Posted on 08/21/2022 10:09:57 PM PDT by DallasBiff
The song most associated with MUNGO JERRY is the global hit IN THE SUMMERTIME
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Same here. I didn't try very hard to understand the lyrics at that age. I could tell that "Timothy" was not a love song, and was somehow about a mine disaster, but couldn't understand that two of the miners had cannibalized the third. I'm sure I would have understood that if I or any of my friends had been a few years older.
Timothy was made on a bet by Rupert Holmes. It was recorded only a little more than one year after the Farmington Mine Explosion (20 November 1968), which killed 78 miners. Another mine disaster, at Hurricane Creek WV, killed 39 in December 1970, after Timothy was recorded. This is probably why airplay of the song continued into 1971.
These mine disasters were well covered in the media of that time, and made a strong impression on me and many others I'm sure. This I'm sure is why the song remained popular among young people, who called radio stations to request it.
Tsh, tsh-tsh, tsh, tsh-tsh...
That fella was ugly.
Summer 70, had turned 16, and could finally legally drive my 59 Ford Custom 2 door (a dog: inline 6, 3 on-the-tree) to town instead of sneaking around on neighborhood gravel roads. A buddy of mine had a 58 Buick Century, and loved that song.
The Buoys were a local bar band out of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre PA and had signed a "one-single" recording contract with Scepter Records but with no promotion. Why a record label would sign a band to a deal and offer no promotion for them is beyond me.
Anyway, they engaged songwriter Rupert Holmes (not a member of the band) and Rupert decided that if they only had one shot at a single (which would not even get promoted by the label), that they ought to make that single a controversial one.
So as you alluded to, Holmes purposely wrote lyrics that would ensure that some radio stations would refuse to play it, in the hopes that the publicity generated would bring the band some notoriety, thus making them more attractive for more adventurous radio stations to add the song to their playlists.
The gambit worked to perfection and the single started climbing the charts in the spring of 1971. Rather amusingly, Scepter Records tried to "put a spin" on the cannibalistic lyrics by positing that Timothy was a "mule" and not actually a person. Nobody took that seriously and even Holmes himself laughed that off and fully embraced the cannibalism references in the song.
The Buoys had a follow-up single, also written by Holmes, called "Give Up Your Guns", which I am not familiar with but also had some dark lyrics about a bank robber on the run.
I do remember the Buoys on the radio again a couple years later with a song called Liza's Last Ride. It was on the radio a few times in Boston but never became a big hit.
As for Rupert Holmes (who had nothing to do with that last song I just mentioned), he would go on to Yacht Rock immortality with "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" which I believe was either the last number one song of the 1970s or the first number one song of the 1980s. I forget.
Makes you wonder what the guy had in mind exactly for this "escape".
Well it didn’t involve yoga, nor health food.
I guess Rupert Holmes was just a talented musician and songwriter who was trying to make it any way he could. He would have been 23 when he wrote Timothy, but he had been working in the music business for a few years before that. His talent level got him hired by some semi-important bands, and he must have been pretty good at networking. His reading of the market opportunity (as you relate it) was pretty clever, no denying it. He got a break and ran with it.
You're right. The Prisoner theme is my all-time favorite TV theme.
It's pretty good, but I think the theme from Mannix (by Lalo Schifrin) is much jazzier, with more innovative chord changes.
The Theme from The Prisoner was written by Ronald Erle Grainer, who was born in 1922, in the UK.
Lalo Schifrin was born in 1932, in Argentina.
Rupert Holmes was born in 1943, also in the UK.
In The Summertime was written by Ray Dorset, who was born in 1947, also in the UK!
Holmes co-wrote and performed on a 1969 Top 40 hit called "Jennifer Tomkins" which features the lyrics below. You have to be a real old-timer to remember this one:
Jennifer Tomkins was born on a Sunday
Her daddy got drunk, and left home on a Monday
Her mama died young when Jenny was seven
And Jennifer Tomkins went to work at eleven.
That song was the first public non-political thing that pissed me off.
“If her Daddy’s rich take her out for a meal.
If her Daddy’s poor, just do what you feel.”
Yes the tune is catchy, but...
Have a drink, have a drive....
A different time.
“Timothy, a song about a mining accident and cannabilism”!!
Some not so subtle. I'm thinking here of California Nights, which was written by (of all people) Marvin Hamlisch, and sung by Leslie Gore. Lyrics by Hamlisch's brother-in-law Howard Liebling.
That's got hit written all over it!
Turns out Mungo Jerry was really Andre the giant.
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