One hit wonders 1967 pt.1

Procol Harum - A whiter shade of pale



Miriam Makeba - Pata Pata



Scott McKenzie - San Fancisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair

One hit wonders 1966

SSgt. Barry Sadler - Ballad of the Green Berets



Los Bravos - Black Is Black



Ray Conniff - Somewhere, My Love



Bobby Hebb - Sunny



New Vaudeville Band - Winchester Cathedral

One hit wonders 1965

Glenn Yarbrough - Baby The Rain Must Fall




Horst Jankowski - A Walk In The Black Forest



Robert Goulet - My Love, Forgive Me (Amore, Scusami)



Jonathan King - Everyone's Gone To The Moon

One hit wonders 1964

Astrid Gilberto & Stan Getz - Girl From Ipanema



Gloria Lynne - I Wish You Love



Earl-Jean - I'm Into Somethin' Good




Gale Garnett - We'll Sing in the Sunshine



Danny Williams - White On White

One hit wonders 1963 Pt 2

The Classics - Till Then



Rooftop Singers - Walk Right In



Kai Winding - More

One hit wonders 1963

The oddball hits of 1963:

Allan Sherman - Hello Muddah Hello Faddah (no video - audio only)



Rolf Harris - Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport



Kyu Sakamoto - Sukiyaki



Singing Nun - Dominique

One hit wonders 1962

Tony Renis - Quando Quando Quando, 1962



Emilio Pericoli - Al Di La', 1962



Mr. Acker Bilk - Stranger on the Shore, 1962

One hit wonders 1961

The Tokens The Lion Sleeps Tonight 1961

A South African hit first recorded in Johannesburg in 1939



Ramrods (Ghost) Riders In The Sky 1961



Dave Brubeck Quartet Take Five 1961

One hit wonders 1960

Hank Locklin - Please Help Me, I'm Falling, 1960



Mark Dinning - Teen Angel, 1960

One hit wonders 1959

I went to boarding school in 1959 and did not get to hear much pop music. The were about 20 OHWs in 1959 but these are the only three that I remember.

Carl Mann Mona Lisa 1959:



The Mystics Hushabye 1959:



Phil Phillips Sea of Love 1959:

One hit wonders - 1958 pt 2

The Monotones The Book of Love 1958



Domenico Modugno Volare (Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu) 1958



Art & Dotty Todd Chanson d'Amour 1958

Suzanne Pleshette

This afternoon I saw Suzanne Pleshette in Gunsmoke (as "Glory Bramley" in the 1970 episode, Stark.) Boy! She was beautiful. It reminded me of how much in love with her I was as a kid - actually all my life. I was very sad when she died of lung cancer two years ago at the young (to me at least) age of 70.

Suzanne Pleshette was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish show-biz family and got started on Broadway as a hoofer before going to Hollywood.

I fell in love with Pleshette from the moment I first set eyes on her in the really crumby B-movie, Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954. From then on, I went to every movie that Pleshette made. My crush was complete when I saw her in 1963 with Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. That was when I realized that, no matter how beautiful the blonde Hedren was, I prefered brunettes and have ever since.

I can remember being jealous when I saw her in Distant Trumpet in 1964 and read that she had married her co-star, Troy Donahue - although I liked him too. Even when she starred as a nymphomaniac in A Rage to Live in 1965, I still loved her but I stopped seeing her movies when I went into a monastery soon after so I never did see her later TV career like The Bob Newhart Show. The next (and last) time I saw her was as Leona Helmsley in a TV movie in 1990 - and to me she was still gorgeous at the age of 63 in spite of the fake plumped-up lips to make her look as coarse as Leona.

What I loved about Pleshette was not only her sultry looks and smoky voice but her fierce "don't mess with me" eyes and obviously superior intelligence. She reminded me of my other crush, Lauren Bacall, another Jewish beauty.

In Creature from the Black Lagoon at the age of 17:






















With Troy Donahue in Distant Trumpet:





















In A Rage to Live:






















With Tippi Hedren in The Birds:













As Leona Helmsley:
















Here's my favorite photo (you'd have to be made of stone not to want to make love to this woman):

One hit wonders 1958 pt. 1

1958 sure seemed to produce some of the most ridiculous OHWs. No wonder us boomers ended up so nuts.

David Seville Witch Doctor 1958



Sheb Wooley Purple People Eater 1958



The Edsels Rama Lama Ding Dong 1958

One hit wonders 1956

Grace Kelly True Love 1956 from the movie, High Society. The only time that Grace Kelly sang. Bing Crosby sings most of the song.




Morris Stoloff Moonglow And Theme From Picnic 1956

One hit wonders 1955

Julie London Cry Me A River 1955



Joan Weber Let Me go Lover 1955:



Caterina Valente The Breeze and I 1955

One hit wonders- popular music 1954

Bulawayo Sweet Rhythms Band - Skokiaan 1954. I had no idea that this South African tune was a hit in the USA.

One hit wonders- popular music 1954

Eddie Calvert & His Golden Trumpet- "Oh, Mein Papa" 1954:

One hit wonders- pop music 1954

I was 7 years old when this first came out and it was my favorite for years after that.

The Chordettes Mr. Sandman 1954:

One hit wonders- popular music 1953

Darrell Glenn Crying In the Chapel 1953:

What real estate bust?

Last month a road was cut into the forest on a piece of land about a mile from us. I drive past it everyday and yesterday a "For Sale" sign appeared on the property so I decided to check it out on the on-line MLS. I was stunned. They're asking $115,000 for 2 acres!

But I was even more amazed to find a listing for another piece of land which I had not known was for sale because it is a mile further down the road in the other direction and I do not have to drive past it. They're asking $500,000 for 7 acres! The difference between the two pieces of land is that the 2 acre lot faces east into the valley whereas the 7 acre lot faces west to the ocean.

I guess I got in just in time. I would not be able to afford to buy nowadays. When I bought the farm 6 years ago, the land was going for $10,000 an acre. This area belonged to the largest timber company in the county. They logged the land 35 years ago and then reforested it and started selling 40 acre parcels. Speculators bought the land for $5,000 per acre.

Then Californians (yep, like me) started buying it for $10,000 per acre. In the six years that I've been here, six new homes have been built by former Californians who thought $10,000 per acre was a bargain. But, as the demand has increased in the past six years, the lots have become smaller and it now seems that the cheapest land (without an ocean view) costs nearly $60,000 per acre or nearly $72,000 (with an ocean view.)

I've got a sliver of an ocean view so I guess my land is now worth about $65,000 per acre or more than six times what I paid for it. I could sell it and buy that 790-square-mile island in Chile for a million bucks that I mentioned the other day but I love this place too much and don't fancy moving again.

There's no perfect place in the world but this suits me fine. The old bunkhouse may not be a palace and I may not have "sweeping ocean views" but it's home and it's fully paid for.

One hit wonders- popular music 1952

Jimmy Boyd singing I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus 1952:

One hit wonders- popular music 1950

Anton Karas' theme for the 1950 movie, The Third Man. Director Carol Reed found Karas playing the zither in a Vienna cafe while scouting for locations for the movie and the rest is history.

One hit wonders- popular music 1949

Okay, so today I'm going to start posting pop music one hit wonders. I got all these pop OHWs from this site. According to it, hit parades started in the 1940s and, to qualify as a OHW, it had to be a musician's only recording to make it to the top of the hit parade.

The only YouTube I could find of OHWs from the Forties is Ezio Pinza singing Some Enchanted Evening from the 1949 movie of South Pacific. Pinza was an Italian basso opera singer. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas. When he retired in 1948 at the age of 56, he went on to become a star on Broadway.



Here is Pinza doing what he did best - opera. This the aria, Non Più Andrai from Mozart's Le Nozze Di Figaro:

The last of the classical one hit wonders # 8, 9, 10 and 11

The baroque pieces by Pachelbel, Albinoni/Giazotto, Mouret and Boccherini that I posted could probably be classified as one hit wonders but, by the time I got to the later composers like Delibes and Ponchielli, I was on thin ice because they did write other good music.

Obviously no classical music is really a one hit wonder because the definition of a one hit wonder is that it's the only recording by a musician to make it to the top of the hit parade - and hit parades didn't happen till the 1950s. Right now I'm busy collecting pop one hit wonders so I'll dump the rest of my classical OHWs.

The following composers wrote other good music but these pieces, because of their popularity, are what Joe Blow and his auntie think of as OHWs because they don't know the rest of the composer's oeuvre. My classical selections should rightly be called classical pop OHWs by composers who are otherwise unknown to the general public.

Jules Massenet — Meditation from his opera "Thais"



Pietro Mascagni — "Cavalleria rusticana"



Aram Khachaturian — "Sabre Dance" from the ballet "Gayane"



Samuel Barber — Adagio for Strings

One hit wonder # 7

Right Wing Prof disagreed with me that the previous OHW, Léo Delibes' "The Flower Duet" from the opera Lakmé, is a "one hit wonder" because "he only wrote one opera (rather, one that is performed), but he is known for his ballet scores." I replied to Prof: "I thought of that too. But it's the only hit from any of his operas." See, Prof is a classical musician and musicologist. I'm just judging by what ordinary folks think. And that's Léo Delibes' one really big hit.

And that goes for this one too: Amilcare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" from the opera "La Gioconda" which most of us know as Allen Sherman's "Hello muddah, hello fadduh" or as the music that the crocs and hippos et al do ballet to in Disney's Fantasia.

Here's the Fantasia version:



Here's the real thing:

One hit wonder # 6

Léo Delibes' "The Flower Duet" from the opera Lakmé:

The South African sardine run

Every July the sardines move north up the east coast of South Africa. As soon as reports from fishing villages further south started to arrive, every man, woman and child in our town would start preparing for "sardines madness."

The first thing you would see was a cloud of sea-birds approaching. As the sharks and dolphins drove the sardines towards the shore, you would begin to see thousands of splashes as the birds dove for fish. Dolphins would leap into the air and the humans would pour into the ocean with buckets, baskets and nets. Some, who were not prepared, simply filled their shirts and pants with the fish. My grandma was once so caught up in "sardine madness" that she began to fill her ample bra with sardines.

The run only lasts for half a day and then you spent the rest of the day gutting the sardines. Most of the sardines were pickled or smoked but everybody fired up the barbie for grilled sardines and that's what you ate for the next two or three days.

Dolphins, sharks, whales and birds competing underwater for fish:

Encompassing diving gannets, sharks, dolphins and Brydes Whales, this is the increasingly rare and unpredictable sardine run. Likened to east Africa's buffalo migration, the run sees sardines spawn and migrate from the cool waters of the Agulhas Bank, south of South Africa, northward to the warmer waters along the east coast. Shoals are known to be four miles long and one mile wide, and are clearly visible from the surface of the ocean.

It is billed as the greatest natural predatory show on earth - and from these images it is easy to see why.

There are more pictures at the link.

One hit wonders # 5

Jeremiah Clarke's "Trumpet Voluntary", more properly known as "Prince of Denmark's March."

The first War against Jihad: the Crusaders and the Knights Templars

During the course of a wide-ranging conversation between Chas, Andy and me at dinner, the Knights Templars were mentioned. I said that I knew of them but not a lot and would need to research them. I did know that they were one of the earliest founders of the "military monastic Orders" (as opposed to "religious monastic Orders" - see below) and that they came to a tragic end. (While the "religious Orders" were founded to study and teach, the "military Orders" were founded to fight - specifically in the Crusades.)

The Knights Templars according to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Immediately after the deliverance of Jerusalem, the Crusaders, considering their vow fulfilled, returned in a body to their homes. The defense of this precarious conquest, surrounded as it was by Mohammedan neighbours, remained. In 1118, during the reign of Baldwin II, Hugues de Payens, a knight of Champagne, and eight companions bound themselves by a perpetual vow, taken in the presence of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, to defend the Christian kingdom. Baldwin accepted their services and assigned them a portion of his palace, adjoining the temple of the city; hence their title "pauvres chevaliers du temple" (Poor Knights of the Temple). Poor indeed they were, being reduced to living on alms, and, so long as they were only nine, they were hardly prepared to render important services, unless it were as escorts to the pilgrims on their way from Jerusalem to the banks of the Jordan, then frequented as a place of devotion.

The Templars had as yet neither distinctive habit nor rule. Hugues de Payens journeyed to the West to seek the approbation of the Church and to obtain recruits. At the Council of Troyes (1128), at which he assisted and at which St. Bernard was the leading spirit, the Knights Templars adopted the Rule of St. Benedict, as recently reformed by the Cistercians. They accepted not only the three perpetual vows, besides the crusader's vow, but also the austere rules concerning the chapel, the refectory, and the dormitory. They also adopted the white habit of the Cistercians, adding to it a red cross.

Notwithstanding the austerity of the monastic rule, recruits flocked to the new order, which thenceforth comprised four ranks of brethren:

• the knights, equipped like the heavy cavalry of the Middle Ages;
• the serjeants, who formed the light cavalry;

and two ranks of non-fighting men:

• the farmers, entrusted with the administration of temporals;
• and the chaplains, who alone were vested with sacerdotal orders, to minister to the spiritual needs of the order.

...

In [their] castles, which were both monasteries and cavalry-barracks, the life of the Templars was full of contrasts. A contemporary describes the Templars as "in turn lions of war and lambs at the hearth; rough knights on the battlefield, pious monks in the chapel; formidable to the enemies of Christ, gentleness itself towards His friends." (Jacques de Vitry). Having renounced all the pleasures of life, they faced death with a proud indifference; they were the first to attack, the last to retreat, always docile to the voice of their leader, the discipline of the monk being added to the discipline of the soldier. As an army they were never very numerous. A contemporary tells us that there were 400 knights in Jerusalem at the zenith of their prosperity; he does not give the number of serjeants, who were more numerous. But it was a picked body of men who, by their noble example, inspirited the remainder of the Christian forces. They were thus the terror of the Mohammedans. Were they defeated, it was upon them that the victor vented his fury, the more so as they were forbidden to offer a ransom. When taken prisoners, they scornfully refused the freedom offered them on condition of apostasy. At the siege of Safed (1264), at which ninety Templars met death, eighty others were taken prisoners, and, refusing to deny Christ, died martyrs to the Faith. This fidelity cost them dear. It has been computed that in less than two centuries almost 20,000 Templars, knights and serjeants, perished in war.

The Templars became very wealthy and powerful - and supposedly corrupt and debauched. They were investigated and persecuted. Then:

It was proposed anew in 1293 by Pope Nicholas IV, who called a general consultation on this point of the Christian states. This idea is canvassed by all the publicists of that time, who demand either a fusion of the existing orders or the creation of a third order to supplant them. Never in fact had the question of the crusaders been more eagerly taken up than after their failure. As the grandson of St. Louis, Philip the Fair could not remain indifferent to these proposals for a crusade. As the most powerful prince of his time, the direction of the movement belonged to him. To assume this direction, all he demanded was the necessary supplies of men and especially of money. Such is the genesis of his campaign for the suppression of the Templars. It has been attributed wholly to his well-known cupidity. Even on this supposition he needed a pretext, for he could not, without sacrilege, lay hands on possessions that formed part of the ecclesiastical domain. To justify such a course the sanction of the Church was necessary, and this the king could obtain only by maintaining the sacred purpose for which the possessions were destined. Admitting that he was sufficiently powerful to encroach upon the property of the Templars in France, he still needed the concurrence of the Church to secure control of their possessions in the other countries of Christendom. Such was the purpose of the wily negotiations of this self-willed and cunning sovereign, and of his still more treacherous counsellors, with Clement V, a French pope of weak character and easily deceived. The rumour that there had been a prearrangement between the king and the pope has been finally disposed of. A doubtful revelation, which allowed Philip to make the prosecution of the Templars as heretics a question of orthodoxy, afforded him the opportunity which he desired to invoke the action of the Holy See.

...

Philip the Fair made a preliminary inquiry, and, on the strength of so-called revelations of a few unworthy and degraded members, secret orders were sent throughout France to arrest all the Templars on the same day (13 October, 1307), and to submit them to a most rigorous examination. The king did this, it was made to appear, at the request of the ecclesiastical inquisitors, but in reality without their co-operation.

In this inquiry torture, the use of which was authorized by the cruel procedure of the age in the case of crimes committed without witnesses, was pitilessly employed. Owing to the lack of evidence, the accused could be convicted only through their own confession and, to extort this confession, the use of torture was considered necessary and legitimate.

The pope, aided by the Grand Master of the Inquisition, dissolved the Order and confiscated all their property. Thus were the Templars destroyed by the very Inquisition (which was originally started to rid Spain of Muslims) that they had once abetted. The 13th October, 1307 was a Friday. This is how the superstition about Friday the 13th originated.

One hit wonders # 4

Luigi Boccherini's minuet from String Quintet in E:

One hit wonders # 3

Jean-Joseph Mouret's Rondeau from Symphonies and Fanfares for the King's Supper. This is used as the theme for Masterpiece Theater.

One hit wonders # 2

This used to be attributed to Tomaso Albinoni but it is now known that it was actually written by Remo Giazotto and contains no Albinoni material.

Adagio in G minor:

One hit wonders # 1

I love music and I've been meaning to do this post for ages. Of course there are disagreements about what "one hit wonders" are. Some say that a OHW has to be the only hit tune that a musician ever wrote. Some say that a OHW has to be the only hit tune that a musician ever performed. I'm not going to get into that controversy. But I am going to post a OHW (or two or three) every day for the next few weeks.

Years ago I bought a CD called "Greatest Hits of the 1600s." It turns out that many of those tunes were OHWs. Yeah, I know you were expecting me to post something like Brandy by Looking Glass (which I love) but I'm working my way through the ages and I'll eventually get to that. Here's my first OHW.

Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D written in 1680:

Sentimental journey

That last post put me in a sentimental mood so I went hunting for some pics from the past.

Here's a lousy pic of my marriage to the mother of my son in 1973. The wedding took place in Kendal Parish Church which is where Henry VIII married his sixth and last wife in 1543.





















And this is one of my favorite pics of my son and his mother taken 35 years ago:

Eight years in Afghanistan

I'm in two minds about Afghanistan. I don't want even one American soldier killed to benefit the sheetheads. But, if we're there because it benefits us, then I'm all for it. I just don't know enough to be sure.

All I know for sure is to ignore the nattering nabobs of negativity.

I was just reading through my favorite big bloggers after I got home from the office this afternoon. And, boy, some of them sure are gloomy! Obviously there's a lot to be worried about in Obamugabe's UZA (United Zimbabwes of America) but there's still a helluva lot to be happy about and grateful for.

The other day I was reading one of my favorite biggie bloggers and I suddenly thought: "Enough already. We haven't had another terrorist attack on US soil!"

Yes, I know that it could happen. Let's face it: one of the worst realizations after 9/11 was that we were so asleep at the wheel that a bunch of moronic Stone Age barbarians could use our advanced technology (jet planes) to totally destroy the Twin Towers and kill 3,000 innocent people.

Let me just say this now: I was horrified by 9/11 but not surprised because one of the first things I noticed when I arrived in the USA was that nearly every American I met seemed to think that sheetheads and other exotic Third Worlders are cute and cuddly "noble savages."

But we've become more vigilant since then. And there has not been another terrorist attack on our soil. And part of that could be because we have stymied Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

No matter who is in the WH, I'm grateful for our soldiers and even our spies who keep a watchful eye open for our benefit. No matter who runs things, patriotic Americans are watching out for our freedom. And that goes for ordinary sensible civilians too. I count my blessings every day as a grateful American.