As mentioned in the previous post, Brent Wilson contacted Ben E King for the doo wop documentary Streetlight Harmonies but the singer died before an interview could be set up.
It's a great pity, in more than one sense. Wilson seems to have taken considerable pains to gain the trust of the artists who took part, and even though contributions were heavily edited in the final version the raw footage must have been quite extensive if the case of Vito Picone of the Elegants is anything to go by. According to a virtual Q&A Picone was "in the chair" for a straight six hours before someone realised it might be time to break for a meal.
I have just watched Streetlight Harmonies, Brent Wilson's new documentary about doo wop, and it's well worth your attention whether you are an aficionado or merely, as it were, doo wop-curious. A little over eighty minutes, it provides a very clear overview of the era as well as some discussion about the genre's lasting influence. It may not be the first film dedicated to the subject but where it excels is in the deft editing of the testimony of a large number of interviewees, allowing the story of this music to be told almost entirely through the artists' own words. Charlie Horner, credited as historical consultant, makes an occasional appearance when context is needed and DJ Jerry Blavat ("The Geator with the Heater"), songwriter Jeff Barry and some others appear, although the vast majority of interviewees are group members (including some representatives of girl groups).
Interviews have been cut up and are spread throughout the film according to theme. The focus is on doo wop as a phenomenon and the experiences common to all those involved rather than having large sections dedicated to individual artists or groups. That might sound bitty but it isn't; the narrative flows very well. At the beginning we get an introductory segment about the form's gospel origins then we move to the Orioles and then - no, not to the Dominos, as a more detailed chronological approach might have taken us, but Frankie Lymon ... which is a bit of a jump, though it can certainly be justified as another major breakthrough.
The narrative then goes back and forward a little, according to theme, helped by a radio dial-type indication of the year, as you can see, though the shape is broadly chronological. A great deal is covered along the way but with little sense of its being a history lesson: there are chapter headings but we're not overloaded with facts. Incidentally, the single gospel recording chosen for illustration is Peace in the Valley, from Sam Cooke's first session with the Soul Stirrers - if that's not a badge of good taste I don't know what is.
A decision was clearly made not to rely on old interview footage from other sources, unlike an earlier documentary, Life Could Be a Dream. The latter was fairly well done but did draw rather heavily on an existing half hour programme about Frankie Lymon. Here, however, all the interviews seem to have been conducted for this specific purpose, so existing doo wop fans don't need to worry about buying a lot of rehashed material. This helps make for a greater sense of immediacy. Jimmy Merchant of the Teenagers is one of those interviewed, though the most touching moment for me is hearing Little Anthony say of Frankie Lymon:
I didn't know how to help him but he was still my friend.
And a few details provided by Charlie Thomas, who was in the Five Crowns with Ben E King, add to the picture King painted in Gerri Hershey's Nowhere to Run when rhapsodising about his streetcorner days. Thomas says:
We used to sing on the streetcorner of 8th Avenue. It used to be the Cadillacs on one corner, it used to be the Five Crowns on one corner, the Harptones on another corner ... you know, you'd light the fire in the garbage can and you'd take a little nip of somethin' and then you'd hit a little doo wop song ...
The Brill Building, the importance of Alan Freed, the rise of Italian American groups, racism and the oddness of groups being forced to sing to the wall rather than being seen to favour the black or white half of the audience are all covered - as snapshots rather than in exhaustive detail, but then that doesn't seem the point of this piece. An overall impression is conveyed of those times, made vital because it's been achieved through the memories of those who were directly involved. Motown is mentioned, as is the way the Beatles' invasion of America helped kill off doo wop, for all their love of it - a point also made in Life Could Be a Dream. Sha Na Na's resurrection of doo wop in the late sixties also comes in, and there are a few newer artists on hand to testify to their love of the form.
But there's not too much of the newer artists because in the end it's not their story, and I'm glad that Mr Wilson resisted the temptation to use too many of their contributions, even if it might conceivably have meant the documentary becoming a more commercial prospect. The emphasis remains firmly on the older artists telling their stories - though there is a pleasing moment near the end when Charlie Thomas is speaking to some younger singers who seem to understand why he is a big deal. It's a small but vital scene which you might even say is key to the film: the names and faces of the original singers in so many doo wop groups are not known to the general public but they were the ones who shaped this music, and they matter, both individually and collectively. For that alone, for providing them with a platform, Brent Wilson must be commended.
But we are long past Doo Wop 50, that PBS anniversary show, and - as with the BBC series Rock'n'Roll America - this makes for a great deal of unforced poignancy about this film. "I am just suddenly very cognisant of time," says one participant - a slightly odd form of words which nevertheless seems appropriately sober rather than pompous. And the sight of two singers walking through an exhibition of old photographs of groups is particularly effective. It's a well chosen moment because it could so easily have been discarded during editing but Brent Wilson or editor George Bellias obviously understood the power of seeing two men, in effect, witnessing their own memorial. As with that BBC programme, you are aware that many of the participants are advanced in years and there may not be other opportunities to share these memories; indeed, I have read that several artists have died since this was completed.
I have reviewed that comparable documentary, Life Could Be a Dream, earlier in this blog. I'm not quite sure how to compare the two pieces, nor whether it matters much. The interviewees are mostly different, anyway. What I will say, however, is that the patchwork quilt approach of Streetlight Harmonies works very well indeed and that, stylistically, it feels more of a piece than the earlier film. Different approaches are possible. I am also very fond of Owen McFadden's four part radio series Street Corner Soul, which was more strictly chronological, but Streetlight Harmonies, in giving us the close-up faces of these performers in addition to their voices, carries an extra emotional punch.
The strapline for this documentary is: "Millions know the music. Few know the artists." That neatly sums up what it does. It's the story of doo wop but also the story of those men and women. And Brent Wilson's film presents them with the dignity they deserve. I said earlier that there is little sense of its being a history lesson; it is, of course, but it's not dry and never seems to labour its points. It's very well pitched and deserves a wide audience. It's not misted over with nostalgia and it pays its participants the tribute of taking them seriously. There are all sorts of pleasing details: the camera pans from a picture of the Elegants (Little Star) back in the day to the proud smile of the man holding it, their singer and songwriter Vito Picone. And as I've gone back through the film for videocaps there have been many other felicitous moments which can only have come out of the taking of immense pains to locate the telling moment or remark during the film's assembly.
On the picky side the DVD doesn't come with any extras, which in a way is a pity. I can't begin to imagine how many hours of raw footage must have been distilled to make this 83 minute feature. A PBS documentary about John Lennon made the raw audio of ten interviewees available to download, and it might be nice to have something of the same for this. Against that, however, I can understand if there's a feeling that releasing such material might dilute the effect of the film, though let's hope that it might be preserved and made accessible to future scholars and biographers.
But the main point is that Streetlight Harmonies is very well made and a credit to those involved. You can buy it in various forms. There may be a lot more to explore - personally, I'd love to see a Ken Burns-style twenty episode series - but a summary of the essence of this music in a form which is accessible to the widest range of people I reckon this will be hard to beat. Some of the names not already mentioned include Terry Johnson, Little Anthony, Willie Winfield - plus many, many others. Maybe not quite eight million stories, though not far off, coalescing into a single shared experience.
Postscript:
Since writing the above I have come across an interview with Brent Wilson which can be found here. It's worth a listen, although be warned it has the limitations and annoyances of interviews conducted at the present time (what a good job the documentary was already done and dusted before the current crisis put limits on two being in the same space). It makes clear that Wilson was keenly aware of the time factor in capturing these firsthand accounts, which gave an added urgency to the project, despite obstacles: he talks about the difficulty of tracking down artists in the first place and then gaining their
trust - so many have been exploited in the past, after all - often having
to go through their more IT-savvy children or grandchildren in the
first instance. (A virtual Q&A, here, is also worth investigating; it features Brent Wilson and several singers from the film.)
It's both sad and gratifying to learn that he was especially eager to include Ben E King, eventually finding a fax number for him; they made contact but he died before an interview could be set up - which makes the testimony of Charlie Thomas, quoted earlier, all the more affecting. Some readers may know that although Ben E King wrote There Goes My Baby he wasn't originally slated to sing it: it was Thomas's job until he got the studio equivalent of stage fright and King took over; now only Thomas's voice is left.
Another person who died before an interview could be recorded was Dave Somerville of the Diamonds, the white Canadian group who covered the Gladiolas' Little Darlin' and had the big hit with it, though he is quite prominent in Life Could Be a Dream. If you follow the link below to my review of that earlier documentary please be aware that I would now be more generous in my assessment of his contribution; at the time of writing it I couldn't see beyond the fact that a member of a white covers group was being given so much screentime but he is very articulate and would undoubtedly have enhanced Streetlight Harmonies too.
This reminds me that Ben E King has been interviewed elsewhere too: an episode of Rock'n'Roll America is dedicated to King at the end; he is featured but died before the broadcast. Here is how that was acknowledged at the end of the programme, and it seems fitting to include this in a piece about Streetlight Harmonies as one recurring theme is the gratitude so many artists feel towards others: "I'm standing on the shoulders of giants!" Little Anthony says at one point.
Related posts and links:
My review of Life Could Be a Dream here. A series about the Flamingos' early recordings here. Posts about the radio series Street Corner Soul here. Ben E King and everything you ever wanted to know about Stand By Me here.
Charlie and Pam Horner's Classic Urban Harmony website has many riches to explore. This page contains a guide to their articles including a seven part series about Richard Barrett.
Another story-in-song which made an impression on me as a child was The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp, written by Dallas Frazier. Like Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town, the song had been a hit for Johnny Darrell on the US country charts in 1967, but I became aware of it via O.C. Smith's soulful interpretation, a greater success in Britain than America, the following year.
Listening to the opening chorus now, I'm aware of how quickly and efficiently the story is set up with a few telling details, preparing us for the fuller account to follow in the verses:
Oh, the path was deep and wide
From footsteps leading to our cabin,
Above the door there burned a scarlet lamp,
And late at night a hand would knock
And there would stand a stranger -
Yes, I'm the son of Hickory Holler's tramp.
When I first heard the song on Top of the Pops, however, I imagined that it was about some ne'er-do-well father who had belatedly decided to reveal his identity to his son, heedless of the public humiliation the child would suffer when it became known his dad was a vagrant.
Yes, yes, a cursory reading of the lyrics suggests an alternative scenario. But I had just turned ten and hadn't yet acquired the habit of analysing songs. Though O.C. Smith's record was certainly more than just an upbeat sound for me. As with Ruby and Honey, certain lines stuck in my ten-year-old mind - including, appropriately enough, the narrator's lack of awareness, when young, of local disapproval:
All we really cared about
Was Momma's chicken dumplings
And a goodnight kiss
Before we went to bed
Not to mention a rather curious and not wholly logical mondegreen which might well say something about my own childhood. I heard the final verse as:
Last summer Momma passed away
And left no one to love her
Each and every one was
More than grateful for their burden
I can't think now how I squared that mishearing of the second line (suggesting the entire brood predeceased her) with lines 3 and 4, although "burden" is consistent with my religious upbringing, which carried with it the implication that to be alive is to suffer and endure.
Despite that, I didn't miss the essentially joyous, celebratory nature of the song. It may have contradicted what I thought I'd just heard, yet I accepted that the family were still a unit and all very much alive, honouring the memory of the mother who had kept them together, in this (corrected) version of the full verse:
Last summer Momma passed away
And left the ones who loved her
Each and every one is
More than grateful for their birth
And each Sunday she receives
A big bouquet of fourteen roses
With a card that reads
"The Greatest Mom on Earth."
So, listening as child, I picked out the bits I could understand and tried to make some kind of sense out of what I couldn't, beguiled as I was by O.C. Smith's singing and the irresistible rasp of those horns.
But before we listen to them blare here's a more pared-down arrangement: Johnny Darrell's take, which seems to have been the first version of the song to be recorded, in September 1967 (he was also the first to record The Green, Green Grass of Home). "Decent" seems the way to describe it: straight ahead, delivering the lyrics, trusting them to do the job; another, not dissimilar rendering by Merle Haggard can be found here.
In his own way, O.C. Smith does the same, but that sense of gospel-style celebration
I mentioned permeates the whole record, the (all-female?) chorus, as though
representing the rest of the family, joyously affirming the truth of his
testimony:
At the age of ten I didn't know anything about gospel singing or its relation to soul music - probably wasn't too clear what soul music was, other than the Tamla Motown hits I might have heard on Top of the Pops, which I had only begun watching the previous year. I'd like to say that hearing Smith was a revelation which set me off on a lifelong quest to snap up unconsidered soul gems, but it wasn't so. (Didn't get enough pocket money, for a kickoff.)
Besides, encouraged by his appearance on Top of the Pops, I
was more taken at the time with the unhinged passion of the Crazy World
of Arthur Brown - a hothead if ever there was one. Here is the performance which so captivated me then:
I have no clear memory of whether my brothers liked or disliked The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp, though it stayed in the charts for months and would almost have been on Top of the Pops more than once.
Judgement was passed on my musical taste outside the family home that summer. When we were on holiday in a
small town in Ireland I tried to play Fire three times in
succession on a jukebox in the local cafe - to the annoyance and
incredulity of at least one other patron as Arthur first effected his diabolical introduction. I must have pressed a wrong
button, however, because The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp played as the
second selection.
(adopting sonorous voice:) Now, I don't know who guided my hand that day - possibly that same Person whose representatives on Earth encouraged me to think of life as burdensome - but that slip helped to fix the song in my mind forevermore, long after my passion for Fire had burnt itself out.
And with the knowledge I have acquired since then, I can see that although The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp was originally a country song, it's not unrelated to the gospel tradition of celebrating the role of the mother. An earlier post about the Soul Stirrers, here, includes a clip of Sam Cooke's group performing live, straining to drive the crowd into a frenzy, and it's the maternal references, cannily held in reserve, which finally do the trick.
Not that O.C. Smith's performance is similarly frenetic. "Jubilant" - not, of course, without its own gospel connotations - would be more appropriate. Which is understandable on two counts.
Smith came from a jazz, rather than a gospel, background, singing with Count Basie in the early sixties (there is a detailed biography on the soulwalking website here). And where actual gospel songs on the subject tend towards the self-lacerating ("Did I treat my mother right?"), the message of Hickory Holler's Tramp, even if delivered in soul/gospel mode, is essentially upbeat: the children weren't fully aware of what was happening, and as adults they can only feel gratitude, not guilt, about their mother's sacrifice.
There are quite a few other covers of the song. Johnny Darrell was quickly followed by Sanford Clark, at the end of 1967, and there were at least eight more in 1968 alone, including the UK's Joe Brown. (You can find it here, though Mike Leander's arrangement sticks pretty close to Smith's record; the best bit is the guitar intro.) The composer, Dallas Frazier, recorded it himself in 1970, and it's also to be found on Kenny Rogers' second solo album.
Which makes me think just how much these three songs are interconnected by a kind of mutual admiration society. Goldsboro recorded Ruby and O.C. Smith recorded Honey, and had a hit with another song by its composer, Little Green Apples. The latter had been written by Russell for Roger Miller who, as I said in an earlier post, recorded the first version of Ruby which Kenny Rogers heard, and which seems to have inspired the First Edition's rockified smash. And whether out of simple gratitude for the pointer or some reason beyond my dull computing Mary Arnold, that member of the First Edition who joshingly dubbed their blend of country and rock as "crock", later married Miller ...
Enough. Here's Kenny Rogers' version. To my ears this doesn't have the whoomph of Ruby, though it's certainly cleverly done: the arrangement builds and builds, unlike some other country versions.
And country it is, or at least a crossover version of it, not "crock". Despite an opening which momentarily suggests it could be going in a more adventurous, rock-oriented direction, each new layering of instruments establishes it ever more firmly and reassuringly as a listener-friendly form of country. Rogers' first album was, William DeYoung says, an uneven mix of styles but the second, in which Hickory Holler's Tramp features, was
a cleanly-produced ... pop/country record that would ... light the way for a generation of crossover artists to come.
You can find out more about the song's composer, Dallas Frazier, on his page on the Nashville Songwriters Foundation website, here. I was surprised to learn he was also the composer of the Hollywood Argyles' Alley Oop, a song referenced by both Marc Bolan ("dinosawer") and ... David Bowie ("Look at those cavemen go"). Here's his own version of Hickory Holler's Tramp:
He also wrote Mohair Sam, the tune recorded by Charlie Rich which Elvis kept playing on the jukebox when the Beatles came to call. Here's Frazier's own version:
Which rendition helps make sense of a comment he once made about his songwriting:
I'm basically country because of being raised in the heart of country music -- but I have a lot of blues in my soul.
This is a considerably revised and expanded version of a 2010 post.
Links:
My post about Honey is here. Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town or The Angel Went can be found here. A biography of O.C. Smith can be found on the Soulwalking website here. Kenny Rogers: Built to Last by Bill DeYoung is here. It's a detailed account of his career (to 1998, when it was written); DeYoung interviewed Rogers and other members of the First Edition for the piece. Dallas Frazier's page on The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame website is here.
Having written about Honey in the previous post I'm now going to look at Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition (above).
There are some connections between the two numbers. Both are stories-in-song, much possessed by death, and whatever the pop/rock elements in their respective arrangements they are essentially country ballads, tales of woe.
But with one important difference - important, at least, to my childhood self. My elder brothers, ultimate arbiters in such matters, adjudged Ruby to be "cool" - or at least not "uncool", which amounted to the same thing. They didn't say so directly but I could tell because they withheld their mockery when Kenny Rogers appeared on our little TV screen, thereby granting permission for the song to be enjoyed, its sensational details savoured without embarrassment, by lowly younger siblings. Memory is cloudy but I don't think they extended the same privilege to Bobby Goldsboro's lament.
It's pretty clear why Ruby would have made the more favourable impact when my brothers and I first encountered the two songs on Top of the Pops. No string-laden backing, no cute Yuletide puppy, no fusty parlour song-type angels, only one of the putative Honky Tonky variety. Instead we found ourselves dropped straight into a film noir-type situation to freeze the blood, with talk of war, death, guns, maybe even murder: tailor-made for boys weaned on the Victor and those little Commando comics, as certain members of my household were.
We probably didn't catch all the story's nuances on that first hearing but the arrangement seized our attention - certainly mine, anyway. It was infernally catchy, racing along at quite a lick, yet somehow the tempo didn't undermine the terrible sadness of the man's plight. It's not a phrase I would have used at the time but I was aware that the guitar playing suggested a kind of brusque sympathy for this embittered and frustrated ex-soldier, and I'm sure we all got that the drums stood for the thud-thud-thudding of his heart as he made one final plea to that no-good, faithless woman.
If I only came to a full appreciation of Honey with maturity the reverse has been the case with Ruby. Well, -ish. I had certainly become a little snooty about one aspect of it in recent years until I was set straight.
To begin at the beginning, here's what I wrote in a 2010 post:
Lines in the song such as
The shadow on the wall tells me the sun is going down
seem on the money: the invalid forced to rely on such signs as that and
the slamming of the door
rather than being able to walk over to the window to check the time of day or go and physically stop her leaving, but I'm never quite sure about the song's opening couplet. A masterpiece of concision, as I sometimes think, or overfussy?
You've painted up your lips and rolled and curled your tinted hair Oh Ruby, are you contemplating going out somewhere?
If it's meant to be a question addressed to her, doesn't it contain a certain amount of detail more appropriate for third person narrative? The couplet calls to mind a line in a spoof radio play by actor Timothy West highlighting the pitfalls of exposition for inexperienced writers:
Whisky, eh? That's a strange drink for an attractive auburn-haired girl of twenty nine.
In short, why did Ruby's husband need to point out to her that her hair was tinted?
And there that annoying smirk on my face might have stayed had it not been for a chance exchange online. After Kenny Rogers' death his songs, especially Ruby, attracted attention on social media, and the author Ray Connolly wrote on twitter that there was "a whole movie in that terrific 3 minute song that rhymed 'crazy Asian war' with 'patriotic chore'."
I tweeted my agreement but repeated the above question: why would he mention something self-evident? Rather than my attempting to paraphrase him I hope Mr Connolly won't mind if I reproduce the conversation which followed:
RC:
Probably because since he's come back from Vietnam, paralysed from the waist down, he's noticed that her hair isn't the same colour as when he went way. She's making herself look prettier. But not for him. He can't help noticing and being bitter & letting her know. It's his POV.
P:
Maybe. Though that reading would make the second line ( "... are you contemplating going out somewhere?") sarcastic rather than pathetic. Then again the tone does veer between self-pity and anger during the song so that could work ... I'm confused now.
RC:
Surely it's a string of consciousness story of a young Vietnam veteran who is terribly injured and in despair to see his wife about to go out on the town? He puts some of his thoughts into some dialogue for dramatic effect. He feels betrayed by country & wife.
P:
Ah. If these are all unvoiced thoughts that would remove the problem. Interesting shift in final verse as well: with the door slam, and all hope removed, the real rage and desperation comes out.
RC:
I think so. Good to discuss.
This view does make a lot of sense: the war vet watching helplessly, desperate thoughts churning away inside him, yet knowing they are not worth uttering because of his helplessness, and that whether she stays or goes will be entirely decided by her. That would certainly remove any niggles about the exposition having been insufficiently camouflaged by the songwriter. Or - and perhaps this is what Mr Connolly meant - the lyrics could be understood as the concentrated essence of the husband's side of conversations the couple have had in the lead-up to this climactic moment of rebellion.
Then again, I suppose it doesn't matter too much. No one worries who Alan Bennett's Talking Heads are talking to: having a gateway into the character's mind is enough to compel our attention and make any thoughts about the artificiality of the situation recede into the background.
Since this piece was first posted Alwyn Turner has pointed out that
the six-bar lines are really striking - there's only really enough material for a standard four bars, but by inserting the additional two bars of vamping, it makes it much more unsettling.
This could be an argument for the words actually being spoken by her husband as the dolled-up Ruby prepares to go out: the extra bars have the effect of isolating each line of the lyric, as though the husband is flinging out a remark, waiting for a response, not getting it, then trying again. Or maybe it's just so hard for him to say these things - to acknowledge to himself that the cosy home patiently awaiting his return doesn't exist - that they have to come out piecemeal rather than as a solid slab.
As with Honey, several versions of Ruby were recorded before the song really hit big. Kenny Rogers and the First Edition made the charts in 1969, the year after Bobby Goldsboro's first success with Honey, although Waylon Jennings and Johnny Darrell had recorded Ruby a few years earlier and Darrell had a sizeable hit with it on the country charts. Bobby Goldsboro recorded it too, as did its composer, Mel Tillis.
First, let's hear Waylon Jennings, possibly the first released recording, followed by Johnny Darrell's country hit. Both have much to commend them. The idea of the guitars offering a kind of supportive commentary seems already present on both sides, although the backing on Jennings' record is generally jauntier, difficult to adjust to after Kenny Rogers. You could say the ache in Jennings' voice balances things out, but to my ears Darrell's flatter delivery is better suited to the song. He sounds wearier, more resigned, which seems in keeping with the idea of a man who knows or
imagines he's already lost the game.
At the end of his record, unlike Jennings, Darrell begs Ruby to "turn around" - though rather than coming to a halt, as Kenny Rogers would later do, he then repeats the title. This brings to mind the double underlining of "Don't take your guns to town" at the end of Johnny Cash's 1958 song of that title - a conscious echoing? The result in both cases is, I feel, bathetic: enough already, we get the point.
I'm not absolutely clear about recording, as opposed to release, dates for all the covers mentioned so can't be certain who influenced whom, though by the time the First Edition came to record it in 1969 they would have had a range of interpretations to draw on. That said, according to a 1998 article by Bill DeYoung,
Kenny had first heard the lonely, loping country tune on a Roger Miller album.
And when you compare this track to the other interpretations there does seems little doubt that this would have been the single most influential one.
Mr DeYoung's piece on Rogers includes a quotation from a former member of the First Edition:
We always liked to joke that we were a cross between country and rock,” Mary Arnold says today. “We were a crock.”
The First Edition arrangement is indeed more rocked up than Miller but I'd describe it as a turbocharged version of his particular take on the song. All the essential elements can already be found on
Miller's recording, including that section at the end where other
instruments fall away and Ruby makes her exit to the sound of throbbing
drums. Which is not to take away from Glen D Hardin's arrangement or Jimmy Bowen's production on the Rogers record, still sounding fresh and powerful however many times you hear it. But had I only heard Waylon Jennings' and Johnny Darrell's records I might not have realised that the First Edition hit is perhaps as much about what might be termed inspired consolidation as it is about invention.
Miller's drums-only farewell is not to be found on the other recordings mentioned, though drums are certainly prominent at the end of the Bobby Goldsboro version. As far as I know Miller's is also the first rendition to end with
"For God's sake turn around!" rather than repeating the plea of
the title. But it's that spare, affecting vocal which really crowns his achievement.
Before we hear that First Edition recording - better, it should be pointed out, than Rogers' later solo remake, which is what you get on a lot of compilations - let's take a listen to how Goldsboro handled it:
Quite a busy arrangement, I think, though an agreeable one, but his singing feels a bit exposed when listening to this immediately after Roger Miller. The plaintive quality doesn't quite cut it in this instance. It doesn't feel as though he is inhabiting the song to the same degree.
Alight, let us proceed, without delay or dismay, to the main deal:
According to Mel Tillis, quoted in a piece by Rick Moore on the American Songwriter website, there wasn't a lot of forethought about the First Edition's recording of Ruby, and the composer wasn't involved.
"They were in Los Angeles recording their Something’s Burning album," he
recalls. "The way I heard it, they had 15 minutes left on the clock.
(Producer) Jimmy Bowen came out of the control room and handed ‘Ruby’ to
Kenny. And you know the rest."
That sounds a little too neat to be true, like the story of Stand By Me being a happy afterthought knocked off in the last twenty five minutes of a Ben E King session. (When I had the chance to raise this directly with Leiber and Stoller during a Q&A they were quick to make clear that all the arrangements had been written out already.)
But if Ruby was indeed recorded quickly that may have been to its
advantage. Bill DeYoung says that the solo success which Rogers enjoyed
with his self-titled second album came about because of his producer at
UA:
Larry Butler knew what to do with the
voice. "Kenny put everything he had into it in the first couple of
takes," Butler says. "After that, he felt it was redundant. And a lot of
Kenny’s vocals were live vocals on the sessions."
Might
Jimmy Bowen have been aware of this too and held that final song back
from the group deliberately, in order to ensure the freshness of Rogers'
delivery? But whatever the degree of premeditation it is a finely
judged vocal performance, with the the emphasis on "performance": there
are moments where the voice is slightly strained, but that's the
character's strain. At times he is flat and resigned; at others the
emotion glints through, as in the line:
But it won't be long, I've heard them say, until I'm not around
Though
even then I think there's a sense of the character holding back, which
helps support Ray Connolly's idea of the song being an inner monologue: that what we are hearing is not the broken soldier's attempt to
harangue Ruby but the sound of his edging himself
forward, with understandable reluctance, in order to contemplate the abyss ahead. And if Rogers did model his vocal approach on that of
Miller it's more pointed, dynamic, as befits the percussion-heavy
setting.
But however it came about , and whatever it may or may not owe directly to Roger Miller, the record was, is, and evermore shall be, a stone classic.
In the service, of course, of a classic song. Which, as it happens, was based on a true story, as Tillis told Rick Moore. Some readers will already know that "that old crazy Asian war" is a reference to Korea, not Vietnam, the time of Rogers' hit, but may not be aware that the original inspiration dates from further back:
"Ruby is a real life narrative about a soldier coming home from World War II in 1947 to Palm Beach County, Florida," says Tillis, himself a Florida native. "The soldier brought along with him a pretty little English woman he called 'Ruby,' his war bride from England, one of the nurses that helped to bring him around to somewhat of a life. He had recurring problems from war wounds and was confined mostly to a wheelchair. He’d get drunk and accuse Ruby of everything under the sun. Having stood as much as she could, Ruby and the soldier eventually divorced, and she moved on."
So why did Tillis choose Korea? "That had been his era," Bill DeYoung writes - and goes on to explain the First Edition's success:
Kenny Rogers’ gauzy reading of Ruby in 1969 came just as many in America were questioning the logic of the Vietnamese conflict, and rush-released as a single, it became something of an anthem (especially after it closed the Huntley-Brinkley Report one night, over news footage of that week’s carnage in Vietnam).
The vagueness of the phrase "crazy Asian war" feels right: the song may have struck a chord in 1969 America but it could be about a casualty of any conflict, which helps account for its longevity.
But finally I have to go back to the power of the language, and a line already quoted. Like Bobby Russell's Honey, this is simply a superbly crafted song. You cannot get more compact, surely, than:
The shadow on the wall tells me the sun is going down
Rick Moore's piece concludes by giving credit where it is most due: to the songwriter, without whose vision and application no hit record would have cause to exist:
In this day of writing by committee, “Ruby” stands up as an
excellent example of what can happen when a lone craftsman gets an idea
and works it and polishes it by himself until he knows it can’t get any
better.
Which seems like a good point at which to let those ominous drums recede into the distance and hand the song back to its composer, who sings it for himself on Porter Waggoner's TV show in 1967, "just like you did it when you first wrote it, just with a guitar," as Waggoner requests. I'm not sure of the precise date of transmission but I'm guessing that the applause is partly in acknowledgement of the success of Johnny Darrell's hit version.
Which just about wraps things up, except to say that in the last few days I have been in email contact with my sister in law, my eldest brother's wife; utilising such vestiges of my dominie training as remain, I have been trying to select poems she might enjoy reading. At one point our exchanges were rudely interrupted by her husband who, in what seemed like a spooky rerun of Autumngate almost fifty years on, passed judgement on our endeavours in this wise:
poetry nonsense, threr [sic] is enough in music
I have a sneaking feeling he may be right.
Links:
Post about Honey and The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp here and here.
Some other versions of Ruby on youtube: Waylon Jennings here; Johnny Darrell's hit version here. Darrell also recorded The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp, subject of an earlier post here. Kenny Rogers: Built to Last by Bill DeYoung can be found on the author's website here.
Behind the Song: Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town by Rick Moore is here.
Ray Connolly is the writer of That'll Be The Day and much else; his website is here.
