THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,995) Dick and Don (Addrisi) — “You’re Bad”
How was this song not one of the big hits of ’66?! A year before they wrote “Never My Love”, which the Association [see #1,264] took to #2, the Addrissi brothers wrote and recorded this killer (but too short!) effervescent pop rock gem (of course, with sad lyrics). I think Michael Jackson must have thought it (“You’re bad, you’re bad”) was about him (“I’m bad, I’m bad”)!
Bruce Eder tells us of the Addrisi Bros:
The Addrisi Brothers are best remembered today for their early-’70s Columbia hit “We’ve Got to Get It on Again,” and for writing the Association [see #1,264]/Fifth Dimension hit “Never My Love.” Don Addrissi . . . and Dick Addrisi actually date back as a musical team to the 1950s. Their parents were part of a family acrobatic act, the Flying Addrisis, but Don and Dick chose music as their career, and by the mid-’50s, with the help from comedian Lenny Bruce, who was a fan, they got their first professional representation. The family was initially lured out to California by the prospect of Don and Dick getting parts on The Mickey Mouse Club — that didn’t work out, but they were eventually signed to Bob Keane’s Del-Fi label, where they recorded a series of singles that veered from Everly Brothers-style rock & roll to somewhat more cloying teen-pop numbers. They never really hit it big, however, and after further attempts at recording success on Imperial and Warner Brothers, they turned their attention to songwriting — both were natural musicians and Don was a music school graduate, and they were signed to Valiant Records. During this period, they signed up a new vocal act called the Association, who eventually recorded “Never My Love,” an Addrisi Brothers original that went to number two on the charts and put them permanently on the map of songwriters. They re-emerged briefly as recording artists in their own right in the early ’70s with a one-off hit single for Columbia entitled “We’ve Got to Get It on Again,” and were probably most visible during that period as authors and singers of the title theme to the ABC series Nanny and the Professor — their harmony singing was as good as ever. They continued working together until Don’s death from cancer in 1984.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-addrisi-brothers-mn0000035013#biography
Check out this fantastic interview Larry Wayne Clark did with Dick Addrisi for the International Songwriters Association: https://www.songwriter.co.uk/page746.html.
Here is an unreleased version by the Knickerbockers (see #718, 862):
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