JOHNNY PRESTON - “Running Bear”
(17th March 1960)
These days dead rock stars leave back catalogues full of convenient foreshadowings and tragic - but marketable - hints. The Big Bopper’s posthumous contribution to the British pop charts, on the other hand, is a jovial rocker about doomed Injun love. Preston plays it straight but not sentimental, and the Bopper’s ‘war-chant’ backing vocals and whoops fill out the Native American gimmick a bit without making “Running Bear” feel entirely like a novelty. In fact it’s a reminder that the category of “novelty” as something separate from “pop” is a fairly recent conception. “Running Bear”, written and recorded by two respectable rockers, is a neat demonstration of the classic record biz approach - release anything and see what works.
If it had been made a few months later in the flush of the teenage death boom, “Running Bear” might have been played for tears (and ended up quite charmless). Instead Preston presents Bear and Little White Dove’s deaths as a matter of fact, window dressing for the record’s floor-friendly jump from verse stalk to chorus swing. 5
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FT's Doctor Mod on September 16th, 2006
This song is forever etched in my mind as the soundtrack to the Christine Keeler versus Mandy Rice Davies striptease scene in the film Scandal.
Otherwise, I’d probably not think of this silly song at all.
(Oh yes, that other “exotic” #1 song about the woman who eats “coky-nuts” and wears a “hoolie-hoolie skirt” is a striptease number in the film as well. It must say something about pop fantasies of native peoples.)
James Grifiths on September 5th, 2008
The version in the movie Scandal was not Johny Preston singing it as it was a live version by a british singer and he was never spoken about in the titles which was very sad as it was a great version of this preston song.Does anyone now the name of the singer in the Scandal version.