The Singing Dogs

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Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Singles
Oh! Susanna / Pat-a-Cake / Three Blind Mice / Jingle Bells (Medley)
  UK 13 December 01, 1955 (4 weeks)
  US 22nd December 10, 1955 (7 weeks)

The Singing Dogs are the result of a technical gimmick from the 1950s in which barking dogs were cut into a melody. The best known is a recording of the Christmas carol Jingle Bells .

background

The Danish hobby ornithologist Carl Weismann had been a specialist in animal voice recordings since 1934 and had specialized in the recording of birdsong. At the end of the 1940s, the Danish school radio asked him to make recordings of dog barking for a teaching program about dogs. He found that the dogs barked in certain pitches and borrowed five dogs to get them to bark a tune. Finally he recorded the bells on tape and cut them together so that the song Oh! Susanna , a traditional written by Stephen Foster in 1848 , emerged. The result was broadcast on Danish radio in 1948.

Four years later, Weismann hit upon the idea of ​​capitalizing on the old recordings to finance his research. He used the tapes to create more songs and made a record that sold 10,000 times in Denmark. Due to the success, he also granted the rights abroad.

In the UK ( Pye Nixa Records ) and the USA ( RCA Victor ) a single with Stephen Foster's Oh! Susanna as the A-side and a medley of Jingle Bells , Three Blind Mice and Pat-a-Cake as the B-side. The interpreter was given: Don Charles presents the Singing Dogs directed by Carl Weismann. The single reached number 13 in the UK charts and number 22 in the US best sellers charts. There were other publications with the Singing Dogs, but they were no longer successful.

In Germany appeared Oh! Susanna and Jingle Bells together with Hänschen klein and Backe, bake cakes at Metronome Records .

Fifteen years later, New York radio DJ Howard Smith came across one of the old singles and played Jingle Bells on his program around Christmas time. He got very positive audience reactions, which the record company RCA also found out about. This then decided to re-release the single. This time, however, they took the one-minute portion of Jingle Bells out of the medley and reassembled it into an almost two-minute version. This was then together with Oh! Susanna was released on the second page in 1971 as a Christmas single. This longer version of the Jingle Bells achieved cult status and is still played today.

In the mid-2000s, two polling companies in the United States examined radio listeners' preferences for Christmas carols. It was Jingle Bells determined by the Singing Dogs as Least famous Christmas carol.

Carl Weismann died in 1999. Although he was not a doctor of ornithology, his research is valued in professional circles. His recordings of bird calls can now be found in the British Library National Sound Archives .

Discography

  • 1955: Oh! Susanna / Pat-a-Cake / Three Blind Mice / Jingle Bells (medley) (US: RCA Victor / UK: Pye Nixa)
  • 1956: Hot Dog Rock 'n Roll / Hot Dog Boogie (US: RCA Victor)
  • 1957: Those Barking Dogs! EP (UK: Pye Nixa)
  • 1971: Jingle Bells / Oh! Susanna (US: RCA Victor)

swell

  1. ↑ Top Pop Singles 1955-2006 by Joel Whitburn , Record Research 2007, ISBN 978-0-89820-172-7 .
  2. ↑ Charts UK
  3. ^ All I Want for Christmas Is Not to Hear That Song , Paul Farhi, The Washington Post, December 14, 2007
  4. ^ "Jingle Bells," The Singing Dogs (RCA) , Mistletunes, July 18, 2008
  5. ↑ Those Barking Dogs EP : contains the tracks from the first single as well as Barking Dogs Boogie and Rock Around the Dogs
  6. ↑ The Singing Dogs at Discogs

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