Saturday July 23, 2022 ”Mambo Number 5” Lou Bega
We’re up to number five in rock & roll by the numbers week and I will begin today with an apology. This may not be a great song but it is more contagious than the current covid strain, but way safer and will likely stick to your brain for at least the rest of the day.
“Mambo Number 5” was originally a 1952 instrumental recorded by Cuban bandleader Perez Prado, “King of the Mambo” and then sampled in 1999 by German singer Lou Bega for his version…wait what, German singer?
It was reported that the girls he mentions were all Lou's former girlfriends but it is probably beyond coincidence that eight of the girls in the song have names that happen to end in "A”: Angela, Pamela, Sandra, Rita, Monica, Erica, Tina, Mary and Jessica.
Bega has said, "I dated a lot of pretty nice ladies when I was younger. These names of my past, you know, just came to me and I wrote it down, got the melody and the rest is history."
In a world of ‘you should have checked this first’, this song was the theme song for the 2000 Democratic Convention (Bill Clinton's party), until someone noticed the line, "A little bit of Monica in my life." Whoops.
Stay safe and well…and a little bit of…fill your own choice in the blank,..I'm going with Rita, one of my current favorite people.