Upon arriving at work this morning, I espied 5 little green apples on the desk of my colleague who works in The Comptroller’s Division. I immediately called out: “Hey look! Little green apples!” I wasn’t expecting her to know that I was referencing a hit song from 1968 with the same name, but it just felt good to finally get a chance to actually match a group of little green apples to one of Americas most popular tunes. Remember, I said “popular,” not necessarily “good.”
And since the maple sap is finally running in New England, this is a good time to investigate one of the more sappy songs in the Great American Songbook.
Nashville singer/songwriter Bobby Russell was said to have had a desire to write what he called “true-to-life story songs.” You will soon know what that means. Well, the creative sap must have REALLY been running for Russell as not only did he write “Little Green Apples,” he managed to write the song “Honey” the same year. The two songs combined to produce prodigious amounts of musical syrup for dozens of other artists. In fact, it’s hard to ascribe either song solely to the original singer because so many other artists took a stab at singing them, with some even charting in the Billboard Hot 100 in various genres.
The first version of Russell’s “Little Green Apples” was released by Roger Miller. Readers may know Roger Miller from his distinctive voice and his string of hits including “King of The Road,” and some novelty songs such as “Do Wacka Do” and “I’m a nut.” The “true-to-life lyrics” for “Little Green Apples” were pure Americana, with a nuclear family, kids running off to school, puppy dogs, God, bb guns, and, of course little green apples:
And I wake up in the mornin’
With my hair down in my eyes and she says hi
And I stumble to the breakfast table
While the kids are goin’ off to school, goodbye
And she reaches out and takes my hand
And squeezes it and says, how you feelin’ hon
And I look across at smilin’ lips that warm my heart
And see my mornin’ sun
And if that’s not lovin’ me then all I’ve got to say
God didn’t make little green apples
And it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime
And there’s no such thing as Doctor Suess
And Disneyland and Mother Goose is no nursery rhyme
God didn’t make little green apples
And it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime
And when myself is feelin’ low
I think about her face aglow and ease my mind
Sometimes I call her up at home knowin’ she’s busy
And ask her if she’d get away and meet me
And maybe we could grab a bite to eat
And she drops what she’s doin’
And she hurries down to meet me and I’m always late
But she sits waitin’ patiently
And smiles when she first sees me ’cause she’s made that way
And if that ain’t lovin’ me then all I’ve got to say
God didn’t make little green apples
And it don’t snow in Minneapolis when the winter comes
And there’s no such think as make believe
Puppy dogs, autumn leaves and BB guns
God didn’t make little green apples
And it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime
Miller’s version of “Little Green Apples” made a good showing on Billboard and even had success in the UK and Australia, but for some reason, the version by soul singer and Louisiana native Ocie Lee (O.C.) Smith that came out the same year ended up being the million-seller.
The song became almost an obligatory cover for dozens of artists, in both vocal and instrumental form:
Bobby Goldsboro on his 1968 album Honey
Burl Ives on his 1968 album The Times They Are A-Changin’
Tony Joe White on his 1968 album Black and White
Frank Sinatra on his 1968 album Cycles
Stanley Turrentine on his 1968 album Always Something There
Dionne Warwick on her 1968 album Promises, Promises
Johnny Mathis on his 1968 album Those Were the Days
Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry on their 1968 album Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbell
The Temptations on their 1969 album Puzzle People
Andy Williams on his 1969 album Happy Heart
Dean Martin on his 1969 album I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am
Tony Bennett on his 1970 album Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!
Ben E. King on his 1970 album Rough Edges
Bloodstone on their 1972 self-titled album
Monica Zetterlund in 1969 as Små gröna äpplen, with Swedish lyrics written by ABBA’s manager Stig Anderson. Both the performance and the lyrics won Swedish Grammy awards.
Nancy Wilson on her 2004 album R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal)
Robbie Williams featuring Kelly Clarkson on his 2013 album Swings Both Ways.
One of my favorites is a reggae version by Dennis Brown:
In the next post, I will deal with the even-more sappy “Honey.”
The rules I made for myself were simple: on my regular Saturday walk to The Kroger, I would select six metal objects on the side of the road that would fit in my hand and then photograph them when I got home (click on image for larger size). It was an experiment in historic archaeology, a selection of the kinds of objects that, well, end up on the side of an American road in an urban area. I was posting them on the dreaded FB each Saturday, but I figured I would give them a home on the resuscitated IP. Here are the results from six (now seven) consecutive Saturdays:
Another rule is not to collect exact duplicate items; one common item is the ubiquitous wheel balancing weight (first image). Perhaps the most interesting item so far is the .22 caliber gun shell casing in the 5th image. Let me know if I should continue this or not.
I’ve got some more blog posts ready to go, so keep your eyes open, and send me any e-mail addresses of people you think would enjoy the IP. I still have some cleanup to do on the blog (dead links and such), but I’m back blogging as the FB is really wearing thin.
When I lived in Chicagoland, whenever I had the free time, I would always go to my favorite town for garage sales: Skokie. This was back before e-bay, so a lot of folks sold stuff without any clue to their value. I’m not saying that old matchbooks have a lot of value, only that I bought someone’s matchbook collection (over 200 matchbooks) for about $5. About 80% of them were for Chicagoland restaurants and dinner clubs from the 50s through the 80s. It was a history of this particular couple’s traveling and eating life as read through matchbooks. All I can say is that they ate out A LOT, and also stayed at a lot of hotels and motels. Each matchbook represented a slice of history, and a challenge to me to find out if the particular business still existed or had been lost to the vicissitudes of retail success and failure. Today, with the IntarWebs (IW), one can engage in matchbook history and end up in a wormhole of intrigue. Such was the case recently when, just for heck of it, I chose one of the matchbooks and sought to find out what I could about the restaurant from which it originated.
Matchbooks have built-in attributes that help the IW researcher. In the case of the above Grassfield’s International matchbook, my first clue was in the phone number, BRiargate 4-666. People tend to forget (or not know) that phone numbers are veracious indicators of a particular historical period. Back when Ma Bell (AT&T) had a monopoly in phone service, as the number of subscribers kept increasing, they came up with a system to establish phone numbers based on a standardized, alpha-numeric system. It was not until around 1962 that what was called “All Number Calling” became the standard, so I knew that Grassfield’s International had to be a fairly old restaurant. And, of course, the address of 6666 Ridge Avenue would also help me find out about this intriguing restaurant with obviously global associations. Not surprisingly, one of the first things I discovered was through another matchbook:
Rather than the world globe, I was confronted with a big lobster, which made sense considering the inner picture of my matcbook showed a fish on a block of ice.
Seafood was this restaurant’s specialty. At this point I searched that spooky 6666 address. Look at what I found:
So now I was confronted with a similar lobster, awesomely die-cut to extend beyond the boundaries of a standard matchbook, but an entirely different name, Allgauer’s. So that was the next search, and here is what I found:
This postcard of Allgauer’s “Nufer” Restaurant depicted a large establishment at the same 6666 N. Ridge Av. location, and was clearly older than the Grassfield’s matchbooks, so I was confused as to why I discovered the same lobster motif for two different restaurants with the same address. What was going on? So then I was off to Google earth to see if that big Tudor-style building was still there:
Except for the small liquor store at the top of the above image, 6666 N. Ridge no longer refers to the location of Grassfield’s Restaurant. So I then decided to find out more about it by doing a little more IW digging. You will note that the Allgauer’s matchbook above notes two locations, one of which was the 6666 N. Ridge address that got this whole thing started, and another that was “Lincoln at Touhy.’ At this point I found some amazing newspaper articles about that second Allgauer’s restaurant:
Now I was sucked into a mob racket story; pure Chicago-style “protection.” Read some of these articles:
Did the Allgauer’s at 6666 N. Ridge change it’s name to Grassfield’s to prevent more fires? Did it too fall to the mob? Who knows. But it just goes to show that behind every matchbook there ‘s a story. And some nice vintage images on the IW:
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