Song:When The Boy's Happy (The Girl's Happy Too)
Album:One Fine Day
So this is going to get a little confusing. There was a British group called The Four Pennies who topped the British charts with Juliet in 1964. This 1963 song When The Boy's Happy (The Girl's Happy Too) is by a girl group called The Four Pennies. It's an obscure single released by The Chiffons before they became famous with hits like He's So Fine. The song was written by the legendary husband wife team of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. The Chiffons were originally a trio of girls who went to high school together in The Bronx, NY. They were Judy Craig, Patricia Bennett and Barbara Lee. At the suggestion of songwriter Ronald Mack, they added Little Jimmy & The Tops lead singer Sylvia Peterson in 1962. They signed with Laurie Records. They recorded two singles as The Four Pennies including When The Boy's Happy in 1963. The song charted but was not a hit. They recorded He's So Fine as The Chiffons. When that song topped the charts, they decided to abandon The Four Pennies name and from that point they were The Chiffons. The odd thing is that the other Four Pennies single My Block was on The Chiffons first album but When The Boy's Happy wasn't. Of course The Chiffons had a lot of success over the next couple of years. You can get When The Boy's Happy on this Chiffons comp from Remember Records. Judy Craig leads a version of The Chiffons today. The confusion about When The Boy's Happy came from when the song appeared in the 1989 film Shag: The Movie. The film stars Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda and Annabeth Gish. It's a teen movie set in 1963. So not surprisingly, there are a lot of oldies used in the film. There were some music rights issues for the home video release of the film. Some songs that appeared in the theatrical release weren't in the video release and vice versa. This is a problem that is more common than one would think. The VHS release was delayed until 1997 because of this. It looks like When The Boy's Happy appeared in the video release but not the theatrical release. I'm not sure. But it's a very obscure song and when fans tried to find it, they didn't know it was actually by The Chiffons and confused this Four Pennies with the British group. I also think Shag: The Movie was more popular on cable and home video than it was in theaters. That just adds to the confusion. Here's When The Boy's Happy (The Girl's Happy Too) by The Four Pennies as it appeared in the 1989 film Shag: The Movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment