Listen: (1-2-3-4-5-6-7) Count The Days / Inez & Charlie Foxx
(1-2-3-4-5-6-7) Count The Days / Inez & Charlie Foxx

There’s not a person I play this to who doesn’t, after one spin, decide they need a copy.

I was always extremely partial to this poor man’s Ike & Tina Turner, as I’d seen them referred to. Inez & Charlie Foxx had their biggest love in the UK, like so many before and after would too. But seeing them perform on Cleveland’s UPBEAT show in the 60′s confirmed my loyalty. UPBEAT was a weekly music program, with a good six to ten acts miming their latest releases on every episode. I guess the local network cornered all of them as they passed through Cleveland, happy to get any TV exposure. It was syndicated to various cities in the US, including Syracuse hence I got to see it every Sunday.

There’s a website for the show, and it is particularly boring to navigate – I believe the producer’s son deals with the estate, and basically highlights only the name acts, when the true interest in the show would be the many obscure ones that were on. Hopefully that footage was preserved and will be freed up. There is definitely a goldmine there.

So it was May of ’67 when I saw Inez & Charlie on that very show. We had recently upgraded to a family color TV, so everything was a technicolor dream come true. No bigger one than Inez Foxx in a skin tight floor length carnation pink dress playing a matching pink Stratocaster; and brother Charlie off behind her to the left singing and dancing on a very small riser perfectly clad in a matching pink chino suit, black shirt and pink tie. Talk about having your visual together. And ‘(1-2-3-4-5-6-7) Count The Days’ was the song they performed. Produced and written by Charlie Foxx and Swamp Dogg, Gene Pitney covered it a year or so later. As great a singer as he definitely was, it was no match for Inez Foxx’s delivery. Along with Inez & Charlie Foxx’s ‘Come By Here’, ‘Tightrope’ and ‘Hurt By Love’, it’s a life long favorite.

Listen: Black Is Black / Los Bravos
Black Is Black / Los Bravos

Without a doubt, this was a signature song to my Summer ’66 soundtrack. This guy’s voice was almost scary. Between that and the lyrics, it especially sounded powerful late at night. I spent a week in Brooklyn that August, glued to the various New York City stations and heard this often. Along with The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Summer In The City’, this song faithfully brings me back to that un-airconditioned summer vacation of listening to the radio by night and dragging my Aunt Nancy round the record shops by day: The House Of Oldies, King Karol and Colony basically. I spent hours in them. Thank God for her patience. Colony was really well stocked, but very expensive – list price: 98¢! This was huge money for a kid in his single digits. Much more interesting were the shops in the East Village. Most of them sold promos for a quarter. Lots of white label Fontana’s, pink label Decca’s and the London Group’s orange swirls. You could spot those a mile away. I vividly recall getting Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours ‘Don’t Stop Loving Me, Baby’ in one such place.

Los Bravos, from Spain, big in England, well ‘Black Is Black’ was. Now big here. What a concept. Play good music on the radio, people buy it.

You still catch this one occasionally on the Oldies stations in smaller US markets and it does pop right out .

Listen: I Don’t Care / Los Bravos
I Don't Care / Los Bravos

The UK followup actually did okay, #16. It was easily a song that band and producer Ivor Raymonde worked hard on. I still would bet my last dime they all knew it wasn’t quite good enough despite the almost good enough parts, yet my guess is they needed something out quick and just went with it, hoping no one would notice.

Their US label, London Records’ offshoot Press, did notice. It never got released Stateside.

Listen: Going Nowhere / Los Bravos
Going Nowhere / Los Bravos

Instead, ‘Going Nowhere’ was the US followup to ‘Black Is Black’. Not a big showing chartwise, it peaked at #91. In a very signature Ivor Ramonde production, it sounds identical to his approach with The Fortunes. He had his sound down. I heard this a bit around Christmas of that year (see chart below). Turns out lead singer Mike Kogel was German, adding a great accent to his Gene Pitney vocal style. Spanish band and the first ever to chart in Billboard, German singer, pretty exotic for the day.

Listen: Bring A Little Lovin’ / Los Bravos
Bring A Little Lovin' / Los Bravos

What a surprise. Almost two years later, an eternity then, when no one expected it, Los Bravos finally really followed up ‘Black Is Black’ with a song equal in greatness. ‘Bring A Little Lovin’ sounded fantastic on the radio. I lit up every time I heard that intro. It was everywhere in Spring of ’68. Oddly, it didn’t chart in the UK, making the British pressing a very pricey item. Even US copies are hard to unearth now. Had they come with this straight after ‘Black Is Black’, the sky would’ve been the limit.

Listen: Did I Come Back Too Soon? / Swamp Dogg 01 Did I Come Back Too Soon_.mp3

Seemingly an ever present bargain bin resident, like everyone else, I just passed all his releases by in the day. Then I read he and Jerry Williams were one in the same. Wait, the Jerry Williams who had produced Inez & Charlie Foxx? It pays to read label credits.

Before that stuff vanished from those bins for good, I picked up a bunch. It was down and dirty. I liked this guy.

The great list of singles he’s written or produced or both is pretty impressive: ZZ Hill, Patti La Belle & The Bluebells, Arthur Conley, Ruth Brown, Gene Pitney etc etc. Being the Inez & Charlie freak, stalker, that I am, he’s a saint in my book, having co-written my all time favorite ‘(1-2-3-4-5-6-7) Count The Days’.

In the 70′s he signed to Island, and released a great album from which they pulled two singles. This is one, with a fun story line that sounds as country as it does funky – was oddly a US B side but UK A side. If only it had been a hit.

Check out the CD compilation of his work on Ace: Blame It On The Dogg – The Swamp Dogg Anthology.