For one, the instrumental beat combos that have been a welcome presence so far on this blog began to disappear. Sure, The Shadows had a couple more good years in them but their chart positions began to erode almost as soon as the Fab Four came on to the scene. (The one other exception was Booker T and the MG's, who supplemented their handful of hit singles by being the backing band to a whole generation of soul singers) So, too, did the good-natured and youthful crooners who filled the void between Elvis' entry into the US army and the emergence of The Beatles. And then there were the storytelling balladeers who had to slink back to the folk club circuit once the British Invasion was in full swing. The days of The Kingston Trio, Johnny Horton, Jimmie Rodgers and Andy Stewart having number ones on the CHUM chart were numbered. (Meanwhile, the folk acts who adapted — The Byrds, The Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, even Bob Dylan — ended up thriving)
Fred Darian's "Johnny Willow" feels like the last of its kind. I don't know if this actually the case but certainly there was less of a demand for an anthem about a boy who signs up to serve in the Second World War than there may have been a few years earlier. Just as Rodgers' "The Wreck of the John B" massively underperformed Stateside, Darian's battle cry dropped to an increasingly disinterested American public. It only just dented the Hot 100, peaking at a very modest number ninety-six. Yet, Canadians wanted more of this kind of thing and for some unknown reason my countrymen couldn't get enough of it — for one week at least.
The appeal of most of those folksy ballads is lost on me (with "John B" being the one exception) but some have the odd glimmer of a song people might want to listen to. Which brings us first to "Donald, Where's Your Trousers?": perhaps it was funny to hear Stewart performing it in the clubs but the recorded product is ghastly. The same goes for "Johnny Willow" although instead of botched humour, it is its attempt to be a stirring call-to-arms that falls completely flat. Maybe it's because of the cliched use of a snare drum or the fact that it sounds more like throwback to the American Revolution or Darian doing what amounts to a speed rap but it's excruciating in a way that the likes of "Honeycomb", "Tom Dooley" and even bloody "Running Bear" couldn't quite lower themselves to be.
The desire to listen to such drivel seemed to persist in Canada but not for much longer. Sgt. Barry Sadler's "The Ballad of the Green Berets" proved to be the biggest hit of 1966 in the United States but it only just managed to peak inside the Canadian Top 30 — and that's with all the TV appearances and radio play the single no doubt enjoyed north of the border. It's easy to imagine Canadians being completely sick of this type of thing by that point. Plus, they had better things to be listening to. The Beatles for one.
Score: 1
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