RE:Visit – John Fred and His Playboys, “Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)” (1967)

It is well-known that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” but what if there’s hardly any imitation to be found in the final product?

Arriving in 1967, John Fred and His Playboy Band released the song “Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)” on the Louisiana-based Paula Records label. The song was co-written by vocalist Fred (real name: John Fred Gourrier) and drummer Andrew Bernard. The title was derived from Fred’s mishearing The Beatles’ “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” released earlier that year, interpreting “in the sky” as “in disguise.”

As we know now, The Beatles song is a wordplay skirting around the experience of an acid trip, with “Lucy,” “Sky,” and “Diamonds” denoting L.S.D. It is renowned for it’s dragging verses, kicking into an energetic, sing-a-long chorus. “Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)” is known for sounding vaguely similar in title to “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” and that’s as far as it goes.

It is difficult to ascertain whether John Fred’s song would have taken off the way it did without that very-thinnest Beatles connection. The song itself has a slightly manic feel. The lyrics are nearly as nonsensical as The Beatles track, but in an entirely different way.

Judy in disguise, that’s what you are
Lemonade pies in a brand new car
Cantaloupe eyes, come to me tonight
Judy in disguise (with glasses)

You almost have to feel sorry for the band, having gotten the wording wrong from the start. Now they were saddled with the word “disguise,” meant to be “in the sky,” requiring the need for other words to rhyme with it, making no sense whatsoever. How did they do it? Apparently by throwing whatever came close at the wall. If it stuck, it stayed.

And honestly, the words didn’t matter. The song is driven mainly by Fred’s garage-rock vocal delivery, backed by horns more inclined toward Detroit than Louisiana, and the band emulated Mitch Ryder’s “Devil With A Blue Dress” rather than look to regional influences like zydeco or Fats Domino. There’s a television clip of the band lip-synching the song, and Fred is out in front with an eye-gouging yellow shirt, super-skinny striped pants, and love beads that, at times, look poised to rise up and strangle him. (It was just the fashion of the times.)

I have no affinity for the track. I don’t hate it, but it is far earlier than my time. If I have a particular memory of it, it would be its occasional appearance on my mother’s favorite oldies radio station. It’s one of those tunes that would buffet more well-known ones, just as something from Lou Christie or Johnnie Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge might do. I will confess that the track has a hell of a hook that, on alternating days, is either highly effective or extremely irritating. When Fred sings “Judy in disguise…,” he completes with, “With glass-ses,” broken for emphasis. The horns mirror his voice. The song stops, but is not over. They kick back in with a Troggs-like exhortation of “Come to me tonight…” and on. As a kid, however, that sudden stop to the song with it not being over was a lot like the dog owner pretending to throw the ball, the dog going out to catch the ball, but surprise, it was a trick!

You might ask, if you have no great love or dislike for the song, then why talk about it? To me, this song is a weird nexus of things all meeting together, like they pulled a bit of everything from all over the place – a mondegreen title, a hippie ethic, a Northern Soul vibe – and Frankensteined something out of it. Surprisingly, it worked for them, but it rendered the band the dreaded one hit wonder status. They’d never do better for themselves than “Judy In Disguise (With Glasses).” The fun of the story behind the song is from how convoluted it all became. This became an international hit!

P.S. – In a weird twist of fate, international distribution for the song frequently was administered by EMI Records, famously the company The Beatles was involved with.