I haven't been mentioning many of the near number ones of late but there was one I was going to write about just the other day until I decided to save it for this review. Coming in just behind Paul Revere and the Raiders' ghastly "I Had a Dream" is a version of "Groovin'", a laid back chart topper from only four months' earlier. If anything, this recording by Booker T. and the MG's is even happier to kick back and relax. The famed house band for Memphis label Stax were the third finest quartet in the business (the two groups ahead of them, of course, were (in order) the Modern Jazz Quartet and The Beatles) and they were now entering a period in which they proved to be up for any standard they got their hands on. They already had a stellar Christmas album to their credit — the highlight being "Jingle Bells", which they might as well have called "You Can't Hurry Christmas" — as well as an astonishing "Summertime", perhaps the second best version of the Gershwin classic (George Shearing's is best). Coming up, they had Simon and Garfunkel and even a full album of Beatles' covers. The foursome wrote some fabulous instrumentals but they did just as well with cover versions.
I say all this not just so I can heap all sorts of praise upon Booker T. and the MG's (a group who won't be appearing in this space) but also so I can point out just how crazy Canadians were for anything connected to The Young Rascals. "How Can I Be Sure" was their third straight RPM number one and the fourth of eleven consecutive Top 10 hits. "Good Lovin'" and "Groovin'" had been such huge hits for the Rascals in many countries but they mostly struggled to recapture that level of success — the British had basically had their fill of them as soon as the latter had fallen out of the UK chart — but Canada bucked that trend.
I had been starting to agree with the folk in other territories especially after "A Girl Like You" proved so mind-numbingly boring. "It's this fence-sitting ordinariness that irks me," was how I finished off that particular review. How nice of them, then, to have been listening to this sad old blogger who happens to be writing nearly sixty years in the future! "How Can I Be Sure" doesn't completely work but at least they were attempting something new and even had a tune I could just about remember.
It's high time I gave some credit to the Rascal songwriting team of Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati. I respect anyone who takes the example of The Beatles and actually tries out some creativity of their own. (Yeah, take that boring old power pop bands!) I mean, that's the whole point for god's sake! Cavaliere even admitted that "How Can I Be Sure" owed a lot to Paul McCartney's softer Fab Four hits like "Yesterday" and "Michelle". He needn't sell himself and Brigati short though: even if the end result is a little messy, there's plenty of sonic experimentation that surpasses those all-too-familiar hits. Sure, I'd still rather listen to "Michelle" but "How Can I Be Sure" isn't simply a product of The Beatles; rather, it's the result of taking proper inspiration from them.
The composition is rather good but it's debatable if The Young Rascals' original is even the best one out there. A suitably dramatic and sultry reading by Dusty Springfield was only a minor hit in the UK in 1970 but her vocal leaves Cavaliere's in the, well, dust. David Cassidy had considerably more success with it a couple years' later. His version is a little too melodramatic but it's hard to argue with the grandeur of the arrangement. (Notably, all three "major" renditions of "How Can I Be Sure" retain the distinctive concertina even if there's less of an overall Continental feel to the Dusty/Cassidy remakes) Indeed, it could be the limitations of being a pop quartet that holds it back from what its true potential.
All that said, I can't bring myself to score it beyond the 'slightly above average' range. For all its strengths, it's still rather unmoving. I admire the craft but fail to be that drawn to the end result. Good not great, as befits even the best Young Rascals hits that aren't the two everyone knows. That said, maybe my perception has been altered by the discovery that its inspiration was the result of Cavaliere dating a high school student when he was in his mid-twenties. How Can You Be Sure? Maybe it was her social studies homework that should've given you the answer.
Score: 6
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