IT’S COLD OUTSIDE
Bandleader Dann Klawon of the Choir knew a girl who had been to England in 1963 and picked up some of the early Beatles singles and one of their albums. Like most of the American garage bands, they were influenced by the British Invasion; but for them, it hadn’t even arrived here yet. Klawon wrote an unabashedly Beatlesque power-pop classic for the band called “It’s Cold Outside” that made the local charts and is among the most beloved garage-rock songs from the era. Stiv Bators, frontman for the seminal 1970’s Cleveland punk band the Dead Boys was among its admirers; but his band couldn’t figure out how to play the song! (Later, as a solo artist, Bators came up with a nice version).
(February 2010)
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A couple of years earlier, Dann Klawon had written the immortal song “It’s Cold Outside” by the Choir that you really shouldn’t miss either; that one is on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JndhLibASI&feature=related .
(February 2012)
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After I got a copy of Choir Practice, the retrospective album by the Choir – which someone at a pre-blog bulletin board about the Raspberries told me about – I wrote up an article on that band. They are basically a predecessor band to the Raspberries, before Eric Carmen joined as the lead singer – in fact, Carmen had failed his original audition to join the Choir. Their song “It’s Cold Outside” is one of my favorite songs of that era; it was a big local hit but unaccountably never made much noise nationally. Read about them in Wikipedia at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Choir_(garage_band) .
(September 2013)
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The five songs by the Choir on the EP called The Choir, however, did not include their September 1966 release “It’s Cold Outside”, which was picked up by Roulette Records in May 1967, hitting #1 on all three Top 40 radio stations in Cleveland and peaking at #68 on the Billboard charts. “It’s Cold Outside” is one of my very favorite 1960’s garage rock songs, and this song has fans across the country and around the world. “It’s Cold Outside” gained more attention when it was included on Pebbles, Volume 2 and later in the first Nuggets Box Set.
(December 2017)
