Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts debuted 70 years ago

Continuing down the musical peanut shells trail, one path leads to Chapel Hill, N.C., to celebrate the 70-year anniversary of the rock ‘n’ roll band known as Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts.

The group formed in 1955 at Lincoln High School, which served the segregated African-American student population in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Original members of the group were Doug Clark (drums) and his brother, “Big John” Clark (saxophone), along with William “Chicken” Little (guitar), Prince Taylor (vocals) and a trumpeter who went by the name of “June Bug.”

Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts evolved into a big-time, party-time band, touring the southeastern United States and performing at social functions, which were largely sponsored by collegiate fraternal organizations. The group was raunchy, and the student bodies lapped up the lewd lyrics.

Ben Windham, a retired editor at The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News, commented: “Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts were in the vanguard of the sexual revolution, maybe even more than Hugh Hefner (of ‘Playboy’ magazine.)”

“Back in the 1960s, things were different. You had to hide a Doug Clark record where your parents couldn’t find it – if there ever was such a place.”

“Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts could never play a high school dance. They never got radio play. Nice stores didn’t sell their records,” Windham wrote.

“Yet, they were incredibly popular. They recorded nine albums in the 1960s. Everybody knew their songs. The crowd I ran around with knew all their lyrics. In moments when adults were scarce, we’d sing the songs and laugh and laugh.”

Hot nuts hot nuts, get ‘em from the peanut man,

Yeh yeh yeh yeh yeh, nuts, hot nuts

Get ‘em any way you can.

“Their music was average, at best, but those sexually charged lyrics! For the early 1960s, they were something else,” Windham said. “That’s what made Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts famous (at least among us teenagers).”

Sam Hicks, a music historian and performer, said the group “cornered the college market” with “raucous live shows.”

Major record labels couldn’t afford to be associated with the group because the Hot Nuts’ lyrics went far beyond what was normally called “party records” at the time. Jubilee Records of New York City created the “Gross” label, designed especially as a vehicle for music of Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts.

Gross went out of business as a record label in 1970, and all of the group’s original recordings are now out of print, as is a short-lived CD compilation.

Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts inspired the creation of Otis Day and the Knights as the fictional R&B band shown in the 1978 movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” (Both main songs – “Shout” and “Shama Lama Ding Dong” – were recorded for the film by uncredited studio vocalist Lloyd G. Williams, and lip synched by actor DeWayne Jessie.)

Musicologists suggest that the Doug Clark and The Hot Nuts’ sound was influenced by Lil Johnson, who recorded “dirty blues and hokum songs” in the 1920s and 1930s, and is most famous for “Get ‘Em From the Peanut Man (Hot Nuts),” a risqué song that she composed and recorded in 1936.

“Dirty blues” was Johnson’s specialty. She often performed with a pianist known as Black Bob Hudson, guitarist Big Bill Broonzy and trumpeters Lee Collins and Alfred Bell. All were early pioneers in the development of “good time” music.

Doug Clark died of leukemia in 2002. He was 66. But the Hot Nuts band plays on, continuing to perform at corporate events, class reunions, wedding receptions and other functions.