One Bad Apple by The Osmonds

One Bad Apple

1971

The Osmonds

Ok, gang, listen closely, and prepare for a shock... The 'Justin Bieber' syndrome as it relates to young female fans is most definitely not a new thing. Young girls have, in fact, squealed and sobbed and swooned at the very mention of the Young Male Singer Of The Moment pretty regularly over Rock and Roll's six or so decades of existence. Us Seventies Kids, in fact, had our own answer to 'The Biebs' back in the early Seventies, and his name was Donny Osmond.

When I say 'Our own answer to The Biebs', I'm talkin' young girls squealing and fainting and crying at just the merest glimpse of him on TV, parents and siblings being shushed to silence when the intro to any Donny Osmond song was heard on the radio in the Family Cruiser, young girls begging Mom and Dad for tickets to concerts because 'Like I'll just DIE if I can't Go!!!!!!, fans (All female and all of the Under 16 or so variety) wanting bits of his clothing and hair, and all of the other general Tween-Girl-Who's-Obsessed-With-A-Teen-Idol insanity.

Being a guy, I was, thankfully, immune to this particular brand of insanity, but not to my then and indeed very first girlfriend's (And still, four and a half decades later, very dear friend's) love for The Most Loved Osmond. Though she's never confirmed this, I've long suspected that she would not have instantly chosen me if she was told that either Donny or I were going to disappear forever, and that she got to decide which of the two of us got to stay around. Of course she would have ultimately smiled prettily, pointed a slender-then-thirteen-year-old finger at me said 'Keep this one...loose The One With The Giant Teeth...

Right? Right?? RIGHT??? Anyyyyywayyy...

Of course there were numerous notable differences between Donny and Justin (Besides the four decades and change that separates their careers). Donny wasn't, on his worst day, anywhere near as controversial as 'The Biebs' (In fact I don't recall any Donny-centric controversy right off the bat), but on the Biebs side of the coin, Justin Bieber has sung and recorded original songs, while (Get ready for shock Number Two, All Ye Donny Osmond Faithful), all of Donny's solo hits were covers of relatively ancient songs...every one of them. Not an original tune in the bunch.

Now the song that kicked in the afterburners on The Osmonds' career and was the first tune to really showcase Donny's prepubescent vocals was an original song, (as were several of the group's hits)...but while it was original and brand spankin' shiny new when they recorded it, it wasn't originally written with them in mind. Oh, it was written for them to record, but it was also written as if it was actually for...wait for it...wait for it! The Jackson Five! Who never even saw it. Confused yet? Read on and find understanding!

First, of course, we have to understand just how The Osmonds came to be in the first place, which brings us to what may be Shock # 3...Donny wasn't originally a member of The Osmonds...Oh he was a member of the family...just not the group. Of course Michael Jackson went through the same thing when the J-5 kicked their singing career off. 

 Both of these now-legendary singers were just toddlers when their dads put their brothers together and made music, and neither of them were included in the family singin' act until a couple of years after their brothers started singing. With that being said, when the J-5 kicked their career off M.J. was older than Donny was when The Osmonds began performing, so Michael had been singing...lead, at that...with The Jackson Five for a couple of years before Donny began singing with his brothers in The Osmonds. It goes without saying that the two groups had something else in common...Both groups careers really took off once they let their respective kid brothers' join the group.

Another important point that both groups had in common...The Dads of both families had a lot to do with both groups getting started, noticed, and becoming successful. The Osmond Brothers got their start in their home town of Ogden, Utah, about forty miles north of Salt Lake City, in 1958 when their dad, George Osmond, put four of the brothers (Alan, Wayne, Merrill, and Jay) together as a barbershop quartet. All of the Osmonds were devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the barbershop quartet was originally set up as a fund raising activity to support the church's charitable activities. And, again, like The Jackson Five, a few years after they started performing locally someone took George aside and pointed out the fact that his kids were immensely talented and that he should really look into getting them a career that entailed more than singing in church fellowship halls and the like.

So George Osmond loaded up his kids and headed for California, with auditioning for and performing on The Lawrence Welk Show being the trip's primary objective. They auditioned for the legendary Mr Welk, and he...turned them down. Didn't need a bunch of kids singing on his show. Don't Call Us, We'll Call You. (Keep in mind here that a few years later Lawrence Welk also thought that One Toke Over The Line was a Gospel song.)

Now you have a bunch of kids, you've just been turned down by Lawrence Welk, and you're in California, home of the then all but brand new Disneyland. The kids decided that Disneyland had far more to offer them than did some ancient dude who was into champagne bubbles and music so old that even they had never heard it, so they set out for The Happiest Place On Earth, where, upon arriving, they promptly ended up singing with a barbershop quartet that was performing that day.

Were you or I to decide to get on stage and join in with one of the performers at Disneyland, or Disney World, or, heck, even the County Fair, we'd be promptly led away by security. If you're an Osmond, however, and you do that along with your brothers, you impress ol' Walt himself and get hired to perform not only there but on television specials as well.

And it was while they were performing on one of those classic Sunday night 'Wonderful World of Color' musical extravaganzas that another father...The fellow who a dude named Andy Williams called 'Dad'...spotted them and was suitably impressed, He told his own legendary son, who hosted a popular variety show in the Sixties, to book The Osmond Brothers for his show, which he promptly did. And they promptly became regulars on the show as well as favorites of both viewers and the show's cast and crew. The former because, well because these kids could flat-out freakin' sing! And the cast and crew because of their attitudes, politeness, and serious professionalism. If it tells you anything, they quickly and legitimately earned the nick-name 'One Take Osmonds'.

They performed on the show regularly from 1962 to 1969, and it was actually during their tenure on The Andy Williams Show that Donny was officially introduced to the world at the age of five when he charmed viewers by belting out 'You Are My Sunshine'. He also officially joined his brothers late in the show's run giving them five members, and while we're at it, it was during their tenure on The Andy Williams Show that both the youngest and prettiest Osmonds (Jimmy and Marie) were introduced.

The Osmonds were a busy clan during that seven year stretch of time...They also toured Europe, released a single in Sweden, began performing as regulars on The Jerry Lewis Show, continued to perform on The Andy Williams Show, became the darlings of the adults who watched variety shows (More than a few of whom planted the seeds of teen male suspicion of All Things Osmond in their sons by asking them 'Why can't you be a good boy like that sweet boy Donny') and, somewhere around 1967 or so deciding they wanted to be...well...pop stars. They wanted to form a Rock and Roll band.

George was not impressed at first. He did not like Rock and Roll. He did not trust Rock and Roll. And he...finally gave in. The Osmonds (They dropped the 'Brothers' when they became a band) learned to play instruments (Perfecting it as easily as they apparently did with all things music), figured out where each of them slotted in vocal range wise, got themselves a manager, got a contract with UNI records, and released a single called 'Flower Music' in 1967. It met with kinda moderate success. It was actually a great little song...catchy, pretty, and it should have been a perfect summer song. But again, it only met with moderate success, and moderate success does not a mega-hit or superstar make. Apparently the time was just not quite right.

So, being the consummate pros they already very much were, they buckled down, practiced even more, became even better...and then came a guy named Mike Curb, who was a record producer of some...er...small renown, and who was the president of an...er...obscure little recording concern known as MGM records. He heard the Osmonds perform. And said WOW. I don't even think they actually had to audition...he signed them. Mike was immensely impressed with them, their abilities both vocally and instrumentally, and their professionalism, and he flat out knew he had stars on his hands. He was right...and a little tune that was written with The Jackson Five in mind was about to prove it.

The Osmonds were performing in Las Vegas, so Mike Curb got hold of Rick Hall...the owner of Fame Studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama...and had him fly out to Vegas to listen to 'A group that I'm kind of interested in'. He didn't tell the guy who'd produced hits for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Rod Stewart and Cher that he was sending him to listen to a group whose main claim to fame was singing on The Andy Williams Show, because if he had, Rick would have very likely stayed in Alabama..

But Hall did fly out to Vegas, took a listen and was suitably impressed by what he heard. He and Mike Curb conferred telephonically, and Mike asked him if he thought he could make 'em into a Jackson Five -like hit machine. Hall said he could do just that...and he meant it pretty much literally, because when he got back to Muscle Shoals he told Fame Studios staff songwriter George Jackson (No relation to The Jacksons) to knock out a song for the Jackson Five...only it wasn't going to be for the Jackson Five, It's gonna be for this new white-bread group called 'The Osmonds'

“Let me get this straight...” Jackson very possibly said to his boss. “...You want me to write a soul song for a bunch of white kids and make them sound like 'The Jackson Five.' ”

'Exactly!'

And George probably nodded, said something like 'O-KAAAAY then', and started writing lyrics and notes and such, while Mike Curb got hold of The Osmonds and sent them to Muscle Shoals. George Jackson knocked out a tune that did such a good job twinning J-5 music that some people think 'One Bad Apple' is a Jackson Five hit to this day! The song's subject...a boy telling a girl not to let one bad experience with another guy ruin their own relationship...is even exactly what you'd expect the J-5 to sing about. But again, it wasn't The Jackson Five...it was The Osmonds. And it was a biggie.

Now, lot's of people...those who aren't busy mistaking 'One Bad Apple' for a Jackson-five hit anyway...think of this as a Donny Osmond song but it actually, well, wasn't, and that's very obvious when you listen to it. This was a The Osmond's single. When George Jackson knocked this bubblegum classic out, he wrote it with Merrill singing lead, and Donny singing co-lead, with Donny singing solo on the chorus...this same set up was, in fact, used in many of the The Osmonds' hits as a group. As their careers progressed, especially when performing on tour as The Osmonds, this actually created it's own brand of confusion because Merrill and Donny looked so much alike, and in much later years, Merrill actually grew his beard out so fans could more easily distinguish between the two of them.

Like all Bubbegum Pop, 'One Bad Apple' was light, simplistic and repetitive, and was aimed square at that group today known as 'Tweens'. The success of this tactic was made very clear before the song was even recorded, much less released, when the group arrived in Muscle Shoals in late 1970. Though The Internet was still a quarter century in the future, and The Osmonds weren't all that well known yet, the news that a bunch of what were probably termed 'Really cute guys!!!!' by the local Tween Girl population were going to be in town arrived before the aforementioned 'Really cute guys!!!!' did, and extra security had to be added at the studio to keep marauding bands of little girls from invading the property (No...I'm not kidding!). These same gals would follow the boys around like the proverbial puppies...likely giving them big eyed stares while sighing regularly...when they went off-site for a break or a bite to eat, or, Oh I dunno, to go back to their hotel to get some sleep. My bet is that, being teenage boys, none of the Osmonds were at all offended by all of this attention.

When the single was released the day after New Years of 1971, these same young girls begged their parents for the four bucks or so that was the going price of a single back then, and started sending One Bad Apple up the charts. It debuted at #78 on on The Billboard Hot 100 on January 2^nd, cracked the Top 10, at #9, on January 30^th, then jumped seven spots in a single week to land in the runner-up spot on February 6^th. The very next week they snagged the Hot 100's Top Spot, and hung on to it for five weeks...a feat that many far more successful groups with #1 hits can't claim for one of their own chart-toppers...dropping down to #4 on March 20^th, and dropping off of the Hot 100 altogether four weeks later, on April 10^th, for a fifteen week chart run, nine of 'em in the Top 10, and again, five of 'em at #1. Not bad for any group, and definitely kick-ass for a group's first single.

Merril was singing 'OHHhhHH give it one more chance before you give up on LoooOOoove...' all over Top 40 Radio as we made our way back to school after Christmas Break of 1970. It was light, feel good, Tween-centric bubblegum pop in it's purest form, and it made all of us guys really leery of this Donny Osmond kid. But the girls loved him (And his bros) and made them stars, and you could hear one or two young ladies doing very respectable acapella renditions of that classic chorus between classes at any given Junior high school on any given day during the song's chart run.

I was in 8^th grade at Southampton Jr High (Home Of The Eagles back than, now long gone) when all of this was goin' on, and we heard it on Tidewater Virginia's AM Top 40 powerhouse, WGH, regularly. Heck, hourly (Or more) on the weekends, and during the early evenings (Trivia bit...WGH reduced power at night, making them all but impossible to pick up in Southampton County after about 9PM)

The song's still around...it'll pop up pretty regularly on Oldies Stations, and women of a certain age will wax nostalgic and get misty eyed, and maybe even sigh like a crush-stricken 13 year old if they happen to be listening when that quick, snappy guitar and hummed vocal intro pops out at them...and I can bet that that hey sing along with it!

So Enjoy! One Bad Apple by The Osmonds!

As a bonus, The Osmonds' very first single, 'Flower Music', released on the UNI records label. They almost sound a little like the Beatles in the first few seconds of the song, and the way the song's arranged, to my not overly trained ear at any rate, even sounds a little like a 'Beatles' song. It's definitely not a bad little tune, and it should have been a great little Summer song...but it wasn't to be