The Almost Complete Jimmy Cross

There are an alarming number of records about traffic accidents - but the sickest has to be I Want My Baby Back by Jimmy Cross. Routinely considered the worst record of all time – and feted as such by the first Kenny Everett Bottom 30– I Want My Baby Back is the king of the teenage tragedies. Written and produced by Perry Botkin Junior and Gil Garfield, the song is a parody of records like Last Kiss and Leader of the Pack, two releases which describe the aftermath of traffic accidents in rather graphic detail, although neither of them go into quite as much depth (if you’ll pardon the pun) as Jimmy Cross does:

(I Want My Baby Back, written by Perry Botkin Jr and Gil Garfield. Released by Jimmy Cross on Tollie Records. © 1964)

Born in Dothan, Alabama in 1938, although radio producer Jimmy Cross had dabbled in song writing (co-writing I Still Love Him, which was produced by Garfield and Botkin for girl group The Joys) I Want My Baby Backwas his first release as a featured performer*, and the only one of his singles to chart. Issued on the Tollie label in December 1964, the single reached number 92 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following February.

Knowingly referencing both the Beatles (the group that supplied Tollie with its only major chart hits) and Leader of the Pack, I Want My Baby Back is a song which describes – in graphic detail - how the singer’s girlfriend is fatally dismembered and how he, after several months of torment, decides that the only way to overcome his grief is to desecrate her grave, crawl into her coffin and join her for all eternity.

(I Want my Baby Back, written by Perry Botkin Jr and Gil Garfield. Released by Jimmy Cross on Tollie Records. © 1964)

It’s ghastly, and thoroughly brilliant – and hearing it for the first time in the early 1980s was a defining moment for me. This (and Fluffy by Gloria Balsam) is entirely responsible for kick-starting my interest in bad music. Bizarrely the song was covered (not very well, in my opinion) by British R'n'B act The Downliners Sect for their 1965 EP The Sect Sings Sick Songs.

The moderate success of I Want My Baby Back was reason enough for Tollie to order a follow up, so Jimmy was put back to work. His second single for the company was The Ballad of James Bong, a comedy record (credited to Botkin, Garfield, Cross, Price and Cole) based on the James Bond phenomenon, where Cross’s character is trying to save the world’s rock and roll stars from being annihilated. It was released (this time credited to Jimmie Cross) in 1965 and sank without a trace – as did Tollie Records. Red Bird Records, the company set up by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, then signed Jimmie and he released a further 45: Hey Little Girl (Do You Want to Get Married), a timely Herman’s Hermits pastiche, backed with Super-Duper Man, a tribute to the man of steel. Both tracks were co-written by a 24-year old bank clerk who, a few years later, would go on to much greater fame: Harry Nilsson.

Unfortunately this single also missed the mark and Jimmie quietly returned to the day job. Hey Little Girl was re-issued, this time with an instrumental version on the B-side (curiously renamed Chicken Track on some copies, Hey Little Girl Part 2on others, and credited to the Jimmie Cross Orchestra) on the Vee-jay imprint Chicken Records: in 1967 Nilsson would offer Super-Duper Man and Hey Little Girl, along with half a dozen other songs, to The Monkees. They turned them down but did opt to record his other compositions Cuddly Toy and Daddy’s Song.

Yet that would not be the end for I Want My Baby Back. In 1977 British DJ Kenny Everett began featuring I Want My Baby Back on his Capital radio programme The World's Worst Wireless Show although initially, probably because of the credits on his later release, Everett wrongly assumed that Jimmy Cross was in fact a nom de plume of Harry Nilsson. Even though he got his facts wrong, the interest in the song created by Everett inspired Wanted Records in the UK to re-issue the single, complete with its original B-side Play the Other Side (a short, instrumental version of the A-side) and a new picture sleeve but without bothering to officially licence the damned thing. They even had the cheek to add a jokey sleeve note and credit it to Jimmy, even though the poor devil knew very little (if anything) about the release.

Jimmy died of a heart attack that same year at the ridiculously young age of 39 in North Hollywood. Perry Botkin Jr went on to fame and fortune working with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Van Dyke Parks and Carly Simon as well as writing and producing the music for many successful TV series including Happy Days, Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirley. Gil Garfield, sadly, passed away in 2011 after a long battle with cancer. Jimmy is buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery. I hope that he’s finally been reunited with his baby.

Jimmie’s daughter, Kellee Cross Raymer, is (rightly) rather proud of her father’s most famous three minutes: “Yes, some would say that I Want My Baby Back is just a little bit out there; but never the less, it must put smile's on people's faces!”

Here, for your enjoyment, is every track recorded by Jimmie (or Jimmy) Cross. I’ve also included the instrumental B-sides to I Want My Baby Back (Play the Other Side), The Ballad of James Bong (Play the Other Side Again) and Hey Little Girl (Chicken Track).

Enjoy!