Raise All Kinds Of Candy To The Stars

Not only the first novelty record in this list to get to number two, but also the first number two with an erroneously-credited performer. Parsons, who came from Coalton, Ohio, was pals with the young Bobby Bare and “The All-American Boy” was apparently written by Parsons himself in collaboration with a strange, middle-aged Irish-Cherokee drifter named Orville Lunsford. However, when Parsons and Bare finally made it into a recording studio, Parsons preferred to sing a song called “Rubber Dolly” and asked Bare to do the talking blues narrative on “The All-American Boy.” However, when the single was released, both sides were credited to Parsons. Indeed the booming narrator we hear on this record is Bobby Bare, and it’s a very good and purposeful send-up of the rise and conscription of Elvis; I wonder whether Presley had this record in mind when he recorded “Guitar Man” a decade later. More than that, it’s a useful snapshot of how so many rock careers would go – hence the con...

More pensive angst for Don and Phil here; they seem to be in a similar situation to the protagonist of “Summertime Blues” – love life non-existent, poor grades at school, can’t use the car so much – and they can’t quite work out why. I note the attendant irony of a song with lyrics including “Woe is me, I should have stayed in bed” becoming a hit in a world into which Morrissey was about to be born, but the song’s central mystery is: what exactly is their problem? How do they love this girl – is it unrequited love, is she cheating on them or does she even know they exist? The song is a slower variant on “Bird Dog” with the brothers’ Bo Diddley influence made really plain by the simple effect of turning up the mixing desk fader to accentuate those 12-string scimitars. But what if it’s an answer song to “Bird Dog” – what if this is actually being sung by daydreaming Johnny, who is unlikely ever to know what love is? In Beatles-influencing terms, “Problems” would definitely be a ...

The first one-hit wonder to appear in this list – or would have been, had Bobby Day not had a minor hit in 1957 with his song “Little Bitty Pretty One” (although Thurston Harris had a much bigger hit with his cover). However, as an effective one-shot hit, “Rock-In Robin” – that is how the title is spelt on the label of the original 45 rpm single – is an agreeable and engaging record. Born in Fort Worth, Day – real name Bobby Byrd (no, he was not that Bobby Byrd) – then moved to Los Angeles and worked with some doo-wop groups, including the Hollywood Flames and the Satellites, before going solo. “Rock-In Robin” was written by one “Jimmie Thomas.” In reality this was Leon René, who had been around since 1902 and composed such classics as “When The Swallows Come Back To Capistrano” and “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South.” You might therefore be forgiven for thinking that “Robin” has a dubious reputation. In Britain this is probably down to the fact that Bobby Day’s orig...

Very occasionally there’s a record which does the double, a transatlantic number two. “Bird Dog” is one such record; in Britain it was runner-up to Tommy Edwards’ reworking of “It’s All In The Game” and as such Lena has already written about it . I don’t have much to add to her commentary except to note that, just as Supergrass were in their heart of hearts best when they were writing songs about being told to sit up straight at the back of the bus, Don and Phil work most powerfully when they sing from the perspective of frustrated, hormone-crazed teenagers – their acoustic guitars sting like freshly-harvested shards of nettle. The question does occur as to why all of these songs were sung by two guys, two different (though complementary) voices, but it is quickly realised that the reason we’re hearing two voices is so that their immaculate harmonies, which will define virtually everything and everyone who comes after them in pop, can be shown off, as hormone-crazed teenagers ...

The term “pootler” sounds like a pejorative but actually means somebody who moves in a slow, leisurely and relaxed manner, usually on a bicycle. If “Patricia” does anything, it pootles; by the summer of 1958, Pérez Prado was slowing down in terms of popularity and the tune, composed by Prado himself, makes a point of taking its time. The mambo was a livelier development of the Cuban Danzón and in Haitian-Creole language the word is described as meaning “voodoo priestess.” By 1958, Prado had perfected his modified, milder variation on the two-step and “Patricia” is no exception to the format – a doleful organ, sounding as old and unearthly as the Fats Waller organ pieces used in Eraserhead , is balanced against alternately screaming and bellowing brass in a general Stan Kenton manner (hardly surprising, since the band included several Kenton stalwarts, not least the Canadian trumpeter Maynard Ferguson). But the organ – played by Prado himself – is not in mourning; instead it...

Pulling myself free of the Then Play Long wreckage, my mind wandered for six months. What else can I write about - except for new music, about which I could write in some considerable depth, though not in the context of a blog. Then, a discussion I had with my wife Lena this weekend about American number two hits took root in my mind. The Billboard number twos - no one has ever written about those*. But why the number twos? Why not the number ones? The simple reason is that a blog about Billboard number ones already exists - Sally O'Rourke's excellent No Hard Chords . True, there appear to have been no new posts there since 2014, and the exercise seems to have become marooned somewhere in 1967. I don't know whether Sally thought better of the idea, or became too exhausted by the thought of the idea, or simply had to go and do something else. But it is only right and proper that I leave analysis of any future chart-toppers to her, since she may wish to restart the blog a...