THREE WINDOW COUPE
Most sources believe that Bruce Johnston and Terry Melcher basically took over vocal duties for almost all of the recordings by the Rip Chords after Hey Little Cobra and Other Hot Rod Hits. Allmusic claims that Phil Stewart (who has a distinctive bass/baritone voice) was the vocalist on only two songs on Three Window Coupe, the band’s second album – “Bonneville Bonnie” and “Old Car Made in ’52” – and that Ernie Bringas didn’t perform at all on the album. However, Bringas insists that all four vocalists collaborated as to who would handle the singing, and that the hit song “Hey Little Cobra” is about the only song where neither he nor Stewart sang at all. For instance, both he and Bruce Johnston were singing the falsetto part on the Top 30 follow-up to their big hit, “Three Window Coupe” (co-written by Jan Berry of Jan & Dean). (The full list of vocalists and their parts on various songs is provided on Ernie Bringas’s website, www.ripchords.info).
I purchased the band’s first album, Hey Little Cobra and Other Hot Rod Hits a long time ago, but I came across their second album just recently, and I have really been enjoying it. Unlike the first album, Three Window Coupe doesn’t recycle a lot of the same old surf songs; instead, the songs are all unfamiliar to me – except the title song, “Three Window Coupe” which I definitely remember – and that makes it a lot more special. That “California Sound” a la Jan & Dean and the Beach Boys is there in force, and it was fun to refamiliarize myself with all those good times.
(July 2011)
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Much to my surprise, in the Rip Chords I finally found a rock band that did not have a listing in Wikipedia with a genuine hit song; their single “Hey Little Cobra” was one of the biggest hit songs in surf music, making it to #4 in early 1964, even though the surf scene was already in significant decline following the recent arrival of the British Invasion. I had recently picked up the second album by the Rip Chords, Three Window Coupe, and it is every bit as good as their common first album, Hey Little Cobra and Other Hot Rod Hits. I was able to debunk the idea that the Rip Chords weren’t a real band but just a studio fiction that revolved around Bruce & Terry, i.e., Bruce Johnston, who later joined the Beach Boys (and is still in the band) and top producer Terry Melcher (Doris Day’ son).
(July 2013)
