Lotsa messages this morning taking me to task for jesting that Johnny Rivers only had one hit. Many folks (Randy Skretvedt, to name one) itemized the many successes of Mr. Rivers for me, citing — here's Randy's list — "Memphis," "Maybellene," "Mountain of Love," "Midnight Special," "Seventh Son," "Poor Side of Town," "Baby, I Need Your Lovin'," "Tracks of My Tears," "Summer Rain," "Swayin' to the Music," "Rockin' Pneumonia (and the Boogie Woogie Flu)." He quotes Wikipedia as saying Rivers had nine Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and 17 in the Top 40 from 1964 to 1977, and notes that the singer had his own record label, Soul City, which gave us The Fifth Dimension.
So, joke retracted. And I hereby reapply it to Yellow Balloon.
In case you don't remember Yellow Balloon, that was a group in '67 or so that really did only have one hit. You know what it was called? "Yellow Balloon." That's right. The one hit of Yellow Balloon, a group founded by Don Grady of the My Three Sons TV show, was called "Yellow Balloon." And you know what was on the flip side of "Yellow Balloon?" A song called "Noollab Wolley," which was "Yellow Balloon" spelled backwards. They named it that because all it was was the same recording played in reverse. I always thought that was funny. Most "one-hit wonder" performers technically had two hits because the A side of the record sold a zillion copies and then the flip got a free ride because even though nobody ever cared about it, it also sold a zillion. But Yellow Balloon actually was a one-hit wonder with one hit. Let's listen to Yellow Balloon playing a medley of that hit, shall we?
Meanwhile, I am also informed by the other half of the people who read this blog that it isn't quite accurate to say this is the 30th anniversary of Fawlty Towers, even though John Cleese apparently says it is. There were two seasons of the show, the first of which aired in the Fall of 1975 and the second of which aired in Spring of '79. So it's the 30th anniversary of the second batch. My thanks to Jon Delfin, Bob Claster, Nigel Parkinson and a lot of folks whose names I don't feel like retyping.