Welcome to MusicDayz

The world's largest online archive of date-sorted music facts, bringing day-by-day facts instantly to your fingertips.
Find out what happened on your or your friends' Birthday, Wedding Day, Anniversary or just discover fun facts in musical areas that particularly interest you.
Please take a look around.

Fact #88821

When:

Short story:

I Want Candy by The Strangeloves enters the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart in the USA, where it will peak at No11.

Full article:

Richard Gottehrer (songwriter/producer) : At the end of the girl group period, we had finished this sorta ska version of an old standard called Love Love Love. We didn't know what to do with the middle so one of my partners started singing [with an English accent]. It was going to be recorded by The Angels , one of our girl groups, but they didn't want to, so we put it out ourselves as the Strangeloves.

The record came out on a small label called Swan and, as a publicity stunt, they said we were three brothers from Australia - never thinking anyone would actually have to meet us. We got a call from a DJ in Virginia Beach who said, "If you guys would be willing to come down here, I think I can get this record to number one." Okay.

So we drove down, brought a whole lot of friends, pull up to the guy's office, and he says, "Hey - you can't just drive up! You've gotta go out to the airport, there's a plane, you get on, it'll taxi down the runway, we'll be waiting for you."

We get out. "Virginia Beach Welcomes Australia's Strangeloves!" I'm from the Bronx, the other guys are from Brooklyn, and we had to be Australia's Strangeloves - Miles, Niles and Giles. We put on fake accents. We said we were born on a sheep farm. We didn't look alike so we said we had different fathers. We actually did this on television! It was kind of a Milli Vanilli thing, but at least we made our own records.

So after we got done with that, we had to put out another record. One of the great men of the record business is Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records - and he's still there 50 years later. He fell in love with our band and let us record a version of Bo Diddley in Atlantic Studios. We put all of our youthful fervor and excitement into it, and when he heard it he said, "Oh man, this is great! I've gotta play it for my partner!"

So he dragged us into a room with his partner, Jerry Wexler, another great man. I mean, we'd had a hit (as songwriters) with My Boyfriend's Back, but this was big-time! So he listens, looks at Ahmet, and says, "Are you f*And%ing crazy? Get these kids outta here before I kill 'em!" Crushed! So with our tails between our legs, we leave. Ahmet comes running out after us and says, "He's in a bad mood - he didn't mean it. I've got a better idea."

He sent us to another great man, Bert Berns. He was a producer and songwriter, and some of the great songs that he wrote, like Twist And Shout and Hang On Sloopy, were based on traditional Cuban rhythms, which at the time had a strong influence on us. So he got us to rewrite our version of Bo Diddley in a different form, and it came out as I Want Candy. And that made the Strangeloves a hit act, and for that, we became the Strangeloves: we wore zebra vests, we had Masai war drums... did you know that in America in 1965, no one knew that there are no zebras in Australia? Nobody even asked! It just goes to show that if you've got something that interests people, and a good song, they'll buy it.
(Source : not known)