December 11, 2020 —– Chart #69
Hello Musical Friends,
Happy Friday to all of you! Today’s Chart of the Day was a top 10 hit back in 1968. “Elenore” is a 1968 song by the Turtles, originally included on The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands. Although written by Howard Kaylan, its writing was co-credited to all five members of the band: Kaylan, Mark Volman, Al Nichol, Jim Pons, and John Barbata. The song was written as a satire of their biggest pop hit “Happy Together.”
The Turtles are an American rock band led by vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, later known as Flo & Eddie. The band had several Top 40 hits beginning in 1965 with their cover version of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe”. They scored their biggest and best-known hit in 1967 with the song “Happy Together”. The band broke up in 1970. Kaylan and Volman later found long-lasting success as session musicians, billed as the comedic vocal duo “Flo & Eddie”. In 2010, a reconstituted version of the band, “the Turtles Featuring Flo & Eddie”, began performing live shows again. The band originated from a surf music group, The Crossfires, formed in 1963 in Westchester, Los Angeles by high school friends Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman, Al Nichol, Chuck Portz, Don Murray, and Jim Tucker. They released a single, “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” / “Fiberglass Jungle”, on the local Capco label in 1963. With the help of KRLA and KFWB DJ and club owner Reb Foster, the Crossfires signed to the newly formed White Whale Records. Adhering to the prevailing musical trend, they rebranded themselves as a folk rock group under the name The Tyrtles, an intentionally stylized misspelling inspired by The Byrds and The Beatles. However, the trendy spelling did not survive long.
By 1968, the Turtles had had a number of successful pop records on the White Whale label, including Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Happy Together,” and “She’d Rather Be with Me,” both written by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon. The band members wanted to diversify their musical output (in parallel with more innovative musical groups of the time) and to record their own material. However, their record company was reluctant to allow them to do so.[1]
As a demonstration of their musical versatility, the Turtles recorded the album …the Battle of the Bands, which featured performances in a wide variety of different musical styles. The band recorded “Elenore” as a parody of the type of happy-go-lucky pop songs they themselves had been performing, but with deliberately clichéd and slapdash lyrics such as: “Your looks intoxicate me / Even though your folks hate me / There’s no one like you, Elenore, really”; and “Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell / And you really do me well / You’re my pride and joy, et cetera…”
The original lyrics used the phrase “Fab and Gear”, which got replaced by the phrase “Pride and Joy”. This was one of the first pop songs that make use of the Moog synthesizer, which is heard during the last half of the second verse, featuring Kaylan’s double voiced track, plus Volman’s harmonic supporting track.
Howard Kaylan later said: Elenore was a parody of “Happy Together.” It was never intended to be a straight-forward song. It was meant as an anti-love letter to White Whale [Records], who were constantly on our backs to bring them another “Happy Together.” So I gave them a very skewed version. Not only with the chords changed, but with all these bizarre words. It was my feeling that they would listen to how strange and stupid the song was and leave us alone. But they didn’t get the joke. They thought it sounded good. Truthfully, though, the production on “Elenore” WAS so damn good. Lyrically or not, the sound of the thing was so positive that it worked. It certainly surprised me.
According to his autobiography Shell Shocked, Kaylan stated that the Turtles had agreed that any song written by one or more members would be credited to the entire group. He added that he regretted this arrangement when “Elenore” became a hit. Describing the song in liner notes to the 1974 compilation Happy Together Again, Kaylan claimed to have written the song in just an hour after locking himself in a hotel room. In his 2013 autobiography, the time of composition has become 30 minutes.
Live on Kraft Music Hall: https://youtu.be/f09itrlXcic (Kraft Music Hall is an umbrella title for several television series aired by NBC in the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s in the musical variety genre, sponsored by Kraft Foods, the producers of a well-known line of cheeses and related dairy products. Their commercials were usually announced by “The Voice of Kraft”, Ed Herlihy.)
Keep rockin’,
Stan