Reader’s Choice/Tom’s Top Tunes…Song #52/250: Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas

The journey from being a brand new baby to being a high school graduate, let’s say, is a truly remarkable one. In the beginning, the newborn babe can’t walk or talk or protect itself or even understand much of what is going on in the world around it. It is helpless. But then learning and study and practice begin. All of the acquired skills of mobility and communication and self-preservation come in time with the guidance of mentors in the form of parents, teachers and other adults who care. As the child’s physical skills develop, their ability to deepen the intellectual capacity of their brains develops in lockstep. By the time their childhood training culminates toward the end of high school (around age 18 in the part of Canada where I live), the only question that truly remains is if that child is ready to become an adult and enter the so-called real world. Most children are, in fact, ready to take this next step. So we dress them up in caps and gowns in order to celebrate the miracle that is childhood. Then we stand back and watch them head out into the world, hopeful that we have helped them enough and that they can successfully find their way. As mentors and teachers, we have done what we can. The journey is now theirs to discover.

If you are of a certain vintage, as I am, then you may remember a television show that appeared on network TV in the early 1970s called Kung Fu. The show starred David Carradine as a man who roamed the world in the peaceful pursuit of knowledge. In each episode, Carradine’s character usually ended up running afoul of other male characters who didn’t understand the nature of his gentleness and the great calm that he possessed. Inevitably, in each episode there would come a scene in which Carradine would attempt to explain why quiet contemplation was his preferred method of co-existing with nature and with other humans. But, when his self-discipline would end up being mistaken for weakness, Carradine would display a set of martial arts skills that would leave the bad guys on their backs after having flown through the air. Through it all, Carradine would reflect back to the training he had received as a child when he was affectionately called Grasshopper by his teacher. The backstory for this show was that Carradine was raised in an environment that valued the ancient art of Kung Fu. From his earliest days as a child, his teachers were always helping to instill within him the physical skills and intellectual self-discipline that comes from this art form. In order to test young Grasshopper’s readiness to leave the safety of his school and head out into the world, the teacher would hold out his hand. In it sat a small, round pebble. Grasshopper would be asked to snatch the pebble from his teacher’s hand before his teacher could close his fist. If Grasshopper managed to snatch the pebble, it signified that it was time for him to leave. Day after day, episode after episode, young Grasshopper would fail in his attempt to snatch the pebble. Then one day, after he had suitably mastered the philosophy of Kung Fu, he snatched the pebble from his teacher’s hand. It was time for Grasshopper to leave. Thus, the TV show Kung Fu had a plot device that propelled the series forward through several seasons. What many viewers who watched this show failed to realize was that the philosophy of Kung Fu and the martial arts used in the fighting scenes are not the same thing. The words Kung Fu actually stand as an umbrella term for an entire philosophical mindset that marries physical self-control and self-discipline with robust intellectual growth. The martial arts that we have come to call Kung Fu are merely one aspect of what Kung Fu really is. Did you know that the slow ballet of Tai Chi is also considered to be Kung Fu? Any activity in which the mind and body work in harmony as one entity is a form of Kung Fu. The mind is the movement and the movement is the mind. However, it is a tough sell to make a movie based on the slow paced dance that is Tai Chi. Our society, being what it is, seems drawn more to action and fighting and war than it is to displays of gentleness and self-control, so the idea that Kung Fu means martial arts was allowed to take root in our cultural consciousness.

In 1964, I began my training in life. Learning to control my bowels and keep down my food were highly prized skills in my earliest days. While I was learning to sleep for more than two hours at a time, a young man named Bruce Lee was entering a martial arts contest called The Long Beach International Karate Championships. With his handsome appearance and amazing physical skills, Bruce Lee wowed those in attendance. Lee was a devotee of a form of Kung Fu known as Jeet Kune Do. His strength, agility and fighting skills, combined with his mystique as a man from Hong Kong opened the door in North America for him as an actor in action films. In fact, his films such as Enter the Dragon helped to launch an entire new genre of action-oriented martial arts based films that also helped make stars out of men such as Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Consequently, for a while in the early 1970s, movies and television shows that featured the martial arts of Kung Fu were one of the hottest cultural trends in North America and throughout the rest of the Western world. Not surprisingly, that trend soon came to include music.

In 1973, a young man named Carl Douglas was working as a backup session singer in the UK. Like many session singers, Douglas had dreams of one day moving to the front of the stage and singing his own songs. In order to help land a recording contract, Douglas cobbled together enough savings to be able to afford three hours of professional studio time. With that time came the assistance of a sound engineer, session musicians and a record producer named Biddu. The goal of this session was to record a professionally-produced single that Douglas could then take to radio stations and record companies to use to promote himself and hopefully land a recording contract. For two of his three hours of studio time, Douglas worked on his single, which was a song called “I Want to Give You My Everything”. When that song was finished, Biddu and Douglas realized that they only had one hour left to record a B-side song. Because Biddu was known for producing dance-oriented tracks, he had several knock-off novelty dance type tunes available for Douglas to choose from. Because the Kung Fu trend was hot, it was decided that the B-side would be a Kung Fu-oriented dance song called “Kung Fu Fighting”. No one thought that this song had a chance of becoming a hit. It was simply a throwaway song that would fill out the B-side of the real single. No one really cared that much about it. There were only ever two takes recorded, because that was all the time that was available. From those two takes, a final B-side recording was pressed and young Carl Douglas headed out into the world.

Initially, Carl Douglas rightfully peddled “I Want to Give You My Everything”, as that was the song that was supposed to launch his career. But the reaction of those DJs and radio executives who listened to it was underwhelming. Weeks went by. Then, as often happens in stories such as this, a DJ in a club decided to give the B-side a listen. This DJ thought that “Kung Fu Fighting” was a song with great potential as a club hit, so he played it for those in attendance that night. The crowd response was very positive. “Kung Fu Fighting” became a hit in nightclubs all over the UK, just as Disco was starting to become a thing, too. When “Kung Fu Fighting” met the Disco dance craze, it was discovered that the rhythm of the song worked in time with the actual martial arts movements found in Kung Fu and, more specifically, in Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do version of Kung Fu. After becoming a dance club hit and starting a Kung Fu style dance craze, “Kung Fu Fighting” became a chart-topping song that swept the planet. It was an accidental hit for Carl Douglas and his producer Biddu, but sometimes we find miracles where we least expect them. This brings us to The Bronx, NYC.

In Bruce Lee, the world found a person who, for a time, was able to bring western and eastern cultures together via his Kung Fu action movies. In Carl Douglas, the world found a man who, for a time, was able to bring the genre of Kung Fu action films together with the genre of music. In the mid 1970s, those two worlds collided in a different way in The Bronx, NYC. New York City was undergoing a period of transition in the 1970s. The disco craze was manifesting itself in the form of hot-ticket nightclubs such as Studio 54. Punk rock was gaining a toehold in the city as The Ramones, Blondie and Patti Smith made clubs such as CBGBs the place to be. Meanwhile, a third new genre of music was gaining traction on street corners, in basements and in community halls all across places such as The Bronx. That music was Hip Hop. In the 1970s, the grandfathers of Hip Hop, DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa were emerging as leaders of this burgeoning musical movement. Just as Kung Fu is actually many different but related disciplines, Hip Hop is also an overarching term that encompasses many different forms of musical expression. One of those styles that the afore-mentioned Hip Hop legends sought to consolidate under the single banner of Hip Hop was a dance style known as break dancing. Break dancing may have evolved as a legitimate dance form in its own good time, but what accelerated that development was the introduction of Kung Fu movies as a genre into NYC and the success of the song “Kung Fu Fighting”. If you examine break dancing, you will see that there are a variety of signature moves that help to characterize break dancing as its own unique dance form. Many of those signature breakdancing moves were inspired by watching Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies on community screens in The Bronx. The introduction of Carl Douglas’ song created a bridge that allowed break dancers to combine Kung Fu-oriented dance moves with music. As Hip Hop grew as a genre and spread out into the world, as it were, break dancing became one of the most visually appealing aspects of it. But the roots of it all come back to the combination of Kung Fu and music. 

I will close this post by dropping one further connection to this story. This is for people who know the films of director Quentin Tarantino. One of the things that Tarantino has become known for in his movies is the placement of music from the 1970s. Almost all of his films contain funked up versions of classic 1970s FM radio hits. If it is true that Quentin Tarantino has a musical style that he enjoys, it was also made clear in his Academy Award nominated film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that he also has a style of 1970s music that he doesn’t like, which is Disco. Without uttering a single syllable in the movie, this is how Tarantino made a sly commentary on the state of Disco music and on the song “Kung Fu Fighting”. 

In real life, when Bruce Lee came to California in 1964 and took his star turn at The Long Beach International Karate Championships, he did so with an eye to parlaying his success there into a career in Hollywood. As a next step to getting himself known in Tinseltown, Bruce Lee became a personal trainer to various Hollywood A-list celebrities. One of those whose body he trained was actress Sharon Tate. It would be nice to talk about Sharon Tate and focus solely on her career. However, instead we find ourselves most often mentioning her as one of the most famous celebrity murder victims of all time. Her death at the hands of Charles Manson and his followers forms the backdrop of Tarantino’s revisionist take on 1970s Hollywood history. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino posits the question of how the cultural and political history of America would have changed if Sharon Tate’s murder had been averted. In teasing out this alternate storyline, Tarantino also takes time to note that if one aspect of history changes, then that single act impacts other parallel timelines and events. Thus, Quentin Tarantino gets to take a cinematic shot at Disco by having Bruce Lee get beaten up in his film. Why that matters is that Bruce Lee’s character is portrayed as being cool and arrogant. He gets his comeuppance in the form of a fight with a throwback character played by Brad Pitt. Pitt’s character is a former soldier who now acts as a bodyguard. He is a man’s man. He is handy with tools. He has good morals. He represents all that was good about the 1970s before the new guys like Bruce Lee showed up and ruined everything with their eastern philosophical take on what it means to be a man. If Bruce Lee and his ilk helped to inspire Disco and Hip Hop with their moves and because of songs like “Kung Fu Fighting”, then Tarantino’s film was a chance to think about a timeline going forward where the likes of Bruce Lee fall out of favour and fail to inspire anything, especially Disco-oriented dance songs like “Kung Fu Fighting”. Tarantino does this by having Brad Pitt kick Bruce Lee’s behind in a fight. That causes Bruce Lee’s character in the film to walk away in disgrace. Disco never happens as a result. Music remains pure. Men remain men of action. That is the magic of filmmaking. Anything is possible. History is what they make it. Tarantino offered his commentary without ever saying a word.

I have always liked “Kung Fu Fighting” as a novelty type song. It is fun and gets you moving, for sure. I admire Bruce Lee as a practitioner of Jeet Kune Do, but if you know me at all then you will understand that his version of what Kung Fu looks like is not something that works for me. I fall into the David Carradine/Grasshopper mentality of someone who goes out peacefully into the world and does not look for trouble but is ready for trouble should trouble arise. If Quentin Tarantino were to ever make a Kung Fu movie that correctly matched the life I lead and mindset I possess, it would undoubtedly be called Tai Chi Retiree. Now there’s a flick that would surely be a huge box office hit, eh? Making you chuckle right there is my superpower. We all snatch the pebble in our own way. 

The link to the video for the song “Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.

The link to the official website for Carl Douglas can be found here.

The link to the video for the trailer for the TV show Kung Fu starring David Carradine can be found here. The scene where Grasshopper finally snatches the pebble can be seen here.

The link to the trailer for the movie Enter the Dragon starring Bruce Lee can be found here.  

The link to a video that shows the connection between Kung Fu and breakdancing can be found here.

The link to a video from the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that shows the scene in which Brad Pitt beats up Bruce Lee (and stops Disco from happening) can be found here.         

    
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