Ray Dorset - Every UK Number 1

The Intro

‘BOO BOO! BOO BOO! BOO BOO! BOO BOO!’ It’s cheap. It’s tacky. It’s the arse-end of disco. But I love Kelly Marie’s Feels Like I’m in Love and I’m not ashamed of it.

Before

By 1977, Mungo Jerry’s fame was drying up. It was seven years since In the Summertime, six since their last number 1 Baby Jump, and they hadn’t charted in the UK since Long Legged Woman Dressed in Black peaked at 13 in 1974. But they still had a following in Europe, and singer-songwriter Ray Dorset hoped that Elvis Presley might record a demo of his called Feels Like I’m in Love. Dorset impersonates Presley here, so you can easily imagine what a fleshed-out version would have sounded like.

Unfortunately of course, ‘the King’ died that year, and Way Down became his last new number 1, signposting a move to disco that was never realised for Elvis. Mungo Jerry recorded Feels Like I’m in Love and it was relegated to a B-side for their Belgian single Sur Le Pont D’avignon. Two years later, Scottish singer Kelly Marie chanced across the song in a music publishing office.

Marie was born Jacqueline McKinnon in Paisley, Scotland on 16 October 1957. She wanted to be a star from a young age and her parents were happy to help, entering her at voice and drama school at the wee age of 10. Two years later she was singing in competitions and at 15 she made her TV debut. Aged 16 she was appearing on Thames Television’s popular ITV talent show Opportunity Knocks. As Keli Brown, she won four times with her cover of I Don’t Know How to Love Him from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

The exposure led to her signing with Pye Records in 1976 as Kelly Marie, and she went to number 1 in France with her debut single Who’s That Lady with My Man. She also featured on Joe Dolan’s number two hit in Ireland, Sister Mary. But despite a few hits in South Africa and Australia, including most notably Run to Me in 1977 and Make Love to Me in 1978, it didn’t look like she was ever going to trouble the UK charts. Singles came thick and fast in 1978, including Loving Just for Fun, a prototype for Feels Like I’m in Love, even including a very similar synth-drum sound. Nothing charted.

One day in 1979, Marie and her producer Peter Yellowstone were in the Red Bus Music office, where they came across Dorset’s tune. They saw its potential and set to work.

Review

These days Feels Like I’m in Love is laughed at. A low-budget, throwaway, cheesy disco track sung by a very ordinary looking club singer with a distinct lack of subtlety. Coming after classics like The Winner Takes It All, Ashes to Ashes and Start!, it simply doesn’t hold up. Balls to all this is what I say. Least of all, the detractors of Marie’s appearance – there’s no need, and fair play to her for adopting the early 80s boiler suit look.

OK, cards on the table – nostalgia plays an important part in the personal appeal of Feels Like I’m in Love. One of my very earliest memories involves playing this at my Nanna and Granddad’s house. I was very young, but it must have been a few years after it was number 1, as I was born in 1979. But in my head, it was this moment in which I fell in love with pop itself – the title had a very literal meaning for me.

Hearing that effervescent, bouncy backing, complete with the infectious ‘BOO BOO! BOO BOO! BOO BOO! BOO BOO!’ synth drum, was like downing a bag of sugar. Everything was turned up to the max, including Marie’s voice. I remember thinking that being in love sounded brilliant. The instrumental break was exciting and I lost myself in it, and by the time the grand finale, with the ‘ahhs’ comes in, I felt sick with happiness and excitement. I felt alive. Hearing that swirling intro unexpectedly still takes me right back to that moment.

So yes, it’s very hard to be objective about something that had a personal impact like Feels Like I’m in Love. However, I’d still defend it as a very catchy example of cheap and cheerful late-period Brit disco. Marie of course gives it the welly it deserves, but the star here is Yellowstone’s production.

The video also turns up the camp, with Marie on a ship with two sailors, who go off on a tour of London, performing in front of mostly non-plussed people. At the end the sailors are back on their ship, waving off Marie who’s now on a tiny boat, heading for London Bridge.

After

Feels Like I’m in Love was released in 1979 but didn’t make a mark anywhere other than South Africa. But upon re-release a year later, it was gaining traction in the discos of Scotland, and then England. Climbing the charts, Marie achieved what must have felt unthinkable only a year previous. For two weeks in September, she was number 1, and she was a hit all over Europe too.

The success was short-lived. Marie rushed out a re-release of Loving Just for Fun, but it sounded like a pale retread of her biggest single, and it peaked at 21. Hot Love in 1981 was her last charting single, reaching 22. UK disco was on its way out, to be replaced by Hi-NRG, which you could argue was exactly what Feels Like I’m in Love was an early version of.

Marie continued releasing singles and performing at clubs throughout the 80s and 90s. In 2005 she appeared on the ITV talent show featuring stars of yesteryear, Hit Me, Baby, One More Time. She lost out to Chesney Hawkes.

The Outro

There were two inferior remixes of her number 1 in the 90s. Stock Aitken Waterman may have been responsible for many Hi-NRG classics in the early to mid-80s, but by 1991 they had run out of steam, and their version is a pale imitation. The 97 remix is even worse.

The Info

Written by

Ray Dorset

Producer

Peter Yellowstone

Weeks at number 1

2 (13-26 September)

Trivia

Deaths

14 September : Fashion journalist Alison Settle
17 September: Enid Warren
18 September: Antiquarian Edward Croft-Murray/Opera singer Walter Midgley
22 September: Labour politician Raymond Dobson/Town planner JR James
23 September: Cricketer Geoffrey Latham/Linguist Alan SC Ross
24 September: Novelist Jacky Gillott/Mycologist Clarence James Hickman
25 September: Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham

Meanwhile…

13 September: Hercules, a popular TV bear, which had gone missing on a Scottish island while filming an advert for Kleenex toilet tissue, is found.

21 September: The CND hold a rally at RAF Greenham Common for the first time.

24 September: 34-year-old Singapore-born doctor Upadhya Bandara is attacked and left injured by Peter Sutcliffe in Headingley, Leeds.

The Intro

Everyone knows In the Summertime by jug band Mungo Jerry, but who remembers this follow-up? The raucous, rowdy Baby Jump must be one of the least-known number 1 singles of all time, and marked the end of ‘Mungo-mania’.

Before

After the huge impact of In the Summertime in the UK, their debut single began to climb the US charts, so Mungo Jerry headed over in September 1970. Upon their return, double bassist Mike Cole was sacked and replaced by John Godfrey. They hadn’t been in a rush to immediately release a second single, preferring to let In the Summertime soak up as many sales as possible.

The band decided to rework a track that was popular at their live shows, and singer-songwriter Ray Dorset came up with some new lyrics too. They recorded Baby Jump at their label Pye’s 16-track studio, but weren’t happy with the results, deciding it needed to sound more lo-fi, so they returned to the studio where they had made In the Summertime, and Barry Murray was back in charge of production. Deciding the single was too short, they chose to repeat the trick of their first single, and Murray created a fake ending, with the song starting up from the start again.

Review

Baby Jump is a real curio. If you didn’t know it, you’d think it was a different band. Perhaps even an early Tom Waits number. The light touch of their debut is replaced by raw rocking noise and Ray Dorset adopts a growling, shouting voice. The track sounds like it’s been dropped in a muddy pool of water and left for a day or two. This might make it sound exciting, and for the first minute or so, Baby Jump is just that. But it soon outstays its welcome and you’re left wanting them to wrap it up – which makes that false ending all the more annoying.

The lyrics are problematic too. Those freewheeling, likeable but misogynistic lads of In the Summertime go full-throttle on the lust levels. Dorset has the horn for a girl in a micro-mini dress and black stockings, and he promises ‘You bet your life I’ll attack’. He goes on to compare him and his dream love to Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper, Mona Lisa and Da Vinci, and worryingly, Humbert and Lolita. Which of course, suggests the girl he wants is underage. So, nine years before The Police namechecked Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov in 1980’s best-selling single, Don’t Stand So Close to Me, Mungo Jerry got there first. But at least Sting was conflicted about his situation.

After

Baby Jump made Mungo Jerry the first British act since Gerry and the Pacemakers to have two number 1s with their first two singles, but there seems to be some confusion about whether it even did really make it to number 1, as there was a national postal strike at the time, which affected chart data. They nearly equalled Gerry and co’s feat of three in a row with Lady Rose, but a controversial B-side, Have a Whiff on Me, meant the single was withdrawn.

Mungo Jerry’s momentum never really recovered, and in 1972 Dorset was summoned to a band meeting and Colin Earl and Paul King told him they wanted him gone. Bit rich, considering Dorset did most of the work, so the management fired them instead. They went on to form The King Earl Boogie Band.

From here on in, the line-up would change over and over, but Dorset remained, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned, is Mungo Jerry. He even used the name on solo material. There were a few more hits in the 70s, including Alright, Alright, Alright and You Don’t Have to Be in the Army to Fight the War. His last top 20 single was the catchy Long Legged Woman Dressed in Black in 1974.

However, Dorset would pen another number 1. He was the man behind Kelly Marie’s excellent tacky disco smash Feels Like I’m in Love in 1980. Originally he’d written it with Elvis Presley in mind – I would have loved to have heard that.

The Outro

Three years later, Dorset joined former Fleetwood Mac guitarist and acid casualty Peter Green and Vincent Crane from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown in the group Katmandu, who released one album, A Case for the Blues, in 1985. Occasional Mungo Jerry albums have appeared since, the last being 100% Live in Baden Baden in 2018.

The Info

Written by

Ray Dorset

Producer

Barry Murray

Weeks at number 1

2 (6-19 March)

Trivia

Births

7 March: Actress Rachel Weisz

Deaths

6 March: Harpsichordist Thurston Dart
7 March: Poet Stevie Smith

Meanwhile…

7 March: After recent protests in London, 10,000 striking workers protested in Glasgow against the Industrial Relations Bill.

8 March: The postal workers’ strike ended after 47 days.