Saturday morning tunes: B. Bumble and the Stingers!

I loved this record when I was a kid. Loved it. I spent hours unsuccefully trying to pound it out on our big old piano (the fact that it was probably another ten years until my handspan could reach an octave might have been part of the problem).

But if I ever knew the title of it, I long ago forgot it. And really, I never had much of a prayer, even in the age of online search engines: You can type in permutations of “tchaikovsky,” “nutcracker,” and “march of the wooden soldiers” until your fingers fall off, but you're not likely to come up with "B. Bumble and the Stingers" or “Nut Rocker,” unless you already knew it.

But to my amazing good luck, after my old pal Keith finished the latest edition of “Strictly the Sixties with Keith Semmel,” his weekly show on 94.5 WCCR-LP-FM, he flipped it over to the overnight tape, and -- lo and behold -- there was the song!

Keith was just locking up the station and preparing to go home for the evening when I caught him. (It's good to know people.) He went back into the studio, called up the playlist, and we spent the next few minutes (via cell phone and Wikipedia) reading up about the short but spirited career of B. Bumble and the Stingers.

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There's some more of BB&TS out there. Watch for them in future editions of Saturday morning tunes.