One Hit No More, No. 19: The Capitols, "Cool Jerk," and Some Blunt Realities

The inevitable end-result of dance moves as a concept.

The Hit

A naked bass line gets “Cool Jerk” started, and the instruments come in one by one as if designed to get the next part of your body moving. It’s a good tune with a better groove – it comes from Motown - the perfect one-off summer single in some ways. Like, uh, more than one song from that era, The Capitols wrote their hit in 1966 hoping to grab the coat-tails of a popular dance of the day, “The Jerk” (which (probably) looked like so). Where does the “cool” come in? A Detroit-area spin on the move inspired the name, but everyone involved didn’t want to risk getting the single pinned under a censor’s stamp by naming it “Pimp Jerk.” Because I’ve got space to fill, enjoy some potential apocrypha on where the “pimp jerk” came from:

“The story goes that there were neighborhood pimps who were too cool to dance the jerk like everybody else at the clubs, so the joke was that they did a pimp jerk.”

The Rest of the Story

The only people the Internet forgets are the ones that too many people forgot before the Internet existed. To rephrase the issue, you can’t get interviewed in the Internet age if you died before the Internet. Unfortunately, two-thirds of The Capitols died before even dial-up: Richard Mitchell (back-up vocals/keyboards; born Richard McDougall) died of “unknown causes” back in ’84, and Samuel George (vox/drums) died in 1981 from getting stabbed in a “domestic dispute” The band’s third member, Don Storball (back up vocals/guitar; born Don Norman), is alive (at least the last time a Wikipedia editor checked in), well(?), and working for the Highland Park, MI police department. He seems the likeliest subject for an interview, too, given that he wrote not just “Cool Jerk,” but also the band’s first swing at fame three years earlier with “Dog and Cat” (which didn’t take because something about “juvenile lyrics,” about which...not inaccurate).

The band had actually broken up the time Storball wrote “Cool Jerk,” but they decided they had something after they worked it up. The American music market agreed, the single took off, and industry people rushed to cash in by recording not one, but two albums in ’66 alone: Dance the Cool Jerk and We Got a Thing That's in The Groove. I can fill in the “what happened next” with in a phrase, and one that’s worth isolating:

“...both [albums] featuring mostly covers of popular Motown and soul songs.”

One Hit No More, No. 12: Len Barry, Nowhere Near as Linear as "1-2-3"

What the hell? His life, man.

Raise your hand if you know the song, “1-2-3,” the 1965 break-out hit for Len Barry, aka, Leonard Borisoff. Unlike a lot of the one-hit artists I've reviewed, the West Philadelphia raised Barry didn’t grow up with stars in his eyes; his voice impressed his Coast Guard buddies enough for them to talk him into trying. The fame-bug took and, for good or ill, it hasn’t let go.

Len Barry makes for a complicated case. For one, I can’t (easily) find interviews, a fan page, or any worthwhile biography, never mind a useful one. The richest source I found was a classicbands.com interview with his bandmate from The Dovells, Mark Stevens. Unfortunately, Stevens is a better talker than storyteller, so, when it comes to The Dovells and Barry, he passes on list of names he/they have performed with (I have more on the Dovells below) and has an understandable, but still odd fixation on name-dropping certain venues. On the plus side, Stevens gets you through the reasons Barry and The Dovells went their separate ways in less than two tweets’ worth of characters (way less, actually):

“Len Barry left in 1963. When he left, it was really because he wanted to be a Rhythm and Blues singer. I had even left for a couple of years because I wasn't happy anymore. I came back in the mid-60s, forever. Jerry and I decided if we're going to be in this business for the rest of our lives, we gotta go to Reno and Tahoe. We have to be the comedic rock 'n roll act that we knew we were years ago, when we were kids.”

That interview doesn’t unlock any big secrets – the salacious stuff tops out with Stevens slagging off on Barry’s management team (“small time stuff”) – but The Dovells did keep living a version of the life, performing 180 days of the year in their prime, and doing what they (except Barry) liked doing. Stevens does, however, deliver one vivid line on Barry:

“He was a real character and the character I'm talking about, I'm saying from a personal standpoint. He was a real Damon Runyan character. Truly, one of the true Damon Runyan characters of the world. But, as a business person? Forget about it!”

(Raise your hand if you know who Damon Runyan is.)

One Hit No More, No. 8: The Exciters, "Tell Him," and Brenda & Herb

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If you ask most people who have heard The Exciters’ “Tell Him” what they liked about it, I’d put money down on that twinkling intro, which is brightened by someone merrily tapping on a xylophone. I’m guessing the vocals would come up too, belted out by lead singer Brenda Reid with a clarity that borders on digital/ABBA quality (so fresh, so clean). “Tell Him” wasn’t The Exciters only big hit, but it’s the only one they got all to themselves.

When you go deeper into their catalog, though, and listen to more songs, you’ll catch a theme: these ladies really want love. A surface read of the song’s message could translate as Reid and her back-up singers, Carolyn Johnson and Lillian Walker, throwing themselves at the men they want, almost desperately. If you put some thought into when this song came out - 1963 - that flips the dynamic on its head. Reid doesn’t just “know something about love,” she’s doing something about it. Dammit. Girl is gonna go get it.

That cultural reversal didn’t go unnoticed: it’s The Exciters’ gift to pop culture. As one biography put it:

“’Tell Him’ boasted an intensity that signified a sea change in the presentation and perception of femininity in popular music, paving the way for such tough, sexy acts as the Shangri-Las and the Ronettes.”

The Exciters’ planted a bigger footprint in pop culture than “Tell Him,” and another, sweet-hearted review highlights the injustice of making light of their impact: “in the USA they are lumped together with acts both sublime and ridiculous as ‘One Hit Wonders.’” They don’t deserve the cultural downgrade, because once you look, you see The Exciters slip into some curious places. “Tell Him” did more than pop up all over pop culture, and inspire multiple covers (not always good ones (and just plain bad ones*), it also inspired Dusty Springfield to go solo and switch up her sound (Wikipedia’s history includes a fantastic quote from her). Moreover, they had one more massive hit - just one later overtaken by a version put out by another act. If you know Manfred Mann (with or without his Earth Band), now you know he didn’t record the original of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”; The Exciters did, a year earlier, and with one less “Diddy.”

In fairness, The Exciters didn’t record the first version of “Tell Him.” It first came into the world as “Tell Her,” as song by Johnny Thunder (not Johnny Thunders), aka, Gil Hamilton. (The Exciters did it better, and on all levels.)

One Hit No More, No. 6: The Contours, To Answer the Question, "Do You Love Me?" Not Enough.

You like "Whole Lotta Woman" best. I never realized.....

More than a little hyperactivity surrounds Detroit’s “other” Motown group, the Contours, and it goes beyond their live-wire stage shows. They changed personnel like most people change clothes - e.g., often and without much thought. One website I found organizes that detail in a way that draws the high-volume, “anyone can go” turnover in high relief, but nothing clarifies the mysterious mechanics quite like the lawsuit that wound up blessing the existence of two groups that toured at the same time - one as “The Contours with Joe Billingslea” the other as “The Contours featuring Sylvester Potts.”

To second guess that second lawsuit a little, Potts wasn’t even an original Contour.

Whatever the current line-up at the precise moment/location, The Contours chief claim to fame was 1962’s “Do You Love Me,” a song so nice, it made ‘em famous twice. The second time happened when that song showed up on the soundtrack for one of the 1980s most iconic movies, Dirty Dancing (not a fan; oh yeah, just put Baby in a corner). The soundtrack(s) for that song re-charted as high as No. 11 and kicked off a brand new, 10-month “Dirty Dancing Concert Tour,” and for a group that never really stopped touring (or rearranging the line-up).

To return to the stray reference above to the “other Motown group,” The Contours worked and lived in the shadow of the label’s bigger names - e.g., The Temptations, The Four Tops, and The Miracles. (If it makes The Contours feel better, I didn’t recognize The Miracles until I put “Smokey Robinson and the” in front of it.) Then again, The Contours owe a couple of their other hits (yes, they had them; more later) to Smokey Robinson, including “First I Look at the Purse” and, a personal favorite for the way it gives them something else to do, the ballad “That Day She Needed Me.”

Overall, the story of The Contours is a collection of near-misses – and those started at the beginning. They had to take two runs at Motown Records founder, Berry Gordy Jr., before he decided to sign them, and even that took the familial connection of a recently-acquired bass singer, Hubert Johnson. When they failed to impress Gordy face-to-face, his cousin, “R&B star and Gordy associate Jackie Wilson” prevailed on Gordy to give them another shot through a second audition – but as The Blenders. That they also came close to losing “Do You Love Me” says everything about how close The Contours came to missing their shot.