Another Precursor to Greatness

Over the course of the blog year, I have talked about some singles in my 1960s cache that were poorly received followup singles (“Snow Train” by the Jamies, for example), or enticing tastes of what was to come (“Face from Outer Space” by Jeff Barry, who had just one Top 40 single as a singer but wrote your childhood soundtrack). Here is another look at someone who was going to be someone, and the tale is almost as compelling to me as Jeff’s is.

Apart from a few legacy singles by Elvis (Presley), the early caithiseach collection of 45s didn’t include a lot of RCA singles, because the label’s stable of artists generated a lot of hits and thus few cutouts. That’s my theory, anyway. In a manner similar to my experience with Mercury singles, the RCA 45s that did make their way to me had a special cachet, because they were a lot closer to being hits than many of the other flops I owned.

I’ve said before that three-year-old caithiseach tended to favor uptempo numbers over syrupy slow songs. I really avoided playing songs that included heavy strings and large choruses singing quavery “oohs.” Today’s song is gentle, has a string part, and has a couple of girls singing background vocals, but it is tender rather than sappy, clean rather than overdone with the production. That distinction, as well as the artist’s voice, made a strong caithiseach hit of “Sweet Little Baby I Care” by Tommy Boyce (RCA Victor 8116).

A large percentage of my readership knows who Tommy Boyce is. Don’t feel bad if you’re young enough that his name has escaped your notice; I’ll fill you in shortly. But even if you know his work well, there’s a decent chance you have not heard “Sweet Little Baby I Care.” That’s not because the track lacks merit; it’s because no one has seen fit to issue a Tommy Boyce solo anthology.

That is a shame, because Tommy’s RCA output is, as far as my knowledge of it goes, pretty solid. He recorded at least two albums for RCA, and I don’t know how many singles he released for them; there is so much search-engine chatter for other configurations of his career that I can’t whittle things down to his solo RCA output. But he scored a three-week Hot 100 hit with “I’ll Remember Carol,” which peaked at #80. A few months later, RCA released today’s song, but it didn’t chart nationally. A copy came into my hands shortly after its release. I loved it.

I was mulling over the song’s charm, and I have figured out a couple of things. First, this recording does not sound like any other quiet song of its era. It should have piano triplets or electric guitar licks, and it sounds more like a folk romance song. The strings serve a purpose, rather than being filler, but they don’t overpower the vocals or the rest of the arrangement.

Unlike, for example, Johnny Tillotson’s “Poetry in Motion,” you could drop “Sweet Little Baby I Care” into a 1970 playlist, and no one would bat an eye. Or an ear.

Conclusion: The song was ahead of its time, not behind it. “Sweet Little Baby I Care” was written by Edwin and Alvin Johnson, co-members of a late-1950s vocal group, the Souvenirs. One of their songs, “Castin’ My Spell,” reached #52 in 1959 for the Johnny Otis Show.

By 1963, Tommy Boyce had paid his dues and earned an RCA recording contract, so I wonder if it was a lack of promotion or radio resistance to his work that kept him down. His unpublished book of industry anecdotes might tell the story, so I’m going to look into that. Here is the chain of career events that led to his RCA days:

Born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1939, Tommy’s break came when a song he said he wrote by himself, “Be My Guest,” made its way to Fats Domino. The de rigeur deal for a new songwriter was to share with a big-name artist, so Fats has partial credit, as does the middleman, John Marascalco. But that 1959 #8 smash was just the beginning, as Tommy went on to co-write “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” with Curtis Lee, who recorded it for the Dunes label, owned by Ray Peterson, with production by Phil Spector.

With Steven Venet, Tommy wrote “Peaches N Cream,” a #36 hit for the Ikettes in 1965, and “Action,” Freddy Cannon’s #13 hit from the same year. The later tune served as the theme to Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is show.

Rather than talk about Phase Two of Tommy’s career with Robert Harshman today, I’ll save myself something pretty spectacular to write about for Saturday. I’ll discuss the producer and arranger of both sides then, as well.

The single is scratchy, because caithiseach played this one all the time. In addition to that bit of solo work, here’s a clip of Tommy singing some of his compositions that were covered by others. More to come on Saturday. See you on the flip side!

Tommy Boyce, Sweet Little Baby I Care

Where Is New Orleans?

(Versión en español: http://granfusion.blogspot.com/)

I don’t know for sure how “Blue Monday” by Fats Domino was still sitting around the store when my uncle started buying 45s for me. The record was six years old then, and it had been collecting dust the whole time, perhaps, because of a defective label. My mom bought “Blueberry Hill” when it was a hit, and I still have that 45. At one point, when Fats is singing “those vows you made,” the master tape or the cutting lathe wobbled, so my 45 came from a bad master disc. My copy of “Walking to New Orleans” wasn’t defective, though.

In contrast to the not-so-exciting red Imperial labels, “Walking to New Orleans” sported a black label with colorful pinstripe-width rays shooting from the virtual center of the 45. (I can’t show you the label, because that 45 died in the Great Meltdown. My “Blueberry Hill” has a hint of a warp at one spot on the edge as well.)

Once I discovered “Walking to New Orleans” among my 45s, I was hooked. I did have to ask my mom where New Orleans was, though, since it sounded pretty far away. Fats probably contributed to hastening my awareness that the world was bigger than Gary and Shoals and the four-hour drive (or train ride via the Monon Line) between them. I would soon become aware that there were such states as Illinois, Michigan, Denmark and Australia.

I know. Leave me alone. I figured it out by the time I turned five, and boy, was I disappointed. I so wanted Denmark and Australia to be states.

What intrigues me now is that three-year-old caithiseach was not much of a fan of slow songs with strings in the background. Fats showed me that a solid performer sounds good regardless of the backing. In this case, the somber strings were the idea of producer Dave Bartholomew and came via the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra. No Fats Domino recording had included a string section prior to this one, and Fats had the wisdom to embrace the innovation. It was also the first string-laden song that appealed to me, and perhaps the first song with a 6/8 beat that I played repeatedly.

The writer of the tune, Bobby Charles (born Robert Charles Guidry in 1938), also wrote “See You Later, Alligator” and “But I Do.” He appeared with The Band at their farewell concert, but his featured song didn’t make the final cut. He did appear during “I Shall Be Released” at the end of the concert.

Charles met Fats after the latter recorded his tune “Before I Grow Too Old.” Fats invited him to his house in New Orleans, and Charles said he would have to walk to get to New Orleans. He wrote “Walking to New Orleans” expressly for Fats and sang it for him at Fats’s house when he finally got there.

And so, these three talents combined to create a slow, stringy song I enjoyed. It was a revelation to me somewhere around 1963, and I hope you enjoy it if you’ve never heard it before.

The song (Imperial 5675) hit the Top 40 on July 4, 1960, peaking at #6 and spending 11 weeks in the Top 40. Its flip side, “Don’t Come Knockin’,” entered the chart two weeks later and climbed to 21.

Tonight, Fats is making an appearance at a special concert for his 80th birthday. Be sure to wish Fats a happy birthday on Tuesday, and buy his new album in support of musician victims of Hurricane Katrina:

Buy Fats Domino's new CD

And enjoy the mournful tones of today’s song. Wednesday I’ll be talking about another idol of mine, and the song will be one you probably haven’t heard. See you then!

Fats Domino, Walking to New Orleans

Fats Wednesday

(Versión en español: http://granfusion.blogspot.com/)

By all rights, I shouldn’t have gotten any records by Fats Domino or Little Richard from my Uncle Tom. These were two huge artists, commercially successful icons whose 45s fell outside the purview of my source, the Big Top department store. Despite the quality of their music, I have a quality-control rejection to thank for their presence in my 1963 record collection.

As you can see if you look at this label scan, my copy of “Blue Monday” would be considered defective. Some label-attaching machine went haywire, and an eagle-eyed worker at Imperial Records tossed my copy into a cutout bin. What happened to my Specialty 45s from Little Richard was a bit different. A couple of the labels had purple smears on the yellow-and-white color scheme, one label was blurred, and I believe yet another was printed as a mirror image. All of my defective Specialty 45s finished their lives in the Great Meltdown, so I can’t show you what a mess those labels were.

Thanks to this label defect, I got my first taste of the guy that three-year-old caithiseach simply called Fats. Until the day in late 1963 when I declared that a hit song (one I’ll profile in April) was my favorite song, Fats Domino stood above all the other artists I knew as my favorite performer.

I have chosen to include Fats in my blog of mostly obscure recordings because February 26, 2008 will be his 80th birthday. This post also marks roughly 45 years of my admiration of his work.

Fats is a New Orleans native, given the birth name of Antoine Dominique Domino. His tendency to portliness was the obvious source of his nickname, one that served as the inspiration for the nickname of Ernest Evans: Chubby Checker. Fats charted his first hit in 1950, “The Fat Man.” That song was the intended B side of “Detroit City Blues”; from the beginning of his career, the B sides of Fats Domino records charted well.

Fats logged 37 Top 40 hits, including 11 Top Ten hits. He never hit #1, though “Blueberry Hill” sat at #2 for three weeks.

His chief collaborator was Dave Bartholomew, producer and co-writer of numerous Fats hits, including “Ain’t It (That) a Shame” and “Blue Monday.” Bartholomew is still performing at age 87. Both are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Extensive biographies of the man exist elsewhere. So does information about his close call with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but I want to reflect on that terrible time for a moment.

New Orleans is where my ancestors landed when they immigrated from Ireland. My grandfather’s grandparents are buried there. Concern for their graves crossed my mind when Katrina struck, and the second thing that occurred to me was that Fats lived there.

I had wanted for years to write him a fan letter. It’s such an easy thing to do; often, if not always, appreciated, and yet a task that tends to sit on the back burner. Fats wouldn’t notice if I didn’t write him a thank-you note for all the music, but I would. According to early reports, it was too late. Fats had stayed in New Orleans to tend to his ill wife, and chances were good that he had perished in the hurricane.

We lost Barry Cowsill, and who knows how many other talented people, to Katrina, but in a near-miraculous turn of events, Fats and his wife were evacuated and taken to the Superdome. Their house was a mess, and Fats lost many prized career-related items. One of his first post-Katrina efforts was to release a new album, Alive and Kickin’, the proceeds of which go to Tipitina's Foundation, to benefit New Orleans musicians displaced by Katrina. The foundation serves also to encourage the reestablishment of the New Orleans local music scene. You can help the foundation and celebrate Fats’s 80th birthday by buying his album here:

Buy Fats Domino's new CD

Fats is in good voice on the title cut, which he recorded in 2006. Amazing. He returned to live performing on May 19th, 2007, my birthday. What a birthday present. Thanks, Fats, for everything. If you're in New Orleans on Saturday, you can catch his latest appearance.

Now, give “Blue Monday” (Imperial 5417) a spin. It made the Top 40 on January 12, 1957 and reached #5. Fats wrote the song with Dave Bartholomew for the film The Girl Can't Help It. If you don’t own any Fats, get some. More Fats to come on Saturday, so I’ll see you on the flip side!

Fats Domino, Blue Monday

Blue Monday label scan