Pickettywitch was a British
pop
Pop or POP may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* Pop music, a musical genre Artists
* POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade
* Pop!, a UK pop group
* Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band
Albums
* ''Pop'' (G ...
group. Fronted by
singer Polly Brown (also billed as Polly Browne), the group became best known for its
hit single
A hit song, also known as a hit record, hit single or simply a hit, is a recorded song or instrumental that becomes broadly popular or well-known. Although ''hit song'' means any widely played or big-selling song, the specific term ''hit record' ...
, "
That Same Old Feeling", which was
written by
Tony Macaulay and
John Macleod. It reached number five in the
UK Singles Chart in 1970.
Origins
The original members were Polly Brown (
vocals), Chris Warren (vocals), Bob Brittain (
organ
Organ may refer to:
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* Organ (biology), a part of an organism
Musical instruments
* Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone
** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument
** Hammond ...
), Martin Bridges (
guitar), Mike Tomich (
bass guitar) and Keith Hall (
drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...
s).
Bridges and Tomich were replaced later in 1970 by Peter Hawkins (died 18 October 2014) (guitar) and Brian Stuart (bass), who would later be replaced by Paul Risi (guitar) and Paul Riordan (bass). The name Pickettywitch is often said to have been taken from a
Cornish village through which their eventual lead singer, Polly Brown, had passed with her sister;
in fact, there is no such village, though there was a
pub of that name at
Yeovil in
Somerset.
History
Pickettywitch was signed by
record producer John Macleod to
Pye Records and released their debut single, "You Got Me So I Don't Know" b/w "
Solomon Grundy" in July 1969.
Their U.K. chart breakthrough came in early 1970 when the single "
That Same Old Feeling" hit the top 5. That single also made the top 40
on the Cashbox pop chart in the US a few months later and remains their only hit single there.
Two further
singles also made the
UK chart
A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...
in that year - these were "(It's Like A) Sad Old Kinda Movie" (again written by Macaulay and Macleod) (number 16), and "Baby I Won't Let You Down" (written by
Les Reed and
Geoff Stephens) (number 27).
In 1970, "Days I Remember" received radio
airplay. The single did not appear on record charts,
but "That Same Old Feeling" reached No. 67 on the
''Billboard'' Hot 100 and No. 40 on the Cashbox pop chart in the summer of that same year. Brown left for a solo career in late 1972.
Subsequent careers
Brown went on to a form a
duo
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*Duo, West Virginia, an unincorporated community and coal town in Greenbrier County, West Virginia
*Duo, Tampere, a shopping centre in Hervanta, Tampere, Finland
* DUO, a twin-tower development in Singapore
Arts, enterta ...
called Sweet Dreams, in partnership with Tony Jackson, recording a cover of the
ABBA song "
Honey, Honey".
Brown then launched a
solo career, with minor hits in the UK and the
United States.
Hall joined
Gerry & the Pacemakers for five years, and has an active international career as a
jazz drummer.
Brown continues to
write and
record
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* Record (computer science), a data structure
** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity
** Boot sector or boot record, ...
music including
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
material. There is a misconception that she died in 2006, this being due to the death that year of Sheila Rossall, who had been the lead singer of a latter-day edition of Pickettywitch who worked the club circuit. Rossall had attracted some publicity in 1981 because she suffered from total allergy syndrome, and Brown often faced questions about the illness as a result.
Albums
* ''Pickettywitch'' (Janus Records, 1970, LP)
* ''That Same Old Feeling: The Complete Recordings'' (Castle Records, 2001, CD)
Singles
* "
That Same Old Feeling" (1970) - UK No. 5,
Ireland No. 6, NZ No. 7, Argentina No. 8 South Africa No. 17, Canada No. 36, US No. 67
* "(It's Like a) Sad Old Kinda Movie" (1970) - UK No. 16
* "Baby I Won't Let You Down" (1970) - UK No. 27
* "Waldo P. Emerson Jones" (1971) - Canada No. 83
References
External links
AllMusic*
*
{{Authority control
English pop music groups