Musical notes
Had a few most excellent old tunes that I’d jdamned near forgotten about altogether pop into my empty head the other day, and I been a-movin’ and a-groovin’ to ‘em ever since. First up, Jack Rabbit Slim’s slashing, energetic “Rock-A-Cha.”
Next up, Travis and Bob’s cool old chestnut, “Tell Him No,” which I used to play with Mook in the Parodis.
Then, we have the legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her great, great rendition of “Didn’t It Rain.”
I dunno, seeing Tharpe wailing on that SG Custom always felt sorta incongruous to me, perhaps because I never could stand an SG myself. Doesn’t seem to bother her any, though.
Lastly but by no means leastly, my own personal favorite of the whole bunch: Larry Finnegan’s strange but haunting 1962 earwig, “Dear One.”
What, you didn’t think I WASN’T gonna delve a little further into this one, did ya? COME ON, MAN! I DID say it was one of my all-timers, ya know.
Finnegan’s wavery falsetto on the intro immediately gives way to a deeper, more chesty man-voice for the rest of the song. It’s just one of several odd, quirky little aspects of this quirky little tune. Others include the spoken lines from the girl who done him wrong, echoing the B-part lyrics sung by Finnegan.
The sudden 180-degree shift in narrative point of view from Finnegan in the victim role to the cheating hussy in this section is almost jarring, but not quite. As the song moves along through, then gets back to the regular chorus-verse-chorus choogle of most pop/rock music, the uninflected, zombie-like recitation of the lame explanation for her faithless betrayal begins to sound funny, really.
Especially the final part, to wit: “But I lost my head/And I lost my heart/And I lost your love to him.” Whuuu….? Lost HIS love, you mean, not YOURS. Right? i mean, how the fug you gonna lose HIS love to etc, ya silly bint?!? Like I said: weird.
Leaving all the departures from standard pop-song form aside, the thing you really want to pay close attention to here is the drummer’s shuffle-beat paradiddling around on the snare. The jangly, tinkly piano is nice, as is the bass line, the guitars, the basic melody, all of it. But it’s the snare drum that drives this thing, that propels the song from run-of-the-mill teenybopper fluff right up into the hightest heights of truly unforgettable music. Once you home in on that snare, that’s it: you’re gone.
As you will no doubt realize straightaway, as inventive and unusual as the entire tune is, it’s that rolling, rollicking snare drum that really makes the whole thing git up and snort. I gots no idea who that drummer is/was, but he’s a bona fide genius—even doing them paradiddles the whole entire song, pretty much, he still never plays ‘em the same way twice.
Reminds me of BP’s drummer Mark, who played similar-type rolls and shuffle-beats on the snare himself, except he pounded them skins so durn viciously you coud almost hear the heads scream in agony. If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.
Update! Y’all prolly knew I’d just HAVE to do some poking around on this drummer business, din’tcha?
When it came to music, Larry counted Johnny Cash and Don Gibson as his two favorite artists. While at the university he and his older brother Vincent, then a senior at Boston College, wrote Dear One. They started knocking on the doors of record companies all over New York, but had no takers until they met Hy Weiss, the owner of the small but successful Old Town Records. Weiss had already produced such hits as So Fine by the Fiestas from 1959, and Let The Little Girl Dance by Billy Bland the following year, as well as Life Is But A Dream by the Harptones. Hy Weiss recognized Larry’s talent and saw the potential in Dear One. He also changed Larry’s last name from Finneran to Finnegan, figuring that dee-jays stood a better chance of remembering a common name like Finnegan.
Dear One was recorded at Mira Sound Studios, West 54th St., New York. According to Vincent Finneran, “There was no demo version of ‘Dear One’, just one recording with two takes. And the thing that made the song successful was the engineer Bill McMeekan. He put five microphones in and around the piano and three microphones on the drums which gave the song a unique sound. Dick Pitassy played piano. Two different girls sang on ‘Dear One’; one did the opening female lines and another did the later ones.”
One of the girls, Bambi LaMorte (today Mignon Lawless), remembers, “Larry dated one of my roommates (Sandy Bryant). I attended St.Mary’s College which is directly across the street from Notre Dame. I met Larry through Sandy. We would sometimes all hang out together. I was a music major and since I lived in Pelham, New York (about 20 minutes from Manhattan), Larry asked me if I would sing a female part on his recording. I said ‘Sure.’ We went to a recording studio somewhere in Manhattan over Thanksgiving vacation 1961 and recorded ‘Dear One’. The only professional musician was Gary Chester, the drummer. Larry felt it was important to have an experienced drummer. I believe there were two guitar players, both from Notre Dame. The only things I remember about that night were that the guitar players were not taking the recording seriously enough and kept making mistakes. Larry finally yelled at them and they shaped up. I don’t remember how many tries it took to get the original, but they did a lot of starting and stopping. I do remember that I had to do my part cold turkey, without any practice. I only sang the introduction to ‘Dear One’. They didn’t like the way I spoke the part, and overdubbed it later. I have no idea who the other woman singer is. Larry’s agent hired someone to do it. Larry and I went back to the studio one night and recorded a song we wrote together. I played guitar, he sang, and then we dubbed different instruments onto the recording. It was fascinating to experience his creativity at work.”
Jeez: two takes, no isolation, baffles, or sound damping, just ambient mics and roll tape boys! Sometimes it seems as if there’s a really cool story behind every hit song, out-of-nowhere artist, or recording-studio session, don’t it?
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