Lally Stott: Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep

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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 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. Given Philips’ tacky artwork for Stott’s Italian single (at right), maybe their shortsightedness is just as well.

My introduction to “Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep” 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 record collection. Less proudly, I doodled all over the covers, an unspeakable crime that still makes me shudder.

A few years ago, I rescued the decrepit discs 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. One look at the title, and it’s probably considered too bubblegum, like Yummy, Yummy, Yummy or Mah-Na-Mah-Na, two more childhood favorites, I admit.

I remembered Stott’s warm smile and thick, lustrous 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 about the creative process.

“Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep,” arranged and produced by Stott, is surprisingly minimalist. There is no audible guitar, no instrumental break, no bridge. He shares the vocal spotlight with an excited female chorus. The only lyrical difference among the four stanzas is the alternation of “mama” and “papa.” The dominant instruments in the chorus, which is sung five times through to the fade-out, are a sinewy bass, a high-hat cymbal, and a jubilant trumpet.

I will make a huge leap and suggest that Stott, a journeyman musician raised in the rough-and-tumble Merseyside beat scene that also produced the Beatles, finished the whole thing in five minutes and considered it a throwaway ditty. It may even be a demo. I guess I’ll never know.

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. Biographical details are 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. This site, lankybeat.com, compiled by his former drummer Sandro Ugolini, has some excellent pictures of Lally in various bands, including Lally Stott & the Black Jacks, the Vaqueros and the Motowns.

Some interesting tidbits can be gleaned from the comments section accompanying 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 along the Kalverstraat, a busy shopping street in Amsterdam, to the delight of senior citizens and pretty shopgirls.

The angry, nose-picking toddler at the end of the first clip makes a cameo in the second. Actually, there is quite a lot of crossover. The Dutch were clearly intrigued by this flamboyant Englishman. If you were part of the cast, please contact me, especially if you are the hot, bespectacled blond wearing the unseasonal shorts in the second clip.

Playing these heartwarming clips every morning will get you through the rest of the day with a smile on your face, a spring in your step, and a song you can’t stop humming.

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 (pictured at left), 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 Italy, 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 about Lally Stott, please contact me. I don’t even know what “Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep” is about.

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

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NOTE: Completely 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