Thanks Vickie, great article. Very sad.
Sandy
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Sent: February-05-16 4:26 PM
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Subject: [ourplace] Joe Dowell Dies at 76
Joe Dowell, had No. 1 hit with 'Wooden Heart," dies at 76 By The Associated
Press February 4, 2016 9:04 pm
NEW YORK (AP) - Joe Dowell, a singer briefly popular in the early 1960s who
had a No. 1 hit with the ballad "Wooden Heart," has died. He was 76.
Dowell died Thursday at a hospital in his longtime hometown of Bloomington,
Illinois. His publicist and friend Johnny Vallis tells The Associated Press
that Dowell suffered a heart attack last weekend and never recovered.
"Wooden Heart" already had been a hit for Elvis Presley in Europe when
Dowell's version was released. With its bouncy tempo and echoed vocal track,
the song topped the Billboard chart in early September 1961. Dowell's other
songs included "The Bridge of Love" and "Little Red Rented Rowboat." In
subsequent years he recorded commercial voiceovers and gospel songs.
He is survived by a sister and two daughters.
table with 2 columns and 6 rows
Writers:
Bert Kaempfert
Kay Twomey
Fred Wise
Ben Weisman
Producer:
Shelby Singleton
August 28, 1961
table end
O
n the day before Joe Dowell was to record his first four songs
in Nashville for Mercury Records' Smash label, producer Shelby
Singleton, went to see a screening of Elvis Presley's fifth
movie, G.I. Blues One of the songs Shelby heard in the movie
was
"Wooden Heart (Muss I Denn)," a part-English, part-German
adaptation of a German folk song, "Muss I Denn zum Staedele
Hinaus."
Singleton was already familiar with the song because he had
been watching a version by Gus Bachus move up the German pop
chart.
Elvis Presley had another single climbing the Hot 100 ("I Feel
So Bad"), so it seemed unlikely that RCA would release "Wooden
Heart" by Elvis. Shelby decided to record a cover version of
the song with Dowell.
Joe arrived for the session at 11 AM and was given three hours to
learn the song. "A man named Eddie Wilson came to the office
to teach me to sing 'Muss I Denn, Muss I Denn.' I didn't have any
idea what I was singing; I learned the song phonetically," Joe
recalls.
Elvis' version of the song featured tuba and organ. Joe remembers
how Singleton came up with a more commercial sound: "Jerry Kennedy
mimicked the tuba with a bass guitar, and Ray Stevens played an
organ, mimicking an accordion." Dowell's version of "Wooden
Heart"
was rushed out in three days and he was sent on a one-month
"barnstorming tour." There were four other cover versions of
"Wooden
Joe Dowell
Heart" plus the Elvis original competing with his recording,
but Joe's promotional tour helped win airplay for his own version.
Joe's "Wooden Heart" entered the Hot 100 at number 98 on
June 26, 1961, and moved to number one nine weeks later.
In Britain and throughout Europe, Elvis' "Wooden Heart" was
already a single. In the United Kingdom, it was number one for
six
weeks. "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight, "
Elvis' previous two singles, had also gone to number one,
making
Presley the first artist to score three chart-toppers with
consecutive British releases.
"Wooden Heart" was adapted by Bert Kaemfert, Kay Twomey, Fred
Wise, and Ben Weisman. The German folk song is sung in the
dialect
of the Hessian state, and a translation of the German line that
Dowell sang would read something like, "I have to leave our
little
town and you, my darling, have to stay behind."
Joe Dowell was born on January 23, 1940, in Bloomington, Indiana.
The family moved a year later when Joe's father, an executive with
the Boy Scouts of America, was
offered a better job in Bloomington, Illinois. When he was 13, Joe
bought a ten-dollar guitar and wrote his first song, "Tell Me."
He was in the ninth grade when he made his first public performance,
singing "Unchained Melody" at an amateur talent show. He
competed in country fair talent contests while majoring in radio and
television at the University of Illinois. "I listened to WLS
radio after and during homework," Joe says. "I tried to
envision that I would be on the radio. I could actually hear my own
voice on WLS." With that dream in mind, he went to Nashville
on a semester break, three weeks before his 21st birthday, to find
a record company that would sign him.
He borrowed a friend's VW and drove to Nashville, where he rented
a room for three dollars a night at the YMCA. A week of knocking on
doors proved fruitless. On his last day in Nashville, he went to
the office of Teddy and Doyle Wilburn, regular singers on the
Grand
Ole Opry show. They liked his voice and his "all-American Jack
Armstrong look."
Joe resumed his studies, then returned to Nashville by train the following
May for his first recording session. He followed "Wooden Heart"
with two more singles on Smash, "The Bridge of Love" (number
50) and "Little Red Rented Rowboat" (number 23).
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