Lally Stott: Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

“Strange Days” in Brazil’s biggest ne... Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons

Lally Stott: Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

Lally Stott would have been 70 in 2015. “Who’s Lally Stott?” you ask. Harold “Lally” Stott was an English singer/songwriter whose best-known creation vied with “Maggie May,” “My Sweet Lord” and “Brown Sugar” as one of the biggest songs of 1971.

Stott’s “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep,” a happy-go-lucky, toe-tapping, sing-along confection seemingly untroubled by deep lyricism, topped the charts in Australia (and possibly Rhodesia), and was also a hit in Argentina (No. 2), France (No. 7), the Netherlands (No. 8), South Africa (No. 9), and Italy (No. 11). It peaked at No. 92 on the U.S. Billboard chart where it was overshadowed by a top-20 version by West Indian siblings Mac & Katie Kissoon.

The most successful version was by the cheesy Scottish boy-girl group Middle of the Road, which took it to No. 1 in the UK, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Singapore; and No. 2 in West Germany, Australia, and Israel. Stott’s label, Philips Italy, apparently had little confidence in his version, and pitched it to the other acts at the same time.

My introduction to the song came courtesy of a greatest-hits record released in New Zealand in 1971, 20 Solid Gold Hits. The LP is basically unplayable now, riddled with scratches and loud pops. It got a real workout during my childhood, and the images from the cover are seared into my memory. It’s safe to say that my love of music and my career as a music journalist stem directly from Solid Gold and a few other compilations in my parents’ otherwise rudimentary music collection. Less proudly, I doodled all over the record covers, an unspeakable crime that gives me shivers to this day.

A few years ago, I rescued the decrepit records from my parents’ house and brought them to the USA so that I could glance at them during periods of creeping middle-aged nostalgia. And one weekend in March 2015, I decided it would be fun to look up the songs on Youtube and learn about them on Wikipedia.

Lally Stott was one of the first I researched because I have not heard “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” in decades. Unlike many of the other songs on the compilations, it does not get oldies-station airplay. It’s probably considered too bubblegum. There’s no audible guitar. The song, arranged and produced by Stott, is powered by an elastic bass line, a high-hat drum, some jubilant horns, and an excited female chorus. I remembered Stott’s warm smile and long hair from the awkwardly cropped photo on the Solid Gold album cover, and wondered whether he would still have either. Maybe I could interview him.

Alas, I was heartbroken to read that he had died in 1977, aged 32. All this time, and I had not known of his tragic fate, which occurred mere months before the death of Marc Bolan and then the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash. Stott apparently crashed a motorbike near his home in Prescot, England. Biographical details are exceedingly skimpy.

There is a lallystott.co.uk web site that is barely maintained, and some well-meaning folk in Prescot produced a tribute video that needs some professional assistance. He does not even rate a mention on findagrave.com. This blog, Bite It Deep, provides the best overview of his recording career.

Some interesting tidbits can be gleaned from the comments section for two Youtube videos of “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep,” which I have been playing to death. Stott seems to be a local hero in Prescot, a town about 9 miles east of Liverpool where his family and friends still live. The black-and-white videos depict a friendly, outgoing chap with absurdly long hair, vaguely lip-synching his song while strolling down a street in Amsterdam to the delight of a motley collection of elderly shoppers and pretty shopgirls.

If you play these heartwarming clips every morning for the rest of your life, you will live long and happily.

Just as the lack of information is frustrating, so is the lack of Lally Stott “product.” He released one LP, also called Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, but it has never been reissued digitally. Nor is the song itself available on MP3. One album he did in 1976, Love Birds with his wife Cathy, is available digitally via Splash Records. The chap at Splash thought the rights to Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep were controlled by Philips, which I imagine is now part of Universal Music. Or maybe the masters have reverted to his widow. It was in Italy that Stott sought his fortune after playing with a few Merseyside groups in his younger days. In fact, “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” was the first English-language song recorded in Italy to be released outside Italy. Another of his compositions, Trinity: Titoli, appears on the Django Unchained soundtrack.

And that’s pretty much all I know. If you can fill in some gaps, please contact me. I don’t even know what “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” is about.

Harold “Lally” Stott • 1945-1977 • Prescot, England

###

NOTE: Unrelated to the above post, my gossipy rock bio Strange Days: The Adventures of a Grumpy Rock ‘n’ Roll Journalist in Los Angeles is available here. For more info, go to strangedaysbook.com