Fact #118651
When:
Short story:
The Kingsmen enter the Billboard Singles Chart in the USA with Jolly Green Giant, which will peak at No4 – the last of their three chart hits.
Full article:
Jack Ely (guitarist, The Kingsmen) : In those days we had no control over recording. Not over the quality … nothing. We were just high schoolers that had a band, and they'd take us into the studio – we were kind of awe-struck by it all anyway, and they'd say, 'Go into the studio and record whatever you know.' And we'd record everything that we played live, and then pretty soon it would show up on records.
We knew this song, Big Boy Pete, which we did live all the time. People really liked it. So, as a joke, because we always recorded everything we played, we wrote these lyrics up for the Jolly Green Giant version. Then we went into the studio on one of our jaunts, recording 800 songs, thinking that the record company was going to say, 'What in hell is this bullcrap?' The Jolly Green Giant was, like, our revenge.
And what do you think happened? They released it. We were in Los Angeles, California, doing Shindig or an Annnette Funicello movie or something and all of a sudden our distributor takes us in and says, "Hey, we love the new record." We said, "Great, what is it?The Jolly Green Giant!" We said, "What? Oh, no!"
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We knew this song, Big Boy Pete, which we did live all the time. People really liked it. So, as a joke, because we always recorded everything we played, we wrote these lyrics up for the Jolly Green Giant version. Then we went into the studio on one of our jaunts, recording 800 songs, thinking that the record company was going to say, 'What in hell is this bullcrap?' The Jolly Green Giant was, like, our revenge.
And what do you think happened? They released it. We were in Los Angeles, California, doing Shindig or an Annnette Funicello movie or something and all of a sudden our distributor takes us in and says, "Hey, we love the new record." We said, "Great, what is it?The Jolly Green Giant!" We said, "What? Oh, no!"