#82: I Been Moved by Andy Kim

City: Hamilton, ON
Radio Station: CKOC
Peak Month: August 1971
Peak Position in Hamilton ~ #9
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #97
YouTube: “I Been Moved”
Lyrics: “I Been Moved”

Andy Kim’s father came from Lebanon to Pennsylvania and finally settled in Montreal, where Kim was born in December 1946. Around the age of 15 Andrew Youakimm became fascinated with the music business in New York City. He’d travel from Montreal to the Big Apple by bus or train and try to figure out how to break into the music industry. He bought copies of Billboard Magazine, Cashbox Magazine and other trade papers to see which record companies had hits on the pop charts.

Kim recalls in an interview with Entertainment Week, September 21, 1974, “I figured those were the companies I would go to. I went to the A and R department of Paramount Records. I told the receptionist I had a meeting that afternoon but I just came by that morning to see the A and R man. She asked if I had a demo and I said yes. She sent me down a corridor to this man and I said ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what a demo is.’ He asked if I wrote songs or played an instrument. (I said) no. He said what the business involved, and I should not trick my way into places.”

Andy Kim began to experiment with songs taking an uptempo tune and making it a ballad. “I’d rearrange songs figuring it would change the personality of the song. I would look up publishers and ask for songs from their top writers. I didn’t get them (the songs from the top writers, so) I decided to write songs too. I discovered a talent I didn’t know I had.” It was while he was working at the Brill Building in the early 60s that Andrew Youakimm changed his name to Andy Kim for record releases.

Andy Kim got his first record released in 1963 with “I Loved You Once” on United Artists Records. He had two more singles on two other record labels in the mid-60’s. One of these, “Give Me Your Love”, peaked at #4 in Saint John, New Brunswick, in June 1964. But when Andy Kim signed with Jeff Barry’s Steed Records in 1968 his first single release, “How’d We Ever Get This Way”, was a Top 30 hit. It would be the first of eleven releases with the record label between 1968 and 1971.

The fourth single release on the Steed label was Kim’s most political, “Tricia Tell Your Daddy“. The song made the Top 20 in Vancouver (BC) in the spring of 1969. The same month “Tricia Tell Your Daddy” was climbing up the record charts in radio markets across Canada, a song Andy Kim co-wrote with Jeff Barry was released that would become the number one song of 1969. That song was by a cartoon group named The Archies and the song was “Sugar Sugar”. It was the polar opposite of a social commentary song like “Tricia Tell Your Daddy”.

Kim’s his next release, a cover of the 1964 Top 30 hit by the Ronettes, titled “Baby I Love You”, added to his appeal. It became his first Top Ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100. “Baby, I Love You” was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Kim’s next single which he wrote, “So Good Together, went to number-one in Winnipeg, but stalled at #36 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Kim struggled with his next two single releases in 1970, but at the end of the year he was back in the Top 20 with “Be My Baby”.

“I Been Moved” was cowritten by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim. Jeff Barry was born Joel Adelberg in 1938, in Brooklyn. Raised in a Jewish family, Adelberg went into the United States Army, and then attended City College in New York City. When he signed a contract to write and record with RCA, Adelberg changed his name to Jeff Barry. “Jeff” was inspired by actor Jeff Chandler (also born to a Jewish family and whose birth name was Ira Grossel). Barry recorded “Hip Couple”, a minor hit in Allentown (PA) in 1959. Jeff Barry’s writing credits include the 1960 Top Ten hit for Ray Peterson titled “Tell Laura I Love Her”, Helen Shapiro’s “Tell Me What He Said”, “Montego Bay”, “Lay A Little Loving On Me” and Olivia Newton-John’s 1974 number-one hit “I Honestly Love You.”

Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich co-wrote “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, “Maybe I Know”, “Hanky Panky”, “Leader of the Pack” and “I Can Hear Music”.

“I Been Moved” is a song about a guy who gets a pounding chest whenever he’s with his lady. He relates that “every time you move your body, girl, I like to wanna die.” She’s got his love for the taking, and his heart is aching, all because he’s been moved.

“I Been Moved” peaked at #5 in Montreal, #9 in Hamilton, #12 in Erie (PA), #15 in Vancouver (BC) and #17 in Toronto.

His biggest hit was “Rock Me Gently”, a #1 hit in the USA. It was seen as a come-back record. However, Andy Kim felt since his hit-making status had not been significant in terms of sales, especially in the USA, there was not much to come back from.

In the 80’s Kim recorded several albums under the pseudonym Baron Longfellow. Since the 90’s Andy Kim had regularly performed in concert under his familiar hit-making name. Since 2003 he has added three more studio albums to his resume, for a total of eight.

May 15, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
Andy Kim, Canadian Bands.com
About Andy Kim, Andy Kim Music.com
Martin Melhuish, Andy Kim: 2016 Inductee to Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, FYI Music News, October 27, 2015.
Brad Wheeler, “Andy Kim and Kevin Drew: Musical Romantics,” Globe and Mail, December 13, 2011.
“Sodajerker presents… Jeff Barry,” songwritingmagazine, January 8, 2015.
Paul Zollo,”Around the Bramble Patch: Jeff Barry,” Americansongwriter, August 2020.

CKOC 1150-AM Hamilton (ON) Top Ten | August 11, 1971