Brenton Wood, the soul singer who sang 1967’s catchy “Oogum Boogum Song” and adopted it with the Top 10 hit “Gimme Little Sign,” died Friday at his residence in Moreno Valley, CA. He was 83.
His managers Isabel and Manny Gallegos confirmed the information to a number of media shops, saying Wood died peacefully in his sleep.
Born Alfred Smith on July 26, 1941, in Shreveport, LA, Wood was raised in San Pedro simply south of Los Angeles. He started singing and enjoying piano at an early age at signed with Brent Records and later Wand Records however didn’t produce a success for both. He then switched to Double Shot Records in Hollywood, the place he recorded “The Oogum Boogum Song.”
A borderline-novelty tune fueled by Wood’s candy falsetto and piano hook, the monitor went Top 10 at L.A.’s main Top 40 station KHJ-AM and dented the nationwide Top 40 in the course of the Summer of Love. He would carry out it on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, however his signature tune can be its follow-up.
“Gimme Little Sign” was a slow-building soul masterclass. Better identified by its sung refrain lyric “just gimme some kind of sign, girl,” the midtempo monitor crashed the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1967 and peaked at No. 9 just a few weeks later. It hit the UK singles chart 57 years in the past this week, and reached No. 8 after Wood carried out it on the favored TV music collection Top of the Pops. It was among the many few Sixties pop singles to not point out the precise title in its lyrics.
Watch the official lyric video for the tune right here and one for “The Oogum Boogum Song” under:
But “Gimme Little Sign” would mark Wood’s profession zenith. He cracked the Billboard Top 40 early 1968 with “Baby You Got It” and dented the Hot 100 later that yr with “Lovey Dovey Kinda Lovin’.” Wood’s sole charting album, 1967’s Oogum Boogum, peaked at No. 187 in 1967.
He went on to have a minor R&B hit with “Some Got It, Some Don’t” in 1968 and would launch quite a lot of singles into the late Seventies. “Come Softly to Me” was his solely different charting tune, reaching No. 97 on Billboard’s R&B tally in 1978.
Wood additionally appeared within the 1969 film Popdown. Information on survivors or a memorial have been incomplete.
Here’s the official lyric video for “The Oogum Boogum Song”:
DEADLINE RELATED VIDEO: