A Man Cannot Count On Becoming A King... Quiz

Answer: The Chordettes

Pat Ballard wrote "Mr. Sandman" in 1954 and it was first recorded by Vaughn Monroe and his orchestra as a B-side to "They Were Doing The Mambo". Later that year the song reached number one on the Cashbox Top 50 as a group ranking with versions by The Chordettes, The Four Aces, Buddy Morrow, Vaughn Monroe, The Lancers and The Song Singers. The Chordettes' and The Four Aces' versions were marked as bestsellers. In the US, The Chordettes' version reached number one on all three Billboard charts including the Hot 100 Chart.

The song is a request to the mythical Mr. Sandman who supposedly sprinkles sand or dust on or into children's eyes at night to induce sleep and dreams. In the song, the singer requests the Sandman to "bring me a dream (boat)" of a man. The 1954 recording of the Chordettes' version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.

Other artists have recorded cover versions, the biggest being a 1978 version by Emmylou Harris. This version was sung by a trio: Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. This appeared on Harris' 1981 album "Angeline" but with a stipulation: it could not be released as a single because of differing recording contacts. As Harris wanted to release it as a single, she re-recorded it with herself singing all three parts. The latter version reached number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Harris's only single to enter the US Top 40.

Answer: The Marvelettes

[Authors note: The American convention is to place a period after the abbreviation (eg Mr.) but the British convention is to omit the full stop if the last letter of the abbreviation is the last letter of the full word. In this quiz, the original context has been used (eg Mr. and Mr)

The (then) Marvels' original lead singer Georgia Dobbins had been granted an audition with Tamla head Berry Gordy in 1961. She needed an original song for their audition, so re-worked a blues song from a friend, William Garrett, called "Please Mr. Postman". After the audition, Dobbins left the group. Berry changed the name to The Marvelettes and hired the songwriting duo of Brian Holland and Robert Bateman as well as Freddie Gorman to rework the song. Gladys Horton was brought into the group by Berry to sing lead on the song.

The song has a simple theme of wishing that a mailman would bring the singer a letter from her boyfriend. The song went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It did not chart on the UK Singles Chart. Interestingly the original "Mr." became "Mister", perhaps to avoid using the American abbreviation title which was subject to copyright.

Brian Epstein, Beatles manager, approached Gordy Berry for the Beatles (then unknown in the US) to be given the rights to record three Motown songs, including "Please Mr. Postman", "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Money (That's What I Want)". Epstein offered less than the going rate of two cents per record but Berry eventually accepted. Because of the vocal range difference between the Marvelettes and The Beatles, the latter version was modulated into an A Major key. It was not released as a single but was released by EMI's Parlophone label on the "With the Beatles" album in the UK in November 1963.

Twelve years later The Carpenters took the single to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 where it became their tenth and final single that would sell one million copies.

Answer: Bobby Vinton

Bobby Vinton co-wrote this song with Gene Allan when he was in the army in the late 50s. It wasn't recorded until 1962 and not released until 1964. The song is about a soldier who is sent overseas with no communication channels with his family and his home. The singer laments the situation and only wishes for company and someone to talk with. The song was released as the Vietnam War was escalating and many of the soldiers who were sent overseas experienced a similar situation. (Vinton and Allan teamed up again in 1967 to compose a sequel of sorts called "Coming Home Soldier").

Vinton wanted this song to be a followup to his 1962 hit, "Roses are Red" but Epic, his record company, saw Vinton as more of a composer and musician than a singer so they gave this song to Buddy Greco who took it to number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100. Vinton continued to have hit songs so when Epic allowed him some scope in selecting the last few songs for his greatest hits album, he chose "Mr. Lonely". This song was picked up by radio disc jockeys and with this newfound popularity, a single was demanded. The single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1984.

This was his fourth and last number one in the US. However, he had a prolonged successful show business career that lasted over 50 years from 1958-2015.

Answer: The Byrds

Bob Dylan wrote and recorded "Mr. Tambourine Man," but it was made famous by The Byrds, whose version made it all the way to number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart.

The two versions are quite different but released only a few weeks apart. Dylan's version was released on March 22 1965, on his "Bringing It All Back Home" album. It is a simple arrangement with Dylan on vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica, and electric guitar by Bruce Langhorne. The Byrds' version was released on April 12 1965, as their first single. Session musicians The Wrecking Crew were contracted to add bass, piano and extra guitar work to Roger McGuinn's shimmering 12-string guitar and harmony vocals by Gene Clark and David Crosby. This arrangement was considered the folk-rock standard and was the main reason Dylan went electric.

THe song was long thought to be about an itinerant musician who is drug-influenced (eg "Take me for a trip upon your magic swirling ship" and "Take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind"). Dylan, usually obtuse about explaining his lyrics, explained on his 1985 "Biograph" compilation album that the song is about guitarist Bruce Langhorne (who played on the song) who had previously been asked to play a tambourine when recording an earlier song. The instrument used was huge ("Big as a wagon wheel" explained Dylan), inspiring him to write the song.

Answer: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

It was quite a journey from the original Mr Bojangles (the person) to the top ten hit by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (1878-1949), was a famous African American tap dancer. His name was taken by a homeless street performer who was jailed for drunkenness in New Orleans and refused to give his real name (but he too was a tap dancer). He told the story about his performing dog who was killed by a car to Jerry Jeff Walker, an American country music artist who was also locked up for public intoxication, in 1965. Walker wrote "Mr Bojangles" (featuring the performing dog) in 1966. It was a minor hit reaching number 77 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1968.

It became a much bigger hit two years later when it was recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a band that had featured Jackson Browne and Bernie Leadon (Eagles co-founder) at some points in the band's evolution. Guitarist Jeff Hanna was the lead vocalist on the track, with bassist Jimmy Ibbotson performing harmony vocals. In the last verse, the two switched roles. It reached number nine on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 and was the highest charting version of the song.

The song has been covered by many including such big names as Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Harry Belafonte, Arlo Guthrie, Harry Nilsson, Whitney Houston, and Jaime Cullum. It was a signature song for Sammy Davis Jr.

Answer: Styx

Styx was a progressive rock band from Chicago that performed for over fifty years. Still, their most popular period was the first twelve years between 1972-84 where they were the first band to have four consecutive multi-platinum albums (between 1977-1983). "Kilroy Was Here" (1983) was the last of these four. It reached the top three on the US Albums Chart. Its lead single, "Mr. Roboto", became Styx's third number one in Canada, and was a number three hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

Known for their enigmatic song titles, "Mr Roberto", was from the band's rock opera "Kilroy Was Here". It tells the story of Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (ROCK) who was locked in a futuristic prison for "rock and roll misfits" which was run by robots. ROCK escaped by overpowering a robot called Mr. Roberto and hiding in its emptied metal shell. The song features Japanese lyrics and part of the lyrics, "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto" became a popular culture item as a catchphrase in North America.

Answer: Alice Cooper

"No More Mr Nice Guy" was the third single off Alice Cooper's sixth studio album "Billion Dollar Babies" The song helped the group (Alice Cooper was the band, not just the alter-ego of lead singer Vincent Furnier) move from a hard rock sound to something more commercially acceptable.

Furnier wrote this song about his family and friends' reactions to his on-stage over-the-top shock rock stage persona. The shock rock antics (replete with gothic stage props) on stage were a big attraction for his audiences, but the "folks in his mother's church groups were unsure how to handle" these behaviours and they were uncomfortable talking about them. Furnier declared that the "gloves are off," and was no longer going to apologise for what he did on stage.

The sing-along chorus was a clue to the song's origins: It was a pop song based on The Who's "Substitute" (1966). "No More Mr Nice Guy" helped the album reach number one on both sides of the Atlantic. Shock Rock had hit the mainstream.

Answer: Electric Light Orchestra

Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) frontman Jeff Lynne wrote "Mr. Blue Sky" for the band's seventh studio album, "Out of the Blue" (1977). The song forms the fourth and final track of the "Concerto for a Rainy Day" suite which occupies a full side of the double album. "Mr. Blue Sky" reached number six on the UK Singles Chart and number 35 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

The "Mister" in this particular song is a personification of the weather. In a 2002 BBC interview with Jeff Lynne, he explained how he came to write the song when he had locked himself in a Swiss chalet for two weeks to write material for an upcoming ELO album:
"It was dark and misty for two weeks, and I didn't come up with a thing. Suddenly the sun shone and it was 'Wow, look at those beautiful Alps.' I wrote 'Mr Blue Sky' and 13 other songs in the next two weeks."
The subsequent album, 1977's "Out Of The Blue", established Electric Light Orchestra's place in the rock echelon.

It is a happy song with simple nursery rhyme-like lyrics. Part of its success was due to borrowing heavily from other rock staples: its arrangement is similar to the Beatles' "Martha My Dear" and "A Day in the Life" (both 1967); it shared its unusual first four chords with "Yesterday" (1965) and the piano/drum intro was very similar to the Kinks' "Do You Remember Walter?" (1968).

Answer: Counting Crows

"Mr. Jones" was the 1993 debut single from rock band Counting Crows. It was the lead single from the band's debut album, "August and Everything After" (1993). "Mr. Jones" reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100, number one in Canada and number 28 on the UK Singles Chart.

The song was related to a single event on a night out with songwriter and lead singer Adam Duritz and The Himalayans' bassist Marty Jones (the protagonist in the song). In an interview with VH1's "Storytellers", Duritz explained:

"It's really a song about my friend Marty and I. We went out one night to watch his dad play. His dad was a Flamenco guitar player who lived in Spain (David Serva), and he was in San Francisco ...playing with his old Flamenco troupe. And after the gig we all went to this bar called the New Amsterdam in San Francisco on Columbus and we got completely drunk. And Marty and I sat at the bar staring at these two girls, wishing there was some way we could go talk to them, but we were too shy. We kept joking with each other that if we were big rock stars instead of such loser, low-budget musicians, this would be easy ...Like the character in the song keeps saying, 'When everybody loves me I will never be lonely,' and you're supposed to know that that's not the way it's gonna be. I knew that even then. And this is a song about my dreams."

In a subsequent 2013 "Huff Post" interview Duritz revealed that the guy in the bar who was attracting the girls was Kenney Dale Johnson, (Chris Isaak's drummer) and that the song was about about Duritz himself. "I wrote a song about me, I just happened to be out with him that night", Duritz said.

The song was unusual (for a rock song) as it incorporated two different keys. The verses were written in A minor whereas the chorus was written in C major, perhaps reflecting that the chorus is written optimistically in the future tense whereas the verses are the stark reality of the present day.

Answer: The Killers

The Killers were formed in 2001 in Las Vegas by lead singer Brandon Flowers and guitarist Keuning. Despite the group's ominous name, its origin is more innocuous: it is derived from a film clip of a New Order song called "Crystal". The band playing is fictitious but it has a "Killers" logo on the bass drum.

"Mr Brightside" was the debut single from the debut album, "Hot Fuss"(2004). The song was first released in September 2003 but it was more popular when it was re-released in 2004 where it reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 but reached number 16 on the year-end chart in the US. It also reached number 10 on the UK Singles chart.

In the UK, it became the third biggest-selling/streaming song of all time and 20 years after its initial release it was the longest-charting single on the UK Official Singles Chart Top 100, with over 408 weeks on the chart in its first twenty years. On this anniversary it was the most successful single to never top the British charts.

UK radio stations Absolute Radio and XFM named "Mr. Brightside" as "Song of the Decade".