This week we’re highlighting songs that were hits multiple times for multiple artists, and today’s classic multiple-whatever song of the day is “The Loco-Motion.” This one was a hit three times in three different decades—in the ’60s for Little Eva, in the ’70s for Grand Funk Railroad, and in the ’80s for Kylie Minogue.
“The Loco-Motion” was written by the team of Carole King (music) and Gerry Goffin (words). It’s not one of their more notable tunes but it was catchy and listeners loved it. It’s a song about a danced called the Loco-Motion, although there was no such dance around when they wrote the song. (Little Eva, who recorded the first version of the song, had to invent a dance to demonstrate when she performed the song live.)
Some stories have it that Carole and Gerry wrote the song for Eva Boyd, who was their babysitter. That is not entirely true. They actually intended the tune for singer Dee Dee Sharp, who’d had a previous dance-themed hit with “Mashed Potato Time.” The songwriters used Eva to record a demo of the tune, and when Ms. Sharp passed on it, they just released the demo.
Little Eva was, at the time, a studio singer who was making some spare change by babysitting Carole and Gerry’s children. She wasn’t a full-time babysitter, she was a singer who caught a lucky break. Dimension Records released her version of “The Loco-Motion” in June of 1962 and it went all the way to #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100, as well as in Canada, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, and Sweden. (It was stalled at #2 in the UK.) Ms. King sang backup on the record.
A dozen years later, rock group Grand Funk Railroad recorded their version of “The Loco-Motion.” Guitarist Mark Farmer was singing the tune in the studio, for whatever reason, and the group decided to put it on tape. Their version, released in February of 1974, also went to #1 on both the Billboard and Cash Box charts.
Fast forward another dozen or so years and Australian singer Kylie Minogue recorded a bass-heavy electropop dance version of “The Loco-Motion.” Her single, released in July of 1987, hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the Cash Box Top 100, as well as #12 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart. It was pretty big worldwide, as well.
So that’s the chart history of Goffin and King’s “The Loco-Motion.” But that’s not all. For your daily bonus track of the day, here’s the song’s songwriter, Carole King, performing “The Loco-Motion” on her 1980 album, Pearls: Songs of Goffin and King. Which version do you like best?
