickname “Bones,” but that’s a story for another time!)

Rumor has it that Stevens chose the stage name “Cat” because he thought his real name, Steven Demitre Georgiou, wouldn’t sell very many albums. And he was probably right! Still, the name “Cat “did sell millions of records – it’s just too bad he didn’t stay with his music career long enough for it to become one of those one-word superstar names – you know, like Madonna, or Sting, or Bono, or Lulu. (Come on – don’t tell me you don’t know who she is!)

As a teenager I really enjoyed Cat Stevens' songs, and spent hours leaning to play them on the guitar. I especially remember how much effort it took to stretch my pinky way out so I could reach the high notes on the guitar intro to Moonshadow. I got it, though! My personal favorite, however, was the song Father and Son, which required singing the first verse (the father’s part) in one octave, and then jumping up an octave to sing the second verse (the son’s part) – contrasting beautifully the maturity of the father with the innocence of the son. How cool is that? Of course, I had to play the song in just the right key so I could do both the low and the high parts without straining my voice too much! (Key of G works best, by the way.)

Cat Stevens' most recent album, Roadsinger, was released in 2009. Go Cat, go!