The Billboard Hot 100 Number Ones

[Rob]

Some guy named Robert John also had a hit with it in 1972, which I actually became familiar with before the Tokens' version.

[lonelysummer]

Sept 15, 2024 4:52:17 GMT Rob said:

Some guy named Robert John also had a hit with it in 1972, which I actually became familiar with before the Tokens' version.

Yes, that's the one I heard first. Interesting side note: he was a one hit artist for seven years, until he belatedly hit the top 40 again in 1979 with "Sad Eyes". That leads to a whole catagory of artists whose first and second hits were years apart - Janis Ian, Maxine Nightingale, Wilbert Harrison, Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds.

[Kapitan]

Most of the story behind "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was new to me in researching the song for this thread. Previous to that I'd say my strongest memory/association with the tune was along the same lines as this post I did last spring for another of our 1961 No. 1s, "Blue Moon." 

Apr 30, 2024 13:06:19 GMT Kapitan said:

This is one of those songs I've known my whole life, but I really never gave it much thought. I had no idea who wrote it, who first recorded it, who had hits with it. I just knew the song, especially this version. (Never even heard the name the Marcels until this thread, though.)

My strongest memories associated with "Blue Moon" are of my college years, when I was about 21 or 22. One of my older brothers--easily the best singer of anyone in the family--used to regularly perform in an a cappella trio (and sometimes quartet), generally at weddings, funerals, fairs, etc. But there was a bar in the college town where they were based whose owner just loved them, and so when he did karaoke nights, he'd give them and anyone with them free food and drinks all night as long as they'd sing a handful of tunes (either to the karaoke backgrounds or just a cappella). 

So in the summers or when I was around on breaks, I'd go with them from time to time. They'd sing their songs and I'd sit at a corner table drinking free beer and eating free bar food. It was a great deal for me! One of the songs they sang was always "Blue Moon," partly because that bass intro/part is always a hit with audiences.

(For the life of me, I can't remember many other songs they'd sing. "Under the Boardwalk," "Sherry," and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" come to mind, but I can't recall any others off hand.)

(I have found that the aforementioned brother's trio has a video online dating from the very early 90s of them singing this one at a junior college talent show. It's pretty funny, because they look so, so 1991!)

[Sheriff John Stone]

This is a unique one. I think I became familiar with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" more from the remake - specifically Robert John's - than The Tokens version. But then it went the other way. I rarely heard Robert John's version on the radio, and I started to hear The Token's version on all of the oldies' stations.

It is a great song I guess. It's stood the test of time, and people still seem to enjoy it. Here we go again, but in some ways it's another novelty song. Those early 1960s just couldn't get enough of them. While it doesn't rock like some versions of "Barbara Ann", in some ways it reminds me of that type of song. The intro is instantly recognizable and people just feel the urge to want to sing along. It has that happy feeling. Even kids like it, as they do with "Barbara Ann". Is anybody surprised that The Beach Boys didn't cover "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"? I can hear it in my head.

My God, they look like a cool rock & roll band despite the poor video:

[Rob]

The intro is instantly recognizable and people just feel the urge to want to sing along.

I know I'm certainly never more than a whim away from humming it.

Is anybody surprised that The Beach Boys didn't cover "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"? I can hear it in my head.

True, how did this not happen? They would've nailed it.
See, this is what I meant the other week in the other thread where I lamented the fact that BB didn't do more covers.

My God, they look like a cool rock & roll band despite the poor video

Thanks for posting that, I've never seen it. Stunning.
This is another thing I loved about the late 50's, early 60's pop music - many if not most of the bands wore suit and tie. Classy. It helped that that era had the best clothing styles, imo.

[Kapitan]

”Peppermint Twist,” by Joey Dee and the Starliters
Jan. 27 - Feb. 10, 1962 (3 weeks)

The song that knocked “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” off the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 was actually a prior No. 1, Chubby Checker’s “The Twist.” That song, released in June 1960 and the chart-topper for one week in September of that year, benefitted from a late 1961 and early 1962 revival of the titular dance craze.

He was not the only beneficiary. There was a Manhattan nightclub called the Peppermint Lounge: fans, and perhaps most importantly, celebrities such as Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Liberace, and many others, flocked there in large part to do the twist.

Who else? A group called Joey Dee and the Starliters, which got its start in 1958, earned a gig at the Peppermint Lounge in 1960. Their performance, intended as a one-off, had celebrities dancing and earned a couple of write-ups in local gossip columns. Thus a one-off became a recurring gig, and even to a years-long job as the house band.

The Starliters were unusual for the era in that two of the original members were black. Integrated bands in any musical genre were rare—more common in jazz, but far less so in rock and roll, R&B, country and western, and other pop music formats. They further integrated by performing beginning in 1961 with background dancers and occasional singers Estelle and Veronica Bennett and Nedra Talley (who, between them, could claim Irish-American, African-American, Cherokee, Puerto Rican, and Chinese heritage!). This trio went on to become the Ronettes.

Dee also ran a tight ship: this was a performing band. They were to look sharp, dress well, in suits. They were forbidden from drinking or smoking on stage, and from doing any drugs whatsoever. Their job was to keep club patrons dancing and buying drinks: keep ‘em twisting. Recording was secondary.

Part of the reason recording was secondary was that the label that signed the group, Roulette Records, was owned by Moishe “Morris” Levy, who had ties to the Genovese crime family. Levy told Dee in no uncertain terms that he would not receive much of anything in royalties, but assured him he’d make his money from performances. (Dee, in a 2020 interview, admitted that he did indeed make that money as promised.)

One reason Dee signed with Roulette was that Levy also was able to make a promise that larger interested labels could not make: he’d release Dee’s new single, “Peppermint Twist (Part 1),” within 10 days. (Part 2, actually just the mostly instrumental continuation of the too-long full song, would be the single’s B-side.) Dee—correctly, it turned out—believed that as the twist continued its national takeover, there would be innumerable knock-offs from artists far and wide. He wanted to beat the crowd.

Dee claims he had written the song within two hours in September 1961. The credits list Roulette exec Henry Glover—a rare black executive in a white-owned label, and a gifted musician himself, with “California Sun” another of his many credits—as a cowriter.

That same year, Dee appeared in a movie about the Peppermint Lounge called Hey, Let’s Twist, a fictional story about Dee, the Peppermint Lounge, and yes, the twist.

Just a couple of months later, the song hit No. 1, knocking off the original, its progenitor, Checker’s “The Twist.” It remained atop the charts for three weeks.

Dee and the Starliters never hit No. 1 again, but had five Top 40 hits overall, and kept performing and releasing music to some success through the ‘60s. They remained on Roulette Records for several years.

The band also became something of a foundry for talent: first, there were the Ronettes, previously mentioned. And then the lead singer on “Peppermint Twist” isn’t Dee, but rather David Brigati. He left the group in 1964, but was replaced by his brother Eddie, who joined two other then-Starliters Felix Cavaliere and Gene Cornish, to form the Young Rascals. (David Brigati was known as “the fifth Rascal” and often sang backgrounds with the group.)

Another early, brief, sporadic member was Joe Pesci, who played guitar. (In fact, Dee got Pesci his first film role, as an extra in the aforementioned Hey, Let’s Twist.

Finally, in the mid-60s, Dee hired a down-on-his luck veteran of the U.S. Army who’d built a reputation on the so-called chitlin’ circuit and with Little Richard’s touring band. He went by Maurice James at the time, and was born Johnny Allen Hendrix, but the world came to know him soon as Jimi Hendrix. (Dee relaxed the “no drugs” policy to let Hendrix quietly smoke pot on his own, but still demanded the same public standards.)

For their various interesting tangents—talent factory, mob ties, movies—Joey Dee and the Starliters’ biggest hit remained their answer to a novelty dance song and craze.

[jk]

I bought "Peppermint Twist" at the time, presumably with Christmas money. Whenever I played it, I played both sides. So I'm as at home with the even more riotous largely instrumental flip as I am with the A-side:



It's not as if it were all one long track that got split up to fit onto a 45. There's some rather jarring footage on YouTube of the Peppermint Lounge in full swing where the two sides are played in succession and the "join" is a mess.

We shouldn't forget the song's author, Henry Glover, who had an extraordinarily wide-ranging career.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Glover

[Kapitan]

Sept 19, 2024 11:35:17 GMT jk said:

We shouldn't forget the song's author, Henry Glover, who had an extraordinarily wide-ranging career.

I didn't!

Sept 18, 2024 19:46:27 GMT Kapitan said:

Dee claims he had written the song within two hours in September 1961. The credits list Roulette exec Henry Glover—a rare black executive in a white-owned label, and a gifted musician himself, with “California Sun” another of his many credits—as a cowriter.

Though I wonder what his contributions were. Dee talks about writing it himself, but the credits always included Glover. Considering he was a label executive, I doubt they were sitting around writing together. My guess would be Glover tightened it up, maybe did something with the arrangement, tweaked some lyrics after it was written? No idea, though.

[Kapitan]

By the way, I think "Peppermint Twist" is twice the song the original "The Twist" was. Maybe even three or four times. It's stupid, sure, as every "dance" song is in a way, but it's REALLY energetic. The drums really keep things going. The sax riff is cool. And I really like the harmony vocal part. I can definitely see why Joey Dee and the Starliters would have been a consistent draw in a nightclub environment in the same way the Beatles would've been in their early days. 

[jk]

Sept 19, 2024 13:50:58 GMT Kapitan said:

By the way, I think "Peppermint Twist" is twice the song the original "The Twist" was. Maybe even three or four times. It's stupid, sure, as every "dance" song is in a way, but it's REALLY energetic. The drums really keep things going. The sax riff is cool. And I really like the harmony vocal part. I can definitely see why Joey Dee and the Starliters would have been a consistent draw in a nightclub environment in the same way the Beatles would've been in their early days. 

I agree. There were better records about the Twist that you could actually twist to. Buddy Greco did a great Twist version of "I Ain't Got Nobody":

[Sheriff John Stone]

Very interesting backstory on "Peppermint Twist". That was a lot more involved than just recording a song to cash in on the fad. I'm very familiar with "Peppermint Twist" (it's always been a mainstay on oldies stations), but I'll say again in this thread that I'm surprised it was #1 for three weeks.

I have to disagree that "Peppermint Twist" is superior to "The Twist". Not to take anything away from "Peppermint Twist", it's great, but I think I prefer "The Twist". I like the rawer, rockier feel. I also like Chubby's voice better. "The Twist" was important.

[Kapitan]

"Duke of Earl," by Gene Chandler
Feb. 17 - March 3, 1962 (3 weeks)

The Duke of Early is Gene Chandler, who is (or was) Eugene Dixon, born in 1937 in Chicago, Illinois. He was still in high school when he began singing with the Gaytones.

As a young man, Dixon joined another vocal group, the Dukays, but his career was put on hold when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He spent a couple of years in the service but rejoined the Dukays in 1960 upon his return to Chicago.

The Dukays were signed to Nat Records and released their debut single, "The Girl is a Devil," in 1961. It charted as high as No. 62 on the Hot 100 and earned them a second chance in the recording studio in August 1961. They recorded four more songs, with two targeted as possible A-sides: "Nite Owl" and "Duke of Earl."

The latter tune included the Dukays on vocals (with Dixon on lead), as well as a band of drummer Al Duncan; pianist Floyd Morris; guitarists Lefty Bates, Phil Upchurch (probably on bass), and Kermit Chandler; and saxophonists Cliff Davis and John Board. Chandler told radio DJ Bob Sirott in 2022 that he wanted to add strings to the arrangement, but was told the label could not afford it.

The stories of how "Duke of Earl" came to be written and released (by Gene Chandler, no less, as opposed to the Dukays) is muddled by different tellings.

"Duke of Earl" is credited to Dixon, Earl Edwards, and the group’s manager and a songwriter in her own right, Berenice Williams, but Dixon told Australia’s Blue Juice Radio Show in 2001 that he was not just the primary, but almost sole writer. He wrote the song around a vocal exercise the Dukays used to do to warm up, singing the syllable "doo doo doo," etc., in different keys. Eventually he altered it to "duke, duke, duke," and later still, added "of Earl," referring jokingly to his bandmate Earl Edwards. He said he gave a co-writing credit to Edwards because it’s his name added into the song, and another co-writing credit to his manager and fellow songwriter Berenice Williams because she added a single line.

Edwards told The Chicago Soul that he conceived the song "from his personal point of view," as opposed to simple being the name attached to the vocal exercise by Dixon.

As to its release by "Gene Chandler," that’s also complicated … or at least fuzzy.

According to Dixon (in that Australian interview above), Vee-Jay Records—a Chicago-based, black-owned label—owned the publishing for the tunes, and thus while Nat Records had the right of first refusal on the recordings, Vee-Jay had access to the unreleased songs. And they really wanted "Duke of Earl" for themselves. The stars aligned as Nat Records made its decision to release "Nite Owl."



Vee-Jay obtained "Duke of Earl" and pushed for immediate release. Dixon says their producers, Bill Sheppard and Carl Davis (who owned Nat Records) were fine with Vee-Jay taking the tune, but did not want another, nearly simultaneously released Dukays single competing with "Nite Owl," which was struggling on the charts as it was (peaking at No. 73 on the Hot 100). They gave Dixon the choice: leave the Dukays and release "Duke of Earl" as a solo single, or stay with the Dukays and let someone else have "Duke of Earl." (He does not name the other would-be solo artist.) To further distance himself from the group, he’d take the stage name Gene Chandler. Dixon being a movie buff, the surname was an homage to actor Jeff Chandler, whom he loved in the 1951 film Broken Arrow). Dixon also said he thought the name Gene Chandler was "sort of a white name," which might help its pop-chart prospects.

Edwards’s telling doesn’t quite line up: his version of the story has the group leaving it up to their East Coast distributor, which selected "Nite Owl." But Vee-Jay wanted to release whichever of the two was left over, thus getting "Duke of Earl" by default. He says that the marketing strategy was always to release "Duke of Earl" under a solo artist’s name because of its individual perspective ("I’m the Duke of Earl"). The producers Sheppard and Davis went hunting for talent in this version of the tale, finding a young singer named Charles Davis in Gary, Indiana, as the likely future "Gene Chandler."

Edwards says the idea of giving the already Dukays-recorded song to an unaffiliated young singer to tour and follow up didn’t sit well with him, and so he (calling himself the leader of the Dukays) arranged a deal in which Dixon would be "Gene Chandler"—after all, he’d sung lead on the recording—and if it worked out, great. If not, he’d be welcomed back to the Dukays.

However it came to pass, "Duke of Earl" was released on Vee-Jay in November 1961. It became a smash, entering the Hot 100 in January 1962. It also topped the Billboard R&B charts and became Vee-Jay’s first million-seller.

To promote the single, Dixon/Chandler began performing as the Duke of Earl, donning a top hat, a cape, a monocle, and a cane. Charles Davis was indeed Chandler’s replacement in the Dukays, and they recorded for Vee-Jay going forward. The group also had an arrangement with Dixon/Chandler that they would share in the profits for "Duke of Earl," so there were no hard feelings about the song being known as being by the solo artist Gene Chandler. In fact, in the above-linked Chicago Soul story, replacement lead singer Charles Davis blamed the money the group got for "Duke of Earl" for their lack of ongoing drive. "The group started drifting away and stopped rehearsing. They just sort of lost motivation."

Dixon—now Chandler, of course—continued a career in the music business as a solo performer, but wisely diversified early on: he became a manager, a record producer, and entered real estate. This foresight let Chandler avoid the eventual career ups and downs that curse so many artists. In fact, he was in 2018 named by the Chicago Defender as one of the Top 50 black businessmen in Chicago.

The business acumen should not take away from his music career, though: while Chandler never again scored a No. 1 hit, he scored five more Top 40 hits on the Hot 100, and more than two dozen more songs charted there. His music performed even better on the Billboard R&B charts, where he had eight Top 10 singles. Chandler’s material charted as late as 1986, and he released an album as late as 1995.

Now 87 years old, Chandler still lives in Chicago.

[kds]

When I was a kid, I used to have a 45 of Duke of Earl, mainly because I thought the repeated bass vocal "Duke-Duke-Duke" was funny.

[jk]

I love this record although I've never owned it. It's from an age when atmosphere counted for a lot. I'll have more to say later.

[Sheriff John Stone]

"Duke Of Earl" is a classic doo-wop oldie. It's a little different because it's not a typical ballad, and it's not a fast(er) song. I didn't realize how close it was (early 1962) to The Beach Boys' career. The two actually overlapped. So, as The Beach Boys were just starting out, "Duke Of Earl" was #1, and Michael Edward Love was digging it:

I saw The Beach Boys perform "Duke Of Earl" (outdoors, in Reading, PA); it was the first time I saw Chris Farmer in the band. Good singer.