![]() Today I learned that Whitman didn't even write "Una Paloma Blanca" so my ridicule of the metaphor can be passed on to George Baker. What would we have thought if we had figured out the translation of "one white dove"? It seems pretty brazen to picture one's self as a white dove, instead of a black crow, or a scarlet tangier, or a simple blue jay. We didn't even know what "una paloma blanca" meant (or cared). ![]() Inevitably, one of us chowderheads would croon "una paloma blanca" as the definitive (and probably the only one we knew) Whitman song, as that song always opened the advertisement, the Spanish-influenced brass section and guitar warning us of the chorus to come. I never thought I'd say this but, given the rediscoveries for Day 300 and Day 299 (Mick Farren), I miss the 70s. And, yes, that is an 8-track pictured at the end of the commercial. Even if true, what did that say about the English, or the Canadians, or any other non-United States' market where he was supposedly huge? Like my step-grandfather, Whitman might have been a little too good at self-promotion, as his Wikipedia entry notes, " He claimed he had sold in excess of 120 million records, although the recorded sales figures give 70 million." At best, he seemed another lounge singer, someone hanging out with Englebert Humperdinck or Tiny Tim, so maybe all those sales were going to gullible old ladies like my grandmother.įor you young'uns who doubt the veracity of my marketing critique, here is the advertisement in all of it glory. The Beatles? Nobody ever outsold the fab four. marketing: "Number One Selling Record in England for more weeks than any singer in history, even Elvis or The Beatles." Elvis? Maybe. Part of what got us idiots in an uproar were the various claims put out by the T.V. It didn't help, for me, that Whitman looked a little too much like my step-grandfather, top-notch charlatan and pianist (in retrospect, I can't say for sure if the adjective should carry over to the noun "pianist"). marketing throughout the day and late night, but never, apparently, prime-time. Mostly this was because of the yodeling, the pencil-thin moustache, and the constant peddling of All My Best, his compilation album that saw mass T.V. ![]() Slim Whitman was the punchline to a lot of jokes with my high school buddies in the late 1970s. Pandemic Panoply: The Full (albeit incomplete) List of 365 Artists/Songs A Dayĭay 300: Slim Whitman (Una Paloma Blanca).Archives: Self-Indulgences (On the book and the blogs).
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