PLEDGE WEEK: “The Name Game” by Shirley Ellis

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Today, we're going to take a look at someone who had two big hits, one one of which has entered into American pop culture to a ludicrous extent, long before I ever heard the song I was familiar with references to it in everything from The Simpsons to Stephen King books, and the other of which is known all over the world, but about whom there's almost no available information, outside the liner notes to one CD.

We're going to look at Shirley Ellis and at The Name Game.

Burly, Feet, Fine, O Merley,

Shirley,

Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln, Bo Bingen, Bonanna, Bana, Po, Bingun, Feet, Fine, O Mingun,

Lincoln

Come on, everybody,

I say now let's play a game.

I bet you I could make a rhyme

out of anybody's name.

When I say there's almost no available information about Shirley Ellis, I mean Normally, with someone who had a couple of major hits in the mid-60s, there's at least a couple of fan pages out there.

But other than a more perfunctory than usual page on Spectropop, there's basically nothing about Shirley Ellis.

Possibly because unlike most of her contemporaries, even though she lived until 2005, she never hit the nostalgia circuit.

The information that is out there is contradictory as well.

Some sources have her being born in 1941, while others place her birth much further back, in 1929.

I suspect the latter date is more accurate, and that she trimmed a few years off her age when she became a star.

Pretty much all the information I'm using here comes from the liner notes of the one CD currently imprint from a legitimate source of Ellis's work.

And that C D also has a problem which will affect this episode.

Ellis released two albums, In Action and The Name Game, which had nine tracks in common.

On In Action, they were overdubbed with crowd noises, more or less at random, to make them sound like they were live recordings, while the Name Game had the unadorned studio recordings.

Unfortunately, the CD I'm using, for some unfathomable reason, chose to use the fake live versions, and so that's what I've been forced to excerpt.

Ellis grew up in the Bronx, in a family with roots in the West Indies, and started out as many young singers did, winning the talent contest at the Harlem Harlem Apollo.

But her initial success came as a songwriter when she wrote a couple of songs for the Shabooms, the group who had formerly been known as the Chords, before legal problems led them to rename themselves after their biggest hit.

She's pretty wild, a pretty wild young girl.

She's pretty wild, a pretty wild young girl.

She's my little twisted twirl.

She's a pretty wild young girl.

She's mighty fine, too to the fine.

She's mighty fine, just my kind.

I intend to make her mine.

Ooh, she's mighty fine.

Now I heard all about the way she breaks young boys on.

But I won't end up like the rats.

She also wrote one, two, I Love You for the Heartbreakers, which pointed the way to the kind of novelty song based around counting and clapping rhymes with which she would have her biggest hits.

But while she'd had these minor successes as a songwriter, It wasn't until she teamed up with a more successful writer that she started to make the records for which she was remembered.

Ellis was introduced by her husband's cousin to Lincoln Chase, who became her manager, record producer, and writing partner.

Chase had already written a number of hits on his own, including Such a Night for Clyde McFatter and the Drifters.

The moon was bright.

Ooh, how bright it was.

It really was such a night.

The night was alive

with stars above.

When she kissed me,

I had to fall in love.

It was a kiss,

which had also been a hit for Johnny Ray and Jim Dandy for Laverne Baker.

Jim Danny to the rescue

Jim Danny to the rescue

Jim Danny to the rescue

Come Jim Danny Come Jim Danny

Jim Danny on a mountain top

Thirty thousand feet drop

Spider lady on a runaway horse

Aha, passes right a course

Jim Danny to the rescue

as well as songs for Big May Belle, Ruth Brown and others.

Chase and Ellis spent a couple of years releasing unsuccessful singles under Ellis's full married name, Shirley Elliston, before releasing The Real Nitty Gritty.

Both song and artist soon had their names shortened, and The Nitty Gritty by Shirley Ellis went to number eight on the pop charts.

hears a ditty.

Say you're gonna have to get a right down to the real nitty-gritty.

Let's get a light down to the real nitty-gritty now.

One, two,

and nitty-gritty.

Now, yeah,

boom.

A couple of follow-ups, starting with that's what the nitty-gritty is, were unsuccessful.

And then Shirley got very unlucky.

She recorded a version of Chase's Such a Night, which had been a hit twice before.

desire

I gave my heart to him and sweet surrender.

That started rising up the charts and then RCA released Elvis's recording from four years earlier, which had just been an album track, as a single.

And that went top 20 and stopped Ellis's single getting any traction.

Oh what a night

Ooh what a night it was it really was such a night Came the dawn

and my heart and her love and the night was gone

But I'll never forget to the kiss of the kiss and the moonlight

Ooh such a kiss

Such a night But Ellis came back with the name game which she co-wrote with Chase based on a game she used to play as a child

And then I say bow, add a B, then I say the name, and then banana, fan, or an FO.

And then I say the name again with an F bird name, then a P, Pi, and a mo.

And then I say the name again with an M this time, and there isn't any name that I can't rhyme.

That made number three on the charts and became an ongoing reference point for a whole generation of Americans.

The follow-up, credited to Chase Alone, was based on another children's game and made the US top 10 and also made the top 10 in the UK.

They all went to heaven in a little rowboat.

Clap, pat, clap, pat, clap, pat, clap, slap, clap, pat, clap your hand, pat it on your partner's hand, right hand.

Clap, pat, clap your hand, cross it with your left arm, pat your partner's left palm.

Clap, pat, clap your hand, pat your partner's right palm with your right palm.

For a while in early 1965, Ellis was a big star.

Big enough that her songs were getting novelty cover versions by people like Soupy Sales.

Come on, everybody.

I say now let's

But unfortunately, her next couple of singles flopped, and people seemed to want only one kind of record from Shirley Ellis.

She and Chase came up with some unsuccessful experiments, like You Better Be Good World, an attempt at getting on the protest song bandwagon by singing about nuclear war, while also recording a Christmas song.

The two didn't really mix.

will Santa say?

You'd better be good world

to you.

Better be good

world.

Don't let the hat homes stare you wrong.

Don't let no hydrogen bomb go boom, boom, boom.

Scaring all the little reindeer

After that, more attempts at songs along the lines of her hits followed, like The Puzzle Song and Ever See a Diver Kiss His Wife While the Bubbles Bounce About Above the Water.

But there were no more hits, and Ellis retired in 1968.

Chase went on to record a solo album under his own name, which has sadly never been reissued on CD.

But I found a vinyl rip on a dodgy MP3 site a while back, and it's fascinating stuff.

Somewhere between Frank Zappa and George Clinton at points.

And quite politically pointed.

Deep, deep, deep in the jungle, a long, long time ago, they came and stole my mother.

They took my father, stuck him in some ships below.

Brought him here to establish land.

Chase would die in the early 80s, but he and Ellis would go on to get credit for a hit song written almost 20 years after his death.

In 1981, the disco artist Stacey Lattislaw would record Attack of the Name game, which was inspired by Ellis's hit, and so Chase and Ellis got co-writing co-writing credit for it.

Then he winked all three of his eyes at me, and he said, Could you catch my name?

It's glad you pack, I got a clack attack, I got a sea flag, Cover Clacker Jack.

Turn the tide, you gotta move the mid, you gotta ramp them, fuck it by the vibe.

Your rap is truly meaner.

Now try some more, he said, for sure.

Come on, let's do Tina.

That wasn't a hit, but in 1999, Mariah Carey and Jay-Z built the number one hit, Heartbreaker, around a sample of that record, meaning that Ellis and Chase got credit for that too.

I shouldn't have known right from the start.

You'd go and break my arm.

Yes, I should please.

That's not the only influence Alice had in more recent times.

Several people have pointed out the similarity in style between some of Amy Winehouse's records, like Rehab, and Ellis's big hits.

Shirley Ellis, unlike many of her contemporaries, never came out of retirement, and she died in 2005, probably aged 76.

we'll sway with these swells

in the spell

called the rolling, rockin' rhythm of the sea.