The Guess Who — “Heygoode Hardy”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — March 10, 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,140) The Guess Who — “Heygoode Hardy”

Here is a wild and infectious good time number from the LP that was the Guess Who’s (see #758) springboard to international success. The song, sung almost at an auctioneer’s pace, is a paean to Hagood Hardy, the one jazz musician brought in for the sessions who was sociable rather than snooty. All to sell Coca-Cola. Forget the Pepsi Generation, rock goes better with Coke!

Russallert:

The song is named after Hagood Hardy, who was well-known in Canada as a pianist, composer and orchestra leader – his hit instrumental The Homecoming was originally a jingle for a tea commercial. When The Guess Who recorded A Wild Pair, they worked alongside a number of studio musicians hired by Jack Richardson, including Hagood Hardy. According to Burton Cummings, most of the studio players were jazzers who looked down on rock & roll and were aloof to The Guess Who, but Hardy was the one guy who was friendly to them, so his name got worked into the lyrics and the title.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8XyLotoBcoE&pp=ygUbdGhlIGd1ZXNzIHdobyBoZXlnb29kIGhhcmR5

Let me quote from a fabulous piece by Guess Who biographer John Einarson (that I recommend everyone interested in band read in full):

Released in the spring of 1968, the Wild Pair album coupled The Staccatos . . . from Ottawa, on Side A with Winnipeg’s favorite sons The Guess Who . . . on Side B. . . . Without it . . . there wouldn’t have been Wheatfield Soul. . . . A Wild Pair’s experimentation with orchestral instrumentation and arrangements coupled with burgeoning songwriting talent was the precursor to the polished professionalism of Wheatfield Soul. And the catalyst for this transformation was . . . Coca-Cola. . . . Did [Canada] have our own legitimate homegrown pop sensations worthy enough to hitch a corporate logo to[?] Canada barely had its own music industry let alone nationally-recognized stars. Toronto-based musician and jingle-writer Jack Richardson believed it was possible. . . . [“]I was with McCann-Erickson, the advertising agency for Coca-Cola[] . . . . We developed this youth radio campaign . . . . using Canadian acts . . . . The Guess Who was one of the acts we approached . . . . Canada’s best-known group having cracked the American charts two years earlier with their hit “Shakin’ All Over”. . . . Jack brought The Guess Who to Toronto[] . . . to cut radio jingles . . . incorporating the soft drink’s signature slogan “Things go better with Coke!” into two of the group’s biggest Canadian hits . . . . [R]ecalls Jack . . . [“]the agency recommended we put together a compilation album from the catalogues of these artists. I suggested it would be better to go with something original. The first one we did . . . was so successful they decided to do it again. . . . Randy [Bachman] and Burton [Cummings] jumped at the opportunity. “This was the first time Burton and I had a serious assignment or goal for songwriting,” Randy enthuses. “Up to then it had been just dabbling with no set goal or usage. . . . [T]he two budding songwriters submitted more than two dozen songs . . . . [of which] five were selected for the album while several others would ultimately appear . . . on Wheatfield Soul and Canned Wheat. . . . Notes band mate Garry Peterson, “The relationship Randy and Burton enjoyed was closer than with the rest of us because they wrote together. Burton learned to write songs with Randy.[“] . . . [N]ow they could take their time and experiment with a variety of instruments and accompaniment, and the results would be mind-blowing. . . . “We got to work with the Toronto A team, “ Randy recalls, “the top players on the scene mostly from the jazz world . . . . [W]e introduced to Hagood Hardy, “ remembers Burton . . . . Chuckles Randy, “Burton and I each wrote a song around his name. Burton’s was better than mine, we both knew it, so we cut it for the album. . . . Heygoode Hardy was really over the top in terms of arrangement with wild trumpets everywhere.” . . . . Coca-Cola began promoting the album in earnest across Canada. Not available in record stores, fans purchased A Wild Pair by mailing in twelve Coca-Cola bottle cap liners and a dollar. Within a matter of months the album had sold over 80,000 copies, a staggering sum for the fledgling Canadian music industry, largely without the benefit of radio support . . . . It “was one of the reasons The Guess Who stayed together,” [Richardson] suggests, “because at that time they were on the verge of breaking up due to severe economic straits.” . . . The unprecedented success of ‘A Wild Pair’ was the first indication that a viable national Canadian music industry could, indeed, exist. . . . “I [Richardson] felt there was a tremendous amount of talent in the group . . . . We approached both the Staccatos and The Guess Who with the idea of coming with us as a production group. The Guess Who agreed . . . . Jack would mortgage his own house to finance sessions in New York later that year for Wheatfield Soul.

https://citizenfreak.com/titles/281692-guess-who-a-wild-pair-split-with-the-staccatos

Here they are “live” in a groovy TV spot:

Here’s Hagood:

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