Monday February 28, 2022 “” Dave Clark Five (Mike Smith)
In 1978 Jim Carroll wrote a memoir about his youth called The Basketball Diaries which would be made into a movie in 1995 starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg. Carroll would put together a rock group called The Jim Carroll Band and record an album in 1980, Catholic Boy which contained a happy, poppy song which received some airplay called “People Who Died” and that tune inspired this week’s theme…people who died.
We’re not going to get dark, but there are very few things in life that everyone does and this happens to be perhaps the number one similarity in absolutely every life. We will however be focusing only on the musical contributions of ‘people who died’ on each date this week.
Mike Smith was the keyboard player and lead singer of The Dave Clark Five, the band that unseated The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” from their number one chart position in the UK and the US. No, that wasn’t Dave singing those songs, he played drums in the group but founded the band and followed the advice that Steve Miller had received about naming the band. “If you call it the Steve Miller Band they can’t throw you out.”
Mike Smith’s parents recognized that their son was a piano prodigy at the early age of five and had him attend the prestigious Trinity Musical College in London. Smith had met burgeoning drummer Dave Clark when they both played soccer for the St. George's Boys Club and the foundation of the band was formed..
Smith co-wrote many of The Dave Clark Five’s seventeen hits including “Glad All Over”, “Bits and Pieces”, “Can’t You See That She’s Mine” and today’s song. At one point in their long career The Dave Clark Five were selling one million records a month, they appeared on the Ed Sullivan a record number of eighteen times and sold over fifty million records.
Mike Smith died of pneumonia at age 64 on February 28, 2008 just eleven days before he was to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with The Dave Clark Five.
Stay safe and well…and enjoy this lovely international top ten tune.