“A New Shade of Blue (alternate version)” (1964) – Bobby Fuller * Written by Bobby Fuller and Mary Stone * LP: Shakedown! The Texas Tapes Revisited (1996) * Label: Del-Fi
This earlier take of Bobby Fuller’s “A New Shade of Blue” first became available on Shakedown!, a 1996 roundup of early singles and demos from 1961 through 1964. Compared to the later version that appeared on the Bobby Fuller Four’s I Fought the Law album, this echo-drenched heartbreaker is better, featuring some of Fuller’s most convincing vocals (which is saying a lot where he’s concerned), delicate guitars and lyrics (written by his neighbor’s mom), and a bullseye bridge. The later version loses too much of that atmospheric reverb. It also screws up the middle-eight’s flawless symmetry by knocking out a key minor chord and adding a measure at the end. And it also finds Fuller overdoing the lead vocal’s vibrato. In 2012, Bob Dylan would appropriate this song’s entire chord structure for his “Soon After Mindnight.”