Only in Oz (8) Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia (1962, 1967)

Another in my series of posts about tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin. See also: Only in Melbourne.

8. Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia
(Roger Roger)
Festival single (Australia) #FK-296 (1962); re-released on FK-1680 (1967)
Australian charts (1962): #8 Sydney #8 Melbourne #16 Brisbane (#26 Australia)

This spaced-out electronic instrumental was familiar in Australia during the 60s as radio filler and as background music on radio and TV. [Listen] I mentioned it in an earlier post as a likely Time-out Instrumental.

Roger Roger (1911-1995) was a prolific French composer for radio, TV and film whose music is often filed these days under Space Age and Library.

Dalilia seems to have started out as a "library" track, a ready-made theme or soundtrack piece, one of numerous tracks Roger Roger composed and recorded for the Chappell Music company's Mood Music series from the mid-50s.

At the time such albums of "stock music" or "background music" were sold to radio and TV stations and film producers, but they are now collected by aficionados of Library Music. Chappell's albums were issued under the label Chappell's Recorded Music Library, established in 1941, so the term "library" has a long history in this context. 

Library Music later became available to the general public through reissues on CD. See, for example, this catalogue from MovieGrooves [archived], which included a Roger Roger collection (Roger Roger is to Library Music what James Bond is to spy movies...). 

[Update, 2020: A lot of library music is now easily accessed on music streaming services. Try, for example, this Spotify playlist of over 1700 tracks from KPM Music.]

Some of Roger Roger's music (SpaceAgePop.com tells us) also fits into a further sub-genre, Test Card, since his work was often heard with test patterns on BBC-TV.

It's possible that the 1962 release of Dalilia as a single was an Australian initiative. The B-side is Cha Cha Charlie, an instrumental by Mel Young, another Chappell library artist.

A US release of the same composition has an altered title, Delilah (1963 on Time). It is either a fresh recording or a remix, with an introduction and some slightly different instrumentation in places [YouTube].

Festival released the single twice, first in December 1962 on #FK-296, when it charted, and again in March 1967 on #FK-1680, again coupled with Mel Young. As I've pointed out previously, one thing Australians loved back then was an instrumental.

The Dalilia tune was used in 1963 for the British TV show The Desperate People, when it was known as The Desperadoes (Theme from Desperate People). Each title is registered to Roger Roger as a separate work at ASCAP, but they do appear to be the same composition. In Australia, The Playboys released a version as Desperado (1965; YouTube).

And the title, Dalilia? The only title resembling Dalilia amongst the hundreds of Roger Roger compositions registered at SACEM (France) is Dalila, the French form of Delilah (the US title). The title Dalilia is, however, registered to Roger Roger at ASCAP, but so is Delila (another form of Delilah/Dalila). I'm wondering whether Dalilia might be an Anglo misprint for Dalila (Delilah).

Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia

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Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.

References: 1. Roger Roger page at SpaceAgePop.com 2. Roger Roger biography at Robert Farnon Society 3. Roger Roger article at French Wikipedia. 4. ASCAP Title Search 5. The Australian Festival Record Company... 1961-1969, label discography by George Crotty 6. Library Music catalogue and Roger Roger blurb from MovieGrooves.com [now defunct]. 7. Composer search at SACEM, the French performing rights organisation.

Only in Oz (2) Acker Bilk - The Harem (1963)

Another in my series of posts about tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin. See also: Only in Melbourne.

2. Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band - The Harem
(Dorothy Hodas-Mack Wolfson-Eddie Cooper)
UK 1963 
Columbia single (UK) #DB7129.
Columbia single (Australia)  #DO4447
Australian charts: #2 Melbourne, #4 Sydney, #3 Adelaide (#7 Australia)

I wrote about The Harem earlier, in connection with Time-out Instrumentals. Then, I said it was a standout amongst Acker Bilk's recordings, a stirring, whirling, percussive instro that builds to a climax.

This track is a bit of a mystery, not least because it is an outstanding instrumental by a popular artist that unaccountably failed to make the same splash on the British charts as it did in Australia.

Acker Bilk had ten Top 40 hits in the UK between 1960 and 1963, but this wasn't one of them. His Stranger On The Shore was a big hit everywhere (#2 UK, #1 USA) and he was popular in the MOR instrumental market. The odd thing is, Acker Bilk's countless albums and reissues have never been hard to find in the bargain bins, but I've never found The Harem on any of them.

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A 1963 single of The Harem by Don Costa and his Orchestra on US Columbia #42705 is the same work, and appears to be the original version.

The authoritative 45cat.com has Don Costa's US release at April 1963, Acker Bilk's UK release at October 1963. It is an American composition, copyrighted in the US in March 1963. [Updated 20 Dec 2016]

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We do know something about the writers' other works, thanks in part to ASCAP's database:

Mack Wolfson (aka Maxwell A. Wolfson) built up a fair repertoire in the 50s and 60s. He often wrote with the prolific Tin Pan Alley composer Eddie White (Edward R. White)*, for example on Happiness Street (Corner Sunshine Square), recorded by Georgia Gibbs and Tony Bennett (both versions charted in 1956); C'est La Vie, a much-recorded song that was a #11 hit for Sarah Vaughan in 1955; Crazy Otto Rag by Johnnie 'Crazy Otto' Maddox, a co-write with the famous Hugo & Luigi that was heard in the film Reds; and Smarty Pants, on disco group First Choice's 1973 debut album.

Eddie Cooper, not so prolific, also wrote with Eddie White: of his 13 compositions at ASCAP, 6 were co-writes with White. (There are 4 additional Eddie Cooper songs listed at BMI.)

Dorothy Hodas (full name Dorothy Gertrude Hodas) has only one other song in her ASCAP repertoire, Love Of My Life, and that was written with Mack Wolfson and, yes, Eddie White.

The Harem could be a faux-Eastern genre piece, but it sounds as if it could be based on a folk tune. I believe I hear something reminiscent of Hava Nagila.

(UPDATE: See the comment below from Anonymous who suggests the Turkish song Usku Dara as a source. Listen to Eartha Kitt's famous version at Youtube.)

ASCAP shows an alternative title, The Harem: Schoene Geschic, which may or may not be a clue. Could Geschic be a database or dialectic truncation of Geschichte? Schoene Geschichte means Beautiful Story.

There are at least two 1960s guitar versions of The Harem, by Rotterdam instrumental group The Explosions (1964), and by New Zealand guitarist Graeme Bartlett, better known as Gray Bartlett (1963 or 64).

Acker Bilk & His Paramount Jazz Band - The Harem.mp3

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Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.
*Could this be the same Edward R. (Eddie) White (1919-1996), a New Yorker listed at IMDb in some bit parts?

Dutch sleeveshot from plaatzegel.nl.

Timeouts: The Tornadoes and a Marching Band

Gregg Sinclair who - as I mentioned previously - was a panel operator at 2GB, emailed with two more examples of Timeout Instrumentals: Lapland by The Baltimore & Ohio Marching Band (1967) and Hot Pot by The Tornados (1964).

Lapland is one of those obscure instrumentals that was surprisingly popular in Australia. In early 1968, it reached #5 in Sydney, #20 Melbourne, #9 Brisbane, #20 Adelaide. It didn't register nationally in the US, but charted regionally.

As for The Tornados: I can't believe I overlooked them, as they would've been a rich source of Timeout Instrumentals. They had that one stunning worldwide hit with Telstar (1962), produced by Joe Meek who also wrote a lot of their tracks, and they continued with a series of organ-led instros. These were pleasant enough but not in the same class as Telstar, and tended to sneak into the lukewarm end of the hottest hits.

Globetrotter (1962), Robot (1963), Dragonfly (1963), Monte Carlo (1964), Hot Pot (1964) and Exodus (1964) all charted somewhere in Australia - though not spectacularly - and I remember The Ice Cream Man getting some airplay as well. One thing Aussies dug in those days was an instrumental.











The Tornados. Bassist Heinz Burt (far right) had some vocal hits as 'Heinz', notably Just Like Eddie (1963)

Timeout Instrumental hits

In the previous post, I noted that Timeout Instrumentals weren't usually hits, and often came from from LPs, EPs and B-sides.

In a comment below, John G. suggested one exception, Love Is Blue (L'amour est bleu) by French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat (#1 USA, #12 UK, #1 Australia, #4 NZ). It was written by Andre Popp, initially as a 1967 Eurovision Song Contest entry sung by Vicky Leandros with lyrics by Pierre Cour. 

 No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In) by The T-bones (1966), and Classical Gas by Mason Williams (1968) were both hits (Classical Gas even has its own website), but I'd be surprised if they weren't also used as Timeout Instrumentals.  

Another example, and a mystery, is The Harem by British clarinettist and bandleader Mr Acker Bilk (right) and his Paramount Jazz Band. It was a hit in Australia in 1964 (#2 Melbourne, #4 Sydney, #3 Adelaide) but failed to chart in the UK, and for some reason it's just about impossible to find on the dozens of easy-to-find Acker Bilk compilations. All Music Guide lists four pages of Acker Bilk songs, but doesn't mention it. It is, however, listed as a 1963 British single at 45-rpm.co.uk.  

The Harem is a standout amongst Acker Bilk's recordings, a stirring, whirling, percussive instro that builds to a climax. It has a little "pip" on the clarinet a second or so before the end that always sounds to me like the first of the time pips that would've followed a Timeout Instrumental. 

I'm wondering whether The Harem started out in Australia being played as a Timeout Instrumental and caught the attention of listeners, who turned it into a hit. Just a hunch, there, but I do remember it being played as a Timeout. (For more on The Harem, see Only in Oz (1).  

The Spartans, by Beatles associates Sounds Incorporated (1964), was another British instro that did better in Australia than in Britain. This is a moody, brass-dominated piece that charted #5 Sydney, #3 Melbourne, #10 Brisbane, and peaked at #30 in the UK. It was written by the chart-topping British pianist Russ Conway, using his real name, Trevor Stanford. Again, The Spartans was probably used as a Timeout Instrumental, but its success was no doubt helped along by Sounds Incorporated playing on The Beatles 1964 Australian tour.

The Timeout Instrumental

At the end of the hour on Top 40 radio, just before the news, the last record would end, the deejay would talk for a bit, and then he would fade in an instrumental track that had been playing in the background. The instrumental would be cued up so that it finished right on the pips (the electronic countdown to the hour). This practice was common in the 60s, but it seems to have faded out during the 70s.

I asked radio historian Wayne Mac and former 2GB panel operator Gregg Sinclair if there was a name for it and they said, yes, it was called timing out, and the tracks were fillers or timeouts.

In my mind, these works have always formed an unofficial, unnamed sub-genre of the pop instrumental. Radio people in the 60s could identify it immediately, just by choosing something that sounded okay in between a bunch of hit records and the news.

I'm calling this musical sub-genre the Timeout Instrumental, just so it has a name.*

The Timeout Instrumental might have been something by Herb Alpert (right): maybe Bittersweet Samba or Up Cherry Street or Mexican Shuffle. It probably wouldn't be the latest Shadows hit, but it could be one of their B-sides or an EP track, something like The Miracle. You might have heard some album tracks, often by middle-of-the-road orchestras. I'm sure Dalilia, that space-age classic by Roger Roger & his Champs-Elysées Orchestra, would have been used: it was a favourite as background music on Australian radio and TV.**

As examples of likely Timeout Instrumental artists, Gregg Sinclair gives The Baja Marimba Band (associates of Herb Alpert), Bill Justis and Floyd Cramer. Raymond Lefèvre's Soul Coaxing is one track he recalls.

There was some skill in timing out: if the timeout track was 3 minutes long, it had to start playing, faded down, three minutes before the pips, while the last record was still playing. Gregg Sinclair writes:

The art of ‘timing out’ was made all the more interesting by the fact that most of the tracks supplied weren’t timed! Believe it or not, any panel operator worth his salt could look at a track and determine how long it ran. After a few years of experience, I could look at an album track and say: “that’s about a 2’45” job”! However, I always preferred to time them if I had the chance. Usually, I’d get in early and go through the ‘music log’ - radio talk for the playlist – and time the appropriate tracks prior to going on air.

There was a feeling in radio that using instrumental filler in this way sounded sloppy or out of date, so from the late 60s it was replaced by playing regular vocal hits up to the news.

For me, though, it lives on. Sometimes when I hear an old instrumental track I haven't heard before - maybe something by Cyril Stapleton or Sounds Incorporated - I find myself waiting for the pips, and I know I've stumbled on another Timeout Instrumental.

[For more on Timeout Instrumentals, see follow-up posts here and here.]

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*As a genre, Timeout Instrumental is similar to Northern Soul in that (1) it is applied retrospectively and (2) works are included not strictly for being of one musical style. See also Bizarro Shadows World Down Under, which is applied retrospectively and is partly defined by geography rather than style.

**Timeout Instrumental intersects with what is now known as Space Age Pop (another retrospective genre). For more on Dalilia, see Only in Oz (9).

Bizarro Shadows World Down Under

Standing in the shadow of The Shadows:
Melbourne band The Phantoms, from Canetoad's W&G Instrumental Story.

How many Australian and New Zealand bands of the 60s started out playing instrumentals in the style of the Shadows but transformed themselves in the wake of Beatlemania? See, for a start, The Strangers, The Questions, The Cherokees and The La De Das.

When a bunch of teenagers formed a band in the early 60s their main passion was often to emulate The Shadows or The Ventures (not only in Australia: see my post ¡Viva Los Shads!). Apache and Walk, Don’t Run were standards of the repertoire.

In Australia, this amounted to something like a movement, a phenomenon I like to call Bizarro Shadows World Down Under.

Aussies were always fond of a guitar-based instrumental. The Shadows were as big here as they were in the UK, and they were still charting alongside the Beatles into the mid-60s: their last hit in Oz was Bombay Duck in 1967 (#3 Adelaide, #10 Brisbane). The Americans preferred The Ventures, but we liked them as well: best of both worlds, down here. When surf music came along we took to it in a big way, and it melded in nicely with the guitar instrumental genre.

We also had our local heroes. Sydney steel guitarist Rob E. G. was often on the radio and the charts in the early 60s, often (but not always) with his own compositions: Railroadin', Si Senor (I Theenk?) and 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Zero. In 1963 Sydney band The Atlantics produced Bombora and The Crusher, two stunning examples of the surf instrumental that give Pipeline and Wipeout a run for their money. The Joy Boys - without Col Joye - had a national Top 5 hit in 1962 with Southern ‘Rora, inspired by, of all things, a new Melbourne-Sydney train service.

Melbourne band The Strangers first charted in their home town with a guitar version of Frankie Laine’s hit Cry of the Wild Goose (1963), a far cry from the soul-tinged vocal pop of 1968’s Happy Without You. Progressive New Zealand band the La De Das were, in their embryonic form, a high school band called The Mergers who played Shadows-styled instrumentals. At the website of guitarist Rod Stone, later with The Playboys and The Groove, you can hear a snatch of his 1962 version of Skye Boat Song, recorded in New Zealand as a 17-year-old in immaculate Shadows style.

It’s not that the instrumental bands didn’t sing at all, but looking back it’s hard to avoid the idea that it was cooler, even more manly, to pick out those precise guitar instrumentals than to sing soppy love songs.

There are a number of Bizarro Shadows World Down Under tracks on W&G Instrumental Story, released by the Australian reissue label Canetoad. W&G was a Melbourne record label.

Some of these tracks sound a bit cheesy, even clunky, at this distance, but that’s a feature of instro-guitar in general. Even so, there’s a good mix of remakes and originals that often stand up well beside their British and American models.

About half the tracks are by Melbourne showband The Thunderbirds, who were really too big, too brassy and too versatile to be put strictly in the mould of the Shads. Their version of The Rebels' Wild Weekend is an Aussie instrumental classic.

Otherwise, tracks by The Cherokees (Thundercloud), The Chessmen (The Rebel [Johnny Yuma]), The Breakaways (The Wheel), The Strangers (Undertow) and The Phantoms (Stampede) wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Shadows or Ventures album.

When Beatlemania hit, many Aussie instrumental bands did just what the boys in my Australian town did: they shampooed their hair, brushed it down over their foreheads, and never again darkened the doors of traditional barbers’ shops.

Pictures of the Beatles before Ringo illustrate the contrast. Pete Best looked fine and he still had a loyal following. He had that detached, moody, brushed-back look that went back to James Dean and the late-50s teen idols, but (unless my perception is skewed by hindsight) he already looked oddly out of place.

More than just changing the idea of what looked cool, Merseybeat made singing an imperative. The Strangers developed a hip pop sensibility that gave them vocal hits in the late 60s with Melanie Makes Me Smile, Western Union and Happy Without You. The Cherokees dabbled in a number of styles, but they had their greatest success with the comic revivals Oh, Monah and Minnie The Moocher that for some reason never seemed out of place on the charts of the late 60s.

The Atlantics ventured into Brit Invasion recycled R&B with the likes of I Put A Spell On You, featuring Johnny Rebb, an experienced rock’n’roller who had joined the band, and Rob E.G. re-emerged as Robie Porter, this time singing on his records (When You’re Not Near). Sydney band, The Questions also hired a vocalist, and his name was Doug Parkinson.

You thought I was going to say, "And the rest is history...", didn't you?
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See also:
Cicadas and Flies: Bizarro Merseybeat World Down Under

¡Viva los Shads!

Elvis Schmelvis, Beatles Schmeatles. Viva los Shads!
- Nik Cohn on British instrumental band the Shadows, in his 1969 book Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom.

Thirty-five years or so later, it seems kind of early to have been publishing a history of pop in 1969, but Nik Cohn's little book remains one of the most exhilarating accounts by an enthusiast that you'll ever read. Otherwise, his main claim to fame may be for writing Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night, the New York magazine article that became the basis for Saturday Night Fever (1977).

This is how he nicely sums up the popularity of the Shadows outside Britain:

Even now, if you're traipsing around the backwaters of Morocco and you stumble across a local group, they'll sound exactly like the Shadows, flat guitars and jigalong melodies and little leg kicks and all. In Spain or Italy or Yugoslavia, they're regarded as the pop giants of all time. Elvis Schmelvis. Beatles Schmeatles. Viva los Shads!