✓ He Didn't Use a Stage Name
Stunning but true! The man born William Joseph Royal went on to pop success as Billy Joe Royal, which is hardly a radical change of identity. I would've guessed he had been baptized as something like 'William Joseph Dingle' or 'William Joseph Barraclough' only for a hucksterish manager from South Carolina to step in and gave him the much more, well, royal surname. Easily pop music's most contrived-sounding real name with the exception of the Captain and Tennille's Daryl Dragon.
✓ Canadians Really Took to Him
Two number one hits north of the border for his nibs when the best he could do in his native United States was a measly number nine with "Down in the Boondocks". "I Knew You When" did no better than fourteen down south. While the normally reliable setlist.fm is of little use to me, I'm pretty sure he played more than one Canadian gig during this period. If anything, you'd think the concert opportunities would have been plentiful up in Canada. Ontarians no doubt embraced his southern bar band rock stylings while out in the prairie provinces they could sense a future country and western star a mile away. (Hell, Quebeckers were probably fooled by his patois, assuming he ever bothered affecting one)
✓ His Second-Biggest Hit Is a Step Up from His Signature Tune
Not by a whole lot, no, but I'd take "I Knew You When" over "Down in the Boondocks". Dancing around the Gene Pitney comparisons with his first big hit, he fully embraces them here and - to hell with originality! - he was right to do so. Dramatic and impassioned, Royal utilizes his voice to its fullest extent without going over the line into sickly melodrama. (Ed.: The above isn't a fact, rather it is simply the opinion of the writer of this so-called review)
✓ The RPM Chart Wasn't Exactly Brimming with Pop Classics
The bizarre practice of purging descending singles from the Top 40 was still in effect which meant that The Toys were done after a fortnight on top and The Beatles' "Yesterday" was nowhere to be found after a relatively modest peak of number four a week earlier. Instead, there are some eccentric covers including a largely forgotten version of The Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" by The Silkie (yes, the singular 'Silkie' rather than the plural regardless of what the good people at RPM would have you believe) and unexpected arrangement of a Dylan song (see below). In addition, a so-so bunch of future Canadian chart toppers were on the rise as was The Byrds with "Turn! Turn! Turn!" which unjustly failed to reach number one. With all due respect to a solid entry from Royal, his competition wasn't exactly stellar.
✓ Billy Joe Royal Would Go on to Success in Country Music
Yeah, no shit.
Score: 6
~~~~~
Can Con
As mentioned above, yet another Dylan cover was doing well in the charts as 1965 began drawing to a close. Up ten places and into the Top 20 this week is Gordon Lightfoot with "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues". The penultimate track on Dylan's most recent album Highway 61 Revisited, it doesn't strike the listener as a potential hit single the way both "Tombstone Blues" and the title track do. So, points for making something out of an apparent commercial dud. That said, it's not great. Yes, it did receive acclaim at the time and returned Gord to within inches of his first number one hit but I find it impossible to separate from both Dylan's vastly superior original and Lightfoot's own creative peak to come. In a way, Lightfoot is too good for the material. Not that it's a poor song, far from it, but it's a great example of someone over-correcting Dylan's modest singing. That beautiful, oak-aged voice of Gord's is present and correct but ill-suited to grasping all of Dylan's humour, irony, literary-ness and rage. Yet, Orillia, Ontario's favourite son isn't the worst thing about it. Horns and backing vocals and a lush arrangement may have seemed like a good idea at the time but they how can they compare with that tinny piano part in the original? They can't. In retrospect, Lightfoot's sixites represented a build up to his mammoth seventies so I like to think that his messy recordings from this period represent growth on his part. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to reviewing some of his genuinely great singles. In the meantime, how about an actual Bob Dylan song for me to sink my teeth into?
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