Song Of The Day 7/5/2016: Blue Mink – “Melting Pot”

British Hits, American Misses II – It's been over a year and a half since the first installment of this series featuring songs that topped the British charts that were roundly rejected by the colonies. With the double-shot news of septuagenerian Brits voting to screw their great-grandkids because their local fishmonger wears a turban, and America's now-escalating debate about whether Donald Trump or the American people get to pose next to the "I'm With Stupid" T-shirt, it felt like a good time to cause some quality trouble while we're killing time waiting for The Hidden '70s to start.

First up is... oy. Oooh, boy. Boy oh boy oh boy. It's "Melting Pot" by Blue Mink. Blue Mink was filled with pedigreed London studio musicians who played for a wide-ranging docket of other cats, most notably Elton John. (John's super-percussionist Ray Cooper was a full-time member of Blue Mink.) They were pretty popular in the UK but never had a single sliver of chart success in the USA -- their most high-profile American moment might have been when Elton hosted their farewell show at the Troubadour in L.A. right before they broke up.

Their first hit "Melting Pot" was written by Minker Roger Cook and his partner Roger Greenaway. They were the co-writers responsible for, among other things, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)," immortalized worldwide by its use in a Coca-Cola commercial. "Melting Pot" is another attempt to bring all the colors of the world together. And it means well. Good Lord, does it mean well. And maybe they couldn't have imagined a world 47 years later when people might be put off by lyrics like... well:

Take a pinch of white man
Wrap him up in black skin
Add a touch of blue blood
And a little bitty bit of red Indian boy
Oh like a curly Latin kinkies
Oh Lordy, Lordy, mixed with yellow Chinkees, yeah
You know you lump it all together
And you got a recipe for a get along scene

Yeeeeeeah... well, it was a different world back then. Maybe you could throw a big to-do at the local bingo hall with those kinds of convivially condescending epithets and nobody'd get offended. To your face, at least. And what the hell is a "kinkie"?

Anyway, well, here you go, let's get this off to a booming start, "coffee-coloured people." And hey! Trump's new campaign manager! Do not use this SOTD as your goddamn playbook! Erase your browser history now or Boss Man's gonna get big ideas that are somehow going to squeeze out of that hole in his face.