Gary Lewis and the Playboys: "Green Grass"

June 20, 1966 (1 week)

It's hot take time! Yes, I've saved my latest musical revelation for my Canadian number ones blog rather than posting it to absolutely no interest from my modest following on Threads. You can go about ignoring my oh-so original opinions so all those music geeks on social media don't have to.

With that intro out of the way, here it is: the Second British Invasion was better than the First.

In order to explain my rationale, let me list off some favourites. From the sixties, I love The Beatles, really like the Stones, Kinks and Dusty Springfield and am fairly into The Who and Hollies. That's about it as far as it goes: the rest I have no opinion on at best. Shifting over to the early eighties, there's The Human League, Madness, Dexys Midnight Runners, Kate Bush, ABC, Scritti Politti, Culture Club, XTC, The Jam, Soft Cell, Tears for Fears, Kim Wilde, Haircut One Hundred, Wham! and Duran Duran and that's not even accounting for groups who I don't care for all that much. While only a handful became superstars on the other side of the Atlantic, this lot represents a significant uptick in overall quality. (The British seemed to have the good sense to keep their disposable pop acts — Bucks Fizz, Bardo — at home) While the presence of The Beatles alone puts the sixties' British Invasion at a significant advantage, the eighties' equivalent makes up for it with shear depth.

The creative spark that drove The Beatles and their legitimate contenders failed to inspire much in the likes of Herman's Hermits and Peter and Gordon but at least it helped push American pop forward. (While The Beach Boys and The Four Seasons were already having hits prior to the emergence of Beatlemania, it's likely that The Byrds and The Lovin' Spoonful would have had a tougher time breaking through without the Fab Four paving the way) A great deal has been made of Bob Dylan influencing John Lennon and Pet Sounds inspiring Paul McCartney but it wasn't just the heavyweights who were upping their game. Even the son of a renowned comedian who possessed a cheesy grin and a less than impressive vocal range proved up to the challenge — at least as far as he was capable at least.

As Tom Breihan notes in his mostly savage review of "This Diamond Ring", Gary Lewis and the Playboys nabbed an unlikely number one smash on the Billboard Hot 100 hot on the heels of several pop classics (he evidently likes Petula Clark's "Downtown" a lot more than I do) which must've seemed like such a clash - either that or American teenagers of the era figured it was just as great as "My Girl" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling". Not a great song to begin with, it isn't helped along by many of the great songs it followed but it's possible that still managed to learn a thing or two in the process. "This Diamond Ring" came up short of the top spot on the RPM listings but the equally poor "Save Your Heart for Me" nabbed them up north later in the year.

Over the course of 1965, the quality of their work began to modestly improve. Hit singles "Everybody Loves a Clown", "She's Just My Style" and "Sure Gonna Miss Her" proved to be surprisingly engaging while remaining reliably facile. Jerry Lewis was one of those comedians who could be equal parts funny and irritating and there's something about son Gary that indicates he picked up some of his pop's habits. Not a great singer to begin with, he often sounds like he's trying a little too hard to be an 'awe, shucks' everyman. On "Green Grass", however, his vocals are just about good enough and, thus, there's not the same need to play up to the crowd. Lewis could be a charming gentleman when he wanted to be and that's precisely how he sounds here.

Over the years, Lewis has maintained that the band he formed while still in high school played on all their recordings from "This Diamond Ring" on. I have no reason to doubt this claim though it has also been pointed out that studio pros added overdubs along the way. As the months rolled by, the lineup changed to the point where it was just Lewis and buddy John West remaining. Filling in were some of the finest studio musicians a trust fund baby like Lewis could find. Leon Russell had been present to do the arrangements while Jim Keltner came on board for percussion duties. These changes resulted in some tighter playing on later Playboys releases.

"Green Grass" is far from a masterpiece of sixties pop but it is a good deal better than the dreck Lewis had been putting out a year earlier. Unfortunately, his path towards musical respectability was halted when he ended up being drafted into the American armed forces. The hits would continue but the Top 10 stopped being what was expected. He never quite reached the next level though it could very well have been beyond his talents anyway. The circumstances of a pop music golden age helped him get this far so well done for trying and just about succeeding. Many who were a part of the First British Invasion weren't nearly as capable.

Score: 6

Gary Lewis and the Playboys: "Save Your Heart for Me"

August 16, 1965 (1 week)

Let's have some fun and look at some numbers! (My dad was a math teacher so I come by a love for stats naturally) From 1957 through to 1964, there have been an average of just over twenty-one number one hits per year. (This figure goes up to just over twenty-two if '57 is disregarded for only accounting for just over half the year) There were just nineteen chart toppers in both '59 and '63 while on the other end of the scale '64 has the highest total to date with twenty-six. For the most part, these seem like good totals: this means that on average a number one hit spent two or three weeks on top.

But let's look again at '64 because it's a key year in the history of the Canadian charts. During the first twenty-five weeks of the year there were just seven number ones (and that includes The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie", a holdover from the end of the previous year). It was at that point that the changeover was made from the Toronto-based CHUM charts to the more national RPM listings. For the remainder of the year there were nineteen number ones in just twenty-seven weeks. Welcome to the era of the one-week wonders.

Thus, 1965. We are now only at the midway point of August but a record has already been shattered. Billy Joe Royal's "Down in the Boondocks" was the twenty-seventh number one of the year but it only took another week for it to be smashed again by Gary Lewis and the Playboys with "Save Your Heart for Me" — and so forth for the remainder of the year. Hard as it may be to believe, there are even more number ones waiting for us in 1966.

If it seems to you like just about any old shit could get to number one in Canada under these conditions — unless, of course, you happen to have been signed to the Motown label — then you would be proven correct with "Save Your Heart for Me". While the first major Lewis-Playboys hit "This Diamond Ring" was no great shakes itself, it was catchy and memorable enough that it doesn't seem out of place as a number one hit on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the now second fiddle CHUM chart. It was even notable enough to be played on those old K-Tel Sounds of the Sixties compilations ("just listen!", "here's more!", etc., etc.)

"Save Your Heart for Me" doesn't even have the modest upside of a "This Diamond Ring" even though I suspect there's a passable hit hiding in there somewhere. Songwriters Gary Geld and Peter Udell had initially submitted it to Brian Hyland, who had previously had a big hit with their composition "Sealed with a Kiss". Already on a downward trend, the teen idol seemed to be moving away from pop and heading towards Nashville which his version leans heavily into. Hyland sounds like he's been on a strict diet of Everly Brothers. It no doubt helped that Geld and Udell produced and arranged it as well. The result is a lonesome drifter's lament, the song's distinctive whistling lulling listeners into a sense that it is carefree but what's really going on is the singer that has been rendered a free spirit since there's nothing else he has to live for.

There's no such similar depth from Gary Lewis and the Playboys. If some of the original's carefree tone remains it's only because that's how the son of comedy legend Jerry Lewis liked it. Communicating any kind of dark side is completely beyond his abilities as a singer and performer. Compounding problems is that Lewis doesn't have the tiniest fraction of Hyland's vocal range. He would've been better off hamming it up than the pathetically grinning effort he put in here.

The one thing that rescues it (albeit only slightly) is Leon Russell's arrangement. While normally an ace session player at around this time, he pieced together the blueprints of a recording that Brian Wilson could have made. The studio tricks are a welcome addition but they ultimately only manage to reaffirm just how boring this single is. And this is an important, if rather remedial, point: you can have all the studio boffins with their state-of-the-art equipment and willingness to experiment but if what you're working on is an okay composition being played by a mediocre band, audiophile wizardry can only take you so far. Sure, it could take you all the way to number one in Canada but virtually everyone was capable of such a feat. The modestly talented were more than welcome.

Score: 3

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Can Con

This week's number one is dismal but much of the rest of RPM's Top 40 is solid. One of the pleasant surprises is Vancouver's The Nocturnals with the garage rock-flavoured "Because You're Gone", a song that doesn't just surpass Lewis' ultra lame "effort" but even holds its own up against tunes you'd actually choose to sit down and listen to. Sit down and listen? Uh, how about get up and dance instead? One that gets better with each subsequent listen as the multiple shifts in tempo become less jarring. Fantastic. They must've been a treat down in the clubs around Gastown and Kitsilano or wherever the hip bohemians of sixties' Vancity would congregate. The punks of the seventies should've covered this banger. I'm going to have to explore more from these guys.

The Kingsmen: "The Jolly Green Giant"

February 15, 1965 (1 week)

There has long been a fascination among pop music fans for one-hit wonders. They used to be derided but now it seems there's an effort to celebrate some of those who lucked out with a major hit but then failed to capitalize on it. (For more on the subject, check out YouTuber Todd in the Shadows and his excellent series One Hit Wonderland)

The Kingsmen should have been your classic one-hit wonder. They could have even ended up being the ultimate example. While they didn't write "Louie Louie", they made the definitive recording of it, one which has lasted for over sixty years.

Unfortunately, no one aspires to be a one and done hit maker. (Actually, I can think of at least one exception; we'll be getting to him and his band in a few years from now) A group has a hit and then they try for another. Record labels and management begin to get involved. A newfound fanbase becomes keen for more. This is a manageable situation if you're The Beatles or Elvis or The Supremes (and, indeed, many without such vast talents) but a more daunting challenge when there was never much to your band to begin with.

"Louie Louie" was a global smash for The Kingsmen that was followed by their cover of Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)", which also happened to be the closing track on The Beatles' second album With the Beatles. It's ramshackle enough but doesn't have the spirited, drunken party vibes of its predecessor. "Little Latin Lupe Lu" and "Death of an Angel" were minor hits for the band in 1964. By this point, the law of diminishing returns was setting in.

Perhaps out of desperation The Kingsmen chose to go with a novelty song as their fifth single. While "Louie Louie" had been this rough mix of garage rock and surf rock that critics have subsequently (and far too generously) termed "proto-punk", much of its appeal came down to it being a party anthem with those stupidly wonderful words that no one could understand. It may not have been intended as a novelty hit but that's how many took it. On "The Jolly Green Giant" it's as if they're trying too hard at what had previously been second nature to them. While "Louie Louie" had been unintentionally taken as novelty pop, there was no mistaking the way their first single of 1965 had been meant to be interpreted. The kids were expected to find this thing funny.

Suffice it to say, it isn't. Of course, this was a dozen years prior to my birth and I can't speak to how humourous youngsters found it back then but I'm going to guess that they either didn't get the gag or that it was amusing that first time anyone heard it. Boys and girls who turned up their noses at broccoli, Brussel sprouts and spinach might have found a record that spoke to them ("It was funny to me in 5th Grade, since we were all familiar with Green Giant commercials on TV", notes one YouTube comment) but it's hard to imagine how anyone else could have found anything to like in it.

It's basically just a sloppy R&B romp in which everyone is meant to be horsing around. While the tune is undistinguished, it's the "singing" that really drags it down. Gone are the casual don't-give-a-fuck vocals from "Louie Louie" which are replaced by a bunch of dweebs trying to act cool while rattling off the life story of a frozen foods mascot. Worse of all are the fill ins ("potatoes", "artichoke hearts", etc., etc.) which make it even lamer. If their signature hit proved to be a glorious example of falling upwards, this lousy single proves that they weren't about to be so lucky again. How the giants have fallen.

Score: 2

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C'Mon, Be a CHUM!

We haven't taken a look at Canada's former national chart in a while so let's see how it's doing in the early stages of '65. With The Beatles' pairing of "I Feel Fine" and "She's a Woman" being a holdover from the end of '64, there have only been two new chart toppers so far: Petula Clark's "Downtown" and Gary Lewis and the Playboys with "This Diamond Ring", a single that had peaked at number three and was already off the RPM chart by this point. While certainly no classic, it is a definite step up from the ghastly piece of shit above. Jerry Lewis' son Gary isn't a particularly good singer though his background in comedy might have aided The Kingsmen. A rock 'n' roll 'What If...' if there ever was one.