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Tuesday, June 06, 2006
BABY, DON'T DO IT
The Five Royals
Smash : 1964
Out of Print
[Buy It]
TEARS OF JOY
Vicki Anderson
King: 1967
Out of Print
THINK
James Brown
Think
Polydor : 1973
[Out of Print]
BABY, DON'T DO IT
Lyn Collins
People : 1975
available on:
Mama Feelgood: The Best of Lyn Collins [Import]
[Buy It]
Part I of III
James Brown has repeatedly covered a few artists' songs in his career--the overlap between his repertoire and Frank Sinatra's is probably the largest and most regrettable, and he devoted half an album and a much later single to Little Willie John's hits. But one act he's clearly got a sentimental attachment to is the "5" Royales, who had only a middling commercial presence but a repertoire and style that lasted much longer than they did on the charts.
JB had a huge hit in 1960 with "Think," which had been a not-quite-as-big record for the Royales a couple of years earlier. Brown cranked up the tempo, mangled the lyrics a little (he's never subsequently unmangled them), and generally marked the song as his territory for good. In response, Pauling and company took a stab at Brown's "Please, Please, Please," not as successfully.
On Live at the Apollo, recorded in late 1962, Brown sped "Think" up again. (When King released the Apollo version as a promotional single in '64, they slowed that recording down to the 1960 single speed, bizarrely enough.) In 1967, on the verge of his funk breakthrough with "Cold Sweat," Brown and Vicki Anderson recorded a duet version of "Think" for a single, this time with a fancier beat and horn chart; he reproduced that arrangement for his duet later that year with Marva Whitney, released in 1968 on Live at the Apollo, Vol. II.
Then, in 1973, as he eased into his relationship with session cats arranged by Dave Matthews, JB cut yet another "Think," this time a slicked-up, wah-wah-funk version. It hit #15 on the R&B charts. For his follow-up, he released--yes--another version of "Think," this time with the same backing track but a very different vocal, beginning with some shout-outs to "Soul Train" and Don Cornelius. (It charted too, though it only went to #37.) The second '73 take has never been released on CD, to my knowledge; it's got a different catalogue number than the previous version, but they share the same B-side: a hilariously WTF version of the Beatles' "Something."
By 1964, the "5" Royales' commercial stock had sunk badly. As he occasionally did with other old favorites of his who weren't filling so many seats any more, Brown produced a couple of records for them (on which they were credited as the Five Royals). "Baby, Don't Do It" is a peculiar new arrangement of one of their earliest hits, originally released in 1953 on Apollo Records--that unresolved horn flourish at the end on the '64 version is just weird.
Vicki Anderson recorded a few JB-produced "5" Royales covers besides "Think," including "Baby, Don't You Know" and "The Feeling Is Real." I'm told that "Tears of Joy" grazed the lower regions of one chart or another, though damned if I can identify which; it was the other side of an odd, jerky funk workout called "If You Don't Give Me What I Want (I Got to Get It Some Other Place)," recorded at the same session as "Cold Sweat."
There's something strangely desperate about the final year or two of releases on the JB production imprint People Records--you can feel the revue's terror at the approach of disco in their attempts to jump on the trends they'd once led and their superstitious adherence to things that had once propitiated hits. Why does the first minute or so of Lyn Collins' version of "Baby, Don't Do It" end in an explosion sound, then start over from the beginning, complete with intro rap? Perhaps because that had worked the year before for "Rock Me Again and Again and Again and Again and Again and Again (6 Times)."
Still: what a great record!
-Douglas WolkLabels: James
posted by James
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