There's a time in life for Hoagy Carmichael. There's a time in life for Claude Debussy. There's a time in life for Jerry Lee Lewis. There's a time in life for Destiny's Child. All these things have their moment. ~Elvis Costello
Benny Bell, born Benjamin Zamberg, was a pioneer in the field of Jewish comedy who sang in English, Yiddish and Hebrew. During a prolific run in the 1930’s and 40’s he released self-produced, self-written albums–on his own record label, no less.
Well after Bell’s peak of popularity, the nationally syndicated Dr. Demento radio program began playing his 1946 song “Shaving Cream”, which led to notoriety beyond New York City for the first time in his career.
It also led to a re-release of the song in 1975, making Benny Bell the most unlikely one-hit wonder since Tiny Tim. “Shaving Cream” reached #30 in the US charts.
The Hollies in 1969, post-Nash. Allan Clarke is the second from right.
Answered by Gene Popa
How about an instance where a band realized they had made a mistake in getting rid of their lead singer, and so they brought him back?
The Hollies had been among the biggest hitmakers in Great Britain in the 1960s and had a number of hits in the U.S. as well. Allan Clarke was the group’s lead singer, but the signature Hollies sound was marked by the high harmony backup singing of Graham Nash. But wanting to pursue a different musical style from the rest of the band, Nash quit in 1968, and went on to form Crosby, Stills & Nash.
By 1971, wanting to scratch his own musical itch (and perhaps being a bit envious of the tremendous success that Nash was having), Clarke told the other members of the Hollies during a down time between recording and touring that he wanted to record his own solo album. He made it clear that he wasn’t quitting, only trying something different. However, the other members of the group found the idea of him doing solo work unacceptable, and they parted ways with Clarke.
They replaced him as lead singer with Mikael Rickfors, which was a bizarre (and unsuccessful) choice; Rickfors’s grasp of English wasn’t complete, and he sang with a noticeable Swedish accent. He also sang in a lower register than Clarke did, so his versions of older Hollies material could be off-putting to some fans. They also signed a new recording contract with another label, Polydor, and as a result their old label, EMI, sought to undercut attention for their first Polydor album by culling a track from their last EMI record, “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”, and releasing it in 1972 as a single.
Mikael Rickfors
The song broke into the Top 40 in the U.K., but it was a much bigger hit in America, going into the Top Five. The Hollies were now faced with the prospect of hitting the road to promote their current hit with a singer who sounded nothing like the voice singing the song.
Instead, the Hollies decided to mend fences with Clarke and bring him back into the fold. In exchange for his agreeing to return, the band had to allow him time to release his own solo albums. And that’s how things remained with the Hollies until Allan Clarke retired from recording and performing in 1999 in order to care for his wife, who was battling cancer, as well as to tend to vocal cord problems he had been having (although Clarke resumed his solo career in 2019).
The Hollies during Allan Clarke’s second tenure with the band.
Every Moment Has A Song 