The New Vaudeville Band: "Winchester Cathedral" / Dana Rollin: "Winchester Cathedral"

November 28, 1966 (2 weeks)

"Thus, for the first and only time, Canada's number one single happened to be occupied by the same song done by two different acts".

Yeah, about that...

The confident claim above from my review of previous co-number one "Concrete and Clay" by Unit 4 + 2 and Eddie Rambeau respectively is directly attributable to Wikipedia and my reliance on it. I had been aware of the former due to its use in the classic Wes Anderson film Rushmore but I had been unaware of the latter. Wikipedia's List of Number One Singles in Canada proved edifying and it lead me to believe that this unique practice of placing competing versions of the same song in the same chart position had been a one off. I hadn't seen anything to make me think otherwise and that, apparently, was good enough for me. Nevertheless, the Free Encyclopedia once again proves that it's only as reliable as its contributors allow it to be. Under the list of chart toppers for 1966, "Winchester Cathedral" is credited simply to The New Vaudeville Band. (Or it was: I just changed it)

The last time we had co-chart toppers — speaking of which, from this point forward I'm simply going to claim that it remains to be seen if it will happen again — it was a case of two reasonably even competitors who were duking it out south of the border while enjoying a unified sense of purpose up north. This time, however, there is no such similar balance in terms of prominence. The New Vaudeville Band had already had a Top 5 UK hit with "Winchester Cathedral" and they would reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100 during the first week of December. The version by Dana Rollin, however, came out at about the same time but only got as high as number seventy-one in the States. Of course, that's no guarantee the Rollin version would have performed similarly even though it's worth pointing out that it failed to appear on CHUM's Top 50 from the same time. (The New Vaudeville Band managed to make it all the way to number one on Toronto's chart with little-to-no support from its rival)

All that said, there's some evidence that Rollin managed to do a bit of the heavy lifting in her own right. According to one YouTube comment, her "Winchester Cathedral" managed to be a local chart topper in some North American markets, including Denver, Detroit, Houston, Pittsburgh and Vancouver. Another mentions that it was the more popular version in New Orleans. On a separate YouTube video — yes, there are multiple uploads of this forgotten recording — someone claims that legendary New York DJ (and noted 'fifth Beatle') Murray the K actually played this one on his radio show before ever getting hold of the New Vaudeville original. (Finally, another poster claims that "Pops had both versions of this he liked Dana's better!"; he's probably just referring to his old man but wouldn't it be something if Louis Armstrong had been a fan? Talk about a feather in your bowler's cap)

But let's get to the quality of the music. (Oh, must we?) Like a lot of the music hall that "Winchester Cathedral" harks back to, it is charming but the novelty doesn't last. The more well known recording by The New Vaudeville Band manages to wear out its welcome by the time John Carter's 'small-man-in-a-box' vocals make their belated appearance. As for Dana Rollin, it's harder to say. (Her version has the advantage of being something I'd never heard prior to the day before yesterday) I will say that her rendition does a better job merging the twenties with the sixties: while Carter's voice sounds like a parlour trick, her vocal has a graininess that makes me think I'm listening to an ancient Kate Smith record. Meanwhile, the backing combines jokey cornet solos with a surprisingly sturdy beat, as if a rock 'n' roll session band found themselves trying to do hot jazz from forty years earlier and not succeeding. Every bloody second of the Vaudeville original is spent doing an affectionate send up of a genre few cared about; the Rollin edition is more like a very flawed facsimile and that's precisely why it works better — though not by much.

Is it its quirkiness that, to quote the lyrics, brings it down or are The New Vaudeville Band and/or Dana Rollin to blame? A clue may be found in Nancy Wilson's much more straightforward big band jazz version from her 1967 album Just for Now. This is the sort of thing I'd much rather listen to: as ever, Wilson is a pleasure to the ears and the band backing her are disciplined if lacking in flash. (Only Mike Melvoin on organ really stands out) Yet as a result, it's more forgettable, a song about how an ancient place of worship isn't bringing a couple together or something. Everything that made it unique was stripped away. Thus, we're left with a work that is memorable but grating. The Vaudevilles and Rollin had to play up to its music hall roots lest it be just another pop song that few would ever bother paying attention to.

Still, modern music fans and critics are obsessed with everything being 'influential' nowadays and in that regard you've got to hand it to The New Vaudeville Band. While Paul McCartney's dad had been the leader of a jazz band and would've been all too familiar with the genre and George Harrison had been a fan of the legendary George Formby and John Lennon appreciated anything absurd, the presence of groups like the NVB would've affirmed in The Beatles a commitment to start playing around with music hall for much of the year ahead (and, to some extent, beyond). I know they aren't regarded as deeply influential the way Frank Zappa and Ravi Shankar are but I think they played a part in Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. For that matter, the scant number of British acts who've dabbled in music hall since — Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Madness, Blur — have a similar (minor) dept to the Vaudevilles. This doesn't make "Winchester Cathedral" any easier to listen to listen to but I feel I ought to say something positive at this point. I may not hate it but that's about as encouraging as I can be.

Annoying as it is, the average person probably has no idea how infuriating it must be to be a verger at the actual Winchester Cathedral in the county of Hampshire. Not a day must pass in which obnoxious American tourists are heard whistling, humming or even singing the lyrics as they tour one of Britain's most historic places of worship. It's bad enough that early Anglo-Saxon kings such as Edmund Ironside and Cnut are overlooked in favour of the post-Norman rulers but to have their main resting place be the stuff of music hall farce robs them of whatever dignity they had left. Did they spend their lives pillaging and plundering for this? (The Cathedral's administrators seem to have decided to steer into the skid by having their choir sing on a re-recorded version. If you can't beat 'em, etc., etc.)

Finally, a word on Dana Rollin, who I had no idea about until two days ago. Come to that, I still don't know much about her. There's a suggestion - again, from one of the YouTube clips - that she was just sixteen at the time she recorded this which means she'd still only be around seventy-five years old now. Her discography is pretty minimal but her "Winchester Cathedral" did end up on a 2007 on a randomly compiled pop-rock CD from France. Otherwise, she is a ghost. Thus, for the first and only time, Canada's number one single happened to be occupied by an individual who doesn't have their own Wikipedia page. (I'll be eating those words before long, won't I?)

The New Vaudeville Band Score: 4

Dana Rollin Score: 5

~~~~~

Hey! Where's...

This feature hasn't been used much of late but I felt it worth while on this occasion since "Winchester Cathedral" wasn't just sort-of-catchy-but-also-mildly-irritating but it also blocked The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" from its rightful place at number one. (At least on the Hot  100 it had the good graces down south to get out of the way of Brian Wilson's masterpiece for a week before returning right back to the top) This isn't anywhere near as big of a pop injustice as it was back in 1960 when the ghastly Anita Bryant and her shitty single "Paper Roses" took the top spot from The Everly Brothers' masterful "Cathy's Clown" but it's worth bringing up all the same. We're now on the dawn of 1967 when the rock album as an artistic statement was reaching its apogee and, consequently, when the singles charts began to appear more as a refuge for bubblegum pop and novelty songs that weren't cut out for the LP market. Some of the finest singles of the year wouldn't come close to the top of the hit parade but at least the albums they were associated with garnered plenty of critical acclaim and were feted by generations of similarly unsuccessful power pop bands. Sorry, I just found myself in the middle of a rant...what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, where The Beach Boys! "Good Vibrations" is great, right? I mean, I prefer "Sail on, Sailor" myself but it's hard to argue with just about the only decent song off of the Smiley Smile album. Damn, I feel another rant coming on...I'd better just close out here. See you next time!

The Beach Boys: "Help Me, Rhonda"

June 7, 1965 (1 week)

So, I woke up the other day to the sad news that Brian Wilson had passed away. Coming just two days after the death of Sly Stone, this week has been a stark reminder that the pop-rock royalty of the sixties are gradually leaving us. I will confess that instead of feeling gutted by the news, I was excited to be able to blog about one of his band's biggest hits, even if it's not one of my favourites. I was determined to finish it off that day in tribute, only to work on it for a while and then leave it behind. Still, here it is. It's too bad that The Beach Boys' story has to conclude here. They came tantalizingly close to having several more number ones — "California Girls", "Barbara Ann", "Sloop John B" and "Good Vibrations" all peaked at number two on the RPM charts over the next year or so — but it wasn't to be. On the bright side, at least this means I won't have to write about bloody "Kokomo" either. Though he would compose many hits for his group, some of Brian Wilson's best loved numbers weren't especially successful. "Sail on, Sailor", my own personal favourite, barely registered at the time. I Just Wasn't Made for These Times. Indeed.

As I have previously discussed, I am fond of The Beach Boys' ninth studio album Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!). Some consider it to be a bit of a creative step backwards after the moody The Beach Boys Today! but I beg to differ. The sound is fuller with the Wrecking Crew being used on every cut. Yeah, a lot of the material is silly but around half of it suggests a kind of roadtrip, a juvenile travelogue that they would explore much more successfully on their marvelous 1973 album Holland.

Summer Days also includes two major hits. One of them is an absolute classic, one of the three or four best songs the group ever recorded. The other is a re-recording of a track that had already appeared on the Today album earlier in the year. It had once been a quirky little oddity but now it was a standard shiny pop hit. Guess which of the two sent The Beach Boys back to the top of the charts for a third and, ultimately, final time?

There's honestly nothing wrong with "Help Me, Rhonda" aside from the fact that I wish it had been a stronger single of theirs instead. In its early form — then titled "Help Me, Ronda" — it had been fodder for one of Brian Wilson's eccentric, uncommercial production ideas (the sound bouncing back-and-forth between the left and right channels) while employing some unusual instrumentation (the ukulele does not need to be so prominent). It's a little hokey but I admire the effort. No one foresaw it being released as a single in its own right - the Today! album had "Dance! Dance! Dance!", "When I Grow Up (to Be a Man)" and "Do You Wanna Dace?" so it was easy to see why slipped through the cracks - and even if it had been, it almost certainly would've underperformed; the similarly un-commercial "The Little Girl I Once Knew" with its dramatic use of sound drop outs ended up coming out near the end of '65 and it wasn't a major hit.

Re-tooled drastically for single release, the renamed "Help Me, Rhonda" certainly sounds like it has chart potential but this came at the expense of ironing out its unique characteristics. They got a better vocal this time out of Al Jardine — his frat boy drawl suits the role of the song's narrator who is a big time loser — but I can't really say anything else was improved upon. Included on Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) the following month, it was cagily placed at the end of side 1 right after "Girl Don't Tell Me", a song that had been the first real sign that The Beatles had been getting to Brian. A brazen copy of "Ticket to Ride", it practically screams "Remember how we knocked the Fab Four from the number one spot? Well, here's the single that did it!" (Another way of looking at it is that they copied The Beatles and then went ahead and copied themselves)

Flip over the Summer Days record (or, if you're a CD enthusiast like I am, wait for the next track) and side 2 begins with Wilson's finest Spector-influenced work. "California Girls" is perfect, a so-called "pocket symphony" that only he could have created. While still a big hit, it failed to reach number one in any territory with the exception of South Africa's Springbok Radio chart. Considering that Summer Days had already been released by this point, it's understandable that some weren't about to go out and buy a single that they already owned. Nevertheless, it's a little disappointing that a passable effort like "Help Me, Rhonda" made it all the way to the top while its vastly superior follow-up came up short. That said, that's the charts for you. They seldom work out the way that they're meant to.

Score: 6 (Unofficial score for "California Girls": 10)

~~~~~

Can Con

Gordon "No-Longer-Gord" Lightfoot and Guess Who? both return to the Canadian charts and they're joined by newcomer Dianne James. I had assumed that her hit "My Guy" was a cover of the Mary Wells classic from a year earlier but it is in fact an original, one that the Saskatoon native had written herself. It sounds a little like one of those themes from a sixties spy thriller, especially with those horns blaring all over the place. There's not much to say otherwise but I'll be keen to see if she managed to sneak on to the Top 40 with any future singles. Like Brian Wilson, she might well have deserved better.

The Beach Boys: "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)"

October 19, 1964 (2 weeks)

As a compact disc loyalist, I am already in the minority when it comes to how I consume music. Records are too big and expensive and, speaking as a careless and clumsy person, I don't trust myself with fragile vinyl and/or stereo equipment. As far as streaming goes, it's just a way to give someone I'm unfamiliar with a listen and that's where it begins and ends. If I'm interested, I'll try to track your album down on CD — either that or I'll forget all about you. Nope, I'm a CD guy. But even within that narrow class, I am virtually on my own in my fondness for the CD two-fer.

The two-fer is a throwback to the late eighties and early nineties when albums were being reissued on the new format. While big name releases such as Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Dark Side of the Moon were released on their own, many shorter albums got paired up in order to take advantage of CD's having eighty minutes of running time. Pet Sounds was a marquee album to put out on its own but the remainder of The Beach Boys' works got the two-fer treatment. I, for one, loved them. They were good value for money, with some even including bonus tracks (when your albums from the sixties tended to clock in under the half-hour mark, they had lots of time to play with). Releases such as Friends / 20/20, Sunflower / Surf's Up and Carl & The Passions 'So Tough' / Holland were all big favourites of mine — and they remain so to this day. Buying them was like getting an album and a greatest hits all at once. Were they cheap affairs? Possibly but that was a concern for others.

Perhaps the most fascinating of the two-fers is The Beach Boys Today / Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!), a compilation of their two major works from 1965 (even though much of the former was initially recorded and released in '64). Because much of The Beach Boy narrative centres around Pet Sounds (and, to a lesser extent, the unfinished and ill-fated Smile), it is easy to hear these two albums as a warm up for what was about to come down. There's no doubt there's some truth to this claim as well. The former's second side is surprisingly reflective while Brian Wilson's increasing reliance on legendary LA session group The Wrecking Crew was a sign of things to come.

Yet, there's juvenalia involved as well which betrays this sense that Brian Wilson was maturing. The first side of Today! has material covering topics ranging from teen romance (their hit version of "Do You Wanna Dance", "Good to My Baby"), the desire to blow off some steam after "six hours of school" ("Dance, Dance, Dance") and an intimidating older brother giving a stern lecture to a young boy up to no good ("Don't Hurt My Little Sister"). Even an early run through of future hit "Help Me, Ronda" is given the youthful, milk-fed treatment by Al Jardine and his frat boy vocals. (As for Summer Days, it is crammed with silly tunes about the capital city of Utah and amusement parks which obscure the fact that it has freaking "California Girls" on it)

Fitting in alongside them is "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)". Sung mostly by twenty-three year old Mike Love with help from the twenty-two year old Brian, it is about a teen who wonders what he'll be like when he gets older. The very nature of it is forced. Only an adult would come up with such sentiments. No teen ever thinks about how they'll turn out, they only ever wonder about what's in store. I remembered being a self-obsessed fourteen year old and I never worried that I wouldn't dig the same music or different women in the future. My mum used to tell my coffee hating sister that she would one day enjoy that hot beverage which was always met with denial. (Naturally, she now drinks coffee) We might fret that others will change but it seldom occurs to us that we might change too.

All that said, I love "When I Grow Up". Brian's vocal arrangements are sublime with more of a jazz influence than on earlier works. The use of an electric harpsichord is an inspired choice and it made me assume that it was the work of a Wrecking Crew member like Leon Russell; imagine my surprise to discover that it was in fact played by Brian himself. In fact, the instrumentation was all the product of The Beach Boys themselves. I used to think that Dennis Wilson was merely a competent drummer but he holds time perfectly well on this. Imagine that: not only could they all sing but they could even play too! Finally, Brian and cousin Mike have rarely sounded so good playing off one another. In many respects opposites as people, their opposing vocal styles mesh beautifully.

Beach Boy fans can have that second side of Today; I'll take the first side along with much of the Summer Days album. Brian's best work of this period seemed to merge sophisticated musical ideas with some youthful diary entry shenanigans. While he could pull off profundity ("In My Room"), he was often better off sticking with childish shit. It was what he was into and, as they say, you should write what you know. (1977's bizarre, erratic and sometimes uncomfortable Beach Boys Love You as well as its unreleased follow-up Adult Child indicate that he never really lost his love of childlike wonder) You may assume that Brian Wilson matured as an artist but he seemed just as content to immature at the very same time.

Score: 9

The Beach Boys: "I Get Around"

June 29, 1964 (1 week)

Whether it's the very best, the utterly incompetent or all those charming groups somewhere in between, the vast majority of chart topping acts are represented fairly well by their biggest hits. No, not every Beatles' classic made it to number one but several did. The same goes for Elvis, Bee Gees, Michael Jackson and Madonna. But not quite everyone. Many of Elton John's number one hits disappoint compared to some of the brilliant songs he recorded at the same time — and the same goes for The Beach Boys.

If anything, it's their number twos that give a stronger impression of the quintet. "Surfin' USA" had been a chart runner up a year earlier and it would eventually be followed by "California Girls", "Barbara Ann", "Sloop John B" and "Good Vibrations". I know, "Barbara Ann" is a silly throwaway and there are many who think "Sloop John B" is a botch (they're wrong, by the way) but you can't tell me "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations" aren't among their finest moments. (That said, "Sail On, Sailor" is another of their remarkable singles and it limped to number seventy-three)

"I Get Around" might be the best of their trio of Canadian chart toppers but even it isn't quite at the level of their absolute best. And while you could chalk that up to a major improvement in the quality of their work over the next couple years, it shouldn't be forgotten that an arguably superior song ("Don't Worry Baby") was on its B side and that it had already appeared earlier in the year on their fifth album Shut Down Volume 2. (The front cover of the single sort of implies that "Don't Worry Baby" was meant to have more prominence; the CHUM chart has them marked as a double A side)

"Surfin' USA", "Surfin' Safari" and "Surfer Girl" established The Beach Boys as a group who sang a lot about, well, surfing. In spite of the best efforts of the Wilson brothers, it was a reputation they could never fully shake. Indeed, the subject of cars and transportation is even more apparent in their work, possibly because it was something they could all relate to. (Famously, Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who actually surfed; on the other hand, it's a good bet they all possessed a drivers licence) Hits like "Little Deuce Coupe" and "Fun, Fun, Fun" got the ball rolling on this second phase, one that would carry forward on much of their silly but technically marvelous 1965 album Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!). While its predecessor, The Beach Boys Today!, tended towards the serious, tracks such as "The Girl from New York City", "Amusement Parks USA", "Salt Lake City" and the sublime "California Girls" painted a picture of a madcap road trip around the United States.

Burnout — something that Brian Wilson knows all too well — was the biggest drawback when it came to how astoundingly prolific everyone seemed to be in the mid-sixties. (Aside from The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding and The Rolling Stones all released two albums apiece in '65; "Only two?" asked members of The Supremes who put out four LPs that year) But another side effect was that it could result in a lot of thrown together projects. The idea of putting together a unified long playing disc had already been done in jazz and was obviously the foundation of cast recordings of musicals but it wasn't really a thing yet in pop. Thus, the aforementioned Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) only toyed with the idea of being a travelogue (a topic they would explore more fully on their 1973 classic Holland) since it had to accommodate whatever else they had in the can. Had Wilson been given more time and had there not been such heavy demands placed on artists such as him, he might even have been able to find room for "I Get Around" on it. For that matter, the extra time he might have had could have been spent on making it shine even brighter.

What we got instead was a rushed affair that still manages to be a triumph — at least to an extent. I'm sure it would have been mighty impressive in the context of what they had been recording up until the midway point of 1964 but it's hard to hear it that way now. The group that made so many near-miss number ones in the years ahead blows their earlier work out of the water. I must confess I don't feel proud writing this. I hate it when people judge The Beatles the same way, as they somehow seem to feel that a late period song like "Let It Be" far outpaces, say, "Please Please Me" even though it's the other way around in my mind. Yet, I'm no different when it comes to The Beach Boys. Good as many of them are, songs like "I Get Around" is best kept to when they did surfing and hot rods but before they really began to blossom as artistes.

Score: 7

~~~~~

C'Mon, Be a CHUM!

Introducing a new segment here on Old Familiar Tunes! Celebrating the CHUM number ones that didn't quite make it that high on the RPM chart. Jamaica's Millie Small took an obscure fifties record and transformed it into a ska-pop moment for the ages. A number two hit on both the British charts and the Hot 100, it fell similarly short on the RPM Top 40 as well. (It did, however, manage to go all the way to the top in Brazil, Ireland, Singapore, South Africa and Sweden; check out Aidan Curran's excellent review on his Irish Number Ones blog) Sounding girlish, charming and confident, Millie more than does it justice, she actually manages to make it seem like it's a far greater song than it is. Outstanding and a harbinger of things to come from Jamaica as well as being impactful in its own right over in the UK. It's great when something really influential also happens to be a lot of fun to listen to; you'd think the two would go hand-in-hand the majority of the time but that is not always the case. As Brian Eno once said, millions of people bought "My Boy Lollipop" and some formed bands — the rest just got on with their lives.

Inez Foxx: "Mockingbird"

August 26, 1963 (2 weeks)

Near the beginning of the eighties comedy classic National Lampoon's Vacation, the Griswold family are heading out on the first day of their ill-fated trip from Chicago to Walley World in California. Parents Clark and Ellen try to engage their kids, Rusty and Audrey, in a family singalong but, like all out-of-touch adults, the majority of their choices do not interest their teenage kids one bit. Cajoling them to join in on "Mockingbird", Audrey protests that they "don't know any of your songs" while Rusty reckons it sounds "made up". (It is only when Clark gets them to sing the "Wally World National Anthem" that the two surly kids give in but they're right back to being disinterested when their folks follow it with an unwelcome rendition of "Jimmy Crack Corn")

Rusty Griswold is correct in his assessment of "Mockingbird". No, not because every song is "made up" but due to the fact that it is highly contrived. The reworking of the beloved nursery rhyme "Hush Little Baby", it lacks the sweetness of its antecedent and fails to add anything of note to it. I suppose it's possible fans were impressed by the call-and-response of the Foxx siblings but it feels too much like doing so just for the sake of it. And what charm there was in their vocal double act is diminished considerably by it being so bloody repetitive.

It doesn't really sound like it now but many took "Mockingbird" as a novelty song at first. Perhaps it was simply the oddity of a song normally sung to babies being adapted into a pop hit that convinced them of such. Yet, it doesn't quite work on that level since there's nothing amusing about it once you get past the "oh, it's that kids song!" reaction. Had they meant to go the "Chipmunk Song"/"Purple People Eater" route, they could've added a lot more to it in terms of production tricks and/or vocal gimmicks. As such, I'm not convinced the Foxx siblings had cutting a novelty song in mind but this then begs the question, what prompted them to do such a trivial tune in the first place?

The photogenic Inez Foxx was initially credited as a solo artist but her brother Charlie contributed just as much. It is said that their record label Symbol wanted to mold her into a star but it is difficult to fathom what they had against a brother-sister tandem instead. That said, she's easily the best thing about "Mockingbird". He handles his side okay but she completely overshadows him with some pretty stellar singing. Scatting seemed to come naturally to her so it's easy to picture her making a gradual move towards jazz — which, sadly, she never really did. Beyond the fact that it's a tedious bore for the most part, what's especially frustrating about "Mockingbird" is that they were capable of a lot better. And maybe they did do stronger work later on but by then the majority of folk had already had their fill of them. You only get one chance to make an impression so it's best to make it count; hell, they might have even done something that Rusty and Audrey Griswold might have sung along with.

Score: 4

~~~~~

Hey! Where's...?

Listed as 'Beachboys' on the CHUM Hit Parade (though that may be as much down to the limitations of space on their cramped listings than anything else), the California quintet — minus longtime member Al Jardine who had left the group to attend dental school; he'd be back before you could say "four out of five dentists" — were still in their early period of songs about surfing and hot rods but Brian Wilson's talent and angst was already beginning to seep their way into their material. "In My Room" is frequently cited as a sign of things to come but "Surfer Girl" is every bit as mature. The same cannot be said for flip side "Little Deuce Coupe" which is brief yet somehow still manages to overstay its welcome. The 'Beachboys' were always factional and this double A side gives an accurate assessment of how polarized they were, even at this early stage. This was a group whose artistic advances always seemed to take a backseat to commercial priorities so to have their brilliant but moody hit having to share space with a bit of filler is typical of any group who'd have a Mike Love in it.