"General" Larry Platt – "Pants on the Ground" (2010)

Lookin’ like a fool

With your pants on the ground

We get a lot of two-part questions at trivia.  

The first part of the question is usually easy enough that most of the teams competing will know the correct answer.  

The second part of the question is usually more challenging – it’s designed to help separate the contenders from the pretenders.  (At one time, I might have said those questions were designed to help separate the men from the boys, and gone on to repeat the tired old joke about how they separate the men from the boys in Greece.  But I’m far too enlightened now to do that today.)

Here’s the first part of a two-part question we had a couple of weeks ago:

The contestants on this reality competition TV show, which first aired 24 years ago, included William Hung, Mary Roach, and General Larry Platt.

Most of the teams playing that night knew that the answer to that question was American Idol.  But the second part of that question was much more difficult:

What was the title of the song performed by General Larry Platt on that show? 

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I occasionally watched American Idol back in the day.  I vaguely remember William Hung, who had his fifteen minutes after butchering Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” on a 2004 episode of the show.  (Hung quickly gained a cult following.  He appeared on all the late-night talk shows, was parodied on Saturday Night Live, and released an album that made it to #34 on the Billboard albums chart.)

But the other two names didn’t ring a bell, and I had no idea what song “General” Larry Platt might have performed.  And neither did my teammates.

(We didn’t know it at the time, but Larry Platt wasn’t an actual general – “General” was his nickname.  But at our trivia contests, the questions are read aloud – not printed – and you can’t hear quotation marks.)

We assumed that whatever he sang was a cover of someone else’s hit.  We kicked around a few guesses – “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Sharp-Dressed Man,” and “Wanted Dead or Alive” among them – but they were all shots in the dark.

“Didn’t some guy’s pants fall down on American Idol?” I asked my teammates.  “Could this be that guy?”

 “General” Larry Platt performs on American Idol

After pondering that for a moment, our youngest team member said, “There was a song on American Idol called ‘Pants on the Ground.’ Is that what you’re thinking of?”

“Maybe,” I said.  “I just remember something about pants falling down.”

We wrote down “Pants on the Ground” as our answer.  And much to our surprise – and my delight – that turned out to be the correct answer!

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Larry Platt, who was born in 1947, was an African-American civil rights activist who was given the nickname “General” in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the civil rights movement.

(When we heard the American Idol trivia question, we assumed that Larry Platt was an active or retired military officer – we didn’t know that “General” was his nickname.  The questions are read aloud at our trivia contests, not printed – and you can’t hear quotation marks.)

Platt obviously didn’t think much of the younger generation.  “Pants on the Ground” was a jeremiad directed at young black men who walked around “lookin’ like a fool” with sagging pants and sideways baseball caps. 

Larry Platt auditioned for American Idol in 2010.  At that time, the show’s eligibility requirements provided that contestants had to be between the ages of 16 and 28.  The producers obviously recognized a good thing when they saw it and made an exception for the 62-year-old Platt.

The Youtube video of his performance of “Pants on the Ground” on American Idol has been viewed well over eleven million times.  Click here to watch that video.

Click here to listen to the studio recording of “Pants on the Ground” that was released subsequent to Platt’s American Idol appearance.  It reached #46 on the Billboard “Hot 100” singles chart.

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.