The horns, the drums, the piano, the fog horn, Johnny singing, no one could stand still with this beat and fantastic sound unless they were in a coma!! 👏💥🌡🔥🎷🎺🎸🎹🎶😎👯🕺💃👏❤
I remember as a young kid around about eight years old, I was in the record store and asked the clerk to play the record so I could see if I liked it. Man, them horns hit me and it was a done deal!!! Another Rock and Roller born!!!
On this day in 1959 {March 21st} Frankie Ford performed "Sea Cruise" on the ABC-TV program 'Dick Clark's Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show'... One month earlier on February 9th it entered Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart; eventually it peaked at #14 and spent 17 weeks on the Top 100... Huey 'Piano' Smith {who composed the song} and the Clowns played at the record... Twelve years later in 1971 it was covered by Johnny Rivers; his version reached #84 on the Top 100... R.I.P. Mr. Clark {1929 - 2012}...
This was the warm-up to Johnny's revival of "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu" one year later in 1972. This record, though, is just as good -- and deserved to be just as big a hit -- even though it climbed no highe than #84.
Both are covers that were written by Huey piano smith, so yes that's why they sound the same and have 1 similar lyric line. Huey's style was very distinct.
When he starts singing, he is in the key of C, the chord progression is back in forth between C & G and the bridge goes to F........gotta do this one live in my oldies show!
I like this version SO much better than Frankie Ford's though is was popular. Ford's is good, but really, the noises from the boat completely overpower the vocals and everything else in Ford's version, as if someone had 5 large burritos followed by a vodka and prune juice.
I love Johnny Rivers too. But most of his stuff was other people's songs. Including this one. And you never actually played an instrument, except once in a while he had a guitar that he could barely play.
But then I saw a rerun of American bandstand and thought Frankie Ford was the original . Then I recently looked it up and saw that Huey Smith was the original.there were a lot of white people making black people's songs popular back then. But I actually do love all three versions.
