Return To 60’s Main Menu Recording Artists Of The 60s
SENATOR BOBBY
“WILD THING”
(Chip Taylor)
Parkway 127
No. 20 February 4, 1967,
,
.
,
Finally, the full story on Senator Bobby rock’n’roll’s Robert F. Kennedy impersonator. What follows
are extracts from an exclusive interview with the man behind this bizarre version of “Wild Thing,” Chip
Taylor, one-half of the folk rock duo JUST US. Mr. Taylor (nee James Wesley Voigt, b. 1940, Yonkers,
New York) is a alt. country rock singer and the songwriter responsible for classics like MERRILEE RUSH
& THE TURNAROUNDS’ ” Angel Of The Morning,” the Hollies’ “I Can’t Let Go”–and the Troggs’ “Wild
Thing.”
“My brother Jon [Voigt, the actor] had gone to school with Dennis Wholey. This one day, Dennis and I
met on a bus; it was the fall of 1966. We were just kidding around when he started telling me about this
guy he knew [Bill Minkin] who did all these impersonations--Chet Huntley, the Lone Ranger, Murray the
K. Without thinking, I just said, ‘Well, why don’t we bring him in the studio and just fool around, and do
‘Wild Thing’ as if it was SENATOR EVERETT MCKINLEY DIRKSEN [who had recorded a spoken-word
tribute to “Gallant Men” in 1966]?
“I went into the Mira sound Studios. I had this demo track, the original demo track that the Troggs had
sent me, doing ‘Wild Thing.’ We had the guitar on this one channel, and we used that channel with a
vocal overdub by this guy, Bill Minkin. We had Bill do one side imitating Robert Kennedy, and the
other, doing Everett Dirksen.
“When the single took off, we just went back in with Minkin and a bunch that Dennis had assembled,
called the Hardly Worthit Players [Wholey, Steve Baron, and Carol Morley], and did this straight-
ahead comedy LP [The Hardly Worthit Report, 1967] as a follow-up. ‘Wild Thing’ surprised us all, and
so we went and did one other single, a take-off on Donovon’s ‘Mellow Yellow’ (#99, 1967) [a “duet” as by
Senator Bobby & Senator McKinley], but that was it.”
Minkin has moved on to public relations firms and ad agencies, where he has created industrial videos
for such firms as McGraw- Hill and Nabisco. Bill has also written comedic material for Sandy Baron
and Dave Astor, and during the ’60s made stand-up appearances at night spots like New York’s Scene.
Baron has written TV scripts as well as pop and folk songs for publishers like April/Blackwood and Wild
Indigo. Steve was a folksinger and played at New York’s Bitter End and Gaslight Cafe. More recently,
Taylor reports, he has worked as an independent televison producer in Nashville. Morley was active in
the ’60s, playing the theater scene in Newport, Rhode Island and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Carol
also did TV commercials for Cascade Soap and Rival Dog Food.