TELLY SAVALAS – "If"

TOP HIT NO. 1 IN ENGLAND!

I have never even heard of this, let alone heard it.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, we come to the first entry on Popular which is currently unavailable on CD; it has never appeared on seventies compilations and none of Telly’s albums (yes, there wasn’t just the one) has warranted revival.

I disagree about the root song being gloopy; I’ve always liked the original, despite or because of its mixed metaphors (erm, wouldn’t you be in one place at two times rather than two places at one time and where exactly is the magic in that?), and to give Kojak his credit he acts it fairly well to dysfunctional TV movie level UNTIL he gets to that “mmmm…” which simultaneously bothered and continues to bother me but which I think is the record’s key hook, remembering that he was a huge sex symbol at the time (it was, after all, 1975).

Possibly the last TV cop with such a major appeal to The Ladies was Peter Wyngarde as Jason King; his own album, 1970’s When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head is a remarkable (and quickly withdrawn once RCA got around to listening to what he’d recorded, although it is now available again on CD) piece of work, even if it was never going to yield a chart topper.

Unfortunately on TOTP Telly elected to “sing” some of this song and it was a truly painful experience. Worse, his follow-up, a heartrending interpretation of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” saw him “singing” the chorus. It is perhaps not startling that it stalled at #49.

A mention also for the inevitable parody record which ensued; the double-sided “If”/”Butch Soap,” a Top 30 hit a couple of months later for a duo called Yin and Yan. Some people, me included, initially thought it was Stan Freberg but in fact it was ex-Corrie actor Chris Sandford (who scored one of the earliest soap star crossover pop hits with “Not Too Little, Not Too Much” back in 1963) and ubiquitous gravel-voiced Canadian voiceover man Bill Mitchell, the missing link between Brut 33 and Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

It could, after all, have been a lot worse. You’re right – Telly’s voice suits the song, and although it seems to me little more than a novelty, capitalising on the popularity of Kojak (a programme I very much enjoyed watching when I got the chance.)

There’s a whole sub-genre of “singing” non-singing actors – cf Lee Marvin earlier in this exercise, and Richard Harris, whose non-singing version of Macarthur Park knocks eight bells out of any number of versions by more accomplished singers. Do I want to count Audrey Hepburn’s Moon River in this? Why not, although Moon River is a finer song than either Macarthur Park or this one and thus it doesn’t sound embarrassing when sung properly. But these are, or were. all good actors, and I think lesser actors might not have carried off the songs a fraction as well. There is, after all, a very strong sense of theatre in pop, and it takes a skilled practitioner to do it.

Mmmmmm, the game’s gettin’ hard!

Audrey Hepburn, whose singing voice in “My Fair Lady” was dubbed by Marni Nixon, whose son Andrew Gold had two hits which were guilt-free pleasures of mine, in particular “Lonely Boy”.

Yes, the Telly Savalas Number 1 was a novelty, not one I particularly liked but one I could accept wasn’t pitched at the likes of me anyway. At least the one he reached Number 1 with was atmospheric and fairly pleasant – it could have been “Who Loves Ya Baby?”

The proper comparison, surely, is not with Marvin or Shatner but with Burt Reynolds

Kojak wins, I reckon.

the Singing TV Cop genre is a mighty deep well, indeed…Jack Webb, both Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser broke into film with Fiddler On The Roof) and Hutch (David “Don’t Give Up On Us, Baby” Soul)…who am I missing?…William Conrad?…Karl Malden?…of course, all of this led to the monuMENTAL achievement that was Cop Rock, but surely that’s for another post…

If that tested your Anglophilia, Dan, two or three of the next four entries will test it even further…

Singing cops – do we include Dennis (Carter) Waterman and Jimmy (Spender) Nail?

It’s a fair cop.

I further raise you Actual IRL Cop turned Number One Pop Star Dave Dee!

…who, er, actually only got to #4 in the states…

That Billy Howard record (Ref # 13) was wonderful and deserved to go higher. Top lines:

Cannon: “One day I trailed some men. A gang of maybe nine or ten. I was alone but I didn’t need help…”

Columbo: “I can believe that. You surrounded them yourself!”

Cannon went on to tell the cops that he was an expert in karate chops…

Columbo: “The only chops you know are the ones you stuff in your fat face!”

Blinding!

a terrible terrible record thats so bad its not even funny-1 out of 10 without a dought
How did this guff get to the top when Jon Pertwee’s vaguely contemperaneous (and awesome) “Who is the Doctor?” didnt even chart?!

God, I thought I was the only one who remembered Yin and Yan. Trust Marcello.

I preferred ‘Butch Soap’ to the a-side.

A subtle prompt there, Frau Carlin!

Yikes ! I just discovered that Don Johnson realeased his own album, ” The Essential ” in 2003. It includes ” Can’t Take Your Memory” which may or may not be a trbute to Telly.

Maybe that’s what that bloke was singing 21 months down the line after seeing the Pistols on the Bill Grundy show.

NASH BRIDGES, the don johnson tv-tec follow-up (feat.CHEECH of cheech&chong in a post-duo mix&match), had a FANTASTIC themetune by eno’s successor in roxy music, eddie jobson

my favourite omg moment in re csi soundtrackin was when they were proving that a SKELETON WAS PREGNANT to the pop stylings of einsturzende neubauten!

Are caps the new indicator of some sort of arousal . Big naughty caps that they are.

Much as the TEENYBOPPERS of 1975 used to WAVE THEIR ARMS AROUND EXCITEDLY at top pop band the BAY CITY ROLLERS!

I know I know! I have a good excuse (well for the first half of the week).

Well, he’s the third cast member of The Dirty Dozen to have a UK hit after Trini Lopez and Lee Marvin, and possibly the only Bond villain (having played Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). I’m sure the film buffs among us can chew on that while Tom dons his tartan trousers…

Back in the early 80s I read a now out-of-print book about cool as a concept (called The Book of Cool I believe – American so I don’t know if it came out in the UK) there was a glossary of cool slang, made up by the authors as far as I could tell – ‘to Kojak’ was to find a perfect parking spot right in front of whatever building or place you were going to visit. It also means to shut your car door by sheer means of acceleration, I think.

Yes, but none of these ever had any UK hit singles!