“Chick-A-Boom (Don’t Ya Jes’ Love It)” by Daddy Dewdrop (1971, #9)

One person’s view:  “God, this is stupid.” – Nerd with an Afro

The public’s view:  2.53 / 5.00

Last week we pondered “Gimme Dat Ding”, a novelty-like tune that clawed its way out of the cesspool of children’s television to become a mainstream hit.  Daddy Dewdrop’s “Chick-A-Boom” has a similar origin story, as it was first foisted upon the world in an episode of the kids’ TV show Groovie Goolies.  In “Chick-A-Boom”, the singer tells us of a dream in which he witnesses a woman in a bikini strolling past him.  You cannot expect a man named Daddy Dewdrop to be content with merely admiring this fine sight.  He proceeds to make a pest out of himself by chasing the woman through the oneiric world that his night-time imagination has conjured up.

The bikini-clad lady has disappeared behind one of three doors, and Daddy Dewdrop must guess which one.  He is not very good at guessing.  He tries the first door, but it leads to a generic social gathering that is entirely unremarkable.  The second door is a portal to Africa, where Dewdrop encounters a man who speaks in the form of Little Richard lyrics.  The beautiful woman is behind the third door, just as 100% of listeners predicted from the outset.

The woman’s bikini falls off during the pursuit, so she is presumably naked by the time that Mr. Dewdrop finally locates her.  (This detail was omitted from the Groovie Goolies cartoon, for some reason, but is present in the hit version of the song.)  The listener feels no excitement from the suggestion of nudity, however, and mostly there is just a sense of embarrassment that the guy barged through the door without knocking first.  And like the proverbial dog who catches the car, Dewdrop has no idea what to do next.  My suggestion would be to go back to the second door, because the Africa portal is the only slightly interesting part of this tale.  Naked women are plentiful, but it isn’t every day that you meet a guy who is off his meds and thinks he’s Little Richard.

The only common thread of the three behind-the-door settings is that the same meaningless mantra is uttered in each:  “Chick-a-boom, don’t you just love it?”  There’s nothing wrong with using a nonsensical saying as the basis for a nonsensical song, as in “Mony Mony”, “Wooly Bully”, “Iko Iko”, and “Say You, Say Me”.  The problem with “Chick-A-Boom” is that it tries to build a story song around the silly lyric, and the repetition of a dumb saying isn’t a strong foundation for a work of fiction.  Hemingway could spin a pretty good yarn about the mundane act of catching a fish, but even he would struggle to make something out of this vacuous “chick-a-boom” concept.

When Dewdrop opens “Chick-A-Boom” by announcing that he had a dream, and a crazy one at that, it is an excuse for the lack of a coherent plot and the lazy effort that is forthcoming.  He is like an athlete visibly limping onto the field at the start of a match, or a president beginning his State of the Union speech by declaring that he just drank five beers.  Don’t blame Daddy Dewdrop that this story sucks.  Blame his subconscious.

So, to answer the question that is hanging over all of our heads:  Chick-a-boom, don’t you just love it?  No, I don’t love it.  Nor do I particularly even like it very much.  And I refuse to dwell on it any further, because I still have a lot of ground to cover in the early 1970s.  Scholars of bad music classify this era as “Peak Osmond”.  As the gentleman behind Door #2 would say, good golly Miss Donny.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Gimme Dat Ding” by the Pipkins (1970, #9)

One person’s view:  “Complete crap from beginning to end.  ...  Destroy this album if you come across it.” – gotofritz @ Rate Your Music, regarding the Pipkins’ Gimme Dat Ding! LP 

The public’s view:  2.59 / 5.00

Media outlets generate massive amounts of video, audio, and text every day, and not all of it will be preserved for future generations to ponder.  Much of it is already disappearing, thanks to the recent proliferation of paid digital subscription services.  Archaeologists will be facing a big problem 1,000 years from now:

Flinders:  Hey Claude, this newly unearthed article might give us fresh insights on 21st-century life.  It’s titled “9 Things I Wish I Knew Before Staying at the Super 8 in Laramie, Wyoming”.  But there’s only one sentence and then it says I need a subscription to Business Insider to read the rest.  Can you help?

Claude:  Sorry, buddy, that’s what those primitive anthropods called “clickbait”.  No one actually paid for Business Insider, so that article has been lost if it ever existed in the first place.

Flinders:  Oh, so it’s like that Celebrity Cat Sitters of West Covina reality series that was supposedly aired on the Peacock channel in 2026?

Claude:  Yeah, just like that.  I think we’ll dig up Noah’s Ark before we find evidence of a Peacock subscriber!

Paywalls can sometimes be overcome via the clever application of copyright infringement techniques.  When researching the origin of the Pipkins’ “Gimme Dat Ding”, however, I ran into a more insurmountable obstacle:  the recklessly wasteful practices of the British broadcaster ITV.  Not even the miracle of piracy can allow me to see the source material that I would like to peruse.  It has vanished forever.

The Pipkins’ hit was written for a children’s program called Little Big Time.  This show starred Freddie Garrity, the goofy dancing guy from Freddie & the Dreamers, whose jovial personality did not prevent the series from taking a dark turn.  Beginning with the second or third season, the action moved to a surreal setting called the Overworld which was almost exactly like the Neighborhood of Make-Believe from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.  It had puppets, a king, and a grandfather clock.  There was only one slight difference between the two milieus:  the Neighborhood of Make-Believe was a friendly, welcoming place in which conflicts were peaceably mediated, while the Overworld was a dystopian hellscape populated by dangerous pieces of machinery that had come to life.  For example, Hungry Drains rampaged through the Overworld while seeking to devour everyone who they encountered.  “Gimme Dat Ding” was born out of this bleak environment.

From what I can gather, the episode that contained “Gimme Dat Ding” centered on the theft of a bell from a metronome.  The metronome warbled the tune as a musical demand for its “ding” to be returned.  This plea was evidently ineffective, as the bell was instead repurposed to repair the Overworld’s grandfather clock.  I would love to tell you more about the ding larceny and whether it was satisfactorily resolved, but virtually all of the tapes of Little Big Time were erased by ITV.  Just a handful of short clips survive, and the remainder of the series exists solely in the distant recollections of those who saw it on the telly when they were toddlers.  The only characters who are remembered clearly are the Hungry Drains, and that is because the Drains gave many young viewers a lifelong fear of plumbing.  Little Big Time set British potty training efforts back by a decade.

We now have no way of watching the Little Big Time cast’s initial performance of “Gimme Dat Ding” in the Overworld.  Without this context, it is difficult to comprehend that the song concerns a metronome’s calamitous anatomical loss.  It sounds more like a meaningless drunken argument between Wolfman Jack and Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo.  As such, “Gimme Dat Ding” is only slightly more intellectually gratifying than a Ben Shapiro podcast.  But even though it is hardly a work of academic rigor, I consider this unusual record to be a fun break from the status quo.  The critics who rank it among the worst songs of its era should be put behind a paywall.

My rating:  7 / 10

“Hey There Lonely Girl” by Eddie Holman (1970, #2)

One person’s view:  “You could wring every ounce of possible comedy from every birdbrained novelty single of the entire 1960s combined and it still wouldn’t be half as genuinely, laugh-out-loud hysterical as the moment Holman’s squeaky, mickey-mouse falsetto comes in on ‘Hey There, Lonely Girl’.” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year

The public’s view:  2.78 / 5.00

If there is any type of music that is not made for me, it’s slow-tempo ballads consisting of men trying to convince women to go out with them.  The unabridged speeches of Walter Mondale are more exciting than the wimpy begging and listless crooning in these lullabies.  Asking me which song of this genre that I want to hear is like asking which of my fingers I wish to slam in a car door, or which pew I would like to sit in at church.  And yet, Eddie Holman’s “Hey There Lonely Girl” doesn’t rankle me in the same way as its brethren.  It is so bizarre that I forget how much I should hate it.

Until researching this post, I had always assumed that Eddie Holman was the same guy who was in the Stylistics and that “Hey There Lonely Girl” was a rare solo hit.  Nope.  The Stylistics’ falsetto was performed by a different person named Russell Thompkins Jr.  This means that, in defiance of the laws of probability and of nature itself, there were two men singing in this manner on hit pop/R&B songs in the early 1970s.  The Stylistics wisely paired Thompkins up with conventional male singers, preventing him from completely carrying their records off into outer space.  Holman would have benefited from a similar sandbagging.  He’s all about the treble – no bass.  And his voice isn’t just incredibly high-pitched; it also has a squeaky edge to it as if he has ingested a dog toy or a songbird.  This squeak might have sounded amusing as a character in a cartoon or a puppet show, but it’s a little off-putting when it is heard in a love song.

Holman’s unusual falsetto overwhelms every other facet of the song, transcending entertainment and becoming sort of a scientific curiosity.  Exactly how high does this guy’s voice go?  And did he need surgery after singing this?  These are matters of scholarly interest, but I can’t find any published papers that address them.  Even the “Hey There Lonely Girl” sheet music completely dodges the issue.  I would expect the written score to fold out at the top to accurately depict the notes in relation to middle C.  Alternately, it might invent a new Italian word like “castraggio” to indicate that the vocals are to be performed six octaves higher than they are written.  Instead, the notes are placed on the treble staff within the range of a standard tenor, and without any special instructions.  The transcribers are probably just trying to save other singers from exploding their larynxes, but it feels like they are rewriting history and erasing Eddie’s achievement.

Most R&B ballads of this variety have some macho bragging in the lyrics, but “Hey There Lonely Girl” has only desperation.  This is an incel with a ridiculous voice, and he is singing to a girl who just got royally dumped.  The two of them have nothing to lose by hooking up, so they might as well settle for each other.  The mutual despair is one of those things – like the humorous falsetto – that makes the song almost bearable to me while ruining it for normal listeners.  I don’t love “Hey There Lonely Girl”, but I do love that it annoys the folks who usually enjoy this type of tune.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Little Woman” by Bobby Sherman (1969, #3)

One person’s view:  “Imagine a song so dripping with entitlement that it makes you question the singer’s upbringing.  ...  The lyrics are a masterclass in audacity, as the singer attempts to convince a woman to abandon her life for his.” – Joe @ I Love Classic Rock

The public’s view:  2.33 / 5.00

What would pop music be without mindlessly fun, catchy bubblegum tunes by teen idols who look better than they sound?  Sadly, however, these types of songs generally get low scores from reviewers and are not fondly remembered by most listeners.  Many of them feature a woefully substandard vocal performance.  (See New Kids on the Block.)  Many have exceptionally bad instrumentation.  (See New Kids on the Block.)  Many include phenomenally stupid lyrics.  (See Kenny G.  No, just kidding, see New Kids on the Block.)  Bobby Sherman’s “Little Woman” doesn’t exhibit any of these three problems, but it still manages to gall some critics with the singer’s condescension toward the title character.

The lyrics are indeed obnoxious if we take them at face value.  This man is admonishing a female to stop chasing rainbows and come down from the clouds because he thinks her goals are crazy and are not worth pursuing.  To be fair, he may be completely justified in doubting her.  This is a little woman, after all, and she might harbor pie-in-the-sky ambitions of becoming a pro basketball player or of shopping in the grown-up section of the clothing store.  Still, he should at least pretend to be more supportive.  If she wants to be an airplane pilot, he should help her find some extenders so that her feet can reach the rudder pedals.  Instead, he belittles her – quite literally – by repeatedly referencing her Lilliputian dimensions.

Scratch beyond the surface, however, and you will find that “Little Woman” is a spoof of chauvinism and that the male is in fact the butt of the joke.  The singer mocks the diminutive woman’s lofty dreams, but then admits that nothing is going on in his own life aside from his unrequited obsession with her.  He sees her in his mind constantly.  He asks if she has similar visions of him when she walks down a busy street, but she’s just trying to avoid drowning in a puddle or getting licked in the face by a dachshund.  She’s not thinking of that loser at all... and therefore he’s the one living in a fantasyland!  Who would have thought that a Bobby Sherman song could contain an ironic twist worthy of an O. Henry story?

And who would have thought that a whole bevy of musicians would be needed to make a bubblegum record targeted at adolescent girls?  According to Wikipedia, this song features five horn players, six violinists, and even a cello.  It’s too bad that similar production values weren’t applied to the teen-oriented music that raged across the U.S. in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Imagine Yo-Yo Ma playing a centuries-old Stradivarius cello while Donnie Wahlberg and Jordan Knight prance around in front of him.  That would have blown through the New Kids’ $8.52 studio budget in a hurry.

All things considered, I have to take the minority view on “Little Woman”.  Aside from the surprising depth in the lyrics and the quality work by the musicians, it clocks in at the ideal length for a teenybopper song:  2 minutes and 22 seconds.  I give it credit for not overstaying its welcome.

My rating:  6 / 10

“This Girl Is a Woman Now” by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap (1969, #9)

One person’s view:  “Seriously, was there no one at Columbia records telling Gary Puckett to knock it off with all this ‘barely legal’-type shit?” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year

The public’s view:  2.74 / 5.00

The Bad Top Ten Hits radar screen has recently been picking up lots of little blips from Yakima, Washington and the neighboring city of Union Gap.  I tried to ignore these signs of trouble, but then I listened to “This Girl Is a Woman Now”.  Now I realize that I must finally delve into the controversial oeuvre of the musical Yakiman named Gary Puckett.

Puckett’s best known single, “Young Girl”, describes an adolescent girl who misleads the singer about her age while unsuccessfully attempting to lure him into an illicit tryst.  (This is the type of problem that only a rock star could have.)  In the follow-up record “Lady Willpower”, the female is the one who is balking as the man begs to be allowed to teach her the facts of life.  Thankfully, “Lady Willpower” does not suggest that the woman is underage – only that she is inexperienced and seems to like it that way.  I get the impression that she might be a nun.

Both of those songs were written by Puckett’s producer, Jerry Fuller, and both of them did the job they were supposed to do.  Puckett realized, however, that Fuller was following a formula and that all of his band’s music was starting to sound the same.  He needed a refresh, so he turned to other songwriters for his fourth studio LP.  This album was dubbed The New Gary Puckett and the Union Gap Album.  It may not have been the most creative album title in history, but it was perhaps the most truthful.

“This Girl Is a Woman Now” was the biggest single from the new LP.  Although it doesn’t plumb the depths of degeneracy like, say, Billy J. Kramer’s “Little Children”, it is cringeworthy enough that I would feel uncomfortable analyzing its lyrics in any detail.  It also unfairly hurt the reputation of Puckett’s earlier music that had done nothing to merit condemnation.  “Young Girl” was not realistic, but it was a perfectly good song that told of a man doing the right thing under difficult circumstances.  Likewise, “Lady Willpower” was fairly inoffensive on its own.  Who among us hasn’t flirted with a nun at some point?  Taken collectively, however, “Young Girl”, “Lady Willpower”, and “This Girl Is a Woman Now” formed a trilogy that seemed to straddle the line between wholesome fun and lechery.

Despite the inferences that might be drawn from these three records, Gary Puckett has apparently led a scandal-free existence.  The worst I can find about him is that he would sometimes display a Confederate battle flag on stage.  The flag was intended to appease audiences in the South who might otherwise have been upset by the Union Army garb that he and his band were wearing.  This utter ambivalence about slavery, and the trivialization of a bloody conflict, jibes with the lack of moral clarity in his music.  Exactly how old is the subject of “This Girl Is a Woman Now”?  Was the teary-eyed surrender of her innocence ultimately a good decision for her?  Don’t ask Gary Puckett those questions, because he’s just the messenger.  We shouldn’t expect him to fully comprehend the meanings of songs he didn’t write, just like we shouldn’t expect a guy from Yakima to have a consistent stance on the Civil War.  As for my view of “This Girl Is a Woman Now”, I would have preferred to hear Puckett sing another sound-alike Jerry Fuller composition.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Jean” by Oliver (1969, #2)

One person’s view:  “What we have is yet another boring ballad with acoustic guitars and a harp and generic love song lyrics that might as well have been written in the 50s.” – Nerd with an Afro

The public’s view:  2.56 / 5.00

Individuals named Oliver have been undermining the establishment since the time of Cromwell.  The most famous Olivers of my lifetime are a filmmaker known for his unorthodox conspiracy theories and a Marine Corps colonel who was the central figure in an actual conspiracy.  Then there was Cousin Oliver, the duplicitous tyke who infiltrated the Brady Bunch as part of an evil conspiracy.  He forced the cancellation of the sitcom, thereby ending the TV empire of Sherwood Schwartz and ushering in the age of Garry Marshall.  A singer named Oliver might be expected to have a similar revolutionary impact on popular music, but his sleepy ballad “Jean” was perhaps the most boring hit song of 1969.  You have to dive into the surrounding context to find anything controversial about it, and that’s just what I intend to do.

“Jean” was the theme song for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.  This film was set in Scotland, so the music needed to have a British feel.  The task of writing the theme was nonetheless given to poet and composer Rod McKuen, who was about as British as In-N-Out Burger.  He surmised that the song should use the word “meadow” to achieve the necessary level of Britishness, because England and Scotland are absolutely teeming with meadows.  (Meadows are less common in other countries.  Anybody who spots one in the U.S. is encouraged to report it to the local zoning board so that it can be paved.)  McKuen also needed to date the song to the era in which Miss Jean Brodie was in her prime:  the 1930s.  I bet he listened to “Danny Boy” a bunch of times before writing this lesser version of it to fulfill his contract.

The lyrics are vague enough that we don’t really know the narrator’s intentions with respect to Miss Jean.  Maybe she truly is young and alive, and he is attempting to wake her out of her half-dreamed dream so that they can have sex in the meadow.  Or maybe she is now well past her peak years, with her mind possibly fading, and he is trying to remind her of better days in which she frolicked in the meadow (and probably had sex in it too).  Either interpretation is plausible, as the Jean Brodie in the film was both a vibrant, attractive woman and a tragic figure whose hubris ultimately led to her downfall.  And here’s what makes her truly special:  she was a Fascist with a capital “F”.

Miss Jean Brodie proudly displayed a picture of Mussolini in the classroom where she taught, and told her students of her fondness for his policies.  She encouraged one young lady to travel to Spain and fight in the civil war on behalf of Franco, resulting in the girl’s death.  In the Muriel Spark novel on which the film was based, Miss Jean eventually decided that the Italian and Spanish Fascists weren’t effective enough and that the German ones were more to her liking.  Maybe that’s why the singer implores Jean to come out to the meadow.  He is corralling people there to send them to the camps, and he wants her help.  Just watch where you goosestep, Jean, because the sheep like to graze there too.

In all fairness, a lot of working class people believed in Fascism in the 1930s.  Mussolini famously made the trains run on schedule, unlike his less competent imitators of today who are more apt to clumsily break the Newark airport.  Some folks were willing to barter away their freedoms as long as they got to Rome in time for Pius XI’s acoustic set at the Vatican Troubadour.  In Scotland, however, Fascism never took root except among a handful of individuals who were motivated more by anti-Semitism than by any legitimate concern for the railroads.  It was not a good look for Miss Jean Brodie, nor for Muriel Spark’s real-life teacher who inspired the character.

It is also not a feather in the cap for “Jean”.  This may be the only top 10 hit in history that expresses fondness for a Nazi sympathizer (except, of course, for Kanye West’s odes to himself).  Perhaps it does so only satirically, but the meaning is so ambiguous that any attempt at irony is going to be lost on most listeners.  It’s probably for the best that it isn’t a very good song, so it has not survived into the age of social media.  We really don’t need any memes involving “Jean”, Roman salutes, and Cousin Oliver.  However, I can imagine an entertaining Brady Bunch episode in which the Brady family invades and annexes Poland so that they can have enough living space for a second bathroom.  Heil Marcia.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Worst That Could Happen” by the Brooklyn Bridge (1969, #3)

One person’s view:  “[A]n ex-girlfriend who you explicitly do not want to marry getting married is quite possibly the least appropriate situation to make all about your stupid hurt feelings, and it shitsure doesn’t deserve the garish, wailing delivery and straight-faced trumpeting fanfares this song delivers.” – Nic Renshaw @ Pop Goes the Year

The public’s view:  3.02 / 5.00

The nine-member Serendipity Singers probably thought they would be the largest conglomeration to be featured on this blog, but today they are topped.  The Brooklyn Bridge consisted of eleven people, which is what happens when you merge a doo-wop vocal trio with a seven-member horns-and-keyboard band.  (The combination still wouldn’t have added up to eleven musicians, except that one of these two ensembles was called the Rhythm Method.  As anyone who has used the rhythm method can tell you, an extra unwanted person always appears at some point.)  With such a large group, a Brooklyn Bridge tour must have been a logistical nightmare.  They needed one bus for the musicians and a whole other bus for their sideburns.

The Brooklyn Bridge’s biggest hit, “Worst That Could Happen”, was a Jimmy Webb composition inspired by the demise of Webb’s romance with his high school sweetheart Suzy Horton.  (Webb may not have been able to find his cake recipe from “MacArthur Park” again, but he knew how to reuse a song recipe.)  However, this is more than just your standard mopey ballad about heartbreak.  In “Worst That Could Happen”, the narrator bemoans his ex-girlfriend’s impending marriage to another man – while at the same time admitting that he didn’t want to marry her anyway!  He is like a kid who loses interest in a toy, but then throws a tantrum when another child starts playing with it.  Not only that, he describes this predictable turn of events as the worst thing that could possibly happen to him.  Given the severity with which he perceives it, we must assume that he is desperately working on a plan to prevent it.  Everyone will know who to blame when a suspicious fire consumes the wedding gazebo at Hugh’s Hitching Hollow on the morning of the ceremony.

The song’s premise is narcissistic to the point of delusion, as the guy thinks he’s the main character in this tragedy.  It’s “the worst that could happen to me.”  Dude, nothing is happening to you.  I don’t think you were even invited to the wedding.  I’m more sympathetic to the groom’s coworker who waited too long to buy a gift and now the only item left on the registry is a $200 set of spaghetti forks.  Or the bride’s sister’s boyfriend, who is missing his Saturday poker game for this boring shit.  Jimmy Webb should have written a song from that man’s perspective:

I have to go all the way to Toledo
It’s 400 miles by car
They’re making me wear a goddamn tuxedo
My reward is a crappy cash bar
It isn’t the worst that could happen to me
But it’s the worst thing that’s happened so far

Now that we’ve ripped this song apart in a tedious manner, let’s ponder the Brooklyn Bridge’s performance of it.  I have to wonder if their rendition of “Worst That Could Happen” was some sort of government works project designed to give jobs to as many musicians as possible.  If so, the three horn players and three male backup singers would make an excellent target for DOGE.  They serve mainly to add melodrama to a situation that calls for none.

The most enjoyable aspect of the recording is the lead singer, the fortuitously named Johnny Maestro, who should have been a bigger star than he was.  He singlehandedly salvages this production with vocals that are powerful and expressive but which don’t completely comport with the unjustified envy and anguish of Webb’s lyrics.  Imagine if this had been a more upbeat composition titled “Best That Could Happen”, in which the man welcomes the ex-girlfriend’s marriage and gleefully enters into a throuple arrangement with her and her new husband.  Johnny Maestro wouldn’t have needed to emote much differently.

We never got to hear how the Brooklyn Bridge would have doo-wopped and trumpeted their way through that delightful three-way scenario.  They might have turned the throuple into an eleven-uple if given the chance.  Although polyamory was not yet something that could be discussed in a top ten hit in the 1960s, you know what wasn’t too controversial for pop radio?  A ballad dedicated to a supporter of the Nazis.  We’ll be covering it shortly.

My rating:  4 / 10

“MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris (1968, #2)

One writer’s view:  “Although there are many songs I hate more than ‘MacArthur Park,’ it’s hard to argue with survey respondents who chose it as the worst.  All the elements are there:  A long song with pretentiously incomprehensible lyrics that was popular enough to get a huge amount of air play and thus was hammered deeply and permanently into everybody’s brain.” – Dave Barry in Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs, noting that “MacArthur Park” was voted the worst song of all-time by his readers

The public’s view:  3.38 / 5.00

What’s worse than a Bad Top Ten Hit?  A Bad Top Ten Hit that’s so long that your fingernails visibly grow during it.  But at least songwriter Jimmy Webb put some unusual metaphors into “MacArthur Park”, helping to distinguish it from the millions of other excruciating compositions about lost love.  Let’s take a look at some of the imagery:

Someone left the cake out in the rain – Couples split up all the time and no one cares, but a dessert going to waste can bring listeners to tears.  “MacArthur Park” would probably be forgotten if not for this viscerally compelling lyric.  I’d just like to know why Webb chose such an unappetizing color for the “sweet green icing”.  Green is nature’s warning that an object might be a vegetable and probably isn’t going to be very tasty.

Old men playing checkers by the trees – Webb and his ex-girlfriend Suzy Horton frequently witnessed these geriatric battles of wits while picnicking together in L.A.’s MacArthur Park in the 1960s.  I imagine that they also heard the geezers wisecracking to everyone between games.  “Is that your cake or did the Jolly Green Giant have an abortion?”

I will drink the wine while it is warm – This is the narrator’s way of saying that he will seize the moment.  It is precisely the wrong moment to seize, however, because wine is supposed to be consumed while it is chilled.  He is evidently the kind of guy who will grab the bull by the legs, dive into the shallow end, and strike while the iron is cold.

[We] were pressed in love’s hot, fevered iron like a striped pair of pants – The meaning of this line is not clear, but I have a theory.  When I think about striped pants, which isn’t often, I think of a vintage New York Yankees uniform.  I believe that Webb is analogizing his ill-fated courtship of Suzy Horton to Babe Ruth’s trousers:  it was a dirty, sweaty, and smelly affair, and it wasn’t always an appealing sight, but it deserves an exhibit in the Hall of Fame.

Some people consider these lyrics brilliant, while others believe they are pompous and absurd.  I lean toward the latter opinion, but the song is melodically interesting enough to have some merit regardless.  It’s unfortunate that Webb enlisted Richard Harris to bring it to life.  Harris was an actor, and he sings as if he’s auditioning for the Dubuque Community Theater’s musical production of Death of a Salesman.  This has prevented his rendition of “MacArthur Park” from being accepted as the definitive version, and has prompted dozens of more capable vocalists – ranging from Liza Minnelli to Donna Summer to Frank Sinatra to Carrie Underwood – to try to improve upon it.  Weird Al Yankovic even chose a parody of this 25-year-old relic as the lead single for his 1993 Alapalooza CD, which is one of very few times he has been woefully out of synch with the cultural zeitgeist.

Notwithstanding the results of Dave Barry’s poll, “MacArthur Park” is nowhere near the worst song ever.  As we shall soon see, it might not even be the worst song about the breakup of Jimmy Webb and Suzy Horton.  However, it doesn’t need to be reincarnated every few years with a new performance.  Let’s leave it in 1968 where it belongs.  Preferably in the rain.

My rating:  4 / 10

“Yummy Yummy Yummy” by the Ohio Express (1968, #4)

One person’s view:  “As far as bubblegum goes, this is definitely NOT ‘Sugar, Sugar’, but rather a joyless stomp sung by someone who sounds like he was forced to perform this at gunpoint.” – darth_tyrannus_rex @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.57 / 5.00

Ohio was on top of the world in the late 1960s.  The Buckeye State’s economy was booming because it produced the highest quality soap, car tires, and astronauts.  Then something terrible happened that would reverse the state’s fortunes and trigger an inexorable decline.

Ohio’s long downfall began around the time that a band called the Ohio Express scored its biggest hit:  “Yummy Yummy Yummy”.  This was almost certainly not a coincidence.  The tune had perhaps the worst central lyric of any song up to that point:  “Yummy, yummy, yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy.”  The singer’s voice, which sounded as though he had inhaled a couple of Legos that were now blocking his sinuses, made the record even more unpleasant.  It was a cringeworthy listen and a pox on the reputation of the group’s apparent home state.

Shortly after “Yummy Yummy Yummy” completed its reign of terror on the airwaves, a fire erupted in the polluted Cuyahoga River.  River fires had long been a source of merriment for locals, and a great way to roast marshmallows, but this particular blaze attracted unwanted attention and turned Cleveland into a national punch line.  The Kent State massacre soon followed, giving Ohio another black eye.  In the ensuing decades, factories closed, businesses fled, and most of the major cities suffered steep population losses.  Ohio’s woes have only worsened in recent years, as its government has been rocked by massive corruption that would put New Jersey or Louisiana to shame.  It’s hard for voters to pay attention to the scandals anymore.  When an electric utility was caught bribing several top officials to secure a billion-dollar bailout, and two of the suspects committed suicide, the entire state let out a synchronized yawn upon hearing the phrase “electric utility”.  Everyone knows that Ohio tax dollars are supposed to be stolen more creatively than that, by funneling them into quixotic ventures such as “charter schools” or “rare coin funds” or “Cleveland Browns stadiums” that are designed to enrich political donors while bringing no joy to anyone else.  Meanwhile, people of talent and good taste are no longer opting to be born in the state.  The land that once yielded Ulysses Grant, John Glenn, and Dean Martin is better known today for Jake Paul, Traci Lords, and JD Vance.  Consequently, many Ohioans now try to minimize their embarrassment by employing an Indiana accent whenever they travel.

All of this can be traced back to “Yummy Yummy Yummy” and the damage that it did to the state’s image.  But it was in fact a cruel hoax; no one from Ohio had anything to do with that record or any of the other four Ohio Express tracks that reached the top 40.  These annoying singles were churned out entirely by studio musicians in New York, but you wouldn’t know this if you went to an Ohio Express concert and saw five young men from Mansfield, Ohio performing them.  This was actually a group called Sir Timothy & the Royals, which had been recruited to go on tour under the Ohio Express name.  Audiences were falsely told that Sir Timothy and the other Ohioans were the same group that had made the hit songs, and the record sleeves even featured their picture.  It was this band that showed up to do “Yummy Yummy Yummy” on American Bandstand, and Dick Clark never figured out that he had been hoodwinked.  The scheme almost unraveled when the Royals were unable to play the latest Ohio Express hit, “Chewy Chewy”, at one of their shows because they had just learned of it that day after hearing it by chance on a car radio.  Say what you will about Milli Vanilli, but at least their manager kept them up-to-date on all of the songs that they didn’t sing.

The comparison to the Vanilli twins is a little unfair, because the Royals were a real band that had genuine talent.  There was nothing that tied them to the music from New York, however, and their singer stubbornly refused to jam anything up his nose to sound more like the guy who had done the vocals on the singles.  The producers could have hired a band from any state to take the blame for “Yummy Yummy Yummy”, and it’s Ohio’s misfortune that the song wasn’t credited to the Vermont Express or the Manitoba Express.

Almost every bad top ten hit has something good that can be said about it, and “Yummy Yummy Yummy” is no exception.  Its innovative sequence of opening chords helped inspire the first few notes of “Just What I Needed”, a song that was crucial to the early success of the Cars.  Without “Just What I Needed”, the members of the Cars might have had to pursue careers outside of music – and that is a bizarre thought.  It’s tough to imagine Ric Ocasek as an insurance salesman or a kindergarten teacher.  So was it worth destroying an entire state to bring about the creation of a classic song and the prominence of one of the all-time greatest rock bands?  Yeah, probably.

My rating:  3 / 10

“An Open Letter to My Teenage Son” by Victor Lundberg (1967, #10)

One critic’s view:  “It is hard in a mere magazine – short of rolling this page into a tube and orating through it – to convey the sanctimonious roundness of Lundberg’s voice.  ...  The minute he says ‘Dear Son’ you know he hates the kid.” – William Zinsser, “The Pitfalls of Pop’s Pompous Pop-Off”, Life, Jan. 5, 1968

The public’s view:  1.06 / 5.00

An Open Letter to My Teenage Son
Regarding “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son”

Dear Son.  You ask my reaction to Victor Lundberg’s “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son”.  First of all, I do not know how you learned of this obscure record that was released 40 years before you were born.  Perhaps it was included in one of those Guitar Hero games that you youngsters play?  It is the most poorly rated top ten hit of the 1960s, but some great men made poorly rated top ten hits in the 1960s:  Ray Stevens and Bobby Vinton.  If you believe that Victor Lundberg is a symbol of our nation, and that our heritage is worthy of this display of pride, you have my blessing to listen to him.

Some will unfairly judge you for being a Lundberg fan, just as I have been unfairly judged for my fondness of Men at Work.  Your mother told me that it is inappropriate to bribe a church organist to play “It’s a Mistake” during someone else’s wedding procession.  However, such transactions are part of our free enterprise system in the United States and are worth protecting, even if they displease your mother and her new husband.

Just as your mother has no right to judge me, you have no right to call your sister a glue sniffer merely because she spends her allowance on glue every week.  We must judge every human being on his own individual potential, and your sister has more potential than a glue sniffer has.  With her potential, she may someday be a telemarketer or perhaps even an unlicensed dentist.  You must accept responsibility for losing your last four bottles of glue rather than blaming your sister every time one disappears.

You ask whether you should order the riblets at Applebee’s.  This is a question each individual must answer within himself.  But are you to tell me that these pieces of bone, surrounded by barbecue sauce and tiny but delectable specks of meat, just happened?  That they simply fell off of a pig one day?  God is love, and He makes himself known through His glorious creation that is available only at Applebee’s.  If you reap the rewards commensurate with your own efforts, you will be eatin’ good in the neighborhood.

Remember that the menu at any restaurant is a guide and not a storm trooper.  Realize that many of the past and present generation have attempted to legislate whether you can substitute a salad for one of your sides, or even to tell you that a baked potato is available only after 4 PM.  This created your generation’s need to rebel against our society with fast casual dining, Uber Eats, and tapas.  All of these go against the principles upon which our country was founded.

You ask my opinion of the teacher who plays Victor Lundberg to her class every morning after the Pledge of Allegiance.  You ask my opinion of the factory owner who purchases copies of “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son” to give to his employees as their Christmas bonus, along with pamphlets titled Labor Unions:  Communism’s Foothold.  You ask my opinion of the disc jockey who locks himself in the radio studio and plays Lundberg’s record non-stop for 7 hours until he is tased by the police when he comes out to poop.  Well, maybe you didn’t ask any of that, but I’m going to tell you what I think anyway.

Each of the aforementioned individuals is employing the record as Victor Lundberg intended.  We all sometimes need to yell invective at a hippie peacenik, or at an impressionable person who is being swayed by that amoral lifestyle.  It is tempting to litter our off-the-cuff comments with insults directed at minorities, but that would detract from our core message.  We might also forget to muse about the existence and nature of God while condemning the treasonous bum.  Lundberg’s recorded speech helps us avoid these difficulties.  It appeases the enemy on the less impactful issues, like civil rights and male hairstyles, while allowing no room for disagreement on the sanctity of the Selective Service System.  It is a tirade that we can proudly broadcast to our unwilling audience.

This does not mean that people will enjoy hearing it, but that is not the point of “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son”.  It is not a record to be enjoyed.  It is one to be inflicted.

Yours truly,

Your infinitely wise and patriotic father

P.S.  I apologize that this letter is open.  I cannot seal it because the glue flaps are missing from all of my envelopes.  I must have lost them somehow.

My rating:  1 / 10

“Please Love Me Forever” by Bobby Vinton (1967, #6)

One critic’s view:  “[H]is light, ingratiating manner, applied in the same way to every song, was pleasant without ever becoming really involving.” – William Ruhlmann, in his AllMusic review of the Please Love Me Forever LP

The public’s view:  2.21 / 5.00

Bobby Vinton is the man who became massively successful by being oblivious to the changes in the world around him.  I wonder what his life is like today at age 90?  I bet he still has a Diners Club credit card.  He probably drives a Country Squire station wagon.  His friends told him there were some good movies being streamed, so he hooked his Betamax machine up to a creek.  And now he’s being made fun of on a blog, like it’s 2004 or something.

In the era of guitar rock, Motown, protest songs, and psychedelia, Bobby released an album with covers of bygone ballads like “It’s All in the Game”, “Young Love”, and “Who’s Sorry Now”.  This was out of touch even by Vintonian standards.  Nonetheless, the title track “Please Love Me Forever” somehow earned a prime spot at the 1967 musical dining table and pushed the Polish Prince back into the top 10 after a three-year absence.

Vinton was the third act to bring “Please Love Me Forever” to the Hot 100, following versions by Tommy Edwards in 1958 and Cathy Jean & the Roommates in 1961.  Edwards’s rendition is the best of the three, because it focuses our ears on the singer’s rich voice and not on the blathering sentiments that he is expressing.  These lyrics have less intellectual heft than a Valentine’s Day poem written by a 6th-grader, and it is best not to ponder them too deeply.  One of Bobby Vinton’s trademarks, however, is his clear diction that places the words of every chorus and every verse out in the open to be scrutinized.  In Bobby’s iteration of “Please Love Me Forever”, each line is conveyed with accuracy and sincerity, much in the way that his fellow Pittsburgh native Mister Rogers would speak.  This forces us to pay attention to the schmaltzy content.  When he gets to the bridge, I think:  “He’s alluding to the ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’ prayer.  He isn’t going to recite the whole thing, is he?  Aw crap, he is.”

I also object to this line:  “You’re in my dreams nightly.”  This sounds romantic until you realize just how freaky and weird dreams are.  If you’re in a relationship with someone, and it’s progressed to the point where you’re asking them to love you forever, they will not be in your dreams nightly.  They will show up only rarely, and even then they will be miscast as a supporting character.  Your girlfriend might play the role of Annoying Classmate in your dream about repeating the 10th grade at age 36, or appear as Horrified Spectator #3 in your recurring nightmare about using a toilet that is inexplicably installed in a restaurant’s dining area.  When you finally get to enjoy an erotic dream, the star of it will be the scary bald woman with the face tattoos who you see gesticulating and cursing at random people at the bus stop by your office.  Too bad that the phrase “scary bald woman with the face tattoos” never fit into the meter and rhyme scheme of any of Vinton’s songs.

One common criticism of Bobby Vinton is that he didn’t grow as an artist despite having a long career.  His fans would say that was a good thing.  They didn’t want any surprises, and – aside from the scandalous use of foreign language lyrics in his 1974 hit “My Melody of Love” – he didn’t deliver any.  Most of Vinton’s songs were sappy love ballads, and he performed them all in that same Fred Rogers tone.  He embraced his identity as the Polish Prince without ever changing the “Prince” part of his nickname to an unpronounceable symbol.  He deserves credit for not chasing every trend that came along, or really any trend that came along, but I wish he hadn’t picked the crooner days of the 1950s to get stuck in.

My rating:  3 / 10

“Little Ole Man (Uptight – Everything’s Alright)” by Bill Cosby (1967, #4)

One person’s view:  “What’s supposed to be funny about this?  ...  There’s absolutely nothing in this song to enjoy.” – Nerd with an Afro

The public’s view:  2.88 / 5.00

Before I begin today’s write-up, I want to mention that it is sometimes hard to separate opinions of a song from people’s feelings for the performer behind it.  This is especially true when a hit record was made by someone who now has an odious reputation.  Anita Bryant’s “Paper Roses” attracted some of the lousiest reviews of any top 10 hit from 1960, but I chose not to feature it here because I suspected that much of the criticism was directed at her personally rather than the song.  I expect I’ll face a similar dilemma when I get to Chris Brown.  Anyhow, in a totally unrelated development, Bill Cosby’s “Little Ole Man” is often listed among the worst hits of 1967.  I have to agree that it’s a bit of a stinker.

“Little Ole Man” is the tale of a senior citizen who complains about being run over by a train and by a herd of elephants, and who then later admits that neither of those catastrophes actually occurred.  We are never given a reason why he would lie about something so serious.  Maybe it is a Jussie Smollett-style hoax intended to slander the Elephant-American community, or perhaps the man is hoping that the railroad will pay him a quick settlement without asking why he still has all of his limbs.  Most likely, though, this is simply an elderly person who is very confused and should not be allowed outdoors by himself.  Someone probably stepped on his toes in 1918, and the addled old man now misremembers this incident and exaggerates it into something more recent and far more threatening.  Likening a minor foot-stepping to an elephant stampede is a stretch, even if the perpetrator was Fatty Arbuckle.

This is sometimes classified as a comedy recording because Cosby is a comedian and he tells the story as if it’s a joke.  However, “Little Ole Man” is only slightly funnier than Ray Stevens’s “Ahab, the Arab”, and in some ways is an even more disappointing experience.  For all its many faults, “Ahab” is at least kind enough to let us know right away what we are getting into.  “Little Ole Man” toys with us for a bit before letting us down.  The setup is promising and Cosby’s pacing is good, but then there is no payoff at the end – unless you think that an individual’s senility qualifies as a punch line.  If laughter is the best medicine, Dr. Cliff Huxtable is lucky he didn’t have his prescription privileges revoked.

The use of Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” as accompanying music is almost as baffling as the old man’s fibs.  Wonder’s song had reached #3 on the Hot 100 a year earlier, and Bill Cosby wisely realized that he couldn’t improve on it.  Nonetheless, he should have at least transformed it in some way instead of hiring a band to recreate it note-for-note.  The target demographic for “Little Ole Man” was people whose copies of “Uptight” had gotten broken or lost in the preceding year, and who were now willing to settle for an inferior version with a rambling story about dementia where Stevie’s singing used to be.  Somehow, there were enough consumers in this predicament for Cosby’s single to peak nearly as high on the charts as “Uptight”.  I hope this served as a good lesson for everyone to take better care of their Stevie Wonder records.

My rating:  2 / 10

“I Dig Rock and Roll Music” by Peter, Paul and Mary (1967, #9)

One person’s view:  “It’s sad actually because in the shallow well of songs actually written by Peter, Paul or Mary this is one of their more memorable melodies.  It just happens to be attached to a really pretentious set of lyrics.” – Remtiw @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.80 / 5.00

Peter, Paul and Mary built their brand around acoustic folk music and enjoyed only a brief time on top before the public moved on to other genres.  Many people can sympathize with this.  One day you have a vibrant career in coal mining, Visual Basic programming, or giving DEI seminars, and then the world changes and you are left fighting for relevance.  You can either reinvent yourself or else you can cling to the old ways for as long as possible while complaining bitterly about everyone and everything.  I guess another possibility would be to embrace your status as a nostalgia act, but that only works for musicians.  There isn’t a lot of nostalgia for Visual Basic.

The three folksters had too much integrity to abandon their roots, and they weren’t ready to go out on the oldies circuit opening up for Tennessee Ernie Ford.  That left bitterness and complaining as the most appealing option for them in 1967, and the result was “I Dig Rock and Roll Music”.  Many critics derided this record as an elitist jab at the rock bands that had usurped Peter, Paul and Mary’s popularity.  Being called elitist by a music critic is like being called ugly by Shrek, but the characterization has stuck with this song over the years.  It continues to be one of the more divisive hit singles of its time.

If “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” was intended as a vicious attack against rock ‘n’ roll, it didn’t succeed.  The song’s satires of the Beatles, the Mamas & the Papas, and Donovan come across as playful style parodies much like those later perfected by Weird Al.  The imitations are too well-studied to be taken as mean-spirited, and the performers that the trio chose to mock were popular and highly regarded.  I get the impression that PP&M really did dig rock ‘n’ roll music, but were too embarrassed to admit it without using light sarcasm as a cover.  If Peter, Paul and Mary had truly wanted to make a snobbish point about music becoming overly commercial or devoid of any serious meaning, I think they would have picked on easier targets like Tommy Roe or the Monkees.

While the song is more of a good-natured roast of rock ‘n’ roll than a pointed insult, it is sincere in its criticism of the media environment that discouraged music with overtly political messages.  However, Peter, Paul and Mary were about to demonstrate the weakness in their argument by recording a song called “Eugene McCarthy for President (If You Love Your Country)”.  Radio stations had good reasons not to touch unsubtle material like this, otherwise they would be stuck giving equal time to eight other candidates.  Listeners would tune out after hearing “The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Deems Hubert Humphrey Tolerable” back-to-back with “Bobby Kennedy Has 11 Kids Who Will All Grow Up to Be Non-Insane People Who Treat Animal Carcasses with Respect”.  Meanwhile, DJs would be double-checking themselves constantly to ensure that they didn’t play a Motown record adjacent to “George Wallace Is a Groovy Guy”.

“I Dig Rock and Roll Music” wasn’t particularly effective as a protest, because any of the outcomes that might have been acceptable to PP&M were not going to work for anyone else.  Nobody wanted preachy music that told them who to vote for.  No radio stations were going to drop the Beatles in favor of Pete Seeger.  The Mamas & the Papas weren’t going to take a break from their drug binges to offer thoughtful observations on Thurgood Marshall’s nomination to the Supreme Court.  Nonetheless, Peter, Paul and Mary’s upbeat and entertaining song can be appreciated despite the unreasonable expectations they had for society.  The resentment that went into it only makes it more intriguing.

My rating:  7 / 10

“Somewhere, My Love” by Ray Conniff and the Singers (1966, #9)

One person’s view:  “How did this sh*t ever get so popular?  You see these albums everywhere but no one wants them.” – ottoshutoff @ Tapeheads.Net, inquiring as to the appeal of Ray Conniff

The public’s view:  2.57 / 5.00

I could write a long essay about “Somewhere, My Love”, but reading it would be almost as boring as listening to the song.  Instead, I’m going to use most of this entry to tell you about a superior Ray Conniff record that I encountered in my childhood.

The story begins on a Christmas morning in that decade we like to call the 1970s.  Santa Claus had been duly apprised of my need for a Kenner Close ‘n’ Play, a children’s phonograph that was frequently advertised during my Saturday morning cartoons.  Judging by the TV commercials, a Close ‘n’ Play was the main ingredient of a happy life.  Simply close the lid to play music and open it to stop.  Hours of fun!

But there was no Close ‘n’ Play under the tree on that day.  Instead, there was a note from Santa.  This was highly unusual; lots of kids wrote letters to the old guy but this was the only time I heard of him writing back.  The note informed me that Santa was unwilling to tarnish the North Pole’s strong brand by delivering low quality junk such as Close ‘n’ Plays.  He had brought me a different record player which he believed was better.  It was trickier to use than Kenner’s model, but Santa said that I was a big boy now and could handle it.

This was a clear breach of my contract with Santa.  I had foregone many opportunities for mischief over the preceding months with the expectation that I would get a Close ‘n’ Play.  But before I could grab the Yellow Pages and look for a lawyer, my parents told me that Mr. Claus was right.  Kenner’s product might be a hot item at the moment, but this fad was doomed to oblivion in another 5 or 10 years.  I wouldn’t impress any ladies in 1995 by inviting them to my apartment to hear the latest Neil Sedaka single on a Close ‘n’ Play.  Modern, urbane men were expected to know how to operate a tone arm, so I might as well learn while young.

Santa gave me a couple of kids’ records along with the record player, and my parents soon augmented those with about three dozen 45s that they or other relatives had acquired.  Some of these were older hit songs that, even at my tender age, I rightly recognized as quality material.  B.J. Thomas’s “Hooked on a Feeling” was one of the best, as was the Coasters’ “Yakety Yak”.  I also enjoyed Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia”, though it was many years before I figured out why Paul Simon was so keen on washing his face.  A few of the records had a more mysterious origin, as they didn’t seem like anything that would be voluntarily purchased.  They had likely been distributed free in cereal boxes or given to my grandfather as promotional items at the store that he managed.  The most curious of these singles was Ray Conniff’s “Begin the Beguine”.

This record was unlike the others.  It had only a small spindle hole in the middle and was designed to be played at 33 1/3 RPM, despite being the same 7” diameter as the 45 RPM singles with the gaping centers.  It was the musical arrangement, however, that made the record truly special.

The frenetic rumbling rhythm of Conniff’s “Begin the Beguine” sounds as though a cavalry brigade is stampeding past the listener on its way to a battle.  After a few seconds of this, singers join in with berserk war cries of “Fi-yah!  Fi-yah fi-yah!”  Some of the members of the chorus prefer diplomacy to fighting, however.  One of them calmly responds to the opposing horsemen with:  “Bah dah bah doo dah.  Bah dah doo dah.”  It’s tough to argue with a reasonable proposal such as that.  After a couple minutes of these negotiations, it seems as though war has been averted – but the lull is misleading.  The horns grow louder and more urgent as the détente ends and the battle rages in a brief but dramatic finale.  One of the horses releases a tremendous burst of flatulence, and it is over.

I didn’t fully appreciate how transformational Conniff’s arrangement was until I heard different versions of “Begin the Beguine” and learned the song’s history and original lyrics.  It began life as a wistful Cole Porter composition about the memory of a romantic dance.  Every other performer has treated it this way, as in the vocal renditions by Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, and Julio Iglesias and the well-known instrumental by Artie Shaw.  Porter’s melody is pretty, to be sure, but it is ultimately just a mundane love ballad to be enjoyed a few times and then forgotten.  Conniff creatively gave “Begin the Beguine” new life as the soundtrack for the human imagination, and it was on the agenda almost every time that my brother and I fired up the record player.  Sometimes we played it at 45 RPM and pretended that the Ray Conniff Singers were high on amphetamines.  I no longer envied the brats in the Close ‘n’ Play commercials, who spent much of their time playing a juvenile game of musical chairs while alternately lifting and closing the lid of their fad toy.  I was now a serious audiophile.

Conniff knew that his reworking of “Begin the Beguine” was amazing.  He produced several versions of it over the years, including one that used Cole Porter’s lyrics in place of some of the “bah dah bah doo dah” dialogue.  “Somewhere, My Love” isn’t in the same league.  Conniff and his chorus recorded this latter song for the film Doctor Zhivago, and it is perfectly fine within that context.  If your spouse has dragged you to a theater to watch a three-hour-long romance set during the Bolshevik Revolution, “Somewhere, My Love” is not going to make your bad day any worse.  It is, however, a run-of-the-mill easy listening song.  I guess the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer people told Conniff that they wanted some of his music for their movie, but they didn’t want any of his ingenuity.

When it came to the singles charts, Conniff was a victim of what I call Cheap Trick Syndrome.  Cheap Trick missed the top 40 with their beloved signature tune “Surrender”, only to later reach #1 with the forgettable ballad “The Flame”.  Similarly, “Begin the Beguine” never found its way onto the Hot 100 despite its importance to Conniff’s legacy.  It’s a travesty that the formulaic “Somewhere, My Love” was his only top 40 hit.

My rating:  4 / 10