Doctor's Orders by Carol Douglas

Doctor's Orders

1974

Carol Douglas

1975’a very first One Hit Wonder was also the very first one to crack the Top 20 that year, and it’s another one that just about anyone who was a teen back then instantly recognizes from the intro...both the music, and it’s spoken intro... ‘Hey Baby, I went to the doctor today...’

Doctors Orders was originally penned by the British songwriting trio of Roger Cook, Roger Greenaway, and Geoff Stevens., and was written all but specifically for former Brotherhood Of Man singer Heather Wheatman...better known as ‘Sunny’ of ‘Sue and Sunny’, a pair of Indian born British sisters who sang as a duo. 
 

Sunny went Solo after Sue (Real name Yvonne Wheatman) married her long time sweetheart and, as her sis put it, ‘Decided she wanted to make babies’. Fellow former Brotherhood of Man member Roger Cook knew that Sunny was going solo, penned the song with her vocals in mind, then gave her a call and asked her to give it a listen...she did, liked it, thought she might be able to do something with it, and recorded it. CBS snapped it up and released it, and it slowly gained momentum (The BBC had concerns about the idea of a woman discussing Intimate concerns with her doctor ...those Brits take things so literally!) and finally made it to the top 10 in the UK...peaking at #7...in May ’74. But this wasn’t the version that charted in the US in ’75...exact same arrangement, just not the same version.

‘Say What?’ you ask??

See, Sunny's label, Midland International, wanted the song covered by an artist in the U.S., and ran an ad in ‘Showbiz’ Magazine, looking for a singer to do just that. One of the singers who auditioned to cover the tune was a veteran...but pretty much unknown...singer by the name of Carol Douglas. She got the gig....then almost lost it. Carol Douglas cut her version of ‘Doctors Orders' and was told she sounded awesome (And when you give it a listen, you’ll concur...the lady has some serious pipes, she do!) but...she sounded too Black.

Huh???

 There might be a reason for that...after all, the very lovely Carol Douglas is indeed African-American. Now, there have been significantly more...make that way more... than a few Black singers, both solo artists and groups, from the classic artists of Motown, to the lovely ladies of Destiny’s Child, who have kept multiple songs in the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100. Songs that are classics, favorites, and that’ll be heard on multiple forms of entertainment media long after all of us are shopping at that Big Record Store In The Sky. So I fail to see the issue here. But apparently Midland was thinking ‘Sunny’ when they posted the ad in Showbiz. Actually, they were thinking of Carol Douglas' voice-over voice, as she recorded a good numnber of commercials for radio, and conceded that she sounded different in them than she did when she...well...sang. Happily Midland both gave her the gig, and kept her vocals intact.

They ultimately got the sound they wanted, pressed sent some test records during the fall of ’74, then sent ‘em to some NYC discos to see how the tune would be received. Does the phrase ‘The Crowd Went Wild’ mean anything? Doctor’s Orders was just about an immediate smash. It was rush-released in November of ’74, cracked the Hot 100 at #79 when it debuted, cracked the Top 40 in December, and peaked at #11 on February 8, 1975. 

 

Doctor’s Orders’ is a legitimate classic in my book and it’s always amazed me that Carol Douglas didn’t really hit it big...again, the lady can flat out sang’   She had several minor hits that were big on the club circuit and on the dance/disco charts, but that didn’t even create a ripple on the mainstream Pop charts...the closest she ever came post 'Doctor's Orders' was with a tune called ‘A Hurricane Is Coming Tonight’ that made it to #82 on the Hot 100.

Her one big hit was and is a ‘Chick Song’ in many ways...I really don't think many guys would admit to singing along with it, and definitely not ‘Singing Into A Hairbrush’ to it. There may, however, have been some covert male head bobbing when Carol Douglas crooned ‘Doc-tor Orders Baby’ from the speakers while girlfriends and female friends did the singing., (I had a friend in high school who could absolutely nail this song...sadly she never did anything with her singing other than enter the Thomas Dale High School Talent Show a couple of times). 

 

The song’s peppy, upbeat tempo coupled with Carol Douglas’ smooth vocals are just as sweet to listen to today as they were nearly 40 years ago, and thankfully this is one that hasn’t disappeared from the playlists....Oldies stations have it in fairly regular rotation. And that’s as it should be.

So Enjoy! Doctor’s Orders by Carol Douglas.

And as a bonus!  Sunny’s version of Doctor’s Orders

A few notes and facts and such!

What a lot of people don’t realize, this just may have been the first Disco song... the first one to enter the Top 40 at any rate. The ‘Bubble’ guitar effect, and ‘Gallup’ drum effects that became such a big part of Disco music? They were invented by, respectively, Guitarist Jerry Friedman and drummer Carlos Martin (He came up with the effect by pounding n the conga with his fists.) for this song.

Carol Douglas, who grew up in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, was prepping for a career in the Entertainment Industry early in life. She attended both the Willard May School for Professional Children, and Quintanos High School for young professionals, and onbe of her classmates was Patty Duke, who starred in a hit sitcome in the early Sixties. Carol Douglas actually set out on an acting career as well as a singing career, and guest stared on an episode of The Patty Duke Show.