Hiding from 'Shaving Cream'

Fab Five originally used a pseudonym and a bad voice to disguise ownership of song

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

If there is someone who still has a copy of Shaving Cream, the Fabulous Five Incorporated's second number one single from its first 45-rpm pressing in 1975, the name on the label will not be the one they are accustomed to.

On that first run (which sold out very quickly) the song was attributed to The Razor Blades.

And, chances are, if it was not by now well known that it is actually Fab Five who 'Jamaicanised' the song written by Benny Bell in 1946 and first sung by Paul Wynn, they would not make out the lead singer's voice as that of Astley 'Grub' Cooper, OD.

Not that Cooper is not renown for doing spot-on imitations of other singers - the band's live party recording series attests to that over and over again - but in this case, he tells The Sunday Gleaner, he was told to sing badly.

Disguise

"The instruction was do it like you can't sing," Cooper said. So it was fun in the studio as Cooper used a "strange voice I had not used before". He has used that "old-man kind of mento" vocal style over and over since, though, for that particular song during live performances.

As for the briefly used pseudonym, Cooper says, "We did not want to be identified. Back in the day, using the 'sh...', we did not want to be identified with it ... . We were seen as a middle class, clean band".

Then, "when the song came out it did not stop playing. The next set came out with the name Fab Five. The first batch of records sold off in days". And, obviously, they would have to perform Shaving Cream, so the pseudonym would not have lasted very long anyway.

Shaving Cream relies on innuendo, each verse putting the singer's forlorn persona into a particularly putrid predicament, laced with fecal matter, but the four letter word is never completed, the audience left to have their merry way with 'it' as the lead singer goes into the refrain:

I have a sad story to tell you

It may hurt your feelings a bit

Last night when I walked into my bathroom

I stepped in a big pile of sh...

Shaving cream, be nice and clean

Shave every day and you'll always look keen

Song banned

Cooper says they could have been introduced to the song by Fab Five's co-manager Dickie Wong (along with Danny Smith), who owned the Tit for Tat Club on Red Hills Road where Skin, Flesh and Bones was the house band. They also ran a record label, on which Fab Five's take on Shaving Cream (including Jamaican references such as 'ilie', the then in term for marijuana) was released.

Shaving Cream was banned in short order, but not before receiving enough airplay to firmly establish it. Then there was the jukebox, sound system and, of course, the band's numerous live performances, Cooper saying "it was more popular than the festival song of that year". That was Roman Stewart's Hooray Festival.

"It was one of those enigmatic songs, like My Leader Born Ya, that played outside of politics and anywhere. And it was not pushed by a particular disc jockey, but enjoyed what Cooper terms a "spontaneous break".

Then it was banned. "The nowadays people would ask why they banned the song, but it is how the value system has changed," Cooper said. And Shaving Cream does enjoys airplay now, with everyone knowing that it is Fab Five performing.

"The only other pseudonym we got by deception," Cooper said, that coming when the band was dismissed in an interview with the moniker 'Sons of the Jungle' by an American singer for whom they had done tracks but who refused to credit them.