A couple of my guy friends asked me if I wanted to go babysit a family friends kids with them while she went out for a few hours. I went along and sat around for a few hours. Finally she came home with a guy in tow. It was Rod Bernard. He asked her to put the background music for this song on the record player and he sang it right there and then, for us. For a guy to do that for three teenage boys shows you how much he loved his music! This was about 1960 in Tacoma, Washington when I was thirteen. 😃
I had always heard that Dick Clark had asked Rod Bernard if he could rerecord the song and change the lyrics a bit in order to be able to be on Bandstand, and I guess it must be true because these lyrics are slightly different than those he actually recorded originally on the record. As I have always heard it, it had something to do with him not being able to use the word sin and the phrase "live in sin" on television. Thanks for showing this as I loved being able to see it performed on stage like this. What a great voice Rod Bernard had.
This is a live vocal performance that bends over backwards to eliminate the word "sin" in favor of the really cumbersome "wrong." Nevertheless, this is a supremely educational and historic video of this original swamp pop classic.
If this is a total re-recording of the original recording, and I believe it is, they replicated the original close enough to fool me. I've heard this song a million times too. I wonder if they recorded this song again at Jay Miller's studio with the same musicians.
