GALE STORM - I HEAR YOU KNOCKING (in colou

This week in 1955, I HEAR YOU KNOCKING by GALE STORM entered the US Billboard Chart Top Ten (Nov 1955)
NOTE: I've colourised this TV clip from the original black and white film.
Written by the New Orleans trumpet player Dave Bartholomew and guitarist Earl King (listed as "Pearl King" - his songwriting pen name), this song was published in 1955 and quickly became a rhythm & blues standard.
The first to record it was Smiley Lewis, a New Orleans singer who ran in the same circles with Bartholomew and King.
With a slow, swinging blues sound, the song is emblematic of the New Orleans sound of the era popularized by Fats Domino, whose version made #67 US in 1961.
The song is about a guy whose ex-lover returns to him. When she left, he begged her to come back, but now the tables are turned and he won't even answer the door.
Singer/actress GALE STORM recorded a very popular version of this song that went to #2 US in 1955. Storm, who starred in a TV show called My Little Margie at the time, did a sultry version with the gender switched.
Dave Edmunds, best known as a member of Rockpile and as a solo artist, brought this song back to the charts with a rocking guitar version released in 1970. In his version, he namechecks some of his musical contemporaries, including Smiley Lewis, who originally recorded the song, and Fats Domino, who also covered it.
It was Edmunds' first single; the song did very well in America, but far better in his native UK (he's Welsh), where it was one of the biggest selling singles of all time to that point. He had several other UK hits, following up with another retro cover: "Baby, I Love You," which made #8 in 1973. He had a number of other hits in his native Britain, among them "Queen of Hearts" and "I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock & Roll)." These were also minor hits in the US (where Juice Newton's 1981 cover of "Queen of Hearts" would also reach #2), but Edmunds' only other American Top 40 hit was 1983's "Slipping Away," which just barely made the list at #39.
The original Smiley Lewis version is in 6/8 time, but Edmunds recorded it at 4/4 to make it more contemporary. At first, Edmunds added a lot of instruments, but he wasn't satisfied with the results.
After leaving it for a few weeks, he returned to the song, stripped it down, and got the sound he wanted.
GALE STORM
Storm, whose real name is Josephine Owaissa Cottle, was born in 1922 in Bloomington, TX. Her father passed away before her first birthday and left her mother as sole support of five children. Their home lacked modern conveniences like indoor plumbing. They made do with an outhouse and laundered their clothes with homemade soap. By the time Storm entered junior high school in Houston, there still wasn't enough money for extras like girls' clubs, including the Girl Scouts. Storm turned instead to the school's free drama club.
In high school, a pair of her teachers encouraged her to participate in a popular contest of the day, Gateway to Hollywood. Held in Hollywood during the late '30s, the competition offered an opportunity for two winners to walk away with a movie contract. Storm was one of those winners and a young man was the other. The two contestants ended up marrying each other, and Storm had her foot in the door at RKO and Universal. She went on to make such films as Between Midnight and Dawn, Woman of the North Country, It Happened on Fifth Avenue, and Foreign Agent, among others.
After Storm triumphed in the talent contest and won her trip to Hollywood, luck didn't desert her. When she appeared on the Comedy Hour Show, where she sang a popular number, her performance was caught by a little girl watching television in Gallatin, TN. From the next room, the child's father also heard the performance and asked who was on the broadcast. The child told him that the stunning singer was "My Little Margie." The girl's father, Randy Wood, was excited enough by her voice that he placed a telephone call then and there, while Storm was still on television. He wanted to sign her to his company, Dot Records.
Storm began to record for Dot. In 1955, her rendition of "I Hear You Knocking," originally by Smiley Lewis, landed in the Top Five on the charts. Other 1955 releases include "Memories Are Made of This" and "Teen Age Prayer," followed in 1956 by "Ivory Tower" and "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" and the following year, "Dark Moon." She also recorded "My Happiness" and "Now Is the Hour," and issued a few albums.
During the late '50s she starred in The Gale Storm Show on television. Later in life, Storm appeared in regional theater productions near her San Fernando Valley home. With actresses Sheree North and Betty Garrett in 1987, she co-starred in a production of Breaking Up the Act. In 1981 she wrote I Ain't Down Yet: The Autobiography of My Little Margie.
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