Inside Tracks #42: "Lovin' Things" by Artie Schroeck, Jet Loring: Evolution of a Hit, feat. Bobby Rydell, Marmalade, Petula Clark, Grass Roots
A jingle writer gets his start writing pop songs! In a handful of covers, we track the evolution of a mighty pop song from its humble '60s beginnings to an influential, super-charged rock hit!
Usually, for “Inside Tracks,” there are dozens of covers from which to peruse and select! I’ve wanted to focus on “Lovin’ Things” for a while, and inasmuch as there have (surprisingly) been only about 14 covers, I thought it might be fun picking a handful, and “tracking” the evolution of the song through a few of its covers!
The Art(ie) of Composing Compact Melodies
Artie Schroeck (pronounced “Shrek,” now 87) was born in October 1938 in Irvington, NJ. A musician by trade, certainly, his career has focused mainly on arranging and composing popular songs and commercial jingles. In fact, he’s won multiple Clio Awards, given for excellence in commercials and advertising.
So, while getting his start pop-tune-smithing (as we’ll see), he rolled that experience into the rare and specific art of composing mostly stings’n’jingles for the small screen, including this ABC-TV 1981 season theme-promo, “Now Is the Time, ABC Is the Place”:
Schroeck also composed (w/Frank Gari) the 1982 season’s themed-promo jingle, “Come On Along With ABC.” These long-form spots (3-minutes +) would be screened for network affiliates’ sales teams and execs in August and September to tub-thump the network’s commitment to the pending new broadcast line-up.
These would also be shown at network conventions to show off the network’s new product, and drum up corporate excitement. While they may also air occasionally on the network early in the season, they’d also get edited down into select 15- and 30-second spots for more frequent promotional airing:
He Writes the Songs….Too
By now, it’s clear to see what a rare and specific gift is this talent of “quick-hitting” jingle composition! We have no time for meandering melodies! Pop history has revealed that longtime hit-maker, Barry Manilow, got his start composing, arranging, and performing on a plethora of commercial jingles:
While that lane fueled Manilow’s pop-record-making career, Artie Schroeck took the other way ‘round: Pop songs as a springboard into the more specific and finely-tuned arena of jingle-creation. By the way, the two have to know each other, members of such a small fraternity as they are!
Artie arranged the classic “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” in 1967 for Frankie Valli, and has written or arranged music for many other pop artists, including Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Frank Sinatra.
Jumping ahead to the ‘90s, he was a regular performer at Harrah’s in Atlantic City with his wife, jingle singer Linda November, and in 1997, he wrote, arranged, and produced a tribute to bandleader/funnyman, Spike Jones. As of 2011, he continues to perform in Las Vegas, according to his Wiki page.
So, with all that experience in the decidedly pop/Vegas/showroom-type songs and singers, what was the deal with “The Lovin’ Things,” and what, exactly, attracted rock-forward artists and bands to the song?
Possible answers include: A) A great song is a great song, regardless of genre (aimed at or perceived); B) talented and creative arrangers/producers took a pleasant-enough pop song, took its “skeleton,” and cranked it up to be a chart-challenging hit.
The Struggle to Become the A-Side
Let’s plot the song’s course…first stop, the original from January ‘67, produced by the venerable (and fellow New Jersian, like Artie), Charlie Calello (86), and arranged (as you’d imagine) by Schroeck.
Curiously enough, Artie’s “song of the day” was the B-side to a Lovin’ Spoonful cover by Schroeck, John Sebastian’s and Zal Yanovsky’s ballad, “Coconut Grove.”
Here, for “The Lovin’ Things,” Artie gives us a guitar-forward reading, yes, but it’s very Byrds-ian in its gentle jangling! Plus, it lopes along fairly languidly, at a pace not at all likely to offend 1967 pop radio, while really hoping to find its home on Easy Listening!
A natural harmony similar to what will later be far more up-front in future covers, is heard quietly in the background. What sounds for all the world like a (gasp!) banjo is also heard, at times. Knowing the arrangements that, thankfully, lurk in the near future, one is tempted to yell at this single, “Step on it! C’mon, move this thing along!”
Oh, we’ll get there! Plus, it’s notable that Artie, here, takes no instrumental break or bridge (just straight verse/chorus all the way through), and makes no attempt at a modulation; both are elements we’ll see inserted along the way.
Nearly a solid year later (December 1967), Bobby Rydell (above) checked in with the very first “The Lovin’ Things” cover. This was pretty much the last time that the “The” was attached to the title. Could it be record labels thought the title might confuse jocks and record-buyers, who might think it refers to a new hippie rock group, The Lovin’ Things?
By the way, this is one of the Bobbys (Vee, Vinton, Rydell, et al, along with several Frankies, including Valli, Laine, and Sinatra) whose careers were severely altered (along with many other solo singers dependent on outside songwriters) upon the 1964 appearance of the self-contained, songwriting Beatles on the rock’n’pop chart scene!
Rydell, here, is a little over 2 years into his post-Beatles career re-start, and one of those Frankies picked him up for his new label acquisition…Sinatra’s Reprise Records, distributed by Warner Bros. Taking a cue from Schroeck’s original, Rydell and Reprise also lacked faith in the song to put it on the A-side, appearing as the “B” to “That’s What I Call Livin’”! In the ‘60s, “g”s seemed to be droppin’ like proverbial flies!
Arranged by the longtime pro, Perry Botkin, Jr., Dave Hassinger produced. Again, what seems to be a 12-string, this turn is far more “electric,” but the tempo still lopes along (we do have the advantage of 20-20 foresight of the arrangements to come)!
Botkin (above), though, is the first to introduce horns to the proceedings. That will be oh-so-key moving forward! The French horns are a little overly-dramatic half-way in, but perennial teen-popper, Rydell, needs all the “oomph” the players can muster! At times, however, Bobby seems all but buried and obscured underneath Botkin’s heavy-handed instrumentation (including the first appearance by a string section).
The song will, quite apparently, need a group (not a solo performer) to rock the song forward, while carrying with it, a deftly present orchestral backing that won’t come close to overwhelming the singer!
This song is just four short months away from true rock gravitas, in a transformation that will reveal the song’s original catchiness, but also borders on the revolutionary: Check the release dates of each arrangement following, with the debuts of horn-heavy rockers like Chicago, Chase, Canada’s Lighthouse, The Bay Area’s Tower of Power, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and others.
If the arrangers of future “Lovin’ Things” (and similar) recordings didn’t directly inform these bands (and their horn arrangements), they certainly helped make the growing guitar-rock landscape “safer” for otherwise jazz- and pop-oriented horn sections!
The pop charts and their resident “pop” bands were influencing the burgeoning hard- and acid-rock scene, whether either liked it or not!
Four “Firsts”: The Marmalade’s Jam
Count ‘em….4: The first time an artist who’s not a single tackles “Lovin’ Things” is also when it takes its first trip outside the U.S. It’s also the first time it has seen the light as a radio-serviced A-side! And, arranger, Keith Mansfield, gives the song its first-ever modulation (at the 2:30 mark)!
Most of these firsts will form the template for many, if not most, of the covers going forward. Meet kingpin psych-poppers, The Marmalade, from Scotland (videos below):
CBS (singing a tired, old song countless Columbia signees have heard for decades, before and since!), concerned at The Marmalade’s lack of commercial success, threatened to drop them if they did not have a hit (a finger-wag blaringly noticeable around the mid-’70s for both Bruce Springsteen and the jazz-fusion Journey, with 1975’s breakthrough Born to Run, and the 1977 onboarding of a songwriting frontman named Steve Perry, respectively; both had heard the “we want a hit” lecture).
So, after the failure of another self-penned single later that year, The Marmalade were urged to record more chart-friendly, outside material.
Mike Smith (not The Dave Clark Five’s similarly-monikered singer/producer) offered the band “Everlasting Love” (the melodic subject-with-covers of our “Inside Tracks” #33, written by Buzz Cason and Mac Gayden), but they declined, as they preferred to continue to record group-based material rather than covers with large orchestral accompaniment. [Gee…a stand-off between artist and label. I wonder who’ll come out on top!]
“Everlasting Love” was then given to Love Affair (whose cover is featured in our “Inside Tracks” #33, linked above), and arranged by Keith Mansfield (shown below), which became a #1 hit for them.
The Marmalade eventually gave in to label pressure and recorded “Lovin’ Things.” It was arranged by Mansfield using a similar orchestral formula he had given Love Affair (Mansfield already knew the band and had previously arranged earlier cuts including The Marmalade’s previous single, “Man in a Shop”). Special mention should be made of Marmalade bassist, Graham Knight, for his imaginative play on this.
Plus, strings and horns come together for the most fully-realized arrangement of the song, yet, with a tempo that finally bounces—even swings!
The Marmalade’s “Lovin’ Things” (released in April 1968) reached #6 in the UK that summer. It did not enjoy a U.S. single release. Two videos are worth viewing/listening to. This one features the band (Dean Ford singing lead) miming to it on a rooftop, sans bobbies (several months before The Fab Four’s January ‘69 appearance on Apple’s rooftop…just sayin’):
This video depiction, with scrapbook-style photo montage, adds a lot in helping us get to know the band:
Before we leave The Marmalade, this brief, informative 2018 tribute to Ford, following his death at 72:
In 1968, Marmalade’s arranger, Keith Mansfield, recorded his own cover for CBS/UK (click on this highlighted link for video), on an album humbly titled, All You Need is Keith Mansfield, crediting The Keith Mansfield Orchestra. Here, he’s functioning as no more than a Ray Conniff- or Percy Faith-type (both Columbia artists in the U.S.) interpretation vehicle, with full orchestra, with vocals by a large chorus.
In August of ‘68, Ohio quintet December’s Children (shown above), released their cover (👈click for video; click here for their website), followed shortly by songwriting duo, Jackie Trent and husband, Tony Hatch (click for video), with their arrangement. The two wrote many of Petula Clark’s 1960s hits.
Pet herself, took a turn at “Lovin’ Things” in April 1969, with Ernie Freeman arranging, and her husband of 63 years, Claude Wolffe (who died in March 2024), producing, from her Portrait of Petula album (Warner Bros. Records).
She adds some clever vocal phrasing throughout:
And, of course, in French (same arrangement):
But, it was in 1969, just after Pet’s version, that Rob Grill and his Grass Roots came with the performance that, to these ears, reached the pinnacle of what Schroeck and Loring’s song could be.
They took The Marmalade/Keith Mansfield arrangement, and put their American spin on it, where it got to #49 in the U.S.; Grill and Marmalade’s Dean Ford are both marvelous singers, far overlooked and under-appreciated in the overall rock landscape of vocalists:
The early ‘80s brought us two more covers, as the song reverted back to the single singer approach it had begun with nearly two decades before. Both were female artists…Terry Gregory in May 1981, and in 1982, minor actress and talk-show regular, Pia Zadora, gave the song a spin.
Great research, Brad. You capture so much about how the industry worked back then, as well as how a song evolves through different artists, producers, and arrangements.
Have to agree that the Grassroots version is the one that pops and swings.
My humble feeling about the song is that it might have 'taken off' with a crescendo at the end. (I always notice if a song stays at the same level of interest throughout, a neat feature on YT. That song peaks early, at 0:32.)
I echo Ellen's comment in saying your research is always the best. I love how you contextualise, add lots of interesting details and "drive" the narrative in a way that makes all the education feel like the most fun of all rides! It's impressive, and you do this time and time again.
Personally I loved being transported back to those glory days. As you know, I missed so much, and have a lot of catching up to do.
Thanks for always working your magic.