The Flamingos' Buzzy Johnson Dreams Up The World's Dreamiest Cover Song

I Only Have Eyes for You

There is only one version of this song that matters, and it is The Flamingos’ woozy, spectral slow dance from 1959, with its harmonized cavern of aching.  It is the definitive version of the song, yet The Flamingos were simply covering an old standard, a number written by Al Rubin and Harry Warren back in 1934 for the Busby Berkeley musical Dames with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, already a hit for Ben Selvin in 1934 and Peggy Lee in 1950, among others.  Peaking at #11, The Flamingos version wasn’t even as big a hit as Art Garfunkel’s insufferable take from 1975, which topped both the stateside Adult Contemporary and UK Singles charts.  Yet, there is only one version of the song that made Rolling Stone’s list of greatest songs of all time, the Grammy Award Hall of Fame, and earned the Flamingos a spot in the Rock’n’Roll  Hall of Fame.  So, really, whose song is it?  Is it Al Rubin and Harry Warren’s for writing it, or Dick Powell for first singing it, or Busby Berkeley’s for needing it, or is it Terry ‘Buzzy’ Johnson’s for reinventing it?  If the song is good, does it really matter whose it is?

In 1959 when The Flamingos’ cover came out, it was commonplace for bands to cut their own versions of popular songs, and it mattered less who wrote the song.  Today there are still plenty of factory songwriters and hit makers on label payrolls, but there tends to be a certain stigma against cover songs, or at least in favor of original songwriting.  Just look at the way in which pop stars like Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift have been praised relentlessly for writing their own songs, even when the song sounds as pre-fab as any record exec-approved pro team job.  Cover bands can eke out a rock’n’roll lifestyle playing bars in small towns, but on a larger scale they are second rate, the minor leagues.  Certainly, the occasional cover is encouraged, especially when ironic, or as an artist’s hat tip to a song they find meaningful, but largely the pattern has been that once a band starts in with the covers, their time is almost up. 

Ironically, that was the case for The Flamingos and their cover.  The group came up in the early 50’s along with a number of acts, many with bird names—the Orioles, the Crows, the Wrens, the Ravens, the Penguins, and later non-avian groups like the Platters and the Coasters, who expanded on the harmonized vocal sounds of 40’s groups like the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers to create the onomatopoetically named style of Doo Wop.  Buzzy Johnson joined the group in 1956, shortly before they signed to Decca, arranging and taking the lead on his first song with the group, “Ladder of Love”.  The group cut 10 songs for Decca, and though none of the songs were originals, Johnson described “Ladder of Love” as “my baby because I thought it was the only one that really had potential”.  The Decca execs ended up making a hatchet job of his baby, burying the vocal harmonies he had arranged and overdubbing some white girls on backing vocals, making the song sound like “something Pat Boone would do”.  The whole project was doomed.  It turned out that Flamingos member Nate Nelson was under contract to Chess Records, and Chess threatened to sue.  Decca all but pulled the plug, refusing to promote the band’s releases, and with frustration all around, the deal was scrapped.

On the verge of oblivion, the group caught a break in 1958 when Richard Barrett, an A&R guy at End Records, responsible for discovering the Chantels and Frankie Lymon, convinced the label execs to sign the Flamingos.  Impressed with Buzzy’s version of “The Ladder of Love”, the label put him in charge of the group’s recordings.  The group scored their first hit shortly after, with a Buzzy Johnson original called “Lovers Never Say Goodbye”, breaking into the pop market.  The End Records execs announced to the group with excitement that white people loved their music, and suddenly everything was different.  The label gave Johnson 33 old standards to choose from, 12 of which would make Flamingo Serenade, their first LP, including covers of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and the song “I Only Have Eyes for You”. 

Buzzy didn’t like the song at first, didn’t know what to do with it.  He had been handed the sheet music, but he thought the song was too plain.  He listened to other versions of the song, all of which he found “just so vanilla”.  He was laying in his room, playing around with the chords on his guitar, trying to follow Nate Nelson’s advice to really change the song up, maybe make it sound Russian or something, but nothing he tried was working.  Then he fell asleep and dreamt the song perfectly.

In my dream I heard ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ just the way it came out on our record. I heard the ‘doo-bop sh-bop’ [backing vocals], I heard the way the harmony would sound — I heard the harmony so clear, and I heard the structure of the chords. As soon as I woke up, I grabbed the guitar off my chest and it was like God put my fingers just where they were supposed to be. I played those chords and I heard the harmonies, and so I called the guys. I woke them all up and I said, ‘Come over to my room right now! I’ve got ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’!’

The group recorded the song in one three hour session with some studio musicians in the same studio where Buddy Holly had recorded “Rave On” just months before.  There were no overdubs, just the hired band following Buzzy’s direction, the group engulfing their five part harmony in a canyon of reverb, and Nate Nelson’s lead vocal.  The label liked the song but didn’t think it would cut it as a single, so left it as an album track, putting the group’s take on “Goodnight, Sweetheart” as the A Side for radio stations.  Yet “I Only Have Eyes for You” was so unique, DJs started playing it instead, and the song rose to #11 on the Billboard chart, becoming the group’s signature song. 

            By 1960 the group splintered, with member Tommy Hunt leaving for a solo career, and Buzzy and Nate breaking off to form the Modern Flamingos, later changed to the Starglows.  The Flamingos went through a rotating cast of members throughout the next decade, and into the next century, with countless incarnations of the Flamingos covering the Flamingos cover of “I Only Have Eyes for You”, yet of every version, there is only one that is the stuff dreams are made of.