Q: There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of documentation, as far as what kind of touring y’all did. Did the Electric Prunes do any package tours?
LOWE: We did tours all over. We were on the Beach Boys tours a few times. Brian Epstein brought us to Europe. our manager was Donovan’s American manager. His name was Lenny Poncher. Somehow, we got plugged in with him and Brian Epstein. Supposedly, Brian Epstein really liked us.”
- Jim Lowe of the Electric Prunes interviewed by Here ‘Tis magazine, 1997
Three solidly rock and roll songs this week, though two are duplicated - I wonder when that stops being a thing that happens? I get covers trending a few years apart, but the same week feels excessive.
Rip It Up - Bill Haley and His Comets (peaked at Number 4)
This is absolutely a song I know, though I suspect I might know the original version, a Little Richard number from the same year. His version got to Number 30 in the UK charts, but this one, which was way less successful in the US, was the one that charted in the UK.
Still, it's a song I could plausibly sing a few lines of already, and I went into it pretty excited. And I was right to, this is such a fun song! It's high-paced, and absolutely lives and dies on how much you like hand-clapping. Thankfully, I really like some hand-clapping, so the sheer amount of clapping in this song is perhaps the opposite of a problem.
The song's about going having a wild night out. We learn early-doors that it's Saturday night / And I just got paid. He doesn't care about saving his money, and so he tells us repeatedly over perhaps the most rock and roll chord progression about how I'm gonna rock it up / I'm gonna rip it up / I'm gonna break it up / I'm gonna lock it up / At the ball tonight. If you swapped "at the ball" to something more like "at the club", you could put lyrics like that in a modern song, there's something timelessly appealing about them.
Less timeless and more dated (but in a very charming way!) is Bill's description of how he turns it into a date, picking his girl up in his 88, before describing A shag going down / By the social hall / When the joint starts jumpin' / Gonna gave me a ball. Has a more 50s description of a night out ever been written? I'm not sure...
Throughout, the energy is maintained, even as we launch into a series of solos. The star of the show here is the saxophone, which at one point even launches into something that sounds alarmingly similar to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, before the soloist clearly realises what he's doing and saves it. It's fine though, more a cheeky little reference than anything. And then Bill's back, it's not a very long segment.
Less salvageable is the opening and ending, where for some reason Bill has chosen to include an absolutely cursed child-like voice first saying Let's rip it up, then Oh my! as the song ends. It adds very little to the song, and it sounds like some sort of haunted ventriloquist's dummy who's about to murder you to death. Not a fan at all, which is a shame, because otherwise this is a pretty cool song.
Green Door - Jim Lowe (8)
And so we get to our first of two different versions of this song. Considerately enough for our purposes, they've both been given minorly different titles, which makes my job a touch easier. Not much, but a bit. This one, without the "The", is the original, by Jim Lowe, an American singer and radio personality.
I immediately like the opening, all soft strings and woodblock percussion, playing a sort of tick-tock card-indicator sound before a habanera rhythm kicks in. It gives of definite jazzy Latin vibes, both from the instrumention and the rhythm itself. And this keeps up throughout the whole track, more or less obtrusively. It works well.
Then we get lyrics, and they unfold quite an interesting story - I'm left with just enough questions to keep me guessing, in any case! We learn that it's Midnight, one more night without sleeping, and that Jim is Watching, till the morning comes creeping. So he can't sleep, for whatever reason. And so he goes up to a mysterious green door, but he can't get in. And that's the whole concept of the song, just a man trying to get into a club and failing. Which doesn't sound like a great idea, but it works quite effectively.
I think it helps that we get these little glimpses of what might be going on. We know that there's an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door. And then, even worse for sufferers of FOMO: Don't know what they're doing but they laugh a lot behind the green door. He tries to get in, but the door slams in his face, leaving him wondering what's going on. An eyeball peeps out through a smoky cloud, but when he tries to get in, they just mock him and shut it again, and that's it. Our narrator peels off again, and doesn't get any sleep, and is endlessly frustrated by that mysterious green door.
In among this all there's also a fun little nod to a past Number 1, as we hear that When I said Joe sent me some one laughed out loud behind the green door. Which the eagle-eared will pick up as a reference to the password at Hernando's Hideaway, another 1950s Latin-flavoured song describing an impossibly cool bar. So it's like a cute little Easter egg!
Amazingly, the titular green door may have been inspired by the Green Door Tavern, a bar that sprung up in Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but which became the Green Door Tavern in 1921, and was the site of a well-known speakeasy, to the point where green doors apparently became a symbol of speakeasies more generally.
Anyway, the mystery works in this song's favour, because I'm imagining all sorts of fabulous goings-on at this super-exclusive club. I particularly love the way the sleepy night-time ambience of the verses ramps up into the rowdier, louder chorus, which cuts in like music spilling out of the club, before cutting back again when the door slams with a literal slamming sound effect. It's a really clever way to create atmosphere and illustrate the story.
The Green Door - Frankie Vaughan (2)
Okay, I've already complained in my introduction about these 1950s doubled-up songs, but I still don't like them! Not least because they make my life quite difficult. It would be one thing if they were vastly different in style or tone, but they're really not. Instead, we're getting the more standard thing where an American original hits it big, and so a homegrown British cover rises up to challenge it, and does passably well.
Only in this case, Frankie's version didn't just do "passably well", it beat Jim's version completely. Which is a shame, because this version is in my opinion slightly worse. There's not much that makes it worse - maybe something about the strings they add to the introduction, or the slightly plummy British-ness to Frankie's voice, or the cheesily intense Green door at the very end of the song? I don't know what it is, but I just like this version a bit less. Sorry, Frankie!
They've got a few more theatrical touches that I do appreciate, so it's not all bad. I particularly like the little flick upwards that Frankie's voice does on Green door in the chorus, which gives him a properly manic, desperate sound, to the actual piano frill when he mentions the piano that they're playing. There's also a saxophone solo. Which feels on brand for 1956, which I'm considering naming the Year of the Sax. It's hard to go wrong with a sax solo, as long as you throw enough attitude at it, and sure enough, this one's a banger. So there's that.
But... yeah, I don't like it as much. I don't have to justify myself, this is my blog.
Wow, we're really at peak saxophone, aren't we? We're definitely still at the point in the development of rock and roll where saxophone and double bass are the main instruments, along with a bit of electric guitar, and maybe some piano or horns. I'll be interested to see when electric bass becomes more common, though, because I feel like we've heard some, it's just not that frequent yet? We'll see, though.
As for my favourite this week, it's a tough one, but as much as I loved Rip It Up, the absolutely cursed voice in the intro and outro just scared me off a bit.
