Songwriter Chip Taylor has passed away. (March 23rd) He composed the ‘60’s monster hits “Wild Thing” and “Angel Of The Morning.” (Could there be any two more diverse songs on a songwriter’s resume?!?!) I was also partial to his “Any Way That You Want Me,” covered here in Chicago by The American Breed, but also believed in by many other artists who also cut the tune over the years. (How this one never made an impact is beyond me.)
Taylor (real name James Voight) was the brother of actor Jon Voight … and also the uncle of actress Angelina Jolie. He was inducted into The Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 2016.
We did a special feature on him in Forgotten Hits AGES ago …
Here are excerpts spotlighting his two biggest …
WILD THING (Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones ... and The
Troggs)
The song "Wild Thing" by The Troggs was an international, world-wide #1 smash back in 1966 ... but most people don't know that the song was originally inspired by and written for another group who never even made the pop charts.
Singer / Songwriter Chip Taylor says that "Wild Thing" was
"written to order" after he was approached by record producer Gerry
Granahan, who was looking for a new song for the band he was working with,
Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones.
When Granahan asked him if he had anything "in the can, ready to go"
that the group could take a crack at, Taylor replied, "Well, I don't know
if I do or I don't, but let me try to write something today for you." Over the next three hours, Taylor knocked out
what would go on to be one of the biggest hits of the '60's ... although NOT
for Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones.
Taylor admits that, subconsciously, their name, The Wild Ones, may have acted
as some sort of inspiration for the lyrics ... and he further admits that the
stop / start rhythm was inspired by the early Carl Perkins rocker "Blue
Suede Shoes." (At the time, he
wasn't even sure what lyrics he would insert into those pauses ... but
everything just sort of jelled together ... and, three hours after receiving
the phone call from Granahan, Taylor went into the recording studio to cut his
demo. He says that the demo he made that day became the template that The
Troggs would follow when they cut the song several months later.) But first he
brought the song to Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones as promised.
"I don't know if it ever came out," he remembers. (It did ... but it never made the charts!) "They had an arranger that was arranging horns and strings and drum beats and stuff like that. So my cool groove all but disappeared with the horns and strings arrangement. It didn't have a great feel." When the song finally made its way to The Troggs' record producer Larry Page (by way of music publisher Dick James, the same guy who also handled all of The Beatles' song publishing at the time), they didn't know what to make of it.
Troggs' lead singer Reg Presley reportedly said, "This is either gonna be the biggest bomb or the biggest hit ever." Incredibly, by the time The Troggs' version was released as a single in 1966, it is believed that at least FIVE other versions of the song had already been recorded and released, with NONE of them garnering any attention.
"Wild Thing" would go on to hit the pop charts a couple more times,
first as a novelty hit for Senator Bobby in 1967 and then again as a remake by
the group Fancy ... they're the guys who that did that "ooga-chugga,
ooga-chugga" version of the B.J. Thomas Hit, "Hooked On A
Feeling." It was also a regular part of Jimi Hendrix's act for years
Chip Taylor would score several other hits on the pop charts as a songwriter ... but did you know that his REAL name is James Wesley Voight ... and that he's the younger brother of actor Jon Voight ... which also makes him an uncle to Angelina Jolie?!?!?! That connection ALONE should have been enough to inspire "Wild Thing"!!!
ANGEL OF THE MORNING (Evie Sands ... and Merilee Rush)
A pair of “Chips” made quite a name for themselves during the 1960’s. (And no, I’m not counting Chip Douglas from “My Three Sons” or Erik Estrada in this equation.) And when the two “Chips” that I AM talking about teamed up to work together back in 1968, they created one of the most beautiful songs of the '60's ... "Angel Of The Morning" by Merilee Rush.
Songwriter Chip Taylor says that the whole song came to him in about twenty minutes. After strumming any variety of chords for close to two hours and coming up with nothing, he says the complete lyrics "There'll be no strings to bind your hands, not if my love can't bind your heart" flowed out of his mouth. In fact, today he laughs about it ... his first thought was "What is that? That's beautiful!" He then thought, "Nobody actually TALKS like that!!! Where did those words come from?" Incredibly, in one sitting, spread out over no more than twenty minutes, he completed the entire song. He says that during the entire process, he never once thought, "I'm gonna say this" or "I'm gonna say that" ... in fact, most of the time he was thinking "I don't even know what this means!" In his own mind, he feels that he didn't so much as WRITE this song as that he DREAMED it ... the way the lyrics flowed out, meshing perfectly with the series of chords he had been strumming ... there just had to be some kind of divine intervention. "I write melody and words at the same time and I hum nonsense things until something comes out. So I don't think about what I want to say ... I just let the emotion carry me. In this song, the emotion just totally took over and carried me. It was magic."
In hindsight, the song was really quite ahead of its time, even for the Swingin' '60's. Essentially about pre-marital sex (at a time where separate beds were being shown on television for married couples and Jeannie's belly-button had to remain hidden), the song still managed to capture a major audience, going all the way to #3 on the Cash Box Magazine Pop Charts in The Summer of 1968.
Singer Merilee Rush was born in Seattle, Washington, and was discovered by fellow Northwesterners Paul Revere and the Raiders, who quickly had her join their tour. They also lined up a management contract for her, put her on their TV Show, "Happening '68" and hooked her up with producers Tommy Cogbill and Chip Moman, who produced her first album and the monster hit single.
It really was the perfect marriage of artist, songwriter, song and producer. If "Wild Thing" was Chip Taylor's biggest hit as a songwriter, then "Angel Of The Morning" has to be his most magnificent. The record was exquisitely produced by Chips Moman and, if you listen closely behind all the lush, building orchestration, you'll hear a pedal steel guitar, an homage to Chip Taylor's love of country music. (In fact, when country / pop cross-over artist Juice Newton redid the song in 1981, it bested Merilee Rush's version, peaking at #2 in Cash Box and topping Billboard's Adult Contemporary Chart!)
But this was yet another case of the hit versions we know and love were not the first version cut of this song. That distinction belongs to female vocalist Evie Sands, an artist that Chip Taylor had been working with for quite some time.
Evie Sands became known as "The Hard Luck Girl" around the recording industry. Her version of "Angel Of The Morning" was released on the Cameo / Parkway record label literally DAYS before the label folded. Despite being the "most-added" record of the week by radio stations around the country, there was no product to distribute and her version of the single never even charted. Reportedly 10,000 copies of the Evie Sands single were pressed and ALL of them were sold within the record's first week of release. But by then, Cameo / Parkway was gone and there were no more singles to sell, so the song died an immediate death. It wouldn't be the only time Sands watched another artist take "her" record up the charts. She was also the first artist to record the Chip Taylor tune "I Can't Let Go", only to see The Hollies' harmony-filled version become the hit ... and then become a hit all over again several years later for Linda Ronstadt. Her recording of "Take Me For A Little While" also stiffed ... yet the song became a hit ... in a much heavier arrangement ... for Vanilla Fudge. Evie Sands eventually did have a #53 Hit with yet another song written by Chip Taylor, "Any Way That You Want Me" ... but she's pretty much known in the industry as the girl who recorded very weak versions of some otherwise very popular hits.
In 1994, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders did a very nice version of "Angel Of The Morning" that was included on the soundtrack album for the popular television series "Friends" ... and, in 2001, reggae artist Shaggy put a Jamaican beat and some new lyrics and melody behind Chip Taylor's classic tune, renamed it "Angel" and took it all the way #1 on the pop charts.
