FTV: One Hit Wonders
Okay music trivia fans, can you name the lead singers for the following one hit wonder bands from the early 1970s? We can hum a couple of bars of the Jeopardy waiting music while you search your memory banks: Edison Lighthouse…White Plains…Pipkins…Brotherhood of Man… First Class…okay, time is up! There is one little letter in the opening sentence placed there to purposely send you down a rabbit hole because there weren’t ‘five lead singers’ involved in all of these hit making bands; only one. His name is Tony Burrows and in 2022, the now retired singer had one of these hits go viral on TikTok even though he was 80 years-old and retired at the time. Maybe it would be best to go back to the beginning before we try to piece all of these hits together.
Anthony Burrows was born in Exeter, Devon, England on April 14, 1942. His odyssey as a professional singer began as a member of the vocal harmony group The Kestrels. His first solo album came out in 1965 under the pseudonym ‘Tony Bond’. His next landing spot was with a group called the Ivy League before they morphed into The Flower Pot Men not long after he joined. Members of the The Flower Pot Men’s touring band included two founding members of Deep Purple, Jon Lord on keyboards and bassist Nick Simper.
In his book Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders: Revised and Expanded, Wayne Jancik reports that Burrow’s first hit song vocal appeared on the song Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes). The song was co-written by Barry Mason and songwriter/producer Tony Macauly of which Mason said, “It had been dashed off in 40 minutes in Macaulay’s London apartment.” They recruited Burrows to sing the lead vocals and when it became a hit, they needed to assemble a band to make appearances.
Macaulay and Mason found a band called Greenfield Hammer and rechristened them ‘Edison Lighthouse’ to give the unexpected hit a face. The band (which had not recorded the song – studio musicians had performed the track and Burrows provided the vocals) included Stuart Edwards (guitar), David Taylor (bass) and Ray Dorey (drums). Released in January of 1970, the song sold 250,000 copies in the United Kingdom and remained No. 1 on the UK charts for five weeks. When Love Grows was released in the United States in February of 1970, it rose to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. By April it had sold over a million copies and was certified as a Gold Record. As it goes in the world of reviving hits via streaming, TikTok reported on-demand streams of Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Grows) surged in 2022. This 1500 percent increase happened in just ten days as a new generation of fans discovered the song 50 years after it first topped the charts.
In the same time frame that Tony Burrows recorded Love Grows, he was also a member of The Brotherhood of Man along with Johnny Goodison, Robert Greenway, Sue Glover, and Sunny Leslie. Goodison (credited as Peter Simons) and Tony Hiller wrote the song United We Stand which was recorded in late 1969 and released in 1970. It spent 15 weeks on the charts and reached No. 13 in the States and No. 10 in the UK. Since then, it has been covered at least 100 times by artists ranging from Elton John to Sonny and Cher and the Muppets (with Lola Falana).
Interestingly enough, Elton John (still known as Reg Dwight back then) was working as an office boy in London for Mills Music (at a Denmark Street music publishing house). Tony Hiller also worked there and knew Dwight could sing so he had him record the original demo for United We Stand. It would later resurface on John’s 1994 album Reg Dwight’s Piano Goes Pop.
Burrows would sing on one other Brotherhood hit single in 1972 (Reach Out Your Hand) before Hiller formed a new Brotherhood of Man group with completely different personnel.
In 1969-1970, the group The Flower Pot Men were struggling to get a hit record. Their new producers, Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook, were also their main songwriters. Amid numerous personnel changes, they renamed the band White Plains. This group is credited with the song My Baby Loves Lovin’. Released on January 2, 1970, the song was a No. 13 hit in America and charted at No. 9 in the UK. While Tony Burrows is often credited as the lead singer on the track, he was in fact a background vocalist behind White Plain’s lead vocalist Ricky Wolfe. In some live appearances, Greenaway was known to step in on lead vocals in place of Wolfe, so we will have to put an asterisk next to the claims that the lead vocal on the song was originally done by Burrows.
Roger Greenway and Tony Burrows would also collaborate on a novelty song called Gimme Dat Ding that appeared on an album of the same name in 1970. The album only reached No.132 on the Billboard Hot 200 but the single reached No. 6 in the UK and No. 9 in the US. Written by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood, it was the only song that charted among the twelve that the Pipkins recorded in their very short career.
The fifth entry in our Tony Burrows hit song tour is perhaps the most circuitous one. The group known as First Class had a hit in 1974 with Beach Baby. It peaked at No. 13 in the UK and No. 4 in the US. It was written by a former member of The Flower Pot Men named John Carter and his wife Gillian Shakespear. When Carter left The Flower Pot Men in 1966, they were still known as The Ivy League. His replacement was none other than Tony Burrows. After they had written Beach Baby, Carter invited Burrows and Chas Mills to record it with his newly assembled studio band. The track was hailed as the UK equivalent of a Beach Boys song but neither Carter or Burrows had the time or inclination to tour behind it. Instead, they recruited a new group of musicians to tour as First Class included Robin Shaw (former bassist for White Plains), guitarist Spencer James (the future lead singer for The Searchers), and former Edison Lighthouse drummer Eddie Richards. The five piece touring band (including vocalist Del Johns and keyboardist Clive Barrett) pulled it off even though none of them had played on the record.
Carter and his former partner Ken Lewis had a band that dissolved when they decided to pursue session work as background vocalists. Their voices would be heard on hits like It’s Not Unusual (Tom Jones), I Can’t Explain (The Who), Hi Ho Silver Lining (Jeff Beck), and (There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me (Sandie Shaw). First Class released a second album but none of the tracks were as memorable as Beach Baby. The core group was down to a trio and Mills would soon leave the music industry to run a restaurant in North London. Burrows continued working as a solo and session artist. John Carter kept busy writing jingles and managing his back catalogue. When asked about his work with The First Class, he said, “Making the First Class albums was a very happy and creative time. Who knows if we ever come up with another suitable song, maybe we will get together one day and record under that name again?”
As for Burrow’s legacy, it should be noted that save Beach Baby, the other four hits were all recorded within nine months of each other and all released about the same time in early 1970. There have been some misconceptions about Burrow’s career singing for so many groups at the same time. In 2025, Mitch Mitchell wrote that Burrows was the first and only performer to appear with three different bands on one episode of the BBC’s Top of the Pops show. Presumably he appeared with White Plains, Brotherhood of Man, and Edison Lighthouse but wearing different clothes for each segment. A dive into the BBC archives proves that this is not totally accurate.
The show records do say he appeared with those three groups, but it was over a span of a month. Two of the bands (Edison Lighthouse and Brotherhood of Man) both performed on the January 29, 1970 Top of the Pops episode. Edison Lighthouse later appeared on February 5, 1970 and White Plains on February 26, 1970. Video evidence still exists of these performances, but Burrows never appeared with three different bands on one show.
Tony Burrows own solo career was moderately successful. His time as a first call session singer kept him busy with his voice contributing to 100 Top 20 hit songs in the 1970s. Elton John’s Levon and Tiny Dancer, for example, featured Burrows singing harmony vocals with James Cale and Cliff Richards. Other notable tracks he had a hand in included (Listen to the) Rhythm of the Falling Rain (The Cascades), Run Joey Run (David Geddes), and Never Gonna Fall in Love Again (Eric Carmen). In 2011, Burrows was awarded the BASCA Gold Badge Award in recognition of his contribution to music.
Tony Burrows isn’t the only anonymous voice who propelled records to the top of the charts in the 1960s and 1970s. Joey Levine became the voice on a string of hits for The Ohio Express but the story gets a little complicated. The name ‘Ohio Express’ was more of a brand name used by Jerry Kassenetz and Jeffry Katz whose company Super K Productions used a group of studio musicians from New York to record their hits. Singer/songwriter Joey Levine was part of this studio group.
The first Super K Productions single, Beg, Borrow, or Steal was actually recorded by a group called The Rare Breed but it did not chart. This group recorded one other record but left the company after some dispute and never recorded again. Super K then drafted a band from Mansfield, Ohio called Sir Timothy and the Royals, renamed them The Ohio Express and sent them on the road. The re-release of Beg, Borrow, and Steal now attributed to the Ohio Express did become a hit and paved the way for a string of hits that followed. Though the Ohio Express moved over to the premier ‘bubble gum pop’ label, Buddha Records, the records were still made in New York with Joey Levine doing the lead vocals. The touring band never appeared on any of the records and Levine never performed with them live.
Starting with Yummy Yummy Yummy, the Ohio Express scored three more Top 40 hits with Down At Lulu’s, Chewy Chewy, and Mercy. Levine was not satisfied with his compensation for the five hit records credited to the Ohio Express and when he left the company, the band never graced the charts again. Levine’s voice also appeared on Super K hits like Quick Joey Small and Life is a Rock (but the Radio Rolled Me) There have been multiple iterations of The Ohio Express that have come and gone (and are still plying the oldies circuit today) but none have included Levine.
Levine founded his own jingle production company and many of the earworm add jingles you have heard can be attributed to him. How about, “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t” used to market Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars? Our friends at Wiki expanded his resume as follows: “Popular campaigns from the past [created by Levine’s company] include: ‘Pepsi – The Joy of Cola’, ‘Gentlemen Prefer Hanes’, ‘Just For the Taste of It – Diet Coke’, ‘Orange you smart, (for drinking Orange Juice)’, ‘Come See the Softer Side of Sears’, ‘Heartbeat of America – Chevrolet“, “Dr Pepper – You Make the World Taste Better”, ‘You Asked For It, You Got It, Toyota,’ ‘Who’s that Kid With the Oreo Cookie,’ and ‘This Bud’s For You’ for Anheuser-Busch, and also the infamous ‘Proud as a Peacock’ image campaign for NBC used from May 1979 to Summer 1981.”
For a time, Tony Burrows and Joey Levine were the voices that sold millions of records. Pop stardom seems to be fleeting, at best, but the post pop hits arc of both of their careers showed that one can survive without necessarily having to go out on the oldies but goodies circuit.
Top Piece Video: Yes, that is Tony Burrow’s voice – but is this really him in the music video? You decide!