Songoftheday 10/14/12 - I'm flat broke but I don't care, I strut right by with my tail in the air...

The Stray Cats - "Stray Cat Strut"
from the album Built For Speed (1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (three weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day is the second top-10 hit from the American rockabilly trio Stray Cats. The band, led by Brian Setzer, broke on the US music scene after success across the ocean in England, and their first stateside single, "Rock This Town", went to #9 in the winter of 1982. The followup, "Stray Cat Strut", written by Setzer and produced by Dave Edmunds, was a much more traditional slowed-down swing-blues number that riffed off their name along with some "cattin'" puns...

"Stray Cat Strut", which just missed the British top-10 in 1981, was the trio's biggest hit ever on the pop chart,while surprisingly only sticking around the lower reaches of the rock radio chart for a couple weeks.It also graced the bottom of the dance chart (then it had 80 positions, "SCS" peaked at #78).

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Here's the "Cats" live on Montreux in 1981...

In 2006, ska-punkers Reel Big Fish covered the song for a tribute album...

Back to the Cats at their peak at the US Festival in 1983...

 

And here's Brian Setzer and His Orchestra redoing the song live in 1999..

Up tomorrow: Extraterrestrial Oceanic Birds.