MUNGO JERRY – "Baby Jump"

The false ending actually leads to a very crude cut-and-paste reprise of the record’s opening 90 seconds, which lends more to its general cheapskate aura. Dr C loves it, but alas the record I cannot abide.

What puzzles me is why this is the only Number 1 between 1961 and 1999 that I’m not aware of ever having heard. Was it so bad that none of the oldies stations play it, and I contrived to miss Jimmy Savile’s Old Record Club at just the right time?

Mungo Jerry revisited the “Alright Alright Alright” theme with a song of exactly that title two years later. I remember reading the words in one of those proto-Smash Hits type magazines: “repeat “Alright” 16 times, then repeat whole song right through”, that sort of thing. Not a bad single though.

One of the Westlife ones – mind you, when you’ve heard one…

Struggling to recall hearing “You Make Me Wanna” by Usher the year before to be honest. Not a genre of music I waste much time listening to (dons tin helmet again)

I don’t especially like this song, and I’d almost think it’s one that, like Erithian, I don’t remember except that on listening again I recall the Lady Chatterley/Gamekeeper Humbert/Lolita bit and almost nothing else about it. Which says it all, really.

I have to take issue with Doctor Casino though. Hack writing it may have been – certainly was in fact – but why does a literary reference make a lyric ‘pretentious’? As somebody who thinks being well-read is nothing to be ashamed of, I rather resent that attitude along with the very word ‘pretentious’. Perhaps somebody will reassure me that I’m misinterpreting something.

Four seems about right although, Tom, you’ve given lower scores to better songs.

Since this is the last time Mungo Jerry will be troubling Tom, I would welcome some discussion about them in general.

A few months back I borrowed from our local library a box set compilation of early 70s pop which had a whole bunch of Mungo Jerry UK hits on it (they had eight Top 40 singles in toto). I copied these tracks onto my work computer – and at the moment they’re still sitting there cos I don’t really know what to do with them. But they are of interest – and make me wonder who bought MJ records and how the group was generally regarded at the time.

What struck me particularly is how diverse their hits were. “Lady Rose” is a slight retread of “In The Summertime” (with a little of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” thrown in) but, that apart, they all adopt different styles. For example, only “Baby Jump” has this gravelly Tom Waits-meets-Animal-from-The-Muppets vocal style. And while the lyrics to 2Baby Jump” are certainly dodgy, I do quite enjoy the vocal delivery of them. There are other minor pleasures here too: the guitar solo which is almost entirely one-note (albeit with octave leaping), the overuse of the piano glissandi, the sheer moronicness of the whole thing – which the false ending only enhances (notice that what happens after the “alrightalrightalright” bit seems to be a full-on repeat of what preceded it.

(I see I am repeating some things others have already said. Sorry about that.)

I agree wholeheartedly that there’s nothing to hide about being well-read, and in fact I’d love to hear a good lyric that invokes Lolita. My suspicion with lyrics like this is that they represent kind of a high-school English mentality, where you read one good book and become convinced that it’s the greatest book ever and that by waving around references to it you can project the appearance of well-readness. Put another way, there are certain references so well-worn that to employ them instantly conveys a naif posturing at erudition. I’m thinking as well of the awkward reference to Pavlov’s dog in “Brian Wilson” by the Barenaked Ladies….there’s this feeling that they read about these concepts/books, kind of got the basic gist of them, and then figured referencing them glibly in a lyric could cover for the lack of anything else to say.

I would also lump in Smoky going on about Pagliacci! Either the audience is opera-hip enough to know who Pagliacci is or they’re not. If they are, then the song’s borrowing of that trope will be immediately obvious, and dropping the reference doesn’t add anything to the song, since it’s just one line that (like most of the lyrics to this underwritten track) just recapitulates the main point of the song: He’s a clown with tears. If the audience doesn’t know Pagliacci, then the lyric is going to sail right over their heads. Why put it in there, except to try and make the song sound smart and grown-up?

Worse, to rhyme with “Naaaaahbuhkov!”

I was just discussing this over a pint at lunchtime, and my friend recalled part of the lyric:

“She wears those see-through sweaters, she likes to wear her stockings black
And if I see her tonight, you can bet your life I’ll attack”

Could be part of the reason it doesn’t get played on oldies radio!

At Club Popular last night we agreed that this was perhaps the most obscure of all British number ones. It does, however, boast one of the best piano lines of all British number ones, so I’d be inclined to give it one out of ten just for that.

Well, I like the godammn record.

ALso, this was another one of those “maxi-singles” where you got a b-side on the same side as the A, and a 15 minute “live” recording of two tracks on the actual b-side.

Marcello is right. Many has been the time when I’ve been discussing pop and rock with people of my age and older how so many simply don’t remember this topping the charts. An obscure Number One indeed.

I happen to think it’s a belter and the references to Lady Chatterley and Lolita are most amusing and should be taken in the tongue-in-cheek manor Ray Dorset intended them. Mungo Jerry, it must be remembered, were a fun band and “Baby Jump” is a busting little piece of honky tonk rock. Credence could have used it.

Oh, and about having fake reprises: So did “In the Summertime”

First this song was in the live-set of Mungo Jerry – who was 1971 in the Melody Maker Top 5 of the best live bands – just after the Stones!
The festival-goers loved it. So the band decided to release it as a single. And it worked – Mungo´s second No.1. As a young german guy I loved this song – and it was the first single I bought from my small money. The song was so different to all other tunes I heard from the radio. So wild, so catchy – for me it was perfect! A rock-song without drums – because the band used it´s first drummer one year later with the Blues-Single OPEN UP. Yes, Mungo Jerry used different styles of music!In The Summertime is jug-band music, Baby Jump and Alright Alright Alright are rock-numbers. LADY ROSE is a pop-song. And do not forget the single YOU DON´T HAVE TO BE IN THE ARMY TO FIGHT IN THE WAR! Great content and a hymh for the young european guys who want to do social work instead of going in the army. Ray Dorset, the band-leader, was winning 3 Ivor-Novello Awards (music-oscars) for penning differnt Mungo-songs!

Sorry for the delay in commenting, but I loved this record at the time. Think it was the visual image conjured up by the words (“she wears those see through sweaters” etc) to an adolescent, but seeing it sung by Ray Dorset on TOTP made it seem rather pervy!

I’ve never seen a list of Tad Doyle’s favourite songs, but if I did….

I’d go as far to say this is the filthiest – in many senses – number one of all time. I was going to put this one down to the ‘early part of the year’ effect, but that doesn’t really fit the end of February. Maybe a combination of the postal strike and it ‘being by the blokes who did that “Summertime” one’? Whatever, the most anonymous – and by that token, easily one of the most interesting – to ever hit the top.

My way into this was K-Tel’s 40 Number One Hits , released in 1977. I don’t think I’ve EVER heard it on the radio.

I tried to convince Terry Staunton at NME that this should be the cover art for what became Ruby Trax. Shame!

Also, I wanted to bags covering Baby Jump for the comp, but was told that Blur already had. The conspiracy deepens.

I thought it was “Substitute” that Damon hated and Alex didn’t play on.

To the extent that it’s never appeared on any other release apart from the “Who Covers Who” album, and that Damon won’t even have it in the house!

It is better than “Maggie May” though.

It’s the Small Faces’ “Universal”, with the guitar solo from Squeeze’s “Take Me I’m Yours”…

I seem to be the lone nut here who loves both “Baby Jump” and “Where do you go to…”. I can say no more than that.

Query: Was the Rupert Jackie Lee the same Jackie who sung “White Horses”? I remember being totally agog with the little blonde Austrian girl in the latter of those two shows. I was probably about nine.

Well, it sounds as much like Reflections Of My Life as In The Summertime I s’pose.

Re 44: Went to Paris last weekend. Got as far as a cafe next to the Sorbonne and… damn you Sarstedt!!! The bloody song was stuck in my head until I got back onto the Eurostar. It overrides any actual French music in my head whenever I go there.

Swede, you may be interested to know Jacky/Jackie has her own youtube channel, including her own recollections of White Horses:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtCNbERKvMs

Lazarus @ 45: It was (part of) the subject of a question on Radio 4 literary quiz show The Write Stuff a week or so ago, so perhaps you’re right. The other part of the question was Shakepeare’s Sister (#674). Host James Walton also made reference to the number ones either side of them, to the effect that George Harrison and T Rex were much to be preferred to Wet Wet Wet and Right Said Fred. Populistas will not be surprised to learn that I concur.

Some years ago there was a spinoff quiz concerned with pop music rather than books and writers called [FX: frantic googling] All The Way From Memphis. I rather enjoyed it but it didn’t have legs apparently.

Apparently there’s “a friend of Sacha Distel” already living there. Which may be a euphemism.

Baby Jump will also get ref’d on a new album out in May (cough).