Judy in Disguise (With Glasses) – John Fred & His Playboy Band

Saturday song of the day: Today’s song is a parody of a Beatles hit.

John Fred and The Playboys (later renamed John Fred & His Playboy Band to avoid confusion with Gary Lewis & The Playboys) had been around since 1956 when the members were in high school.  They had a very minor hit in 1959 with Shirley, but otherwise did not have much impact until 1967.  At that time, they had a big hit inspired by a Beatles song.

John Fred Gourrier and Andrew Bernard wrote their song after hearing the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  John Fred initially misheard the lyrics as “Lucy in disguise”, so he based his parody on the misunderstood lyrics.  While the resulting Judy in Disguise (With Glasses) also uses psychedelic images (although it veered more toward nonsense than the Beatles record), musically it was quite different from the song that inspired it.

Judy in Disguise (With Glasses) reached the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at #1 in January 1968.  The song it knocked out of the #1 spot just happened to be another Beatles song, Hello, Goodbye.  As it turns out, John Lennon himself liked the parody.  John Fred later related, “When I met John Lennon, that’s the first thing he asked me. He thought it was great. He said the first thing he was going to do when he got home was write a song called ‘Froggy in a Pond with Spectacles.’”

Tomorrow:  But he’d be warm in your coat