The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” hit #1 over the Thanksgiving weekend in 1958.  I had a mini-Dooley fest on Folkways today, where I played the hit version, the Smothers Brothers version, Grayson and Whittier’s original 1929 version (Grayson was actually related to the Grayson in the song), and “Tom Dula” by the late Bill Morrissey with Greg Brown from 1993. I did not, however, play this 1974 Incredible Bongo Band version of the song, called “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley, Your Tie’s Stuck in Your Zipper.”

The Incredible Bongo Band – “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley, Your Tie’s Stuck in Your Zipper” (1974)

Debut single by Howard Devoto’s post-Buzzcocks quintet built on a menacing ascending guitar riff that would work well as a US cop show TV theme. The single version strikes harder than the version on their Real Life LP.

In his Heart of Rock and Soul, Dave Marsh points to Bruce Springsteen’s opening riff for “Roulette” (recorded in 1979 and released as a 1988 B-side) as a “Shot By Both Sides” mimic, but it’s really just vaguely similar.

Magazine – “Shot By Both Sides” (single version) (1978)

Magazine – “Shot By Both Sides” (LP version) (1978)

Bruce Springsteen – “Roulette” (1988)

A book idea I have is to take a quasi familiar, cultural wallpaper song like this and interview 500 people to get quick vignettes or anecdotes about what they were doing when they first heard it. “Celebration,” for me, long before it became a wedding standard or Erik Estrada strutted to it on CHiPs, was this:

In Salt Lake City, during the first two seasons after the New Orleans Jazz had relocated, you could get courtside tickets at the Salt Palace for $12. I saw more live basketball during 1979-81 than I would for the rest of my life. My friends and I would go early and watch the teams warm up before introductions. Before a Jazz-Pacers game in November 1980, we observed Rickey Green and John “Bay Bay” Duren doing ad lib dance steps to it as it thumped from the speakers and we had no idea what it was. Then we noticed two of the Pacers (Kenny Natt? Johnny Davis?) doing the same thing. The scene reinforces itself every time I hear this song, decades-running.

Kool and the Gang – “Celebration” (1980)

Did you know that Hawaii Five-O actor James MacArthur recorded a few singles? His non-charting “In-Between Years” (1961) featured vocals by the Earls, whose “remember, remember-member” would later make them doo-wop immortals. His version of Harvey and the Moonglows’ “Ten Commandments of Love” (1963) reached #94 in Billboard.  Warning: Both of these are very drippy teen idol spoken word singles, but they’ll make any Five-O fan smile.

I got talking with Kendell Kardt about his pre-Rig days in New York City and he again made my head spin somewhat when he talked about a folk group he played in called “Forever Children” that included his friend Paul Giovanni (other members included Ronnie Gilbert, Joyce Aaron, and Mike Poznick). This is the same Paul he writes about in his private, online memoir – a guy he gave guitar lessons to and who performed, along with the aforementioned Ms. Aaron (Kendell’s girlfriend at the time), in an experimental troupe called the Open Theatre. Paul and his partner, the British playwright Peter Shaffer, eventually (and benevolently) flew Kendell out to London during an Open Theatre stint out there circa 1970 so he could reunite with Ms. Aaron.

That’s pretty much the end of Kendell’s own story with Paul, but the memory drive in my head kept clicking over the familiar-sounding name, and I remembered it was the same name listed as composer on the opening credits of the the 1973 Wicker Man cult film (performed by a group called “Magnet”). So I dug up an album cover by the group Side Show, that I since found out Giovanni had also belonged to, and Kendell said, “yes, this is Paul, second from the left.” I then told Kendell about The Wicker Man and have now replaced the long standing encyclopedia listing in my head that read “Paul Giovanni: Forgotten British folkie who composed a one-off soundtrack to a singular movie” to “Paul Giovanni: New York actor, composer, and old friend of Kendell’s who also happened to write the music for a singular movie.” Giovanni passed away in 1990, but although this New York Times obituary makes no mention of it, that enchanting soundtrack alone will keep his memory alive and well.

(Another friend of Kendell’s, by the way, recently sent along this piece from the Guardian about a Rocky Horror-style Wicker Man singalong that just took place in London…)

Magnet – “Corn Rigs” (1972)

Get more of yer ya ya’s out. Lyrics: ya ya ya ya ya ya/ya ya ya ya ya ya/ ya ya ya ya ya ya/ ya ya ya ya ya ya (repeat).

The Yardbirds – “Hot House of Omagarashid”

Forgotten Vertigo label brilliance from Deutschland for getting your ya ya’s out. Lyrics: ya ya ya ya ya ya ya/ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya (repeat). Ja?

Odin – “Turnpike Lane”

The opening number of this clip features Cowsills mom Barbara, who passed away 24 years ago today, along with daughter Susan and son Bob. (PS: The blonde woman is Nanci Roberts, Bob’s wife at the time.) The Cowsills, in case you don’t know, were a family group with a handful of big late sixties hits and even more handfuls of Tiger Beat features. They were actually supposed to be the TV family we now know as the Partridges, but when they objected to the intended replacement of real mom Barbara with fake mom Shirley Jones, the whole thing fell through.

This entire clip comes from a Cowsills appearance on the CBS Playboy After Dark TV variety show, which ran from 1969 to 1970, and it really sticks in my mind for a few other reasons:

– This family group with considerable preteen market appeal – labelmates with the Osmonds during “wholesome entertainment” advocate Mike Curb’s tenure at MGM – happen to be performing on Playboy After Dark. (Then again, they’d already sung the opening theme for the first season of Love, American Style, the kind of saucy prime time show parents didn’t let their kids watch.)

– Little Susan is uber adorable, and brother Barry (RIP), taking lead vocals on “II x II,” is uber cool and has rock star written all over him.

– “II x II” is the gospel-tinged title track of their gospel-tinged 1970 album (which is also their best). So not only is the family band playing the Playboy Mansion, but they’re also gracing it with gospel music. When the Playboy Mansion crowd is shown clapping along and occasionally holding up two fingers, then, they’re flashing the familiar hippie peace sign that, in this case, also doubles up as a token of gospel solidarity. Take us up Lord, two by two, to Thy Playboy Mansion in the sky, sayeth they. Must be the early 1970s, sayeth we.

Dickey Lee made out well during the early ’60s death rock craze. In the ’62 hit single “Patches,” one girlfriend ends up dead in the ditch, while in the following year’s “Laurie,” another one’s passed on long before Dickey even meets her (it’s a musical version of the sweater-on-a-gravestone urban legend). By 1968 he was still dabbling in tragedy. “Red, Green, Yellow and Blue,” which just missed Billboard‘s Hot 100, captures a presumably Brylcreemed and becardiganed Dickey leaping frantically around town over the news that his girlfriend’s gone to San Francisco, aka Drugs. “You’re halfway up your rainbow, girl, by now,” he yelps, while Charles Chalmers’ orchestration gives it all the moody atmosphere those earlier records only yearned for.

Dickey Lee – “Red, Green, Yellow and Blue”

Deviny James was an alias for Jim Pewter, who became better known by his given name as a DJ on KMET-LA and later Armed Forces Radio. “Blue, Blue Denim” – a title that likely aided in endearing him to Gene Vincent, with whom he later collaborated – came out on the Beta label as the flipside to “Little Girl” in 1959. Check out the scorching guitar solo by session ace Larry Hulley and the disembodied backup voices on loan from the house on haunted hill. Thanks to Jerry Richards for this one.

Deviny James – “Blue, Blue Denim”