 |
| The pleasure is just as fleeting... |
The Hit
A 1967 number titled “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” that did a little drop pass to doo-wop. (If it goes less than 10 years back, can it rate as a “throw-back”?) It’s cute, in all honesty, and built around this conceit:
“Kiss me each morning for a million years/
Hold me each evening by your side/
Tell me you’ll love me for a million years/
Then if it don’t work out/
Then if it don’t work out/
Then you can tell me goodbye”
It’s still doo-wop, which is fine, but it’s “echo doo-wop,” a revival of a freshly deceased genre. (Don & Juan had charted with “What’s Your Name” just five years prior.) With all the free-floating ambition in the rock world that same year (e.g., The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, The Beatles, Sgt. Peppers), you wonder whether some kind of sleeper demographic (e.g., older adults pining for their youth) didn’t carry “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” to that lofty No. 6 in the Billboard Hot 100 all on its own.
The Rest of the Story
“Wrong song, yes, but possibly worse–the Casinos didn’t look the part. With nary a short hair out of place and no jeans and peace signs, Gene and his Casinos were deviates. The look was of a Sunday morn choir, a gathering of Young Republicans.”
That quote comes from a site called One Hit Wonders: A Musical Revue (link below; how is this the first time I've seen that site researching this project?), and it points to just one of the ways The Casinos were a bad bet to every get a second hit. For one thing, doo-wop had to be at least four genres passe by 1967, a relic of a square past the youth revolution rejected. Add the fact(s) that, 1) they started performing in 1958 and failed to break through when doo-wop was big, and 2) they chased fame from Cincinnati, Ohio, it would have been a miracle if they hit No. 60 with a song like “Then You Call Tell Me Goodbye.” And yet they did, by paying their dues one dollar at a time.
A 1967 number titled “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” that did a little drop pass to doo-wop. (If it goes less than 10 years back, can it rate as a “throw-back”?) It’s cute, in all honesty, and built around this conceit:
“Kiss me each morning for a million years/
Hold me each evening by your side/
Tell me you’ll love me for a million years/
Then if it don’t work out/
Then if it don’t work out/
Then you can tell me goodbye”
It’s still doo-wop, which is fine, but it’s “echo doo-wop,” a revival of a freshly deceased genre. (Don & Juan had charted with “What’s Your Name” just five years prior.) With all the free-floating ambition in the rock world that same year (e.g., The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, The Beatles, Sgt. Peppers), you wonder whether some kind of sleeper demographic (e.g., older adults pining for their youth) didn’t carry “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” to that lofty No. 6 in the Billboard Hot 100 all on its own.
The Rest of the Story
“Wrong song, yes, but possibly worse–the Casinos didn’t look the part. With nary a short hair out of place and no jeans and peace signs, Gene and his Casinos were deviates. The look was of a Sunday morn choir, a gathering of Young Republicans.”
That quote comes from a site called One Hit Wonders: A Musical Revue (link below; how is this the first time I've seen that site researching this project?), and it points to just one of the ways The Casinos were a bad bet to every get a second hit. For one thing, doo-wop had to be at least four genres passe by 1967, a relic of a square past the youth revolution rejected. Add the fact(s) that, 1) they started performing in 1958 and failed to break through when doo-wop was big, and 2) they chased fame from Cincinnati, Ohio, it would have been a miracle if they hit No. 60 with a song like “Then You Call Tell Me Goodbye.” And yet they did, by paying their dues one dollar at a time.
