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This has been bothering me for years, decades even. It's an instrumental featuring organ dating from sometime in the early to mid '60s. I used to hear it regularly on the UK "pirate" stations as music leading up to news bulletins and the like. First I thought it was "The Happy Organ" by Dave "Baby" Cortez but it's not. It's a jaunty little affair----too jaunty for, say, Booker T----with a slightly unusual harmonic development for a pop instrumental of those days. I think it's about the same speed and "gait" as "Spiders And Snakes" by Jim Stafford...

Oh yes----the initial melody line----assuming it's in G which it probably isn't but it means I can include flattened sevenths----is as follows. The first D (in bold) counts for two beats, italics indicate a possibly syncopated (and therefore longer) note. Upper case (Capitals) indicates a drop in pitch, lower case indicates a rise. The four bars are in G, F, G and F respectively. Bar lines are indicated thus: | | |

| D B d | f E D C | d B G D | f

All thoughts on the matter are most welcome!

if you have a smartphone there is an app called shazam that might be able to tell you what it is.

assuming you have a recording of it

I haven't, so it won't. And I don't. But thanks for the tip. ;=)

Red River Rock?  Telstar?

Time is Tight by Booker T and the MG's?   (this was played as sign off  music on my local top 40 station many years ago...along with Take Five by Brubeck)

I know those three (four) well. I just checked all the Booker T tracks on YouTube but it's as I've always thought----they're too gutsy. "My" track has something buoyant about it. It wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be somebody and their orchestra, lol. I've spent literally hours sifting through pop instrumentals on YT and checking the UK "pirate station" sites for possible pointers. Nothing----absolutely zilch.

Thanks anyway for your thoughts on the matter. :=)

One Mint Julep by Ray Charles?

I don't know - I can't tell by your description but I've got a ton of Hammond stuff

It wouldn't be the same organ theme used in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, would it?...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hmDZz5pDOQ

Wait -- I just noticed your use of the phrase "jaunty".

How about "You Can't Sit Down" by Phil Upchurch Combo

or "All About my Girl" by Jimmy McGriff

FYI: The original "You Can't Sit Down" was used by the Real Don Steele on KHJ underneath his manic raps back in the 60's.

Do you have an idea of which pirate stations you may have heard this theme music playing? Radio Caroline, Radio London, etc?

Nice info. Thanks! - I have to see if I can get a listen to those. It's a cool song.

I'll try to grab something from my collection, I should have an mp3 of one of Steele's raps. He'd do this as a sign-off on "Fractious Friday", just before 6pm on KHJ Fridays in the 60's, and he'd basically talk loud and fast as "You Can't Sit Down" played under his voice. Really cool stuff.

For the mystery song: I played the melody on my guitar - it's a G Mixolydian thing, sounds super-familiar maybe even from later songs, but if any clues can be given as to what year and what station this may have been played on, it would help a great deal in the search!

Awesome! Would love to hear it.

Slight detour in this thread...

I threw together a short slideshow under one of several recordings I have of Steele's "Fractious Friday" sign-offs, featuring his signature "You Can't Sit Down". I date this around 1967 because Steele mentions our Smile buddy Humble Harve following him at 6pm.

This guy was awesome. Apparently he'd have the music playing extremely loud in his booth as he did these raps, and he'd really get fired up and into the music - you can hear it on the tape. He was one of the best top 40 DJ's ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSooQcWuIsY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSooQcWuIsY)

Great to see you guys taking an interest. Thanks a bunch. :=) I'd say I heard it in 1967 and that it was on Radio London----I didn't listen to Caroline all that much once I discovered London. Of course we're talking about almost half a century ago, lol, so my information on time and place may be incorrect. But I reckon I got the melody right. It begins with that simple, single-note melody in the organ----later it gets a bit fruitier,  the chord sequence starts getting a little unconventional (pushing away from the tonic, possibly in a progression of fourths?) and the organ plays chords rather than single notes. More than that I can't remember...      

It's not Jimmy McGriff----too jazzy. I don't even think it's a Hammond, more likely a Vox Continental, Farfisa, that area.  



Haha.

By the way it's not "You Can't Sit Down" either----brilliant track though it is.

That was nuts! Thanks for posting. I enjoyed it a lot.

Very cool! I had a handful more of these raps but that one had the best quality - It sounds like these were taped directly from the radio's speaker by a listener, I wish I had some in better fidelity. Can you imagine hearing that while stuck in Los Angeles traffic on a Friday evening back in 1967? That's only a small snippet of Real Don Steele, and he wasn't always that wild or manic on the air, but he was an amazing DJ and got people excited about the music. If you've seen the film "Gremlins" the DJ in that movie is Don Steele!

Short of finding the song in question by chance, I'm stumped. I'll continue searching around but I haven't found anything solid so far.

Stumped or not, thanks a lot for your efforts. It makes me feel one of us will get there one day. :=) 

WELL WADDA YA KNOW???!!!! I'VE FOUND IT, AFTER 40 YEARS----UNBELIEVABLE!!!! THE FIRST HALF OF THE MELODY LINE FITS BUT I SEEM TO HAVE ADDED THE SECOND PART DURING THE INTERVENING DECADES, LOL. THE TUNE IS CALLED "THE KID" AND IT'S BY A BELGIAN ORGANIST NAMED ANDRE BRASSEUR. PLEASE READ THE YOUTUBE COMMENTS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m4l8iyJusQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m4l8iyJusQ)

I know exactly how you're feeling.


Several years ago, this little instrumental was stuck in my head, it's a guitar instrumental.  I'd heard it a bunch, it was something from the 80's, but I wasn't really around when it was big so I had no clue what it was called.  I went around for years, humming it.  Literally.  It'd pop in my head all the time... anybody I was with, I'd say "Hey, you know that song that goes... duh...dah dah dah dah... " and hum it for them a little bit.  Some folks had never heard it; some would say they'd heard it but don't know the name, nobody could help me.

Since it's an instrumental, there's no lyrics, and no voice, so it's so hard to figure instrumentals out.  So this goes on for years.  YEARS. 

Finally, I woke up early one morning, because the t.v. was on.  It's like 5:30 in the morning, two or three hours before I usually get up.  I noticed the news was on.  So it's one of those kind of crazy news shows where they just tell jokes and stuff all morning.  Well, I"m watching it for about 10 minutes, and they go to a commercial.  When they came back from the commercial, THEY WERE PLAYING THE SONG!  FINALLY!  I'd heard it again!  I don't know why I woke up early.

So anyways, the guy on the news starts humming it, and says "What's that song called?" and the other people in the newsroom couldn't tell him.  So they do their thing for 4 or 5 minutes, and go to another commercial break.  When they came back from the commercial, the guy said "Well, thanks to Bob who called in and told us, that song we were wondering about is Eric Johnson's Cliffs Of Dover". 

And Voila! the mystery was solved.