Lost in the ’80s: Frankie Smith, “Double Dutch Bus”
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 by John C. Hughes
What’s up, every bizzle? It’s Jizzle-ohn in the hizzouse with another Lost in the Izzle.
Before you grab the flaming torches and pitchforks, let me just say that’s my li’l way of introducing you to today’s artist, hip-hop pioneer/legend Frankie Smith, co-author of the classic “Double Dutch Bus” and progenitor of “izzle”-speak. That’s right, Frankie Smith gets all the credit/blame, not Snoop Dogg, who appropriated the izzle to big success a few yizzears ago.
A song about both the jump-rope technique and public transportation in Philly, “Double Dutch Bus” (download) was a nearly instantaneous smash on the R&B charts after its release. Smith wasn’t quite an overnight success, though, having spent some time in the trenches as a writer for acts like the O’Jays, Billy Paul, and other artists in the Philadelphia International Records stable. Smith got the idea for “Double Dutch Bus” after being turned down for a job as a city bus driver. He ended up in the studio at two in the morning, where he recorded a profanity-laced tirade about the bus system that, once cleaned up, became a single.
After massive success on the R&B charts (it spent eight weeks at the top), “Double Dutch Bus” crossed over to the pop side of things, where it had a little more difficult time, peaking at just #30. The chart position belies its importance in hip-hop history, however, since the song has been remade, sampled, stolen, etc., over and over, most recently by Missy Elliott with “Gossip Folks” in 2003, and this year’s travesty, a more straight-ahead remake by former Cosby Show cutie Raven-Symoné.
As for Smith, he had trouble following up, failing to chart any more singles on the pop side of things. Smith went into acting with parts in Beloved (1998) and various B movies. His Wikipedia page claims he currently works as a delivery driver, which I sort of want to believe because it would mean he finally got that dream driving job he always wanted, yet I don’t want to believe it because that’s a little depressing after scoring a gold single. Can you imagine Frankie Smith delivering your package? “Here you gizzo. I just need your sigizznatizzure right hizzere.”
“Double Dutch Bus” peaked at #30 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and at #1 on the Hot Soul Singles chart in 1980.
Get Frankie Smith music at Amazon or on
![]()





Hardcore David Bowie fans are probably familiar with the name Ava Cherry, but for the benefit of everyone else, Ava was Bowie’s lover in the early to mid ’70s, as well as one of his backup singers in the Astronettes during the Diamond Dogs/Young Americans Tour. Bowie had plans for Cherry and the other Astronettes, producing an album for the trio that was New Wave before the term existed. It also ended up being shelved for twenty years when things with their mutual management MainMan went sour.
Combining shoegaze and dreampop with straight-ahead power pop, Washington D.C. indie-rock darlings Unrest were the brainchild of Mark Robinson, founder of the TeenBeat label. After a few post-punk experimental years, Unrest tamed their sound a bit (with plenty of more unorthodox tracks here and there) and snagged a distribution deal with famed 4AD Records, which was itself distributed in the U.S. by Warner Brothers. This is a roundabout way of basically saying their 1993 album, Perfect Teeth, was the first to get a major label push which resulted in the band getting some MTV play on “120 Minutes.”
If at first you don’t succeed … fail a second time. Third time’s the charm!
Anyone who’s ever worked at a record store that buys and sells used CDs can tell you what titles they see over and over again. Jagged Little Pill, Cracked Rear View, the entire Cranberries catalog … these are discs that clog the bins coast to coast, as music buyers buy, absorb, and ultimately get sick of these huge mega-hits. The second type of disc you see a lot is the one-hit wonder album - Vanilla Ice’s To The Extreme or today’s featured artist’s album, Chumbawamba’s Tubthumper.
Let’s get all the cute little jokes about the title of today’s featured song out of the way first, shall we? I’ll pause while you do so.
Boy, we’d buy anything in the ’70s, wouldn’t we? Laverne & Shirley, the most successful spin-off from Happy Days, was riding high in 1976, overtaking its parent show to capture the number-one slot in the Nielsen ratings. It was time to cash in.
Riding a rockabilly/Motown revival during the early ’80s that also included the Polecats, Roman Holliday and the Stray Cats, Britain’s JoBoxers (with American lead singer Dig Wayne) barely scraped the Top 40 in the States with “Just Got Lucky,” another one of those hits that got bigger as the years rolled on, being featured in plenty of movies, most notably The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But while “Just Got Lucky” is what the band is best known for here, it was actually their first single in the U.K., “Boxerbeat”
So, who worries about the music their kids listen to?
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing