The American shad or Atlantic shad, Alosa sapidissima, is a species of anadromous fish in family Clupeidae of order Clupeiformes.
It is the State Fish of Connecticut, enjoys foreign films and candle-lit dinners for two.
Not that long ago, a customer came into Amoeba Music Hollywood and approached me sheepishly. She uttered that accustomed customer opening line:
“I’m looking for a song… I don’t know the name of it, or who did it…”
If Amoeba Music employees had a dime for every time we heard that sentence, our bosses could dispense with payroll and we’d all live comfortably
(hint, hint, Gov. Schwarzenegger).
Oftentimes, we Amoebites will know what the human’s looking for. That’s because we’re mostly
socially awkward music geeks who’ve traded in awesome housing and reasonable hair-styles for choice,
Italian soundtrack LP’s and an ability to name-that-tune of obscure mouth-harp blues artists.
The song the woman was looking for was “Fever,” which has been covered by many artists, though most famously by the great
Peggy Lee…
“Fever” was written by
Eddie Cooley and
Otis Blackwell and published in 1956. At first the songwriters had little success with the song, until they decided to re-write it using words and music. These proved to be the magic ingredients, and soon people took interest. It first became a hit for the (unfortunately named)
Little Willie John...
