BILL and SUE-ON HILLMAN: A +50-YEAR MUSICAL ODYSSEY
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THE CHAD ALLAN
SHAKIN' ALL OVER STORY
www.hillmanweb.com/chadallan/shakin'.html

"Shakin' All Over" was originally performed by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. It was written by leader Johnny Kidd, and his original recording reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart in August 1960. The song is sometimes credited to Frederick Albert Heath, which is Kidd's real name.  The musicians who performed on the recording were Johnny Kidd (vocals), Alan Caddy (guitar), Brian Gregg (bass), Clem Cattini (drums) and Joe Moretti (lead guitar). Kidd was quoted as saying:
    When I was going round with a bunch of lads and we happened to see a girl who was a real sizzler, we used to say that she gave us 'quivers down the membranes'. It was a standard saying with us referring to any attractive girl. I can honestly say that it was this more than anything that inspired me to write "Shakin' All Over".
    Kidd's recording was not a hit outside Europe. In other parts of the world the song is better known by recordings from other artists.

The song gained more fame after it was recorded in Winnipeg in December 1964 by a group called Chad Allan and the Expressions. Chad recalls the events that led up to his recording "Shakin' All Over" in an interview transcribed by Bill Hillman in 2001 -- from a phone interview in the Wayne Russell collection:

CHAD ALLAN: We were very much into Cliff Richard and the Shadows. We were getting import albums from England all the time through a very good friend of mine - Wayne Russell - who is from Winnipeg originally. We were pretty much school buddies, he's now living in Brandon, Manitoba. Wayne is a record buff extraordinaire, very much into '50s and '60s material, especially early '60s, and really what happened is that I would go over to Wayne's place and he would play me the latest records that he sent away for in England. He had some amazing stuff that had never reached Canada, especially Winnipeg, and he's playing me all these tunes, Gerry and the Pacemakers and more obscure stuff... and he played some material for me by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates.

One of the tunes was Shakin' All Over and there was some other material as well. And this stuff was not making it in Canada at all to my knowledge... it was on HMV Records of England, I think. He played me this stuff and it really knocked me out. I don't remember the exact sequence of events but I do remember that Wayne suggested Shakin' All Over to us and I remember having some sort of reel-to-reel tape without any labels, without any song titles, or artist credits or anything and we weren't always aware of who actually wrote or recorded these tunes. And I remember, fairly distinctly being at home at a practise playing this reel-to-reel tape with all these tunes on it and we were picking tunes to record. We'd generally go down to Minneapolis to record a lot of our stuff - between Winnipeg and Minneapolis. As far as Shakin' All Over, we all liked it immediately. I don't remember who did the initial selling job on those. It was largely from Wayne Russell and then I guess the rest of us picked it up. We decided to do Shakin' All Over on stage. Later for the recording I added an acoustic guitar, we also added the click click click piano and we came up with a much different arrangement.

In the spring of 1965 the record became a #1 hit in Canada. The group's label Quality Records credited the artist as "Guess Who?" in an attempt to disguise their origin and hint that the group might be a British Invasion act. The actual name was revealed a few months later, but radio DJs continued to announce the artist as "Guess Who?". This prompted the group to change their name to The Guess Who. This version was also a #22 hit in the United States

The song has been performed many times by The Who, starting in the 1960s. In Randy Bachman's autobiography, he says that when he met Who bass player John Entwistle, he was told that people constantly got The Who and The Guess Who mixed up. Tired of being yelled at for not playing the song, The Who started playing it just to keep the crowd happy. Bachman responded that the Guess Who had the same reasons for playing "My Generation".

REFERENCES IN POPULAR CULTURE
    * The Guess Who version was included in the Battlefield Vietnam soundtrack. It can also be heard in the 2006 Edie Sedgwick biopic, Factory Girl. The Guess Who version was also featured in a Hugo Boss XY and XX Fragrance commercial, featuring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Bette Franke.
    * The song was referenced in a 1975 song by The Guess Who titled "When The Band Was Singin' 'Shakin' All Over'".
    * "Shakin' All Over" was featured several times in the UK TV series Heartbeat (1992 - 2007) (usually the version by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates) and in the first ever episode of the UK TV series The Royal on 19 January 2003.
    * Shakin' All Over is the name of a CBC Television documentary on Canadian rock music in the 1950s and 1960s.
    * The song is featured in the Mr. Bean episode "Mind the Baby, Mr. Bean".
     * The Pirates version of the song was featured in the film Crooked House.
    * A version by Wanda Jackson appears during the end credits of Bridesmaids, as taken from her album The Party Ain't Over (2011).
    * The album Sea of Tears by Eilen Jewell includes the track.
    * A cover of it by Rose Hill Drive is included in the 2005 game Stubbs The Zombie.

MORE MANITOBA MUSIC STORIES AT
JOHN EINARSON'S SHAKIN' ALL OVER EXHIBIT

www.hillmanweb.com/shakin/
IN THE MANITOBA MUSEUM
A Celebration of Made in Manitoba Music

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Shakin' All Over
Performed by Chad Allan & The Guess Who
When you move in right up close to me
That's when I get the shakes all over me

Quivers down my back bone
I've got the shakes down the kneebone. Yeah!
The tremors in the thighbone
Shakin' all over
Just the way you say goodnight to me
Brings that feeling on inside of me

Quivers down my back bone
I've got the shakes down the kneebone. Yeah!
The tremors in the thighbone
Shakin' all over

Well, you make me shake and I like it, baby
You make me shake and I like it, baby
Well, shake, shake, shake
Shake, shake
Shake, shake, shake
Shake, shake, shake


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