This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2011) |
Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers | |
---|---|
Origin | Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England |
Genres | Novelty, pop |
Years active | 1989–present |
Labels | BCM, Indisc |
Past members | Les Hemstock John Pickles Andrew Pickles Patrick Perkins Ian Morgan Mark Smith Joe Holden John Anderson (producer/sampled) |
Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers are a British novelty pop music act from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. The face of the group was Jive Bunny, a cartoon rabbit who appeared in their music videos. Costumed actors also made promotional appearances as the character.
Doncaster DJ and producer Les Hemstock created the original "Swing the Mood" mix for the Music Factory owned Mastermix DJ service. It was then taken from there and developed as a single release by father and son team John and Andrew Pickles. [1] The name Jive Bunny was devised by Andy Pickles. [2] Ian Morgan, a fellow DJ and co-producer, also engineered and mixed some of the early releases along with Andy Pickles. Morgan was replaced in the early 1990s by DJ and producer Mark "The Hitman" Smith.
Jive Bunny's three number ones during 1989 were "Swing the Mood", [2] "That's What I Like" and "Let's Party". [3] All three songs used sampling and synthesisers to combine pop music from the early rock 'n' roll era together into a medley.
The act had 11 entries in the UK singles chart between July 1989 and November 1991. Each track used a sampled instrumental theme to join the old songs together, in much the same way as dance music megamixes. "Swing the Mood" began with Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" (a recording from 1939), followed immediately by rhythmic re-editing of Bill Haley and His Comets' "Rock Around the Clock", Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up, Little Susie". The recording also had a short extract from The Glenn Miller Story (1954) with James Stewart as Glenn Miller. "Swing the Mood" was No. 1 for five weeks on the UK Singles Chart in 1989, and quickly caught on in the United States, where it reached No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
"That's What I Like" featured the theme music from the television police drama Hawaii Five-O , with overlaid excerpts from rock hits like Chubby Checker's "The Twist" and Ernie Maresca's "Shout! Shout! (Knock Yourself Out)". "Let's Party" (released originally in the U.S. as "March of the Mods") used "March of the Mods" (also known as the Finnjenka Dance), interpolating Del Shannon's "Runaway" and The Wrens' "Come Back My Love" among others.
In the United Kingdom, "Let's Party" was a Christmas hit with samples of Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday", Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" and Gary Glitter's "Another Rock 'N' Roll Christmas". Recently this has been remixed to remove the Gary Glitter track to avoid controversy over his subsequent criminal convictions and, somewhat anachronistically, replace it with Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You", should any radio stations wish to play it over the Christmas period. They did not have permission to use the original Wizzard recording so Roy Wood re-recorded the part of the track for them.
With "Let's Party" reaching Number One in the UK Singles Chart a couple of weeks before the Christmas chart of 1989, [4] [5] [6] [7] the act became the third group after Gerry and the Pacemakers and Frankie Goes to Hollywood to 'top the chart' with their first three releases. However, Jive Bunny was also credited on a Children In Need charity single ("It Takes Two, Baby", also featuring Liz Kershaw, Bruno Brookes and Londonbeat), which preceded "Let's Party" and did not top the charts. As of 2020, the Official Charts Company website does not include "It Takes Two, Baby" in its list of Jive Bunny releases, [6] [8] while many British Hit Singles books of the early 2000s added the record to their discography.[ citation needed ]
The original European medleys featured the original recordings by the original artists. Legalities prevented certain of the original recordings to be reused in America, so the American Jive Bunny releases substituted later re-recordings of the same tunes by Bill Haley, Del Shannon and others. Later reissues further replaced some of these artists, such as Bill Haley and Elvis, with impersonator-singers.
The original idea for the project came from Les Hemstock on the DJ-only Mastermix DJ service. [1] The original "Swing the Mood" mix appeared on Issue 22 of Mastermix's monthly album release. John Pickles (father of Andy Pickles) was never in the band, but was the owner of the label and effectively the manager.
Title | Album details | Peak chart positions | Certifications | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
UK [9] | AUS [10] [11] [12] | AUT [13] | CAN [14] | GER [15] | NZ [16] | SWI [17] | US [18] | |||
Jive Bunny: The Album |
| 2 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 14 | 9 | 3 | 26 | |
It's Party Time |
| 23 | 12 | 26 | — | — | 50 | 14 | — |
|
Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame |
| — | 180 | 14 | — | — | 34 | — | — | |
The Best of Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers |
| — | — | — | — | 88 | — | 44 | — | |
Christmas Party |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
|
Hop Around The Clock |
| 76 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
Ultimate Christmas Party |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
|
Year | Single | Peak positions | Certifications | Album | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
UK [9] | AUS [22] [11] | AUT [13] | BEL (FL) [23] | GER [15] | NET [24] | NZ [16] | SWE [25] | SWI [17] | US [18] | |||||||
1989 | "Swing the Mood" | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 11 | Jive Bunny - The Album | ||||
"That's What I Like" | 1 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 17 | 5 | 4 | 69 | ||||||
"Let's Party" | 1 | — | 26 | 13 | 80 | 70 | 49 | 14 | 13 | — |
| singles only | ||||
1990 | "That Sounds Good to Me" | 4 | 66 | 19 | 12 | 36 | 12 | — | — | 19 | — | |||||
"Can Can You Party" | 8 | — | 27 | 28 | — | 51 | — | — | 13 | — | It's Party Time | |||||
"Let's Swing Again" | 19 | 67 | 27 | 36 | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||||||
"The Crazy Party Mixes" | 13 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||||||
1991 | "Over to You John (Here We Go Again)" | 28 | — | — | 43 | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||||
"Hot Summer Salsa" | 43 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | singles only | |||||
"Rock 'n' Roll Dance Party" | 48 | — | — | 24 | — | 68 | — | — | — | — | ||||||
"—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released. |
"In the Mood" is a popular big band-era jazz standard recorded by American bandleader Glenn Miller. "In the Mood" is based on the composition "Tar Paper Stomp" by Wingy Manone. The first recording under the name "In the Mood" was released by Edgar Hayes & His Orchestra in 1938.
A mashup is a creative work, usually a song, created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, typically by superimposing the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another and changing the tempo and key where necessary. Such works are considered "transformative" of original content and in the United States they may find protection from copyright claims under the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law.
"It Takes Two" is a hit single recorded in late 1965 by American singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye and American soul singer Kim Weston, released in 1966 on Motown's Tamla label.
"Santa Baby" is a song performed by American singer Eartha Kitt with Henri René and His Orchestra and originally released in 1953. The song was written by Joan Javits and Philip Springer, who also used the pseudonym Tony Springer in an attempt to speed up the song's publishing process. Lyrically, the song is a tongue-in-cheek look at a Christmas list addressed to Santa Claus by a woman who wants extravagant gifts such as sables, yachts, and decorations from Tiffany.
A remix service is a company that provides remixed music to disc jockeys.
"Swing the Mood" is a song by British novelty pop music act Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, released as the first single from their debut album, Jive Bunny: The Album (1989). Produced by the father and son DJ team of Andy and John Pickles, "Swing the Mood" is a cut and paste record which fused a number of early rock and roll records with liberal use of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood".
"That's What I Like" is a song by British novelty pop music act Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, released on 2 October 1989 as the second single from their debut album, The Album (1989). It followed "Swing the Mood" to number one in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain and went top ten in several countries. In the United States, it failed to build on the success of the group's first hit, peaking at number 69 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Let's Party" is a song by British novelty pop music act Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, the third single released by the father-and-son DJ team Andy and John Pickles. Released on 4 December 1989, it reached the top of the UK Singles Chart for a single week the same month. They became only the third act to reach No. 1 with their first three singles, following on from Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1964 and Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984, and took the shortest time to achieve the feat.
Tony Calder was an English record manager, impresario, talent-spotter, promoter and public relations agent. He was Andrew Loog Oldham's business partner from 1963 to December 1969.
American entertainer Cher has released 80 official singles, 28 promotional singles and appeared in 36 other songs. On the Billboard Hot 100, she has achieved: 4 number 1 singles, 12 Top 10 singles, 22 Top 40 singles and a total of 34 charted singles as a solo artist. Combined with the entries she had as part of Sonny & Cher: 5 number 1 singles, 17 Top 10 singles, 32 Top 40 hits and a total of 52 singles which charted on the Billboard Hot 100.
British pop music is popular music, produced commercially in the United Kingdom. It emerged in the mid-to late 1950s as a softer alternative to American rock 'n' roll. Like American pop music it has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, as well as that of the Singles Chart usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs. While these basic elements of the genre have remained fairly constant, pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, particularly borrowing from the development of rock music, and utilising key technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. From the British Invasion in the 1960s, led by The Beatles, British pop music has alternated between acts and genres with national appeal and those with international success that have had a considerable impact on the development of the wider genre and on popular music in general
English musical duo Wham! released three studio albums, four compilation albums, four video albums, 12 music videos, 14 singles, two remix albums and two documentary films.
"Donald Where's Your Troosers?" is a comic song about a Scotsman who wears a kilt rather than trousers. It was written by Andy Stewart with music by Neil Grant. When performed by Andy Stewart and the White Heather Group, it was a hit in 1960, reaching number 37 in the UK Singles Chart, and number 1 in the Canadian CHUM Charts. When re-released in 1989, it became an even bigger hit, reaching number 4 in the UK.
Jive Bunny: The Album is the debut album by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, released in 1989 by Telstar Records and produced by Les Hemstock and Andy Pickles. It includes two UK number one singles: "Swing the Mood" and "That's What I Like". Each of the album's tracks is made up of a medley of songs and samples from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Music Factory is a UK promotional remix service that started in 1985. To this day, the service provides monthly Mastermix albums with exclusive mixes to qualified disc jockeys, as well as having provided a number of spinoff services over the years. It is also responsible for the Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers releases that were made commercially available.
"Wouldn't Change a Thing" is a song performed by Australian singer-songwriter Kylie Minogue, recorded for her second studio album Enjoy Yourself (1989). The song was written by Stock Aitken Waterman, and was released on 24 July 1989 by Mushroom and PWL Records. The song was released as the second single off the album.
"Western Movies" is a song written by Cliff Goldsmith and Fred Sledge Smith and performed by The Olympics. It reached #7 on the U.S. R&B chart, #8 on the U.S. pop chart, #4 on Canada's CHUM Chart, and #12 on the UK Singles Chart in 1958.
"Y'a pas que les grands qui rêvent" is the a 1989 song by Belgian singer Melody. Written by Guy Carlier and Jean-Pierre Millers, it was released as her debut single in August 1989, when she was 12-years-old. Later, it was included on Melody's debut album, Danse ta vie, released in 1991. It achieved success in France, peaking at number two for one month.