There’s an old saying in showbiz: “Don’t quit your day job.”

Some people don’t heed that advice, taking a leap of faith and hoping everything works out. The chance to make a living doing what you love rather than doing what you have to is often a risk worth taking.

Ray Dorset grew up on the outskirts of London and formed his first band as a teen in the early 1960s near the end of the skiffle boom. He continued to play in different groups but always kept a day job on the side: at a hairdresser’s, at a radio parts manufacturer, eventually at a research lab for Timex.

During his off hours in 1968, Dorset founded The Good Earth and the group actually released an album on a small label. Unfortunately, they didn’t find much success, and as the lineup changed, their sound became more acoustic. This incarnation began to build a following in the clubs and their popularity resulted in Dawn Records (the experimental subsidiary of Pye) signing them up to make an album. But Dawn felt the band needed a new name and thus dubbed them Mungo Jerry, after a character in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Meanwhile, watching the minute hands at the Timex factory one day, Dorset thought back to childhood summer vacations, and in about ten minutes had completed the lyrics for a song called “In The Summertime.” He set the words to music and worked up a rhythmic, percussive arrangement with the band. In the studio, Mungo Jerry played “In The Summertime” for their producer, Barry Murray, but stopped after about two minutes. Murray loved the song and asked why they hadn’t played the rest of it. Dorset replied that the song was over — that’s all they had.

Someone had the idea to record the sound of a motorcycle to fill up the middle of the song (they actually used the recording engineer’s little Triumph sportscar) and then Murray simply took the first section and repeated it (with some sonic tweaking) to make it the second half of the song. Problem solved.

Released as a single in May of 1970, “In The Summertime” motored its way to # 1 on the UK chart and stayed there for the next two months. The song also topped the charts in 16 other countries (except for the US, where Edwin Starr’s “War” and Bread’s “Make It With You” kept it from the top spot). Dorset had to ask his manager for time off so he could appear on Top Of The Pops, but he quit his day job soon after.

Luckily, Mungo Jerry was no one-hit wonder, scoring another #1 in the UK with “Baby Jump” in 1971. The hits came and went over the following years — mostly went by the late 70s — but Ray Dorset never stopped, continually playing live and releasing singles for the next five decades.

He learned a valuable lesson from his days at Timex: you take a licking, and keep on ticking.

So stretch right up and touch the sky… with Mungo Jerry.