Thursday, August 12, 2010

Johnny (Is the Boy for Me) - Jussista saan miehen armaan


We continue with another timeless piece of music. Metro-tytöt was an all girl vocal group from Kitee, Finland. The group comprised of sisters Anna-Liisa and Hertta Väkeväinen and their cousin Annikki Väkeväinen. Annikki was later replaced by Tamara Dernjatin (b. Tamara Hramova). Metro-tytöt was the most popular Finnish vocal group of the 50's along with Harmony Sisters and Kipparikvartetti. This "Jussista saan miehen armaan" (Jussi will be my dear man) was one of their classics from 1954. Ten years later a vocal group called Tytöt had a hit with the same song. Tytöt was a one-off group, whose members were Finnish top models / beauty queens at the time, fronted by Lenita Airisto. The song that these both groups covered was a 1953 hit "Johnny (Is the Boy for Me)" for Les Paul (b. Lester William Polsfus) and Mary Ford (b. Colleen Summers). Les Paul was a famous guitar builder anf Mary a country singer. The couple made several hits in the 50's with featuring Les's distinctive electric guitar and Ford harmonizing with herself. BTW, Les Paul was the godfather of rock guitarist Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band. In later years, Romanian light music composer Richard Stein sued Les Paul for plagiarism, charging that "Johnny" was taken from Stein's 1937 song "Sanie cu zurgalai" (Sledge with Bells). And as you can hear yourself after hearing the Romanian original version sung by Maria Lataretu, he was right ...

Here's the bunch:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Composer Richard Stein won the plagiarism case against Les Paul.

magomusiikki said...

Toimiva biisi, Hannen versiona myös, vuodelta 1978.