Trouble: You've Got Your Troubles

David and Jonathan: You've Got Your Troubles

[purchase]

David and Jonathan, perennials in lists of one-hit wonders for their cover of The Beatles’ Michelle, were actually Roger and Roger — Cook and Greenaway.

If you don’t know their names, you will know their songs. They wrote such hits as Gene Pitney's Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart, The Hollies' Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress and Gasoline Alley Bred, Home Lovin’ Man for Andy Williams, Deep Purple’s Hallelujah, Something Tells Me Something’s Gonna Happen Tonight for Cilla Black; White Plain’s My Baby Loves Lovin’, Blue Mink’s Melting Pot, Whistling Jack Smith’s I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman, Cliff Richards' High And Dry, and Gary Lewis’ Green Grass.

They also wrote a song called True Love and Apple Pie for Susan Shirley. They later rewrote that song with two other chaps to produce the famous Coca-Cola jingle I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke, which in turn became a rather annoying hit for The New Seekers (get the Susan Shirley song and the Coke jingle as well as the story of the song HERE). By contrast, for themselves they wrote songs with titles such as Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen By-The-Sea (well, they did have another UK hit with the more soberly titled Lovers of the World Unite).

Their first successful songwriting collaboration was You've Got Your Troubles, which was a US and UK top 10 for The Fortunes. The Birmingham band would have a hit with another Greenaway/Cook song, This Golden Ring. The two Rogers recorded the song themselves, but it seems unclear when: one source claims that they did so before The Fortunes recorded their version in May 1965; most sources say David and Jonathan’s version was released in 1966.

Anyhow, the two Bristolians ceased their biblically-monikered George Martin-produced duetting high jinks in 1968, having recorded a flop with Softly Whispering I Love You (four years later a hit for The Congregation). Greenaway was invited to join the newly-formed band Blue Mink. He declined, but recommended Cook, who became co-lead singer with Madeline Bell. Cook and Greenaway wrote the bulk of Blue Mink songs.

After Blue Mink, Cook moved to Nashville, eventually becoming the first British songwriter to be inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.