Robbed hit of the week 11/16/15 - Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot"...

"Hot Hot Hot" - Buster Poindexter (aka David Johansen)
from the album Buster Poindexter (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45

This week's "robbed hit" was a campy remake of a world-music song by one of the giants of 70s punk music, David Johansen, who was the lead singer of the New York Dolls, a band that combined the energy of the full-throttle punk of Iggy Pop with the trashy genderfuck glam of David Bowie. Their classic "Personality Crisis" was on Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 rock songs list, as their debut album from 1973 did the same. The group disintegrated by the end of the decade, with Johansen releasing a few solo rock albums, with a live medley of 60s band the Animals' hits "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place/Don't Bring Me Down/It's My Life" getting airplay enough to reach #12 on Billboard's then-new Mainstream Rock radio chart in 1982.

In 1987, Johansen took a left turn an recorded an album under the alter ego of Buster Poindexter, a "sophisticated" throwback to the 40s and 50s lounge and big-band style. He released as a single a cover of a song written and performed by French West Indian calypso/soca artist Arrow (aka Alphonsus Cassell), whose "Hot Hot Hot" had been a minor hit in England in 1984, reaching #59 on the singles chart there...

Johansen's version stayed pretty faithful to this version, though going waaaaaay over the line in the 'outrageous' vocal department, and pushed the brass even farther to the forefront...

While David/Buster's "Hot Hot Hot" just missed the top-40 on the pop chart in America in February of 1988, and the 12" extended version stopped short at a frustrating #11 on Billboard's Dance Club Play list, those 'chart positions' have no meaning in the long-lasting popularity of the song, which has since overshadowed everything else he's ever done in the mainstream collective mind. It's been a wedding staple, a party constant, the glue of every white man's party ever since.

He tried to capitalize on the success for a bit, returning to the dance chart at #12 the following year with "All Night Party" from his next album, but this truly became a "one-hit-wonder" situation, with David eventually returning to rock music (and eventually reuniting with the "Dolls"). He's had more exposure acting, appearing in Bill Murray's version of the the Dickens tale Scrooged.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's "Buster" and the Banshess of Blue appearing on Johnny Carson's Late Show to promote the song...