Category: 1960-1964

“(Say I Love You) Doo Bee Dum” (1964) – The Four-Evers * Written by Steve Tudanger and Joe Di Benedetto * 45: “(Say I Love You) Doo Bee Dum” / “Everlasting” * Produced by Al Kasha * Label: Smash

This Brooklyn group’s name and sound play off of their models the 4 Seasons. Their eventual hookup with that group’s Bob Gaudio and producer Bob Crewe secured them a record contract. “(Say I Love You) Doo Bee Dum” would be their last single, though, and that knowledge gives it a special dose of sweet pain. The short instrumental break at 1:28 sparkles and yearns like the sun setting on Coney Island on the last day of summer. Peaked at #119 in Billboard.

“Adam et Eve dans le Paradis” (1960) – Frank Schildt * Trad. Arr. * LP: Songs of Love, Play and Protest * Label: Folkways

Frank Schildt was a Dutch folksinger with a stentorian vocal delivery. All seven of the languages he uses on his only album, Songs of Love, Play and Protest, come at you full throttle. After moving to the US in the late fifties and working the folk scenes in New York and Chicago during the folk revival years, his activities go undocumented. One of the album’s clear highlights comes from the island of Martinique where, as he explains in the notes, the French missionaries found its inhabitants abiding in the nude. Charitable clothing donations were immediately sent for, leading to an eventual protest at mission HQ, in which the islanders, all sans vêtements, sang “Adam and Eve in paradise.” The lyrics, as Schildt translates them in his liner notes, go as follows: “Adam and Eve in paradise wore no clothes, so why should we wear them? Tonight we are going to dance with no shirts and pants.” Schildt delivers them here with the gusto of a dirty-minded schoolboy.

“Abigail Beecher” (1964) – Freddy Cannon * Written by Bob Boulanger and Richard Heard * 45: “Abigail Beecher” / “All American Girl” * LP: Freddie Cannon * Produced by Frank Slay * Label: Warner Bros.

In the style of Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive,” slinky voodoo guitar underscores Cannon’s raves about the high school history teacher, who knows all the dances, drives a Jaguar XK-E, and has the goods to be a rock ‘n roll singer. Such high school stomp-friendly vignettes from teenage life distinguished the man nicknamed “Boom Boom” from the other ducktailed singers all over the early sixties charts. Reached #16 on Billboard.

“Borracho de Amor” (1962) – José Manuel Calderón * Written by José Manuel Calderón * LP: Este es Jose Manuel Calderon * Label: Zuni

The guitar-oriented “bachata” sound, an offshoot of the bolero and son genres, rose up in the Dominican Republic with José Manuel Calderón’s popular 1962 “Borracho de Amor” (“love drunk”) single. Sadly for him, the music couldn’t shake a decades-long Dominican perception of it being the soundtrack of crime, which eventually drove a disheartened Calderón off to more supportive communities in New York City, where he still makes music. To appreciate “Borracho de Amor” fully, don’t go previewing and skipping around. Just let it play so you can experience the full effect of the pause at 1:17, after which Calderón’s vocals, suddenly intoxicated with reverb, sound like voices in your head.

“All Day and All of the Night” (1964) – The Kinks * Written by Ray Davies * 45: “All Day and All of the Night” / “I Gotta Move” * Produced by Shel Talmy * Label: Pye (UK)/Reprise (US)

Top Ten broken-bottle mod rock that, along with “You Really Got Me,” presents the Kinks as potentially more primal than anything the greasers (their first audience’s cultural rivals) listened to. This one did have deceptively sophisticated chord changes, though, giving many once-confident garage combos pause. By the late sixties the Kinks had matured into English gentlemen, for whom the line “the only time I feel alright is by your side” actually did seem believable. The song reappeared as a self-referential musical motif in the band’s 1981 FM rock hit “Destroyer,” which would chart higher (#3) than its source (#7).

 

 

“A’Soalin’” (1963) – Peter, Paul and Mary * Traditional Arrangement by Paul Stookey, Elaina Mezzetti, and Tracy Batteaste * LP: (Moving) * Produced by Albert B. Grossman * Label: Warner Bros.

“A’Soalin'” is a folk rendition of “Soul Cake,” a traditional British Christmas song for the dead associated with certain door-to-door proto-Halloween traditions. This one stands out among holiday recordings by creating a haunting, wintry mood; its guitar part, too, still serves as an alluring entry point for newcomers to the instrument. But Paul Stookey’s verse about the “lit-tle chul-dren” brings to mind a demonstrative Dickensian headmaster. On the label, songwriting credits go to Stookey, Mezzetti, and Batteaste, even though it’s an arrangement.

“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.”