I'm repeating myself a bit today, but I hope readers will indulge me, as I've just become the proud owner of a copy of one of my favorite records ever. I have posted the A-side of this 45 before, 18 months before I began this "song poem of the week" project, but the MP3 shared at that time was cribbed from an eBay auction, and I never actually owned the record before this week. This means I can now share a higher quality MP3, can offer up the B-side, and can share scans of the record itself.
The record is "What's She Got (That I Ain't Got)", and I wrote about it at length in July of 2007, in a posting you can find here. Without repeating much of that post, I will say that my love and admiration for this record continues to grow, and in particular I adore the lead vocal, and the masterful bridge, one of the best I've ever heard, made all that much better by a guitarist who had clearly been listening to "Love is Strange", but whose work here is superior even to that great guitar performance.
There is some question in my mind as to if this is actually a song-poem. Carellen Records was a hybrid of sorts, releasing song-poems, vanity records and maybe even some records which were legitimate bids for hit status. And Edith Hopkins, the author of this song, and my all-time favorite song-poet, also commissioned both song-poems and more legit releases.
I'll say this: If this is a song-poem, it's the best one I've ever heard, by a significant margin. If it's a legitimate late '50's release, it's among my favorite records of that era (and that's saying something, as that is my favorite era for pop music). This is, in my opinion, a perfect record. Play:
The flip side, "Cry Baby Heart", is more of a standard late '50's rock-a-ballad, brought to above-average quality by another singularly great vocal by Betty Jayne, who clearly deserved to be a big star (I say this based on this and other records by her in my collection). My view of the likelihood of this being a song-poem record goes way up, when I hear that another take was not attempted, after the bass singer sang a a truly horrible note, right at the end of this performance.
Download: Betty Jayne - Cry Baby Heart
Play:
4 comments:
Bob,
Congratulations! I am so glad for you!!!
Oh, happy day indeed! Glad for you, Bob.
I was backtracking and hadn't gotten to this one!
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.
I love this one.
Just discovered your site via Googling "Betty Jayne." She's great and should have had better material, in my opinion; "What's He Got" isn't too strong and does sound song-poemish. However, "Cry Baby Heart" sounds a lot better written and more professional despite the bass singer's honker at the end. If you recall, a lot of '50s-'60s sessions were done on the cheap with mistakes kept in if the rest of the performance was up to snuff. In this case, I'd say that was true. I am nowhere near a song-poem historian (I'll leave that to you and to Phil Milstein), but if "Cry" is indeed a song-poem, it's one of the best records of one I've ecvery heard!
By the way, whoever sampled the record sounds as though they did it at a lot less than the 192kbps at which you posted it. I've cleaned up "Cry" a little - can't get the "digital blurgle" out, but I evened out the volume a bit. E-mail me at p h d @ verizon dot net (no spaces and fill in the dot properly) and I can send you my "fix" if you're interested.
Thanks
Country Paul
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