Mississippi (song)
| Mississippi | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Pussycat | |
| publication | April 1975 |
| length | 4:33 |
| Genre (s) | pop music |
| Author (s) | Werner Theunissen |
| text | Werner Theunissen |
| music | Wim Jongbloed |
| Publisher (s) | EMI Bovema |
| Label | EMI Bovema |
| Award (s) | Conamus Award (BUMA Export Price), Edison Award, Lion from Radio Luxemburg, a. a. |
| album | First Of All ( 1976 ) |
| Cover versions | |
| 1976 | Rebekah |
| 1976 | Vikingarna |
| 1976 | Barbara Fairchild |
| 1991 | Lucille Starr |
| 1977 | Petra Černocká |
|
Chart positions Explanation of the data |
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Mississippi is the first and most successful song by the Dutch country pop group Pussycat and was released in 1975.
Pussycat was a young formation from the Dutch town of Brunssum , consisting of the three sisters Betty, Marianne and Toni Kowalczyk, with Toni (now known as the solo artist Toni Willé) being the lead singer . The singers were accompanied by Lou Willé (guitar), Theo Wetzels (bass guitar), John Theunissen (guitar), Henk Hochstenbach, Hans Lutjens (until 1973) and Theo Coumans (from 1973). The song was written by Werner Theunissen and produced by Eddy Hilberts . With "Mississippi" they became the first Dutch artist to reach first place in the British charts .
History of origin
The guitarist, guitar teacher and songwriter Werner Theunissen wrote "Mississippi" back in 1969, inspired by the song Massachusetts by the then very successful Australian group Bee Gees . Since it was a melancholy song of mourning a slowly vanishing, the modern Roll 'n' Rock retreating, country music acts, he had to wait until he had the ideal interpreter of this.
With his formation Sweet Reaction, founded in 1973, he laid the musical foundation to help this song still come into its own, albeit a few years after the band was founded. The close harmony singing of the three Kowalczyk sisters, who performed under the name The BG'S (Beat Girls) from Holland before the founding of Sweet Reaction , seemed ideal to give the song the necessary expression. So Werner Theunissen sent this and two other songs to the largest record company in the Netherlands at the time, EMI Bovema in Heemstede . There you heard the pieces of music and immediately decided to make a contract with the band. Eddy Hilberts became the producer and the band changed their name to Pussycat . Hilberts, who also produced the song Guitar King by Hank the Knife and the Jets , gave the song the country note.
The recordings were made in February 1975 in the EMI Bovema Studios in Heemstede . The record company took into account the celebrations of the Brunssum Carnival , which was suitable to add to the voices of the young women, and postponed the recording to a date after the festivities. Mississippi came out in April 1975 (EMI 1C 006-25 312). The B-side was titled Do it , which appeared along with Mississippi on the 1976 debut album First of All .
The success
After the release, nothing happened for a long time, then Meta de Vries , a well-known radio presenter on the public broadcaster Hilversum 3 , who recognized the hit potential of Mississippi early on, played the song on her show. She initially suspected that Pussycat was an English band. Many listeners called the studio and wanted to know what the song was called and who was singing it. But colleagues within the station also inquired. The later television presenter Hans Van Willigenburg also brought the song into his radio broadcasts. During a broadcast in November 1975 he played three songs, among other things, and his audience could vote on which of the three song interpreters should then be invited to the studio. The audience opts for pussycat. In the same week the song climbed into the top 40. A few days later Pussycat sang on the music show TopPop and the following week later Mississippi climbed to number 1.
The song was also played live on November 18, 1975 on the evening quiz show Herkent U Deze Tijd ("Do you remember that time?") With Kick Stokhuyzen on NCRV : When asked about the American Mississippi River in the course of the program , should Pussycat to play her song.
Although Toni and Marianne were still employed as office workers at the Heerlen company DSM , they were no longer able to pursue their profession when their song was also very successful in neighboring Germany (also number 1 in the charts two weeks in a row, 32 weeks . represented in total).
In 1977 the song received the gold record . It was not initially planned that the song should be marketed in Germany or Great Britain, as such a great interest in the song was not foreseeable. After the great success in Holland and Germany, however, the song was published by the small Swedish record company Sonet Records in London (SON 2077) and in the autumn of 1976 Mississippi was number 1 in the English charts for four weeks. For this they received the ' Conamus Award ' (Buma Export Award) from the Conamus Foundation. This award was given to them for being the first Dutch band to have reached the top of the British music charts . It was presented by the British Ambassador to the Netherlands, Sir John Barnes, on January 5th, 1977.
Other top positions in the charts of other countries followed, for example in Austria, Switzerland, Norway and Brazil. Even in Australia the hit reached number 1 (August 1976). In Brazil and Israel alone it was in the charts for 129 weeks. It is estimated that the single was sold over five million times worldwide (as of 2005). In the USA this song was only successful when it was interpreted by the American singer Barbara Fairchild .
Cover versions
Pussycat themselves brought out "Mississippi" in German in 1976, albeit with a heavily modified text.
The song was sung by different performers in different languages. In the same year it covered Barbara Fairchild in the USA and the pop singer Rebekka in Germany . In 1991, the Canadian Lucille Starr recorded the song.
Other versions were "Te Necesito" by the Colombian singer Fernando Calle . A notable version under the same title was established in April 1976 by the Swedish Dansband -Formation Vikingarna in Swedish language added (Text: Margot Borgström ) and appeared on the album Kramgoa latar 3 . A year later there was a Czech version by Petra Černocká .
The Dutch pop singer Dennis Jones recorded a reggae version of the song in 2007 in Dutch. He was able to win the three singers of the group Pussycat, which broke up in 1985, as background singers, who thus sang their own successful song for the first time in their mother tongue.
Web links
- Text Mississippi original in English
- Text Mississippi of the German publication ( content differs from the English-language original )
- Video interview with Pussycat (Dutch with English subtitles)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chart positions Mississippi : NL , DE ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , AT , CH , UK , accessed June 22, 2015.
- ↑ Interview with Pussycat, minute 2:00 ( Dutch, English subtitles )
- ↑ a b Biography of Pussycat ( Dutch )
- ↑ Dutch charts
- ↑ Interview with Pussycat, minute 3:49 ( Dutch, English subtitles )
- ↑ Interview with Toni Willé and daughter Kimberley ( Dutch )
- ↑ Fanwebseite the Bee Gees
- ^ British charts for 1976 as a whole
- ↑ Youtube video with Dennis Jones, minute: 4:00 (Dutch)
- ↑ Peter Maier: Pussycat and her Mississippi ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Sindelfinger Zeitung / Böblinger Zeitung , September 24, 2014, accessed on June 22, 2015
- ↑ Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh: 100 UK Number One Hits , Omnibus Press London 2005, ISBN 978-0-85712-360-2
- ↑ List of many cover versions of Mississippi
- ↑ The Swedish Media Database (SMDB) ( Swedish )
