Today’s classic song of the day is a really obscure one. The song is “Here’s to You” by Hamilton Camp, and it was released as a single in June of 1968.
You probably know Hamilton Camp not as a musician but as a character actor, typically in comedy roles, during the late 1960s through the turn of the century. He appeared on TV shows like WKRP in Cincinnati, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, M*A*S*H, Bewitched, The Andy Griffith Show, Three’s Company, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Cheers, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Too Close for Comfort, and He and She (an overlooked one-season gem, starring Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss). He appeared in the movies Heaven Can Wait, SOB, Smokey and the Bandit, The Graduate, American Hot Wax, Eating Raoul, Under Fire, and Meatballs Part II. He provided voices for DuckTales, Darkwing Duck, The Smurfs, Paddington Bear, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones Kids, and other animated fare. You know his face and voice, if not his name.
Well, before he made it big on the screen, Hamilton Camp had a bit of a career as a folk singer. He debuted (under his given name of Bob Camp) at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival, made his first recording (with folk legend Bob Gibson) in 1961, and maintained a dual career as musician and actor throughout the better part of the decade. He penned the tune “Pride of Man,” which was a minor hit for Quicksilver Messenger Service in 1968.
That same year, with the backing of Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew, he released the album Here’s to You on Warner Brothers records, which contained the song, “Here’s to You.” It’s not a bad little tune, although it strays a bit from his folk beginnings into sunshine pop territory. The song had some regional success, as records did in those days, in cities like Cincinnati, Columbus, Boston, and Denver, as well as in his native Canada in Vancouver, New Brunswick, and Toronto. Nationally, it peaked at #76 on the Billboard Hot 100.
That’s about all there is to write about Hamilton Camp’s musical career, although it’s an interesting side note to a performing career that stretched from 1946 (as a child actor in a Boris Karloff film called Bedlam) all the way to his death in 2005, aged 70. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that Hamilton Camp had a long and interesting life.
