Humble Pie – Natural Born Bugie

This band contained the singer who I thought was one of the best if not best of his generation…Steve Mariott.  Mariott doesn’t sing this song but it’s a nice rock song. Bass player Greg Ridley took the lead vocals on this one. They had a nice guitar lineup going on… Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton.

Humble Pie had some great songs but nothing really caught on with the masses. That’s not always a bad thing but they never had a big song identifiable to them as some other bands do. They did have four top twenty albums but were more known as a live band…check out Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore that put them over the hump.

Natural Born Bugie was their debut single, which did well on the UK singles charts in the summer of 1969 becoming a #4 hit and was quickly followed by the album As Safe As Yesterday Is, which didn’t include the song.

After their debut hit, Humble Pie never became a singles act. None of their other British singles reached the charts. Hitting big in America, they were an album band that concentrated on the live experience. In the US their most successful single was “Hot ‘n’ Nasty,” which peaked at #52 on the Billboard 100 and #35 in Canada in 1972.

Steve Marriott had left The Small Faces and Peter Frampton had left The Herd and they formed Humble Pie. Marriott had bad management with the Small Faces and also throughout his career. After Humble Pie toured the US in 1969, they returned to England to discover that their record label (Immediate) had gone bankrupt. They were stalled for a time, trying to find a new manager and label. They eventually signed with A&M Records.

Later on, Frampton left but Humble Pie kept going. In the mid-seventies, their manager was Dee Anthony who had connections with the Mob. Everything was ok until Steve wanted to know where the money was at. Marriott began openly questioning Anthony’s business practices, and the singer was summoned to a meeting at a social club in New York’s Little Italy. According to Marriott’s ex-wife, among those in attendance were John Gotti and several other members of the Gambino crime family. Marriott was quietly persuaded to forget about any money he thought he had coming to him.

Jerry Shirley: “‘Natural Born Bogie’ was written after we had completed the album. If we had been smart we would have put it on the album. It was the first song that Andrew Oldham heard that he said had single sensibilities. I remember Steve at a rehearsal saying, ‘Here, I’ve got this, what do you think? I’m pretty sure he had the whole song. Funny thing was, we hardly ever played it live.

Natural Born Bugie

There she is again
Steppin’ out of her limousine, well
Looking like the cover of a twenty-dollar magazine
She’s got it made and branded
If you know what I mean

She’s a…natural born woman
Natural born woman
She’s a…she’s a natural born woman

There she is again watch her stop the Main Street in its tracks
Looking like Creole queen
Hair hangin’ down her back
I say, don’t look too long, boy
She’ll make your glasses crack

She’s a…natural born woman
Natural born woman
She’s a…she’s a natural born woman

Get your track
Yeah, natural born woman
Yeah, yeah…
Natural born woman
Yeah, yeah…
She’s a natural born woman

Well, I’m sweatin’ and I’m shakin’
When I’m bringin’ you the news
You can do anything
But lay off of my blue suede shoes
That’s why I’m standin’ here today
Preachin’ natural born woman blues

Well, she’s a…natural born woman
Well, yeah…
Natural born woman
Well, yeah…
Natural born woman

Well, I’m looking out my back door
Wonderin’ which place to go
Think I’ll move on down to Memphis
Pay my money to see a rock ‘n’ roll show
Find me a sweet-heart Susie
Together we can lose control

Ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
She’s a…natural born woman
Yeah, yeah…
Natural born woman
Yeah…
Natural born woman
Yeah, ooh…
Ooh…
All right…

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

26 thoughts on “Humble Pie – Natural Born Bugie”

  1. Great band! And I agree with you on Marriott – certainly one the best vocalists. He was a tiny wee guy too … all us short -arses need to stick up for each other! 😀

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  2. I hear this song occasionally today on UK streaming radio. I had no idea about the mob getting to their money. That is really scary. I hate that the mob got away with it easily. Frampton did so much good work before he went solo. He was a prolific artist from the start.

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    1. Marriott was really ripped off in the Small Faces and Humble Pie… yes it’s not much he could have done. I would like to hear some of Herd when Frampton was with them.

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      2. I just saw one called ‘I Don’t Want Our Loving To Die’ that obverse recommended…. Frampton looked like a child almost

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  3. Humble Pie decided to take an unassuming name in order to keep them from becoming a disappointment from any high expectations that people might have of them, as many groups in that category did not always end up meeting with the success that fans thought should happen and this allowed them to keep a low profile. Marriott died in a house fire in 1991 and he was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Small Faces. Preliminary reports said the fire was caused by smoking in bed, as it was thought that Marriott was probably too lazy to put out his cigarette before he fell asleep. Nice song Max.

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    1. Yea that was tragic because if he would have lived a little longer he could have made more money than he ever did by regrouping with the band… that was about the time Classic Rock was really taking off again and bands were reforming.

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  5. Well what do you know? I was pretty sure I’d never heard ‘Natural born Bugie’ but when I played it, I found I did know it, somewhat. Better than what I was expecting honestly, I’ve heard a handful of things by them I don’t really like. they and Uriah Heep were the 2 bands I’d see on the local radio station album chart (published underneath their top 30 songs) but never heard or had a clue about the sound of.

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  6. Good tune and I need to get better acquainted with Humble Pie. I swear that guy I used to babysit for had an album of theirs. It had a porcelain baby face on it? I just looked at all of their album covers and didn’t see it, so my memory is disappointing me today.

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    1. Marriott was such a great singer…Page wanted him in Led Zeppelin… Now that is going to drive me crazy….I gotta find that album you are talking about.

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  7. If memory still serves The Herd had two hits out here, ‘From The Underworld’ and ‘I Don’t Want Our Loving To Die’ both so 60s it almost hurts. My older bro thought Humble Pie were brilliant, he thrashed the grooves off that first album. I’d heard enough; by the time ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ came out I hated Pete- his flying hair, his pasty chest, his effect on his guitar, everything! And he is a very fine player, but I’d had more than enough of him after hearing Humble Pie through too thin walls for years.

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      2. I just saw the video of it…Frampton looks like the kid he was. I heard the deeper part of the song…I like it.

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