Against all odds, Ernie K-Doe is burning formerly again.
During the 2007 Christmas season, the British chemist's shop chain Boots featured K-Doe's 1970 transcription "Here Come the Girls" in a prominent TV ad run. In a popular commercial, dozens of female spot workers start primping at their desks, then strut out en masse to K-Doe's chorus.
Thanks to the Boots exposure, "Here Come the Girls" rocketed to No. 3 on the United Kingdom single charts. "That's astonishing, " said K-Doe's widow, Antoinette, "because Ernie's dead and the strain came from the grave."
On Saturday, July 12, Mid-City Lanes Rock 'n' Bowl hosts a "Here Come the Girls" party that should be yet some other milestone issue in the litany of K-Doe-related curiosities.
Blue Eyed Soul, the stripe that a great deal backed K-Doe in his later long time, will play his hits. In keeping with the theme of the Boots commercial, women are bucked up to pay heed in evening wear. One hundred women are to be presented with roses and escorted past the eerily lifelike Ernie K-Doe statue -- which, Antoinette says, will be affixed with its "standing legs" and available for saltation on a wheeled platform. And the show is on the seventh day of remembrance of Ernie K-Doe's funeral, in the same locus that hosted his repast.
Nine years after "Mother-in-Law" took him to No. 1 in 1961, Ernie K-Doe was badly in pauperism of a hit. He turned to producer and songwriter Allen Toussaint, the force behind "Mother-in-Law." Toussaint wrote a batch of new songs, including "Here Come the Girls, " and put K-Doe in the studio with the Meters as his backing isthmus. The solution, the self-titled "Ernie K-Doe" album, was released by Janus Records and speedily disappeared.
Cut to the summer of 2007, six eld after K-Doe's death. Antoinette K-Doe received a call off inquiring around the rights to "Here Come the Girls." She referred the caller to performance rights organization BMI and forgot about it.
Months later, her husband's 37-year-old recording is a stumble in England thanks to a pharmacy commercial. "Here Come the Girls" likely found its way to Boots' marketing team via "New Orleans Funk: The Original Sound of Funk 1960-75, " a compilation assembled by the British label Soul Jazz Records.
"I can't get Ernie back, so I thank them for putting it out, " Antoinette K-Doe aforementioned. "It could have been out there and done nothing."
Hoping to capitalize on the song's new popularity, in March the Great American Music label issued "Here Comes the Girls!, " a CD containing the original 10-song "Ernie K-Doe" album from 1971, two bonus tracks and an up-tempo, alternate take on "Mother-in-Law."
Her husband's unexpected life history resurrection overseas was a rare chip of full news in what was a rough spring for Antoinette K-Doe. On Mardi Gras, she suffered a heart attack, followed by a pocket-size stroke. Doctors inserted a stent to improve blood flow to her heart.
As she convalesced during Lent, Antoinette K-Doe temporarily unsympathetic the Mother-in-Law Lounge, the Claiborne Avenue nightclub/shrine. But it's open once once again and she reports that, at 65, she's feeling well. Tending her garden provides exercise, and she's committed to keeping her husband's memory alive. She plans to be at the Mid-City Lanes on Saturday in her evening gown.
"Ernie's still with us, " she said. "When they pass, they leave this great music. It's an honor to go to the jukebox and play his songs."
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