Friday, October 17, 2008

Pretty Flamingo - Kaunis Flamingo


By coincidence, there's a couple of things common with this song and the previous one. Firstly the Finnish versionist in this one is a rock'n roll brother of Timo Jämsen, namely Pekka Loukiala. Pekka was one of the first rockn'rollers in Finland. In 1961 he was crowned as The Rock King of Finland, after winning a singing contest. His first records were of rockn'roll covers, but later he turned more into mainstream pop. He recorded "Kaunis flamingo" (Pretty flamingo) in the later years of his career in 1966. The second similarity to previous Finnpick is of course the name. "Flaming" & "Flamingo", you see ;-). The original bird song was born in USA in 1963 and performed by a little known group called Tommy Vann & Echoes. They had couple of hits - including "Flamingo" - before disbanding in 1964. Today Tommy Vann is the head of Tommy Vann Productions, a DJ, Karaoke and Entertainment Consulting Firm. The song became international hit in 1966 when recorded by Manfred Mann.

Here's the pair:

Kaunis Flamingo - Pekka Loukiala
Pretty Flamingo - Tommy Vann & Echoes

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