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ABOUT US
| FRANKIE GARCIA BORN APRIL 22 1946 PASSED AWAY IN LOS ANGELES 1996 THIS WEB SITES DEDICATED TO HIS MEMORY AND THE MUSIC LIVES ON IN HIS BAND TODAY |
ABOUT LAND OF A THOUSAND DANCES BY JOHN
WILKMAN PER TAINING TO CANNIBAL AND THE HEADHUNTERS AND
MANY OTHER LATIN ROCK GROUPS FROM EAST LA MUSIC SCENE IS
BEING SHOWN ON YOUR LOCAL PBS STATION OR GO TO PBS.ORG FOR
LISTINGS AND TIMES
Land Of 1000 Dances is a song from the Sixties that has an interesting history
and has been recorded by a variety of different artists.
In the early 60's dance songs were very popular in rock-and-roll. Following the
success of Chubby Checker's The Twist, which had reached the number one
spot in the charts on two different occasions, there was a proliferation of
dance songs: the Locomotion, the Pony, the Mashed Potatoes and others. In
1962 New Orleans songwriter/performer Chris Kenner decided to write his
own dance song.
Kenner was one of rock-and-roll's most eccentric wildmen. Following the lead
of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and others who had
come before him, Kenner was a hard-drinking frenetic singer, songwriter and
performer. In 1961 he had written and recorded I Like It Like That, Part 1. The
song made it into the top ten nationally [it returned to the top ten later in the
60's, in a cover version by the Dave Clark Five].
Kenner was inspired by an old spiritual that was sung in the South named
"Children Go Where I Send Thee." It is a song where the narrator enumerates
all the places where he can "send thee:" "Children go where I send thee, how
shall I send thee ..." etc. Kenner took the song to noted New Orleans record
producer Allen Toussaint and recorded it in 1962. It is interesting to note that
in the popular version of this song Kenner's original introduction has been
eliminated. That introduction, however, explains the title of the song. Nowhere
in the lyrics is there any mention of a Land of 1,000 Dances, although many
different dances are mentioned in the lyrics. The original introduction by Chris
Kenner goes like this: "I'm gonna take you, baby, I'm gonna take you to a
place. The name of the place is the Land of a Thousand Dances." It failed to
chart; it was a bomb. But Kenner still liked the song and was determined to
take it a little further.
So, he approached Fats Domino, hoping to persuade him to record it. That
ought to get the song some attention. Domino agreed, with the proviso that he
receive half the publishing rights and be listed as co-writer of the song. Being
the irresponsible wildman that he was and eternally short on funds, Kenner
accepted the deal. Unfortunately, Domino was nearing the end of an
incredible stretch of recording popular songs -- he put only one song in the
top forty in 1962, and it wasn't Land Of 1,000 Dances.
A Chicago DJ picked up on the song, and it reached as high as number
seventy-seven in the charts; ironically, this was Kenner's version, not
Domino's. By 1965, the Beatles had inspired teenagers across America to
form their own garage bands. These groups, most of whom were not very
talented musically, were looking for songs that were easy to play. One such
group, which was actually a gang from East Los Angeles, picked up on the
song and began to use it in their act.
The lead singer of this group was Frankie Garcia. As Garcia tells it:
At that time Rufus Thomas was singing a song called "The Dog," which I sang
in our show. And on the album where Thomas sang that one, he also had
Land Of 1,000 Dances. I learned the song the way they wrote it, but we
changed the rhythm a little. We added a double drum sound which Stevie
Wonder had just come out with on Fingertips. I wanted to do it to that beat; I
thought it really sounded good. Now the original of that song, if you've ever
heard it, is lyrics from beginning to end. Dances all the way through. Lots of
lyrics. And on stage, I blacked out and couldn't remember the words. So I
started ad-libbing, 'Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.' After the show, the other
musicians went 'What were you doing?' and I said 'I don't know.' And they said
'Well do it again, it sounded real good. Could you do it again?' Finally we got to
where I could remember it, but didn't care about the words anymore. I just
wanted to get to that 'Na na na na na.' Everywhere we went we got a great
response to that song. And that's when I was approached by a guy named
Eddie Davis through a group called the Mixtures, which was one of the first
bi-racial groups around then. Eddie Davis wanted to send us into the studio.
Now, I didn't know a thing about the studio. I was paranoid about all this
technology. They couldn't convince me to go into the studio, until I found out a
band called Little Willie and Thee Midnighters had started singing Land Of
1,000 Dances and we found out they were going to cut the song themselves.
So I figured I'd better go into the studio. Before you know it, it was a big hit.
[Quote is from Bob Shannon and John Javna, Behind The Hits.
