Johnny Rivers: "Baby I Need Your Lovin'"

March 18, 1967 (1 week)

In a just world I would have already written about "Baby I Need Your Lovin'". The same goes for "Ask the Lonely", "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)", "It's the Same Old Song", "Reach Out I'll Be There" and "Standing in the Shadows of Love". I should've just recently finished a glowing review of "Bernadette" and I should've been looking forward to getting to "Walk Away Renee" in a couple months from now. (I'm tempted to mention a few more but let's not go nuts here)

Yes, the rumours are true: I love The Four Tops. If you ask me — which you didn't — they're the greatest vocal pop group of all time and it's really not close. The rough baritone of Levi Stubs has been rightly praised over the years but it often easy to overlook their magnificent harmonies as well. Not to take anything away from them but silky smooth groups like The Miracles and The Temptations lack the Tops' distinctiveness. No one sounded like them at the time and no one has managed to sound like them in the years since.

To his credit, Johnny Rivers would probably admit that he doesn't sound like them either. He certainly doesn't sound like he's trying to on his hit version of "Baby I Need Your Lovin'". Even with his delightfully chewy voice, Rivers is at a disadvantage since there's only one of him. Thus, we encounter the first major knock against his rendition: welcome to backing singer hell. While Levi Stubbs tears into (see what I did there, fellow Billy Bragg fans?) pleading with how much he needs her (his?) lovin', the remaining Tops — Obie Benson, Duke Fakir and Lawrence Payton — back him ably with the right mixture of empathy and distance. Motown backing vocalist trio The Andantes add to the lush sound without getting in the way. The same cannot be said for The Blossoms on the Rivers' version — and it isn't even their fault really. They're all Rivers has for support and since he already sounds bored out of his mind, what was Darlene Love's group to do? 

The big problem here is it's all so incredibly bland. While Rivers and The Blossoms are out of their depth with a pop classic, the musical structure and production sucked whatever life remained from it. Not that I would ever attempt this experiment but it's how I would imagine an AI cover of "Baby I Need Your Lovin'" might sound. Up to this point, Rivers had managed to carve out a respectable if unspectacular singing career. His seemingly abrupt shift from proto-swamp rock to mainstream balladeering might have seems like a classic sell out move but he got away with it at first. Previous Canadian chart topper "Poor Side of Town" had been a bold step forward but this is has me pining for the dirty southern rock of old. Not only was a fantastic Four Tops song too much for him but he was too good for something so trite.

Score: 3

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Wait...What?

Cannonball Adderley? Again??? Of all the jazz greats, he's the one I'm the least interested in and "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" doesn't raise him any in my esteem. I mean, Joe Zwainul's tune is typically cool and catchy and he plays a mean organ but the Cannon's alto sax is barely present. Then again, why should I complain if a jazz soloist I don't think much of is only minimally involved in something? That said, I do care. I care very much that the comparatively bland Adderley enjoyed chart success that was denied to Miles Davis or Bud Powell or even Duke Ellington (how the addictive earworm "Limbo Jazz" was never a hit I'll never know). Nice at it is to see some jazz make it on to the pop charts in a year like 1967, I just wish it wasn't as underwhelming a listen as the Cannonball's overrated "classic" Somethin' Else.

Del Shannon: "Runaway"

April 17, 1961 (4 weeks)

So, 1961 is starting to look like a pretty solid year for CHUM number ones. The stink of Andy Stewart's massive haggis farts has finally lifted and it's now possible that his not-especially-good and godawful back-to-back entries may be the exceptions rather than the rule. But let's not go nuts here: there are a handful from that summer and autumn that I'm apprehensive about. But, for now at least, we can bask in some fab pop.

Del Shannon's "Runaway" is the third bone fide classic covered so far and we've only just entered spring. But while "Apache" is a spectacular display of guitar dynamics (along with some production brilliance) and "Blue Moon" an irresistible slice of nonsensical hooks and scatting, "Runaway" is a much more conventional pop outing, albeit one with shifts in style while also being a perfect spotlight for Shannon's magnificent vocal range.

"Runaway" begins by deceiving the listener into thinking that it's a country number — Shannon (under the guise of Charles Johnson; his real name was less rock 'n' roll/more professorial Charles Weedon Westover) had been in a C&W group in his native Michigan prior to his rise to fame — before quickly settling into a brisk R&B groove with a seemingly out of place twinkling piano. Things proceed normally until just after a first pass of the chorus when the song's most distinctive element arrives in the form of what keyboardist, co-writer and inventor Max Crook had dubbed his Musitron, a proto-synthesizer set to a pitch that could just about cut glass. Until now simply a catchy pop song, this clavioline-type instrument lifts it into a whole other level - a good song suddenly becoming great.

The overall experience of listening to "Runaway" for the first time is startling but it manages to hold up over repeated plays as well. The after-effects of the space-age sound of the Musitron is such that the opening with the county guitar I already eluded to makes it seem like you've put on the wrong song. Seldom has a piece of music started one way only to end up in such a radically different place. Meanwhile, Shannon's voice seems to get better and better the more you listen to him. From guttural all the way to hitting a sweet falsetto ("Why-why-why-why-why"), Shannon proves why he was one of the great, if sadly overlooked, vocalists of his era.

There is one tiny problem though. At two minutes and fifteen seconds, "Runaway" ends a little too abruptly and it feels as if another sixty to ninety minutes could have been tacked on with perhaps another Musitron solo or, better yet, some other out there instrument or technique. I'm all for brevity and would much rather a pop song that leaves me wanting more than one that can't bring itself to wrap up but there's a nagging feeling here that there's unfinished business. The coming wave of album orientated rock would have found a simple solution; release this short version as a single and save the full, five or six minute epic for the LP.

The pop/rock boom of the mid-sixties that was ushered in by The Beatles resulted in a great deal of futuristic singles — The Byrds' "Eight Miles High", The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations", the Fab Four themselves with their peerless run of hits — but it wasn't something that just started off with Ed Sullivan introducing those "youngsters from Liverpool". Rather, the groundwork was being laid by others while the future superstars were still a struggling beat group playing the Cavern and the Hamburg dive bars. The Tornados with the extraordinary "Telstar" (we'll be getting to it in a few weeks) was a huge step forward but the sound of Sputnik orbiting the Earth was something that Shannon and his crew were already mining in the first half of '61. Psychedelic and progressive rock, meet your Rosetta Stone.

Score: 9

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Wait...What???

Though I write about pop, I'm also quite the jazz fan. Trouble is, I don't know anything about it so my attempts to review the genre have been laughably bad. While it's nice to see traces of some of the jazz greats pop up, I'd rather, say, Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus or Thelonious Monk than Cannonball Adderley. I know a lot of budding alto sax players cite him as an influence but I've never been crazy about him listening to him. (Though generally considered to be a jazz classic, his 1958 album Somethin' Else makes for a pleasant listen but nowhere near as good as the high placings on many Greatest Jazz Albums of All-Time lists would have you believe) Luckily, Adderley's often dull and methodical style of playing is covered up by bandmates on surprise minor CHUM hit "African Waltz". With the likes of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman taking the jazz solo to new and unexplored (and, frankly, often unlistenable) heights, this frenetic group performance would have made for a refreshing change of pace. Still, it's quite a racket without a trace of subtlety. I don't know if anyone asked for a spy thriller theme song as played by gathering of tribal elders but I'm glad it's something they embarked upon. I just won't be listening to it as often as something like "Runaway".