And This Blog Loves "The Duke Of Earl"

While we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog missed the TCM Classic Film Fest and shall, having found ourselves increasingly and seriously homesick as our March-April CA trip progressed, also miss the epic 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival (and drive all the blog's cinephile readers away by covering other totally unrelated 20th century pop culture topics), we never miss a favorite song.



At the top of the list of ridiculously catchy tunes from the halcyon days of 1960's AM radio (KFRC, KYA and KDIA where I grew up), even higher than Mother-In-Law by Ernie K. Doe and Quarter To Three by Gary U.S. Bonds: the one, the only Gene Chandler's 1962 hit The Duke of Earl.



It's a great tune and Gene's snazzy getup tops Bela Lugosi, Liberace and Screamin' Jay Hawkins.



Gene Chandler sang this hit with pleasure for 50+ years!



Amazingly enough, The Duke of Earl made it into the late 20th century.



In 1991, the Latino American hip hop group Cypress Hill sampled it 29 years after The Duke Of Earl topped the charts.



What do the kings of doo-wop and hip-hop have in common? Well. . . in this writer's estimation, a certain goofy, tongue-in-cheek sensibility and humor underlying a strong desire to entertain and give the audience their money's worth, not unlike the aforementioned Screamin' Jay Hawkins.



Lyrically, Cypress Hill's (would-be) macho tough guy anthem Hand On The Pump is more akin to Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting than Gene Chandler's doo-wop masterpiece, even though one suspects neither the glam pop star Englishman nor the very thoroughly 420-ed Cypress Hill in actuality administered "beat-downs" ever.



Few recording artists had the temerity to actually cover The Duke of Earl. One musician who did was Alex Chilton.



Alex Chilton, as he did with many 1960's tunes, rearranged Gene Chandler's classic as a rock n' roll song, gave it his all and had fun in the process!



The fact that Alex Chilton, the uncrowned king of covers throughout his solo career and even in his concerts with Big Star and The Box Tops, tackled The Duke Of Earl should be no big surprise. Alex covered one of this blogger's favorite 1967 hits, Brenton Wood's classic "The Oogum Boogum Song."





As far as this blogger knows, Alex did not cover Brenton Wood's second big 1967 hit, Gimme Little Sign. Possibly he did and it was never recorded; didn't call Alex Chilton the uncrowned king of covers for nothing!



Meanwhile, here's Brenton Wood performing Gimme Little Sign on Top Of The Pops - and sounding great as usual.



While asking just how I might wrap up this post, the notion arises that some readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog might want to sing The Duke of Earl at home. Why not? Here are the lyrics - have fun!