Dootone 347 (original), USA, July 1954
Words & Music by: Side A - Vernon Green (a bit of a debate);
Side B – Vernon Green
Musicians: Vernon Green (lead), Randolph Bryant (tenor), Willie
Graham (2nd tenor), Rudolph Brown (baritone), Ira Foley (bass
vocals), Ted Brinson (upright bass), Andrew Blue (piano), any others unknown
Recording sessions: Ted Brinson’s garage (a real garage), Los
Angeles, CA, May/June 1954
Highest chart positions: this was a double-sided regional (West
Coast) hit, but didn’t hit any national charts.
I have posted the original 45 pressing here.
This upbeat A-side was put together almost on the fly. The Medallions borrowed the melody from Todd Rhodes' older R&B hit "Rocket 69". Since the teenagers could not afford actual cars, they improvised by creating vocal car-engine sound effects with their mouths to fill out the instrumentation.
The session's most iconic moment occurred during “The Letter”, when 16-year-old lead singer Vernon Green forgot the lyrics mid-take. Instead of stopping, he began to ad-lib a spoken-word recitation over the music. During this improvisation, Green accidentally coined nonsensical, romantic phrases like "pismotality" and "puppetutes of love". The latter phrase was later famously misheard and popularized by the Steve Miller Band as "the pompatus of love" in their 1973 hit “The Joker”.
List price: Les Docks lists this at $15-$25. 45cat.com Price Guide sets this at €14. Discogs.com shows a median price of $10,68. I found 16 copies sold in eBay ranging from €18 to €80. The highest price was paid in Germany.
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