Hot Butter
Hot Butter were an American instrumental band fronted by the keyboard player and studio musician Stan Free. The other band members were John Abbott, Bill Jerome, Steve Jerome, and Danny Jordan and Dave Mullaney. They were best known for their 1972 version of the Moog synthesizer instrumental hit "Popcorn", originally recorded by its composer, Gershon Kingsley, in 1969.[1][2] The track became an international hit, selling a million copies in France, 250,000 in the United Kingdom, and over two million worldwide.[2]
Hot Butter
New York City, U.S.
1971–1978
Musicor
Dynamo
Stan Free
Dave Mullaney
John Abbott
Bill Jerome
Steve Jerome
Danny Jordan
History[edit]
The group released two albums, Hot Butter (Musicor MS-3242; 1972) and More Hot Butter (Musicor MS-3254; 1973), primarily of covers, on LP issued by Hallmark Records. (The 1974 Australian Moog Hits consisted of nine tracks from More Hot Butter, plus two new tracks, Roger Whittaker's "Russian Whistler" and "Mexican Whistler".) The two albums were compiled on CD as Popcorn on the Castle Music label in 2000, omitting "Pipeline" and "Kappa Maki" from More Hot Butter and the two new tracks from Moog Hits.
Tracks written by members of the band were "At the Movies" (the B-side of "Popcorn") and "Tristana", by all the band members except Free, and "Space Walk", by Dave Mullaney and his brother. "The Silent Screen (Hot Butter)" is credited to all the members except for Free, but it's actually an arrangement of the main theme of the first movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 40. Among the other artists covered by the band were Stephen Schwartz, Jerry Lordan and The Shadows, Neil Diamond, Joe Meek and The Tornados, Neal Hefti, Serge Gainsbourg, Robert Maxwell, Piero Umiliani, Jean-Joseph Mouret, Billy Joe & the Checkmates, Joe Buffalo's Band, Teo Macero, Leroy Anderson, Chuck Rio, and Norman Petty and The String-A-Longs. Mullaney and Abbott did most of the arranging. The Jeromes, Jordan, and Richard E. Talmadge produced the albums with MTL Productions for Musicor.
In addition to "Popcorn", another well-known track is August Msarurgwa's "Skokiaan", which was included on RE/Search's compilation album Incredibly Strange Music. Follow-up singles included The Shadows' "Apache", Chuck Rio's (Danny Flores) "Tequila", Billy Joe and the Checkmates' "Percolator", Joe Buffalo's Band's "Slag Solution", and Gene Farrow with G.F. Band's "You Should Be Dancing".