If you have read earlier entries on this blog about the Flamingos' 1953 doo wop classic Golden Teardrops then you may be interested in this youtube clip of the 1961 Vee-Jay reissue with overdubbed guitar. Presumably this was done to lessen the gap between the group's Chcago recordings and their recently successful sides for End, most notably I Only Have Eyes For You.
Be warned it ends a second or two prematurely, so you miss the guitar rounding things off at the end. The sound isn't great on this particular clip, but you can hear enough to decide whether you like this reworked version. I've written about it on many occasions in this blog, such as here (about the overdubbed version versus the original) and here (an essay about the recording and notes about the oldies album where I heard it first) and even now I'm not sure how I feel - it was, after all, the form in which I first heard (and loved) it. How can you erase that completely?
Anyway, here is the youtube clip of the overdubbed Golden Teardrops, followed by a clip of the original, undoctored recording (sans guitars, as Clarke put it), if you fancy making a comparison. It's not really a fair competition, however, as the sound of the second youtube clip happens to be superior - and doesn't stop before the end. But it's a handy excuse to remind yourself of what a great record (or two) it is.
Listening to the two versions again, what I can hear is that the addition of the guitar masks or replaces what I presume is a very, very softly played (very softly indeed) sax. The original musicians were careful not to impose themselves on the beautiful vocal arrangement - something which I presume must have been obvious the first time the group sang it to them, so the redubbed version is not about the need to conceal something ungainly - like Uncle Phil camouflaging what is said to be Lennon's lousy bass playing on The Long and Winding Road, according to Ian Macdonald's Revolution in the Head.
Nevertheless, maybe a guitar is simply a more natural accompaniment for voices. But I dunno. I think you can say, however, that it's underlining something already there, or implicit, in the existing accompaniment - maybe a bit like Ringo adding some simple drumming in earlier Beatle days when a track had been bounced down several times. The only difference is that presumably Golden Teardrops was live, so the self-effacement of the musicians was presumably a conscious decision on their or the engineer's part - or whatever the technical term was in those days. So could it be said that the guitar is too on-the-nose, musically? I can't decide - but maybe you can.
