Boston Dee Jay saves 'My Ding a Ling' From Obscurity

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I know what you are thinking, but it is not!

The Ding a Ling is a little toy that Dave Bartholomew said a grandmother gave to her grandson when he was a young boy in New Orleans. It is a set of silver bells hanging on a string. She told the lad that the bells were his ‘Ding a Ling”.

In 1952, Dave turned the ‘toy’ into a tune which he recorded for Imperial Records. The song tells the story of the bells and how Dave would take them to school and play with them. He further relates that he used them like a charm in dangerous situations such as falling after climbing a garden wall or swimming across a fast running creek.

Admittedly the song is laced with double entendre - but; when you listen to it, try to remember that ‘My Ding a Ling’ is a little set of silver bells.

Dave Bartholomew is a Crescent City Institution. He was the band leader behind all of Fats Dominos' great hits. He wrote most of ‘em. Born in 1920, he still plays the occasional gig and was actively recording as late as 2004.

Dave’s rendition of his own composition wasn’t much of a hit, but give it a listen…I think it is the best of all the versions.

　Two years later, in 1954, another New Orleans group waxed the tune. The ‘Bees’, also on Imperial Records, retitled the song as “The Toy Bell”. Their effort was also, not a commercial success.

The Ding a Ling sat unused and unplayed, on a shelf in Dave’s music room until 1968 when Chuck Berry dusted it off, renamed it “My Tambourine” and again the cute little Ding a Ling song went nowhere.

Berry, who had many top ten hits, did not forget the song and played it frequently in his live shows. Such was the case, one night in 1972, at the Lanchester Arts Festival at the Locarno ball room in Coventry, England.

Chuck performed the song with the Roy Young Band backing him. The performance was recorded and was well received but the release was stalled.

Enter the lowly disc jockey. As so often happens in the music business, a DeeJay falls in love with a song and almost single handedly pushes it to the top.

A New England Jock, Jim Connors, at tiny WMEX in Boston, discovered the tune and touted it in Massachusetts, while sharing it with his counterparts up and down the East Coast. Like a train out of Boston’s South Station, that song eventually went everywhere in the U.S. and peaked at NUMBER ONE. It was the first and only number one song for Chuck Berry.

In an unprecedented move, the publishers and the record company presented a Gold Record to DeeJay Connors for his role in promoting the song to the number one spot in The States and England.

Listen now, to a few versions of this funny little song, including the original Dave Bartholomew track.

　And for two more excellent "double entendre" classics, follow this link:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Theyre-Not-Dirty-Just-Funny-The-Best-of-the-Double-Entendre-Songs