Fortuitously #3

 

I am no expert on the work of Lucy Sante, but one of my favourite pieces of music-related writing comes in her Maybe The People Would Be The Times essay collection, which I chanced upon. The piece I love is the first in a short story sequence which has at its heart musical fact and appreciation, with special loving focus on The Paragons’ ‘Florence’. I would never claim to be a die-hard doo wop aficionado, but I suspect there are few among us who have not succumbed to something in that musical sphere, and ‘Florence’ is for me as good as it gets. And the writing by Lucy on this occasion is exquisite.

Lucy is someone I consider to be a real writer, as in someone who has regularly contributed to prestigious publications over a long period of time, rather than being an enthusiastic amateur like me. I first came across the name Sante via the book OK You Mugs, a 1999 title edited by Luc Sante and Melissa Holbrook Pierson featuring “writers on movie actors”. It is a book that, for me, immediately suggests that glorious time when London’s West End shoppers were spoilt for choice with bargain books establishments. I still cherish my copy and in particular Patti Smith on Jeanne Moreau, ‘Dana Andrews, or the Male Mask’ by Geoffrey O’Brien and ‘With Gene Tierney in Paris’ by Charles Simic.

I bought Lucy’s Maybe The People Would Be The Times in April 2022 when I was lucky enough to find a cheap copy online. It was, I think, published in late 2020 by Verse Chorus Press, and I admit to being shallow enough to say I was attracted initially by the cover (which reminded me of Lulu’s Melody Fair) with a photo of the New York club Tier 3 from 1979 and some nice mod graphics. And I liked the title. Lucy, like me, has a fondness for referential titles. An earlier essay collection was called Kill All Your Darlings (alluding to a William Faulkner quote, I believe) and a forthcoming one is called My Heart & I Agree which I assume links to ‘Totally Wired’. And her memoir of transition was called I Heard Her Call My Name. I confess that I have not read any of these, but you see what I mean?

Maybe The People features essays or articles on photographers, musicians, artists, writers and assorted oddballs and ephemera. It includes excellent pieces on Richard Stark and Georges Simenon which are very much up my street, but it is the music-related contents I am most drawn to, particularly for the way they capture a sense of time and place, which is not so much nostalgia as something far stranger and a lot to do with verifying one’s own past while there is still time.

The piece I love the most in the book is the first section in a short story called ‘E.S.P.’ It’s probably a little less than a thousand words in length but contains multitudes. Fusing fiction and pop facts can be a very appealing format for a writer. I have even had a go myself. Indeed, in 2007, under another name in a different place, I had great fun writing weekly ‘stories’ in this vein.

In Lucy’s far better contribution to this form the opening cinematic scene is of a couple on a train travelling home very late at night. It is gloriously evocative. One assumes it is set in New York. The time is not specified so let’s guess that the couple are returning from a night at Tier 3 in 1979. Maybe they have been to see The Feelies. They sit in silence, but their internal soundtrack is ‘Florence’ by The Paragons, which Lucy goes on to describe, emphasising the spectral strangeness of the song and the doo wop form. She is also brilliant on the advent of the oldies radio shows and the DJs: “Chattering middle-aged men, audibly overweight, short-sleeved even in the dead of winter, who are capable of putting on the spookiest sides without seeming to notice the weirdness as they jabber on about trivia before and after.”

Mention of oldies on the radio makes me think of Roger Scott and his pioneering Friday evening show, Cruisin’, which I listened to religiously on Capital Radio for a while as a kid. This had a lot to do with loving Showaddywaddy. And, if I remember rightly, Roger’s show had a lot to do with Hank Mizell’s ‘Jungle Rock’ becoming a surprise UK hit in 1976. I loved that and many of the other old rock ’n’ roll records Roger’d play, and while my tastes ran more to the Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran side of things, I vividly recall being temporarily spellbound by the doo wop tracks he’d play. The Penguins’ ‘Earth Angel’ and The Chords’ ‘Sh-Boom’ are songs I associate with that time. In fact, if you look in the Roger Scott archive run by his family there is a special doo wop show from September 1976 there.

Lucy Sante’s ‘E.S.P.’ story first appeared in the spring of 2007 in the long-running literary journal Conjunctions and was then serialized in November 2008 on a blog she ran anonymously for a short while called Pinakothek. You can still read it there or on her website. In its early incarnations it was called ‘Not Fade Away’ which in my mind automatically links to the Jim Dodge book of the same name. And it is easy to imagine Floorboard George Gastin as his pilgrimage gains momentum playing a copy of The Paragons’ ‘Florence’ while driving along in a tongue-tied wired state.

Not Fade Away, the novel, is set in 1965 and contains another of my favourite snippets of music-related writing where Jim describes how “all at once, along with a roots-first resurgence of black music into the mainstream, there was a new eruption of possibilities and permissions, a musical profusion of amazing range and open horizons, from the harshest doubts and indictments and a blatant sexual nitty-gritty unthinkable the year before to a sweetly playful and strangely fearless faith. The stone was rolling, and you couldn’t mistake the excitement.”

Among that resurgence would be many of the recordings we now associate with the Northern Soul scene. And many of those artists would have roots in the doo wop era, like Little Anthony & the Imperials, The Dells, Tams, Radiants, and Valentinos who I immediately associate with the writing of Barry Gifford and his preoccupation with their ‘Lookin’ For A Love’. Somehow, I associate Barry with doo wop, but I am not sure I have enough evidence to show why. Certainly, in Night People he mentions Tony Allen and the Champs’ ‘Nite Owl’, the song later immortalised by Bobby Paris, who himself had doo wop roots. On his astonishing 1968 Tetragrammaton LP Let Me Show You The Way he covers in dramatic fashion the 1958 spectral classic ‘Tragedy’, first recorded by Thomas Wayne & The DeLons and then by The Fleetwoods. Such an unsettling and haunting song.

In Wild At Heart Barry mentions The Hearts’ ‘Lonely Nights’, a femme doo wop treasure. Over the years there would be plenty of different incarnations of The Hearts (Baby Washington and Betty Harris passed through their ranks) who also recorded under different names including The Jaynetts whose ‘Sally Go Round The Roses’ provides the soundtrack for the closing part of Lucy Sante’s ‘E.S.P.’ story: “Even the first time you hear it, it sounds as if you’ve always known it. It comes over you like a glow or a chill. It comes over the couple as they sit, shivering, on the rooftop of an old building in Chinatown. It is August, but that does not prevent the air from feeling glacial. They’ve been talking all night, at cross-purposes.”

Everyone loves that song, don’t they? We know Lou Reed did and Andy Warhol too. I know I first heard it via Grace Slick & the Great Society in 1983. Now 40-plus years on from that one can sit at home and watch Tim Buckley perform it live and Pentangle too. You can also instantly hear the haunting version from 1982 by the Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch on keyboards and vocals. I don’t recall even being aware of the band back then and certainly didn’t know Lucy Sante contributed lyrics.

The title tract of Lucy’s Maybe The People Would Be The Times collection is a gloriously partisan piece: “Almost everything of interest in New York City lies in some proximity to music.” This piece, originally published by Vice magazine in the States (and still on their website) in 2017, starts in 1975 with one of the earliest Television performances, and takes in reggae, disco, funk, punk rock, No Wave, nascent hip-hop, all wonderfully. And the conclusion is infinitely wise.

Along the way the Sante doo wop theme is beautifully revisited: “Or else we walk by a radio and hear the Jesters and the Paragons and the Flamingos and the Moonglows because a calendar next door or down the street still reads 1957. Julius McMichael’s spectral falsetto lead on the Paragons’ ‘Florence’ casts us off the shore of the speculative present and maroons us in a pillowy intertime, all velvet and sateen and crushed corsages on the scarred basketball dance floor, a ballad that keeps falling into dirge cadence, hovering between the aurora borealis and the void.”

Not all the great doo wop recordings were of an other-worldly nature, though. Some of the greatest groups could really let rip. So, for example, The Flamingos may be best known for their haunted reinvention of ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, but if you can find the clip of them in 1959 from the film Go Johnny Go performing ‘Jump Children’ you will see they were something else when they went wild. Oh boy, that choreography! Those moves! Long before the Casino Soul scene. Aptly, at that time among their ranks was Tommy Hunt, many years before he became a Northern Soul hero. One suspects that when he appeared live at the Wigan Casino in the mid-1970s he experienced a rather bittersweet mix of emotions seeing the young dancers out on the floor.

The Flamingos also have a connection to the Northern Soul scene as their 1966 single ‘The Boogaloo Party’ took off in the early old and rare soul clubs like the Twisted Wheel and a reissue became a UK hit in 1969, their only UK hit I believe, oddly. Despite being a total classic, it is not a track that crops up on compilations with alarming frequency, in my experience. And I genuinely don’t recall any other recordings from that era by The Flamingos turning up on old soul collections. I am probably wrong, but there you go.

You could easily enough create a playlist showcasing a flamboyance of Flamingo soul sounds. From, say, 1963 onwards they recorded quite a collection of soul or R&B tracks, singles or album cuts, through to the ultra-funky ‘Heavy Hips’ from 1975, which would work wonderfully well on a CD compilation. Maybe there is already one out there somewhere. I’d like to find one if that is the case.

Several of these soulful Flamingos recordings were made with Ted Cooper as producer. I am far from being an expert on Ted’s studio work, but I do know he was the producer for Walter Jackson’s ‘It’s an Uphill Climb to the Bottom’ and The Remains’ ‘Don’t Look Back’, and pop music doesn’t get any better than that does it? Ted Cooper also produced The Flamingos’ 1970 single ‘Buffalo Soldier’ which features a remarkable seven-and-a-half-minute version on the flipside.

Intriguingly this song was written by the songwriting team of Margaret Lewis and Mira Smith with David Barnes. How did that work? Who did what? Who was David Barnes? And how did he become involved with Margaret and Mira? Did they write anything else together? Does anyone even know? And is the “when will they call you a man?” line a deliberate Dylan reference? Is it only me that worries about such things? Ah life.

‘Buffalo Soldier’ was also recorded by the extraordinary vocal ensemble The Persuasions and released as a single and on their 1972 Capitol LP Street Corner Symphony, which also contained a beautiful version of Bob’s ‘Man in Me’. A spinechilling a Capella rendition of ‘Buffalo Soldier’ live on TV by The Persuasions can be found on YouTube. It is quite something.

Big Al Downing also recorded ‘Buffalo Soldier’. I am not sure it was ever released at the time, but it appears on a compilation called Southern Soul Rhythm & Grooves: From the SSS Vaults which as far as I know is only available digitally or on streaming platforms, so there is no background information on the contents. Big Al (why does that always make me think of the great philosopher in Alan Plater’s Beiderbecke Trilogy?) recorded a couple of singles in 1969 for the Silver Fox label, part of Shelby S. Singleton’s SSS stable and run by Kenny Rogers’ brother Lelan, so one assumes it was recorded around the same time. So, would this be the first recorded version? It would make sense as Margaret Lewis and Mira Smith were a songwriting team at SSS.

I suspect Big Al Downing is for some of us a name most closely associated with recordings (including one of those Silver Fox sides, his riotous ‘Medley of Soul’) that have found favour on the Northern Soul scene and its offshoots. This was before he found success as a great Country crooner. Going way back, though, Big Al was heavily involved in creating some wild rock ’n’ roll sides and played with the Poe Kats, for the time a rare mixed-race outfit, who would for a while be the backing group for the great Wanda Jackson.

There is a brilliant film called Welcome to the Club: The Woman of Rockabilly, an hour-long documentary, directed by Beth Harrington, which was originally shown on American TV in 2001, then a few years later it was released on DVD, which is how I came across it. In it Big Al Downing appears as a talking head, telling the story of how once when he was in Butte, Montana, playing piano on stage with Wanda Jackson, the owner came up and stopped the band, refusing to let them perform with a black guy onstage. Al apparently got up to leave but Wanda called him back and then told the owner: “Al is in my band. If he can’t play here, I can’t either.” And she won the day. You didn’t mess with Wanda.

This film was made by Beth Harrington, who in interviews has identified the roots of her film as being a Rounder compilation LP from 1981 of female hillbilly & rockabilly performers, Wild Wild Young Women which is not a release of which I was ever aware. The documentary is narrated by Rosanne Cash and, coincidentally or not, Beth more recently has made an award-winning documentary on the Carter and Cash families. In Welcome to the Club unusually the talking heads, especially Janis Martin and Wanda Jackson, are inspirational as they recall the sheer excitement of being involved in what was effectively a social revolution.

These particular pioneers faced prejudice, repressive attitudes, conservative values, often insurmountable barriers, but they came through, eventually. It is surely impossible not to be moved to tears by the scenes where Janis makes it to Las Vegas, finally after 40 years, to perform her signature tune ‘Drugstore Rock ’n’ Roll’ to a packed rapt audience of young and old rockabilly fans.

In the film Wanda Jackson cites Rose Maddox as a big influence. Janis Martin, meanwhile, talks about the epiphany she experienced as a kid hearing Ruth Brown singing ‘Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean’ on the radio, and how nothing would ever be the same again. Many, many miles away in an ice-cream parlour on Bexleyheath Broadway a young Dave Godin would hear the same song on a jukebox and his life would also be changed forever. There must have been something about that song. Rather wonderfully, Janis got to sing this number onstage with Ruth in Long Beach back in 2006. To add extra poignancy to this special occasion both of these great ladies passed away a year or so later.

I am not sure I made the connection at the time but Beth with Ellie Marshall, her friend and flatmate in Boston, made up the Rockin’ Robins who sang backing vocals for Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers in the early 1980s, both live and on the immortal Jonathan Sings! LP, which I bet is many people’s favourite Jonathan record. I wonder how many would choose 1979’s Back In Your Life? I’m not sure. Certainly, I would admit I have a soft spot for it (I like it, I like it a lot!) and ‘Abdul & Cleopatra’ is one of my favourite songs, full stop.

It’s an odd record, isn’t it? One of the greatest songwriters ever and yet nearly half of the record is made up of cover versions. And what a mad mix of choices! A couple of which are decidedly ancient, pre-rock ’n’ roll, pre-anything, with Jonathan unexpectedly adopting the signature tune of John McCormack, my Grandad Carney’s great favourite, on ‘I Hear You Calling Me’, and on ‘Emaline’ earnestly singing a traditional song that became a favourite of barbershop harmony ensembles.

Even ‘Buzz Buzz Buzz’ which seems so quintessentially Jonathan was recorded by the Hollywood Flames way back in 1957, and it’s no surprise Jonathan would be a fan of doo wop and early R&B vocal groups. I recently came across an interview with him, published in the Boston punk magazine BGN back in June 1980, where he said: “I listen to just a few songs and listen to them over and over again. Like ‘Blueberry Sweet’ by The Chandeliers which was made in 1956. ‘Down In Cuba’ by the Royal Holidays from, like, '57. Then I listen to old Diablos from '54, '55, '56.” I had to look the first two up but at least I knew a little about Nolan Strong and the Diablos, especially their spectral pop classic ‘The Wind’ with what Jonathan would more recently say has a tremelo guitar sound at the start which sounds like a harp.

Laura Nyro would cover ‘The Wind’ on her immortal Gonna Take A Miracle set and Lou Reed was also a huge fan of Nolan Strong and the Diablos, especially ‘The Wind’ which maybe links to one of my favourite Velvets songs, ‘I Found A Reason’ where the guitar sound is very Diablos-esque. And there’s Jonathan’s cover of ‘Lydia’. One can picture Jonathan with his transistor radio listening to an oldies station back home in Boston, hearing ‘Lydia’ by Lewis Lymon & the Teenchords and thinking “I could do that”. And yes, Lewis was Frankie’s brother: “And talking about Frankie Lymon, tell me why is it so?”

Then there’s that gorgeous instrumental surf version of Billy Swan’s ‘Lover Please’ where you can practically sense Jonathan grimacing and gurning as his guitar twangs sharper than lightning. It is another song that goes way back to the dawn of the 1960s, first recorded by a teenage Billy Swan and the Rhythm Steppers, with other great versions swiftly following by Dennis Turner, Clyde McPhatter, the marvellous Marvelettes and over here the great Vernons Girls.

Then Billy Swan himself got to record it in 1974 for his debut LP I Can Help. The title track is one of those songs that instantly whisks me back to being a kid. It sounded so good on the radio back then. Still does, I bet. And I love that album, though it would be many years before I got to hear it. When I did and heard the closing track, ‘P.M.S. (Post Mortem Syndrome)’, where the doo wop style backing vocals came in halfway through, I suddenly thought that’s not unlike Vic’s ‘Birth and Death’, the opening track on my beloved What’s The Matter Boy?! Maybe it is just me and my cloth ears? Maybe it’s just coincidence. Who knows? But somehow, whether real or imagined, that kind of connection can brighten up our lives.