Jean - Oliver

As a child, I was collecting singles. I took over this obsession from my brother and sister, who were seven and six years older than me, respectively. Starting at such a young age had its disadvantages. For instance, like I wrote in my first post, I was constantly cleaning out my collection, so that I will never know what my first record was. It also meant that whenever I did have a record that one of my siblings deemed interesting enough, they swindled me out of it by proposing a swap. This is how Oliver came into my life. My brother wanted a single from my collection and gave me a broad range of his throwaway singles to choose from. I chose this one, for reasons that I cannot remember.

From that moment on until just a few minutes ago, I knew nothing about this Oliver. As a child I thought this record was from the 1950's, because it looked so old and had no year of release on it. It also didn't reach the Dutch singles chart. Not even the UK chart! I played it every now and again, but that was all. The mystery remained.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know everthing about Oliver. William Oliver Swofford (February 22, 1945 – February 12, 2000) was an American pop singer. Oliver's clean-cut good looks and soaring baritone were the perfect vehicle for his July 1969 single 'Good Morning Starshine', from the pop-rock musical 'Hair'. In October 1969 Oliver reached no. 2 on the Hot 100 and no. 1 on the adult contemporary chart with Rod McKuen's melodious ballad "Jean", the theme from the Oscar-winning film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. See? I didn't know all that. Thank God for this blog.

My collection: 7" single no. 3

Found: at home, in my brother's collection

Cost: nothing. Well, 1 other single.

Tracks: 'Jean' / 'Who will buy'

Download: here