Manfred Mann: "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"

October 5, 1964 (2 weeks)

This was turning out to be some British Invasion. The Beatles and a bunch of groups of questionable talent desperate for a hit. Gerry and the Pacemakers had once been one of the premier acts around Liverpool but by the time stardom hit they were an amusing little music hall sideshow. The Dave Clark 5 sounded like a garage band that hadn't left the garage. Peter and Gordon may have had some Lennon-McCartney originals to keep them afloat but there's no escaping the fact they sounded out of date by the time they started to make the charts.

For all the talk of Liverpool being a rough town, you'd never know it listening to most of the Merseybeat groups of the time. Instead, the tough types hailed from elsewhere. The Animals came from Newcastle up in the north of England while The Rolling Stones came from some of London's satellite towns, as did associates The Pretty Things. So much for southerners being soft, especially compared to those hard northerners.

Manfred Mann ought to have been one of those similarly tough bar bands who played the London clubs. And in a way they were. Their chops are thick and solid and in Paul Jones they had a lead singer who could have ripped his vocal chords to shreds on any given night. While there's no guarantee they would've gotten anywhere as a recording concern as a tough as nails R&B band, there's every reason to believe they could've been a top flight concert attraction had they stuck to what they were best at.

But they didn't do so. "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" is stupidly silly single but one that could have worked under the right circumstances. American vocal group The Exciters had initially recorded it in 1963 and it's genuinely thrilling and far less irritating than Manfred Mann's vastly more successful version. The studio pros backing The Exciters give a very strong performance with some booming precussion while the vocals are suitably exciting. For whatever reason, it fell through the cracks and could only be rescued by a group from the UK — even one that was going to suck all the life out of it.

To be as generous as possible, perhaps "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" has simply been played too much. It is one of the staples of oldies radio so it clearly still has its fans — and they aren't exclusively all Boomers. Tom Breihan considers it to be a "blast", praising its hook as "basically one big euphemism for fucking". The Exciters' version certainly succeeds in that regard but Manfred Mann's is far too lame and plays it too safe. They could have gotten into it with a similar vigour as The Exciters or they could have played it off as a joke. But they chose to do neither making it nothing more than a slog to get through — and one that easily gets on your nerves.

Manfred Mann would go on to record some stronger singles, including UK chart toppers "Pretty Flamingo" and their fab cover of Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn", but we won't be encountering them in this space again until well into the seventies by which time they will have altered their name while releasing another massive hit which also happened to be a cover. Just hold your horses before getting reved up like a douche.

Score: 4