Tune Tuesday – The Stripper

Oh, the songs that make it to number one! In the coming days, I will be posting a piece that I wrote for The UK Number Ones Blog. Today’s song might have easily been one I could have included in that piece.

64 years ago today, a song that at one point had no title, topped the charts – The Stripper from David Rose and His Orchestra.

The story behind the hit is worth sharing. According to songfacts.com:

David Rose wrote this in the last 10 minutes of a recording session in 1958. He didn’t have a name for it, and referred to it as “a funny piece of music with no title.” Later that year, Rose was asked to re-record the song “Ebb Tide” to help promote the movie “Sweet Bird of Youth” (with Paul Newman and Geraldine Page), which he quickly did, but the movie studio needed a B-side for the single, so this song, which was an unnamed, unreleased cut, was pulled from the vaults, given a name (“The Stripper”) and placed on the B-side of the “Ebb Tide” single.

The song became a hit because of a radio DJ. As a former radio guy, I laughed when I heard the story. Of course, you’d probably get fired for doing what he did today. The story is that Los Angeles DJ Robert Q. Lewis popularized this by playing it on the air for 45 minutes straight AND playing it whenever a listener requested ANY song. Can you imagine?!

David Rose was an amazing composer and wrote the score to over 1000 television programs! He wrote the scores for The Red Skelton Show, Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, and Highway to Heaven, just to name a few. Sadly, he’ll forever be remembered for The Stripper.

Songfacts goes on to say that when Rose performed in the Royal Albert Hall years later, he had no intention of including this in his repertoire, but he played it anyway after someone in the audience yelled out a request for it. Rose apologized to Albert Hall management afterwards.