Fact #100848
When:
Short story:
Ska makes its first appearance on the Billboard charts in the USA
when My Boy
Lollipop by Millie Small
enters the Hot 100. The song is arranged by Ernest Ranglin, who also plays guitar on the track.
Full article:
Chris Blackwell (producer) : Your first hit is what moves you from being one of thousands to one of hundreds. What was special about Olympic Studios in London, when it was at the Carlton Street address. It was recorded by a staff engineer there. I was interested in engineering. I found that if you could learn how to get the sounds, you could get them quicker. That's why I always wanted to work with the best engineers - to get at the things that are in your head more quickly. Back then, an engineer was an engineer, and a producer-usually an A + R person-was the producer. As a producer, you wanted to try this or that sound, and you told the engineer, and he moved a knob. It was frustrating. The producer brought in the artists and the song, but it was the engineer's responsibility to get the sound. It was a time of maKing Records when you hoped no one dropped anything in the last ten seconds of the take. I never really considered myself an engineer, but I did have an ability to get a good sound and to mix.
On that record, the reverb came from a sort of cupboard in the back of the studio that we used as a live chamber. It was a mono record, and we fed the sound in, adding a bit more of the reverb on Millie's voice. The record worked well for radio, but partly because it was a minute and 51 seconds. That was important for people at radio who were putting playlists together. Also, Millie's voice was irresistible - for a certain length of time, anyway. So a short record worked well for her.
Jimmy Powell [Jimmy Powell And The Five Dimensions] : I played harmonica on My Boy Lollipop and Mike Carroll did the clapping.
Chris Blackwell : I didn't put it on Island because I knew it was going to be so big. Independent labels in those days couldn't handle hits, because you couldn't pay the pressing plant in time to supply the demand, so I licensed it to Fontana, which was part of Phillips. It was a big hit all around the world, and I really wanted to look after her, so I went everywhere with her, which took me into the mainstream of the record industry.
(Source : interview with Andrew Perry, Daily Telegraph, 20 May, 2009)
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On that record, the reverb came from a sort of cupboard in the back of the studio that we used as a live chamber. It was a mono record, and we fed the sound in, adding a bit more of the reverb on Millie's voice. The record worked well for radio, but partly because it was a minute and 51 seconds. That was important for people at radio who were putting playlists together. Also, Millie's voice was irresistible - for a certain length of time, anyway. So a short record worked well for her.
Jimmy Powell [Jimmy Powell And The Five Dimensions] : I played harmonica on My Boy Lollipop and Mike Carroll did the clapping.
Chris Blackwell : I didn't put it on Island because I knew it was going to be so big. Independent labels in those days couldn't handle hits, because you couldn't pay the pressing plant in time to supply the demand, so I licensed it to Fontana, which was part of Phillips. It was a big hit all around the world, and I really wanted to look after her, so I went everywhere with her, which took me into the mainstream of the record industry.
(Source : interview with Andrew Perry, Daily Telegraph, 20 May, 2009)