Green Door

484. Aneka – Japanese Boy (1981)

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The Intro

In some ways, early 80s pop was progressive. New romantics were blurring the gender lines and make up was worn by many men in music videos. But then you have this example of cultural appropriation set to an admittedly very catchy tune. But understandably, Scottish folk singer Mary Sandeman, AKA one-hit wonder Aneka, would rather forget Japanese Boy.

Before

Sandeman, born 20 November 1948 in Edinburgh, had released her first record on Thistle Records in 1965. Memories of the Mod wasn’t a Who-inspired record – it was a short selection of traditional Gaelic ballads, that she most likely sang at The Royal National Mòd, which was a Celtic version of the Welsh Eisteddfod.

A few more singles followed, and in 1979 Sandeman released her first album, Introducing Mary Sandeman, on Fleet. Sandeman was working with songwriter and producer Bob Heatlie, and expressed an interest in recording a commercial pop song. Heatlie was sceptical that Sandeman was suited to this, and so he put off the idea, despite constant reminders from Sandeman. Eventually, the frustrated singer told Heatlie she had set up an appointment to record a demo of his non-existent song. Heatlie cobbled together an oriental-sounding chorus with snippets of lyrics from previous material.

The demo of Japanese Boy was rejected by Berlin-based Hansa Records several times, but eventually they were signed. The duo figured Sandeman would need a new look, more in keeping with the song, and so they dressed her in a kimono and wig. And she would need a more fitting name, too, so they leafed through a German telephone directory. They liked ‘Anika’, but Sandeman insisted she became ‘Aneka’, as a link to her surname. The fact that this was a German name, not Japanese, didn’t seem to matter to them – or record buyers, for that matter.

Japanese Boy was released in July and soon climbed the charts, eventually toppling Green Door at the end of August.

Review

Conflicting feelings here. The politically correct me thinks Japanese Boy is a terribly dated song that should be consigned to history – which may well be how Aneka feels, considering she’s never attempted to go back to it. A Scottish folk singer, dressed up as a geisha, pretending to be Japanese, is really not a good look in 2024. The lyrics are pretty poor too – they read like something a teenager writing their first song might come up with.

But, but, but. It really is catchy as hell. Incredibly so. There’s hook upon hook here – however cliched they might be. The production is also great, sounding surprisingly modern for a 1981 potboiler. This is one of the most infectious number 1s of 1981 so far, which is amazing really, considering its up against some of the greatest chart-toppers of the decade. Both my daughters, 12 and nine, also now love it, despite the eldest understanding how tacky and dated the concept is. I would argue Japanese Boy deserves to be better known – but it’s incredibly obvious why it isn’t in this day and age.

The video to Japanese Boy is a bit of a disappointment, as I’d have hoped for some kind of terrible Carry On-style short film based around Aneka searching far and wide for her guy. Instead, it’s simply Aneka stood against a primitive backdrop. This Top of the Pops appearance, featuring backing dancers waving around Japanese paper parasols.

After

Japanese Boy was only number 1 for a week, but Hansa Records tried to capitalise, by commissioning an album. However, nothing else from the LP charted, including the unusual follow-up, Little Lady, for which Aneka dropped the oriental look and became an aristocratic lady. This clip is an interesting watch. Then came Ooh Shooby Doo Doo Lang, a total change of tack, in which Aneka sang from the point of view of a singer permanently relegated to backing vocals. It drops the early electro styles of the last two singles, and sounds more like a comedy song from The Two Ronnies. Although both Little Lady and Ooh Shooby Doo Doo Lang did quite well around Europe, they sank in the UK.

Sandeman, a mother of two young children at the time, was smart and continued to perform traditional material, performing at the Edinburgh Festival the night she went to number 1. Two more Aneka singles followed – Heart to Beat and Rose, Rose, I Love You, over the next two years, but Sandeman then dropped the name. She gave up music for good in the 90s.

In 2006, Justin Lee Collins tried to get Sandeman to take part in a performance of one-hit wonders for Channel 4, but she refused. She was interviewed by The Daily Record in 2011, who reviewed she was working as a tour guide in Stirling.

The Outro

Japanese Boy was rejected in Japan for sounding too Chinese. Heatlie went on to write for Shakin’ Stevens, and was the man behind his 1985 festive number 1, Merry Christmas Everyone.

The Info

Written by

Bobby Heatlie

Producer

Neil Ross

Weeks at number 1

1 (29 August-4 September)

Trivia

Births

2 September: Cricketer Chris Tremlett
3 September: Television presenter Fearne Cotton

Deaths

29 August: Billiards player Joyce Gardner/Radiologist James Ralston Kennedy Paterson
30 August: Actress Rita Webb
31 August: Motorcycle racer Dave Potter
3 September: Novelist Alec Waugh

    Meanwhile…

    1 September: Filling stations started selling motor fuel by the litre.

    483. Shakin’ Stevens – Green Door (1981)

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    The Intro

    Ghost Town had spent three weeks at number 1, soundtracking the country’s dissent over rising unemployment. What did it take to reunite the country? It took the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles II and Lady Diana Spencer, and the retro rock’n’roll of Shakin’ Stevens, who was at the peak of his fame with Green Door.

    Before

    Shaky-mania was a very real thing back then. Grandparents and parents loved the Welsh pop star, who had filled in the sizeable gap left by the death of Elvis Presley, boys thought he was cool, and girls swooned.

    Stevens’ cover of This Ole House had topped the hit parade in the spring, and so it was a case of striking while the iron was hot. Work began on his fourth album, the imaginatively titled Shaky. Adopting the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ methodology, it featured a mix of self-penned Stevens numbers and covers of 50s rock’n’roll tunes. The first fruits of Shaky to see the light of day was the original track You Drive Me Crazy, which was a strong track and rushed out hot on the heels of This Ole House. It was brand new, but could easily have been mistaken for a 50s or 60s hit. It very nearly became Shaky’s second number 1, but it was kept off the top spot by Stand and Deliver!, by the UK’s other hottest pop star of 1981.

    Perhaps sensing that Stevens could repeat the success of his last number 1 by releasing a song the old folks would remember from their youth, Philips Records released his cover of Green Door.

    Green Door had been written by US orchestra leader Bob ‘Hutch’ Davie, with lyrics by Marvin J Moore, in 1956. The original version was recorded by Jim Lowe, a singer-songwriter and radio presenter. The green door in question refers to the entrance to a private club, that Lowe is desperate to enter. He can hear laughter, an old piano which is being played ‘hot’, and can see smoke coming through the keyhole. Lowe’s recording, which became number 1 in the US and eight in the UK, is an interesting production, on which Davie played piano, that he sped up to give it a honky tonk sound.

    In the UK, Lowe’s version was eclipsed by Frankie Vaughan’s, which reached number two. Vaughan, known as ‘Mr Moonlight’, was hugely popular in the UK, and in time he would have two number 1s. However, Lowe’s version is the superior one.

    Review

    I don’t know if it’s age or nostalgia, but here I am bigging up Shaky, whose version of Green Door is better than Lowe’s and Laine’s. It is very similar to the latter, but where normally I’d prefer an authentic primitive 50s production over a glossy 80s take, that isn’t the case here.

    Producer Stuart Colman gives it sheen but also some oomph. It’s catchy as hell and to be fair, the country must have been ready for a party after all the civil unrest that had been going down that summer. And yet, it’s only a few months since I reviewed This Ole House, and I marked that down considerably, despite both singles being very, very similar. Perhaps Stevens caught me on a good day, this time.

    Or perhaps it was the silliness of the video that made me warm to Green Door. Shaky’s videos are always good for an easy laugh, and this is no exception. Just like This Ole House, the director is taking things very literally (possibly the same director?). Stevens jumps around in front of some, yes, green doors in much the same way he jumped off the old house (yes, really). There are repeated shots of an eye looking through a keyhole, a piano… you get the message. Then he finally gets inside the club and gets the chance to do some Elvis-style gyrations on the piano. It’s ridiculous, but in a good way, and I can totally see why he must have seemed so cool to me as a little lad.

    After

    After spending nearly all of August 1981 at the top of the singles chart, the parent album Shaky was released, and went on to be his most successful LP ever, also reaching number 1. It’s Raining, also from the album, peaked at 10, but he would soon be back at pole position.

    The Outro

    Green Door is obviously squeaky clean and upbeat. But it also took on a more sinister meaning for me, thanks to its reworking for a 1976 public information film, that continued to be shown well into the 80s. Looking at it now, it’s really not scary, but it did its job when I was a boy, as after seeing it I’d be too scared to answer the door to anyone. Cheers, Central Office of Information!

    The Info

    Written by

    Bob Davie & Marvin J Moore

    Producer

    Stuart Colman

    Weeks at number 1

    4 (1-28 August)

    Trivia

    Births

    8 August: S Club 7 singer Bradley McIntosh
    11 August: Scottish singer-songwriter Sandi Thom
    17 August: Conservative Party MP Johnny Mercer/Actor Chris New
    20 August: Ben Barnes
    27 August: Comedian Olivia Lee
    28 August: Scottish Labour Party leader Kezia Dugdale

    Deaths

    5 August: Poet Molly Holden/Clarinettist Reginald Kell
    9 August: Landowner Ralph Bankes
    10 August: Civil servant Sir Alan Lascelles/Anglican clergyman James Parkes
    12 August: Royal Navy captain Howard Bone
    15 August: Lawyer Sir Humphrey Waldock
    16 August: Cinematographer Denys Coop
    18 August: Second World War pilot Athol Forbes
    19 August: Actress Jessie Matthews
    21 August: Journalist JRL Anderson
    22 August: First World War nurse Mairi Chisholm
    24 August: Physician Margery Blackie
    26 August: Television producer Peter Eckersley
    28 August: Record producer Guy Stevens

    Meanwhile…

    1 August: Kevin Lynch became the seventh IRA hunger striker to die.

    2 August: Less than 24 hours later, Kevin Lynch became the eighth.

    8 August: Thomas McElwee became the ninth.

    9 August: Broadmoor Hospital is criticised when double murderer Alan Reeve became the second prisoner to escape there in three weeks. 

    17 August: An inquiry opened for the Moss Side riots.

    20 August: Michael Devine was the 10th IRA hunger striker to die in prison.
    Also on this day, Minimum Lending Rate ceased to be set by the Bank of England.

    25 August: Britain’s largest Enterprise Zone was launched in Tyneside.

    27 August: 31-year-old Moira Stuart was appointed to be the first black newsreader on the BBC. 

    477. Shakin’ Stevens – This Ole House (1981)

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    The Intro

    The UK’s bestselling artist of the 80s was Welsh singer Shakin’ Stevens. Hard to believe, several decades later. But with Elvis Presley gone, there was a gap in the market for old-school, good-time 50s rock’n’roll with an 80s sheen. The first of Shaky’s three chart-toppers had been a number 1 for Rosemary Clooney back in 1954.

    Before

    Stevens was born Michael Barratt in Ely, Cardiff on 4 March 1948. The youngest of 11 children, Barratt was a teenager in the mid-60s when he formed his first band The Olympics, who soon changed their name to The Cossacks, and quickly changed again to The Denims.

    Barratt became associated with the Young Communist League – although he later said this was only because the person who booked their gigs was also in the YCL, who held a lot of sway back then through association with leading stars such as Pete Townshend.

    By 1968, Barratt was an upholsterer and milkman during the week, and a would-be pop star at the weekend, performing in clubs and pubs around South Wales. He had long admired retro Penarth-based band The Backbeats, occasionally featuring as their guest vocalist. That year he became their full-time singer. When local impresario Paul ‘Legs’ Barrett saw them perform, he suggested a repackage of the group. With his old school friend Steven Vanderwalker in mind, Barratt and co became Shakin’ Stevens and the Sunsets.

    The future looked bright, at first. Shakin’ Stevens and the Sunsets signed to Parlophone Records in 1970 and released their first album, A Legend, produced by Dave Edmunds. However, the group spent the vast majority of the 70s touring Europe to minor success, and achieved next to nothing in the UK.

    In 1977, producer Jack Good (the man behind early TV music series Six-Five Special) was working on Elvis!, a musical based on the life and recent death of ‘the King’. Good wanted three men to play Presley in different stages of his life, and he chose Tim Whitnall as young Elvis, Stevens as prime Presley, and PJ Proby for the Las Vegas era.

    Elvis! was only planned to run for six months, so The Sunsets waited for Stevens to return. But the musical was a hit and ran for a further two years. Stevens released an eponymous LP in 1978 with Track Records, and appeared on Good’s revival of his TV show Oh Boy! and Let’s Rock.

    In late-1979, Freya Miller became his new manager, and she told him to ditch The Sunsets. She was right, as he signed with Epic Records and released Take One!. The first single to be released was a cover of Buck Owens’ Hot Dog, and it became his first hit, reaching 24. Stevens, together with new producer Stuart Colman, never looked back. Which is ironic as his music was constantly doing just that.

    His second album Marie, Marie, was released in October 1980. The title track, an old song by The Blasters, broke the top 20, peaking at 19. But the next single, Shooting Gallery, couldn’t crack the top 40. It took Stevens’ take on NRBQ’s 1979 arrangement of a former UK number 1 to really catapult Stevens to the big time.

    This Ole House is – I believe – the first instance of a number 1 by two different artists in two different decades. In Every UK Number 1: The 50s, I wrote about its creation:

    ‘Stuart Hamblen was an alcoholic, gambling-addicted singer-songwriter and radio personality. He was constantly getting into scrapes and being bailed out, thanks to his charm. In 1949, he decided to take a different path, converting to Christianity after attending one of Billy Graham’s rallies. He was fired from his radio show for refusing to do beer commercials, and then he gave up his vices.

    While out hunting with a friend one day, he came across an abandoned shack on a mountain. Upon inspection, they found a dog guarding a dead body. Allegedly, he came up with the lyrics while riding back down the mountain. So the “ole house” in question is in fact the body you leave behind when you die.’

    Actress and singer Rosemary Clooney took This Ole House for a week on 26 November 1954, around the time of the release of White Christmas, in which she starred alongside Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.

    Review

    I gave Clooney’s recording of this song – featuring Thurl Ravenscroft, voice of Tony the Tiger, a thumbs up, and I stand by it. It’s one of the best pre-rock’n’roll chart-toppers, and one of the rare number 1s of those first few years you can genuinely enjoy.

    I also commented on my thoughts on Shaky in that review:

    ‘It never occurred to me that This Ole House could be about anything other than house renovation. To me, and probably most children of the late-70s and early 80s, it conjures up happy memories of Shakin’ Stevens hanging around an old building in the video of his 1981 cover version. What with this, his cover of Green Door, and his love of denim, I think I assumed “Shaky” was some sort of singing builder as a child’.

    Returning to this song, and video, all these years later, nothing has changed. Stevens’ version is serviceable enough, and sums up his appeal. It’s nostalgic but removes the grit and grime of earlier versions, making it swing more but in a very early 80s way that adds nothing exciting or original.

    Although it’s hard to be overly critical of Stevens for nostalgic reasons (something that’s going to be a potential problem with lots of 80s chart-toppers for me), one listen to the NRBQ version (This Old House) lowers my opinion more. They’re almost exactly the same, apart from the lead vocal by their singer Terry Adams –which is arguably better than Stevens’ rendition. It’s music for grandparents and children, not a 45-year-old music snob.

    After

    Such was the success of Stevens’ This Ole House, his LP Marie, Marie was retitled to share its name. Many more hits followed, and his second number 1, Green Door, wasn’t far away.

    The Outro

    In 2005, Stevens, fresh off the back of an appearance on ITV’s Hit Me Baby One More Time, re-released This Ole House along with a cover of P!nk’s Trouble. The double A-side reached 20.

    The Info

    Written by

    Stuart Hamblen

    Producer

    Rock Masters Productions

    Weeks at number 1

    3 (28 March-17 April)

    Trivia

    Births

    1 April: S Club 7 singer Hannah Spearritt
    10 April: Atomic Kitten singer Liz McClarnon

    Deaths

    28 March: Cartoonist Bernard Hollowood/Artist Helen Adelaide Lamb
    29 March: Racing driver David Prophet
    30 March: Olympian athlete Douglas Lowe
    31 March: Playwright Enid Bagnold
    1 April: Writer Dennis Feltham Jones
    3 April: Labour Party MP Will Owen
    4 April: Journalist Donald Tyerman
    7 April: Ice hockey player Lorne Carr-Harris/Music producer Kit Lambert
    8 April: Film composer Eric Rogers
    13 April: Actor Albert Burdon/Novelist Gwyn Thomas
    14 April: Composer Christian Darnton
    15 April: Actor Blake Butler
    16 April: Political activist Peggy Duff/Cricketer Eric Hollies
    17 April: Palaeontologist Francis Rex Parrington

    Meanwhile…

    28 March: Controversial Ulster Unionist Enoch Powell warned of racial civil war.

    29 March: The first London Marathon was held.

    30 March: The Academy Award-winning historical sporting drama Chariots of Fire was released.

    4 April: Bucks Fizz became the fourth UK act to win the Eurovision Song Contest, with future number 1 Making Your Mind Up.
    Also on this day, Oxford University student Susan Brown became the first female cox in a winning Boat Race team. And cancer survivor Bob Champion won the Grand National with his horse Aldaniti.

    5 April: The UK Census was conducted.

    10 April: IRA member Bobby Sands, on hunger strike in Northern Ireland’s Maze prison, was elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in a by election.

    11 April: Rioting in Bristol resulted in more than 300 injured people (mostly police officers).

    13 April: Home Secretary William Whitelaw announced a public inquiry into the Brixton riot.