Biography
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Founded In
New York, New York, United States
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Members
- Russ Prez
- Storm
Hot Butter was an American instrumental cover band fronted by the keyboard player Stan Free. The other band members were Dave Mullaney, John Abbott, Bill Jerome, Steve Jerome, and Danny Jordan. They were best known for their 1972 cover of the Moog synthpop instrumental, "Popcorn", originally recorded by its composer, Gershon Kingsley, in 1969. The Hot Butter version became an international hit, selling a million copies in France, 250,000 in the United Kingdom, and over two million globally.
The group released two albums, Hot Butter (Musicor MS-3242; 1972) and More Hot Butter (Musicor MS-3254; 1973), primarily of covers, on LP issued by Hallmark Records. The two albums were compiled on CD as Popcorn on the Castle Music label in 2000 (with an album cover from the 1974 Australian release of More Hot Butter titled Moog Hits, depicting the five other band members immersed in melted butter produced by Free's synthesizer), though several tracks, including Roger Whittaker's "Mexican Whistler", were deleted.
The liner notes to the CD indicate that Free played the Moog synthesizer. Based upon the photograph and the sound of the album, the group had two additional keyboardists, two percussionists, and a guitarist.
The only tracks written by members of the band were "At the Movies" (the B-side of "Popcorn") and "Tristana", by all the band members except Free, and "Space Walk", by Dave Mullaney and his brother. "The Silent Screen (Hot Butter)" is credited to all the members except for Free, but it's actually an arrangement of the main theme of the first movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 40. Among the other artists covered by the band were Stephen Schwartz, Jerry Lordan and The Shadows, Neil Diamond, Joe Meek and The Tornados, Neal Hefti, Serge Gainsbourg, Robert Maxwell, Piero Umiliani, Jean-Joseph Mouret, Billy Joe & the Checkmates, Joe Buffalo's Band, Teo Macero, Leroy Anderson, Chuck Rio, and Norman Petty and The String-A-Longs. Mullaney and Abbott did most of the arranging. The Jeromes, Jordan, and Richard E. Talmadge produced the albums with MTL Productions for Musicor.
In addition to "Popcorn", another well known track is August Musarurwa's "Skokiaan", which was included on RE/Search's compilation album, Incredibly Strange Music. Follow-up singles included The Shadows' "Apache", Chuck Rio's (Danny Flores) "Tequila", Billy Joe and the Checkmates' "Percolator", Joe Buffalo's Band's "Slag Solution", and Gene Farrow With G.F. Band's "You Should Be Dancing".
Stanley "Stan" Free (born Friedland) (April 12, 1922 – August 17, 1995) was a New York City-based jazz musician, composer, conductor and arranger.
David Mullaney (New York City, 1931 - 2018) was vice president of Laurie Records where he arranged for such artists as Dion, the Royal Guardsmen and Melanie. In 1969, he adopted the name Christopher Scott to record the album Switched-On Bacharach.
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