I was noodling around recently and found my attention drawn to a video of that famous 1971 TV commercial — you know, the one where a bunch of singers tell us that they’d like to “teach the world to sing” while guzzling a Coke?
According to the information I’ve found — which is on the internet and therefore 100% accurate (he said with a straight face) — there is a little confusion about that whole thing. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but as near as I can determine it was originally planned for the New Seekers, an established group that had already had some chart success with a cover of Melanie’s “Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma.”
However — and this is where it gets a little fuzzy — the group had a scheduling conflict, so music producer Al Ham cobbled together a bunch of singers that included among them his wife and daughter. The TV commercial quickly became a favorite of viewers and it didn’t take long for Ham to rewrite the song without the Coke references and hit the recording studio with his group, which he’d named the Hillside Singers.
Hillside Singers – “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”
The record did very well but the New Seekers quickly jumped into the fray with their competing version of the song. It soon became an even bigger hit, and when coupled with the group’s many appearances on TV and elsewhere, eventually emerged as the most-remembered version of the song.
The New Seekers followed up with a few more years of success before eventually dissolving, and occasional restarts in later years have met with limited success. The Hillside Singers pretty much disappeared.
Geezer Music Club 