The “Golden Hits Of The 70s”
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OCEAN
“PUT YOUR HAND IN THE HAND”
(Gene MacLellan)
Kama Sutra 519
No. 2 May 1, 1971.
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Before the righteous vision hit them, they were Leather and Lace, like, a hippie band. According to Greg
Brown, the band’s keyboardist and vocalist, he and this dude, lead guitarist Dave Tamblyn, came together as
a weekend group in the summer of 1970, the year of the birth of Jesus Christ Superstar. Greg brought in
dear-voiced Janice Morgan, who would sing up-front on Ocean’s only Top 40 hit; his booking agent,
meanwhile, was on the lookout for other guys to gig with. “Primarily, we were searching for a bunch of
people that we would like,” Greg told Ritchie Yorke in Axes, Chops, and Hot Licks. “Ocean is more of a
people thing than anything else.”
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Jeff Jones and Chuck Slater were located to fill in on bass and drums, respectively. Canadian Arc Records
signed Ocean to a contract, put them in a studio, and told them to do their stuff. Never to be known for their
song-creating abilities, the group decided to cover singer-songwriter Gene MacLellan’s “Put Your Hand in
the Hand.” (Months before, Anne Murray had sold a million copies of her cover version of MacLellan’s
“Snowbird.”)
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With the success of NORMAN GREENBAUM’s delightfully confused “Spirit in the Sky” and George
Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” it looked to Greg like the world was ready for religious pop-rock songs; that
could chart. “I wouldn’t say that we feel strongly about the religious angle of the song,” Greg explained to
Yorke. “We were concerned that it might give the group a gospel image.”
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Unfortunately for the group, that is just what the record did. Top 40 radio will take to a spiritually inclined
tune every now and then, but not even when Jesus was a superstar and great numbers were under a
Godspell could an act sing the praises record after record and get away with it; big-time charting, that is.
Three follow-up singles, all ecological or religious in theme, did chart in the lower reaches of the Hot 100.
Thereafter, Ocean remained a Canadian happening.
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