TFJ
all the more reason to buy "Creature Feature" on vinyl!!!

huh?
why is that?

Jeff(bigtikidude)

spskins
Yes. I just assumed Summers was a Tony Hilder type character lurking in the background of different bands.
????

He's mentioned at intervals in Dalley's interviews as the owner or co-owner - with Mike Curb, as in Mike Curb/Davie Allan - and engineer at the Sound House recording studio in El Monte. He was involved in recording the Surfmen/Expressos, the Lively Ones, the Revelairs, the Vibrants and Adrian & the Sunsets.

A note on credits relative to the Lively Ones: Bob Dalley quotes Jim Masoner as saying "The group never received any royalties from our records , not even the writer's royalties. I made the serious mistake of putting the group's name as the writer of our songs. That mistake enabled Del-Fi Records to say they owned the rights to the name because of the contract. They also owned the publishing company. They were able to claim all of the money." (p. 163a)

I'm not sure I fully understand the logic here, but it does imply that Masoner considered that at least some of the songs attributed to the group as a whole were actually his. Apart from that I think he's saying that the contract conceded rights to the name to Del-Fi and that as a result listing the songs to the group as a whole let Del-Fi claim the royalties were theirs.

Tuck
They opened once for ? & the Mysterians.

so did the Fathoms ~1998

I think they did it in 1968. I guess that makes them "early openers."

Art Bourasseau came up with the melody for that one (I wrote the bridge), so I don't know. I've never noticed any similiarity....

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

shivers13
Understood, but you also have to put in perspective that The Ventures recorded a hell of a lot more albums than The Lively Ones did. When the surf craze was over so were The Lively Ones and the like. Whereas, the Ventures continued on.

Dalley's interview with the Lively Ones has them recalling that they came out ahead of the Ventures in a couple of battles of bands. I'm not sure what this refers to, though.

From all accounts The Lively Ones lived up to their name on stage. Tim Fitzpatrick told me that their stage show was intentionally more high energy than the rest... they wanted to stand out against the competition. Not surprising they beat out the Ventures in a battle of the bands. The Ventures were great live (their Japan live stuff is proof) but they don't exactly tear up the stage with presence.

The fact that they beat The Ventures in a battle of the bands is a testament to how great they must have been. There's no way the could have won entirely on stage presence. Too bad there's no live footage of the LO's in their heyday. What a shame.

BOSS FINK "R.P.M." available now from DOUBLE CROWN RECORDS!
www.facebook.com/BossFink
www.doublecrownrecords.com

I've been looking a bit further into the question of the origins of Walkin' the Board.

The first lead is the credit to a J. or G. Urango and the AllMusic business about J. Uranga writing Alla en el Rancho Grande.

It turns out that Alla en el Rancho Grande is the title song of a Mexican cowboy movie of the same name, produced by Fernando de Fuentes (December 13, 1894 to July 4, 1958). It came out in 1936 and basically founded the cowboy musical movie genre in Mexico. The English of the title is Out on (or Over at) the Big Ranch. The movie is also called Cruz, after the female lead character.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027277/ (1936 original)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040088/ (1948 remake)

The music for that song was written by Emilio D. Uranga, and the Spanish lyrics are by J. de Moral. The English lyrics, probably later, are by Bartley Costello. I think I was more than fair in calling them doggerel.

(shields up!)

http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/e/elranchogrande.shtml

You sometimes see this song attributed to one Dominio Publico. He's written a lot of stuff. His name is actually Spanish for Public Domain, which may explain things.

It is harder to get to J. or G. Urango from E.D. Uranga than from J. Uranga, but in the end the credit here is plainly a vexed issue.

The AllMusic credit of the song to Engineer Javier Uranga is probably a case of their tendency to unify into one person any set of one or more people with the same or even just similar names, e.g., Albert and Alan Garcia. (And, what the heck, they both play(ed) bass! It all works out.)

The song Alla en el Rancho Grande was sung in the original movie by singer actor Federico Arturo "Tito" Guízar Tolentino (April 8, 1908 - December 24, 1999). It was a a hit for him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito_Gu%C3%ADzar

If you go to Amazon (etc.) you can purchase MP3 downloads of the original version, or of various Spanish and English covers, e.g., from the CD Having Wonderful Time by Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven. Apparently the original LP came out in 1944 and was reissued various times. The English version was covered widely, e.g., by Bing Crosby and by Dean Martin.

The name Urango is a Basque surname/placename meaning 'well watered, near the water'. Durango is a Spanish version of it. I assume Uranga is a variant form, too. (Incidentally, boxer Juan Urango's brother Gurango Mitico Urango whom I mentioned was made up by me in a silly moment to explain the G. Urango variant.)

===

Well, that's one approach. Another is to assume that the title is some sort of give away, e.g., Walkin' the Board is from something Board or Walkin' something, like 40 Mile of Bad Road vs. 40 Miles of Bad Surf, and so on.

This leads pretty quickly to Patsy Cline's Walkin' After Midnight, which actually has some resemblances to Alla en el Rancho Grande.

http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/w/walkingaftermidnight.shtml

This song is credited to Don Hecht and Alan Bock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkin%27_After_Midnight

Which part of the song is Hecht's and which Bock's I don't know, but a big part of Hecht's contribution was in buffaloing Patsy into singing it. It was a huge hit for her, but apparently she never liked it much. I guess apart from the odd lyrics - "Tell me again why I am wandering along a highway in the early morning hours?" - it reminded her of Alla en el Rancho Grande on some subliminal level. She recorded Walkin' in 1956 and it became popular immediately when she sang it on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on CBS in January 1957. (The pilot for American Idol.) She ended up recording it multiple times. Every time she did Hecht felt a twinge run down his spine like someone was walking on his grave.

There was another "Lively Ones," although I can't put my hands on a reference right now. NOT a surf band. The photo, above, is likely of that band.

www.johnblair.us
www.soundofthesurf.com

New York is a good pointer: Google lists a blog about a band called the Lively Ones from New York, that unfortunately is no longer online (and also not on the Internet Archive), with the following preview text:

The band, 'The Lively Ones' definately had some good tunes. This musical variety show was a summer replacement for "Hazel" and aired for two years. Out of all ...

And then there is this recording from the Dark Horse Tavern, which could yet be a completely different band. Definitely no surf music.

Thanks for the help with this riddle. Now back to the real Lively Ones!

Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!