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| The dream. |
The Hit
“And it’s become…it’s almost, I mean the longer it goes on, it becomes more like ‘Happy Birthday,” because, when anybody thinks of the summer, they think of ‘In the Summertime.’”
Asking whether a person knows Mungo Jerry’s, “In the Summertime,” isn’t so different from asking whether she’s seen a commercial air either before or during summer. So, yes, of course she has. That quote comes from snippet of a 2012 VH1 interview snippet with Ray Dorset, the man so synonymous with Mungo Jerry that that might as well be his name - a thought he has voiced in other interviews.
Songs don’t come more free and breezy than “In the Summertime,” all the way down to the famous lyric, “have a drink, have drive, go out and see what you can find.” It’s an unusual tune too, and all the way down to the dude blowing into a jug; all acoustic, it’s minimalist as a drum circle outside your local dorm, only there are no drums on the track (and hold that thought). Less a story than an experience - specifically, the beginning of a day that feels destined to fall into place - it brims with hope, requiring nothing more than asking the right questions…and, yeah, a big nod to young, male horniness. (“You got women, you got women on your mind.”). What’s not to like, y’know?
That song over and over again, for starters…
The Rest of the Story
“Dorset was the composer, guitarist, blues harp, kazoo player, frontman and singer.”
First, a confession: dear God in Heaven, did I suffer through Mungo Jerry. I can say kind things about them and they have an interesting/semi-comic history, but I chose that sentence to start because I can’t think of one good reason to put a kazoo in any piece of music. And yet Mungo Jerry did it over and over again. At any rate, and this isn’t a question of quality, the only way I will listen to this band again is on a fucking dare.
Now, the good/interesting stuff.
First, Mungo Jerry barely qualifies as a band. Dorset aside, no one stuck around for long and the whole thing seemed like a contentious experience all ‘round. The best timeline I found came out an interview with Classic Rock Revisited - who, in a fun twist, talked with original/occasional keyboardist, Colin Earl. He started with Dorset in a band called The Good Earth back in 1968. They later drafted Joe Rush to play double bass and, sometime after that, pulled in Paul King to play banjo, blues harp and 12-string guitar. That made them a four-piece, only not for long, because someone named Mike Cole replaced Rush before they recorded their first 17 songs. It was the Dorset, Earl, Cole and King quartet who recorded Mungo Jerry’s first album, “In the Summertime” among them, but even the sales format changed. As did their name, somewhere in there...
I believe that they played the show that made them as The Good Earth, but what happened when is a little unclear. That show, the Hollywood Festival, happened in Newcastle-under-Lyme in May of 1970. Several bands played that show, big ones too - e.g., Black Sabbath, Traffic, the Grateful Dead, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, and others - but it was The Good Earth who got invited back for a second day. The “maxi-single” (explained here; Wikipedia says it was the first ever) that included “In the Summertime” dropped the next day and that sucker blew up across the Western world, straight to No. 1 in the UK, to No. 3 in the U.S., and so on, but it’s not clear their break-out performance turned on the single’s launch. They played behind Free that second day, by the way, something Earl remembered fondly. (“The next day we had to follow that really famous band that Paul Rodgers sang for called Free. Paul Kossoff was on guitar. We had to follow them the next day, and they were terrific; they really were a great rock and roll band.” Free is a rich and sad story; I wrote about them in an earlier chapter.) At any rate, they released the maxi-single as Mungo Jerry, a name they picked up from…yes, “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer,” a poem in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Books of Practical Cats, curse and inspiration, etc. In a nice touch, they invited Joe Rush back to play the Hollywood Festival, which tracks another theme with them.
Unbelievably, Mungo Jerry became a global phenomenon - “Mungomania” they called it - taking them all over the world, releasing new material all the while. Their next maxi-single, centered on the frankly refreshing “Baby Jump,” topped the UK charts in 1971. “Lady Rose” came next and looked destined for another No. 1, only to get undone by (one of?) the b-sides, “Have a Whiff on Me” after the Public Prosecutor’s Office heard love for cocaine in between the lines and moved to kill it. Underneath all that, new members came in and out of the band - for instance, John Godfrey replaced Cole before “Baby Jump” - but the biggest rift came shortly thereafter when King and Earl tried to fire Dorset from the band in 1972. The fun begins…
The move blindsided Dorset. In his telling, it happened when Mungo Jerry returned from touring in Asia. He attributed his near-sacking to his push to bring on a drummer. In his conversation with Classic Bands, Dorset recalls they played a couple rockabilly numbers and, as he says, “I figured you can't go forever playing without a drummer” - i.e., that having a rhythm section built around him stomping the floor could be limiting, so he pitched getting a drummer. He had no sense how deep the discontent ran until “a call from the office” passed on word that King and Earl had fired him and that they’d be moving on with a new front-man named David Lambert. The firing didn’t come off. When push met shove, management, the label and the publishers all took Dorset’s side and small wonder:
“Because I wrote all the songs and sang 'em all and I was the front man, it was decided by the record company that I would take on the name Mungo Jerry, the performing artist and Ray Dorset the songwriter. So, I suppose I kind of took on the whole Mungo Jerry identity. People in the know, people in the music business say Ray Dorset and the other people call me Mungo Jerry. After such a long time, maybe forty years now, I've got used to the idea.”
Earl remembers the whole thing differently. He claims they never tried to fire Dorset, but they did make noise in the hopes of returning his focus to the project. In Earl’s memory, Dorset was checked out, “not even brothering to tune his guitar.” He raised the way the band apportioned credit as another issue:
“One of the things that I didn’t like about the whole set-up was that Ray decided that because he arranged these traditional songs- which we really hadn’t because we just sat down and played them- he was claiming we had arranged them and I thought that was wrong. One of the things I have always admired about my brother’s band, Foghat, is that whenever they have used songs that were written by older guys, they have always given them the credit for it. I thought that was the right thing to do; it is the right thing to do. It was unfortunate how we did it. I didn’t like that, and I didn’t feel comfortable with it.”
Other sides to the firing come up in different places - for instance, Wikipedia’s entry mentioned a Dorset solo project, Cold Blue Excursion, that tried push the band’s sound in another direction - but whatever side each member took, the positions never seemed to harden beyond repair - e.g., Earl returned to play keys in 1975, and Rush came back as well. Several members continued to collaborate all the way up to the time when that Classic Bands interview took place (which, fwiw, contains some fantastic notes on the early history of the UK’s rock scene), including full-blown collaborations between Dorset and Cole and Dorset doing some music publishing for King. For all that, and regardless of who came in and out of the line-up, Mungo Jerry remains the sole property of Dorset. He continues to call the shots, even when Shaggy came calling for his cover. He could have Dorset and the samples, but it was clearly a package deal.
On the music/popularity side, Mungomania continued into the mid-70s, at least in the UK. With charting singles like “Alright, Alright, Alright,” “Wild Love,” “Long Legged Woman Dressed in Black,” “Hello Nadine,” “It’s a Secret” and “You Don’t Have to Be in the Army to Fight in the War,” no one can call Mungo Jerry a one-hit wonder. And yet they here they are on the list I follow like the Bible.
Having crapped all over them at the beginning, I want to close my notes on Mungo Jerry with a positive. They were a unique, ballsy act. Whatever Dorset and Earl said about one another, both come across as originals and enthusiasts. They played what they liked and with no expectation of reward. To quote Dorset from another source:
“My music philosophy is not about technical ability, but about the emotional communication from the performers to the listeners and viewers. My sound and style does not conform to any set standards because I do not discriminate between musical genres or instrumentation, I either like it or I do not like it.”
The Classic Bands interview asks Dorset how he felt about “skiffle revivalists” as a shorthand for Mungo Jerry. After laughing off the label, he deflected it into this pitch:
“OK. That's one way to describe the line-up in say 1970 or say end of 1968 when I started. I'm a big fan of all kinds of music that's played from the heart. How can you say? No bullshit music.”
In closing, I hate Mungo Jerry and I like them. But I also never want to hear them again…at least outside of commercials with “In the Summertime” in them.
About the Sampler
To the surprise of no one, it’s pretty thin and a little hostile. More than anything else, I focused on the kings of songs that I wish Mungo Jerry played more - which includes a couple listed above, e.g., “Baby Jump” and “Lady Rose,” both good rock songs. “She’s Gone,” “Open Up,” “Baby Let’s Play House,” “I Just Wanna Make Love to You,” and “Memoirs of a Stockbroker” (if…with some omissions) file under that category. After a couple that bridge the divide between their two moods - e.g., “She Rowed” and “Johnny B Badde” - the rest came in as examples of what I just can’t get through, not now, not ever - e.g., “Dust Pneumonia Blues,” “Maggie,” and (incredibly) “You Better Leave That Whisky Alone.” Again, I fucking hate the kazoo.
As always, I don’t go into any of these posts expecting to love everything I listen to. More to the point, who gives a shit what I like? If you love Mungo Jerry, get down with your bad self. They did their own thing and that’s enough.
“And it’s become…it’s almost, I mean the longer it goes on, it becomes more like ‘Happy Birthday,” because, when anybody thinks of the summer, they think of ‘In the Summertime.’”
Asking whether a person knows Mungo Jerry’s, “In the Summertime,” isn’t so different from asking whether she’s seen a commercial air either before or during summer. So, yes, of course she has. That quote comes from snippet of a 2012 VH1 interview snippet with Ray Dorset, the man so synonymous with Mungo Jerry that that might as well be his name - a thought he has voiced in other interviews.
Songs don’t come more free and breezy than “In the Summertime,” all the way down to the famous lyric, “have a drink, have drive, go out and see what you can find.” It’s an unusual tune too, and all the way down to the dude blowing into a jug; all acoustic, it’s minimalist as a drum circle outside your local dorm, only there are no drums on the track (and hold that thought). Less a story than an experience - specifically, the beginning of a day that feels destined to fall into place - it brims with hope, requiring nothing more than asking the right questions…and, yeah, a big nod to young, male horniness. (“You got women, you got women on your mind.”). What’s not to like, y’know?
That song over and over again, for starters…
The Rest of the Story
“Dorset was the composer, guitarist, blues harp, kazoo player, frontman and singer.”
First, a confession: dear God in Heaven, did I suffer through Mungo Jerry. I can say kind things about them and they have an interesting/semi-comic history, but I chose that sentence to start because I can’t think of one good reason to put a kazoo in any piece of music. And yet Mungo Jerry did it over and over again. At any rate, and this isn’t a question of quality, the only way I will listen to this band again is on a fucking dare.
Now, the good/interesting stuff.
First, Mungo Jerry barely qualifies as a band. Dorset aside, no one stuck around for long and the whole thing seemed like a contentious experience all ‘round. The best timeline I found came out an interview with Classic Rock Revisited - who, in a fun twist, talked with original/occasional keyboardist, Colin Earl. He started with Dorset in a band called The Good Earth back in 1968. They later drafted Joe Rush to play double bass and, sometime after that, pulled in Paul King to play banjo, blues harp and 12-string guitar. That made them a four-piece, only not for long, because someone named Mike Cole replaced Rush before they recorded their first 17 songs. It was the Dorset, Earl, Cole and King quartet who recorded Mungo Jerry’s first album, “In the Summertime” among them, but even the sales format changed. As did their name, somewhere in there...
I believe that they played the show that made them as The Good Earth, but what happened when is a little unclear. That show, the Hollywood Festival, happened in Newcastle-under-Lyme in May of 1970. Several bands played that show, big ones too - e.g., Black Sabbath, Traffic, the Grateful Dead, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, and others - but it was The Good Earth who got invited back for a second day. The “maxi-single” (explained here; Wikipedia says it was the first ever) that included “In the Summertime” dropped the next day and that sucker blew up across the Western world, straight to No. 1 in the UK, to No. 3 in the U.S., and so on, but it’s not clear their break-out performance turned on the single’s launch. They played behind Free that second day, by the way, something Earl remembered fondly. (“The next day we had to follow that really famous band that Paul Rodgers sang for called Free. Paul Kossoff was on guitar. We had to follow them the next day, and they were terrific; they really were a great rock and roll band.” Free is a rich and sad story; I wrote about them in an earlier chapter.) At any rate, they released the maxi-single as Mungo Jerry, a name they picked up from…yes, “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer,” a poem in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Books of Practical Cats, curse and inspiration, etc. In a nice touch, they invited Joe Rush back to play the Hollywood Festival, which tracks another theme with them.
Unbelievably, Mungo Jerry became a global phenomenon - “Mungomania” they called it - taking them all over the world, releasing new material all the while. Their next maxi-single, centered on the frankly refreshing “Baby Jump,” topped the UK charts in 1971. “Lady Rose” came next and looked destined for another No. 1, only to get undone by (one of?) the b-sides, “Have a Whiff on Me” after the Public Prosecutor’s Office heard love for cocaine in between the lines and moved to kill it. Underneath all that, new members came in and out of the band - for instance, John Godfrey replaced Cole before “Baby Jump” - but the biggest rift came shortly thereafter when King and Earl tried to fire Dorset from the band in 1972. The fun begins…
The move blindsided Dorset. In his telling, it happened when Mungo Jerry returned from touring in Asia. He attributed his near-sacking to his push to bring on a drummer. In his conversation with Classic Bands, Dorset recalls they played a couple rockabilly numbers and, as he says, “I figured you can't go forever playing without a drummer” - i.e., that having a rhythm section built around him stomping the floor could be limiting, so he pitched getting a drummer. He had no sense how deep the discontent ran until “a call from the office” passed on word that King and Earl had fired him and that they’d be moving on with a new front-man named David Lambert. The firing didn’t come off. When push met shove, management, the label and the publishers all took Dorset’s side and small wonder:
“Because I wrote all the songs and sang 'em all and I was the front man, it was decided by the record company that I would take on the name Mungo Jerry, the performing artist and Ray Dorset the songwriter. So, I suppose I kind of took on the whole Mungo Jerry identity. People in the know, people in the music business say Ray Dorset and the other people call me Mungo Jerry. After such a long time, maybe forty years now, I've got used to the idea.”
Earl remembers the whole thing differently. He claims they never tried to fire Dorset, but they did make noise in the hopes of returning his focus to the project. In Earl’s memory, Dorset was checked out, “not even brothering to tune his guitar.” He raised the way the band apportioned credit as another issue:
“One of the things that I didn’t like about the whole set-up was that Ray decided that because he arranged these traditional songs- which we really hadn’t because we just sat down and played them- he was claiming we had arranged them and I thought that was wrong. One of the things I have always admired about my brother’s band, Foghat, is that whenever they have used songs that were written by older guys, they have always given them the credit for it. I thought that was the right thing to do; it is the right thing to do. It was unfortunate how we did it. I didn’t like that, and I didn’t feel comfortable with it.”
Other sides to the firing come up in different places - for instance, Wikipedia’s entry mentioned a Dorset solo project, Cold Blue Excursion, that tried push the band’s sound in another direction - but whatever side each member took, the positions never seemed to harden beyond repair - e.g., Earl returned to play keys in 1975, and Rush came back as well. Several members continued to collaborate all the way up to the time when that Classic Bands interview took place (which, fwiw, contains some fantastic notes on the early history of the UK’s rock scene), including full-blown collaborations between Dorset and Cole and Dorset doing some music publishing for King. For all that, and regardless of who came in and out of the line-up, Mungo Jerry remains the sole property of Dorset. He continues to call the shots, even when Shaggy came calling for his cover. He could have Dorset and the samples, but it was clearly a package deal.
On the music/popularity side, Mungomania continued into the mid-70s, at least in the UK. With charting singles like “Alright, Alright, Alright,” “Wild Love,” “Long Legged Woman Dressed in Black,” “Hello Nadine,” “It’s a Secret” and “You Don’t Have to Be in the Army to Fight in the War,” no one can call Mungo Jerry a one-hit wonder. And yet they here they are on the list I follow like the Bible.
Having crapped all over them at the beginning, I want to close my notes on Mungo Jerry with a positive. They were a unique, ballsy act. Whatever Dorset and Earl said about one another, both come across as originals and enthusiasts. They played what they liked and with no expectation of reward. To quote Dorset from another source:
“My music philosophy is not about technical ability, but about the emotional communication from the performers to the listeners and viewers. My sound and style does not conform to any set standards because I do not discriminate between musical genres or instrumentation, I either like it or I do not like it.”
The Classic Bands interview asks Dorset how he felt about “skiffle revivalists” as a shorthand for Mungo Jerry. After laughing off the label, he deflected it into this pitch:
“OK. That's one way to describe the line-up in say 1970 or say end of 1968 when I started. I'm a big fan of all kinds of music that's played from the heart. How can you say? No bullshit music.”
In closing, I hate Mungo Jerry and I like them. But I also never want to hear them again…at least outside of commercials with “In the Summertime” in them.
About the Sampler
To the surprise of no one, it’s pretty thin and a little hostile. More than anything else, I focused on the kings of songs that I wish Mungo Jerry played more - which includes a couple listed above, e.g., “Baby Jump” and “Lady Rose,” both good rock songs. “She’s Gone,” “Open Up,” “Baby Let’s Play House,” “I Just Wanna Make Love to You,” and “Memoirs of a Stockbroker” (if…with some omissions) file under that category. After a couple that bridge the divide between their two moods - e.g., “She Rowed” and “Johnny B Badde” - the rest came in as examples of what I just can’t get through, not now, not ever - e.g., “Dust Pneumonia Blues,” “Maggie,” and (incredibly) “You Better Leave That Whisky Alone.” Again, I fucking hate the kazoo.
As always, I don’t go into any of these posts expecting to love everything I listen to. More to the point, who gives a shit what I like? If you love Mungo Jerry, get down with your bad self. They did their own thing and that’s enough.
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