The Browns - "The Three Bells"
Hit Number 1: August 24, 1959
Stay at Number 1: 4 Weeks
It almost seems hard to believe, but yesterday's "A Big Hunk O' Love" by Elvis Presley, and today's "The Three Bells" were produced by the same record company, RCA Victor. The songs could not be any more different from each other. While Presley's "A Big Hunk O' Love" was fast, fun, and pure rock and roll, "The Three Bells" is a lot slower, quieter, and tells a story. Well, it kind of tells a story. The song is about some dude named Jimmy Brown, and three big phases of his life: his birth, his wedding day, and his death. This Jimmy Brown coincidentally had the same name as the Browns' front man Jim Ed Brown.
The Browns were a group made up of siblings. Maxine and Bonnie Brown, along with the aforementioned Jim Ed, started singing individually in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, before Jim Ed and Maxine signed a recording contract as a duo. In 1955, their younger sister Bonnie joined the group and they began to perform on Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, Louisiana. At the end of 1955, the group had their first top ten hit "Here Today and Gone Tomorrow" which Maxine called their "real breakthrough". The song's popularity was helped by the group's appearances on ABC-TV's "Ozark Jubilee". Producer Si Siman discovered the Browns, and he helped sign them to a recording contract with RCA. The Browns had to go without Jim Ed for a couple years when he was drafted, but they continued to perform with their sister Norma on tours. It was shortly after Jim Ed returned, that "The Three Bells" came along, and it became their biggest hit.
"The Three Bells" has some history to it before the Browns got a hold of it. It started out as a French song called "Les trois cloches", and was written and recorded by Jean Villard Gilles. English lyrics were written by Bert Reisfeld, and was recorded by a group called "The Melody Maids" in 1948. A few other acts recorded the song, but the one that stuck is the Browns' version in 1959. I like what the Browns do with the song, and I really am a sucker for well-performed harmonies, which the Browns specialized in. But the song itself, I'm not the biggest fan of. The song sort of waddles along and I don't understand what the obsession is with this "Jimmy Brown". A good way for me to describe the song is a "snoozefest" sort of song. Unfortunately, there's not much the Browns could of done to make this song that great, but I do think it is well performed, which keeps me from disliking the song too much. The harmonies are very good, and the sisters accompany Jim Ed's lead vocals well.
After "The Three Bells", the Browns continued to produce a few hits here and there, with some doing pretty well on the country charts. In 1963, they joined the Grand Ole Opry. But the band didn't last too long after that, as they broke up in 1967. In the 1980s, they would start performing occasionally in concert. Unfortunately, none of the Browns are still with us today. Maxine just died earlier this year, Jim Ed died in 2015, and Bonnie died in 2016. You have to respect the music career that they had though, it just sucks that their only chart-topper was such a bland song.
GRADE: 4/10
THE TWOS:
Phil Phillips and the Twilights' "Sea of Love" peaked at #2 behind "The Three Bells". It's a 6.
Comments