Platters Had a Great Hit With 'Pretender'

Reporter-Herald ^ | 01/02/2018 | Jim Willard

[nickcarraway]

Old songs trigger old memories. "The Great Pretender" did just that for me.

The occasion was a dance party at a classmate's home. I was 16 years old that day. I'd just broken up with a girl who'd been my date for many months. Then at the party I began dancing with a new girl to "Oh yes, I'm the great pretender, pretending that I'm doing well ..."

We danced through that evening and regularly to the next spring.

Be that as it may, the group that recorded "The Great Pretender" was one of the mainstays of 1950s' music.

The Platters were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, although their sound was much closer to the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers than it was to Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis or any of the other early rock 'n' rollers.

In 1953 in Los Angeles, Tony Williams, Alex Hodge, David Lynch and Herb Reed formed the Platters. They met Buck Ram, who had been a writer and arranger for big bands during the 1930s and '40s.

Buck added a female vocalist, Zola Taylor, to change their sound.

Their first attempts with little known King Records included "Only You," but nothing clicked.

Then in the fall of 1955 after Ram maneuvered the group to Mercury Records, they scored a top pop/R&B smash hit with the same "Only You," written by Ram.

A white group, the Hilltoppers, quickly covered the song. However, unlike other white covers, the Platters' issue was more successful.

They followed "Only You" with "The Great Pretender" and they were on their way to stardom.

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"The Great Pretender" became the first R&B ballad to top the pop charts as well as the R&B charts.

Buck Ram knew how to write for this group and their next release "(You've Got) the Magic Touch" doubled on the pop and R&B charts.

They followed with a standard, "My Prayer," and maintained their momentum.

By now rock 'n' roll movies were in the vogue, so the Platters appeared in both "Rock Around the Clock" and "The Girl Can't Help It" in 1956.

In 1958, they released "Twilight Time" (co-authored by Ram) and "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" ( their take on another standard).

Rock music was evolving and although one or another edition of the Platters continued on through the 1980s, they never ascended to the level of popularity they achieved in the mid-1950s.

I'll always remember one special hit record.

• Well, here's some cheery news. In a normal lifetime, each of us will grow 899 new layers of skin. Extra credit may be given kids for "skinned knees, etc."

• He may have been smiling when he went down for the third time. The Duke of Clarence drowned in Malmsey wine in 1478.

• George Colman once said he made his fortune out of what people left on the side of their plates. What was George's product? He produced mustard.

• I must have missed it. Following Ian Fleming's death, Kingsley Amis wrote the first James Bond followup, "Colonel Sun."

• Thankfully I'm not there yet. You know you're getting old when you look forward to a dull evening.

Jim Willard, a Loveland resident since 1967, retired from Hewlett-Packard after 33 years to focus on less trivial things. He calls Twoey, his bichon frisé-Maltese dog, vice president of research for his column.

[Family Guy]

Can't forget Stan Freberg's classic version. The Great Pretender

[Oshkalaboomboom]

NO, people who call themselves Platters tour constantly, but all the real Platters are dead.

I've seen several of these bands and they either have a relative of an original member or had an original member in it who passed on the rights to the name and the style. If they didn't they would have to call themselves a Platters tribute band, or Salute to the Platters.

[smalltownslick]

All of which means, of course, that they have the legal right to call themselves the Platters, but they still aren’t.