I love the Internet. It may yet destroy civilization, but it’s the ultimate encyclopedia in ways that outdo the collective imagination of all the sf writers’ extrapolations of universal libraries. None of them gave a second’s thought to the possibility that there’d be a million pages on comic books. Or one hit wonder pop music.
I reheard Mercy’s 1969 hit “Love (Can Make You Happy)” for the millionth time yesterday, but decided for the first time to chase down its history. Man, what a story. Maybe the archetypal 60’s one hit wonder boom and bust fiasco.
Everybody old enough knows the song, easily findable on YouTube. Rock purists may despise it, but it’s on my short list of prettiest songs ever. The girl group angel chorus harmonies are simply awesome. (Some double-tracking or studio help going on? I can’t tell.) The backing is tasteful, tight, and perfect for the song. It shot to #2 on the charts.
If you’re old enough you know the album cover as well, with three smiling and lovely groovy hippie chicks posing against the ocean. The cover proclaims “Featuring the Original Hit Recording.” That’s not the album you bought, though. You bought this one, from Warner Brothers, with its cheery voyeuristic look at a woodland assault.
The story couldn’t be better if written as a film. It starts, in fact, in 1968 with a movie producer who was scouting local talent in Tampa for a low-budget movie called Fireball Jungle. He found a group called Mercy, led by Jack Sigler Jr. He asked for a song and Jack had one he wrote in high school. Guess what it was called. They filmed a scene where the group performs the song in a bar, a stripped-down version, and got an instrumental called “Fire Ball.” A tiny local label named Sundi put them out as a single, probably adding the glorious depth to the spare sound. The movie never got released to theaters.
Normally, you’d never hear from any of these people again. The group, like many groups, went through bodies and line-ups until Jack left for the Navy and then broke up. But the guy from Sundi was so encouraged by the Florida reception that he made a deal for national distribution. That’s when the single soared. But there wasn’t a group to hype. No problem. Hire three anonymous chick singers and call them The Mercy. The Mercy, not Mercy. Think anybody noticed? I didn’t until now. They recorded enough additional songs for an album. Are the three girls on the album cover the same as the singers? I don’t think anybody knows.
Jack somehow returns from service to find that he has a national hit record, no group, a record label that sold him out, and total strangers touring the country on his name. He puts together a new group, signs with Warner Brothers, rerecords “Love (Can Make You Happy)” and lives happily ever after. No, of course not. He gets the satisfaction of seeing the Sundi album tank, but the Warner Brothers fake barely scrapes the bottom of the top 40. The lawyers argue for decades over the spoils and Mercy never does another album. It’s a movie, but one for the art houses.
Or is it? Because nothing ever disappears in the Internet age. Fireball Jungle becomes available on DVD. And that means that you can watch on YouTube the original Mercy sing their original recording in that dingy bar next to a sign that reads “The LSD for Lunch Bunch.” The director manages to botch a scene of people standing still, which probably indicates why the movie never had a proper release. But Mercy is so clean cut Middle American groovy that it will make you twitch at night for a lost past.
What a story.