Rock/Pop Tidbits

While talking on the phone with his mother, Disc Jockey Murray The K mentioned that he and Bobby Darin were soaking their feet after playing a game of softball in Central Park. A few minutes later, she called back to say that she had an idea for a song - "Splish, Splash, take a bath..." Murray and Bobby began sorting out some lyrics while Murray's mother, Jean, who had been a vaudeville piano player, finished the melody. It became the first of Bobby's 22 US Top 40 hits when it reached #3 in the Summer of 1958.

The Beatles recorded two different versions of the song "Strawberry Fields Forever". One was a half-tone higher and slightly faster than the other. The group couldn't decide which rendition they liked better and finally asked producer George Martin if he could put them together somehow. When one was slowed down, it fit perfectly with the other, resulting in the song we know today.

Apparently, Little Richard was not a real smart child. As a lad, he wanted to give one of his neighbors a ‘creative gift.’ But his neighbor, Miz Ola screamed when she opened her present. It seems young Richard thought that defecating in a box and wrapping it up as a present for his elderly friend would be a good gift for her. Little Richard stated in his autobiography: “God bless Miz Ola, she’s dead now.” No word on if he selected other neighbors to receive his thoughtful gift.

When Malcolm Young and Angus Young named their band AC/DC, they apparently didn’t realize that the electrical term was also slang for bisexual. But the ambiguous name helped them out in the beginning as the group was hired to play many gay-themed gigs. Work is work, I guess.

In the early days, the Bee Gees were so desperate to sell their records that they actually gave members of their fan club money to go out and but their records. Thankfully, there were only six members in the fan club or the trio would be broke.

Ironically, only Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys was the group’s only surfer.

Antoine "Fats" Domino came by his nickname because he stood 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighed 225 lb.

Fats Domino's 1956, US #2 hit, "Blueberry Hill" was originally a number one hit for big band leader Glen Miller in 1940.

When Elvis Presley was inducted into the US Army on March 24th, 1958, Uncle Sam started losing an estimated $500,000 in lost taxes for each year that Private Presley served.

Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead was brought in as a session musician to play steel guitar on Brewer and Shipley's March, 1971 hit, "One Toke Over The Line".

Michael Jackson was just five years old when the Jackson Five played their first professional gig. Their fee for the night was only eight dollars, but they collected over one hundred dollars in money tossed on the stage.

The music business is hard on a marriage. Paul Revere has been married six times. Jerry Lee Lewis, Kenny Rogers and Tammy Wynette have each been married five times. James Brown, Glen Campbell and Peggy Lee have been married four times.

Diana Ross, Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson were not the first group in the rock and roll era to call themselves The Supremes. An all male quartet from Columbus, Ohio used the name on a 1957 single called "Just You And I" and Ruby and the Romantics, who had a number one US hit with "Our Day Will Come" in 1963, started out as The Supremes.

The Guess Who performed at The White House during the Nixon administration, but were asked not to perform their #1 hit "American Woman" because of its' anti-U.S. establishment lyrics.



According to Rolling Stone magazine, The Young Rascals were surprised by the success of "Good Lovin". Felix Cavaliere admitted, "We weren't too pleased with our performance. It was a shock to us when it went to the top of the charts."

Although Jerry Lee Lewis received a lot of bad press for marrying his 13 year old second cousin, Jerry's sister Linda Gail first married at 14 and another sister, Frankie Jean, first married at age 12.

When song writer Burt Bacharach asked B.J. Thomas to sing "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" for the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he neglected to tell Thomas that the song had already been turned down by Bob Dylan and Ray Stevens.

Buddy Holly's drummer, Jerry Allison played drums on The Everly Brothers 1959 hit "Til I Kissed You".

Songwriter Hoyt Axton once revealed that the first line of "Joy To The World", Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was never intended to be in the song. It was just a fill-in line he used until he could come up with better lyrics. He pitched the tune to Three Dog Night when they toured together and they ended up recording it "as is."

George Harrison expressed his feelings about the break-up of The Beatles by saying: "The saddest thing was actually getting fed up with one another."