Favourite One Hit Wonders

[kevin]

Vivaldi - Le Quattro Stagioni

Is that deep pan or thin and crispy?

[kas]

Thin and crispy of course, preferably served in a quality place in Italy and enjoyed in the right sort of company.

The deep pan version only worked for me once.

[kevin]

Thin and crispy of course, preferably served in a quality place in Italy and enjoyed in the right sort of company.

Which is what I will be doing from next Wednesday, Sitting al fresco in the Piazza Garibaldi in Parma with a pizza topped with proscuitto crudo and porcini, sipping on a local red. Can't wait.

[Dayna]

You want to come all the way to Parma for a pizza?! Ha ha!

(Parma is a suburb of Cleveland).







These Boots Were Made For Walking by Nancy Sinatra.

It's funny she is only known for this one song, but I liked her better than Frank.

[kas]

That is the song most people propably remember her for, true. But she had a string of other hits, most with (and written by) Lee Hazelwood: Summer Wine, Jackson, Bang Bang...

Some Velvet Morning is a personal favourite of mine.

Have a nice trip, Kevin! Wouldn't mind being in Italy myself.

[rongould]

Thin and crispy of course, preferably served in a quality place in Italy and enjoyed in the right sort of company.

Which is what I will be doing from next Wednesday, Sitting al fresco in the Piazza Garibaldi in Parma with a pizza topped with proscuitto crudo and porcini, sipping on a local red. Can't wait.

The only place to get real pizza is Napoli. Until you've done that you have no idea what gastronomic heights pizza can reach.

My favourite one hit wonder (to get back to the point of this thread) is...

Bad Penny Blues Humph. and the band. Johnny Parker's piano on this track is just magnificent.

[Ronald]

I Know(You Don't Love Me No More)-Barbara George-1961

[Dayna]

You Sexy Thing-Hot Chocolate

[Paul]

Hot Chocolate might have been one hit wonders in America, but not in Britain with 25 top 40 singles!

[Adam Blake]

I Know(You Don't Love Me No More)-Barbara George-1961

Bit of a serious cornet solo there from (I believe) Melvin Lastie. I think I'm right in saying that AFO Records was the first indie record label to be run as a collective by both black and white musicians, in 1960, and in Louisiana too. Quite an achievement...

[judith]

Louisiana, most particularly New Orleans, is very much a part of the deep south in many ways - including those Adam refers to. In others it is an anomaly not only to the south but the rest of the world. I wouldn't know where to begin to describe its culturally rich history - stuff like the first Jewish lieutenant governor in U.S. history (Henry Hyams, 1859) was in Louisiana. Or, it has been said slaves were allowed to drum in New Orleans when this act was forbidden everywhere else http://www.revels-bey.com/history_of_latin_music.htm (reference in 2nd paragraph).

I would recommend reading the wikipedia entries on Louisiana and New Orleans. The histories are rich when one considers the legacy is music.

Is "My Boy Lollipop" a one hit wonder? I was thinking of Millie Small's version.

[kas]

Somebody who has visited New Orleans wrote that New Orleans is much more Caribbean than American.
Wasn't Louisiana also a French outpost for a long time before it had anything to do with the United States? Must reread some of those history books.
Congo Square I believe was the spot in La Nouvelle Orléans where slaves were allowed to have some drum and dance sessions now and then. I just saw the 'Warming By the Devil's Fire' episode of The Blues series the other evening, and there they revisit Congo Square to pay homage to it.

One hit wonder to fit the theme then?

How about Johnnie Allan and Promised Land?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqdfgqBVo0

[richardh]

Kas and Judith, I can commend to you Ned Sublette's new book, The World That Made New Orleans, subtitled "From Spanish Silver to Congo Square", published earlier this year. It covers the period from the 1670s, when La Salle christened La Louisiane, up to the 1820s. In the words of one of the jacket blurb contributors, "the fascinating story of the people who created New Orleans: imperial schemers and enslaved Africans, merchants and pirates, revolutionaries and refugees from revolution, Acadians and Kongos, singing French nuns and Senegambian fiddlers..."

[NormanD]

I Know (You Don't Love Me No More) - Barbara George-1961
Bit of a serious cornet solo there from (I believe) Melvin Lastie. I think I'm right in saying that AFO Records was the first indie record label to be run as a collective by both black and white musicians, in 1960, and in Louisiana too. Quite an achievement...

The story of Harold Battiste's All For One Records is covered in detail in John Broven's great book on NO music, Walking To New Orleans. I think that you and I both had a copy of that book that we separately loaned out and separately never got back. Maybe we were related in a past life, the karma of being good-hearted schmucks.

I'm sure it was Mel Lastie, part of that great AFO studio band. Most of them got recruited as session players on the big labels after Liberty, etc heard what the AFO label was putting out.

And going back to One Hit Wonders: Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit In The Sky" left a very great guitar riff to posterity (was he the first with it?). He had a minor hit in an earlier incarnation with "The Egg Plant That Ate Chicago" but, in all honesty, who remembers that one?

[will vine]

Me.