1 of 1- Lorne
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Article about Green Book, Don Shirley, and Richard Armin
I haven't seen Green Book, and really didn't know much about it until after its Best Picture win at the Oscars. But I thought that the following article might be of interest to people here for two reasons. First, Don Shirley had a Billboard top 40 hit in 1961 with Water Boy, and another Hot 100 hit in 1962 with Drown In My Own Tears, so he's part of the oldies era. And what's also interesting to me is that his only two Billboard hits reached #40 and #100 respectively ... I have to wonder if he might be the only artist to ever do that. But the other aspect of this article that I found interesting is that it centres around the recollections of a former member of the group Lighthouse, Richard Armin, who toured with Don Shirley in the 1960s.
- Roman
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Re: Article about Green Book, Don Shirley, and Richard Armin
Lorne wrote:
I haven't seen Green Book, and really didn't know much about it until after its Best Picture win at the Oscars. But I thought that the following article might be of interest to people here for two reasons. First, Don Shirley had a Billboard top 40 hit in 1961 with Water Boy, and another Hot 100 hit in 1962 with Drown In My Own Tears, so he's part of the oldies era. And what's also interesting to me is that his only two Billboard hits reached #40 and #100 respectively ... I have to wonder if he might be the only artist to ever do that. But the other aspect of this article that I found interesting is that it centres around the recollections of a former member of the group Lighthouse, Richard Armin, who toured with Don Shirley in the 1960s.
Prior to reading this the only version of 'Drown In My Own Tears' that I'd heard was by Joe Cocker on his Mad Dogs & Englishman album. I looked the song up on Wikipedia and found that Ray Charles charted with it in 1956. I'm kind of surprised that Shirley covered it again so soon after Charles' version..
- Lorne
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- From: Toronto, Ontario
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Re: Article about Green Book, Don Shirley, and Richard Armin
I wasn't familiar with the song, so I did some searching myself ... I found that Charles' version went to #1 R&B, but didn't make the main Billboard chart. And Shirley's version is much more jazz-oriented than Charles'. I'm actually more surprised at Water Boy doing as well for him as it did, because of the way it starts off very slowly for the first half-minute or so.
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