“My Ding-a-Ling” by Chuck Berry (1972)

One person’s view:  “A lifetime of epoch-making rock and roll standards blighted by one attention-grabbing, innuendo-laden infantile sing-a-long which monstrously became the biggest hit of the great man's career.” – Lejink @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.11 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1972 and 1973

Chuck Berry was one of the Founding Fathers of rock ‘n’ roll.  His influence was undeniably essential to the sound of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and so many other groups, and yet the #1 position on the pop chart eluded him for much of his life.  In middle age he finally figured out what the public had been wanting from him for all of those years:  a juvenile novelty song based on a dick joke.  He went to England and recorded a live performance of “My Ding-a-Ling”, and this became the greatest commercial success of his career.

Many people regard this as a horrible travesty that disrespects Berry’s contributions.  It’s as if Mother Teresa had been passed over repeatedly for the Nobel Peace Prize for all of her charity work, only to be designated People Magazine’s Sexiest Woman Alive after flaunting a swimsuit in front of the paparazzi.  I don’t see it this way at all.  “My Ding-a-Ling” is something that Berry had a right to be proud of.

Let’s consider the type of guy that he was.  There’s no need to rehash all of his personal scandals, some of which would have ended the career of a lesser personage, but I must note that he was one of the first celebrities to be (allegedly) featured on a leaked sex tape.  His sex tape makes Paris Hilton’s look like Citizen Kane by comparison.  If you haven’t seen it please don’t go looking for it.  I will make just one observation that should convince you not to watch it:  Some men prepare for a lovemaking session by ingesting a little blue pill.  Evidently, Chuck Berry preferred to eat a big bowl of beans.

With that in mind, the crudity of “My Ding-a-Ling” is not some out-of-character stain on Berry’s legacy.  It’s also not that bad of a novelty record, compared with other novelties that have hit #1.  It may be a one-joke song, but Berry’s showmanship and rapport with the audience gets extra mileage out of the joke.  And I always get a snicker at the thought of a guy trying to swim across a creek full of snapping turtles with both hands over his crotch.

I do have one minor nit to pick with the hit version of the record.  Though the humor relies on the audience’s lack of familiarity with the joke, the fans are somehow able to sing along perfectly on the first chorus.  It doesn’t make sense unless you listen to one of the longer versions of the performance, in which we hear Berry cleverly teaching the audience the chorus before launching into the main part of the song.  Ultimately, I can’t fault him for editing this part out of the single release.  He deserves our everlasting gratitude for getting radio stations to play a song about masturbation in 1972, but asking radio to play a ten-minute song about masturbation would have been a little too much.

“Go Away Little Girl” by Donny Osmond (1971)

One person’s view:  “It’s a real bore of a song when you don’t listen to the lyrics, and awfully loathsome when you do.” – Lyzette @ Films Like Dreams, Etc., on Steve Lawrence’s original #1 hit version of “Go Away Little Girl”

The public’s view:  1.65 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1971

The Osmonds were marketed as the safe alternative for pop music fans who found the Jackson 5 to be too threatening.  As such, they are one of those acts, like Pat Boone, who rock critics instinctively enjoy savaging.  This is unfair, as the family clearly had a lot of talent and had been performing together for years before anyone had heard of Jermaine, Michael, or Tito.  They weren’t a cynical, artificial construct like Milli Vanilli or New Kids on the Block.  However, no defense of the Osmonds can justify “Go Away Little Girl”.  It simply should not have been allowed to happen.

My guess is that Donny Osmond’s version of this song came about only due to time pressures.  When the Osmonds’ “One Bad Apple” topped the charts in early 1971, many people adored the sound of Donny’s high voice on the chorus.  However, he was already 13 years old and that million-dollar soprano was set to turn baritone at any moment.  There was only a brief window to cash in, and not enough time to commission songwriters to churn out worthwhile material for him to perform.  He needed a cover tune, pronto, and through some connection to Steve Lawrence it was decided that he would remake Lawrence’s #1 hit from 1963.  Osmond was rushed through the rehearsal and recording, and soon we had the entirely unnecessary return to #1 of a song that most people thought they would never have to hear again.

“Go Away Little Girl” is sung from the viewpoint of an older married man who knows that he can’t resist the temptation of being around an attractive young woman.  It leaves the impression that the “little girl” is applying for a job in his office, and he is rejecting her on a discriminatory basis to prevent a later sexual harassment suit and a divorce.  In other words, the singer sounds like a creep.  This doesn’t necessarily make it a bad song, and there are plenty of examples of #1 hits with lecherous lyrics that manage to be perfectly entertaining.  In the late 1970s, for instance, we had “Hot Child in the City” and “My Sharona”.  The problem with “Go Away Little Girl” is that the guy seems to be utterly clueless about his creepiness.  He’s a one-dimensional stereotype of a chauvinistic early ‘60s businessman, someone who probably wasn’t all that common but is today regarded as an example of how not to behave.  And the melody and arrangement are bland stereotypical representations of that bygone era, too – on both Lawrence’s original and Osmond’s update.

When performed by a prepubescent boy, “Go Away Little Girl” is no longer vaguely offensive.  Now it is completely pointless.  It does at least prove that Donny can sing, but there were many less bothersome ways in which he could have demonstrated his skills.  A cover version of “The Ballad of the Green Berets” or “Mr. Custer” would have been preferable.

The ascension of Donny Osmond’s “Go Away Little Girl” to the #1 position on the Hot 100 is a moment in which the checks and balances of American society completely broke down.  Someone at MGM could have chosen to promote a different track and put this one on a B-side.  Radio broadcasters could have invoked their obligation to serve the public interest and refused to air the record.  Consumers could have said, “I already have a Steve Lawrence 45 of this song that I never play.  Fool me once…”  It’s unclear why none of that happened.  This ranks up there with “Honey” as one of the most inexplicable #1 hits.

If you think I’ve been too negative today, you might be delighted at my defense of the next “bad” #1 hit that will be discussed here.  Or you might very well be horrified.

“Knock Three Times” by Tony Orlando & Dawn (1971)

One person’s view:  “No redeeming qualities whatsoever.  Utterly appalling.” – djiaind @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.68 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1971 that wasn’t by someone named Osmond

Imagine that most of the relics from the 1970s are wiped out by a nuclear comet, and the only surviving items are the master tapes that Tony Orlando keeps in the lead-lined bunker beneath his house.  Anthropologists who listen to his songs will conclude that communication was very awkward in the ‘70s and people constructed bizarre ways to avoid having a conversation.  Women of the ‘70s didn’t discuss family problems with their husbands, and simply fled without a word to become strippers in New Orleans.  Prisoners asked their wives to indicate their loyalty by decorating trees with yellow ribbons.  And then there’s the courtship attempt described in “Knock Three Times”, in which some dude tries to seduce his downstairs neighbor by dangling a note from string outside of her window.

One of the criticisms of “Knock Three Times” is that it’s a little rude for a guy to proposition a woman via a note when, by his own admission, she doesn’t even know him.  This is why the setting is so important.  Although the woman may not have ever talked to the upstairs Casanova, she does know a lot about him from the unspoken intimacy they have shared while living in the same building.  She knows that he gets home from work before she does, and that he takes the best spot so she has to park in the giant mud puddle.  She gets his mail by mistake from time to time, so she knows that his grandmother still renews his Highlights for Children subscription every year on his birthday.  She also knows that he stomps into the kitchen for a snack every night at 2 AM, in what are probably his goddamn cowboy boots, and that he frequently unleashes manly urinations with all the sound and fury of Niagara Falls on a rainy day.  Even if these two lovebirds haven’t shared a hello or a smile, he’s already maneuvered his way into her heart.  It’s time to write a note!

On the other hand, the man is forgetting that he also has information about the young lady that he can leverage.  Specifically, thanks to the volume level she has inconsiderately chosen for her music, he knows the songs that she likes.  Why not incorporate this into the note?  “I hear that you’re playing ‘Honey’.  I’m a Goldsborohead too!  I can’t find anyone who will go with me to Bobby’s show at the V.F.W. hall next Thursday.  Would you be interested?”

The biggest problem with the note scheme is that it leaves the woman with only a binary choice.  She is requested to reply with three knocks on the ceiling for a “yes” and two on the pipe for “I would rather have a 24-hour tap dancing studio upstairs than you.”  Maybe she’s interested in the dude but needs to negotiate some terms first.  How should she respond if she wants to have sex only if she can watch a rerun of Gomer Pyle during it?  Should she draw a picture of Jim Nabors on the note and send it back up to him?

Orlando’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” ends by revealing the wife’s arboreal message to her freshly paroled husband, but “Knock Three Times” leaves its story unresolved.  It never tells us the downstairs neighbor’s response.  That’s probably because there’s no believable way to make this cringeworthy incident turn out well for the incel who dangles the note.  It’s as if the song knows how dumb it is.

"Everything Is Beautiful" by Ray Stevens (1970)

One person’s view:  “[T]his is a garbage piece of songwriting, melody writing, and lyric composition.  It’s a disaster from bottom to top and is the worst #1 of the year.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music 

The public’s view:  2.20 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1970 

I looked for any excuse not to give this record a write-up here, but there’s no way to avoid it.  “Everything Is Beautiful” has a Rate Your Music score that is almost a full point below any other chart-topper from 1970.  My go-to reviewers for this project, Tom Breihan and dagwood525, both hate it.  Oldies radio rarely plays it because no one is clamoring to hear it.  So despite all of the good intentions that Ray Stevens poured into this song, it regrettably must be included in the museum of the worst #1 hits of all-time.

As with most #1s, I’ve heard “Everything Is Beautiful” a number of times in my life.  However, my memories of it have become tangled with a couple of other way-too-joyful early 1970s songs – “Isn’t She Lovely” and “The Candy Man”.  Those three records have congealed into a single unwelcome glob in my mind, a combination that is worse than its constituent parts.  Have you noticed that no one ever plays “Everything Is Beautiful”, “The Candy Man”, and “Isn’t She Lovely” back-to-back-to-back unless they are conducting a ritual to summon Satan?  But when I listened to the Ray Stevens hit before writing this post, it wasn’t the foul experience that I expected it would be.  I even admired some of the little piano flourishes that he put into his performance.  I could do without the choir of second-graders, but you’ve got to appreciate Ray hiring non-union background singers who would work cheap.

One of the ways that #1 hits get labeled “bad” is by having inconsistent lyrics that fight against each other.  “Everything Is Beautiful” does not have this problem.  There’s nothing that undercuts the optimistic message of inclusion and spirituality.  It isn’t the song’s fault that the ‘70s would yield other chirpy, overly cheery entertainment that soon turned such uplifting sentiments into a widely despised cliché.  Getting happy was a lot more fun when it was done voluntarily, before it was a chore dictated to the public by the Partridge Family.

It also isn’t the song’s fault that Ray Stevens later earned a reputation as sort of a right-wing crank.  In 2020 he recorded a “50th Anniversary Edition” of “Everything Is Beautiful” that begins with a diatribe against liberals.  He slams “those who use diversity for their own evil purpose to divide you and me.”  I’m guessing that a record label public relations executive told him that his novelty songs “Ahab the Arab” and “Bridget the Midget” were now deemed offensive, and made him sit through a seminar or something like that.  The irony is that one of the most unconditionally positive tunes ever to hit #1 – a song with a message that no one outside of the KKK could oppose – was later repurposed by its creator as a divisive weapon in the culture wars.

“Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro (1968)

One journalist’s view:  “I sat transfixed in my car as it played, as if I were in the midst of an accident.  The simpering melody, the tearjerking lyrics:  God, how I hated it.  And yet I couldn't change the station.” – Todd Leopold @ CNN   

The public’s view:  2.56 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1967 to 1969 

Today’s rock critics look at 1960s music through rose-colored glasses, and that makes it hard to choose #1 hits that qualify for our museum of the all-time worst.  I found only three such candidates in the second half of the decade.  I already discussed “The Ballad of the Green Berets” and will discuss it no further.  Later in 1966 the New Vaudeville Band topped the Hot 100 with the pseudo-novelty “Winchester Cathedral”.  This bassoon-riddled record scolded a church building for permitting a woman to move out of town, and the singer expressed this delusional complaint through some kind of megaphone or perhaps a walkie-talkie.  As preposterous as this concept was, its Rate Your Music score is hardly any worse than average.  There are a fair number of people who find “Winchester Cathedral” to be quaint and charming, and so I have chosen not to highlight it with an entry here.  Instead, I will move forward to 1968 and perhaps the most inexplicable #1 song in history – the song that rhymed “what the heck” with “hugged my neck.”

With most #1 hits – even those that are later viewed as a mistake – I can think of a reason that they were popular at the time.  None of those reasons applies to “Honey”.  It doesn’t have topical lyrics, great singing, or a kick-ass guitar solo.  Its melody is somewhat pleasant, but the song isn’t obnoxiously catchy like many of the questionable #1 hits of the 1970s were.  “Honey” didn’t ride some fad or novelty wave to the top, and there was no devious marketing scheme or chart manipulation pushing it forward.  There was no popular dance called The Honey.  Bobby Goldsboro was not a huge star whose records were a must-buy, and he wasn’t as handsome as other prominent Bobbys such as Vinton, Sherman, or Kennedy.  And his song’s dominance of the Hot 100 can’t be dismissed as a fluke that happened only because there was nothing else worth listening to at the time.  It knocked Otis Redding’s “(Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay” – which Redditors have voted the best chart-topper ever – out of #1, and then monopolized the peak position for more than a month.  I know that 1968 was a bad year for the U.S., with assassinations and riots and the Tet Offensive, but “Honey” seems like a purely self-inflicted and unnecessary harm.

“Honey” doesn’t work as a romantic ballad, because comparing your partner to either of the characters in it would be certain to provoke a fight.  The woman is childish, overly emotional, and a careless driver.  The man ignores his wife’s feelings and buys a dog to keep her company because he’s always at work.  He’s possibly even more child-like than she is, as he insists that he’s “being good.”  Maybe his mommy will let him stay up late now?

As a death song, “Honey” is the lamest of its genre.  It is nearly twice as long as “Moody River”, yet it doesn’t tell half as interesting of a tale.  The woman doesn’t die in a train collision, a mining accident, or a gun battle.  She doesn’t give a tearful goodbye to the narrator from a hospital bed.  He simply comes home one day and finds her dead.  The best thing about the story is that the woman passed away before these two insufferable people could have a child together.  It’s much better that she only planted a tree, but I bet this will be one of those trees that oozes sap all over everything and extends its roots through the foundation of the neighbor’s house.

While I’m sorry I can’t offer any more insight on the popularity of “Honey”, I am pleased to announce that we have now covered all of the consensus picks for “bad” #1 songs of the 1960s.  The next decade should be a lot more interesting.

“The Ballad of the Green Berets” by SSgt. Barry Sadler (1966)

One person’s view:  “Non-existent singing, bad music, no progression and lyrics that are basically [V]ietnam war propaganda.” – Heq @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  1.57 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of the 1960s

We’ve reached the most divisive song ever to hit #1.  “The Ballad of the Green Berets” was Billboard’s top single of 1966, and it still has fans today who admire its patriotic viewpoint.  (SSgt. Barry Sadler’s CD has a 4.8 star rating on Amazon based on 506 reviews.)  However, any discussion of the worst #1 hits is certain to mention this track – unless, of course, all of the participants are under the age of 65, in which case there is a good chance that no one will even remember it.  For having such a huge impact when it was released, it sure has faded into obscurity.  It never gets played at weddings or used in Apple ads.

In 2023, Reddit users held a Survivor-style vote to determine the absolute worst #1 song of all-time.  “Green Berets” did not win, but it came pretty darn close.  Tom Breihan of Stereogum, who is probably the de facto expert on #1 hits these days, thinks that Redditors were being too kind to it.  He considers “Green Berets” the most horrible chart-topper ever, behind such non-classics as “Mr. Custer” and Eminem’s “Crack a Bottle”.  As usual, we’ll look at these claims of awfulness and determine whether they have any merit.

Let’s start with the easiest part:  the quality of the performance.  Sadler was not a professional recording artist until he made this record.  He was a soldier – a Green Beret medic who had served in Vietnam before being wounded.  His singing is marked more by authenticity than by vocal prowess, and that’s perfectly fine in my view.  I don’t think I’d want to hear Kelly Clarkson singing these lyrics.  Sadler’s life story, as messy as it would later become, is the best thing that “Green Berets” has going for it.

The backing music is a simple Army-style march, much like that of a previous #1 song:  Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans”.  Horton’s record was 1959’s biggest seller, but it had fallen out of favor by 1966.  Its lyrics about killing British people no longer offered a unifying theme that Americans could rally around, thanks to Beatlemania and such, so the time was ripe for another military march to supplant it as the country’s favorite.  But marches drive rock critics crazy; no one can dance to them, and the regimentation is at odds with the emotion that music is supposed to make us feel.  Making matters worse, there’s certainly no Sousa-like genius at work in “Green Berets”.  The average Division I-AA college football team has a fight song that is more musically interesting than this.  The lackluster melody and instrumentation is not enough by itself, however, to justify the over-the-top vitriolic reviews that this record has received.

The lyrics are where the song really falls short of the quality we should expect from a patriotic hit single.  Sadler praises the Green Berets as an elite squad that fights for the rights of the oppressed, and declares that only 3% of those who seek the beret will qualify for it.  Unfortunately, he also seems to regard their battlefield deaths as inevitable.  Sending the Green Berets to “jump and die” doesn’t sound like an advantageous military tactic to me.  These are the bravest, the strongest, the most loyal young men in America, and Uncle Sam has spent a ton of money training them.  When they die, we can’t replace them by recruiting a few stoners who we find at the pinball arcade.  Here’s an idea:  let’s take better care of our Green Berets.  Put someone less valuable on the front lines, or better yet let’s not risk our men’s lives in foreign wars at all unless our national interest is at stake.  But Sadler doesn’t explore this approach, ending instead with a late soldier’s plea for his wife to raise their son to be a Green Beret.  And thus the pointless cycle shall continue, with every male citizen serving no purpose but to either die needlessly in the prime of his youth (3% chance) or be branded as a failure and suffer from a lifetime of self-esteem issues (97% chance).

But even its lyrical flaws aren’t enough to put “Green Berets” near the bottom of the heap of #1 hits.  It is its implicit association with the Vietnam War that – with the benefit of hindsight – completely ruins it for listeners today.  This is unfair to Barry Sadler, because the lyrics of “Green Berets” don’t reference any particular conflict.  The fallen soldier doesn’t tell his wife how proud he was to die in defense of the Da Nang air base and the Nguyen junta.  But buying this record was a way of expressing a political point of view without all the aggravation of voting.  It was the 1966 equivalent of purchasing a 12-pack of a brand of beer that had offended you and pouring all of it down the drain.  When “Green Berets” sold 9 million copies, it sent a message to draft-dodging hippies:  we have you outnumbered.  Now take a bath and get ready for your physical!

When public opinion turned against the war, Sadler’s record lost much of its initial appeal.  A patriotic country song from 2003 would later suffer through a very similar trajectory.  Darryl Worley’s “Have You Forgotten” urges Americans to support the war against the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.  It was an almost universal sentiment, but unfortunately the record was released just as the U.S. was launching an unrelated invasion of Iraq.  Many people interpreted the opening lines “I hear people saying / We don’t need this war” as a reference to this second conflict, and Worley did little to convince them otherwise.  Within a couple of years the Iraq War had become a foreign policy disaster, and this once massive country hit was no longer welcome on radio or hardly anywhere else.  Have you forgotten “Have You Forgotten”?  You probably have.

“Green Berets” is not as good of a song as “Have You Forgotten”, but I respectfully disagree with those who call it the very worst #1 hit of all time.  If you want to call the next song I will discuss here the worst, however, I won’t argue with you.

“Roses Are Red (My Love)” by Bobby Vinton (1962)

One AI’s view:  “The term ‘cheesy’ is often used to describe Bobby Vinton’s music.  It refers to the sentimental and sometimes overly romantic quality of his ballads.  While some listeners appreciate this nostalgic charm, others may find it a bit excessive.” – Bing Copilot with GPT-4

The public’s view:  2.47 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1962 to 1965 

Americans weren’t just celebrating John Glenn’s orbit in 1962.  They were also rejoicing in the start of an extended period lasting through 1965 in which no truly terrible songs topped the Hot 100.  Sure, each of us as individuals could find a few songs to hate from that time frame, but there are no consensus picks as to the worst #1 records.  The closest we have is “Roses Are Red”, whose Rate Your Music score was very low for its time but would be considered average today.  And that mirrors the critics’ view of Bobby Vinton as well:  he was so mediocre that he was even mediocre at being bad.

But that’s not giving Vinton enough credit.  He is one of very few musical artists who has mastered the art of time travel, building an extraordinarily successful career on the notion that many people do not easily part with the ways of the past.  As someone who still has a 30-year-old cathode ray tube TV sitting in my living room, I find that to be admirable.  Vinton ventured so far into the realm of the uncool that he can actually be considered cool for it.  Yet, other than a brief moment in 1986 when his song “Blue Velvet” was used in a movie, there has never been any kind of revival of his music.  Just like Lawrence Welk, who I wrote about previously, Vinton has been mostly forgotten.

Vinton’s career appeared to be washed up by the time he was 26, as he was still performing big band music at a time in which big bands had become passé.  In 1962 his record label informed him that his deal would not be renewed.  He reinvented himself on the spot, but not as a 1960s rock ‘n’ roller:  he would be the next Bing Crosby.  I can just imagine the exasperated sighs that were emitted by the label’s executives when Vinton announced this plan.  His contract still had a few records left to run, however, so the label had little choice but to go along.  Vinton discovered “Roses Are Red” in a pile of discarded submissions from songwriters, and you know what happened after that.  A rejected song, recorded by a rejected singer, hit #1 and put Vinton on the path to superstardom.  He became one of the top performers of the decade.  (One ranking based on the Billboard charts places him at #11 for the 1960s – two notches ahead of the Rolling Stones.)

Bobby Vinton epitomizes a vocal style known as “crooning”.  Based on a few black-and-white clips that survive from the post-war era, I have concluded that crooning was once the dominant form of communication in America.  Anyone who failed to take appropriate precautions when leaving their house in the 1940s or 1950s was at risk of being crooned at.  But how do you define crooning?  While musicologists could give a better explanation, I hear it as a vocal style that puts the emphasis on the words and melody rather than on the instruments or on any histrionics performed by the singer.  It’s fine to put some emotion into a croon, particularly if that emotion is sadness, but excessive melisma is discouraged.  Women can croon, if absolutely necessary, but men had better not sound like women while they are crooning.  Most importantly, a good croon never needs to be accompanied by a lyric sheet.  You can understand every word of Vinton’s croons, which is not necessarily desirable when it comes to “Roses Are Red”.

Some modern male singers are occasionally accused of crooning, but most have little in common with Vinton or with 1950s crooners like Dean Martin and Nat King Cole.  I call these newer performers anti-crooners.  For an example, listen to Edwin McCain’s 1998 hit “I’ll Be”.  Or, as McCain sings it, “Owwwwwwlllllll Beeeeeee”.  In McCainland, the word “love” can have six or seven syllables.  If anyone had yodeled a romantic ballad like this in 1954, he’d be locked up for the aggravated murder of vowels.  Edwin McCain is not a true crooner.

Historians look unkindly on Bobby Vinton because he adopted an outdated musical style which most people were already sick of, and then almost single-handedly kept it on the radio for another few years.  He even outlasted the Beatles, notching his last top 10 hit in 1974 with “My Melody of Love”.  This last record was made to sound like an old Polish folk song, so once again Vinton managed to successfully revive a format from another era.  What else does he have up his sleeve?  I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s getting ready to put out a disco album.

By most critical and popular metrics, “Roses Are Red” is the lowest regarded of Vinton’s four #1 hits.  I think that’s fair.  Its wistful lyrics of lost teenage love are tinged with sadness, but they are not sad enough to make anyone cry.  Mostly they just make the listener uncomfortable and slightly nauseous.  I bet that a lot of push buttons on car radios were worn out in 1962 by people hurriedly changing the station whenever this record started up.

Although “Roses Are Red” is debatably among the worst #1 songs of the early 1960s, no sane person ever argues that it is the worst #1 song of all time.  I can’t say the same for the next hit that will be discussed here.

“Wooden Heart (Muss I Denn)” by Joe Dowell (1961)

One critic’s view:  “It’s a clumsy, galumphing ballad with a farting tuba that reminds me, more than anything else, of the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme music.” – Tom Breihan @ Stereogum

The public’s view:  2.19 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1961

Other than novelty and novelty-ish records, “Wooden Heart” has – by far – the lowest Rate Your Music score of any #1 hit of the 1960s.  I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it on an oldies station or blaring in the frozen foods section at Kroger.  The guy who recorded “Wooden Heart” managed to score only one other top 40 hit and then disappeared from sight.  If not for its one week as the most popular song in America, which forces me to review it for this feature, I would remain happily unaware of its existence.  All of this makes it more intriguing.  It is exactly the type of lost hit whose alleged badness is the most fun to investigate.

Much like the previously discussed 1961 hit “Calcutta”, “Wooden Heart” has roots in German folk music.  And much like “Calcutta”, it features a pleasing but unmemorable melody that needs a boost from a megastar like Lawrence Welk before anyone will pay attention to it.  That boost arrived when Elvis Presley performed “Wooden Heart” alongside a dancing puppet in his G.I. Blues movie.  The King released a 45 RPM disc of “Wooden Heart” in the U.K., where it went to #1, but there were apparently some concerns that the song was too silly for the mature image that he was trying to craft after leaving the Army.  Any time that people heard it, they’d think of him singing with that stupid puppet.  (This was long before an opportunity to duet with Kermit the Frog became a highly sought after experience.)  Elvis and his label decided not to make the track available in the U.S., and so the task would fall upon someone else to record “Wooden Heart” for the American market.

Pretty soon there were five or six different cover versions floating around by singers who thought they could be the next Elvis.  Most of these recordings have been lost to history, but Joe Dowell had the tenacity and ego to believe that his might be a hit – even though he churned it out the very first time he set foot in a studio.  Without his ambitious promotional tour of radio stations, someone else probably would have walked away with the #1 hit.  Just think how differently history would have turned out if the more charismatic Gus Backus had been the one instead of Joe Dowell.  The subsequent British Invasion might have been averted, as girls would have been too busy passing out from Backusmania to ever notice any Liverpudlians trying to get their attention.  Unfortunately for Gus, his version peaked at #102.

I don’t think “Wooden Heart” is as horrible as Tom Breihan’s Stereogum review and the Rate Your Music score would indicate.  Dowell was a competent singer and the studio musicians did some interesting things to cope with the minimal budget that they were given.  Tuba and accordion rentals are expensive, but who really needs them?  The bass player was able to make his instrument produce the farting noises that Breihan complains about, and a lot of people couldn’t tell the difference between that and an actual tuba (or actual farting).  The organ player was able to mimic the sound of an accordion while daydreaming about one day putting his own name – Ray Stevens – on a couple of critically panned #1 records.  But let’s face it, this forgettable song needs more than just competence to save it from obscurity.  It needs a distinctive world class voice like Elvis or Tom Petty, and even then it is not going to rise to the top of the catalog.

Much of what I know about Dowell comes from an interview of him by Greg Adams that was conducted at the Beef House restaurant in Covington, Indiana in 2003.  (The Beef House is a convenient stop along I-74, and I’ve eaten there on two or three occasions myself.  Next time I will ask to sit in the Joe Dowell Booth and see if anyone knows what I am talking about.)  One of the more interesting tidbits is that Dowell once wrote a song about a man murdering his own daughter and his daughter’s boyfriend by directing a bull to attack them.  Dowell was also not a huge fan of rap music, describing it with words like “idiocy,” “cancer,” and “really devastatingly awful stuff.”  I bet 50 Cent feels the same way about “Wooden Heart”.

There is no evidence that Joe Dowell was in England in 1960 when Suggs, the lead singer of Madness, was conceived.  So this is probably just a coincidence:

“Moody River” by Pat Boone (1961)

One person’s view:  “Even more repugnant than the lyrics themselves is Boone’s delivery.  …  He sounds callous as opposed to caring.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music 

The public’s view:  2.93 / 5.00, in the bottom 25% of #1 hits from 1961

Pat Boone.  Oh boy, is there some controversy about this dude.  Boone is the man who took original songs by other, more talented acts, and recorded his own watered down “whitewashed” versions to make them palatable for audiences in his own demographic.  The prevailing opinion among critics is that this cannibalized sales for the original recordings and obscured the achievements of the marginalized musicians who had performed them.  The contrarian argument is that Boone brought attention to these previously little known artists and helped them achieve later commercial success.  I hold the latter point of view.  When I listened to Boone’s 1997 album In a Metal Mood:  No More Mr. Nice Guy for the first time, I was enthralled by the song “Paradise City”.  It turns out that it was originally recorded by an obscure garage band called Guns N’ Roses.  I decided to check out their stuff, and it’s pretty good too!  I never would have discovered them without the help of Debby Boone’s father.

Boone has also made some contentious political statements.  He recorded a robocall for the Republican in a Kentucky governor’s election a few years ago because the Democratic candidate had “consistently supported every homosexual cause” and would turn the Bluegrass State into “another San Francisco.”  The Democrat was elected anyway, and Boone’s dire warning proved to be correct.  A gay horse won the Kentucky Derby, bourbon distilleries switched to making pomegranate martinis, and the coal miners’ union demanded paid time off for Lady Gaga’s birthday.  Boone was not the only has-been out-of-state music star to interfere in the race, as Kris Kristofferson had endorsed one of the Democrats in the primary.  With these two titans of entertainment on opposing sides, many Kentuckians simply refused to vote until Chubby Checker offered his opinion.

But enough about the legend that is Pat Boone.  Let’s talk about his hit song “Moody River”.  It tells a story in which Boone’s character goes to meet his girlfriend at an oak tree next to a river.  Instead, he finds a note in which she confesses to cheating on him.  The guilt was bothering her, so she did the only rational thing that a female in this situation could do:  she jumped in the river and drowned.

These lyrics have been criticized as problematic, but before we cast moral aspersions at a song from 1961 we need to look at the popular music of our own era.  We’ve had hits glorifying murder, drug dealing, and getting jiggy with it.  I’m not sure what that last one is, but it sounds like a violation of God’s commandments.  One modern chart-topper took things to a completely new level, basing its entire premise on the liquids that are being copiously emitted from the performers’ private parts.  By contrast, Pat Boone is so pure that he hesitated to kiss his co-star in a movie because he wasn’t married to her.  The world has bigger worries than the lyrics to his songs.  (The lyrics to his political robocalls, on the other hand, might be an issue.)

“Moody River” has a nice jaunty little feel to it, and Boone’s voice is agreeable.  He’s not exactly Elvis or Roy Orbison, but he’s more distinctive than the next couple of guys we’ll be looking at on this blog.  It’s hard, though, to put exactly the right level of emotion into a weird story like this.  Keep in mind that the lyrics refer to “last Saturday evening,” so the trauma should still be fresh in the singer’s memory.  But there isn’t a hint of anger when he describes learning about the cheating.  It’s like, what can you do about it?  Girls are sluts these days.  He does convey a slight tinge of sadness about the suicide, and it’s just the appropriate amount.  I really don’t need to hear him wailing and moaning in anguish.  Overall I think he did reasonably well with the material he was given, but once again this is the contrarian opinion.

“Moody River” does have one major flaw, however.  The song abruptly ends after only two verses, just as the tale is starting to get mildly interesting.  What happens next?  Don’t leave us hanging like that!  I envision a third verse in which Boone’s character confronts the other man who was referenced in his girlfriend’s note.  He busts through the guy’s door and finds two people in bed together, covered in river mud.  Who would have thought that she could swim?  At this point he decides that women are too much trouble.  He’s moving to Kentucky.

“Calcutta” by Lawrence Welk (1961)

One person’s view:  “It’s a lifeless tune by a horribly dated artist.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music

The public’s view:  2.64 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1961

“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” is generally regarded as one of the greatest girl group classics of all time.  When 57-year-old bandleader Lawrence Welk knocked it out of #1 with a bland instrumental, he ensured that rock music historians would not look kindly upon him.  He further secured his place in infamy by blocking Motown’s first major hit, “Shop Around”, from the top spot the following week.  Neil Sedaka’s future cat food jingle “Calendar Girl” was also sent tumbling down-dooby-doo-down-down the Hot 100 when it couldn’t match Welk’s performance at the record store.  And that’s the enduring gripe that earns “Calcutta” a spot in our museum of the worst #1 hits:  it achieved commercial dominance despite there being far better products available.

As an industrious businessman, however, Welk had earned this success.  His keen grasp of economics went back to his childhood, when he sensed that his life prospects as a German-speaking fourth-grade dropout in rural North Dakota were not good.  His family’s ancient heirloom accordion seemed to offer him a way out.  No, he didn’t pawn it and use the cash to pay for fifth grade at an elite prep school.  Nor did he blow it up with fireworks like kids of today would do to earn likes on YouTube.  Instead, he practiced playing it until he got to be pretty good, and then persuaded his dad to buy him a better accordion that he could perform professional gigs with.  His father then made the teen work for him for four years until the instrument was paid off.

I can relate to this story, because I also asked my parents to buy me an accordion when I was a kid.  I wasn’t forced to do farm labor afterwards like young Lawrence, but I did have to endure years of lessons to justify the extravagant purchase.  I quickly learned that accordions are uncomfortably hot to wear in the summertime, and that using the clarinet reed setting on a poorly maintained second-hand accordion provokes dogs (and many humans) to howl in agony.  I also learned that my musical talent was nonexistent, and that – unlike our friend from North Dakota – I would never ace out Smokey Robinson for the #1 position on a Billboard chart.  It didn’t help that the arrangements in my accordion lesson books were usually of German folk tunes with titles like “Du Du”.  I would eagerly page through each new book in search of a Bee Gees song, only to be disappointed every time.

My accordion has resided in a closet for the last four decades, but Welk eventually leveraged his into a popular national TV show with 27 years of first-run episodes.  He prudently invested his paychecks in California real estate.  Along with his fellow land mogul Bob Hope, he became one of the wealthiest show business personalities of his generation.  He did quite well for a guy who couldn’t speak English until adulthood and didn’t break out as a huge star until middle age.

The Lawrence Welk Show was always airing on some channel or another during my childhood, but it was never on in our house.  My parents deemed it uncool, having been forced to watch it by their parents.  But one day I adventurously channel-surfed to the local PBS affiliate.  I was hoping I might catch something edgy like a Sesame Street blooper reel in which Gordon uses a four-letter word that is brought to you by the letter “F”.  Instead, the station was selling Lawrence Welk videotapes as part of its never-ending fund drive that seemed to take up 80% of its air time.  It showed a clip of a 1974 episode in which Welk announced the marriage of his singer Mary Lou Metzger to his band member Richard Maloof.  The young couple celebrated this happy occasion by performing a duet of “The Music Goes Round and Round”.  While she sang and Maloof played the tuba, Metzger traced the music’s path through the horn as if she were diagramming the passage of a burrito through someone’s digestive tract.  “The music goes round and round… and it comes out here!”  Upon seeing this absurd yet captivating performance, I immediately understood the appeal of Welk’s show.  I also understood why no one younger than my grandparents would admit to watching it.

Lawrence Welk was enough of a phenomenon that he deserved to have a #1 hit, but it’s hard to argue that “Calcutta” deserved to be the one.  The instrumental was written by a German composer under the title “Tivoli Melody”, but then some other German guy decided that the tune was the perfect vehicle for an imprecise lesson about the geography of India.  He added words to the music and renamed it “Kalkutta Liegt am Ganges”.  The new lyrics suggested that Calcutta lies on the Ganges River, even though most of the water from the Ganges flows about 50 miles north of the city.  It’s like saying that Boston is in Rhode Island:  it isn’t that big of an error in the scheme of the universe, but it would make a fairly stupid title for a song.

When two American songwriters were tasked with writing English lyrics, they kept the word “Calcutta” without bothering to translate the rest from German.  In their version, the narrator brags about the girls he has kissed in Naples, Paris, and Spain before observing that “the ladies of Calcutta do something to me.”  So now it’s a song about sex tourism.  It’s little wonder that Welk chose to replace the lyrics with “la-la-la”s and hand claps.  But he still couldn’t fix the song’s biggest problem:  it’s a pleasant melody that would work perfectly as a thirty-second interlude in a medley, but two minutes is a stretch.  I keep expecting it to morph into the “Chicken Song”, and it’s frustrating that it never does.

Here’s what I find most fascinating about Lawrence Welk.  He was one of the biggest musical success stories in U.S. history, and yet hardly anyone under 60 can name even one fact about him today.  Ask any fourth-grader who Elvis Presley was, and he’ll tell you he was a man with sideburns and a white suit who was extremely grateful – that’s why he was always thanking people very much.  The kid probably even knows an Elvis song or two.  Welk outlived Elvis by fifteen years, but good luck getting a fourth-grader to hum “Calcutta” to you.  And few children these days can explain the benefits of purchasing an accordion with indentured servitude rather than taking out a high-interest loan.

Aside from an occasional Saturday Night Live parody, Welk mostly vanished from pop culture thirty years ago.  Things might have been different if he’d had just one big hit song that was more memorable than “Calcutta”.

Still a tourist attraction, though not a highly visited one

“Mr. Custer” by Larry Verne (1960)

One person’s view:  “That’s the most horrible thing I ever heard in my life.” – independent record label owner to songwriter Joe Van Winkle (source:  The Billboard Book of Number One Hits by Fred Bronson)

The public’s view:  2.09 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1960

When choosing a #1 hit to spotlight for 1960, there are two whose extremely poor retrospective reviews set them apart from the rest.  Both are novelty songs.  Brian Hyland’s “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” is the inferior of the two by some metrics.  It has the lowest Rate Your Music score of the year (1.91) and is almost universally loathed by critics.  Its lyrics playfully mock a girl who has decided that drowning or freezing to death in the ocean is preferable to letting people see her skimpy bathing suit.  The simplistic melody clashes with this dark theme, being more suitable for a children’s nursery rhyme than a tale of a swimmer’s impending demise.  However, you don’t hear too many people arguing that “Polka Dot Bikini” is the worst #1 hit of all time, or even that it’s a contender for the title.  Those who hate it usually also hate “The Streak” and “Disco Duck”, and they focus their rage on those later songs.  “Mr. Custer”, on the other hand, does have detractors who rate it at or near the very bottom of the heap of over 1,100 #1 records, and so it will be featured in today’s entry.

“Mr. Custer” was a team effort by Hollywood stuntman Larry Vern Erickson and three songwriters who had an office across the hall from him.  You don’t usually think of stuntmen working in an office building.  (“We’ll have to cancel this week’s sales meeting.  Larry’s setting himself on fire in the conference room again.”)  Somehow, though, this benign setting turned out to be the right environment to incubate a comedic hit song about the Battle of the Little Bighorn.  No one knows why.  Offices didn’t yet have dry erase boards in 1960, so we can’t blame it on sniffing the markers.

The most common criticism of “Mr. Custer” is also the most obvious:  it contains racist stereotypes about Native Americans.  You have to put this in context, however.  A fake battle whoop and a couple jokes about scalping are hardly the most grievous crimes committed against the indigenous peoples.  And when you consider that “Mr. Custer” came out of Hollywood in 1960, it could have been much, much worse.  It wasn’t even the first #1 song to feature a tribal war chant, as Johnny Preston’s “Running Bear” had already busted through that glass ceiling earlier in the year.

If we’re going to criticize #1 hits for stereotyping Native Americans, Paul Revere & the Raiders’ “Indian Reservation” is a more deserving target than Verne’s silly novelty record.  “Indian Reservation” purports to express sympathy for the Cherokees but manages to confuse their characteristics with those of other tribes.  More troublesome, though, is its reputed origin.  Songwriter John D. Loudermilk said that his car had gotten stuck in a blizzard in the Smokey Mountains, and he was captured by the Cherokees and forced to pen a song about their history if he wanted to escape with his life.  The story was obvious bullshit that he never intended to be taken seriously, and the details changed each time he told it, but it was accepted as truth by some media outlets.  Even the esteemed Casey Kasem reported the improbable tale on his radio show.  Thanks to Loudermilk’s prank, a generation grew up believing that vengeful Indians were waylaying American automobile travelers and engaging in bizarre acts of extortion.  Children had nightmares that their family wouldn’t make it to Grandma’s house without being stopped by the Osage Nation and ordered to weave a tapestry or produce a Broadway play.

If you still worry that Larry Verne’s music was racist, you might be reassured by one of his follow-up singles, “Abdul’s Party”.  When I read that title and saw Verne dressed up as various ethnicities on the record sleeve, I was prepared to hear something awful.  In this inoffensive song, however, all of the jokes are at the expense of Larry’s slow-witted yokel character who doesn’t realize how annoying he is.  That persona seemed to be the only trick in Verne’s bag, and it was not enough to carry a long career in show business.  It’s a shame, because his performance in the “Mr. Custer” video hints at some acting talent that was never allowed to ripen.  He could have been the American version of Mr. Bean.

In my view, there’s a more serious flaw with “Mr. Custer” than its use of a couple of worn-out Indian stereotypes:  it tries to mine comedy from a tragic event, and it doesn’t succeed.  Little Bighorn was one of the most devastating losses of life on U.S. soil between the Civil War and Pearl Harbor.  In 1960, there were still a few people who remembered the battle or who had lost grandfathers there.  Offensive humor is a wonderful thing as long the punch lines actually land, but “Mr. Custer” gets laughs only from Verne’s goofy facial expressions and bad lip-synching in the accompanying video.  And even then, it’s like Louis C.K.’s bit about school shootings:  a few snickers here and there aren’t enough to overcome the awkward premise.  I hope I am dead by the time anyone releases a novelty hit sung from the viewpoint of a 9/11 hijacker who begs “Mr. Osama” not to make him get on the plane.

A not-so-hilarious part of American history

Billboard's Worst: The Bad #1 Hits

Are they truly bad, or just misunderstood?

That’s the question that this blog will attempt to answer, as we take a chronological look back at the records that have been branded the worst to ever top the Billboard Hot 100.

For more details on this project and who is behind it, click the “About” link at right.