Oop oop (oops oops)
by Bryce Martin

Never kick a cow chip on a hot day -- Will Rogers


I knew I was listening to a wide variety of really great songs during and right up to, and especially, during my high school years. From Gogi Grant and "The Wayward Wind" to The Hollywood Argyles and "Alley Oop."

What I later found out was amazing. If you would have told me it was the same guy from Skip and Flip singing "Cherry Pie" singing, well, sort of singing, "Alley Oop" for the Hollywood Argyles, I would have said you were loco. And "loco" is the word I would have used because I was raised to not call anyone "crazy" even in jest.

Gary Paxton was here, there and everywhere in the commercial music business. He wrote them, played on them, produced them and sang them. Anything he had a hand on had a chance.

Paxton produced records cafeteria-style, loading his tray with a bit of this and a bit of that. He jumped from genre to genre, hopped on fads and trends, searched popular culture movements, all in a quest to be fresh and first with the latest. Sort of in the mold of Will Rogers and his motto for success in any particular, chosen endeavor, something to the tune of knowing where everyone is going and getttng there first.

He didn't seem to get it though with post-"Alley Oop." He came up with all these followup songs, songs about guys with greasy hair and "critters named Jack," startling oblivious to what made "Alley Oop" so popular. It was this: oop, oop, oop-oop.

Sang and repeated as it was, that was the song's hook. Take out that part and the song still might have charted, but its impact would have been much less notable and its ranking much lower. It wouldn't have been the No. 1 smash song that it was.

Not since dum-de dum-dum, dum dum from Jack Webb's TV police show had we heard something as catchy and likeable.

Paxton knew. The blatant copies, the rewrites, they all brought to light another side of Paxton. He was tenacious. Once he got you in a bulldog grip, he was not going to let go. He would do whatever he could to hold on. As silly as some of those forgotten followup songs were, a new oop oop or dum-de dum dum might have supplied the magic hook.

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