Hank Ballard – Do It Zulu Style
Hank Ballard is an R&B legend. He was spotted by percussionist / impresario / Get Involved hero Johnny Otis during a 1951 talent-scouting trip to Detroit. The facts as to when precisely he joined local Detroit group the Royals, are murky, but certainly he was singing with them when Otis penned the group’s first doo-wop masterpiece, Every Beat Of My Heart (Federal 12064, 1952) – which didn’t sell brilliantly at the time but is now considered a cult classic. Original pressings are worth a small fortune!
The Royals changed their name in early 1954 to The Midnighters in order to avoid confusion with The Five Royals - another similar R&B vocal group.
Ballard is chiefly remembered for recording a trilogy of risque R&B numbers: Work With Me, Annie (the biggest R&B hit of 1954 which sold more than a million copies and spawned more than 20 answer records - including Etta James’ Roll With Me Henry), Annie Had a Baby and Annie’s Aunt Fannie. Yet Ballard’s contribution to rock and roll goes much deeper than that. With the grinding guitars, distorted sound and the fervid call-and-response style of those tracks and many other recordings made for the King and Federal labels, Ballard helped define the sound of rock and roll.
In fact, it was Hank Ballard who ushered in one of rock’n'roll’s greatest dance crazes - by writing and recording The Twist – the tune that made a star out of a certain Chubby Checker. The Twist was an up-tempo 12-bar blues that used a melody which Ballard lifted from the group’s flop of the previous year, Is Your Love For Real? – which he had, in turn, borrowed from Clyde McPhatter and the Drifter’s 1955 hit What ‘Cha Gonna Do? Unhappy at Federal, Ballard took the new tune to Vee-Jay, which cut it but didn’t release it. Then King, Federal’s parent label, picked up the group’s option and recorded The Twist (the first record to place Ballard’s name on the label in front of the group’s). It was issued, however, as the B side of the gospel-drenched tear-jerking ballad Teardrops On Your Letter. It was the strength of this 1959 record (it reached number 4 in the R&B chart) that got the Midnighters an invite to appear on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand show in Philadelphia but they never made the gig. The story goes that Dick Clark loved The Twist so much (The Midnighters’ version peaked at 16 in the R&B charts) that he had Ernest Evans re-record it. Dubbed “Chubby Checker” by Clark’s wife, Evans re-recorded it and released it in 1960 on Parkway and then appeared on Clark’s show - before The Midnighters had the chance to reschedule their appearance. Checker had a stack of twist-related hits in the 60s while Ballard and The Midnighters failed to bag a notable hit ever again.
Do It Zulu Style was released in 1965, and it’s a weird one. Certainly not a classic to most music-lovers’ ears but I’m personally a big fan as it’s got backing singers giving it large on the oohs and ahs and heavy tambourine action. That’ll get me every time. I’ve got no idea what the Zulu reference is all about – although the film Zulu (which made a star out of a young British actor called Michael Caine) – had been an international success the previous year so perhaps it is a reference to that… One thing I do know is that this will get a lot of play at Get Involved!
