30 Million in Just 2 Minutes, What a Triumph!
- Place – Pye Recording Studios
- Time – 1970
- Artist – Mungo Jerry
- Producer – Barry Murray
- Engineers – Terry Evennett & Howard Barrow
Mungo Jerry’s greatest success was with the song In the Summertime, which topped the UK charts for seven weeks in the early seventies, it was also number one in twenty-six countries around the world.
The follow up single, Baby Jump, hit the top spot in the UK and was there for two weeks.
They were originally called The Good Earth, but at the insistence of the new label Dawn Records, which was a subsidiary of Pye records, the band’s name was changed to Mungo Jerry.
Dawns label manger and the bands Producer was Barry Murray.
Terry Evennett was the recording engineer.
Barry was laying down tracks for a new album but decided to mix a single for immediate release.
As Terry was booked on another session Howard Barrow took over the mixing of the single.
Barry was adamant, much to the Band’s dismay that the single should be In The Summer Time; the only problem was that the recording was only two minutes long.
Howard came up with an idea, to run a microphone cable outside the building to the ramp where his Triumph TR6 roadster was parked and place a microphone close to the exhaust.
Some ten seconds, of the car revving up was recorded and then added to the end of the two minutes track.
After the car sound the the original two minutes was copied and edited, then added repeating the whole song from the beginning.
The track could now be faded at three minutes thirty seconds.
This would be the first release on the new Dawn label.
The maxi-single arrives along with Mungo mania
Barry had devised a way to launch this single by the way of a 33 1/3 rpm maxi-single, which would basically be like an EP containing three to four tracks, but played at the slower speed. It would come in a picture sleeve and sell for just slightly more than a standard 45 rpm single.
On release the record hit the number one spot where it remained for seven weeks leading to the arrival of Mungo Mania.
It seemed odd to me that apart from the lead Singer Ray Dorset, the rest of the band were still working at their day jobs.
When I asked Paul King why he still was working he replied,
“Who knows how long this will all last?”
I wasn’t sure if he meant the chart success or the relationship within the band.
It became more apparent with each session that tension was growing between Ray and the rest of the group.
Ray was receiving all the adulation from the press and fans, he began to think Mungo Mania was down to him and him alone.
On one session Ray came rushing in to the studio, waving a children’s music songbook in his hand.
In The Summer Time was one of the songs printed inside.
Obviously he was very excited and unwittingly, or perhaps knowingly, pissed the rest of the band off by going on and on and on about it.
It took a very laid-back Barry Murray, munching on his peanut butter and banana sandwich, to mention how strange it was for a children’s song book to allow the lyrics “When the sun goes down, you can make it, make it good in a lay-by.”
This comment slowed Ray down for a good half second.
By the time their second single Baby Jump reached number one, the bass player Mike Cole had been replaced by John Godfrey but the arguments still raged on every session.
The winning formula
With their winning formula they used the same repeating method on the follow up Baby Jump, without the car sound of course.
At two minutes forty-seven seconds they copied the track from the start and repeated the whole song from the beginning fading at four minutes ten seconds.
I will say, that whatever the tensions were in the studio, the entire band, and Barry, were always very pleasant to me and why not – I was just the tape op and tea boy.
Just for the record (excuse the pun), due to work commitments, Howard Barrow recorded Baby Jump and Terry mixed it.
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