Sunday, September 07, 2008
Frogmen, Mad Daddy, My Home Town
Not exactly doo wop or a vocal group, the Frogmen made just a few records in their short instrumental career. The biggest hit by far was called Underwater. It was a smoking instrumental picking up on the surf scene in southern California, and peaked at number 44 in 1961. You could easily find it a lot higher on west coast local radio station charts,but I could understand why the Midwestern states might have trouble visualizing it. The first issue was on Scott, though it appears it was the Frogmen's second release for the label. Reportedly, the group was a four piece band from Culver City, California, and Rockin Records list the FIVE members as: Jim Young,Dennis Fowley, Mike Anderson, Raymond Sulivan and Larry Bartone. Adding the "guiro". a Spanish percussion instrument, gave it that croaking hook. Scott records was a short lived small independent label from the Los Angeles area, not to be confused with several other labels of the same name, mostly on the east coast. The record was quickly moved to Candix records, and proved to be one of the biggest hits on the label. It should be noted that the Beach Boys certainly had a strong hit on Candix with "Surfin".So I have been re-visiting some airchecks of mine lately. An aircheck in my collection is defined as an original radio broadcast of a vintage rock and roll music show from the 1950's or early 1960's. Last night I plugged in Mad Daddy. He was an amazing DJ with unbelievable creativity. He could rhyme everything - in fact he did. One of the things he didn't so quite as well as many DJ's was announce his songs. Thus my question for you. One of the great instrumentals he played on more than one show, was clled "Big Bad Train". I don't have a clue who it was by. He had a habit of playing some obscure and very local records to his place of employment at the time, WHK in Cleveland, Ohio. His story has a sad ending. He was on top of the world in Cleveland, went to New York and was not accepted by the listeners. He went from number one to generally not listened to. He committed suicide in 1968. Here is a link where you can hear 30 seconds of Big Bad Train. If you know who the artist is, email me. brian@colorradio.com
I am always a sucker for radio station related records. Whether it's a LP with the radio call letters and their then current pick hits, or a 45 related to that radio station's on air talent, I love them. My latest was called WISM (Wisconsin) "Madison Madison, That's My Home Town". Sung by the WISM Hit Paraders and featuring Miss WISM. Who was she, anyway? Also, I may be mistaken but I think there was a series of My Home Town records for different cities in the USA.
Labels: big bad train, frogmen, mad daddy
