As usual, we lost a fair few famous people over the festive period - Tom Wilkinson, Bob Johnson from Steeleye Span, Jacques Delors (the man credited with Maggie's downfall) and Wish You Were Here director Bob Leland, among others - but none of them appeared in any memorable songs... so I'm taking this feature back to basics with another Hollywood legend, High Noon star Gary Cooper.
We'll start today with one for George. It's Genoese singer songwriter Lorenzo Pupeschi, aka...
Piero Antonio Franco de Benedictis was also born in Italy - though he moved to Argentina when he was 3, going on to carve quite a career for himself as a singer songwriter in the Latin American charts...
And what better to follow that than some German "cloud rap"*? (*No idea.)
What do you get when you cross Franz Ferdinand with Sparks? FFS...
He finished up his cola and the waitress thought, "So soon?"
He looked a little bit like Gary Cooper in High Noon
He left to find a movie theatre, it was shuttered down
It seemed like there were lots of things that had been shuttered down
And now some proper 80s air guitar... if you only know Richard Marx from his cheesy ballads, prepare to hate his rockier side too.
He's gonna be a leading man in the Gary Cooper mold
Now working at a pretzel stand, but it's him that's getting sold
Still rocking, Peter Criss was one of the founding members of Kiss. He was fired in 1979 for not having the right make-up*. Then he went solo... I'm guessing the song below might have been aimed at his former bandmates.
I ain't gonna be no whipping boy for you no more
I'm tired of swallowing my pride
I wanna tell you just the way I feel
I got a heart made of steel
I feel like Gary Cooper in the noonday sun
My heart's a loaded .44
I've spent a lifetime burning up inside
You can run but you can't hide
(*I made that bit up, in case Mr. Criss's lawyers are reading.)
Wild Seeds came from Austin, Texas in 1984. File them under "further investigation required"...
It wasn't in an old movie
Or Gary Cooper's face
That sunset blinded me
From that dark place
I must have blacked out
I don't recall the rest
I lost my true love
To the west
Still in Texas, here's Pat Noon, via High Noon...
He walked like Gary Cooper, he dressed like Daniel Boone
He might been a hero in a Willie Nelson tune
Bill Chinnock came from New Jersey, where he played alongside future E Street Band regulars Danny Federici and Vini Lopez in the late 60s. He never made the big time, but he did win an Emmy Award for his song Somewhere In The Night which was used as the theme tune to US soap Search For Tomorrow.
If I'd heard this song back in the mid 80s, I would have bought it.
You've taken all my heroes
And left me with nothing but late night TV
Gary Cooper and James Dean are all I've left to see
And now for a double act who came 5th in the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest, representing Austria. They also took part in the pre-selection process for the 2004 contest, losing out to a boy band called Tie Break, after which they lodged a formal complaint that Tie Break's entry broke contest rules by being longer than 3 minutes, "clocking in at between 3:09 and 3:11 depending on the stereo used." Their complaint was not upheld.
Did you ever see a movie
Where Erroll Flynn played Robin Hood
Where Gary Cooper played a hero
And where Jane Mansfield was all nude?
Good old HolIywood is dying
Good old HolIywood is crying
Good old HolIywood is dead
From there we go to a classic example of the insecure country singer...
In my mind I'm thinner and I'm taller
Younger too with a little more hair
I saw myself going so much farther
In my mind I'm rugged and I'm charming
The hero who might save the day
Kinda' like a modern Gary Cooper
Don't worry, mate. Self Help For Cynics will be back next week.
Still in the world of country, here's the great Ray Stevens. Bugadeh bugadeh.
He did impressions of Garbo and Gary Cooper
And I tell ya friends, I thought it was super
'Cause for props he grabbed the organ players wig and a deacon's hat
Next up, some Kentish folk, from a band who've been kicking around since Waterloo and Robinson first entered the Contest...
Like a swimmer in the ocean leaves his clothes upon the shore
Like a lover in commotion drops his shoes upon the floor
Like the ghost of Gary Cooper checks his guns in at the door
I leave these songs with you
Winning the prize for best Gary Cooper rhymes are 80s hip hop duo Nice & Smooth...
My name Smooth B, yes I am a trooper
On my private house in letting lord in super
True to myself, won't ever be a snooper
Never try to hard to look like Gary Cooper
When I'm on the mic you surely a prover
If I do steal then call me a hoover
Staying in the 80s, let's hear it for the Dogs D'Amour!
You wanna be like Errol Flynn
Captain Blood was a whore
You wanna be like Gary Cooper
High on a horse
You wanna be like Lon Chaney
Howlin´ at the moon
You wanna be like Baby Glass
Give me a kiss too soon, yeah
There was one song that came up over and over again in my search today, and it was also the song that sent me down this particular rabbit hole in the first place. It was written by Irving Berlin in 1929 - I have to admit, I didn't think it was quite that old, or that Gary Cooper was even on the scene way back then, but it turns out he was an emerging star of the silent movie generation at the time. Which is why good old Irving chose to namecheck him thus...
Dressed up like a million-dollar trouper
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)
Come, let's mix where Rockefellers
Walk with sticks or umbrellas in their mitts
Puttin' on the Ritz
Puttin' On The Ritz has been recorded by all the usual suspects - Bing, Ella, Fred, Judy - as well as some more surprising interpreters...
Arguably the most famous version of the song was released in 1982 by Indonesian-Dutch (by way of Germany) synth-popper Taco. Although it didn't reach the UK Top 40, it was a worldwide one hit wonder. In the USA, it made Irving Berlin, then 95, the oldest living songwriter to ever have a hit in the Billboard Top Ten.
