The “Golden Hits Of The 60s”
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CHRIS KENNER
“I Like it Like That, Part 1”
(CHRIS KENNER, Fats Domino)
lnstent 3229
No. 2 July 31, 1961
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According to Chris Kenner’s booker, Percy Stovall, Kenner was not much in the way of being a
professional performer. “He couldn’t sing, he couldn’t dance, he dressed raggedy–he just stood there,”
Stovall told Almost Slim author I Hear You Knockin. “He would get so drunk he would forget the words to
his song; they used to throw bottles at him.” Despite problems of this sort, Kenner created some
rock’n’roll “perennials,” cutting and canning some of the finest recorded examples of the New Orleans
sound.
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Chris was born Christmas Day in 1929, in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans. He worked as a
longshoreman and sang in a number of gospel groups, including the Harmonizing Four. In the ’50s, Chris
switched over to rhythm & blues. His first disk, “Grandma’s House” b/w “Don’t Pin That Charge on Me”–
released on Baton Records in 1955–bombed. A few years later, the producer for Imperial Records, Dave
Bartholomew, let Kenner have another crack at it. “Sick and Tired” (R&B: #13, 1957) turned out to be a
big seller in New Orleans.
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Kenner only made one other record with Imperial because label owner Lew Chudd didn’t think he had
much of a future. But the following year, Fats Domino covered “Sick and Tired” (#22, 1958) and sold a
million copies. After a single for Ponchartrain (“You Can’t Beat Uncle Sam” b/w “Don’t Make No Noise”)
and one for Ron (“Life Is a Struggle” b/w “Rocket to the Moon”), Kenner had his moment.
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“Like It Like That’ was a slang gimmick,” Kenner told John Broven in Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans.
“It was a good title and I tried to put a story to it. I worked on it a little while and got it together, you know.
We didn’t think it would be a hit record … I had it on tape at Allen Toussaint’s house, and one day [Instant
Records] Joe Banashak stopped by. He played him some old tapes, and that particular song Banashak
liked.” The BOBBETTES, the Dave Clark Five, and Loggins & Messina liked it like that, too: each group
charted with remade versions of Kenner’s smash.
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Chris received a Grammy nomination for “I Like It Like That,” appeared on “American Bandstand,” and
toured with the Coasters, Gladys Knight & The Pips, and Jackie Wilson. He continued to wax solid efforts
like “Something You Got,” a much-recorded disk, and in 1963 recorded his career crowner, the original
version of “Land of a Thousand Dances” (# 77, 1963). Although most pop fans associate the tune with
Wilson Pickett (#6, 1966), “Land” was also a hit for CANNIBAL & THE HEADHUNTERS (#30, 1965), Thee
[sic] Midnighters (#67, 1965), THE ELECTRIC INDIAN (#95, 1969), and the J. Geils Band (#60, 1983).
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As Kenner explained to Boven, the song “… actually came from a spiritual, ‘Children Go Where I Send You’
and I turned it around. It was inspired by the dance tunes going around.” Nowhere on the record does
Kenner say anything about a “land of a thousand dances.” But upon listening to the original master tape,
Goldmine’s Almost Slim noted a 10-second introduction, snipped from the track at the last minute, that
had Kenner calling out: ”I’m gonna take you, baby/I’m gonna take you to a place/The name of the place is
the Land of a Thousand Dances.”
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Chris’s career came to a halt in 1968 when he was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary for statutory
rape of a minor. On his release four years later, $20,000 in accumulated royalties was there for him.
Almost Slim wrote that “in true Chris Kenner style, the money was exhausted within a month.” Hep’ Me
Records issued two further singles, “You Can Run but You Can’t Slip Away” and “We Belong Together:’
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Chris Kenner was found dead from heart failure in his rooming house on January 28, 1976–he was 46.