{"id":609,"date":"2006-09-18T11:58:10","date_gmt":"2006-09-18T11:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/18\/the-norman-greenbaum-award\/"},"modified":"2006-09-18T11:58:10","modified_gmt":"2006-09-18T11:58:10","slug":"the-norman-greenbaum-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/18\/the-norman-greenbaum-award\/","title":{"rendered":"The Norman Greenbaum Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know the song. It’s instantly recognizable, even without the slightly daft religious lyrics. The fuzzed-out guitar, the chugging riff, the weird little noises in the background. But who recorded<\/strong> “Spirit in the Sky” (now playing in a Nike commercial near you…)?<\/p>\n

The guy’s name is Norman Greenbaum<\/a>, and this is one of those useless bits of trivia that I know that prevent me from remembering important deadlines and where I put my keys. I’d be willing to bet that eight out of ten people on the street could hum the riff and sing the chorus, but not tell you who recorded it.<\/p>\n

“Spirit in the Sky” would be my nomination for the song known by the most people recorded by the most unknown artist. I’m not sure what else even comes close– “Rock and Roll, part 2” by Gary Glitter, maybe, though his kiddie porn troubles have recently linked his name to the song more tightly than before. Possibly “Low Rider” by War. <\/p>\n

I don’t think it’s really fair to include songs that exist in a million versions– “Mack the Knife,” for example, has been recorded by a bunch of people, and they all sound similar enough that some confusion is understandable– or songs by easily confused groups– there are a dozen songs that could be either the Temptations or the Four Tops, and guessing wrong there is no surprise. I’m talking about people who are totally obscure, who nevertheless recorded songs that are instantly recognizable by a large number of people.<\/p>\n

Any suggestions of somebody with a hit song who’s more obscure than Norman Greenbaum?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know the song. It’s instantly recognizable, even without the slightly daft religious lyrics. The fuzzed-out guitar, the chugging riff, the weird little noises in the background. But who recorded “Spirit in the Sky” (now playing in a Nike commercial near you…)? The guy’s name is Norman Greenbaum, and this is one of those useless… Continue reading The Norman Greenbaum Award<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}