So I was kind of needing to hear a little music. Dave was doing his reggae show on the community radio station I help to run, but it just wasn't what I was looking for. While idly drifting along in the web, I looked in on the blog and this morning's post, which I finished just in time to head out to work. I ended up watching and listening to all the songs again. God but I loved those songs back then. I still love them now. Momma Cass sends me, what can I say? Love the voice and the persona. Watching and listening to her makes me happy.
Okay, here comes the confession. I was a Righteous Brothers fan. I have more than one of their 45s. As a teenager I was a huge fan of those bombastic Phil Spector wall of sound productions that played like mini rock and roll operas. I wrapped myself in them as I embraced my loneliness. You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' was great. But there was one other song that was just mournful teenage superb. It was sung as a solo by Bobby Hatfield. I was 14 when it was a hit, I loved it then and I cherish it now. Here's a clip I found on YouTube of Hatfield singing it on the old Shindig show. Hatfield sings and moves like a cross between Sam Cooke and Johnnie Ray. This clip is before the image makers took over and cleaned up the 'Brothers' look and movements into a more homogenized product. If you look for the version of this recorded one year later in color, you'll see what I mean. Here it is the way I remember it, and the way I prefer to remember it, and them.
5 comments:
Sigh......
mbj/D - yeah.
Holy crap, Shindig! and jesus mary and joseph what a performance. I smell the radiators and wet wool and fell all of us in the old living room. That's a time machine there. Thanks Stevil. Wow.
And damn, they bleached the '66 version to an ultra whitebread. Somehow I remember the '65 version better.
Austan - yeah.
That clip took me back too.
What a shame it has such a short ending. Still, it is so superior to the 66 version - what were they thinking? Oh, yeah, it was before black influences in music were cool, gotta make it safe for the white folks. My little hometown got most of its radio from Philadelphia where they played the good stuff. It was just good music to me. I didn't know some of these performers were black, or for that matter white, until years later.
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