Valleri

"Valleri" is a song written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart for The Monkees, who had a #3 on Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on Cash Box with it in early 1968. The song also rose to #12 in the UK.

Responding to Screen Gems president and music supervisor Don Kirshner's early-morning request for a "girl's-name song" to be used in the Monkees's television series, Boyce and Hart improvised "Valleri" on their way to Kirshner's office, after pretending over the telephone that the song was already finished. Nonetheless, Kirshner was pleased with their work, and "Valleri" took its place on the Monkees recording schedule, with Boyce and Hart producing the original sessions in August 1966.

The original recording (with instrumental backing by the Candy Store Prophets, plus session musician Louie Shelton contributing a flamencoesque guitar solo) was featured in the show's first season in 1967; a staged performance showed Michael Nesmith copying Shelton's guitar licks, and singer Davy Jones appearing to physically outgrow his bandmates, through forced perspective and camera trick shots. While the first version of "Valleri" went unreleased, a few off-air recordings received radio airplay (thanks to DJs taping the audio directly from the video), and later surfaced on bootleg recordings.

It was during this time that "Valleri" was released by Ed Wool under the name of The Pineapple Heard on Epic/Diamond Records by producer Mike Joyce. The record sold very well and per Billboard and Cashbox was a regional hit on it's way to being a national hit when it was recalled over a licensing dispute. According to Wikipedia, Ed Wool is an american blues/rock guitarist and singer who has been recording and performing since the 1960's on a number of major record labels.

By the end of 1967, the Monkees had gone from only singing on their records (to meet their filming, recording, and appearance schedules) to also playing, to a mix of both. More importantly, they had gone from having no say over the music production to being in near-complete creative control. Their fifth album, The Birds, The Bees & the Monkees, rounded out the selection of songs from the show to appear on record, with the second season (1967–1968) being its last. Assuming both performing and producing roles, the Monkees remade both "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet" and "Valleri", duplicating the latter as closely as possible to the original, to the point of bringing back the Candy Store Prophets and Louie Shelton to perform. Boyce and Hart were not pleased that their production was not being used, but understood the reasons, and still collected writer's royalties. Mike Nesmith had been reluctant to remake the song, and adamant against it being released as a single, declaring it the "worst record ever", but he was overruled by Colgems Records.

When Lester Sill of Colgems heard the track, he felt it needed something extra, and had a brass section overdubbed. The remade "Valleri", released on March 2, 1968, made it to Number Three in the US, and was to be the band's last top ten hit of the 1960s. (It was also their last single to receive a push from their television series; its followup, "D. W. Washburn", was not featured on the show, and only reached #19 in the pop charts. Later singles fared even worse.)

When Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork reunited in 1986 to tour as the Monkees, they featured "Valleri" frequently in their song lineup. The song itself is simple musically; consisting mostly of four chords (F# Major, E Major, B Major and C# Major) repeated several times, with a change midway (from F# Major to D# minor, twice).

The original recording of "Valleri" was finally released in January 1990, as part of the Rhino Records collection Missing Links, Volume II, along with several other versions of Monkees tunes used in the TV series.

Of note, 1960s record releases of the second version, as well as subsequent hits packages of the song, feature a fade out ending. The original cold ending version heard in one episode of the television series was finally released on Arista's "Then and Now... The Best of the Monkees" in 1986. Subsequent hits packages and reissues of the single on their Flashback label also feature the longer version. Early examples of the Flashback single release have the fade out ending.

References

• The Monkees Tale, Eric Lefcowitz (Last Gasp Press) (ISBN 0-86719-338-7)
• Monkeemania! The True Story of the Monkees, Glenn A. Baker, Tom Czarnota & Peter Hogan (St. Martin's Press) (ISBN 0-312-00003-0)
• 1968 singles charts
• ED WOOL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Wool
• ED WOOL FACEBOOK/YOUTUBE: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=847064056