GEORGIE FAME – “The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde”
And so to 1968. Recently I read a book called 1968 – Mark Kurlansky’s breathless tour of that year, which touched dutifully on all the accepted counter-cultural highpoints without really bringing them to life. It didn’t talk much about the pop charts. For people who weren’t there – and some who were – I’m guessing the soundtrack of 1968 is Pink Floyd or the Doors, not Esther and Abi or Dozy and Beaky. To put it crudely – albums, not singles.
The late 60s saw a shift in critical and promotional emphasis away from singles and towards albums. Whether promotional money came before critical regard or not, I don’t know: better margins no doubt came before both. There are particular events and trends that push the shift along: the crackdown on the pirates and the launch of state pop radio; the release of Sergeant Pepper’s; the rise of an underground press in Britain with new ideas about what mattered in rock; consumer uptake of marijuana and 33rpm record players. For the purposes of this blog it doesn’t actually matter, except to note that pop abhors a vacuum, and even if labels and writers and A&R men were all about albums, something still had to top the singles charts.
As I think I’ve said before, the lists of British number ones are hard to pick trends or generalisations from. They’re a blend of hot acts with mobilised fans, labels pushing fads and niche markets hard, one-offs spawned by film or TV or news, and a large proportion of records that – thanks to some gimmick or other – simply seemed like a good idea at the time. All of these categories, I reckon, are about equally likely to produce fantastic pop: it’s just that 1968 seems to feature a lot of the last.
This particular example is sort of a film tie-in, in that the writers went and saw Warren Beatty’s Bonnie And Clyde, loved it, and decided that what it really needed was a vampy supper-club theme tune by Georgie Fame, complete with “jazzy bit” as a sop to what Georgie did best. Fame’s throaty, amused delivery may aim for nihilist romance but as the story and song plods to its end he just sounds jaded. A strange hit to kick off a strange year.
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Tom in FT / Popular • 4,624 views • Share/Save
is it the closest to country that went to no 1 in england? (or is that some stray johnny cash)
“Stand By Your Man”, “No Charge”, and “Coward Of The County” all closer, I think. (And is “Sixteen Tons” country?)
also “ernie”?
GPWM
Cotton-Eye Joe.
Something else that occurred to me – but that I didn’t include in the entry cos I haven’t actually seen the fillum… from what I’ve read about it – albeit only in that dreadful Easy Riders cinema book – the ‘thing’ of B&C is the chemistry of Beatty and Dunaway’s nihilistic romantic outlaw cool, which supposedly resonates with the cool of ‘rock’ – so doing a louche lounge pastiche as yr fantasy soundtrack is missing the point (or is a clever critique, I guess!)
5,6,7,8!
Make that Billy Ray Cyrus.
Neither of them #1s!
I don’t think I’ve ever heard this (Georgie Fame that is, not Billy Ray). I’m curious to hear (well, not that curious).
The French of course got Gainsbourg & Bardot instead, who pretty much nailed the “romantic outlaw cool stroke the yoof of today” thing.
Yes, the comparison is so one-sided I couldn’t even bring myself to make it!
Bonnie and Clyde is a v.early US to reflect the bounceback from the French New Wave’s take on American outlaw chic (a distillation; a de-moralisation maybe*). English pop (and English film) were just out of this particular feedback loop, except as a kind of absurdist mockery (cf Billy Liar). (or haha Carry on Cowboy). Brit popstars of the 60s always shatter the potential for cool by being ENTHUSIASTS, maybe? Except for Peter Sellars in BEDAZZLED!!!
With Jagger, there’s a freight of manipulative sarcasm involved also: plus also his shtick is more “haha aren’t i a CRAP ACTOR” on-stage and on-screen.
I have still never seen “ned kelly”: “performance” = “if2: this time it’s polyamory”
*=ie is stripping out of the saggy moralisation that had come to clog “serious” hollywood films in the late 50s? this is a bit of a generalisation
Tsk, Mark – poor show for a sub: that’s Peter Cook in Bedazzled – one of the great movie pop moments, though.
Except this was Mitch Murray and Peter Callender hitching a ride on the passing ambulance as only they knew how. GF never thought much of it; CBS had just signed him up and needed commercial insurance, so to speak.
In terms of (a)morality, the whole Biskind theory requires you to shut your ears and eyes and pretend that Billy Wilder didn’t exist.
a. i am off the clock when posting on the interweb AS YOU CAN SEE
b. gurk yes i even got the wrong peter sellars (=californian opera director w.spiky hair!)
c. i kill myself now thxbye
true about wilder, tho i think there IS a 60s je-ne-sais-quoi which us films did adopt from the nouvelle vague which wilder does differently — of course the warners bros movies and cartoons of the 40s were also anti-moralistic in a way that cahiers loved and made its own
Oh, there’s no doubt that Bonnie & Clyde is (avowedly) nouvelle vague-indebted, it just annoys me the way that PB pretends that everything that came out of Hollywood pre-Warren and Bob Towne etc projected a Pleasantville-vision of America. I do realise it would be harder to sell his thesis and thus his book without this year zero moment.
“16 tons” is very country – it was written by merle travis, king of country guitar, and a guy that sounded like he was about to break into a huge grin whenever he sang
unlike tom, i enjoyed the biskind when i read it, but almost entirely for its wacky behind-the-scenes anecdotes — his critical analysis was very extremely second-hand and lame, but his tale of how and why a “movement” failed (ans=they were all cokehead tw@ts) was interesting, at least as a pigpile of evidence
haha also, unlike tom, i like films!!
(of course you’re prob. talking about the 1955 tennessee ernie ford version, which was the hit; the difficulty we have today in calling ford “country” points up the segregation of this kind of music that began at some point in the 1950s – into black and white, rock, pop and country – there were no such categories at the time; one wonders, however, how “16 tons” would have fared had it not been written by travis, and had ford been just a bit blacker)
i think genre segregation predates 1955 — the niche charts began in the billboard in the late 40s, no? (i have this all written down somewhere)
(actually there’s an argument to say that genre segregation began with the use of the word “blues” in a song title, ie in the 20s –> it meant “ONLY BLACK FOLKS WILL WANT TO BUY THIS”)
I actually got no further than the Bonnie And Clyde section as I realised that a) I didn’t like Warren B. that much and that b) if I didn’t like Warren B, god only knows what horrors wd await me later in the book!
Musically, this always seemed like it belonged among that odd little cache of 1920s revival songs that sprung up in the mid-1960s. My impression is that this came from the general movement to rediscover interesting aspects of American and English history (hence the vogue for Western duds among American hippies and Edwardian gear among English bands) that was prominent at the time. In America, the 1920s mini-boom produced hits like Sopwith Camel’s “Hello Hello” and the New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral.” Various acts also posed in 1920s garb on their album covers (see: Spanky and Our Gang and Peter, Paul, and Mary, among others). Outside of pop music, there were examples such as “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in movies and the revival of “No, No, Nanette” on Broadway.” To me, “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde” sounds at home in this funny little musical cul-de-sac. It never occurred to me when I was hearing it on the radio as a 9-year old that the singer and songwriters were all British. (Of course, I never knew until today that the same guy who wrote “Winchester Cathedral” also wrote “There’s a Kind of Hush” and “Doctor’s Orders.” There’s three songs I would never have guessed came from the same pen.)
kinda feeds into my mom’s controversial contention that bellbottoms were already retro in the 1960’s – they looked like sailors’ trousers!
This is the first Number 1 that I can remember from the time and seeing it on TOTP at the age of 5. Of course it started a lifelong affinity with TOTP and so many memories of great appearances – none more so than the one coming up in about 13 entries’ time! Last year, at exactly the same age, my twin boys for the first time went to bed singing the Number 1 they’d just heard on TOTP, “Amarillo”. It’s a pity they haven’t got thirty-odd years of the show to look forward to…
I’m a stinker for assuming things got to #1 which didn’t, really, but I thought dear old Kenny Rogers had a short string of #1s which were proper actual country (albeit of a pop variety)?
Pls ignore the above covered by TE’s first reply whch I misunderstood completely. Oh dear.
According to Everyhit, Kenny got to number 1 with Lucille and (of course) Coward Of The County, and number 2 with Ruby. As Tom sort of implied, this country’s fear of country is a bit of a myth.
I forgot “Lucille”! Yes indeed.
That said I think the UK’s country-lovin’ heyday does seem to have passed, a bit.
Howdy! I keep meaning to come around and comment on something here in the “new” location. Glad to see so many new posts on here.
However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard this song, which limits my opportunities to discuss it somewhat. Having glanced at the rest of 1968 I agree with the overall tenor.
Now I’m off to annoy everyone by commenting on ancient posts…
Though it should be noted that “Stand By Your Man,” recorded and released in 1968, took seven years to get to number one in Britain.
The same Peter Sellars who played William Shaksper Junior the Fifth in Godard’s King Lear – along with Woody Allen, Julie Delpy, Norman Mailer, Burgess Meredith and Molly Ringwald?
Country? Since when is this sorry bit of retro-30s pseudo-jazz COUNTRY??
There was some genuine c&w in the film soundtrack, Flatt and Scruggs, as I recall. Now that guitar/banjo pickin’ work fit right in with the ambience of the film. B&C were country-kinda people, after all.
Somehow, Georgie Fame mugging and smirking through the sound of multiple gunshots makes me wonder if Mitch Murray and Peter Callender actually saw the film.
The denouement was not cute.
Ha, I was reading down this and was wondering “When is someone going to mention Flatt & Scruggs” – though as for their being “genuine country,” I might classify ‘em more as neo-bluegrass proto-NPR/alt-country. Also, not having read any of the bios, I’d nonetheless expect that the real Bonnie & Clyde – and also the ones portrayed in the movie – would have been pop fans, probably listening to Crosby and Astaire and having dreams of glamour. And my ex-wife Leslie once remarked that the real Bonnie would probably have been ecstatic to have someone who looked like Dunaway playing her in the movie.
Beatty is an amazing actor, but always makes me uneasy, since his specialty is characters with a lot of difficult things going on inside but without much self-awareness of all that’s running beneath their own surface.
Mark, of course the Cahierist new wavers weren’t anti-moralist at all (note the Rohmer cycle “Six Moral Tales”) (and Penn and Benton and Newman aren’t antimoralist either); what they objected to was films reducing themselves to a moral point, as if they were Aesop’s Fables. The Cahieriets wanted ideas to be imbedded in the whole staging and flow of a movie and the relations of its characters (“staging and flow/relations of its characters” = my attempt to translate the phrase “mise en scène”; lots of “Death Rock 2000″ [among other pieces] is my applying the concept ["concept"] “mise en scène – or Ferguson’s and Farber’s American equivalents – to music).
Odd that you should pick the Doors to represent albums, Tom. You’re right that 1968 is the big shift to albums, but the Doors were the one freak band to never stop placing singles high on the charts. And Morrison never lost his appeal to teenyboppers, albeit to the glammetal-before-there-was-even-glammetal rock-chick teens, not the Davey-Jones-is-so-cute teens.
I didn’t know that! In the UK I guess the singles weren’t released, or weren’t promoted, because they didn’t really have hits beyond “Hello I Love You”. “Light My Fire” is a #1 later though, for someone else, and Pink Floyd get a number 1 too in 1979, so the picks were a tiny bit tongue in cheek.
Didnt Mitch Mitchell play on this before jumping ship with Jimi Hendrix?
No, Fame fired Mitchell for “insubordination” back in ’66; his next job was with the Experience.
I read the various opinions of my song, ‘The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde’ with interest and amusement. Of course, many of the comments were fair and well-made, but at the time I was in the business of writing hit songs and I can’t apologise for that – especially as millions of people all over the world bought the record and made it No.1 in so many countries. Several other singers besides Georgie Fame covered it and had great success, including Johnny Halliday’s No.1 in France – ‘L’Histoire de Bonnie et Clyde’.
Yes, of course it was a period-piece, and was meant to relate to the Thirties however, the song told the story of Bonnie and Clyde in what I believe was a highly melodic yet dramatic style.
Your correspondents were right when they observed that the piece was an example of musical opportunism – much of pop music is always opportunistic, hit songwriters like to have hits, but I am very proud of the song and believe it had value. Millions of record buyers agreed, and Warner Brothers recognised that ‘The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde’ helped with the promotion of the movie in many territories.
By the way, we did see the film – that’s why we were inspired to write the song.
Thank you all for your interest. Best regards, Mitch Murray.
What did you think of the Serge Gainsbourg one?
I finally heard this one for the first time and I must say, Tom, you’re uncharacteristically harsh here! You may be right that the performance hits some weird notes, but if you’re not paying attention this is a really catchy thing. It could use some more surprises along its length but I can’t complain about that first hook, “BONnie and Clyde” – nice.
I associate these kind of rinky-dink retro pieces with mild children’s edutainment cartoons, mainly the “I’m Just A Bill” spot on “Schoolhouse Rock” but I think it ran through all manner of cheap children’s fare for decades. Ooh – even better example – Follow The Arrows.
….so imagine my surprise when I got ready to post this comment and found that this thread was once revived by the song’s author! (Or an imposter, although I can’t imagine what would possess somebody to bother.)
Oh, there’s nothing wrong with a little discreet self-Googling… ;-)
(although I note that Mr Murray didn’t return to comment on the “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” entry)
Tom @38: Light My Fire was a contemporary hit, though not a number one, for Jose Feliciano. Not a straight copy but an interesting and original interpretation.