Guy Mitchell - She Wears Red Feathers

Hello all - I return. Long time no see. Here's Guy Mitchell and 'She Wears Red Feathers', a jaunty tune that will stay with you for days upon listening to it a few times. You got your money's worth in the 1950s. Guy Mitchell was really Albert Cernik, but would you let your children listen to songs by a man called Albert Cernik? Of course not. The story goes that a record exec came to the name by reasoning thus: "my name is 'Mitchell' and you seem a nice 'guy', so we'll call you Guy Mitchell". I am going to adopt a similar approach with my firstborn, substituting the record exec for a midwife. 

'She Wears...' tells the tale of a London banker who falls in love with a hula girl. Yes, that age old story.... After sailing 14 days from Mandalay (it is imperative you know that, how dare you say it is only a rhyming device), the banker spies from his ship a native girl wearing aforementioned feathers and a "huley-huley skirt". Yes - a "huley" skirt. In the playing out of some sort of grand cosmological scheme, it happens that this woman has been dreaming of an Englishman every night, as simple native girls are wont to do. And what of the subsistence of this girl I hear you cry? Fret not, such an important fact is not neglected, you will be interested to hear that she "lives on just cokey-nuts and fish from the sea". Yes - "cokey-nuts". Guy Mitchell laughs in the face of accepted pronunciation. As you'd expect, primitive (wo)man only has two source of nutrition. To cut a three minute pop song short, English banker is granted instantaneous permission to marry native girl by her parents, they wed to the sound of basoon-playing baboons, and before you know it, huley-girl is back in London drinking tea - a thoroughly amusing sight to all.

I don't think I'm entirely wrong in detecting slight, how should I put this, colonial overtones in this song . 'Don't take it so seriously', I hear you cry - it's only a harmless pop song indulging in comedic caricatures of the exotic. Of course I don't really think there's anything malicious in it. My Mum and Gran both remember it fondly, and I assure you that they are not neo-imperialists. Nonetheless, it's a little dated in its global outlook. It's akin to the awkwardness that arises when an elderly relative clumsily describes someone primarily in terms of their being foreign or not white (despite meaning nothing by this at all).

'She Wears...' was written by the hugely prolific Bob Merrill, who also wrote such classics as '(How Much Is That) Doggie In The Window' and 'If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake'. We'll be hearing him again very soon. Following Merrill's suicide in 1998 a rather scathing article in Slate magazine proclaimed him 'the worst songwriter of all time'. Although I've just been pretty scathing myself about Merrill's work on this song, I still think this is a ridiculous and pretty damn rude accusation. Ok, the guy wrote some bum songs and perhaps wasn't the deepest of lyricists, but who hasn't. I'm sure Leonard Cohen would have struggled to write a good song about a hula girl and a banker. And much as I love Leonard Cohen, he did not write '(How Much Is That) Doggie In The Window'. Can you imagine life without those eight words? Without that little tune? No. I have seen it and it is hellish. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there is a fine line between sublime simplicity and plain old shit. It's difficult to hit the right side all the time.

To end, an important thing I feel that I should draw your attention to is the cover of this song by glam rockers and purveyors of big-cat-footwear-themed-music Mud. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that Mud are missing some of the endearing twang of the original. At least it saves you the trouble of finding out yourself how the song sounds in karaoke form, with the Agadoo switch turned up to 11.

When: 13th March 1953
How long: 4 weeks