Johnny Will - Kilpakosijat

On the next few days I'm going to present somet artists that rarely recoerded any cover versions, and mainly wrote their own songs. Maybe that's one of the reasons these artists became extremely popular in Finland. Let's start with Jukka Kuoppamäki , who is one of the living legends of Finnish pop music. His career began already in the end of 1950's. He was at first singing tenor in the vocal groups Neloset and Kukonpojat (see previous entries here and here) before launching a very successful solo career. After 1969 he has exclusively relied on his own material, and has done a remarkable task in writing over 1o00 songs for other artists. Many of them becoming Finnish pop classics. However, in the 60's Jukka did some covers, and one of those was on his first solo single in 1962, a song called "Kilpakosijat" (Rivals in love). The song sank without a trace and has been rarely played since. The original was performed by Pat Boone (b. Charles Eugene Boone) as "Johnny Will" in 1961. It was one of Pat's minor hits and written by Paul Evans, who was a singer himself, but gained reputation with hit songs he wrote for others. You can hear his demo version of "Johnny Will" here.

Here's the pair: