Ben Davis, a co-writer with Ted Murray of the other side of the single 45 record decided to take an acetate (an unreleased 45 recording) to a local Miami, Florida radio station in advance of the official release of the recording, “The Biggest Sin of All” coupled with V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N”.
The distributor in Miami started to get phone calls on Ben’s song and that is when MGM Records discovered that Ben‘s song, “The Biggest Sin of All”, somehow, was prematurely being played in Florida prior to the official release date .. A major NO-NO!
Connie was told and.. WOW! … Did Connie blow up when she found out that the promotional record, she personally gave to Ben Davis was actually being played on the air before the record was released! Fortunately, for me, as a result, Connie asked MGM to reverse the order of A Side and B side causing the song, V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N would now be the “A Side”, or the promotional side!
Unfortunately, because of this change, the actual release date was delayed by about a month. The release date took place just after the July 4th holiday. This meant that many kids were away at camp and out of town at that time and would not have the opportunity to purchase a copy of “Vacation” at their local record store. As a result, it was estimated that about 250,000 sales were lost by this delay in releasing this 45-rpm single.
I am grateful for the events which occurred during that time. It gave me a golden opportunity to have an A side sung of the “Queen of Popular Music”, throughout the world. At age 22, some 58 years ago, I had written a top ten record throughout most of the world, and it is a fact that few songwriters had success at such an early age.
1 Comment
Great story! Thanks for sharing.