He would just say it's about the guy who takes the wallpaper off the wall so it can be freshly repainted ...
I have to say, I almost never heard this on the radio... but in other venues, either for comic effect, or of course, the Noxema commercial. The poster who said it is a bawdy hoot is totally spot on. It always puts a smile on your face.
I live out here in the middle of the Pacific and heard it quite a lot in the 60s. Maybe we're a bit bawdier than the average mainlander? After all, one of the missionaries' first orders of business was to cover up all that naked brown skin they were ogling, hot tropical weather be damned!
There was a time when the bargain bins were flooded with this album. I'm guessing that this will come up again in this thread, if it makes it to 1974.
That's not the same, and the diversity was instituted by "Rock Around the Clock" in 1955. Adult buyers are what made it possible for songs such as "The Stripper" to advance as high as it did but it is part of the last hurrah for music our parents enjoyed as it regards the Top 40. In just a few months in 1962 there will be another anomaly, one that started the Bossa Nova craze in the USA, with a song so atypical of the general market that it would repeat several times over the next couple of years. By 1970 artists like Lawrence Welk will not make the charts again as they had in these earlier days of the Rock era. I'll concede that there WAS one late Sixties musical act that appealed to older listeners, and they came to the record store I managed while in college to buy every Carpenters 45 to be released. By then, though, even what was thought of as teen music had evolved,
Sorry to be a killjoy, but this never did much for me, although I kind of like a rockier version recorded by The Rockin' Rebels on the Wild Weekend LP released in 1963. It's a stripped down version -- sax, drums and lead and rhythm guitars. Still, it seemed so old school, even for 1962.
@sgb Oh, I get it! You mean it was more of being our/my parents generation still influencing what was popular in top 40 music. Rock n Roll didn't quite wipe out everything else just yet?
So if a classic rock-styled song were to get into the top 40 today, would that be esssentially the same as Calcutta or The Stripper becoming hits in the early '60's - the older generation infiltrating the teen pop dominated charts? Are classic rock fans the Lawrence Welk fans of 2016?
I don't know if there's a comparison. The world isn't the same. The Who probably influenced more young bands in the 2010s than Lawrence Welk did in the 1960s. At a time when almost as many people in their fifties attend Lollapalooza as do teenagers, that way of thinking doesn't really wash anymore.
Many consider him to be one of the casualties of the British Invasion and the changing musical landscape but in truth, his career continued through the 70s and in total, he managed to place 30 songs on the Hot 100 including 3 top 10 hits after his last #1 in '64. His days at the top may have been over but he was hardly forgotten.
I look up the definition of "earworm" in the dictionary and it says, "refer to 'Roses Are Red' by Bobby Vinton."
Brings memories of summer days, with my mother ironing while I was helping fold the laundry, with the song on the radio she listened to. I was about to enter 3rd grade.
Simply put... Bobby Vinton is underrated these days. I think "Roses Are Red" is fairly good song, but his best moments had yet to come. There had to been something special when one of his tunes came on the radio. Those vocals are so warm and youthful... it's hard for a teenage girl to not fall in love with him...
Wow. Never heard this one before - or don't remember it, anyhow. I see cliched tracks like this as sheep, about to be slaughtered by the pending British Invasion.
I didn't know it either. I have "Blue On Blue", "Blue Velvet" (which I love) and even "There! I Said It Again" on approximately a million compilations (usually from Time Life), but somehow not "Roses Are Red". And... I can't really think of a lot to say about it. It's pleasant enough, but it doesn't touch "Blue On Blue" or "Blue Velvet".
Can you recommend a good Bobby Vinton compilation? It'd be nice to have more of him in my collection. I suspect the 2004 Best Of Bobby Vinton on Epic/Legacy could be the one I'm likeliest to find because it's quite recent and on the Legacy label, but not unexpectedly there seems to have been dozens of Vinton comps. The 1991 16 Most Requested Songs (mastered by Mark Wilder) looks very promising too.
We're at the point where I actually remember the songs (most of them). This was a monster. Probably regarded as saccharine by most Forum members nowadays. I prefer BLUE VELVET over Roses now, but neither makes me turn the radio off.
Yeah, there is a mess of them. I was looking at this one, but it seems to omit BLUE VELVET! https://www.amazon.com/Roses-Are-OR...&qid=1426030591&sr=1-11&keywords=bobby+vinton However it does have quite few I've never heard. But I don't think he ever did Rock and roll
"Roses Are Red" is high on my "I don't want to like it but I do" list. It's saccharine, it probably sounded square on the day it was released, and Bobby Vinton doesn't strike me as the type who'd have had a girlfriend in high school...and yet, it does capture the essence of young love and the loss thereof just about perfectly. That sense of loyalty and devotion we feel for our friends at that age and the world-weary awareness we have as adults of what really becomes of it all - it's all there. The finale of Grease ("We'll always be together!!") is what we all think will happen on graduation day, "Roses Are Red" is what really does happen. By the way, is there any hit from this era that doesn't have an answer song?
I love Bobby Vinton's hits. I prefer "Blue Velvet" and "Blue on Blue" to "Roses are Red..." but I still dig it. Great voice and great productions.