Song of the Day 10/8: Climax Blues Band, “Couldn’t Get It Right”
Like the presenter of this Top of the Pops video, I thought these guys were Americans, but it turns out they just wanted to sound like they were. They weren’t a one-hit wonder, but “Couldn’t Get It Right” was their only Top 10 single in the U.S., and it it took them nearly a decade to get there.
What was first called the Climax Chicago Blues Band was formed in 1968 in England’s West Midlands, which is pretty much the sticks, when Britain was going through its infatuation with electric blues. Over their decade of successful touring and several LPs they developed a couple of trademarks – double lead vocals sung an octave apart, duets between Colin Cooper’s sax and Pete Haycock’s guitar – but they weren’t selling a lot of records.
When they delivered their eighth LP, “Gold Plated,” in 1976, their manager, Miles Copeland III – later the founder of I.R.S. Records and manager of the Police – told them they needed a single that would reach the charts. He suggested they cover an Elvis Presley song. They wrote this one instead. It reached No. 3 on the Hot 100.
The band’s other American hit, “I Love You,” came four years later and is just as treacly as its title would imply. I always thought it was by Air Supply, and it’s so banal I can’t bring myself to link to it. It made it to No. 12 in 1980, and the band started drifting apart a few years later. They never actually broke up, though, and despite the presence of none of the founding members, most of whom have died, a Climax Blues Band remains active today.
