Len Barry's biggest solo hit, "1-2-3," topped the Cash Box Chart and got as high as #2 in both Billboard and Record World. (It hit #1 here in Chicago, too, on the WLS Silver Dollar Survey.)
The song was co-written by our long-time Forgotten Hits Buddy John Madara, who had an across-the-boards #2 Hit the year before with Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me," one of my favorite songs of all time.
(You also heard John with his group The Spokesman on the track we featured a short while back, "The Dawn Of Correction," which was written and recorded as sort of an answer song to Barry McGuire's #1 Hit "Eve Of Destruction.")
You can read some of John's special memories on the other Forgotten Hits website ...
https://fhjohnmadara.blogspot.com/
Len Barry started his solo career after leaving The Dovells, a Cameo-Parkway band that scored big with the Top Three Hits "Bristol Stomp" and "You Can't Sit Down" in 1961 and 1963 respectively.
After striking big on his own with "1-2-3," Len Barry would have two more successive Top 20 Hits with "Like A Baby" (#13, 1966) and "Somewhere" (#17, 1966), the latter coming from the hit musical and motion picture "West Side Story." (Both of these tracks peaked far lower in Billboard for some reason where they topped out at #27 and #26. The Cash Box and Record World showing are much more consistent with one another.)
John shares some of his special "hands-on" memories of Len Barry's big hit below. (This article also appears on the forgottenhits.com website)
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JOHN MADARA: One story that really needs to have the truth printed about is the "1-2-3" / Motown story.
FORGOTTEN HITS: I've listened to ASK ANY GIRL more than a few times recently ... and I suppose that if I PRE-CONDITIONED my thinking into allowing and acknowledging that there are SUPPOSED to be similarities between the two songs, I can find a few ... but there is NO way that I would have EVER thought so by hearing EITHER of these songs independently of one another or if I hadn't been told up-front that there are people who THINK that they sound a lot alike. ASK ANY GIRL isn't even really that well-known of a MOTOWN song!!! It was an uncharted B-SIDE! And emulating a popular sound-trend in music by simply trying to capture a "feel" hardly constitutes a copyright infringement or offense!!! Jeez, with THAT line of thinking, can you imagine how many lawsuits there could have been when every record company and artist on the planet was trying to cash in on the Disco craze?!?!?
JM: What I've read on the Internet is that Madara, White and Barry did a rewrite on "Ask Any Girl" and were then sued by Motown ... and that the credited writers now are Holland, Dozier & Holland, who wrote "Ask Any Girl." This is totally false! First of all, we never heard "Ask Any Girl." The only influence for making "1-2-3" was to make a ballad with a beat. And the sound of "1-2-3" was definitely the sound of the era. Listen to "The In-Crowd" ... that's not the Motown Sound ... that's the sound of the era ... and "1-2-3" definitely had a beat! Motown was suing a lot of people at the time. And because our record was at #1 ... and we had a beat ... they sued us!
FH: And it sounds like, thanks to BERRY GORDY's and MOTOWN's persistence in tying this up in court, the songwriting credit WAS ultimately changed to include HOLLAND, DOZIER and HOLLAND. How did that feel at the time ... to have to SHARE a songwriting credit for something that you had, in fact, created?
JM: The current writers' credits for "1-2-3" are Madara, White, Barry, Holland, Dozier and Holland, and they get the credit and the 15% that was made in the settlement. It would sure be nice if someone printed the real story acknowledging that this was NOT the only hit record we made! We made a LOT of hits. Read the different stories, Kent, i.e., Lyrics.com, or any of these other bull... sites. These people have no idea of who they are writing about, their history, who they are and their accomplishments through their careers. They make it sound like we were thieves in the night stealing someone else's music.
FH: Unfortunately, as we've seen over and over and over again, these "mistruths" are repeated SO often and for SO long that they become established as "fact" when in reality, NOTHING could be further from the truth.
JM: This is one story, Kent, where I would really like to see the truth come out. Again, Kent, thank you for the opportunity to present these facts and, if you have any questions at all, please let me know.
Here's
a copy of the ORIGINAL sheetmusic for 1-2-3 ... showing the title as "One, Two, Three" ... and JOHN MADARA, DAVID WHITE and LEONARD BORISOFF as the songwriters. After BERRY
GORDY's 1965 lawsuit, future publications would also list the MOTOWN
Songwriting Team of HOLLAND, DOZIER and HOLLAND in these songwriting
credits.
After
scoring five Top 40 Hits with THE DOVELLS, LEN BARRY decided to pursue a
solo career. In the liner notes of his Greatest Hits CD, here is how he
describes the excitement of "1-2-3" becoming such a HUGE chart success:
"When we did
'1-2-3', we got to where I was trying to go since 1961. I was really
at home with that. I was a Motown act as far as I was concerned. It was
the second take. We did it live in the booth. There were no overdubs, no
punches. It was great! It had never sounded like that --- ever! I said
to myself, 'The Man upstairs is hearing me.' If you listen to '1-2-3,' I have sung better, but I have never communicated with the public like
that, ever. Because on that song, the vocal is total desperation. I was
saying to the public, 'Look, I'm 22, let's get serioius because I don't
know what I'm gonna do if you don't buy this record.' That desperation
was in the performance."
About the song itself, BARRY had this to say:
"I didn't write that for me. I wrote that for the Pixies Three. They had '442 Glenwood Avenue' and such. That's why it had numbers. I don't know why they didn't do it, but they didn't do it --- and I should be grateful."
JOHN MADARA: With regards to writing 1-2-3, you told me that Len Barry had said that it was written for The Pixies Three. That's not correct, because by 1965 we were not producing anything for Mercury Records anymore. I remember clearly that we were set to have a writing session at the office for Lenny's recording session, and I walked in with the melody and a title of "1, 2, and 3". Lenny said, "Let's make it 1-2-3." So we sat and wrote the song ... with no help from Motown.
BARRY's
last DECCA single was cowritten with and produced by KENNY GAMBLE and
LEON HUFF, two OTHER figures who would later feature prominently in the
career of JOHN MADARA. One of MY personal favorite LEN BARRY records is
his take on SOMEWHERE, from the Hit Musical WEST SIDE STORY. (It hit #17
on the CASH BOX Chart in 1966.) This was another song selected and
produced by the team of MADARA and WHITE, much to the disdain of LEN
BARRY ... especially when they arranged it to sound similar in style to
his two previous hits, 1-2-3 and LIKE A BABY. BARRY felt pigeon-holed
by the sound.
LEN BARRY: SOMEWHERE I didn't even want to do ... I wanted to throw up. The drummer must have died from repetition.
Well, personally, I really LIKE this version!!!
For more on BERRY GORDY's penchant for lawsuits, you might find our BOBBY PARKER / YOU'VE GOT WHAT IT TAKES article interesting ... you can still find it posted on The FORGOTTEN HITS Blog Page here:
