Rosemary Clooney

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.

31. Pérez ‘Prez’ Prado & His Orchestra, The King of Mambo – Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White (1955)

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The Intro

As mentioned in my blog for Mambo Italiano, the US and UK were going through something of a mambo craze in 1955. Rosemary Clooney’s number 1 was a very successful attempt to cash in on this phenomenon, but it was a novelty song. Bandleader Perez Prado was the real deal, though, and the craze was largely due to his success with songs such as Mambo No 5 at the start of the decade. Yes, that’s the song that Lou Bega remade in 1999, and then reworked by none other than Bob the Builder in 2001.

Before

Born in Matanzas, Cuba on 11 December 1916, Dámaso Pérez Prado was a musically gifted child (often the case with these early number 1 artists). He studied classical piano as a child and went on to play in local clubs. For most of the 40s he was performing with the casino orchestras of Havana, where he earned the nickname ‘El Cara de Foca’ (‘Seal Face’).

Prado moved to Mexico in 1949 and began his recording career there. He quickly ascended to the top of the mambo scene, developing trademark grunts as he powered his way through fiery, sometimes raunchy tunes.

His first hit, Mambo Jambo, appeared a year later. Also in 1950, Spanish-born French composer Louiguy, the man behind the melody of Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose, wrote Cerisier Rose et Pommier Blanc. This Latin jazz composition translated as Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White. Lyrics were written in French by Jacques Larue, and English by Mack David, but Prado decided to record it as an instrumental, and it is this version that first went to number 1 in the UK, on 29 April, after its appearance in the movie Underwater!. starring Jane Russell, who dances to it in a famous scene.

Review

Prado’s version has a great, memorable opening, with a powerful brass blast before trumpeter Billy Regis performs a lazy drawl on his instrument (this is probably a strange way to describe it but it’s the best I can think of) and then the sultry rhythm takes hold. It’s easy to see why mambo was popular in the UK. Compared to number 1s by Vera Lynn and David Whitfield, this is exciting and exotic. The low horn sound that crops up from time to time is probably the weirdest noise to appear in the charts so far. It’s so deep it almost sounds alien and electronic. The most enjoyable number 1 so far, and the only one to get a reaction from my two-year-old.

After

Other acts wanted in on the mambo craze, and ‘Man with the Golden Trumpet’ Eddie Calvert’s inferior cover of this track also went to number 1 a few weeks later.

The Outro

This was Prado’s only number 1, but although the mambo craze was short-lived, he continued to enjoy success around the world for years to come. He died of a stroke on 14 September 1989, aged 72, but his music has lived on, and aged very well. In addition to the remakes of Mambo No.5, his track Guaglione was used in a famous advert for Guinness in 1995, which is where I first came across his work. And despite never seeing Underwater!, Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White sounds very familiar to me, and I’m certain it’s been used on TV, so if anyone can tell me where, please do!

The Info

Written by

Louiguy 

Producer

Herman Diaz

Weeks at number 1

2 (29 April-12 May)

Trivia

Births

16 May: Singer Hazel O’Connor

Deaths

11 May: Cricketer Gilbert Jessop

28. Rosemary Clooney with The Mellomen – Mambo Italiano (1955)

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The Intro

A lot of writers will tell you that sometimes their best work comes when they’re hard-pushed to meet a deadline. This is how Bob Merrill came up with Mambo Italiano. He was already a renowned hitmaker. Indeed, this became his fourth UK number 1, after She Wears Red Feathers, (How Much is That) Doggie in the Window? and Look at That Girl. Merrill was looking for a way to cash in on the craze for mambo music in New York in 1954, and considered Rosemary Clooney the best artist for the job. The problem was, he couldn’t think of a tune and he was running out of time, until one night he was eating in an Italian restaurant and it came to him. He quickly scribbled his idea on a napkin, rang the studio from the restaurant payphone and dictated the whole thing to producer Mitch Miller and the studio pianist.

Before

Whether this explains the fact the lyrics are often either lazy, stereotypical Italian (basically, any Italian word an American would have known, and some Spanish as well) or actual gibberish, I’m not sure. let’s face it, Merrill had written borderline offensive songs before (She Wears Red Feathers), and been very successful with it. In less enlightened times, who was going to stop him? He gets away with it on Mambo Italiano for two reasons. One, the tune is so catchy. Two, Rosemary Clooney’s performance.

Review

Clooney throws herself into the song completely, and does a very good impersonation of an Italian despite her Irish-American upbringing. This is in part due to the many Italian musicians she worked with. She’s the embodiment of the lusty temptress, and she even throws in some feral growling at times. It’s easily the sexiest number one yet. With this and This Ole House, that’s two good number 1s in a row from Clooney.

Mambo Italiano has been covered many times since, with Dean Martin’s being probably the most notable. Martin was Italian-American and didn’t seem to have a problem with the song. In fact, neither did Italy, as it became popular there in 1956 thanks to a cover by Carla Boni. I guess as far as national stereotypes go, ‘those Italians are always horny and we like their food’ is one of the better ones.

After

Mambo Italiano knocked Dickie Valentine’s Finger of Suspicion off the top spot for a week, before Valentine took over again for another fortnight. A further two-week stint followed for Clooney, and then her time at number 1 was over.

She continued to have television and music success for many years though, with two variety series in the US in 1956-57. She would often appear with Bing Crosby on TV too.

Clooney would struggle throughout her life, suffering several nervous breakdowns, depression, prescription drug addiction, two divorces to actor José Ferrer and money problems.

Unlike many stars from her era, she continued to record and act through the decades. In 1995 she appeared alongside her nephew George in US drama hit ER, which earned her an Emmy nomination.

Clooney was a long-time smoker though, and despite surgery to remove lung cancer, she died on 29 June 2002, aged 74.

The Outro

Who were The Mellomen, who were credited alongside her on this track? They were a very popular singing quartet, that’s who. At this time they consisted of Thurl Ravenscroft (also the voice of Tony the Tiger, who helped out Clooney on This Ole House), Max Smith, Bill Lee and Bob Hamlin. They went under several guises through the years, and together, and separately, they recorded with Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby and Doris Day, as well as providing voices for Disney films including Alice in Wonderland (1951) and The Jungle Book (1967).

The Info

Written by

Bob Merrill

Producer

Mitch Miller

Weeks at number 1

3 (14-20 January, 4-17 February)

26. Winifred Atwell & Her ‘Other’ Piano – Let’s Have Another Party (1954)

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The Intro

As 1954 drew to a close, the charts were finally livening up. Rosemary Clooney’s This Ole House had shown the way forward, and a certain song called Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley & His Comets had been getting attention. Unlike the previous December, when record buyers had chosen the solemn Answer Me by Frankie Laine as their Christmas number 1, everyone decided they wanted to spend the festive season having a bloody good knees up. And so on 3 December, Winifred Atwell’s instrumental Let’s Have Another Party went to the top and stayed there until the new year. She had become the first black person to have a number 1.

Before

Una Winifred Atwell was born in Trinidad & Tobago, date unknown, though her gravestone suggests 1910. She was expected to join the family business and become a pharmacist, but she had loved playing the piano since childhood, and left her home to study music in the US, before moving to London and becoming the first female pianist to achieve the highest grading at the Royal Academy of Music. Substituting for an ill star at the Capitol Theatre, she caught the interest of famous impresario Bernard Delfont with her frenetic honky tonk style of playing. Before long, her version of Black and White Rag made her famous (it was later used as the theme tune to the BBC’s snooker show Pot Black).

Review

Let’s Have Another Party was a follow-up to her hit Let’s Have a Party (see what she did there?). Atwell showcased her skills once more with a medley of 10 songs. Easily the longest chart-topper so far, she ran through Somebody Stole My Gal, I Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight, When the Red Red Robin, Bye Bye Blackbird, The Sheik of Araby, Another Little Drink, Lily of Laguna, Honeysuckle and the Bee, Broken Doll and Nellie Dean. She did this without pause, at a relentless pace, and as old-fashioned as it sounds now, it’s very refreshing to hear something so different to what came before. Atwell had mad skills, you could say. You can imagine people gathering round the gramophone on Christmas Day and actually smiling along to this, or perhaps even going so far as to have a little dance, and it’s a lovely image.

The Outro

Although the charts in 1954 had often offered up more of the same, the number ones were of more interesting fare than 1953, with a little less crooning and more (dreadful) comedy, jazz and pop. 1954 showed early signs of how unpredictable the UK charts could and would be in years to come.

The Info

Written by

Leo Wood/Walter Donaldson & Russ Kahn/Harry Woods/Ray Henderson & Mort Dixon/Harry B Smith, Francis Wheeler & Ted Snyder/Clifford Grey & Nat Dyer/Leslie Stuart/William Penn & Albert Fitz/Douglas & Guy C Rawson/Henry W Armstrong

Weeks at number 1

5 (3 December 1954-6 January 1955)

Producer

Johnny Franz

Trivia

Births

5 December 1954: Author Hanif Kureishi
8 December: Author Louis de Bernières
25 December: Singer Annie Lennox
31 December: SNP leader Alex Salmond
1 January 1955: Classicist Mary Beard
5 January: Comedian Jimmy Mulville

Deaths

20 December: Author James Hilton

Meanwhile…

25 December: The Prestwick air disaster occurred at 3.30 that morning, when the RMA Cathay struggled with intense rain and landed short of the runway at Prestwick Airport in Scotland. The aircraft overturned and burst into flames, killing 28 of the 36 on board, including two children and cricket star Kenneth Davidson.

25. Rosemary Clooney with Buddy Cole & His Orchestra – This Ole House (1954)

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The Intro

It never occurred to me that This Ole House could be about anything other than, well, doing up an old house. To me, and probably most children of the late-70s or 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. Upon researching the original number 1 version, by Rosemary Clooney, I found out the dark origins of this chirpy tune, and suddenly the song is probably the deepest UK number 1 up to this point.

Before

Stuart Hamblen was an alcoholic, gambling-addicted singer-songwriter and radio personality. He was constantly getting into scrapes and being bailed out due 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 stopped his addictions. While out hunting with a friend, 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. Seems obvious when you then read the lyrics, but to be fair, I didn’t do that back in 1981, I was barely reading.

Clooney, born 23 May, 1928 in Maysville, Kentucky, was one of three children born to alcoholic parents, which meant a lonely existence, often being left with relatives. But at the age of 16 she formed a singing duo with her sister Betty. Brother Nick would later become a newsreader, and of course Rosemary’s nephew is Hollywood star George Clooney.

Clooney made her first recordings with Tony Pastor’s big band, before turning solo in 1949. Two years later, she rocketed to success with Come On-a My House in 1951, which she hated (yet another ‘house-related’ song). 1954 was one of her most successful years, as that winter also saw the release of the film White Christmas, in which she starred alongside Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.

Review

Of course, the fact the tune is so catchy and, (especially by comparison to most number 1s of the day), kind-of rollicking, also obscures the subject matter. It wouldn’t make a bad funeral song. Sod the fact you’re dying, your body has had it anyway, and better times await. It’s the perfect vehicle for Clooney, who belts it out with gusto.

The Outro

Unlike most number 1s of the era, people could actually dance to this! Pop was back at the top. In particular, the piano break is a lot of fun, and best of all, the man with the deep voice singing ‘Ain’t a-gonna need this house no longer…’ is Thurl Ravenscroft, the original voice behind Tony the Tiger! What more could you ask for?

The Info

Written by:

Written by

Stuart Hamblen

Producer

Mitch Miller

Weeks at number 1

1 (26 November-2 December)