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ftguworldwide · 4 years ago

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“MAM’SELLE” - ART LUND [1947]

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"Mam'selle" is a bittersweet song about a rendez-vous with a "mam'selle" (mademoiselle) in a small café. The music was written by Edmund Goulding, the lyrics by Mack Gordon.

The song originally appeared in the movie, The Razor's Edge, with Tyrone Power in 1947.

Five versions of the song became top ten hits in 1947: by Art Lund, by Dick Haymes, by Frank Sinatra, by Dennis Day, and by The Pied Pipers. Frankie Laine had a hit jazz version, renowned for its vibe solo by Lou Singer.

The Art Lund recording was recorded on February 20, 1947 and released by MGM Records as catalog number 10011. The record first reached the Billboard magazine charts on April 11, 1947 and lasted 11 weeks on the chart, peaking at #1.

The Dick Haymes recording was recorded on March 6, 1947 and released by Decca Records as catalog number 23861. The record first reached the Billboard magazine charts on April 25, 1947 and lasted 8 weeks on the chart, peaking at #4.

The Frank Sinatra recording was recorded on March 11, 1947 and released by Columbia Records as catalog number 37343. The record first reached the Billboard magazine charts on May 10, 1947 and lasted 4 weeks on the chart, peaking at #6 on the Best Seller chart, and #1 on the Jockey chart.

The Dennis Day recording was released by RCA Victor Records as catalog number 20-2211. The record first reached the Billboard magazine charts on April 25, 1947 and lasted 5 weeks on the chart, peaking at #8.

The Pied Pipers recording was recorded on March 14, 1947 and released by Capitol Records as catalog number 396. The record first reached the Billboard magazine charts on May 2, 1947 and lasted 4 weeks on the chart, peaking at #9.

The Frankie Laine recording was recorded on March 28, 1947 and released by Mercury Records as catalog number 5048.

The R&B vocal group The Ravens released Mam'selle as the "A" side their 1952 OKeh single, catalog number 6888.

In the 1953 film Pickup on South Street, Moe (played by Thelma Ritter) plays the song on her phonograph in her one-room apartment.

Andy Williams released a version on his 1960 album, Under Paris Skies.

Barbershop Harmony Society 2006 quartet champion Vocal Spectrum recorded Tom Sando's arrangement of the song on their first CD.

#MAMSELLE #ARTLUND #JUNE #1947

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randomvarious · 5 years ago

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The Champs - “Tequila” Fetenhits: Oldies Song released in 1958. Compilation released in 1999. Frat Rock / Rock & Roll / Latin Rock

Though The Champs spawned a handful of hits in their improbable seven-year run, it was their first hit, the instrumental, “Tequila,” which was originally recorded as a throwaway b-side, that would make them an indispensable piece of both popular music and rock and roll history. But before getting into the band’s formation and the song itself, let’s do a little bit of scene setting.

From history-of-rock.com:

The year 1958 saw a dramatic increase in short-lived fad rock and roll instrumental combos. Not that Rock and roll instrumentals hadn't been around before or that they wouldn't be around later. It was just that the floodgates opened wide in 1958. A year earlier, the biggest selling instrumental was "Raunchy" by it's co-composer Bill Justis. By the end of 1959, there was Santo and Johnny, Johnny and the Hurricanes, Dave "Baby" Cortez, Duane Eddy, the Fireballs, the Virtues, the Wailers, Link Wray and His Ray Men, the Royaltones, the Rock-A-Teens, Sandy Nelson, Cozy Cole and Preston Epps. However the group that really created the demand was the Champs.

It’s The Champs, a loose collection of session musicians who officially formed as a band after “Tequila” was released, who are responsible for the most memorable rock and roll instrumental of all time. It’s not groups who dedicated themselves full-time to rock and roll instrumentals; it’s these guys, who, not long after they released their debut album and started to tour, became a revolving-door-band, and added people like Glen Campbell and the duo that would become Seals and Crofts to their ranks. A random session that was originally intended to be just a one-off to fill a b-side for a 45 ended up selling millions of records, rocketing up to #1 on the Billboard charts, and winning a Grammy. Go figure.

Now for the origin story of the band, with more from history-of-rock.com:

The story of the Champs began with Dave Burgess, who was born December 13, 1934, in Beverly Hills, CA. Burgess first recorded for Okeh Records, a subsidiary of Columbia that issued country, blues, and jazz records. Burgess was eighteen when he recorded his first two Okeh singles: "Don't Put A Dent In My Heart" and "Too Late For Tears." In 1955, he recorded two singles for Tampa Records "Don't Turn Your Back On Love" and "Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue." All were country and had no success.

In 1956, Burgess was recording for Top Records. Top would take unknown, but talented artists, have them cover the latest hits as closely as possible to the original, then issue them four-to-a-record for forty nine cents. Top's slogan was "twice the music at half the cost" and it was a bargain until the unsuspecting buyer got home and played the record. Burgess appeared on an unknown amount of records, but at least ten came out with his name in the credits.

Ethics aside, Burgess got a first hand education in recording and performing while at Top. In 1957, while working as a deejay in Lancaster, CA. to [pass] time he composed songs and sent them off to various music houses. Two became very successful that year" "I'm Available" in the "pop" field and "I'll Be There" in the country market. [The Champs would later record an instrumental version of “I’ll Be There” as a b-side for “Tequila” in 1958.]

His songwriting brought him to Challenge Records, a Los Angeles company founded in April, 1957 by Gene Autrey (sp.).. There he recorded as Dave Dupree, as well as under his own name. Four of Challenge's first singles were recorded by Burgess, who became a regular session guitarist for Challenge.

A couple days before Christmas in 1957, a session was arranged in Hollywood by Challenge to record Burgess’ next single, “Train to Nowhere,” due to be released in January, along with a b-side. Sitting in on the session with Burgess, who was on rhythm guitar, were, according to Wikipedia, “Cliff Hills on bass, the Flores Trio (Danny Flores on saxophone and keyboards, Gene Alden on drums, and lead guitarist Buddy Bruce), and Huelyn Duvall contributing backing vocals.” The group had recorded two other songs to consider for the b-side, “Night Beat” and “All Night Rock,” the latter of which has never been released. But at the tail-end of the session came an instrumental ditty.

history-of-rock.com has more:

With some studio time remaining, Burgess asked the other musicians to stay to help him come up with a B-side for a record he had previously recorded.One musician offered a Tex-Mex sax line, another a snappy guitar riff, the drummer played a backbeat on the bell of his cymbal and Burgess plucked the muted strings of his electric guitar.The song was called "Tequila" and was spoken after each bridge. In ten minutes they had a take.

And that was that. Sometimes a musician or a producer knows when they’ve got a hit on their hands...but this wasn’t one of those times. “Tequila” was a pure filler track. The seller was gonna be “Train to Nowhere”. Everyone at the session knew that. But then, sometime in January, some radio DJ in Cleveland got a hold of “Train to Nowhere” and decided he would spin the b-side instead. And three weeks later, “Tequila” was all of a sudden the #1 song in America. Wild.

“Tequila” is nothing without Danny Flores, the man who graces the track with his trademark “dirty” sax melodies and the intermittent gravelly murmur of the word “tequila.” At the time of the song’s recording, he was actually signed to another label, so he couldn’t use his actual name on the record. Instead, he went by Chuck Rio. It was because of “Tequila” though, that Flores was crowned as the godfather of Latin rock. And while that’s a really cool title to have bestowed upon yourself, one can’t help but think of all the money he missed out on from selling his American rights to the song for what’s been reported as a paltry amount of money. However, it wasn’t all bad. He still had the global rights to the song, which was said to have netted him about seventy grand a year up until his death in 2006. A lot more than probably any other 50s rocker can say they made in residuals off a single song.

“Tequila” has staying power, I think, because it pulls a bunch of different ideas from a bunch of different music styles. Its composition is simple, its melodies are catchy, and the fact that rock and roll instrumentals were popular at the time was definitely a contributing factor to its success, too. But this song also simultaneously carries that hip, 50s cocktail lounge kind of vibe with its cymbal taps and its mambo beat; it has hand claps and an upbeat rock and roll tempo for dancing and partying; its guitar strums are poppy; the chorus has a definite, escalatory big band jazz/swing feel to it; and Flores’ sax tone is very reminiscent of the jazz-brass-sleaze that had constantly complemented burlesque and striptease dance routines (it’s hard to imagine that strip joints used to have house bands, but they did) for years prior. In fact, something could even be said about how “Tequila” manages to combine an air of lounge-y sophistication with its beat, while supplying over-the-top, trashy amounts of sax melodies with its lead, representing a sort of convergence of two opposite styles of contemporaneous nightlife: artsy hipsterdom vs. raw, transparent transactionalism. It’s all in one track and all at the same time. A song by The Champs, made for both camps.

Without a doubt, “Tequila” is the most popular rock and roll instrumental ever recorded. Its success was totally unforeseen, so much so, that The Champs formed after the thought-to-be-a-one-off, just-before-Christmas recording session in 1957 that birthed the song. They weren’t even an official band; mostly just some session musicians recording a b-side and having a bit of innocent fun in the studio. But that fun was both evident and highly contagious, which ended up lending to the song’s overall immortality, landing it as a staple track for just about any classic party mix, and opening the door for an oncoming era of pre-garage-frat-rock behemoths like “Louie Louie,” “Surfin’ Bird” and “Shout”.

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