ACCA 106

MITCH AND PACE MAKERS  (Vcl Mitch & James) // MITCH EMFINGER

70

SoN-88671 - Hello ... Bear who    (Law Publ.)

SoN-88672 - Mitch Boogey (sic)    (Law Publ.)

ACCA 106

Auburn Souvenir Record, 129 E Glenn, Auburn, AL

A take off of "Hello Josephine" to commemorate a football win by Auburn over Alabama in 1969. A doctor who may have known Mitch's sister asked the band to record the song as a tribute to an astonishing win. I have pasted part of the story with records to the recording.

"The main thing we know about Dr. John Day, other than that he’s dead (Mitch is pretty sure it wasn’t long after all this stuff) is that he was the one who came up with the idea, who came up with the lyrics — “he just thought it deserved a song about it,” Mitch said — and that to commission the thing he came to Mitch because he was friend’s with Mitch’s sister (she ran a boarding house near campus, maybe that’s how they knew each other ) and also because Mitch and The Pacemakers still carried a little regional clout in 1970. In the early 60s, they had a regular gig at the Jennings Rose Room in Atlanta, which could hold a weekly Saturday night twist contest for up to 3,200 people, and they brought “Godfather of Sax” Ace Cannon on stage a time or two, and shared some tour stages with Bo Diddley and Marty Robbins and folks like that. Hell, they would have been signed to King Records (off the strength of this 45 they put out on Bethlehem Records: A-side “One Chance” / B-side “I Could Cry”) had it not come out that their manager was the guy King had fired a few yeas back for bootlegging some of its other artists (not to mention the embezzlement). And they had only recently stopped playing with Russell Smith, Jerry Lee Lewis’ original drummer (he kept the beat on The Killer’s first ever television appearance) who thought the fall-out from the whole marry-your-13-year-old-cousin thing was mostly over by ’69 and went back to Jerry Lee for some gospel numbers on “The Mike Douglas Show,” etc. But Mitch and the Pacemakers, aka Mitch and the Echoes, aka Mitch and His Five Echoes got another drummer and kept at it up until the 80s, when the Emfinger clan finally convinced Mitch to buy the Tiger Laundromat and settle down in Tallassee.

Mitch is also fairly certain that Dr. John Day wasn’t in the studio with them down in Satsuma when they recorded it – which probably explains the unfortunate pronunciation of Jordan. Mitch (mostly because of the sister) was (and is) an Auburn fan when asked, but rarely went to games because he was basically on the road for 30 years. Filtered through the sass of a punctuated rock ‘n’ roll delivery, Mitch’s southern drawl is enough to soften the cringe (…Shug Jawdon.) But a fan passionate enough to want to commemorate an Auburn victory in song surely would have known better and could have corrected it. And that’s really the only thing we know for sure about Dr. John Day. He must have been that kind of fan. His is the name in the parentheses. He’s the one who wanted Bear Bryant to suck it in song like he did on the field."

Here's the link for the full lowdown. I'm not at all familiar with US football so I'm not going to pretend I know what the hell any of it means with regards to the game. I guess it would be like Swansea thrashing Man City 5-0 or something.

www.thewareaglereader.com/2011/11/rpm-mysterious-auburn-fan-shoots-bear-bryant-the-emfinger-in-69-iron-bowl-song

Source: Phillip J Tricker