DOUG CLARK AND THE HOT NUTS
Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, also known as Doug Clark and his Hot Nuts, The Hot Nuts and, since the death of Doug Clark in 2002, Doug Clark’s Hot Nuts, is a rhythm and blues, rock and novelty band that has played party and club dates for more than fifty years. Starting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, they became famous on the college circuit in the southeastern United States in the early 1960s for their risqué song lyrics and jokes, and for allegedly performing in various states of undress. Their signature song was “Hot Nuts”. Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts influenced contemporary artists such as Too Short, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Toy Tiger. (More from Wikipedia)
It is fair to say that Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts are a North Carolina institution. With original bandleader Doug Clark’s death in 2002, the band is now known as Doug Clark’s Hot Nuts. Combining a hot African-American R&B band with the raunchiness of a Redd Foxx “party record”, the Hot Nuts are popular throughout the state and into adjoining areas as well, particularly at college fraternities, though they play at a lot of black clubs also. Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts are said to have been the inspiration for the party band in the film National Lampoon’s Animal House, Otis Day and the Knights.
Doug Clark (a native of Chapel Hill) put the band together in the early 1960’s, with his brother John Clark on saxophone. They played dance hits of the day interspersed with bawdy songs that included “My Ding-a-Ling” (long before Chuck Berry had his sole #1 hit with “My Ding-a-Ling” in 1972), “Baby Let Me Bang Your Box” (later played at the end of the New York porno cable program, The Robin Byrd Show), “Big Jugs” (a reworking of the Jimmy Dean song “Big John”), “Barnacle Bill the Sailor”, “Two Old Maids”, and “Gay Caballero”.
Their signature song was “Hot Nuts”, with a chorus that went: “Nuts / Hot nuts / You get them from the peanut man / Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah / Nuts / Hot nuts / You get them any way you can.” Between the choruses are couplets typically about women they have known (sample: “See that girl all dressed in pink / She’s the one who made my finger stink”), and the band had an endless supply of lyrics that could make any word seem dirty. Even though there is nothing particularly offensive about their name, the Hot Nuts, their appearances were usually advertised on the radio as simply “Doug Clark”.
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Jubilee Records clandestinely introduced a label specifically for Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, appropriately called Gross Records; and they put out a total of nine albums between 1961 and 1969, beginning with Nuts to You (featuring Doug Clark flipping the bird to the audience). I have that album and their second, On Campus that I purchased for under $2 each ages ago. Somebody just didn’t know what they had!
(June 2016)
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