Los Shakers In The U.S.A. (Part Five)
If you were to ask someone who lived in South America to name a Los Shakers song, depending on where you lived you’d probably hear ‘Break It All’ or ‘Never Never’ mentioned from the top of their heads. However, if you had asked someone in the United States to name a Los Shakers song, the first song that would come to their heads would be ‘Red Rubber Ball,’ a song written for the group especially by Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley from The Seekers which proved to be the band’s only chart-topping single in the United States.
By the end of 1966, Los Shakers were focusing all their attention outside the United States, keeping up constant television appearances in Argentina and various visits and tours to outside countries. However, their name was beginning to cross the minds of many well respected individuals throughout the music scene such as John Lennon’s ravings which caused a short promoting the ‘Shakers For You’ album to precede American showings of Richard Lester’s comedy ‘A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum’ until January 1967. One such person who was captured by Los Shakers was Bruce Woodley, a member of famous Australian folk group The Seekers after seeing a filmed insert of the group appearing on ‘Top Of The Pops’ in the UK. He composed what would later become ‘Red Rubber Ball’ bringing along Paul Simon to finish off the song. The hardest part according to Simon was being able to send the song to Los Shakers as not many artists wrote songs especially for them to sing previously. It would not be until January 1967, numerous months after the song had been composed that Los Shakers would arrive in England where an acetate of the song would be sent to their place of residence. Although not immediately struck by the song, the band was persuaded to record the song after learning about Simon’s own starpower and previously released material.
On the 29th of January 1967, Los Shakers entered the EMI Studios in Argentina to record a bunch of songs including ‘Red Rubber Ball’ which was to be saved as the group’s next A-side in February 1967. Although the song did well in South America it was not a massive hit for the group in comparison to some of their previous singles but elsewhere raced up the charts likely a combination of the quality of the song and the starpower of who created the record. The single was released in the United States in mid-March 1967 backed with the self-composed novelty song ‘Don’t Call Me On The Telephone Anymore, Baby,’ and although not directly promoted by the group in the country (some previously-filmed inserts did air on American television however), made large climbs up the charts ultimately ending up in the number one spot for two weeks in April 1967 knocking off ‘Somethin’ Stupid’ by Frank and Nancy Sinatra off the top position in the Billboard Top 100.
With the massive success of the recent single, Capitol was begging for new material to quickly compile a new album; however at the time Los Shakers were under a heavy touring and promotion schedule with only two untapped recording sessions occurring by that point of the year. The album utilised nearly all usable material from those two sessions plus additional cover songs from 1965 and 1966 yet released in the United States. Although these two recording sessions were very prolific in the amount of material they produced, the quality of that material was very low which the group messing around and giving poor performances likely under the impression this material was never seriously intended for a proper release. The resulting album was a mess. The quality of the album was low, both in terms of the material used and the sound quality of that material with numerous songs only having mono mixes made forcing fake stereo mixes to be made to fill out large chunks of the album. Although the artwork of the album was pleasant, even the construction of the album was at an all time low with a very audible tape glitch during 'Peek-A-Boo' that causes the song to waver greatly in speed and tempo for around five seconds. Very few compositions by Hugo and Osvaldo Fattoruso were recorded/used on this album due to the pair's writers block created by the sheer magnitude of material the two had to write in the previous two years, resulting in nearly the entire tracklisting comprising of covers most of which greatly paled to their original hit versions.
The album was released in June 1967 hitting a peak of #29 on the Billboard Top 200, with an additional single ‘Hallelujah’ backed with ‘The Land Of A Thousand Dances’ released in July 1967 hitting a peak of #111. Although ‘Red Rubber Ball’ came out at the perfect time, by the time of ‘Songbook’s release, times were changing. Although helped by the success of its hit single, ‘Hallelujah’ seemed outdated and particularly not strong enough towards efforts of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix who were pioneering a heavier, psychedelic rock sound. Even Los Shakers by this point had moved long past the material that comprised ‘Songbook,’ beginning work on what would become their psychedelic masterpiece ‘La Conferencia Secreta Del Toto’s Bar.’ As quickly as Los Shakers had reached the peak of their popularity in the United States did it come tumbling down, with the level of success captured by ‘Red Rubber Ball’ and ‘Songbook’ for a few mere months never to be repeated again.
Songbook (2nd June 1967)
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