Songoftheday 11/5/12 - 3-6-9 the goose drank wine, the monkey chew tobacco on the streetcar line...

Pia Zadora - "The Clapping Song"
from the album Adorable (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (two weeks)
Weeks in the top-40: 3

Today's Song of the Day is by actress/singer Pia Zadora, who started out as a child star, and appeared in the cult sci-fi trainwreck Santa Claus Conquers The Martians in 1964. After marrying venture capitalist Meshulam Riklis (who was over twice her age), she started appearing in a series of crazy movies that somehow nabbed her a Golden Globe award for a girl in an incestuous relationship in Butterfly, which caused an uproar over accusations of "buying" the award.

At the same time, she released a series of country music single in the late seventies that scraped the chart, starting with "Bedtime Stories" in 1979 that went to #76. In 1982 she scored her first pop hit, "I'm In Love Again", which almost made the top-40 in 1982. Her next single, "The Clapping Song", did, though..

The song was originally done by R&B singer Shirley Ellis, who took the song to #8 in 1965...

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


In 1982, British vocal group The Belle Stars had a #11 hit with a version of the tune...

A year later, Zadora recorded the song for another movie, The Lonely Lady, and got a top-40 hit out of it...

The song spent almost four months on the chart, and was her last top-40 hit. A year later, she would also grab (suspiciously) a Grammy nomination for "Rock It Out". Of course the song is impossible to get on CD, or even scarce on vinyl...

Most recently, British singer Cher Lloyd sang "The Clapping Song" on her stint on the UK's X Factor...

...as did group inTensity did on the US version...

Up tomorrow: Kilroy says "Thank You".