HANG ON SLOOPY
“Hang On Sloopy” is a 1964 song by Wes Farrell and Bert Russell, originally titled “My Girl Sloopy”. It was first recorded by The Vibrations in 1964, for Atlantic Records (45-2222), becoming a top-30 hit. As recorded by the pop group The McCoys, “Hang On Sloopy” went to #1 in the United States in October 1965. (More from Wikipedia)
The American songwriter/producer trio of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer has been a veritable cauldron of one-hit wonders over the years. They first teamed up in 1963 for the girl-group classic “My Boyfriend’s Back” by the Angels. They discovered the lead singer in a local band in Ohio named Rick Zehringer. They brought him back to New York and pieced together Rick’s vocals with one of their own melodies, creating yet another hit with “Hang on Sloopy” that was released under the name the McCoys. (That melody was later “sampled” in the cool novelty song “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” by the Royal Guardsmen; the tune was well known enough so that everyone understood the implied lyric “hang on Snoopy” without its having to be uttered).
(May 2012)
