Tony Orlando Honors Composer L. Russell Brown at New Jersey Hall of Fame
(l-r) Brown and Orlando
By all accounts it was a heartfelt celebration when New Jersey Hall of Famer (Class of 2023) Tony Orlando honored Newark composer L. Russell Brown, 85, by giving him the NJHOF “Everyday Hero” award. Brown co-wrote the beloved American anthem “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ol’ Oak Tree” with Irwin Levine of Livingston. Tony Orlando & Dawn took it to #1 in 1973. Six years later, in 1979, Americans remembered it enough to tie yellow ribbons around trees all across the country for the hostages in Iran, who finally came home stateside in 1980.
Brown also wrote “Sock It To Me, Baby,” a big hit for Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels in 1967, a song my 16-year old self had my mom buy for me at the Belmont Record Shop on Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair. I drove my grandparents crazy playing it over and over while my single mom was at work so I just had to ask him about it.
“I was given the job to rehearse Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels for three weeks,” he remembers, “and to tell the producer, Bob Crewe [of Four Seasons fame] when the band was ready. I had never had a hit before and when the record was finished, the label decided to put out `Devil With The Blue Dress On’ instead. I thought I was finished, that my career was over. But Bob Crewe promised my song would be the follow-up single. It was and it sold a million records! Nobody was more shocked than me! It went Top 10! And as I listen back to it today, I realize it is, indeed, a great little rock’n’roll record.”