40th Anniversary of "Undercover Man"

May 2025 marks the 40th Anniversary of the little known song "Undercover Man".  That song was written and recorded by the one-gig-per-year Party Rock Band called the Cool Brothers.  This podcast episode of Rock and Roll Flashback is a lighthearted homage to "Undercover Man", to the Cool Brothers, and to the band's benefactor, Wilbur Lehman.  

All podcasts on the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast are produced by brothers-in-law Bill Price and "Jumpin' John" McDermott. The Podcast Theme Song, "You Essay", was written by John. It was initially recorded by Bill and John on April 1, 2004 with several revisions since then.
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Thank you for listening to Rock and Roll Flashback Podcasts!
Until next time...
Rock On!

Transcript

Jumpin' John (JJ):  May 2025 marks the 40th Anniversary of the little known song "Undercover Man".  That song was written and recorded by the one-gig-per-year Party Rock Band called the Cool Brothers.  This podcast episode is a lighthearted homage to "Undercover Man", to the Cool Brothers, and to the band's benefactor, Wilbur Lehman.  Welcome, everyone, to Rock and Roll Flashback!  We are here at the Classic Frog Recording Studio, and I'm here with my podcast partner, Bill Price!  Good to see you, Bill!

Bill Price (BP):  Never heard of him!

JJ:  Never heard of him.  Anyway, Bill and I are here.  We are going to do a lighthearted flashback.  We are going to go back forty years ago to 1985 and an exclusive Cool Brothers track.  We're gonna discuss an all-time classic song that the Cool Brothers composed and recorded back in 1985.

BP:  Well, one thing maybe you should mention just how the Cool Brothers name came about.

JJ:  Well, why don't I let you go into a little bit more detail about that.

BP:  Well, I guess it goes back to sometime in - I don’t know - was it the late '70's or early 80's?

JJ:  The late '70's.

BP:   See you're taxing my memory already.  Anyway, we were at the World Famous Lehman Inn Rock and Roll venue, and one time we were there in the back yard and foolin' around and you brought your two acoustic guitars out, and we just started jammin' and that was kind of...

JJ:  It was kind like a hootenanny.

BP:  Yeah and that was kind of the beginning of the Cool Brothers.

[From July 4th, 1977 the Dirty Gritty Band performing "Home On the Range", featuring Wilbur Lehman and Sally McDermott on vocals.]

BP:  Now the name Cool Brothers has an interesting connotation.  Since I'm from California originally, my nickname was Cal.  And John being from, he's originally from PA..

JJ:  Western PA.

BP:  Western PA.

JJ:  Coal Country.

BP:  Coal Country.  So I was Cal, and he was Cole.

JJ:  Spelled C-O-L-E.

BP:  And we became the Cool Brothers, because we were obviously cool.

JJ:  That's right!

BP:  Anyway we started jamming with acoustic guitars, and that led to more things, more instruments, electric guitars, keyboards, you name it.

JJ:  Yes, they expanded quickly.  It was interesting too that the Cool Brothers were promoted with a series of spots.  I don't know, were they 60 second spots?

BP:  Yeah.

JJ:  And they were promoted throughout Pennsylvania with these spots.  But one thing about the, and we're going to listen to a couple of them shortly, one thing about them was they were really focused on limited concerts, wouldn't you say?

Linda Price (LP):  Oh, yes.  They only came to the World Famous Lehman Inn once a year.  The Fourth of July.    

[Here is one of the 1983 Cool Brothers promo spots]

[Here is a 1985 Cool Brothers promo spot]

JJ:  Do basically it was an annual event.  And by the way, thank you Linda for sitting in and giving us your insights into not only the Cool Brothers but also into this exclusive song that we are going to talk about in a minute.

BP:  Well the Cool Brothers also had an M.C.  Wilbur, the M.C.

JJ:  Wilbur Lehman, the proprietor of the...

JJ & BP (in unison):  World Famous Lehman Inn.

BP:  And he would actually construct a stage for us where we would perform for the Fourth of July.  And in one Fourth of July he introduced us as just coming back from the Three Mile Island area.  This was the time when the Three Mile Island had the nuclear accident.

JJ:  I believe we have a sound bite of that.  Let's play that right now.

BP:  OK.

[Wilbur Lehman's 1985 introduction of the Cool Brothers.]

JJ:  He was very generous with his time.  He put a lot of time and effort into making that stage. So we never had it collapse under us, and we also received a very generous payment from him in terms of beer.

BP:  Oh, yes.

JJ:  Payment in kind, as they call it.

BP:  The one concert that stands out for me was the World Famous Monsoon Concert.

JJ:  Yes!

BP:  It was a tremendous downpour of rain, so he kind of at the last minute constructed this overhead tarp over us...

JJ:  Yes, overhead tarp.

BP:   And every so often we would have to enlist the audience to help drain the water off the tarp.

JJ:  Yes.

BP:  So that was interesting.

JJ:  Very memorable.  That was a good one.  The song that we're going to talk about today is entitled "Undercover Man", and when we performed these exclusive concerts at the Lehman Inn normally our repertoire would include a variety of tunes, ranging from rock to country to even polkas.  And some of them were actually original tunes, such as "Lazy Days", "Hot House Blues", "Yodel-Lay-He-Who", "Cool Brothers Polka", etc. etc.  And we happened to be together in New York State in 1985, and we came up with the idea of this song called "Undercover Man".  Now Linda, I would have to give you credit for giving that inspiration - maybe not inspiration - but giving us the idea of "Undercover Man" as a song title and a subject.

LP:  Yeah well, the story goes where I was working, Dad - I guess he - he liked the way I worked and everything, where I worked.  And he told his workers that I was working under cover.  And I thought, well, I didn't want to tell him I wasn't, but I didn't want to tell him I was.  But then  he'd say "I don't know whose covers she's under".

JJ:  Boy.

LP:  And so then one day I bring Bill home, and I guess maybe Dad then knew who I was working under cover for.

JJ:  Well this employer, who shall remain anonymous right now, but this employer handled secret and top secret things of that nature?

LP:  I guess so.
 JJ:  Yeah.  That would lead to the undercover part of it, and we came up with this idea, well let's write a song about undercover man.  Anyway, we were together in 1985 in New York State, Linda came up with this idea of undercover man.  So Bill and I got together jointly, it was a joint effort.  We started out with the melody first.  Basically in the key of E I would say.

BP:  That's at least what the paper shows. 

JJ:  Right.  We started out with an E chord and jammed around for awhile and came up with a chord progression and came up with a chorus, and then we sat down and tried to put some lyrics together that would make sense.  That would have kind of a double meaning for undercover man, similar to what Linda implied her father was saying.  So we came up with lines like "baby I'm lonely tonight, 'cause without you nothing seems right, while I sleep I dream of you dear, it's your warm body that I long to be near".

BP:  So that had some rather dicey connotations.

J:  Yeah.  It was edgy for us.  Not your typical Lehman Inn polka or Cool Brother polka.  It's a little bit edgy lyrics.  Then we had kind of a bridge going up to the chorus. "You've broken many hearts along the way, promising others that you'd come back some day, I've played the detective, I've searched for the clues, and now I've got those lonely man blues".  We're both looking here at our original, hasn't been entered into the...

BP:  Scribbled down

JJ:  It's scribbled down notes.  It hasn't been entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. yet but, these are the original notes on the song.  So, Bill why don't you read the four lines of the chorus.

BP:  "I want to be your undercover man, I will love and protect you the best that I can, sliding together under covers at night, awake in the morning holding you tight".

JJ:  So that was kind of the basic premise of the song.  It was kind of a double entendre or double meaning, but it was one that we felt fit together pretty well and then it ended up the second verse was "baby you treat me unkind, at work I can't get you off my mind, I love the laughter in your face, your smile is something I just can't replace, some call me a dreamer in search of perfection, a politician in search of re-election,  I've played the detective, I've searched for the clues, and now I've got those lonely man blues".  And then we go back into the chorus again.  So that was kind of the premise of the song. and we didn't record it when we wrote it.   We wrote it up in New York State, but we recorded it in Fairfax, Virginia.

BP:  Yeah, if my recollection is correct, we recorded that on my TEAC 4-track recorder.

JJ:  OK.  So initially we recorded it on the TEAC.  We had a drum machine.

BP:  Yeah.  You had your electric guitar, I guess with a pedal effects.

JJ:  Yes.  I believe that was with a flanger pedal.  

BP:  Yeah.

JJ:  My electric Kent guitar.   And you were playing a keyboard of some sort.

BP:  Yeah, yeah that probably might have been the Korg 800.

JJ:  OK.

BP:  Synthesizer.

JJ:  OK.  So we recorded the basic tracks, and then you went back and - I sang it - and you also added some bass guitar later.  So we came up with the final song, which we are going to play here shortly for you.  The song itself did not make it into the Billboard Hot 100.

BP:  Or the Billboard Hot 1000 either.

JJ:  No.

BP:  In fact, it didn't even get out of the house.

JJ:  Right!  Now, did we ever perform it?  I cannot remember.

BP:  I don't think so.

JJ:  Yeah.  It wasn't overly complex...

BP:  It would have been a little tricky to perform live because you would be playing the guitar, I'd have to do the keyboards...

JJ:  And the drums.

BP:  then the bass guitar and the drums...

JJ:  So two people can't do the four...

BP:  That would have been quite a challenge.

JJ:  Yes.  I know Getty Lee on Rush, he was able to play bass guitar and then hit pedals with his feet.  

BP:  We weren't quite that versatile.

JJ:  We weren't quite that versatile.  Anyway, that is the story, the background behind that big Cool Brothers hit from 1985, "Undercover Man"!

BP:  You refer to it as a hit?

JJ:  That big hit!

BP:  Oh well, maybe I would rephrase that as a non big hit.

JJ:  That regional song...

BP:  Very regional!

JJ:  "Undercover Man"!

BP:  By the Cool Brothers!

[Take 6 of "Undercover Man" by the Cool Brothers, 5/19/85]

JJ:  So that concludes another fascinating flashback episode from 1985 of the Cool Brothers song "Undercover Man".  Thank you again for listening to Rock and Roll Flashback with your hosts, Jumpin' John McDermott and...

BP:  Bill Price.  And until next time...Rock On!