Songoftheday 8/25/14 - Hide and seek I play along while rushing cross the forest, monkey business on a sunny afternoon....

Baltimora - "Tarzan Boy"
from the album Living In The Background (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #13 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10

Today's Song of the Day is from an Italian pop-dance act called Baltimora, who were led by keyboardist and producer Maurizio Bassi. Recruiting Irishman Jimmy McShane to be the visual frontman of the group, the "band" recorded their first album for release in 1985. The debut single from the project, "Tarzan Boy", was a big success around the world, no doubt helped by the infectious Tarzan-like yodel as a stand-in chorus....

"Tarzan Boy" would become the band's first and only top-40 hit in America, reaching the top-20 in March of 1986 and eventually spending half a year on the Hot 100. The remix of the record climbed to #6 on Billboard magazine's Hot Dance Club Play chart as well. Internationally, the single went to #1 in both France and the Netherlands, peaked at #3 in England, and made the top-10 in most of the rest of Europe and Canada, with a #6 placing in their native Italy and #2 in McShane's Ireland.

The novelty of the record would be their doom in America, with their next single, the title track from Living In The Background, stalling at #87. Meanwhile in Europe they had a bit more success with another campy number, "Woody Boogie", which went top-10 in Sweden and top-20 in Italy. In 1987 the band released a second album, and the first single, "Key Key Karimba", slipped into the Italian top-40 at #37, but with the record not getting any attention anywhere else, Baltimora split up shortly thereafter. McShane would leave the biz, and passed away from complications from AIDS in 1995.

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In 1993, a remix of the song commissioned for the soundtrack to the third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie as well as a Listerine commercial the same year brought the track back to radio and record stores, and the record re-entered the Hot 100, climbing to #51 and spending another dozen weeks on the pop chart.

Here's McShane miming it up for the Peters Popshow TV program in 1985. You know, there's been a controversy whether he actually sings lead on the song, but rather Bassi, and if I listen really closely, I do think I might detect an Italian rather that Irish inflection (I may be wrong, but Italian disco acts are notorious for this)...

In 2001, Destiny's Child sampled the yodel in their international single "Nasty Girl"...

Numerous other Eurodance acts covered "Tarzan Boy". One of the first was the British act Modern Romance about the same time as Baltimora's...

Bango went top-40 in France with a version of the track in 2006...

Two years later, a reggae-fied take on "Tarzan Boy" became a top-10 hit in Sweden for Bad Influence...

Up tomorrow: Storms are brewing in her eyes, says a mighty morphing rock group.