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"What do you want to make those eyes at me for?" - Emile Ford and the Checkmates

1959 Music: James V Monaco; lyric: Joseph McCarthy and Howard Johnson

They make me mad! They make me glad! They make me want Let's Do It, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76.

A great song will transcend generations. This one was written for the Broadway production "Follow Me", which opened and closed in 1916 to no great regard. The only good bit was a song, performed by the booming tenor Henry Lewis, and covered by a couple of the other stars of the day.

Emile Ford was born in 1937, moved from Guyana to London in the mid-1950s, and got interested in sound reproduction technology. Studying at Paddington College, he learned to play all of the instruments: guitar, drum, piano, violin, and many more. He put a band together with his half-brother and some of their mates, appeared on television's Six-Five Special and Oh Boy!, and won a talent show promising a record contract with EMI.

But that EMI contract required that someone else produce Emile Ford, and the self-described "sound scientist" wouldn't agree to that. Instead, he signed to Pye Records, who gave him full artistic control. "What do you want to make those eyes at me for" was intended as the B-side to the first single, but everyone heard the doo-wop single and fell in love.

A contemporary rock 'n' roll sound brushing up against the old-fashioned doo-wop style. A chatty lyric with great depth, and enough hooks to make sure the listener remembers it first time round. Emile's production brought out the crack of the drum just before each verse, and the sound is broad and expansive.

The song gave Emile a launchpad to megastardom, he had a regular gig on Sunday Night at the London Palladium, massive tours, huge screaming fans. Emile Ford vied with Cliff Richard as the biggest pop star of the time, an honour he'd lose to one of his support acts - The Beatles. After fading from performance, Emile advanced studio technology, including pre-recorded backing tracks to support singers. Emile Ford died in 2016, one of the Black pioneers of music.

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It's always 4 o'clock in Australia

Three of ITV's 4pm shows have turned up in Australia.

Deal or No Deal has Grant Denyer as host, and is cut to half an hour. Perhaps a little too short for its own good, but they do get the right amount of drama and silliness in there.

Tipping Point is filmed in Bristol, with Todd Woodbridge as host. Slightly more miserly than our version, all to tip the odds for a "Jackpot Temptation" finale.

From the Dock Ten Studios in sunny* Salford, Jeopardy! Australia is hosted by Stephen Fry. It's a carbon copy of the ITV version, right down to the questions, right down to the credits font.

Plus! The 1% Club tells a little family drama: The Clever Sister and The Other Sister (Who Didn't Win Any Money But Learned A Lot).

All this and more in the Week: you can throw it away as much as you want, but it'll come back like a boomerang.

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source

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"Delilah" - Tom Jones

1968 Music by Les Reed, lyric by Barry [and Sylvan?] Mason

Let's Do It: my, my, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76.

The murder ballad is a controversial form of music. Not everyone is in favour of songs about killers, and the Welsh Rugby Union recently decided to stop playing this classic at their matches. The WRU are hardly in a place to lecture others about morality, seeing as how they cravenly ban trans women from playing their sport in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary, but let's not get too far from the point.

"Delilah" is a murder ballad. Her lover finds that Delilah is screwing someone else, which is hardly headline news in 1968. The lover goes round to her house, waits for a rival to leave, and uses a knife to kill Delilah.

Lyricist Barry Mason says the song is based on the feelings had about his first teenage crush: they had a summer fling, and then Barry found out "his" girlfriend had a lad back home. Jealous, a whole lot of pain, trauma that lasted for years.

Barry's former wife Sylvan says that's cobblers, that musician Les Reed wrote the "why, why, why, Delilah?" line, and the lyric bears a passing resemblance to the 1954 musical Carmen Jones crossed with the legend of Samson from the book of Judges. Samson - and the protagonist of "Delilah" - will kill rather than live without what he wants. We might meet Samson again when someone nominates Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in a later timeframe.

Tom Jones always puts his heart and soul into everything he records, and "Delilah" is no exception. Loud and hoarse, we can hear the passion in his voice. A flamenco arrangement is another prominent feature of this song, a loud flare just before the chorus line, making sure we cannot miss it when we hear it. Backing vocalists include Elton John, making his only appearance in my top 50 ("Crocodile rock" finished in the next twenty.) Tom has had more comebacks than anyone, "Delilah" was later covered by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

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'Think twice about the weekend. This time get twice the Pepsi ... and don't run out!'

Pepsi-Cola advertisement (1971).

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"Hey woman" - The Ducats

1965 Written by Robert Battiste and Lewis Skinner

The rock of Let's Do It, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76.

There were regular explosions at Springhill mine in Nova Scotia; two in the late 1950s killed over a hundred miners. People from the area came together for fund-raising concerts, and that included young people from the island across the way.

The Du-Cats were from Port-aux-Basques on the west coast of Newfoundland. The group was Lewis "Butch" Skinner on lead guitar; Jim Crewe on rhythm guitar; Bob Battiste on bass guitar; Joe Boulos on drums; Winston Blackmore as vocalist.

The group were inspired by rock 'n' roll radio as broadcast to the American servicemen at Gander air force base. But their music brought in a distinct culture. It blended in the jigs and reels of the Celtic diaspora running through Newfoundland culture like pyrite runs through rock. Sometimes obvious, sometimes you have to listen to hear the unusual steps and time signatures.

After five years of increasing success in and beyond Atlantic Canada, the group travelled down to Boston to make an eponymous album. This single attracted the attention of Berry Gordy, and the group came within a whisker of being signed to Motown Records - but it didn't happen. Two further albums were made and released locally. The group continued to gig and perform, and were celebrated with an East Coast Music Award in 2008. Lew Skinner spoke to the CBC in 2021.

Why is this one of the best fifty singles of the era? It's an example of how so much music was being made. Young people cared for what they did, young people had talent and drive. That they didn't always meet with massive commercial success is often down to sheer chance.

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Poster for FOGFEST 2023

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-Sketch for A Mermaid-

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Princess prom but make it 1890 anyone?🗡

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"California dreamin'" - The Mamas and the Papas

1966 Written by John Phillips and Michelle Phillips

All the leaves are brown in Let's Do It, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76.

Remember Barry McGuire? He was the first person to record "California dreamin'", and then faded into showbiz distance. Best we know he saw out his days playing in the Accrington Stanley.

The song was written by John and Michelle shortly after they'd moved from sunny California to grey and cold New York. John wrote the chorus and opening verse, Michelle added the second stanza after she had literally gone into St Patrick's Cathedral to duck out of a freezing day. Once the couple had formed a band - with Mama Cass (qv) and Denny Doherty - the group turned to songs they'd written.

Producer John Adler was impressed - "I actually thought that must have been how George Martin felt after he heard The Beatles." The harmonies are crystal-clear, the counterpoint between the vocals adds to the wistful longing. I'm sure they've double-tracked the vocals, the same vocalists perform twice, with oh-so-slight differences between the takes.

It was the right song at the right time. California was dreaming, helped by a load of mind-altering drugs, aided by a counterculture that became the mainstream for a short while. Although the band broke up within a few months, "California dreamin'" has become a standard, recorded by acts as diverse as Meat Loaf, Scala & Kolacny Brothers, José Feliciano, and the River City People. Yeah, I first heard this song through Siobhan Mayer of But First This..!.

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Avril Lavigne

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"Blockbuster" - The Sweet

1973 Written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman

What "LDI" is a collection of fifty great singles from 1954-76?

Take the riff from the Yardbirds' song "I'm a man", and twizzle it around to meet your lyric. If you are David Bowie, you'll end up with "Jean genie". If you are The Sweet, you'll end up with "Blockbuster". And a bit of a panic, only assuaged when producer Nicky Chinn reassures you that nobody will mind that the records share a hook.

Add in an air-raid siren, because the most important bit of a song is at the beginning. (Look at the last few entries: handclaps, "Is this the real life", a mic drop two seconds in, scene-setting instrumentals.) Catch the audience's attention at the start of the song, and they're in.

And a big image helps - the whole band were caked in make-up, and Steve Priest was the first bloke to wear hot pants on Top of the Pops. Well, the first performer to be so attired, we don't know about the audience…

"Blockbuster" comes at an interesting point in The Sweet's career: the public pigeon-holed them as purveyors of bubblegum pop like The Monkees, but the band saw themselves as heavy rockers in the vein of Deep Purple. Over the early 1970s, they gradually transition from pop to rock, as the records get heavier and pop hooks turn into metal riffs. "Blockbuster" is the most interesting point of the transition, the point where they're at the crossroads between pop and metal.

Sadly for The Sweet, their place in the pop metal firmament was taken over by Queen, whose meandering through styles felt natural and was displayed on their biggest hit. The Sweet gave up the struggle in the late 1970s.

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"I think I was going into my senior year, so I was seventeen. And it was totally different, and so much fun. I hadn't grown up a comic book person and it already had a gigantic following, so I did my research, obviously. When you're in something with that type of fanbase, you have to show respect."

Anna Paquin talks X-Men to People (March 2024)

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"Car wash" - Rose Royce

1976 Written by Norman Whitfield

Working at Let's Do It, my personal fifty favourite singles from 1954-76.

Funky horns. Slap bass. Massive Afro haircuts. Handclaps and a rhythm that sounds like a car wash. It's over a minute before Gwen Dickey begins to sing; while we wait, we're drinking in the sound, this new-fangled "disco" sensation.

"Car wash" was written for the film "Car Wash" (it's about everyday life at a car wash, nothing more), and works to summarise the plot of the film you're about to see. Or, in the case of "Car Wash", the lack of plot: the movie is a bunch of funny guys hanging out at their place of work, like "Clerks".

Norman Whitfield was the producer, and he was a hard taskmaster. He got Gwen to re-sing "a movie star or an Indian chief" until she got the enunciation absolutely perfect. He's bridging the gap between soul and funk, and it's almost impossible not to want to dance to the song.

Gwen's vocals add a laidback vibe to the song, it fits with the light movie, though there's plenty going on behind the vocals. Ultimately, it's easy listening, in the sense of I could listen to this every day and never tire of it.

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