"Flowers on The Wall" is a song made famous by country music group The Statler Brothers. Written and composed by the group's original tenor, Lew DeWitt, the song peaked in popularity in January 1966, spending four weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard magazine Hot Country Singles chart, and reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song was used in the soundtrack to the 1994 film Pulp Fiction and as the title theme of the 2001-2002 BBC Radio 4 sitcom Linda Smith's A Brief History of Timewasting. The song mentions the lines in the Chorus: "Playing Solitaire till dawn/ with a deck of fifty one", and "Smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo." The final lines say "Oh Don't tell me/ I have nothing to do".
[edit] Chart positions
| Chart (1965) |
Peak
position |
| Canadian RPM Top Singles |
1 |
| New Zealand Singles Chart |
2 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks |
2 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 |
4 |
| U.K. Singles Chart |
38 |
[edit] Eric Heatherly version
Eric Heatherly recorded the song in 2000 on his debut album, Swimming In Champagne. Also released as his debut single, Heatherly's rendition reached No. 6 on the Hot Country Songs charts and No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100.
[edit] Chart positions
| Chart (2000) |
Peak
position |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks |
6 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 |
50 |
| Canadian RPM Country Tracks |
3 |
[edit] In popular culture
The song is used in the soundtrack to the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. Bruce Willis's character sings along to the line, "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo." In the 1995 film Die Hard with a Vengeance, when Willis's character John McClane is desribing his suspension from the police force, he says he was "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo."
The song was frequently employed as bumper music on the syndicated radio talk show Coast to Coast AM, particularly in the earlier days when Art Bell was the host.
This song also featured as the theme song to A Dog's Show (1977 to 1992), a New Zealand television series featuring sheepdog trials.
[edit] References
[edit] Sources
- Whitburn, Joel, "Top Country Songs: 1944-2005," 2006.
