“In a sense, ‘Playground’ hurt me,” Clint Holmes told Bob Gilbert and Gary Theroux in The Top Ten. “It branded me as a novelty singer… We recorded another song in the similar vein, which I did not want to do. It was called ‘Shiddle-ee-Dee’ and the very title tells you what the song was like-a bomb.”
Born in Bournemouth, England, on May 9, 1946, Clint was raised in Farnham, New York. Holmes showed an interest in music while quite young, and his mother, a former British opera singer, encouraged him and acted as his first vocal coach. While in high school, Clint had his own pop band, and majored in music at Fredonia College. After a stay in the service as part of the Army Chorus, Clint began playing nightclubs in Bermuda and the Bahamas. One night, the successful songwriting team of Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss happened onto his stage act. After Clint’s performance, they approached him with some tunes they hoped he might record–in particular, “Playground in My Mind.”
Clint was not ecstatic about recording the ditty, but was impressed with their credentials. Paul and Lee had composed Perry Como’s “Catch a Falling Star,” the CUFF LINKS’ “Tracy,” the DETERGENTS’ “Leader of the Laundromat,” and Brian Hyland’s “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” to name but a few. The fact that the tune would require a little boy’s goo goo gaa-gaa babblings (supplied by Paul Vance’s son Phillip) didn’t help, Clint agreed to give it a shot. Upon the issuance of the disk, certain regions of the country took an immediate liking to “Playground,” but it was nearly a year before the nation began buying up skids full of Clint’s “Playground.” Lightning need not always strike twice, however, and all of Clint’s future singles on Epic Records stiffed–as did his years and years of releases on the Buddah, Atco, and Private Stock labels. Nothing, but nothing Clint recorded seemed to ever recapture the pulse of pop America.
Clint Holmes is still–as of the early ’90s–carrying the torch of hope and making the nightclub circuit. ”I’m trying to create a new image, which is why I don’t do that song in my act anymore. ‘Playground’ was an excellently-made record, but it could have been almost anybody singing it; therefore, it was not a career-making record. It didn’t bear the stamp of Clint Holmes. I think that’s why, even today, a lot of people remember the song but not the fellow who sang it.”
