Jay and the Americans: "Let's Lock the Door (and Throw Away the Key)"

February 8, 1965 (1 week)

On February 1, 1965 Petula Clark reached number one on Canada's RPM charts with "Downtown". A week later, it was nowhere to be found on the Top 40 & 5. (The same thing happened to The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling", the chart topper during the last week of January and the previous week's number two) As a matter of fact, fully half of that week's Top 10 had suddenly disappeared from the charts just seven days later. Was there some sort of Great Pop Purge going on in Canada during the early part of '65?

Not quite. It was during this week that a unique and rather unwelcome change was made by the people at RPM to remove singles that had begun to slip down the hit parade. It didn't matter if it had been way up at the tippity top or down with the dregs, if a 45 began to fall it was over. So, what to make of it. Well, it's jarring to discover that a song that was at number one just a week earlier could vanish so suddenly. The charts aren't supposed to work that way: a single is supposed to work its way towards a peak position then gradually fade away as it makes room for others. This isn't always the way it transpires but it was the norm, particularly during the era in which physical sales still mattered.

But there is something I like about it. Not unlike the RPM chart's frequent turnover of number ones (incidentally, the current streak of one-week wonders is at ten; Elvis' "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby" all the way back in November of '64 was the last time a Canadian chart topper had spent at least a fortnight on top), I think this trend reflects the way young people consumed music back then. A single can be your favourite one week and then be dead to the listener the next. As someone who was geeky enough have his own version of the chart in his teens, I know full well how quickly a beloved single can drift from us. (Typically, a song would occupy the number one spot on Paul's Chart for however long it took, then it would drop down to number two or three and then be forgotten about entirely)

Ushering in this new phase of Canada's national chart is Jay and the Americans with "Let's Lock the Door (and Throw Away the Key)". While falling just short of the Top 10 down south, it continued the group's hot streak north of the border. While the solid if unspectacular "Come a Little Bit Closer" would go on to become their best remembered hit — along with yet another future Canadian number one that we'll be getting to before long — it doesn't approach the spectacularly unoriginal enthusiasm of "Let's Lock the Door".

Wait, 'spectacularly unoriginal enthusiasm'? This Jay and the Americans single is supposed to be better for how much it borrows from the work of others? Yes, exactly. By shoving The Beatles, Beach Boys, Four Seasons and the burgeoning Motown sound together, America's third greatest vocal group of the mid-sixties managed to just about sound like no one else. The copying is so brazen that even someone with as dead an ear as myself can hear all the influences being crammed in.

The Beach Boys and Four Seasons are the most readily apparent. Those towering Jersey Boys' harmonies are the backbone of "Let's Lock the Door" while the jazz scatting and Mike Love-esque baritone drop ins in the chorus are clearly nicked from the Wilson's over on the West Coast. Then the bridge comes in which pays an obvious debt to The Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout". Finally, there are those horns which might as well have been sampled from the Funk Brothers, Motown's highly accomplished if rarely acknowledged secret weapon. Add to the mixture some of their patented Latino rhythms and you've got a Frankenstein's monster of pop.

This all should be a huge mark against Jay and the Americans but they make it work. There's a certain genius in borrowing so liberally from a variety of sources and not failing miserably in doing so. In fact, "Let's Lock the Door" is two minutes and twenty seconds of glorious pop that any of their artistic superiors would have been proud to have released themselves. Though 1965 was becoming increasingly a place for insanely creative to thrive, it's nice to know that those more modestly talented types could keep pace — even if only fleetingly.

Score: 9

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Can Con

It's been fun tracking the progress of US immigrant Ronnie Hawkins on Canada's charts but this looks to be mostly coming to an end. More famous for a catchy if unremarkable recording by The Beach Boys, "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" is a surprising choice from the barrelhouse southern rocker. Not really the best use of his talents but it's all right all things considered. The swampy "Diddley Diddley Daddy" on the flip is the stronger song though it may not have had the commercial potential. A decent final Top 10 hit for the national treasure, (Though credited as 'Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks' the accompanying band isn't that of Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel, who had already departed and were soon to sign on as Bob Dylan's backing band. I hope they didn't begrudge him keeping their name)

Cliff Richard and The Shadows: "Summer Holiday" / "Dancing Shoes"

May 13, 1963 (3 weeks)

The American and British charts have had many differences over the years but no major artist has ever had such contrasting appeal as Cliff Richard (and yes, he sure as hell counts as a major artist). In his homeland, he has been consistently popular for the better part of seventy years with fourteen number ones and a hundred and twenty-four Top 40 hits. Meanwhile in the US, he is a total unknown and he seems like the longest of longshots to one day make it in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (I like the Pet Shop Boys' chances by comparison, a band who no one other than myself and critic Chris Molanphy talk up) Neither of these statements are exactly true, however. He has at least as many detractors in Britain as he has fans and his popularity has had its ups and downs over the years. And while he has remained rather obscure in America, he has had three Top 10 hits on the Hot 100 which isn't nothing — even if it's dwarfed by what he has accomplished back home.

As for the rest of the world, we're somewhere in between when it comes to the former Harry Webb. I think he can be rightly described as a star in Australia given that he has two dozen Top 10's, even if only one managed to make it to the very top. The same goes for New Zealand where he managed to have several chart toppers. But what about Canada? We're a country that has always been almost literally in between the US and UK (you know, if not for Greenland, Iceland, Ireland and the Atlantic Ocean being in the way). If Cliff was going to be treated as an afterthought south of the border, than he was hardly going to be getting much attention north of it either. The 1959 UK number one smash "Living Doll" gave him a minor hit in North America but that's all there was for the first few years of his imperial period. That said, the ties that bind were still strong especially in Canada during the early sixties when the Red Ensign was still being flown.

In 1962, Cliff's musical film The Young Ones came out. It proved to be an enormous hit, as was the single of the same name. Once again, interest in the US was minimal but Canadians were more receptive to it to the tune of a Top 5 hit on the CHUM charts. He went on to have two more Top 20 entries with "It'll Be Me" and the North America-only 45 "Wonderful to Be Young". An upward trend for sure but they couldn't have guessed what would have taken place the following spring.

The film Summer Holiday was released in Britain in February of 1963. As Tom Ewing notes, it would have been a "canny release date" to see a group of English lads basking in the Grecian sun in the midst of a rotten winter. It wouldn't come out in the United States — and possibly Canada, more on that point below — until November 13, just two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Yet, goodwill towards Cliff in Canada was such that not only did the "Summer Holiday" single start climbing the charts in the spring of '63 but it was hot on the heels of another single of his which came from the same movie.

"Bachelor Boy" entered the CHUM charts at number forty-one on April 1 and then quickly moved into the Top 20 the following week. Just seven days later, as it was on the cusp of that big Top 10, it was joined, also at forty-one, by "Summer Holiday", paired with "Dancing Shoes". Its ascension was even swifter, getting to number four just a fortnight after its debut. At the same time, "Bachelor Boy" was at number two. A week later they were in the silver and bronze spots respectively and a week after that "Summer Holiday" was at number one. All told, the two competing singles spent sixteen weeks in the Canadian Top 10 from April to June. (Notably, "Bachelor Boy" had this chart run about two months' prior to Cliff's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show)

(Which leads me to wonder, had the Summer Holiday film managed to come out in Canada approximately six months prior to its ill-fated US release? As I mentioned above, he had made a name for himself the previous year so it's possible that his latest motion picture would have been made available at an earlier date than down south. Given that he doesn't appear to have done any other forms of promotional work in Canada at around this time, it seems likely. Whatsmore, the soundtrack managed to top the CHUM Albums Index at around this same time. The only problem is, I can't find any evidence to confirm when this film came out)

With two Cliff Richard singles to choose from, the question must be asked: did Canadians make the right choice in sending "Summer Holiday"/"Dancing Shoes" to the top over "Bachelor Boy"? I think they did. For one thing, the latter is a bit wet, a childish throwaway, albeit one that Cliff has perhaps grown into over the years as a performer. Being still in his early twenties, few would've guessed that he would go on to live that very bachelor life over all these many years. But now that he is well into the back half of his career, it has more resonance since that is indeed what he has become. What likely didn't have much meaning to him at the time has come to practically define him.

"Summer Holiday" at first seems naive and generic but now I think those might be among its strengths. As someone who has visited a few countries over the years, the song's narrative reads like a bland postcard but it's meant to be sung from the perspective of a group of young mates who've never been anywhere and are embarking on an exciting European road trip. "We've seen it in the movies, now let's see if it's true". That is the thing about idealizing a trip to Europe in particular: we tend to over romanticize the Continent which typically leads to severe disappointment. Perhaps Cliff and his chums were as let down as the gang in the 2004 sex comedy Eurotrip (a movie which happened to include a scene featuring characters traveling Europe on a double decker bus, possible as a nod to Summer Holiday).

On its own "Summer Holiday" might be a tad underwhelming but its enhanced by its flip side "Dancing Shoes". Having not actually seen the film since the early nineties (and I'm not even sure I saw the whole thing then), I had imagined that Cliff would be singing it in a dance hall or on a patio by the sea in the moonlight. Instead, he used the song to cheer up a peasant woman in the fields of what I think was the former Yugoslavia. (Just an old musical trick of inserting a tune into any old scene regardless of whether it makes sense to do so) Though Cliff sings it as immaculately as ever, the real stars are The Shadows with guitarist Hank Marvin in particularly fine form. Is it any wonder he was idolized by a whole generation of young guitarists, some of whom went on to be far more famous than their hero. I've heard talk that Cliff Richard and his longtime backing group released some first rate B sides during their heyday and I think this is my cue to investigate further.

As many already know, Cliff Richard can be a salty individual at times — and that's probably an understatement. He has expressed bitterness towards the press, The Beatles, plenty of other pop stars, Eurovision Song Contest judges for denying him the victory he felt he had been entitled to and young fans for booing sleazy politicians at award ceremonies but one that really gets his goat is his relative lack of success in the US. (The man likes to think of himself as an innovator so perhaps he should take pride in being the first in a long line of Brits who failed to make it in America) Does he at least appreciate the fact that Canadians took to him when their neighbours to the south failed to do so? I don't imagine he's aware of it — he last did a tour of Canada back '81 during his renaissance — so someone ought to let him know.

Score: 7

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Can Con

Ronnie Hawkins: "Bo Diddley"

Another Ronnie Hawkins Top 10 hit so another Can Con write up it is! There aren't many left so I might as well keep 'em going. By now residing in the Toronto area, Rompin' Ronnie had formed The Hawks with a drummer from Arkansas by the name of Levon Helm and some young local musicians including Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson. Imagine being on the verge of making history and not knowing you're doing so. (That's always the way though) Fascinating as all this is, "Bo Diddley" isn't one of his better efforts. I suppose it probably sounded better in some of those rough bars in Ontario towns like Cornwall, North Bay and Sudbury but there's not much to recommend in its 45 state. That trademark Bo Diddley shuffle isn't even all that prominent. Had they replaced this sound with something else of note then it would be fine but that's not the case at all. Just rugged rock 'n' roll which goes through the motions: Cliff Richard at his most depressingly dire would've struggled to be this piss poor.

Andy Stewart: "Donald, Where's Your Troosers?"

March 6, 1961 (1 week)

It really ought to take someone special to be able to replace themselves at number one. Though it had occurred prior to the establishment of the Hot 100, Elvis Presley was the first person in the rock 'n' roll era to pull it off when the mighty double A-side "Don't Be Cruel" / "Hound Dog" was overtaken by the nearly as great "Love Me Tender". The Beatles did one better by having three chart toppers on the bounce with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "She Loves You" and "Can't Buy Me Love" during their dominant run in the first half of 1964. The Fab Four also became the first act to replace themselves at the top in their native Britain, with the feat not happening again until the devastating aftermath of John Lennon's murder (it has become a little more common in the twenty-first century now that hardly anyone bothers paying for music anymore; it helps, too, that spending ten or more weeks at the top is not longer a rarity so artists have plenty of time to put out follow-up usurpers).

Yet, it was Andy Stewart of all people who was the first to pull the same trick on Canada's CHUM charts. After three weeks of "A Scottish Soldier" on top, the Canadian public opted for the cheerful "humour" of novelty song "Donald, Where's Your Troosers?", perhaps as supposed light relief. Originally released in 1960, it was ignored until its follow up helped bring it back from the dead. A tartan revolution in pop had begun and this was a decade in advance of the Bay City Rollers. Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Andy Stewart: one of them is not like the others.

I grew to find "A Scottish Soldier" to be just about tolerable but the same cannot be said for "Donald, Where's Your Troosers?". Stewart's brogue takes some getting used to but if used on something worthwhile, I can accept it. On here, however, the singer in his mid-twenties who looks like Rick Astley's goofy older brother with a secret gambling addiction is suddenly transformed into a seventy-three year old Scot who can't stop moaning about everything. Well done, I suppose, for doing a convincing turn as an elderly Scots git but the sound is rubbish.

Things do not get off to a promising start and only get worse from there. Forty seconds in and I've already had enough of this crap. Coming from an era when the two-minute pop song was still the norm, its three-and-a-quarter minutes is agonizing to get through. As if sensing that even his fans were getting restless, he ventures down to London and does a shocked upper class reading of the line "Donald, where's your troosers?". Before long, he grudgingly admits that his Highlands twang isn't going to appeal to many outsiders and he begins impersonating Elvis. Oh my god, the comedy this man was capable of. Ninety seconds of Stewart hamming it up as the most Scottish person who ever lived is terrible enough but then to add on those horribly unfunny voices makes a bad thing that much worse.

One of the problems with "A Scottish Solider" is that it plays far too much into that "postcard" impression people have of Scotland. With "Donald, Where's Your Troosers" it's now more like a caricature of the country in which all the laziest stereotypes emerge. Tartan, bagpipes, even deep-fried Mars bars — which weren't even a thing back then — swirl around Oor Andy. Maybe there's something to making light of what a Scotsman wears under his kilt but this is the equivalent of a crass postcard depicting some old jock showing off his bare buttocks. Not funny and not pleasant — and not a part of the Scotland that I am fond of.

A fair number of Scots will eventually be featured in this space including the Bay City Rollers, Pilot, Sheena Easton and Simple Minds (though, surprisingly, not Donovan). None will come even close to overt Scottishness of Mr. Stewart here. In fact, the majority won't even seem especially Scottish. A trait shared by many acts in the eighties and nineties is that they tended to look to the United States for inspiration rather than down south towards hated England. While there were a few exceptions like Big Country and The Proclaimers, most seemed reticent to embrace their own culture in their music as well. Was it because of people like Andy Stewart? It's hard to say though I wouldn't blame them if that was indeed the case. Proud of your Scottish heritage? You don't need to release something this diabolical in order to prove it.

Score: 1

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Can Con

 

Ronnie Hawkins again??? Well, yeah. Who else is there? As I have already stated, I'm done with Paul Anka until I absolutely must deal with him again and there's no one else. (Underscoring this point, when was the last time I even did a Can Con segment?) And I'll happily discuss The Hawk at any chance I can get. This time it's with a cover of the Hank Williams classic "Cold, Cold Heart". Ronnie puts a good deal more passion into his rendition than the original which is a mixed blessing. The dry wit of the Williams original is sacrificed in favour of something that is easier to listen to. He may not have topped the so-called Hillbilly Shakespeare but he certainly did one of his finest songs justice. Dammit, why couldn't Ronnie Hawkins have had a number one in his adopted homeland? And, no, I'm not including a future charity hit which we'll be getting to at some point. For now, Rompin' Ronnie is still one of Canada's national treasures for bringing southern American music up north. All hail!

Johnny Preston: "Running Bear"

January 4, 1960 (3 weeks)

It couldn't last. The fifties drew to a close with Marty Robbins' "El Paso", a song which didn't try to hide its Mexican influence and managed to do so without being either insulting or thieving from the source — or, indeed, both. All the while being done by the very anti-progressive Robbins. It's as if a singer-songwriter could borrow from another culture's music and just leave everything else alone. The mind boggles.

Sadly, "Running Bear" wasn't able to accomplish something similar with native American culture. Instead we get a caricature. Of course, this was 1960 so of course that's what the public got. Mexican culture may have been treated condescendingly with the Looney Tunes character Speedy Gonzales but at least Robbins had been tasteful in his plundering and so, too, had Charlie Mingus on his masterful 1957 album Tijuana Moods (even though it would remain unreleased for five years). But Natives were never even given that level of respect. Everything played into gross stereotypes whether it be the mascot of the old Cleveland Indians, the Lone Ranger's sidekick Tonto or just lame "hello, white man" lines in movies. This is the world that Johnny Preston's first big hit came out of — and no attempt was made to do anything even remotely nuanced with it.

Problematic material is difficult to look past but a good-to-great song certainly helps. And in this regard, too, "Running Bear" falls flat. Whereas genuinely good bands may have a standout element that attracts fans while a secret weapon keeps them there (come for the sweetness of Paul McCartney, stay for the bitter humour of John Lennon), this is pretty much its opposite: turn it off because the song sucks, never return because of the racism. (Though you could certainly do it the other way round if you so desire) The chorus isn't quite as vile the verses which just about rescues it from the lowest of the low of pop and credit here should go to one Link Davis for providing a decent tenor sax that almost makes the rest of it, well, bearable.

It's worth pointing out that this was still the infancy of the rock 'n' roll era (in spite of the fact that the genre had already dried up...or so everyone thought) and the whole thing was based on novelty. Teenagers with disposable income? Novelty. Jukeboxes in burger joints and malt shops? Novelty. All this beat music noise everyone's been talking about? Novelty. As Tom Ewing says in his review of this monstrosity — in which he inexplicably gave it an extremely generous score of 5 — that it's a "neat demonstration of the classic record biz approach — release anything and see what works". And even though "Running Bear" very clearly doesn't work, it still managed to make it to number one in just about every English speaking country in the world.

But just who was buying this thing and who was sending in requests that their local DJ play it? I can't fathom a circumstance in which any intelligent adult would wish to play it and it's even more hard to believe that teens of the time were into it as well. That leaves kids playing Cowboys and Indians at their local park as the only logical answer. I'm not even completely convinced that little Bobby or Alice even wanted this song on 45 but that their parents and aunts and uncles went out and bought them because they liked watching Gunsmoke and dressed up as cowboys for Halloween and had toy six shooters. There was something to all of these childish pursuits but "Running Bear" does not deserve to be held alongside them. A fun and imaginative childhood deserves much better out of pop music than this piece of crap.

Score: 2

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Con Can

There's a reason so many Canadian entertainers end up relocating down to the States: opportunities. Also money. Two reasons, in fact. Some Americans used to do much the same north of the border. And is it any wonder Ronnie Hawkins made metro Toronto his permanent home when everything he put out went Top 10 there? "Southern Love" is reasonably good — though it sounds like an absolute masterpiece when held up against bloody "Running Bear" — and something of a grower and even hints at being an influence on Kenny Rodgers' "Just Dropped in to See What Condition My Condition Was In" but its success on the CHUM charts suggests that it was Hawkins who people were fond of most of all. The records you give or take but to see him and The Hawks play some dingy bar in Guelph or North Bay at the time must have been something else indeed. His singles may never have gone to number one (barring a charity hit that we'll get to in good time) but I daresay he was at the top for many an Ontarian during the early sixties.

Johnny Horton: "The Battle of New Orleans"

June 1, 1959 (7 weeks)

The Clash's "I'm So Bored with the U.S.A." deals with some serious issues surrounding some of the rotten aspects of the American way of life. From the country's piss-poor treatment of soldiers back from Vietnam to propping up dictatorial regimes around the world, the Mick Jones-Joe Strummer composition makes it clear that the American Dream is a giant lie. Yet, I heard it first in the early nineties as a sullen Canadian teenager and none of those topics clicked in my mind. For all it mattered to me, it was an anthem about being sick to death of American TV, music, movies, news and trash culture. 

With the rise of Jerry Springer and tabloid news coverage, this would only get worse as the decade progressed. Lorena Bobbitt slicing off her husband's dick, Tonya Harding's goons taking a lead pipe to Nancy Carrigan's legs, that stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress, the O.J. Simpson arrest and trial, any time some total nutjob picked up a gun and fired: my brain is stuffed with freak show media circus nonsense that seemed to dominate the news in that era. Even genuine tragedies — the Waco siege, Columbine, 9/11, O.J.'s victims — ended up becoming trivialized by my own sense of fatigue

It was only in the post-9/11 period that conservatives in Canada began to express concern over anti-Americanism, as if it was something that had only just begun following George Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq or something. But in my family at least a part of being Canadian meant making everyone know how much we weren't like the U.S.A, even if at the same time we couldn't do without it.

Somehow or other Canadians back in the fifties didn't get the memo. With Hollywood's continued domination, TV shows coming from American networks ABC, CBS and NBC and virtually every musical genre coming out of the States, it's perhaps understandable why there wasn't yet a backlash. Still, didn't Canadians ever just get tired of hearing about these people all the time? It's one thing for a third-rate country singer like Johnny Horton to tap into jingoism and have it catch on in a big way in the States but elsewhere? What the hell was wrong with Canadians back then? (And we weren't the only ones: the Australians also took this ghastly record to number one; at least the British were far less convinced, taking it to only sixteen)

Given that Paul Anka wasn't all that good while the likes of Elvis, The Everlys, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra were, I can certainly see why the majority of my countrymen opted for American music back in the day. But did they really have to go for this crap to the tune of seven agonizing weeks at number one? A march about a battle with the British in which the good guys were armed with just nail clippers and old peach pits against the might of the Red Coats and their muskets?

Interestingly, "The Battle of New Orleans" ended up being altered for Great Britain and members of the Commonwealth, presumably so listeners wouldn't be turned off by tales of their ancestors getting their arses so thoroughly handed to them. Naturally, this would have included Canada, though I'm skeptical that this took place. For the love of god, we're the only nation in the world that shares a country code so of course we were just going to get the same version of a song that Ed Sullivan and Dick Clark and the like had been hyping.

In the end, anti-Americanism is something Canadians bring upon themselves. Find other TV shows to watch if you're sick of the crap from the U.S. Listen to artists from your own country or elsewhere if the music from down south is a load of shite. In fact, this seemed to occur seven years later when Sgt. Barry Sadler's giant U.S. number one "The Ballad of the Green Berets" (incidentally, a much worse song than "The Battle of New Orleans") only ended up being a modest Top 30 hit in Canada. The public would have been exposed to this pile of crap on TV and radio and most of them wisely decided to take a pass. The best way to be anti-American is to embrace Stevie Wonder and Magic Johnson and Seinfeld and the first two Godfather films while discarding all of its junk. Start with with Trump and celeb culture but don't forget to rid yourself of useless singles like "The Battle of New Orleans" while you're at it.

Score: 3

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Can Con

He wouldn't be a permanent resident for a few more years but I think we can include Ronnie Hawkins at this early stage since he was already making mint from tours in Toronto and around Ontario. Plus, why not include an American who came to embrace everything about his adopted homeland, especially in a review dealing with being sick to death of our neighbours to the south? "Forty Days" is an enjoyable enough little rockabilly bopper, one that I was pleasantly surprised to see got all the way up to number four. If only it had been able to push Johnny bloody Horton out of the top spot. Rompin' Ronnie would, sadly, only ever have a number one as part of a charity single but I'll still try to celebrate him as much as possible until we get to 1985. Hopefully there will be many more opportunities. Until then, bask in the effortless vocals and just try to imagine how kick ass it must have been at one of Mr. Dynamo's show with a group of young Canadians and a drummer from Arkansas who were then known as The Hawks. Oh to have seen them tear up the bars of Sarnia and Sault Ste Marie back in the day.