Back in 2007, I started a Valentine’s Day tradition for The Missus. (Like many/most such things, it didn’t become a tradition until the third time around.) It’s not a big deal — just something in the Things I Do category: I work up a mix CD for her.
All of these CDs share a common series title, which is something of an in-joke between us (and so not shared here). Each year’s CD, furthermore, has its own theme, usually based on the title of the first or last song on the disc; the songs are selected because the theme plays a major role in their title, source, context, lyrics… whatever. I usually start coming up with possible themes during the preceding fall. I forget most of these preliminary ideas, but pretty much have the final one selected by sometime in January. The master list of possibles — dozens of songs — gets put together by the first week of February. And from then on, it’s a matter of whittling things down so they fit onto one side of a disc — roughly 21 or 22 songs, of about an hour’s total length — in a sequence which both makes sense and sounds right.
All of which may sound wonderfully romantic.
But in fact, by the time I’ve spent a few hours during that last marathon through the full list I start to get a little tired, tired and bored and punchy. I start to grab at and cling to songs because they’re “interesting” to me, or (worse) “funny” to me — but not necessarily to her. Alas, in a few cases these songs have made it into the final cut. But I do fight this impulse (the expression “Kill your darlings,” y’know, doesn’t refer only to editing your own writing). Some of the oddest songs end up on the last-minute cutting-room floor.
Today’s selection here at RAMH was one of the oddballs culled from this year’s mix.
It never became a Monster Hit; I think the highest it went on the charts was around #7 or #8. Written by a trio of high-school students in the late 1950s, it was first released in 1960 — on a label owned by Tom Shannon, the DJ who first set words to it as a theme song for his Buffalo (NY) radio program.
A couple of odd things in the above photo: First, most obviously, there’s no Rockin’ in the group’s name. They came up with that “enhancement” to avoid possible problems with another band called The Rebels, fronted by Duane Eddy. Second, the “Todaro-Shannon” credited as the song’s writers were, respectively, the guy who owned the studio where the band first did their recording, and — yes — the DJ.
I’d never known the song had even commercial lyrics until seeing The Rebels’ Wikipedia article, which lists one version (maybe the original jingle) like this:
Tommy Shannon Show
KB Radio
Great times, news and weather
This is the place where things get better
On the…… Tom Shannon Show
KB radio…
Nevertheless, by the time the song finally took off, the lyrics were gone. (The first time I heard it was on an album which also introduced me to “96 Teardrops,” by ? and the Mysterians. I covered that song in a post here, in 2009.)
[Below, click Play button to begin Wild Weekend. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:18 long.]
“Wild Weekend” was recast as (no kidding) “Wild Weekend Cha-Cha,” which appeared on the flip side of later releases of the 45rpm record. You can hear that version over on YouTube. It was also given real lyrics in the 1980s by NRBQ — one of those long-lived bands (like the Dead, or Phish) with a devoted following, and possibly worthy of multiple blog posts in its own right. Their version was slightly retitled to “It’s a Wild Weekend,” and NRBQ uses no saxophones, but otherwise, yeah, it’s the same song:
[Below, click Play button to begin It’s a Wild Weekend. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:30 long.]
[Lyrics]
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