PLEDGE WEEK: “Farmer John” by Don and Dewey

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021.

Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast.

If you want to get those and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/slash Andrew Hickey.

That's A-N-D-R-E-W-H-I-C-K-E-Y, to sign up for a dollar a month or more.

Just a heads up for those of you who have a limited time.

This one runs slightly longer than most of the Patreon bonus episodes.

The script's the same length, but there are about twice as many music clips as normal, so it may last closer to 15 minutes than 10.

Today we're going to look at a duo who at one point I planned to include in the main podcast, and when I moved them out of the list for that, I forgot to do as a Patreon episode at the appropriate time.

But this week's main episode deals with the searchers, who popularised their most successful song.

So today we're going to look at a duo who are almost certainly the only artists ever to influence both Frank Zappa and Donnie and Marie Osmond.

We're going to look at Don and Dewey and Farmer John.

Don Sugarcane Harris and Dewey Terry were two of the best multi-instrumentalists on the California RB scene in the 50s.

Harris could play guitar, harmonica and piano, and also spent a decade learning classical violin, while Terry started out on piano but soon became a fearsome blues guitarist in the style of guitar Slim.

They started working together in a six-piece vocal group, the Squires, who were based in Pasadena, where both men grew up.

of yours.

She's a big fat woman and a name with Los Angeles.

She's the ugliest thing I've ever seen.

She looks like Devin, she's twice as many.

As well as recording under their own name, the Squires also recorded as the Blue Jays, making sound-alike EPs of current RB hits for a budget label called Dig This Record.

One EP is an example, featured Sincerely, Earth Angel, Hearts of Stone, and Pledging My Love, the latter with Don on lead vocal.

you.

So promise me, darling,

your love in return.

Better spy, my soul, dear,

forever.

However, Don and Dewey soon realized that since between them they could play most instruments, sing most parts, and write songs.

There was no need for them to continue splitting the money with four other people, and started working as a duo, while the Squires continued on their own.

Don and Dewey recorded a couple of singles for small labels.

The vocal Miss Sue.

And the instrumental Slummin, which was the first record to show off Harris's unique violin playing.

I can't find my source for this, but I read somewhere that Harris created his own electric violin by taping a record needle to his violin and hooking it up to an amp.

Whatever he did, he got a unique sound that proves that the violin can work as a great blues instrument.

His playing manages to combine the tombre of both the blues guitar and the harmonica, and it sounds stunning.

Shortly after this, Bumps Blackwell signed the duo to Specialty, where they were quickly fitted into what was fast becoming the Specialty House style, making records that sounded just like Little Richard or Larry Williams, starting with Jungle Hop.

I met a fine girl in town,

fine and sweet as she could be.

I guess that's what you say, just a swinging through the tree.

You got a jumble hopper with the bee be liver,

a jumbo hopper with the bee be liver,

a nangin' old oak, changer, chang.

I mean a jumble hopper with the bee be liver.

She wiggle like a snake when she started the war.

Sound like an angel when she started.

Their second specialty single was a song that would become a standard.

I'm leaving it all up to you.

I

don't understand.

What have I

done wrong?

I wish I could have

you all.

That's why I'm leaving it

up to you.

You decide

in 1963, that would reach number one for a duo called Dale and Grace,

and in the 70s, it would become a top 10 hit for Donnie and Marie Osmond.

what you're gonna do.

Now, do you want my love

or

all the way through?

I'll give it all up to you.

But it was their last record of the 50s that became their most influential, even though, like their other records, it wasn't a hit.

A song called Farmer John that they released in 1959.

I dig the way she walks,

the way she

Shortly after that, they moved labels, as their A ⁇ R man, Sonny Bonno, who had written their earlier single Coco Joe, was moving, and they went with him.

Unfortunately, their new label did little to promote them, and the duo spent the next few years in obscurity, while Bonno went on to bigger things, some of which you can hear about in this week's main episode.

They eventually joined Little Richard's backing band and played on his comeback attempt, Bama Lama Bamaloo.

Now I figure how she'd like to drive me wild with Bama Lamma, Bumbama Loo.

But that's my painting for kids.

She shook her head like this.

They also released another record on specialty around that time, Mamma Jamma.

Mamma Jammer, Mamma Jamming.

Mamma Jammer to hoo ladder.

Mamma Jammer, Mamma Jammy.

You all sing her little girlfriend and

she back on to the

Neither of those records was a hit, and Don and Dewey started playing as a Vegas lounge act for the next few years.

But oddly, Farmer John started to take off, more than four years after originally being released.

The first cover version of it seems to have been by The Searchers, who often sought out obscure RB songs.

Their version of it was an album track on their first album.

I'm in love with your daughter.

Oh, oh, oh,

with the champagne eyes.

Best she knows that I love her.

That was then picked up by a Swedish group called the Hepstars, who had a top ten hit with the song in Sweden with a copy of the searchers arrangement.

I mean I'm with it on her.

The Hepstar's keyboard player Benny Anderson would later start writing songs in collaboration with another member of a later line-up of the group, and they would have some small amount of success with their new band, ABBA.

In 1964 as well, another band revived it, a Chicano band called the Premiers from East LA.

Their version is clearly based on Don and Dewey's original, combined with Louis Louie.

They've said that they specifically modelled their record on Louie Louie, but it seems likely to me that the searchers reviving the song a few months earlier will have brought the song to mind, as nobody had covered the song in the years since 1959, and the British Invasion bands were so popular at the time.

Whatever the reasoning was, the Premier's version made the top 20.

Farmer John,

I'm in love with your daughter.

That would be the premiere's only hit, but it would turn Farmer John into a Garage Rock standard, recorded by dozens of other artists over the years, most notably Neil Young.

In the late 60s, Frank Zappa was working with Johnny Otis and asked him about Sugar Cane Harris.

Otis had recently worked with Harris, who had played piano and violin on the Cold Shot album with Otis and his son Suggie, who was also working with Zappa.

Otis introduced the two, and Harris played with Zappa on several tracks, including two on his biggest-selling album, Hot Rats.

I'm a little pimp with my hair gas bad, hair gay ass with my shoes shine black.

little lady walked that street, telling all the boys it's crazy.

And he played violin and sang lead on Zappa's cover version of Little Richards Directly from My Heart to You.

Directly from my heart

to you.

Direct

Directly from my heart

to you.

The exposure that these appearances with Otis and Zappa gave to Harris meant that for the next few years he was a successful sideman, playing with John Mayle, John Lee Hooker, Harvey Mandel, and others, as well as releasing a string of his own solo blues albums in the 70s.

Later, he and Dewey reunited to play the Nostalgia Circuit, and they carried on playing together until 1999, when Don died.

Dewey got in a replacement, but died himself four years later.