Richard Caiton

Many TV adverts use a brief snippet of a familiar pop song to attract peoples attention. I find it disrespectful when there are mere seconds of famous tunes such as Time is on my side used to sell “stuff”. However one recent advert featured a song I was sure I had heard before but just couldn’t place. I had to resort to Googling to find out that the singer was Richard Caiton. The song was released in the USA in 1964 and is classed as early Soul but it has the feel of late Doo Wop due to the chorus. Never a hit in the States. In fact Richard remained unknown in the States apart from his home state. But this particular song grew in fame in the UK and Europe from the 1970s onwards and copies of the single changed hands for large sums of money. His later singles are coveted by Northern Soul fans in the UK. Let’s hope he gets some money from the advert although he didn’t write the song. It seems the song was written and produced by Dave Bartholomew. Is this the same Dave Bartholomew who wrote and first recorded My-Ding-A-Ling in 1952, later to be a UK number one for Chuck berry twenty years later? Dave died in 2019 at the age of 101.