Welcome to “Underrated Artists,” an entertainment column from the St. Louis Park Echo covering unpopular and unknown artists. Every week, a different Echo staffer takes on the role of writer, reviewing single releases and albums from four underrated artists.
Taking it all the way back to 1958, my first underrated artist is Bobby Day. Day is a multi-talented artist and songwriter who performed both R&B and rock. He has only released one studio album, but his talents have shown through regardless of the sparse selection. While his most famous song “Rockin Robin” is still very well known and listened to to this day, neither his name — nor the rest of his discography — tends to be remembered alongside it. Day is often forgotten because of his limited album collection, he often wrote songs that were covered by other artists who made them more famous than he was able to. A shining example of this was the song “Little Bitty Pretty One,” which, while many people would recognize from the Thurston Harris version, was actually written and originally sung by Bobby Day. Also included on Days’ album are songs like “Over and Over” and “Darling if I had you.” While these songs are less noticeable and remembered as the earlier mentioned songs, they are of no less merit and warrant the same recognition and praise. Day was swept up in the influx of the popular Rhythm and Blues movement and tried to make it in Los Angeles as a lead singer at the age of 15, trying out a number of sounds under a few different names before settling on Bobby Day and creating the music that he is remembered by today. Day is sometimes seen as somewhat of a one-hit wonder with the song “Rockin Robin” as his other well known song was brought to light by a different artist, but I believe that the people who say that never listened to the rest of his album as that song should not be his only hit. Despite this, while Day is often remembered through the song, “Rockin Robin,” it is often the song that is remembered while his name gets pushed further and further aside.
To continue the trend of underrated and forgotten artists of the 1960s, Chubby Checker was a “two-hit wonder” of whom I have never met someone under the age of 50 having heard of. Most people, even people my age, have seen or heard of the dance, “the twist,” which is a dance move that teenagers in the 1960s would perform along with a song by Chubby Checker, also called “The Twist.” Due to this dance craze, “The Twist” reached a fame in the US that rivaled massive hits like “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepson and “Friday” by Rebecca Black — not in its content or its impact, but in its short-lived but massive fame and success. This song charted at number one in the US on two separate occasions in 1960 and 1961 before fading out of the mainstream. Checker would chase this success with songs like “Let’s Twist Again” and “Limbo Rock,” which would arguably have more staying power than his first hit did but never reached the same hold over the nation that “The Twist” had. Chubby Checker continued to release music, with albums still coming out as recently as the 2020s and singles that came out last year, but no song has been able to push him back into the limelight. He has started to move away from just creating music and has recorded a PSA for the Social Security Administration in 2008 to promote the changes in Medicare law that Obama had introduced. He has also partnered with Howard Perl Entertainment and Hard Rock Rocksino to produce a show, designed to help rescue animals get adopted. Despite his continual release of music and his philanthropic efforts, he has not reached a larger audience than the ones that had listened to him in his heyday and becomes more and more forgotten as those groups of people age and are replaced by younger generations that don’t seem to listen to his music.
The first band that I am naming is The Drifters. The Drifters are also an R&B group of the 1960s that are never mentioned in the conversation of popular R&B groups of the 60s. This is another group where some of their songs are recognized before they are. With songs like “Under the Boardwalk” and “Up on the Roof,” their music is hardly going to be forgotten anytime soon, but the band itself may very well be. These songs are often mentioned as big R&B songs of the 60s, but the name, “The Drifters” is never attached when they are being talked about. They also have many other hits like, “This Magic Moment” and “Save the Last Dance for Me” that are never remembered, much less talked about. One problem with recognition for the name, “The Drifters,” is that they were a very unstable vocal group that is still technically active to this day, but without any of the original singers, or even any of the people that first replaced them. While they were extremely vocally talented and sounded great together, the dynamic between the members of the group was unhealthy and caused them to break up. The first coalition of singers that went under the name, The Drifters, is the most known and they were the ones that released the well known music that is known today, but they disbanded in the 70s, and was replaced by another vocal group headed by Ben E. King, of which the second group was separately inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside the first group and a single member of the third. Despite their confusing history and instability, they should still be remembered as a foundation of the style of music known as doo-wap, as well as remembered for their music’s listenability and should be listened to in respect to how good their music was.
My final underrated artist is Meat Loaf. Meat Loaf was an incredible vocalist and performer who released hit after hit in the 70s and 80s, but is never in the same conversation as other amazing singers. One reason behind that is he is another artist that has recognizable music without a recognizable brand. Meat Loaf had massive hits in the 70s with songs like “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “I’d do Anything for Love.” While his songs alone were very popular, they were augmented by his storytelling and energetic live performances. He has an intense rock style of music that, when combined with his theatrical live shows, allows for an audience to experience a lot more than what they would just by listening to the CD. I believe that this is a large reason for his fall from the limelight as, when he slowed down his performances, his album sales decreased accordingly. This has also caused his music to be overlooked when looking at popular music from the 80s and his incredibly wide-ranging voice to be overlooked for how impressive what he was doing and how challenging his songs were to sing. He has also acted in a variety of movies, but as with a lot of his music, you are more likely to recognize one of his characters than him as a person. His roles include Eddie in “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and Robert Paulson in “Fight Club.” Both of these characters are very well known, but his name is not always as strongly connected to these roles as it should be. Despite this, I believe that Meat Loaf’s music is much better than he is remembered to be and, despite his goofy personality, should be taken more seriously than it often is. I hope that he will be remembered for his incredible vocal talent and his energetic live performances and not fade away from music history.
