Robbed hit of the week 5/16/16 - The Georgia Satellites' "Hippy Hippy Shake"...
from the album Cocktail (Original Soundtrack) (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45
This week's "robbed hit" is by the southern rock band Georgia Satellites, who had landed a massive pop hit in America in the winter of 1987 with "Keep Your Hands To Yourself". However, they didn't have a lot of success following that up on mainstream radio, although their second album scored them a top ten rock radio hit with "Open All Night". In 1988, the group contributed a song to the soundtrack to the Tom Cruise bartending movie Cocktail. It was a cover of a track originally written and recorded in 1959 by Spanish/Native American teen rock artist Chan Romero, which was a hit in Australia and caught the eye of the Beatles, who would cover it when they were still a German bar band...
The British Invasion rock band The Swinging Blue Jeans released the song as well in 1963, and had an international hit with it, reaching #2 in the UK and #24 in America...
Despite it's way-short under two minutes running time, the Georgia Satellites tore through "Hippy Hippy Shake" and landed back on radio. This was after the Cocktail soundtrack sent two songs to #1, Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy", and the Beach Boys' "Kokomo"...
The Satellites' take on "Hippy Hippy Shake" climbed to #13 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, but just missed the pop top-40 in November of 1988. In 1989, the band released a third album, In The Land Of Salvation and Sin, and from it "All Over But The Cryin'" reached #17 on the Rock radio chart, but they were passed by on the pop side. Lead singer Dan Baird would leave for a solo career not long after (with two excellent albums you should seek out), with guitarist Rick Richards taking over vocals.
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And here's the band performing live in Denmark in 1989...
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