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The Hit
I recognized intro to “The Playground in My Mind” the second I heard it. Had someone asked me cold where it came from, I’d say something like…shit, I don’t know, Sesame Street? Some weird damn kids’ program I’d forgotten from the 70s? Happily, the real story makes far less sense.
A guy named Clint Holmes recorded that saccharine and literally escapist trifle. It has its good parts - e.g., I like the piano - but, generally, it’s a vicious little earworm that chokes on kid vocals. And, for the record, Holmes had nothing to do with its creation. A New Yorker named Paul Vance caught him performing at the Paradise Island Hotel while vacationing in Nassau and, adding together a lounge-singer and that song, somehow came up with “four” (i.e., he thought it added up). Holmes recalled his skepticism in an interview with Classic Bands (best source for all this, btw):
“He had a couple of songs. I didn't particularly like the ‘My Name Is Michael’ song. I thought it was cutesy. The other song he had was a song called ‘There's No Fortune In My Future Without You,’ which was a little closer to where I really thought I ought to be recording.”
Hold that last thought. Vance got one thing right: he had written a hit, one that soared as high as No. 2 on the 1972 Billboard chart.
For good or ill - mostly the former, happily - it stranded Holmes professionally. He didn’t have anyone he really worked with, for one, but it also didn’t sound like anything else he did day-to-day. While he performed it on American Bandstand and variety vehicles like Merv Griffin and the Mike Douglas Show, Holmes never toured. As it happens, he was more of a residency kind of performer…
The Rest of the Story
Clint Holmes was born in Bournemouth, England in 1946, but his family later relocated to the United States - a tiny town called Farnham, New York, specifically. His parents had roots in the arts - his mother was an English opera singer, his father a Black jazz musician - but other interviews (e.g., a 2017 interview with Las Vegas’ KNPR) answered the question of where a jazz musician and an opera singer would perform in a town of 500: they didn’t. While it’s unclear what his mother did for a living, Holmes’ father, Edward Louis Holmes, commuted to nearby Buffalo, New York, where he worked a variety of jobs - working in steel, driving garbage trucks, working as a janitor. His father found something else in Buffalo, too: jazz clubs.
I recognized intro to “The Playground in My Mind” the second I heard it. Had someone asked me cold where it came from, I’d say something like…shit, I don’t know, Sesame Street? Some weird damn kids’ program I’d forgotten from the 70s? Happily, the real story makes far less sense.
A guy named Clint Holmes recorded that saccharine and literally escapist trifle. It has its good parts - e.g., I like the piano - but, generally, it’s a vicious little earworm that chokes on kid vocals. And, for the record, Holmes had nothing to do with its creation. A New Yorker named Paul Vance caught him performing at the Paradise Island Hotel while vacationing in Nassau and, adding together a lounge-singer and that song, somehow came up with “four” (i.e., he thought it added up). Holmes recalled his skepticism in an interview with Classic Bands (best source for all this, btw):
“He had a couple of songs. I didn't particularly like the ‘My Name Is Michael’ song. I thought it was cutesy. The other song he had was a song called ‘There's No Fortune In My Future Without You,’ which was a little closer to where I really thought I ought to be recording.”
Hold that last thought. Vance got one thing right: he had written a hit, one that soared as high as No. 2 on the 1972 Billboard chart.
For good or ill - mostly the former, happily - it stranded Holmes professionally. He didn’t have anyone he really worked with, for one, but it also didn’t sound like anything else he did day-to-day. While he performed it on American Bandstand and variety vehicles like Merv Griffin and the Mike Douglas Show, Holmes never toured. As it happens, he was more of a residency kind of performer…
The Rest of the Story
Clint Holmes was born in Bournemouth, England in 1946, but his family later relocated to the United States - a tiny town called Farnham, New York, specifically. His parents had roots in the arts - his mother was an English opera singer, his father a Black jazz musician - but other interviews (e.g., a 2017 interview with Las Vegas’ KNPR) answered the question of where a jazz musician and an opera singer would perform in a town of 500: they didn’t. While it’s unclear what his mother did for a living, Holmes’ father, Edward Louis Holmes, commuted to nearby Buffalo, New York, where he worked a variety of jobs - working in steel, driving garbage trucks, working as a janitor. His father found something else in Buffalo, too: jazz clubs.
