The Hottest Hit On The Planet:
“Papa Loves Mambo” by Perry Como
There was a “Mambo #5.” There were four mambos before it.
There would be more afterwards. Eight of them, at the very least. And that’s just the ones written by Cuban bandleader and mambo maestro Perez Prado. So, ladies and gentlemen: this is “Mambo #5:”
The mambo came out of a previous Cuban form of dance-music: a slow form of dance music, with just enough hip-swivelling spiciness to be considered scandalous in some circles – called the danzon, the dance which also gave birth to the chachacha. And when I say “came out of” I mean that quite literally.
Some danzon bands would include a break-down vamping section towards the end of their danzon. They called that part “the mambo.”
Since that section was by far the most exciting part of the danzon, some bands decided to dispense with the danzon parts all together and just play the mambo.
Perez Prado just played the mambo. According to newspaper reports at the time, he said he invented it. Or at least his interpreters said he said he invented it. The only English Perez knew was “OK,” “thank you,” “very good” and “money.”
Perez played the mambo in high-end Havana casinos, before moving to Mexico in 1949, to play in high-end casinos over there. He particularly liked to play a tune of his own called “Qué Rico el Mambo,” or, um… “How Delicious The Mambo?”
An American big-band leader by the name of Sonny Burke was holidaying in Mexico. He heard “Qué Rico el Mambo,” decided that it was indeed delicious, and took it back to America, where he inevitably changing the name to “Mambo Jambo.” Some guy called Dave Barbour recorded it, and it became a moderate hit.
The mambo had arrived in America! It would still take a few more years – and a couple of silly novelty songs – before the mambo could take over the charts.
But it had arrived. “Denizens Of Broadway Go Slightly Primitive Under Spell Of The Wild Sweaty Mambo,” announced The Daily News.
Perez’s records were great for dancing to, and Perez was an animated, if extremely goofy looking band leader. His records were full of short little blurts of melody that could get stuck in your head for days; but the thing everyone really noticed about him was that he was constantly grunting.
Non-Spanish speakers thought that he was grunting “UGH!” But what he was really grunting was “Dilo!”, which means “SAY IT!”
It was that grunting that would form one of the punchlines of “Papa Loves Mambo,” the first of the two mambo-themed novelty songs.
The other punchline was the general play on words and alliteration of it all: “Papa loves Mambo, Mama Loves Mambo…” etc. But the biggest punchline of all was the fact that it was Perry Como who was singing it.
Perry Como was about a decade into his career as America’s sleepiest sounding crooner.
This wasn’t a reputation that Perry earned later in his career, when he had gotten so old that sleepiness was virtually inevitable.
People were already making jokes about it when he was still quite young. That’s probably why The Perry Como Show – every Friday night on CBS – was on at 7:30PM. Any later, and Perry would have already gone to bed.
Such a relaxed demeanour apparently made Perry good husband material.
In polling conducted by Life Magazine, 20-year-old-women voted Perry Como as their Number One Preferred Husband, beating the likes of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, and JFK.
Although, the fact that Dwight Eisenhower bet all four as well was probably the more surprising result.
“Life” magazine also asked the girls what they were looking for in their ideal husband.
Some of their requirements were very specific.
More relevant to our discussion is that the ideal husband needed to take his wife dancing.
Maybe that’s why he got so many votes. Because Perry did love mambo. Mama – presumedly the 20-year-old wife – loved mambo. Look at them sway with it. Shouting “Olé” with it. Feeling so gay with it. He loses weight with it! WOW! UGH!
“Papa Loves Mambo” is top-notch family entertainment. The trumpets are blasting, the mambo rhythm is shuffling, and there in the middle of it all, is Perry, making absolutely zero-fuss, not making anything that might be mistaken for effort. There’s a certain bemused Dad-joke-ness to it, in the way he grunts “UGH!”, as if it’s hilarious that Perry Como would ever grunt. Which indeed it is.
Mambo had suddenly become so huge, that our friend Mitch Miller got our other friend Rosemary Clooney to combine both mambo and her Italian accent-schtick together in one song! A full-proof plan! Particularly since Mitch got Bob Merrill to write the thing.
“Who was Bob Merrill?”, I hear you ask?
Bob Merrill was a man who had, a few years earlier, cracked the formula of how to write a catchy earworm. The kind of shamelessly catchy earworms that earnt him the reputation of the worst songwriter of all time!
The kind of godawful song writer who, when asked why he thought his songs sold so well, answered:
“For everyone who takes the record home to play, two buy it for the pleasure of breaking it to bits.” Bob Merrill was very clearly a genius.
Bob Merrill had discovered the perfect instrument upon which to compose shamelessly catchy earworms. Bob wrote his early songs on a toy xylophone that he had bought for $1.98. After he’d written a couple of hits he upgraded to a $6.98 model.
Writing your songs on a toy xylophone prevents you from playing any fancy jazz chords or anything else that might challenge the average record buyer. It quite possibly prevents you from playing any chords at all. Just melody lines.
Writing songs on a toy xylophone forces you to write songs like “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked A Cake.”
(Which he instantly followed up with “Candy And Cake” and “The Donut Song,”) and even more iconically, “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window,” the definitive example of early 50s/pre-rock’n’roll pop cheese.
That was in 1952. Incredibly, Mitch Miller didn’t have anything to do with “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window,” despite – dog barks and all – it being very much the sort of thing he would do. It was as though by 1952 the rest of the music industry was trying to play catch-up with Mitch, battling with him to see who could find the lowest and most common denominator of all.
Mitch may not have had anything to do with “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window,” but he was certainly a Bob Merrill fan.
He got Bob to write a bunch of songs for Guy Mitchell, a fellow almost as relentlessly cheerful as the songs Bob wrote for him. Together, Guy, Bob and Mitch were an Unholy Trinity, churning out the chirpiest and cheesiest songs of an already chirpy and cheesy era.
I won’t embed them.
Nobody needs “She Wears Red Feathers (And A Huly Huly Skirt)” or “Feet Up (Pat Him On The Po-Po)” in their lives. It’s bad enough simply to know that they exist.
But yes, “Mambo Italiano.” In which Rosemary tells the tale of a girl who goes back to Napoli, because she misses the scenery, the native dances, the charming songs… only to find out that the mambo craze has arrived there before her – all you Calabrese are doing the mambo like a-crazy – and all those charming songs have gone!
The lyrics to Bob Merrill songs are typically such nonsense that one probably should not read too much into them. But I think the second verse – “don’t want tarantella, no more mozzarella, try an enchilada” – suggests that all Italian culture has been swept aside by the mambo craze to be replaced by Cuban culture…
Not that enchiladas are Cuban, but I think that’s what Bob is aiming for here. Or not. Bob was famous for putting minimal effort into his lyrics. It’s likely that “Mambo Italiano” doesn’t mean anything at all.
But I am not the only one to be a little uncertain what “Mambo Italiano” is about, because – FUN FACT:
“Mambo Italiano” was “banned” by New York station WABC, a station that apparently specialized in Broadway songs. The station was worried about what the Italian words might possibly mean.
In the end, the record company sent them an Italian language professor and a Catholic priest to reassure them that they could play the song and still uphold their moral values.
As for Perez: Although he hadn’t had any big chart records yet, now that the word “mambo” was on everyone’s lips – as well as on their hips – it was only a matter of time.
“Papa Loves Mambo” is a 9. “Mambo Italiano” is an 8.
Meanwhile, in Doo-Wop Land:
“Earth Angel” by The Penguins
“Earth Angel” by The Penguins may be the greatest doowop record of all time. The pinnacle of doowop as an artform. There would be stuff later on, The Flamingos for example, who would create doowop inspired records of awe-inspiring beauty… but I feel they were too big budget to be considered real doo-wop. Real doo-wop is the stuff you can sing with your buddies on a street corner or a stoop! Real doo-wop doesn’t have an orchestra playing in the background.
Which lead doo-wopper Cleve felt confident were the coolest of the birds.
“What’s cooler than a penguin?” he would ask, safe in the knowledge that, although cooler birds might conceivably exist, The Ravens or The Crows were certainly not it.
Cleve may have been unduly influenced in his judgement by the advertising for Kool mentholated cigarettes, and its mascot, Willie The Penguin.
Another reason for “Earth Angel” being the pinnacle of doowop is that it was built out of the best bits of a whole bunch of other doowop songs. This was pretty much standard practice in the doowop scene at the time. After all, you don’t sit down and write a doowop song. You just start doowop-ing and see where it leads you, grabbing “doo-wops” and “boom-pa-lomp-pa-lomps” from other doowop songs you know.
The Penguins took bits from Jessee & Marvin’s “Dream Girl.” The “will you be mine” bit may have been from The Swallows “Will You Be Mine.”
The bit where they sing “vision of loveliness” may have been snatched from “I Went To Your Wedding.”
You might know the Patti Page version, but “I Went To Your Wedding” was also, originally, a doowop song.
“Earth Angel” contained so much of so many other doowop songs that it was practically a medley.
Also “Blue Moon,” a song that served as the basis for virtually every doowop song up to, and including, “Blue Moon” by The Marcels.
That chord progression was used in so many songs in the 50s that it became known as “the 50s progression”.
It was also known as “the ice-cream changes,”presumedly in honour of the “Blue Moon” ice-cream flavour, as well as being a nod to the centrality of ice-cream as a key food group amongst the teenage malt-shop patrons who liked to play doowop records on the jukebox all day.
The Penguins were signed to Dootone Records, named after its founder Dootsie Williams. Nobody was calling doowop, doowop yet, so the name is just a coincidence.
Now, Dootone had never been involved in a hit record before, the closest they had previously come being The Medallions “Buick 59,” a car song about a car that did not yet exist.
It couldn’t possibly exist, because it was only 1954. Dootone was such a small record company, and “Buick 59” was such a low-budget production, that the group had to make the car noises themselves with their mouths, as though they were little children.
“Earth Angel” blew up so fast that Dootone had trouble keeping up with orders. Sourcing enough paper for the labels was particularly challenging. The Penguins were understandably quite frustrated with the lack of professionalism inherent in the whole operation, and were consequently in the market for a slick-talking huckster who would promise them fame and fortune.
That slick-talking huckster was song-writer Buck Ram, who told them he could get them a contract with Mercury, a proper record company.
Now, Buck Ram was already managing a group. A group that was a bit more old school. A lot more polished. And they had a girl.
They were The Platters, and they were on Federal Records.
Not a bad record company by any means – they were having hit after hit, mostly banned blues records like “60 Minute Man” and “Work With Me Annie” – but Buck thought he could do better.
He thought The Platters deserved to be distributed by a record company that didn’t have issues with their records being confiscated by police. A record company like Mercury.
But Mercury wasn’t interested in The Platters, since they hadn’t had a hit. They were interested in The Penguins, though. Mercury was so interested in The Penguins that they were willing to sign The Platters too, just to get their hands on them.
So The Penguins signed with Buck, Buck got them signed with Mercury, Buck got The Platters signed with Mercury… then Buck proceeded to ignore The Penguins and give all his good songs to The Platters.
The Penguins waddled so that Buck could cut their flippers off from under them, turn those flippers into legs, and give those legs to The Platters, so that The Platters could run. And boy, would The Platters run.
Come back sometime in the middle of next year when we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the beginning of The Platters run.
“Earth Angel” is a 9.
Meanwhile, in British Land:
“Let’s Have Another Party” by Winifred Atwell And Her “Other” Piano
The biggest British party record of 1954: Was a ragtime medley of cheesy pop hits from the 1920s played on a piano that its player, Trinidadian Winifred Atwell, had bought for 50 shillings, or about $2.50. That’s only 52 cents more than Bob Merrill’s toy xylophone!
That 50-shilling piano was Winifred’s “other piano.” Winifred also had a proper piano; a concert grand. Winifred was, by profession, a concert pianist. She was quite a good one. But no one really cared until she switched to her 50-shilling “other piano,” and started pounding out ragtime tunes.
Winifred had a variety show act where she would start playing on a concert grand, as she had been trained to do, having studied at the Royal Academy Of Music.
Even more impressively, studied with Russian pianist, Alexander Borovsky. I’m assuming from the context – and the fact that he was a Russian pianist – that this was a pretty big deal.
Half-way through the show, Winifred would switch from the concert grand to the claptrap, and probably ever-so-slightly-out-of-tune, “other” piano and start playing rags. This is what people had come for. Paid good money for. This is what made Winifred famous.
This half-classical masterpieces, half boogie-woogie ragtime-party act extended to her albums, her 1954 debut featuring everything from “The Charleston” to “Story of Three Loves: Variation XVIII From Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
So popular was Winifred in 1954, that the latter became a UK Top Ten Hit!
So famous was Winifred in 1954 that she had her hands insured with Lloyds Of London for $40,000, although the policy would become void if she ever did the dishes.
Winifred’s journey to novelty-sized insurance policies had all begun years before, back in Trinidad, when she had been playing piano for American servicemen. They started to ask for boogie-woogie. They bet her she couldn’t play any boogie-woogie. So she went home and wrote a boogie-woogie. She called it “Five Finger Boogie.” It goes hard.
Winifred is obviously a legend, but I can’t love “Let’s Have Another Party,” for the simple reason that it’s a medley of cheesy old songs. That is, songs that were already decades old in 1954.
Liking “Let’s Have Another Party” would be like liking Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers, the wedding-DJ/cartoon rabbit who destroyed my childhood by mixing together a whole lot of hits from about the same time as “Let’s Have Another Party” was a hit.
“Let’s Have Another Party” has a lot in common with Jive Bunny. Like Jive Bunny, “Let’s Have Another Party” features a monotonous dance beat running through it – or at least the 1954 version of a dance beat – so that even the most rhythmically challenged of your wedding guests can jitterbug to the thing.
In the case of “Let’s Have Another Party,” it’s practically a polka beat. Which means “Let’s Have Another Party” is practically a Weird Al Polka Medley – with no Weird Al. Nobody needs that in their life!
Like Jive Bunny in the late 80s, the song selections on Winifred’s ragtime medleys were all your parent’s – or even grandparent’s – favourite party hits.
We are talking about the corniest of 1920s pop hits. Most of the songs on “Let’s Have Another Party” – as well as Winifred’s other ragtime medleys – are those usually associated with Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor.
True, it’s probably hard to find a crowd-pleasing 1920s pop hit that isn’t deeply corny. But the prequel to “Let’s Have Another Party” – titled just “Let’s Have A Party” – kicks off with “If You Knew Susie (Like I Know Susie)” and there aren’t many songs more annoying than that!
Then there’s “That’s My Weakness Now,” made famous by Helen Kane, aka the inspiration for Betty Boop! That’s no accident. There’s no way they weren’t trying to be tortuous on purpose.
The nadir of Winifred’s ragtime medleys though, was “Let’s Have A Ding-Dong,” a title that practically served as its own warning label.
“Let’s Have A Ding-Dong” is nothing but The Worst Hits Of The 1920s!
- There’s “Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!”
- There’s “Happy Days Are Here Again!”
- There’s “Ain’t She Sweet!”
- There’s “Yes, We Have No Bananas!!”
Winifred plays all of these so very, very fast: All the hits you remember, all the hits you’ve been trying to forget, racing from one tune to the next with all the subtlety of a pianola gone out of control, transforming nostalgia into one obnoxious blur.
“Let’s Have Another Party” is a 3.
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I had heard Perez Prado here and there in the past, but I recently bought a greatest hits-esque album of his at an estate sale recently. “Mambo #5” and “Mambo Jambo” were both on it. I knew parts of the former from the Lou Bega hit. I liked reading about how Prado was formative in bringing the mambo to U.S. popular culture because I didn’t know how that happened. I wasn’t into what I was hearing on that album, as much I love mambo. It felt like “mambo lite”. I was introduced to mambo music mostly through Tito Puente and that’s my preferred sound. Lest I be branded a mambo snob, I love “Mambo Italiano.” Lest I be branded a mambo sell-out, I hate “Papa Loves Mambo.”
I had never heard of Winifred Atwell. She’s my new hero. She’s an amazing pianist and “Five-Finger Boogie” is the truth. The cheesy medley I can do without.
Speaking of which, I am with you on the wretched Jive Bunny track. That piece of garbage descended on wedding receptions like the plague and cheapened big band music in a way that I could never forgive. I hate it passionately to this day. Thank you for reigniting that. I can’t think of a better way to start my day. I’m not being sarcastic.
I bought the first three Jive Bunny singles.
Am I proud of myself? No but it’s only by admitting and facing up to our past mistakes that we can learn and improve ourselves.
JJ introduced us to Winifred Atwell a few months ago when he shared “Let’s Have a Party” with us in one of his British novelty articles!
I remember Jive Bunny as being latent offender?
I always thought that the “let’s make a dance track by co-opting _____” progressed as such:
How’s my chronology? I’m sure I’m missing things,
Chronology correct.
Jive Bunny then begat “Grease Megamix”, which, it has to be admitted, was very well done. Although it would have been vastly improved by the inclusion of “Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuA0Zxit6JE
It wounds me to the core that “A Fifth of Beethoven” is on a list entitled “offenders”.
Hooked on Classics has to be on this list.
Should Crazy Frog be in there somewhere?
I have no idea what that is but the title alone sounds like it qualifies.
I’m sorry*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85mRPqvMbE
*= not at all, actually!
Ugh.
Here’s a word of caution to any musicians out there. If you’re at a gig or a jam and the leader calls out “ice cream changes,” it can mean I-vi-IV-V or it can mean I-vi-ii-V. It’s only one chord difference but playing one when the rest of the band plays the other will make your ice cream melt.
I don’t like being in the office on Mondays (or, if I’m honest, any other day) because I have to wait until I get home to listen to these songs. Winifred Atwell sounds like a hoot.
As a small child I took piano lessons. One day I asked my teacher how she got into playing. She was inspired by her parents playing Winifred Atwell records. As a child in 1970s America, of course I had never heard of Atwell. She played me one of her records, which I thought was a fun sounding song. The next weekend I used my allowance to purchase one of Atwell’s albums. It’s a compilation record called “Chartbusters”, which I still have. I spent the next few weeks learning to reproduce her cover of “The Poor People of Paris”. My piano teacher was extremely impressed when I played it for her.
“The Poor People Of Paris” will probably soon appear in this column.
That’s a great story, Zeusaphone!
No number ones column yet today. Is Tom taking Columbus Day off? Great article. Papa Loves Mambo is a great song and so is Swing The Mood. Remember from the top 40 of Swing the Mood that it had some originals and some recreations (likely due to what they could get permission for)
Tom just published it.
Also, please remember to vote in the poll at: http://billbois.com/TNOCSPoll.php?PollID=501
You want a dance version of Mambo Italiano? Of course you don’t but British electronic duo Shaft did it anyway.
https://youtu.be/TtoZ6GRPGbo?feature=shared
It’s not as annoying as their previous single; (Mucho Mambo) Sway.
Which is in turn a work of genius compared to what they did next. I’d forgotten this ever existed. You’ll wish I hadn’t remembered if you give this a watch. Renaming themselves Da Muttz, they gave us Wassuup!
The year 2000 called. It begged forgiveness and asked for its dignity back.
https://youtu.be/ic-EsjAsc3w?feature=shared
Bobby Rydell was one of the singers that had a hit with “Sway”. He recorded a disco version of it in 1976. I love it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5dgCFTtQnU
Let’s not forget that Rydell’s fellow Philly singer Frankie Avalon remade his own No. 1 hit “Venus” in 1976 and got an unlikely No. 1 adult contemporary hit out of it as well as No. 46 pop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PagZsjQKMjU
It is no secret that I’m a Perry Como fan. I prefer his light-hearted and his silly songs to his big ballads. I am a fan of “Papa Loves Mambo”. (grunt!)
I remember talking to an old timer (about 83 now) who remembered an old radio countdown of the top rock and roll records of all time. It was slanted towards the birth of rock and roll rather than The Beatles, etc. Their #1 song was “Earth Angel”. We both scoffed at that choice, though it is a sweet song.
I do much prefer the Flamingos “I Only Have Eyes for You”, which I still say has place in the best-songs-of-the-20th-century argument.
“I Only Have Eyes For You” is a showstopping classic.
Shbop shbop *
*=damn straight
The Flamingos’ “Lovers Never Say Goodbye” would’ve worked in Ghost. I’ve hit the mute button to see if it would work in place of “Unchained Melody”. Only reached #52. It almost has the same grandeur as “I Only Have Eyes for You”.
I’m waiting for the Jive Bunny megamix, “Let’s Have a Ding-aling.”
The pre-rock 50s (and even into the pre-Beatles 60s) were F-ing WILD. Imagine 20% of today’s charts being held by Weird Al – that’s how crazy this period feels.
The early 60s were the heyday of inane novelty records. It’s handy to keep that in mind whenever boomers want to tell you how much better the music of their youth was.
“Bob Merrill was a man who had, a few years earlier, cracked the formula of how to write a catchy earworm. The kind of shamelessly catchy earworms that earnt him the reputation of the worst songwriter of all time!”
Paul Vance (Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, Leader of the Laundromat, Tracy, Playground in My Mind, Run Joey Run) has entered the chat to challenge the latter claim.