ELDER MUSIC: Singers and Actors. (Or Vice Versa)

EDITORIAL NOTE: When I returned from New York City, there four new Elder Music stories in my inbox from Peter Tibbles of Melbourne. This guy knows his music from many angles and has prodigious knowledge and memory for Fifties pop music (among other genres and eras). Here is today's with more to come in future weeks.

We all know of fine singers who went on to become good actors. The prime example of this is Frank Sinatra. Not far behind him would be Bing Crosby and Kris Kristofferson. Doris Day and Tom Waits. Dean Martin was good at both. And, of course, there’s always Elvis. He didn’t do too badly in his first three or four films. Had he been given some more good roles he could have been a contender. We know where that went though.

I’m not going to dwell on singers who became actors, but actors who became singers.

For this I’m excluding musicals, so there will be no Natalie Wood, no Audrey Hepburn (of course, that really means there will be no Marnie Nixon. I’m also excluding Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood (I can hear the collective sighs from here).

No, I’m talking about actors who had separate careers as singers, no matter how brief. Actors who made a record or two.

I’m also ignoring David Hasselhoff here as I pretty much always ignore David Hasselhoff. I’ve also left out William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, David Soul, Robert Mitchum and some others quite arbitrarily.

I’ll concentrate on the fifties and sixties (now why does that come as no surprise to you all).

The first of these, and we had a 78 of this song (hello Pam, this was yours), is Sal Mineo - Start Movin'. This isn’t a bad song, rather typical mid-fifties pop song. I quite like it. I notice that he recorded a whole album at the time.

Now when I said actor, I’m stretching the point somewhat. I’m doing that so I can include Tab Hunter. He covered the Sonny James song Young Love. He also did Red Sails in the Sunset on the flip side, but we’ll ignore that (and if you’ve ever heard it you will agree with me). We had this one too.

Tony, Tony, Tony. Tony Perkins. Norman Bates. Also that creepy minister in that strange film with Kathleen Turner (Crimes of Passion). Before all that we had a nice gentle Tony doing Moonlight Swim.

Edd Byrnes was definitely not a singer as you will hear, so I suppose he was an actor. I assume he did something other than 77 Sunset Strip but I can’t be bothered finding out what. He had help on this song with another singer/actor, Connie Stevens. I don’t know if she was a singer who became an actress or vice versa. It doesn’t really matter as she wasn’t exactly earth shattering at either enterprise. Kookie, Kookie Lend Me Your Comb

Shelley Fabares. Ah, Shelley. All we males of a certain age had the hots for you back then. Okay, Annette Funicello was in there as well. You were the girl next door who really didn’t live next door to us, alas, and Annette was, well, Annette.

Back to Shelley. There are rumors on the net that this song took about a million takes as she couldn’t sing in tune. The record was cobbled together from these. I don’t know if that’s true, we’d have to ask her. As she doesn’t live next door I can’t do that. Johnny Angel

Johnny Crawford, another Mouseketeer that grew up. Also The Rifleman’s son. That pretty much completes my Johnny Crawford knowledge. Here’s the only song I remember him doing: Your Nose is Gonna Grow

Duane Eddy had a big instrumental hit with Because They’re Young. In the way of these things in the 50s/60s cusp, someone wrote some words to that tune and got James Darren to sing them. Actually, James had a number of hits around this time (Goodbye Cruel World, Her Royal Majesty) so I don’t know if he fits into the actor turned singer category, but as he wasn’t bad in Let No Man Write my Epitaph and The Guns of Navarone, I’ll include him.

Alas, my 45rpm of Because They’re Young is no longer in the box and I can’t find a playable version on the web, I’ll just have to go with Goodbye Cruel World instead.

Ringo. This isn’t really singing, more reciting, but I’m including it because I can.

We in Australia (and Britain, and probably elsewhere) first discovered Peter Sellers in The Goon Show on radio. In Australia, this program has never been off the air since it finished its run in the late fifties.

Okay, that’s not strictly true, but close enough – it is still running here today. Anyway, Peter Sellers made several records. Here he is with Sophia Loren, Goodness Gracious Me.

Later in the Sixties, a most unlikely addition to the genre, and a particular favorite of mine (and I’m not going to tell you why) is Richard Harris, MacArthur Park.