Let’s Hear It For The Girls!

It’s no secret that some of the greatest popular music ever made will never make Top Hundred lists of Rolling Stone or Uncut. There are a number of reasons for this but the most important is that much of it was released on singles rather than albums. Furthermore, rock ‘n’ roll music is very male dominated and so some extremely good music has been criminally overlooked and undervalued, for instance; the girl group genre of music.

Mr Lee– The Bobbettes (1957)

The Bobbettes were the first girl group to make it into the charts with this, a doo-wop ode to a teacher they despised. In fact they disliked this particular teacher so much that the original title of the song was ‘I Shot Mr. Lee’, and those sentiments were reflected in the lyrics of the original recording. Although Atlantic Records sensed they might have a hit on their hands, the murderous element of the song made them a tad nervous and so they asked the group to record this more sanitised version.

Maybe – The Chantels (1958)

The Chantays were the first to craft something that more noticeably all the hallmarks of what the girl group became . The pain and longing in Arlene Smith’s vocal is so audible that teenagers everywhere must have instantly been able to relate to it and they bought the record in droves. It sold over a million copies when it was first released. Lead singer, Arlene Smith, also wrote the song.

Be My Baby – The Ronnettes (1965)

By the mid-60s , this was released. Be My Baby is perhaps the most legendary girl-group record of all time – some say the greatest pop record ever made. Phil Spector may be more notorious than famous now, but in the mid-60s he was at the peak of his powers. Even so, the lyrics of Be My Baby are rather disturbing; ‘So won’t you say you love me, I’ll make you so proud of me, we’ll make them turn their heads every place we go…’ The words almost suggest that the singer is happy to be the object of her love’s possession – quite ominous in retrospect.

Don’t Say Nothing Bad About My Baby – The Cookies (1963)

The Cookies were a prolific girl group who recorded under several different names, including; The Pasilades, The Stepping Stones and The Honey Bees; usually with Dorothy Jones on lead vocals. They were a very successful session group too and can be heard supplying backing vocals on many of Neil Sedaka singles, Little Eva’s ‘Locomotion’ and its follow-up hit, plus Mel Torme’s ‘Comin’ Home Baby’. They were Goffin and King’s demo group of choice and recorded some of their songs as singles, including ‘Don’t Say Nothing Bad About My Baby’, which became The Cookies’ biggest hit. Check out the way Dorothy Jones says, ‘So girl, you better shut your mouth,’ they were the epitome of cool.

Tell Him – The Exciters (1963)

Produced by the legendary Leiber and Stoller, The Exciters were quite different from the girl-groups who preceded them. They were noted for having a ‘tougher’ sound and a more aggressive variety of femininity. Fronted by Brenda Reid, this was their first hit:

Nowhere To Run – Martha & The Vandellas (1965)

Another record from 1965, this is a far more up-tempo R&B number and Martha Reeves had the vocal chords to carry a song like this off. Before The Supremes arrived on the scene, Martha & The Vandellas were one of Tamla Motown’s most commercial acts and they hit after hit, most of which haven’t dated one jot. Vandellas records were typically dancey, R&B powerhouse numbers, which went on to be covered by many of mod bands, such as; The Who, The Kinks, etc. None of those cover-versions surpassed the originals though.

Baby Love – The Supremes (1964)

According to Supremes mythology it was Florence Ballard who had the vocal talent, but whatever the truth is, Diana Ross went on to front the band and there’s no denying her charisma. However, the hit-making team placed with The Supremes (Holland, Dozier and Holland) realised that Ms Ross’ voice was not remotely in the category of a powerful singer like Martha Reeves and so they had to take a different approach to accommodate it. The Supremes wanted to record Vandellas style records but instead were presented with more subtle songs like ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ and ‘Baby Love’. The young Diana Ross’ breathy, kitten-like voice suited the syncopated style of those records in a way that Martha Reeves’ would have been too powerful.

Baby It’s You – The Shirelles (1961)

The Shirelles were one of John Lennon’s favourite groups and The Beatles even went on to record a version of this on the first album. The Shirelles’ version of ‘Baby It’s You’ has a unique, weird sound all of its own though, and that’s why I’ve included it here. The record has a disconcerting atmosphere and this is quite typical of the Shirelles, whose imperfect harmonies add depth to all of their recordings. Even their most famous single, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’, shares this quality.

Out In The Streets – The Shangri-Las (1964)

Some of The Shangri-Las’ records are, quite simply, masterpieces. The Shangri-Las’ producer, George ‘Shadow’ Morton was heavily influenced by Phil Spector, but unlike Spector was less overbearing and temperamental. Although The Shangri-Las’ quickly became associated with a short 60s phenomena known as ‘the death ballad’, their records always had a sense of humour and fun about them and the group embodied streetwise glamour.

Nobody Knows What’s Going On In My Mind – The Chiffons (1965)

The Chiffons were one of the most successful girl groups of the 1960s and they had many hits, most of which were pop at its purest form (‘He’s So Fine’, ‘Sweet Talking Guy’, and ‘One Fine Day’, etc). Their records were very stylish and had a great deal of natural poise and elegance. This record is no exception but it has far more in common with R&B than their earlier pop hits. In fact, it’s very easy to imagine this being a hit in Northern Soul clubs.

Attack – The Toys (1966)

The Toys scored a Number One single in the US with ‘Lover’s Concerto’ in 1965 – they only managed to get to Number Eighteen with this, but I like it. Again, it has a Northern Soul style quality and should be heard more often.

The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game – The Marvelettes (1967)

The Marvelettes are one of the great girl groups but perhaps owing to the fact that they shared the Tamla Motown label with The Supremes, they have been too often overshadowed. They recorded the original version of ‘Please Mr Postman’ and took it to Number One in the Billboard Charts and recorded many equally memorable singles. In fact, they were Motown’s most successful girl-group for a short time.

Bad Boy – The Donays (1962)

‘Bad Boy’ was the A-side of ‘Devil In His Heart’, which went on to become a vehicle for an early George Harrison vocal performance (as ‘Devil In Her Heart’, of course). As far I can make out, it was sadly the only single The Donays ever released.

He Was Really Saying Something – The Velvelettes (1964)

This was the original version of the song Bananarama and FunBoy 3 had a hit with in 1982. The Velvelettes were another first-class Tamla Motown girl-group and they specialised in street-wise anthems like this (another was ‘Needle In The Haystack’). The Velvelettes were unfortunately another great girl-group who suffered as a consequence of Motown’s relentless cash-generating machine.

Nothing But A Heartache – The Flirtations (1968)

Play this record to most people and they will immediately think that is one of the best Supremes songs they’ve never heard or will at least imagine that it’s a Tamla Motown single. Not so, this was a group of US émigrés recording for British record-label, Deram (which was Decca’s more ‘with it’ younger brother). This was the best record The Flirtations ever managed to release though as they were never quite able to find the right producers or material to match their potential. This is an undeniable masterpiece though.

Mama Didn’t Lie – The Orions (1963)

The Orions were primarily renowned for realeasing dance-craze singles like ‘The Wah Watusi’, but the foursome had far more range, as this early Curtis Mayfield composition demonstrates. Rosetta Hightower was their lead singer and they were one of the forerunners of the early Philadelphia Soul sound.

I Wanna Love Him So Bad – The Jelly Beans (1964)

The Jelly Beans were signed by Leiber and Stoller and placed with production and songwriting team, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. This was their debt single and it peaked at Number Nine in the Billboard Charts. Apparently the group did a lot of recording but much of it was remained unreleased. Two further singles came out with little interest being generated at the time and so their label Red Bird didn’t put out an album, despite ample material being available. The group split up in 1965.

Brothers Gonna Work It Out (or maybe not in some cases)

There is long history of sibling rivalry in bands. In the 1990s, it was one Oasis’ biggest marketing tools, so much so that there is even a rare bootleg of the Gallagher brothers rowing during an NME interview, called ‘Wibbling Rivalry’. Journalists compared the friction between the Gallaghers with examples of the tension between the brothers in bands of the past. For example, the rivalry of Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks is the stuff of legend; it even resulted in the band being banned from playing some venues in the USA, since it actually resulted in onstage violence.

However, there had been a long tradition of brothers making music together, which probably stretches back for as long as people have been making music. Arguably it was most noticeable in country music, when the brother duo became a rather commercial proposition from the 1930s onwards. The Everly Brothers were of course the most commercial and famous of these, but they were aware that they were steeped in a whole tradition of brother-acts that had gone before. In particular, they were both were huge fans of The Louvin Brothers, whose harmonies had a big influence on the Everlys and they even covered some of the songs the Louvins had popularised.

The following list contains some examples of brother duos, some more famous than others:

The Louvin Brothers – Kentucky

The Osborne Brothers – White Dove

Blue Sky Boys – On The Banks Of The Ohio (it is unknown if The Blue Sky Boys chose their name because they didn’t want to be known as The Bolick Brothers. Yes… Bolick was their surname).

Rusty & Doug Kershaw – Louisiana Man

The Delmore Brothers – Freight Train Boogie (some claim that this was one of the first rock ‘n’ roll recordings ever made)

The Stanley Brothers – Man Of Constant Sorrow

The Monroe Brothers – Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

The Callahan Brothers – She’s Killing Me (1934)

The Lilly Brothers – Dig A Hole In The Meadow

Jimmy and Jesse Reynolds – Are You Missing Me

The Crowe Brothers – Jane (a very rare bit of rockabilly).

The Everly Brothers – When Will Be Loved

‘I like music made with proper musical instruments played by proper musicians’

Am I the only one tired of hearing that phrase?  It’s usually uttered by people who feel that their taste in music is far superior to everybody else’s, thus unassailable.  These people usually have two things in common; they hate anything to do with Hip Hop and Dance music, and they usually worship at the altar of ‘authenticity’.

Ewan MacColl – A man and his ‘rules’

For the uninitiated, ‘authenticity’ can actually also be applied to some forms of Hip Hop, but in the case of that genre the terminology is to ‘keep it real’, use straightforward language and/or strip the arrangement down to the traditional ‘two turntables and a microphone’ set-up.  In rock music authenticity is an even more  anal concept and it was possibly brought into play during the merging of folk/blues with rock ‘n’ roll during the mid-60s, a time when an artist was expected to write his/her own songs, henceforth reveal their own emotions in their songwriting and performance.  Since then, the parameters have shifted and arguably tightened.

 

The Yardbirds – Blues Revivalists bring the brth of the ‘guitar hero’

Artists like The Beatles – at least in the early days – were unashamedly commercial, and played pop, but their more middle-class counterparts like The Yardbirds made it their role to play ‘authentic’ blues (in reality it was not in the least authentic).  Guitarists of the time, like Eric Clapton, have since revealed that they would even mimic what they perceived to be the lifestyles of their favourite blues musicians; drink gallons of bourbon, and so on.  Of course, Clapton and his contemporaries didn’t want to emulate the poverty of the original bluesmen and were more than happy to reap the rewards of their record sales.  The blues revivalists considered what they were playing to be automatically better than popular music, because they thought it was more emotional and ‘real’ than the popular music of the day.  This also had another component; they felt blues to was better because it was the music of Afro-Americans and therefore it enabled the blues revivalists to feel morally superior to their more populist contemporaries.

Ironically, what actually escaped the attention of blues revivalists is that the original bluesmen were often encouraged to play blues by their record labels, because it was considered to be the most commercial part of their repertoire. Many country blues artists like Charlie Patton played as much and country, folk and ragtime in their live performances as blues, but since most of this didn’t make its way onto recordings it was largely forgotten about.  Blues revivalists also didn’t seem to notice that some of the best popular music of the time was being made by Tamla Motown, a label owned and entirely made up of Afro-Americans – how could the music being made by these artists be less ‘authentic’ than the output of some middle-class, white, British kids trying to mimic old bluesmen?

Nevertheless, arguably the authenticity-badge was imported into rock via folk.  Everybody knows about the story about when Bob Dylan plugged in an electric guitar, the folk fraternity went crazy and began calling him ‘Judas’ and so on.  The biggest culprit for causing folk music’s obsession with authenticity was the UK’s own Ewan MacColl – an admirable man in many ways, but not renowned for his tolerance of other people’s opinions.  MacColl insisted that folk singers should only sing songs from their own place of birth, and this was curious since MacColl himself sang Scottish songs, despite being born in Manchester (his parents were both Scots but even with that being considered, he was still bending his own rules somewhat).  He was also known to sing Joe Hill, which is an American folk song – so it was certainly a case of ‘don’t do what I do, do what I say’ with our Ewan.  It was not only MacColl who caused folk music’s rather insular attitude, but this may be one of the reasons why it has fallen out of favour as a genre.  Folk music had a lasting effect on rock though, ever since Dylan went electric.

One of the most damning charges that can be made against an artist nowadays is that they don’t write their own material, being a great interpreter of other people’s songs is no longer enough.  Being an Elvis fan, I have constantly heard people dismiss him for this reason, despite the fact that when Elvis came up in the music industry no-one was expected to write their own songs; Sinatra never wrote a song in his life!   For this reason it is now common for artists to be described as singer-songwriters, but if one investigates further the facts are rather different (this was true of Katie Melua and James Blunt – both of whom I can’t abide for different reasons, but that’s beside the point).

Scratch DJing – Not as easy as it looks…

So what is real musical instrument?  It wasn’t too long ago that people considered the guitar to be ‘not a serious instrument’, and considering that it is now the most macho and phallic of all rock instruments, it used to be more often played by women.  Rock guitarists will instantly claim that DJs certainly aren’t musicians because ‘all they do is play records’.  If, like me, you have ever tried to ‘scratch DJ’ and been rather embarrassed by the results, then you’ll know there’s a lot more to it than that.  I can play the guitar reasonably well, but when I attempt to scratch DJ it sounds like a washing machine falling down the stairs while remaining switched on.  The same people dismiss rapping, but that is another skill that requires as much hard-work and discipline as singing – and it is certainly more creative than most of what I hear in mainstream rock.

It is however unfair of me to blame just rock musicians for all of this backward thinking.  The worst offenders at the moment are Indie musicians.  They will dismiss DJs, rappers and anybody who uses any musical instrument that wasn’t around in the 1960s – apart from when it suits them (this is why I have spent most of this particular blog discussing what went on during that period).  They will use basic dance beats, for instance, but will at the same time complain about ‘music made with computers’ and ‘sampling’.

Oasis – Don’t use many samples but they did get ‘inspiration’ from other people’s songs.

Yes, sampling.  I’m hardly the first person to write about the ethics of sampling.  However, many artists who have been sampled have had their careers revitalised as a result, rather like the blues musicians who benefitted from renewed interest in their music during the 1960s.  It was a result of sampling that I first heard great funk bands like The Meters, for example, and for that I am grateful.  Another point is that at least artists who such recording techniques now clear and give credit to the samples they use (most of the time); Indie musicians don’t credit The Velvet Underground when they rewrite Pale Blue Eyes for the millionth time (they will talk at great length about the band during interviews though), and how many times did Oasis get sued for infringing copyright?  All of that seems to be far more dishonest than sampling, to be honest.

Indie musicians believe that they are more authentic than pop musicians, that what they do is more intellectual, and nowadays they even seem to think that they are more ‘ethical’.  Indie musicians may write their own songs, but does that make them better songs?  Does that make their performance of them more real?  Anybody who knows anything about the music industry knows that that is nonsense; Indie bands are under as much pressure to create hit records as any pop singer, the criteria is just different.  This is why there are record labels for Indie bands (very few are actually independent any more) and record labels for pop-stars – there are also record producers who specialise in every genre that one hears.

Indie musicians may not use computers to create their music, but it will probably be digitally recorded, and they will probably use digital effects during their live performances.  Their producers will often edit and quantise their performance of their music before it is even considered for release.  This is the final irony – most music we now hear was doctored on a computer, just like the films we see, the TV programmes we watch and so on.  This is not even a recent development – even in the theatre, actors have a director, a producer, a script; composers would write to order; artists would be commissioned; authors write to be published and so on.

To return to that old blues music I discussed earlier it is important to remember that when John and Alan Lomax recorded those old blues and hillbilly musicians, they were looking for a specific type of sound that conformed to their own prerequisite view of authenticity, and this was music at its most basic and ‘primal’.  There were plenty of Afro-Americans and hillbilly musicians at the time who were playing far more complex music, but this didn’t fit in with their criteria.  Authenticity is in the ear of the beholder.