The Hit
In keeping with a new pattern, who the Hell is Bobby Bloom? And didn’t The Beach Boys do “Montego Bay” with Jon Stamos slapping away at the congas?
Of course not, that was two decades after Bloom rose to very brief fame when this tune shot up to No. 8 on the U.S. charts (it made it all the way to No. 3 in the UK). "Montego Bay" was a fun, bubbly number that dances over a loping beat and boasts one of a great, super-sticky hook in the chorus. Bloom has a unique voice - a mix of husky and warm that clicks perfectly with the lazy and carefree spirit of the song - but I can’t sell Bloom’s hit any better than a blog I found called 7 Inches of 70s Pop:
“And ‘Montego Bay’s” mix of pop and calypso along with the pleasurable images of laying on the beach during the day, drinking silver rum and driving your MG to an all night party did more for Jamaican tourism than anything their consulate had dreamed up.”
That post provides a decent glimpse into Bloom’s works and collaborations, even if it sells him a bit short by calling him “a struggling songwriter” (we should all be so lucky…mostly), but its author, Adrianqiano, ends with a deft, telling touch:
“When you hear Bobby break into 'Oh What A Beautiful Morning' at the end of the song and he gets to the line 'Everything’s going my way,' tell me that you don’t get the chills."
The Rest of the Story
While Bobby Bloom didn’t quite struggle, he comes off as someone lurking in the orbit of some of the biggest names of the era. A Brooklyn kid, he got into the industry about a half decade prior, but on the wrong-end of the doo-wop era with a group called The Imaginations that didn’t go much of anywhere. He had a decent ear for songwriting, though, and caught his break when he co-wrote “Mony Mony” for (the inescapable) Tommy James and the Shondells. That one caught the attention of one of the bubblegum pop era’s biggest, fattest wheels, Jeff Barry, the man who thrived from the girl-group boom - e.g., “Da Do Ron Ron,” “Then He Kissed Me,” “Chapel of Love” - including working with the legendary (lunatic) Phil Spector - e.g., “Be My Baby.” With his wife, Ellen Greenwich, collaborating they become one of the dominant songwriting teams of the mid-to-late-1960s…at least until their relationship caught fire and they flamed out (call it a hard lesson in working with your spouse). I could write about Barry forever, obviously - I haven’t even gotten to The Archies yet, never mind The Monkees - but this is Bloom’s story, so let’s get back to that, or at least what’s left of it.
When Barry landed a songwriting gig for the animated, imaginary Monkees knock-off band, The Archies, he brought Bloom along. The latter had a hand in at least one song for the show - “Sunshine” - but some of the songs he and Barry wrote together ended up with Bloom and, according to the 7 Inches of 70s Pop post, Bloom demoed them for a small label called L&R. That label released “Montego Bay,” which finally put him in the spotlight. He went into it with plenty of material, releasing two albums in 1970 - first, The Bobby Bloom Album, then Where Are We Going - so he had a body of work…only no one took much interest in the rest of it.
His career ended just four years later and with a self-inflicted gunshot wound out in Hollywood. The family that survived him never believed that Bloom would take his own life and, while no one really knows what happened the alternate theory is that Bloom shot himself cleaning his gun. He was just 28 years old, a mere 10 years removed from breaking into the biz with The Imaginations.
About the Sampler
For anyone wondering why I get so hung up on music history, Bloom’s small and brief career contains several elements of the answer. When most people think of “The 60s” (or even The 70s), they think of the massive rock acts of the era - e.g., The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, even Cream, Jimi Hendrix, or The Who. A guy like Bloom, and even Barry (or Greenwich and arguably Spector, for that matter) came out the deeper tradition, one that started in Tin Pan Alley and later took up residence in the Brill Building by the time all those rock legends hit their hey-days. These were the song-scribblers who took the broad idea(s) of what those more innovative acts created, only they softened the edges and themes to sell to a mass-market looking to be entertained as opposed to electrified. (This evolution fascinates me and I would kill to have the time to keep going with this project while wrapping my head around that endless supply of material.)
I bring that up because a lot of Bloom’s material sounds like it comes from further back in that chain - especially what went onto Where Are We Going. Listen to a song like “Love Don’t Let Me Down” and tell me you don’t hear something that Tom Jones would sing while the ladies slung bras at the stage. The rest of the songs I selected from Where come from the same vein - e.g., “Valerie” and “Was I Dreamin’.” That’s straight-up crooner fare to my ear, something Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin would have recorded had they started 20 (30?) or 10 years earlier, respectively. He spiced up a couple numbers, or maybe modernized them, say, with the bass-line that opens “Cracks in the Sidewalk” or the tempo and leading piano in (the frankly disappointing, because the title) “Pirates and Western Villains.”
The material on The Bobby Bloom Album plays more modern to my ear - think Neil Diamond, i.e., a crooner actually updated for the rock era. “Heidi” comes closest to something you’d hear Diamond do, but “Montego Bay’s” b-side, “Heavy Makes You Happy” raises the stakes with the clear guitar-rock riff that juices the chorus. Something about the word “heavy” inspired Bloom to lean into that sound - see “A Little on the Heavy Side” - but the one time I really heard him go all the way in across both albums came with the instrumental “Fanta.”
If you check both sources I used for this post - the one noted above, plus Wikipedia - you’ll see it took a little stretching to go this long, but I still don’t know what the hell to make out of this stray note: “'Where Are We Going' and The Bobby Bloom Album all used the same combination of pop, calypso, and rock.” I mean, yes, on the pop and rock...but the calypso?
Anyway, whatever happened, you feel for the guy and his family.
In keeping with a new pattern, who the Hell is Bobby Bloom? And didn’t The Beach Boys do “Montego Bay” with Jon Stamos slapping away at the congas?
Of course not, that was two decades after Bloom rose to very brief fame when this tune shot up to No. 8 on the U.S. charts (it made it all the way to No. 3 in the UK). "Montego Bay" was a fun, bubbly number that dances over a loping beat and boasts one of a great, super-sticky hook in the chorus. Bloom has a unique voice - a mix of husky and warm that clicks perfectly with the lazy and carefree spirit of the song - but I can’t sell Bloom’s hit any better than a blog I found called 7 Inches of 70s Pop:
“And ‘Montego Bay’s” mix of pop and calypso along with the pleasurable images of laying on the beach during the day, drinking silver rum and driving your MG to an all night party did more for Jamaican tourism than anything their consulate had dreamed up.”
That post provides a decent glimpse into Bloom’s works and collaborations, even if it sells him a bit short by calling him “a struggling songwriter” (we should all be so lucky…mostly), but its author, Adrianqiano, ends with a deft, telling touch:
“When you hear Bobby break into 'Oh What A Beautiful Morning' at the end of the song and he gets to the line 'Everything’s going my way,' tell me that you don’t get the chills."
The Rest of the Story
While Bobby Bloom didn’t quite struggle, he comes off as someone lurking in the orbit of some of the biggest names of the era. A Brooklyn kid, he got into the industry about a half decade prior, but on the wrong-end of the doo-wop era with a group called The Imaginations that didn’t go much of anywhere. He had a decent ear for songwriting, though, and caught his break when he co-wrote “Mony Mony” for (the inescapable) Tommy James and the Shondells. That one caught the attention of one of the bubblegum pop era’s biggest, fattest wheels, Jeff Barry, the man who thrived from the girl-group boom - e.g., “Da Do Ron Ron,” “Then He Kissed Me,” “Chapel of Love” - including working with the legendary (lunatic) Phil Spector - e.g., “Be My Baby.” With his wife, Ellen Greenwich, collaborating they become one of the dominant songwriting teams of the mid-to-late-1960s…at least until their relationship caught fire and they flamed out (call it a hard lesson in working with your spouse). I could write about Barry forever, obviously - I haven’t even gotten to The Archies yet, never mind The Monkees - but this is Bloom’s story, so let’s get back to that, or at least what’s left of it.
When Barry landed a songwriting gig for the animated, imaginary Monkees knock-off band, The Archies, he brought Bloom along. The latter had a hand in at least one song for the show - “Sunshine” - but some of the songs he and Barry wrote together ended up with Bloom and, according to the 7 Inches of 70s Pop post, Bloom demoed them for a small label called L&R. That label released “Montego Bay,” which finally put him in the spotlight. He went into it with plenty of material, releasing two albums in 1970 - first, The Bobby Bloom Album, then Where Are We Going - so he had a body of work…only no one took much interest in the rest of it.
His career ended just four years later and with a self-inflicted gunshot wound out in Hollywood. The family that survived him never believed that Bloom would take his own life and, while no one really knows what happened the alternate theory is that Bloom shot himself cleaning his gun. He was just 28 years old, a mere 10 years removed from breaking into the biz with The Imaginations.
About the Sampler
For anyone wondering why I get so hung up on music history, Bloom’s small and brief career contains several elements of the answer. When most people think of “The 60s” (or even The 70s), they think of the massive rock acts of the era - e.g., The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, even Cream, Jimi Hendrix, or The Who. A guy like Bloom, and even Barry (or Greenwich and arguably Spector, for that matter) came out the deeper tradition, one that started in Tin Pan Alley and later took up residence in the Brill Building by the time all those rock legends hit their hey-days. These were the song-scribblers who took the broad idea(s) of what those more innovative acts created, only they softened the edges and themes to sell to a mass-market looking to be entertained as opposed to electrified. (This evolution fascinates me and I would kill to have the time to keep going with this project while wrapping my head around that endless supply of material.)
I bring that up because a lot of Bloom’s material sounds like it comes from further back in that chain - especially what went onto Where Are We Going. Listen to a song like “Love Don’t Let Me Down” and tell me you don’t hear something that Tom Jones would sing while the ladies slung bras at the stage. The rest of the songs I selected from Where come from the same vein - e.g., “Valerie” and “Was I Dreamin’.” That’s straight-up crooner fare to my ear, something Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin would have recorded had they started 20 (30?) or 10 years earlier, respectively. He spiced up a couple numbers, or maybe modernized them, say, with the bass-line that opens “Cracks in the Sidewalk” or the tempo and leading piano in (the frankly disappointing, because the title) “Pirates and Western Villains.”
The material on The Bobby Bloom Album plays more modern to my ear - think Neil Diamond, i.e., a crooner actually updated for the rock era. “Heidi” comes closest to something you’d hear Diamond do, but “Montego Bay’s” b-side, “Heavy Makes You Happy” raises the stakes with the clear guitar-rock riff that juices the chorus. Something about the word “heavy” inspired Bloom to lean into that sound - see “A Little on the Heavy Side” - but the one time I really heard him go all the way in across both albums came with the instrumental “Fanta.”
If you check both sources I used for this post - the one noted above, plus Wikipedia - you’ll see it took a little stretching to go this long, but I still don’t know what the hell to make out of this stray note: “'Where Are We Going' and The Bobby Bloom Album all used the same combination of pop, calypso, and rock.” I mean, yes, on the pop and rock...but the calypso?
Anyway, whatever happened, you feel for the guy and his family.
No comments:
Post a Comment