Post by rayge on Feb 21, 2022 13:16:01 GMT
Another double-sided single for your delight and delectation.
A-side
B-side
The artist isn't remotely obscure of course, but this single was my way into him, heard long before Spanish Harlem or Stand By Me or before I knew he was the lead voice on the Drifter's Save the Last Dance For Me. It was his twelfth or thirteenth solo single on Atco, released early in 1963, and one of the first not to have any input from Leiber and Stoller as writers, arrangers or producers, but the arrangement carried on their experiments with introducing strings and other instruments to pump up the emotion of R&B and soul numbers.
I was originally sucked in by the extraordinary melodrama of the A-side, from the echoing thump of the bass drums at the beginning to the chanting of the girl group (which MAY have been Dionne and DeeDeeWarwick and their aunt, Cissie Houston, who appeared on other Ben and indeed Drifters singles), the keening of the violins, the splash cymbals and of course Ben E's vocal. It was probably the first time I'd heard that testifying soul vocal style and it burst like a benevolent bomb in my 14-year-old brain - His phrasing, the little gasps and yelps, the sheer emotional heft of it. It's a slight song with no great tune and very little in the way of separation of instruments, but a transcendent performance just lifts it.
And then I turned it over, and there was something completely different, but just as affecting. The arranger, Jimmie Haskell, had worked with Ricky Nelson, and would later arrange Ode to Billie Joe and Bridge Over Troubled Water among many others, and there's a slightly more popppy sound to Gloria Gloria than the A, but it was still wlld and new to me, with the star being that propusive organ pushing hard at the beat beneath Ben and the girls doing their call and response yearning thing, and then taking over for the just-reined-in desperation of the break before the vocals come in for a repeat. Again, there's not much of a song there - as with Stand By Me, Ben was great at writing the germ and hook of a song, but not in fleshing it out - but the mood is astonishing, and it swings like a pendulum on amphetamine sulphate.
This record, more than any other I think, ignited my love for what I like to think of as 'real' soul music, and, looking back now, I think that what turned me off from later 'soul' sounds - especially those influenced by Stax, Muscle Shoals, and James Browns funkiness was that the tone and colour and expressiveness of instruments was utterly subsumed to the rhythm and the notion of dancing rather than listening. Wonderfully expressive and melismatic instruments such as organ, sax and trombobne made sharp percussive noises, at the expense of subtelty, emotion, colour, texture and tone. It didn't have to be this way - I defy anyone to keep still to Gloria Gloria, for instance.
