Author: Kim Simpson

“Morning Girl” (1970) – Jim Pike * Written by Tupper Saussy * 45: “Morning Girl” / “Here, There and Everywhere” * LP: The Lettermen – Everything Is Good About You * Produced by Jim Pike and Tony Butala * Label: Capitol

Although the label on the Capitol 45 label and the chart listings all credited “Morning Girl” to the Lettermen’s Jim Pike, this version of the Neon Philharmonic’s #17 hit from 1969 eventually showed up on the 1971 Lettermen album Everything Is Good About You. Pike and fellow group member Tony Batula get credit for the production, which might imply that they also did the shimmering, Percy Faith-conscious string arrangement. This was the last chart entry for anything written by the Neon Philharmonic’s Tupper Saussy, although future teen idol Shaun Cassidy would release a version of “Morning Girl” as his very first single in 1975. The B-side featured a Pike rendition of the Beatles’ “Here, There and Everywhere” with more of the A-side’s alluring strings.

“If You Leave Me Tonight I’ll Cry” (1972) – Jerry Wallace * Written by Gerald Sanford and Hal Mooney * 45: “If You Leave Me Tonight I’ll Cry” / “What’s He Doin’ in My World?” * LP: To Get to You * Produced by Joe E. Johnson * Label: Decca

The TV show Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, which aired from 1969 to 1973, had a format similar to The Twilight Zone, with Serling as the host introducing creepy tales with twist endings. An episode called “The Tune in Dan’s Cafe” spawned the Jerry Wallace 1972 country #1 hit “If You Leave Me Tonight I’ll Cry.” The episode told the story of a jukebox that played the same record over and over again due to its being haunted by the ghost of a jilted lover. After the episode ran in January of ’72, radio stations received enough requests for the nonexistent record to prompt an official release by vocalist Wallace, who’d had moderate pop chart success until the mid-sixties, when he’d shifted gears to country. This overbaked hit version—barely listenable today—is sadly inferior to Wallace’s unavailable TV version, which had a harder country sound.

“Soon After Midnight” (2012) – Bob Dylan * Written and produced by Bob Dylan * LP: Tempest * Label: Columbia

Bob Dylan, as an active participant in the folk and pop culture processes of reshaping idioms and traditions to create new art, has been no stranger—since the early days of his career—to accusations of plagiarism. Many of them are maybe too paltry to apply to a prolific force of nature like Dylan, and they do tend to distract from the big picture. Consider, too, how often he’s been ripped off. In September 2012, though, he lashed out at “wussies” who pointed out similarities between his work right at a time when his newly-released Tempest album had unveiled a song called “Soon After Midnight,” in which he uses the entire chord structure and musical road map of Bobby Fuller’s “New Shade of Blue.” Although Fuller and co-writer Mary Stone have both passed on, this seems like a case where gracious acknowledgment of the source would be in order. (From a previous post at Boneyard Media.)

“A New Shade of Blue (alternate version)” (1964) – Bobby Fuller * Written by Bobby Fuller and Mary Stone * LP: Shakedown! The Texas Tapes Revisited (1996) * Label: Del-Fi

This earlier take of Bobby Fuller’s “A New Shade of Blue” first became available on Shakedown!, a 1996 roundup of early singles and demos from 1961 through 1964. Compared to the later version that appeared on the Bobby Fuller Four’s I Fought the Law album, this echo-drenched heartbreaker is better, featuring some of Fuller’s most convincing vocals (which is saying a lot where he’s concerned), delicate guitars and lyrics (written by his neighbor’s mom), and a bullseye bridge. The later version loses too much of that atmospheric reverb. It also screws up the middle-eight’s flawless symmetry by knocking out a key minor chord and adding a measure at the end. And it also finds Fuller overdoing the lead vocal’s vibrato. In 2012, Bob Dylan would appropriate this song’s entire chord structure for his “Soon After Mindnight.”

“Window Girl” (1970) – Luiz Bonfá * Written by Luiz Bonfá * LP: The New Face of Bonfá * Produced by Ernie Alschuler * Label: RCA Victor

Brazilian composer and guitarist Luiz Bonfá wrote the song of his career, “Manha de Carnaval, in 1959 for the Black Orpheus film. (Its many cover versions often show up as the “Black Orpheus Theme.”) He released three albums for RCA in the early seventies, with the first of these, The New Face of Bonfa, showing up on Los Angeles MOR powerhouse KMPC’s album airplay list. The lead-off track “Window Girl” showcased the 12-string guitar (a Giannini Craviola) that Bonfá was favoring at the time, although the flugelhorn of Alan Rubin took the lead. Bonfá, who did the arranging for most of the album, let Marty Manning do the honors on “Window Girl.”

“Sweet Georgia Brown” (1945) – The King Cole Trio * Written by Ben Bernie, Kenneth Casey, and Maceo Pinkard * 78: “Sweet Georgia Brown” / “It Is Better to Be By Yourself” * Label: Capitol

With this record, Nat King Cole (piano), Oscar Moore (guitar), and Johnny Miller (bass) run a California clinic on how to make a small jazz combo cook. All three of them rip through this instrumental version of a standard (that was only twenty years old at this point), sounding like they could twirl their instruments on a fingertip if they wanted. In Moore’s guitar playing, you hear a clear prototype of the glimmering West Coast sound Barney Kessel would later pursue in the fifties with his own combos.

A 1966-67 TV ad campaign for Benson & Hedges 100’s focused on the extra long cigarettes’ disadvantages, making for situational giggles. The commercial was popular enough for the alluring musical backdrop to get some airplay on its own. Written by Mitch Leigh, the same man who scored the Man of La Mancha musical, the genuine as-heard-on-television article made enough noise in Cleveland to chart locally and to get listed in a 2/11/67 issue of Billboard as a potential breakout hit. This record was credited to “The Answer” on the red Columbia label, and the arrangers are listed as “Music Makers,” aka Leigh’s own production house. (Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles erroneously cites Bill Dean and John Campbell as the songwriters.) Another arrangement of this song, by Phil Bodner’s studio assembly the Brass Ring, entered the charts a week earlier on the Dunhill label with the hyphenated title “The Dis-Advantages of You” (and an arrangement of the “Dating Game” theme on side B). Peaking at #36, it won the battle of the jingle singles, outpacing the original as a full-blown Top 40 hit.

“Superstar” (1969) – Murray Head with the Trinidad Singers * Written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice * 45: “Superstar” / “John Nineteen Forty-One” * LP: Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) * Produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice * Label: Decca * Charts: Billboard #14; UK: #47

The 1969 leadoff single for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s ambitious rock opera starring the Son of God did its part in generating anticipation for an album that wouldn’t hit shelves until late 1970. The single sleeve attributes the track as coming “from the Rock Opera ‘Jesus Christ’ now in preparation.” The single would enter the US Billboard charts three separate times between 1970 and 1971, and appeared on the UK singles chart as late as 1972. A promo clip featuring vocalist Murray Head, who would be Judas Iscariot in the musical and who had recently starred in a London run of Hair, shows him climbing around cathedral ruins and singing alongside a chorus of six women billed as the “Trinidad Singers.” Its early association with the “Respect” or “Oh Happy Day” tradition ought not to be discounted as a broad appeal factor.