Hailing
from the London borough of Bermondsey, the Handley
Family were – for a very short period – touted as England’s answer to the Partridge Family, the Osmonds and the Jackson Five. The five siblings (three
girls – Molly, Wendy and Sally - and two boys – Tommy and Billy) appeared on
Hughie Green's talent show Opportunity Knocks and
released at least three singles, the first of which managed to scrape into the
UK Top 30 in 1973. There was at least one further sister, Julie, and Sally had
previously sung with the showband Sweet Rain.
Issued
on RCA imprint GL the A-Side, Wam Bam
is pretty typical of its type and time, a singalong country song – written by
Dave Christie (who would become the group’s producer) - that would keep a Sunday
night TV audience tapping their feet for a couple of minutes between acts on
any televised variety show. You can easily imagine this song being covered by Op Knocks superstar Lean Zavaroni. The B-Side, however, is another matter.
Rum, Dum and Baccy is downright awful, with ludicrous lyrics
which in no way reflect the particular type of alcohol or the cigarettes
mentioned in the title. Also, the kids clearly sing Rum Dum DUM Baccy all the
way through the song, rather than the correct Rum, Dum AND Baccy.
Went to a dance, saw a girl named Sandy
Dancing with Brandy and sipping on shandy
The candy was handy so we gave it to Sandy
Everybody there was feeling dandy
Wo-woah! Rum, dum-dum, baccy....
Just
stupid. And that’s it: that one verse repeated twice. Great bongoes though, and at least the writers Dave Reece and Steve Glen - who would go on to release the frankly ridiculous and overblown Jim Steinman rip-off Down Among the Dead Men (the Story of the Titanic) on CBS in 1980 - saved embarrassing the children by avoiding the use of the word 'randy'! The
Handley kids, all too young to enjoy the delights of booze or tobacco would go
on to release two further 45s on Dave Christie’s Tiffany label (Boing Boing
Boing/Chuggin’ Along and Light Up
the World With Sunshine/Joanna May), with the Handley sisters also being
roped in to sing backing vocals on other sessions for the company: they can be
heard prominently on recordings by ‘comedian’ Freddie Starr, who co-incidentally was also a former winner of
Opportunity Knocks.
There
were a few live appearances, including being the star attraction at the Bermondsey
and Rotherthithe Carnival, where they arrived in an open-top limousine. They
also appeared on several other TV shows, including kid’s teatime staples Crackerjack and Lift Off with Ayshea. Their time in the spotlight was brief; the kids grew up,
left school, put their music career behind them and brought up families of
their own.
Released in 1972, the Richard Harris Love Album is a ridiculous time-capsule of grandiose
schlock, and a thoroughly justifiable exhibit in our museum of oddities. Some people love this kind of thing: the same people who like early Al Stewart and drink Mateus Rose no doubt.
Consisting primarily of tracks from his first three (yes,
I know, there were Richard Harris albums
before, and after, this horror) plus
both sides of his latest single – taken from the recent musical remake of Goodbye Mr Chips – The Richard Harris Love Album is basically
a ‘best of’ the Irish-born actor’s early recordings although, confusingly, one
or two tracks have been renamed and could easily confuse the casual buyer into
thinking he or she were getting new product for their pounds.
At the tail end of the 60s Harris’s recorded work
garnered much praise although in all fairness most of that praise was aimed at
the song writing and arrangement prowess of his co-conspiritor Jimmy Webb rather than Harris’s own
vocal dexterity: “I admire Jimmy,” says the great Burt Bacharach in Bill DeMain’s
book In Their Own Words. “I thought
the album he did with Richard Harris was one of the great, great albums. I
think the songs are just unbelievable on it”. Yet to me he fails miserably to
reach the heights of the only truly great singing actor, Peter Wyngarde. Webb, who also wrote Glen Campbell's smash hits By
the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita Lineman and Galveston, had met Harris at an anti-war rally in Los Angeles and
to this day won’t hear a word against his friend. “If he missed a note or he
didn't carry it off particularly well as a singer, he had the actor's ability
to step his way through the lyric and to speak some of the lines and basically
to carry it off…it's a little insulting to say that he couldn't perform, or
that he couldn't sing,” he told songfacts.com
Listen to One of
the Nicer Things, and make up your own mind. It’s understandable that Webb
would want to support his mate’s performance, especially as Harris is no longer
here to answer for himself: the Oscar- and Golden Raspberry-nominated actor passed
away in 2002. He’s probably best remembered these days for having played Albus
Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies but his filmmaking career spanned
more than 40 years. Still, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree that his voice is awful:
a thin, reedy wail that often misses its mark. Webb and Harris, of course,
collaborated on the overblown horror that is MacArthur Park – and Webb’s own story of how that particular track
was recorded makes for enlightening and entertaining reading.
“Richard and I started hanging out after rehearsals and
drinking Black Velvets: 50% Guinness, 50% champagne,” he told The Guardian in
2013. “One night after a few, I said: ‘We ought to make a record.’ He'd starred
in the movie Camelot and sang every song in it beautifully. A few weeks later,
I received a telegram: ‘Dear Jimmy Webb. Come to London. Make this record.
Love, Richard.’
“Over the course of two days we tore through 30 or 40 of
my songs. I was playing the piano and singing. He was standing there in his
kaftan, waving his arms and expressing excitement at some songs, not so crazy
about others. The best went into his debut album, A Tramp Shining. MacArthur
Park was at the bottom of my pile. By the time I played it, we had moved on
to straight brandy, but Richard slapped the piano. ‘Oh Jimmy Webb. I love that!
I'll make a hit out of that, I will.’
“I recorded the basic track back in Hollywood, with
myself on harpsichord accompanied by session musicians the Wrecking Crew. When
Richard did the vocals at a London studio, he had a pitcher of Pimm's by the
microphone. We knew the session was over when the Pimm's was gone.
“We had doubts about releasing it as a single, but when
radio stations began playing it I was asked to do a shorter version as a
single. I refused, so eventually they put out the full seven minutes 20
seconds. George Martin once told me the Beatles let Hey Jude run to over seven
minutes because of MacArthur Park.” Incidentally, Harris was not the first choice
to record MacArthur Park: the song
had originally been offered to The
Association, who turned it down.
I’ve also included First
Hymn From Grand Terrace which, on the disc’s label is listed as The First Hymn From Grand Terrace (Part 2),
but was originally part of a suite of songs that appeared on the second
Webb/Harris album The Yard Went on
Forever entitled The Hymns From The
Grand Terrace) If the arseing around with the title doesn’t annoy you, the
performance will. Harris’s forced vibrato is uncomfortable to listen to, and
the strain in his voice when he hits the key change hurts my ears. Coming out
of a Dansette, in a bedsit full of scatter cushions and thick with marijuana
smoke this probably sounded brilliant...I can see how a young lady would be wooed by Jimmy's seductive lyrics and lush arrangements, but today it’s a kitsch reminder that, back
in the 60s, people would buy anything. Although Harris would release several
albums of new material after he and Webb parted company, he would never again
reach the heights he once did.
Whenever
I’ve asked you what your favourite (or, more likely, least favourite) bad
record is, one title rears its ugly head again and again and again, and it is
that record I bring to you today, complete with its seldom-heard B-side.
An
appalling ditty with nonsense lyrics, this particular monstrosity - Little Arrows by Leapy Lee - was a huge hit: Number 2 in the UK and Australia,
Number 11 in America, Top 10 in Canada and a Number One smash in several
European countries. It’s still horrible though, and it’s no surprise that it
regularly turns up on bad record lists. Luckily this was denied the top spot by
the first two releases from the Beatles’
Apple records - Hey Jude and Those Were the Days.
Little
Arrows was co-written by Albert Hammond, whose song writing credits include The
Air That I Breathe, Don’t Turn Around, When I Need You, One Moment in Time, Nothing’s
Gonna Stop Us Now – and Gimmie Dat Ding. Hammond – who knew Lee through their
mutual friendship with Dave Davis of the Kinks – gave him the song “because,”
he told DJ and writer Jon Kutner, “He said he was a singer and I couldn’t get
anyone else to record it.” Lee, Hammond states, “was a jack of all trades; he’d
been a comedian, an antique dealer, a fruit seller and even a bingo caller in
Shepherd’s Bush!” Perhaps what is surprising is that this was not Lee’s first
recording: three years earlier he released the self-penned It’s All Happening on Pye. Nor, unfortunately, would it be his
last. It would, though, be his only major hit. Later covered by Little Jimmy Osmond, Leapy Lee re-recorded and re-issued the song in 2010.
Lee is a
funny old character. Still performing today at the grand old age of (almost) 75
– mostly around Mallorca, where he has lived since the early 1980s – he’s
perhaps better known locally as a rather reactionary columnist for the ex-pat
English-language newspaper the Euro Weekly News...although I suspect the irony
of his being rabidly against immigration whilst being an immigrant himself is
no doubt lost on him. Born Graham Pulleybank in 1939 (he would later change his
name to Lee Graham); he’s also very down on criminals – odd when you consider
his own brush with the law. His chart career was nobbled shortly after his
second US hit when, in July 1970, Leapy found himself in the Chequers Pub in
London's West End with actor Alan Lake (who, at that time, was married to WWR
alumnus Diana Dors). A fight broke out and the pub’s relief manager was stabbed
- allegedly by Lee, who was sentenced to three years in prison. Lake got 18
months.
Little Arrows is bad enough, but you’ve yet to hear the
dreadful B-side, Time Will Tell.
Co-written and produced by Gordon Mills, the legendary manager of Tom Jones, Englebert
Humperdinck and Gilbert O'Sullivan, it’s an absolute shocker. Mills, who also
wrote or co-wrote hits for Cliff Richard, the Searchers and others, really
dropped the ball with this piece of rubbish, but even if the song had been
world class it would have been ruined by Lee’s ridiculous performance. I quite like the Joe Meek-esque compression, but the song
itself is totally unsuited to his mediocre voice, and Lee’s constant straining to hit
the right notes (and failing miserably) makes for rather uncomfortable
listening. You’d have to hope that he was aiming for something comedic - but it
doesn’t make me laugh.
Born on May 15, 1918, Richard
Edward ‘Eddy’ Arnold was one of country music’s most popular performers,
with a career that spanned six decades, 147 hits on the Billboard Country Music
charts and sales in excess of 85 million records. A pioneer of Nashville sound
(the country-pop crossover popularised by Arnold and stable-mate Jim Reeves), he was ranked 22nd on
Country Music Television's list of The 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003.
Nicknamed the Tennessee Plowboy (because he grew up on a
farm and started his performing career while still working there), he was
signed by Colonel Tom Parker more
than a decade before the Colonel would get his claws into Elvis Presley, and cut his first disc – a schmaltzy piece of
hillbilly music called Mommy Please Stay Home with Me - in 1944. That flopped, but the
follow up (Each Minute Seems a Million Years) was a top five hit on the country charts and began an unprecedented run
of 57 Top 10 hits. Although his appeal waned with the advent of Rock ‘n’ Roll,
in the middle of the 60s he had an unexpected resurgence, with two massive hits,
What's He Doing in My World? and Make the World Go Away. “I’ve
never thought of myself as a country-and-western singer,” he told a reporter from
The Charlotte Observer in 1968. “I’m really a pop music artist. I want my songs
to be accepted by everyone.”By 1969 however the pop hits dried up,
although he continued to score hits on the country charts until 1983.
In 1971 he released
what was easily the most misguided song of his career, a woeful piece of right
wing propaganda entitled A Part
of America Died. Arnold, known for
his smooth vocal style, felt that this particular portentous piece of crap needed
something different and decided to recite the song’s scaremongering lyrics whilst
a choir hammered home the message by mumbling a hymn in the background.
According to Michael Streissguth (in his book Eddy Arnold:
Pioneer of the Nashville Sound), with A
Part of America Died‘Eddy took a
turn toward topical material, addressing Middle America’s growing concern with
crime, an issue brought to the fore by President Richard M. Nixon’s rhetoric. A Part of America Died (was) penned by
Harry Koch – a policeman – and lashed out at the overemphasis on criminals’
rights…Eddy condemns a policeman’s murder while a disembodied chorus singing
the Old Rugged Cross hovers behind
him. “I think it’s timely,” Eddy said.’
A stalwart Nixon supporter, Arnold was so convinced his
record would sell to the moral majority that he regularly called RCA sales reps
around the country to check on its progress. The lyrics to this awful dirge
were even mentioned in the United States Congress when Mario Biaggi, the
representative for New York’s 24th District and a former policeman
himself, rose to his feet and quoted parts of the song to the rest of the House
of Representatives.
Despite that, and in spite of a Billboard review which
claimed that ‘this potent message could
easily prove an important pop item’ the single struggled to gain a footing
in the country charts – peaking at a miserable 41 - and failed to provide him
with a much-wanted crossover hit. “I’ve always picked good song,” he told Michael
Streissguth. “I always picked a good lyric, and that gave me a wider audience
than just the country buyers. I did that on purpose. I never was political
about songwriters.” Boy, did he pick a wrong ‘un this time. Disappointed by the
lack of mainstream success, he followed it up with a cover of the Jim Reeves
classic Welcome to my World, which
limped into the country charts at 34.
Arnold died, in a care facility near Nashville, on May 8,
2008, just two weeks before his 90th birthday. Just three weeks
later RCA issued To Life, a cut from Eddy’s final album (recorded and released
in 1996). The song debuted at 49 on the Country charts, setting the record for
the longest span between a first chart single and a last: 62 years and 11
months, and extending Eddy's career chart history to seven decades.
