Listen: I’ll Slap Your Face / A Handful Of Cheek
HandfulCheekSlapFace.mp3

King Of The Hooks, as Jonathan King was known, kept a non-stop flow of pop novelty singles coming from his UK Records imprint during the early 70′s. Initially distributed by Decca and later Polydor, some deservedly became the occasional hit.

Clearly, all these one-off releases were from his own musical pen, when not picking up the occasional left field Reggae (Carl Malcolm), Northern (The Devonnes) or American Soul (Hoagy Lands) master that is.

JK always came up with hysterical synonyms for himself and his hired musicians. In this case, A Handful Of Cheek.

When visiting London in March ’77 with Corinne, we made the rounds of all the labels, blagging records. Howard set us up with Andrew Lauder at United Artists, and folks at Chrysalis, Charisma, etc. No one was about to bother with UK, deemed quite unhip despite 10CC and The Kursaal Flyers. Maybe others looked down their nose at UK, but certainly not me.

Maintaing a small office just near the entrance to Warren Street tube, the very nice receptionist gladly opened the cupboards and pulled out a good fifty singles for me to take back home for my US college station. Bless her. A Handful Of Cheek was among them.

Starting with a glam drum sound, ‘I’ll Slap Your Face’ soon turns into one of my favorite Jonathan King novelties. Dropping in the orchestral backing at the key change is an unexpected and undeniable example of why King Of The Hooks, even if self appointed, is undeniably justified.

Listen: Fatty Bum Bum / Carl Malcolm CarlMalcolmFatty.mp3

Listen: Miss Wire Waist / Carl Malcolm CarlMalcolmMissWireWaist.mp3

Despite the one hit wonder tag, his #8 UK singles placing from ’75 is a perfect pop-reggae classic. Produced by Clive Chin, not only famous for his work with Augustus Pablo, Black Uhuru and The Wailers, but is self credited as having made the very first dub album. Pretty nice.

This pop hit, further categorized as ‘maybe not so credible’ due mostly to becoming popular, but also because it’s release on Jonathan King’s rather fantastic UK Records imprint meant it was considered mainstream and polished. Like that’s bad – even if the song is great? Jonathan King had impeccable talents for spotting hits as well as recording them. Well I loved this song – from the first listen.

And in a perfect marketing ploy (get all the girls big and small), Carl Malcolm and UK Records released ‘Miss Wire Waist’ as the hopeful, and deserving followup single. It really should’ve been a hit and brought Carl to a higher career plateau. It wasn’t meant to be – well not as recording artist. Year later, you can find him drumming solidly for the Melodians.