A Bunch Of ‘Sorry’ Songs

The Texas Gal and I have a friend who’s been looking for a used printer, and I told that friend Sunday that I’d send her the phone number and email address of Dale the Computer Guy down on Wilson Avenue.

I forgot.

I sent the info yesterday in an apologetic email, and this morning, I got back a kind email saying my delay was not a problem. But it got me to wondering how many recordings among the 75,000 currently logged into the RealPlayer have the word “sorry” in their titles.

I was surprised. There are only thirty-eight such recordings (and one album: the Gin Blossoms’ 1996 effort Congratulations I’m Sorry). Those recordings span the years, however, starting with the 1935 single “Who’s Sorry Now” by Milton Brown & His Musical Brownies and ending with a 2013 version of the same song recorded by Karen Elson for the HBO show Boardwalk Empire.

Here’s the western swing version from Milton Brown & His Musical Brownies:

It’s worth noting that “Who’s Sorry Now” seems to be a pretty sturdy song. Written by Ted Snyder, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, it was first recorded in 1923 by a number of folks including Isham Jones (whom we met here last autumn when we were listening to versions of “I’ll See You In My Dreams”), and according to the information at SecondHand Songs, it’s been recorded several times in every decade since then except the 1930s (and I’ll bet there are recordings from that decade that have not yet been listed at the website). The most recent version noted there before Elson’s 1920s-styled take on the tune is one from Mary Byrne, a 2010 contestant in the United Kingdom’s version of the singing contest, The X Factor.

But what else did we find when searching for “sorry”? Well, the second-oldest recording stashed here in the EITW studios with “sorry” in its title is from 1951, when Johnny Bond saw his “Sick, Sober & Sorry” go to No. 7 on the Billboard country chart. And the second most-recent is from quirky singer-songwriter Feist, whose “I’m Sorry” was released on her 2007 album, The Reminder.

Looking chronologically, and picking one track from each decade from the 1950s on, we find some gems: “I’m Sorry” by the Platters went to No. 11 on the Billboard jukebox chart and to No. 15 on the R&B chart in 1957. (And yes, we doubled up on the 1950s, considering we’d hit the Johnny Bond record, but it’s worth it for the Platters.) From 1962, we find “Someday After Awhile (You’ll Be Sorry)” by bluesman Freddy King (a departure from his normal “Freddie” spelling).

In the 1970s, we find the funky “Both Sorry Over Nothin’” from Tower of Power’s 1973 self-titled album. The pickings in the files from the 1980s are pretty slender, so we’ll skip over one track each by the Moody Blues and the Hothouse Flowers and head to the 1990s. And that’s where we find the atmospheric “Not Sorry” by the Cranberries from their 1993 album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?

And we have one more stop with “sorry,” heading back to 1968 and the regrets expressed by the HAL 9000 computer in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This Time With The Vocals

Originally posted February 22, 2009

Oops!

In Friday’s post, I shared what I thought was my regular copy of the Platters’ “With This Ring.” It turns out I had mislabeled and misfiled what seems to be a karaoke version of the song: No vocals.

I have a few karaoke versions like that, and I keep them in another file. This one – through my carelessness – escaped and was mislabeled. I’m sorry.

Thanks to reader Magkfingrs for pointing out the problem. I’m uploading the correct song to that post, and to this brief Sunday post. (Sorry about the lower bitrate; I’m in the process of upgrading as many of the 128 kbps mp3s – ripped from CDs or vinyl long before I thought about blogging – as I can to 192 kbps, and I haven’t gotten to the Platters yet.)

“With This Ring” by the Platters [Musicor 1229, 1967]

A Six-Pack From Three Februarys

Originally posted February 20, 2009

In February of 1967, my parents and doctor decided that the only was to halt my series of increasingly frequent sore throats was to take out my tonsils. I remember thinking perversely during the worst of the post-surgical pain, “Yeah, they did a fine job getting rid of my sore throat. I can’t even swallow ice cream!”

Of course, that passed, and sore throats have been a relative rarity in the more than forty years since then. As it’s mid-February and the forty-second anniversary of my tonsils’ liberation, my first thought for today was to dig into the chart from 1967 and see what I wasn’t listening to as I recovered. But I did a post from February 1967 just a week ago. I mean, I know I could find six pretty good additional singles, but I’d rather not double up that quickly.

So in yesterday’s post, I said I’d likely be looking at this week in 1977. I haven’t dug deeply into that year since last August. But when I looked at the February 19, 1977, chart, it didn’t seem to have any singles that grabbed me by the ears and said, “Listen to this, Buster!” So, dithering, I looked at the chart from February 21, 1970, a chart that falls right in the middle of the first great season of Top 40 for me. And there were many old friends there. So I continued to dither.

But when I got up this morning, it felt like pre-op 1967: I have a sore throat and don’t wanna decide anything this morning. (The Texas Gal has taken the day off, and I’m hoping to feel well enough this afternoon to take in the movie we’ve been planning to see.)

So here are some singles from 1967, 1970 and 1977:

A Six-Pack From Three February editions of the Billboard Hot 100
“My Cup Runneth Over” by Ed Ames, RCA Victor 9002 [No. 24, February 18, 1967]

“With This Ring” by the Platters, Musicor 1229 [No. 126, February 18, 1967]

“Always Something There To Remind Me” by R.B. Greaves, Atco 6726 [No. 33, February 21, 1970]

“Je T’Aime . . . Moi Non Plus” by Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg, Fontana 1665 [No. 63, February 21, 1970]

“Living Next Door To Alice” by Smokie, RSO 860 [No. 27, February 19, 1977]

“What Can I Say” by Boz Scaggs, Columbia 10440 [No. 98, February 19, 1977]

Ed Ames was better known in 1967 for playing the role of Mingo, a Native American, on the television series Daniel Boone. “My Cup Runneth Over,” from the Broadway musical I Do, I Do, is pure pop, of course, but people liked it: It went to No. 8.

“With This Ring” was the twenty-third – and last – Top 40 hit for the Platters, who first made the chart with “Only You (And You Alone)” in 1955. The group had seven Top Ten hits, and four made it to No. 1: “The Great Pretender,” “My Prayer,” “Twilight Time” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.” “With This Ring” – which I’ve always thought was a nice bit of music – went to No. 14 in 1967.

When R.B. Greaves is thought about at all these days, it’s generally for “Take A Letter, Maria,” which went to No. 2 in November of 1969, blocked from the top spot by the 5th Dimension’s “Wedding Bell Blues.” While I liked “Maria,” I’ve always thought that Greaves did a better job on “Always Something There To Remind Me,” which stalled at No. 27 in the late winter of 1970. Thirteen years later, the English duo Naked Eyes sent their version, titled “(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me,” to No. 8.

“Je T’Aime . . . Moi Non Plus” by Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg, was quite the deal in its day. The matter-of-fact yet intimate tone of the melodic conversation (in French, no less) followed by Birkin’s moans of ecstasy kept, I believe, a lot of program directors in the U.S. from putting the single on the air. The single peaked at No. 58 during a ten-week stay in the Hot 100. Wikipedia has a good recap of the hoo-ha that followed the single’s release.

I only vaguely recall hearing “Living Next Door To Alice” when it was on the charts, but it’s a good, if not great single that has always sounded to me a lot like Dr Hook. (In fact, when I was wandering around the ’Net this morning digging up information, I saw that a lot of careless listeners have tagged the song as being Dr. Hook’s work.) The record, which went to No. 25, was the only U.S. hit for Smokie, whose members hailed from Yorkshire, England. The group was far more successful in its native country.

Lastly, I figure a guy can never go wrong when he takes advantage of a chance to post a Boz Scaggs record. “What Can I Say” was the third – I think – single from Scaggs’ marvelous Silk Degrees album, but it didn’t have the success that its predecessors had: “It’s Over” dented the Top 40, reaching No. 38 in the spring of 1976, and “Lowdown” went to No. 3 that summer. “What Can I Say,” which was just as good as those two, was in the Hot 100 for fourteen weeks but got only to No. 58. (Another single from Silk Degrees, “Lido Shuffle,” would follow “What Can I Say” and reach No. 11 in the spring of 1977.

Note:
The version of “With This Ring” I posted was – because of a filing error – the karaoke version. Sorry. I’ve uploaded the correct version.

Two Years Of Echoes

Originally posted February 2, 2009

I’ve been wondering for some time how to mark the second anniversary of this humble blog. While I’d shared a few albums and singles beforehand, it was on February 1, 2007, that I invested a small bit of cash and installed a counter. With that done, I began to actively encourage folks to stop by here.

So I’ve designated February 1, which was yesterday, as this blog’s birthday, and – as I said – I’ve been wondering what to do to mark it. The first thing to do, I thought, is a historical inventory, seeing from what decades my mp3 collection comes. This is what I found.

1800s: 27
1900s: 9
1910s: 10
1920s: 381
1930s: 412
1940s: 316
1950s: 1,054
1960s: 7,842
1970s: 12,353
1980s: 2,983
1990s: 4,032
2000s: 4,293

The stuff from pre-1920 isn’t as impressive as it might look. Almost all of those mp3s are classical pieces and college fight songs tagged by their dates of composition, not by recording dates. The oldest recording that I have – at least the oldest to which I can append a date that I believe is accurate – is a performance of “Poor Mourner” recorded by the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet in Philadelphia on November 29, 1902.

The focus on the 1960s and 1970s doesn’t surprise me, nor should it startle anyone who comes by here regularly. I am a little surprised that I have that much music from 2000 and after.

So what should I post today?

What I’ve decided to do is to first ignore the music from pre-1950. I find some of it interesting, but I think it’s less so to the folks who stop by here. After that, I’ll sort through the files by decade and then by running time, and at that point find a single track of roughly average length from each decade from 1950 on. I’ll select the singles based on rarity and on my perceptions of their appeal and aesthetic value.

And since you all by now know that my aesthetic structure has a few slightly warped walls, this might be fun! So here’s what we’ll listen to today:

A Six-Pack Through The Decades
“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” by the Platters, Mercury 71383 [1958]

“Girl From The East” by the Leaves, Mira 222 [1966]

“Come Back into My Life Again” by Cold Blood from Lydia [1974]

“Don’t Walk Away” by Toni Childs from Union [1988]

“Ghost Train” by Counting Crows from August And Everything After [1993]

“Mastermind” by Grace Potter & The Nocturnals from This Is Somewhere [2007]

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” spent three weeks at the top of the pop chart in early 1959, giving the Platters their fourth No.1 hit. Over all, the Los Angeles group had twenty-three records reach the Top 40 between 1955 and 1967.

“Girl From The East” was the B-Side to the Leaves’ “Hey Joe,” which reached No. 31 in the summer of 1966. More interesting in these precincts is the fact that “Girl From The East” was written by my pal Bobby Jameson for the 1965 album, Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest that Bobby recorded under the name of Chris Lucey.

By 1974, Cold Blood was trying to capitalize on its lead singer, Lydia Pense, using her name as the title of one album and then, in 1976, titling its next album Lydia Pense & Cold Blood. The strategy didn’t get the group that many more listeners, but the music was still good, as “Come Back into My Life Again” makes clear.

Toni Childs’ Union was one of my favorite albums of the late 1980s, an idiosyncratic piece of work that I found fascinating. “Don’t Walk Away,” a funky, powerful track, is the album’s opener and was released as a single. Even more than twenty years later, the album has a grip on me.

Adam Duritz’ distinctive voice was by any measurement one of the iconic sounds of the Nineties. I haven’t always liked Counting Crows’ work, but it’s almost always been interesting.

On the other hand, through three CDs, I absolutely love everything that Grace Potter and her band, the Nocturnals, have recorded. The band – with Potter on keyboards – is tight, and Potter sings like. . . well, I don’t have a superlative strong enough at hand right now. Get the CDs and listen.

A Brief Note
I just wanted to say that I’ve had more fun keeping this blog going for these past two years than I could ever have anticipated. I’ve had a chance to share music I love, and – much more importantly – I’ve had a chance to find similarly inclined friends from around the world. Thanks to all of you for reading and for your comments as well as the occasional correction or clarification. I hope you all come along as we head into Year No. Three.

And At No. 44 on April 4 . . .

It’s time for Games With Numbers again. It’s April 4 today, or 4/4. So I thought I’d dig into some charts from selected years and see what tunes were at No. 44.

We’ll start in 1961, looking at the chart from fifty years ago this week. Sitting at No. 44 was “Spanish Harlem” by Ben E. King. The record, King’s first solo hit after his work with the Drifters, had peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at No. 15 on the R&B chart. It was the first of twenty-two Hot 100 hits for King.

A few years ago, I found in a box of old records the Rays’ classic version of “Silhouettes,” from 1957. The first version I ever heard of the tune, however, was the one sitting at No. 44 in 1965, forty-six years ago today. Herman’s Hermits’ version of “Silhouettes” was on its way to No. 5, the third of an eventual nineteen Hot 100 hits – including two at No. 1 – for the pop-rock group from Manchester, England.

Looking at 1969, I don’t think I’d ever heard the No. 44 tune from the week of April 4 until this morning. But then, I was never much a fan of Engelbert Humperdink. I did like “Les Bicyclettes De Belsize,” which went to No. 31 in 1968, but I seem to have missed “The Way It Used To Be” the following spring. The record would only move up two spots more, to No. 42. It was the seventh of an eventual twenty-three Hot 100 hits for the man born Arnold Dorsey in Madras, India.

The Wattstax concert in Los Angles during the summer of 1972 provided the Staple Singers with the eighth of an eventual fifteen Hot 100 hits, including two No. 1 hits on the pop charts and three on the R&B Chart. A live version of “Oh La De Da” was at No. 44 as of April 4, 1973, and probably should have done better than it did: It peaked at No. 33 on the pop chart and at No. 4 on the R&B chart.

After seventeen years with the Miracles, Smokey Robinson went out on his own in 1972. In the spring of 1977, “There Will Come A Day (I’m Gonna Happen To You)” brought him the tenth of an eventual twenty-five Hot 100 hits as a solo artist. The record, which was at No. 44 during the first week of April, eventually peaked at No. 42 on the pop chart and at No. 7 on the R&B chart.

And we’ll close our excursion this morning by doubling back to a time four years earlier than we started, in April of 1957. The No. 44 song in the Billboard Hot 100 fifty-four years ago this week was “He’s Mine” by the Platters, the thirteenth of an eventual forty Hot 100 hits for the long-lived group from Los Angeles. A quick check at YouTube this morning brought a video of the Platters lip-synching the record, which would peak at No. 16 on the pop chart and at No. 5 on the R&B chart.

Chart Digging: August 5, 1967

Doing something once is an occurrence. Doing it twice, well, you can call it a pattern. So today starts a pattern, a pattern of digging around in a listing of the Billboard Hot 100 matching the current date. In this case, the Billboard list comes from August 5, 1967, forty-three years ago today.

First, as we did last time – and will likely do from here on in – let’s check out the Top Ten:

“Light My Fire” by the Doors
“I Was Made To Love Her” by Stevie Wonder
“All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles
“Windy” by the Association
“A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” by Frankie Valli
“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by the Buckinghams
“White Rabbit” by the Jefferson Airplane
“Pleasant Valley Sunday” by the Monkees
“Little Bit O’ Soul” by the Music Explosion

Boy, would that make a nice forty minutes or so out in the yard with the transistor radio, with only one groaner for me; I’ve never much cared for the Frankie Valli tune. As far as the other nine go, yes, there’s some over-familiarity there, but that’s a product of the long-term quality of those nine singles.

Two comments: First, the Beatles’ single jumped from No. 29 to No. 3 this week after jumping from No. 71 to No. 29 the previous week. Second, there’s one true one-hit wonder in this Top Ten: The Music Explosion’s record, which had spent two weeks at No. 2 in early July (blocked from the top spot by “Windy”), was the only Top 40 hit for the group from Mansfield, Ohio.

Heading down the list from there, we find some interesting things. At No. 14, we find the seventh Top 40 hit for Nancy Sinatra, this one a duet with her mentor, the eccentric studio genius Lee Hazlewood. In the previous fifteen months, Sinatra had scored four Top Ten hits, with two of them – her solo performance on “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” and her duet with her famous father, “Somethin’ Stupid” – reaching No. 1. “Jackson” would stay at No. 14 one more week and then begin to fall down the chart; Sinatra would never crack the Top 20 again.

Moving lower down, the Critters were in their second week at No. 40. A year earlier, the Plainfield, New Jersey, quintet had reached No. 17 with “Mr Dieingly Sad” and had two other 1966 singles reach the Hot 100: “Bad Misunderstanding” went to No. 55, and “Younger Girl” reached No. 42. The current entry, “Don’t Let The Rain Fall Down On Me,” would spend one more week at No. 40, then move up one notch to No. 39 for a week before leaving the Top 40. It was the group’s last single to make the Top 40, or the Hot 100 for that matter.

Since 1955, the Platters – in various configurations – had seen thirty-seven singles reach the Billboard Hot 100, with twenty-three of those reaching the Top 40, seven hitting the Top 10 and four – “The Great Pretender,” “My Prayer,” “Twilight Time” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” – reaching No. 1. (Eighteen of those singles also reached the R&B chart, and one spent some time in the chart that is now called Adult Contemporary.) That run was close to the end; the group’s current single, “Washed Ashore (On A Lonely Island In The Sea),” would be its next-to-last entry in the Hot 100; the record was at No. 57 on August 5, 1967, and would peak a week later at No. 56. In the autumn, the Platters would reach the Hot 100 for the thirty-eighth and last time as “Sweet, Sweet Loving” got to No. 70.

A little further down the Hot 100 from forty-three years ago, Davie Allan and the Arrows were seeing “Blue’s Theme,” their only Top 40 hit, climb up the chart. I’m not at all familiar with the group, but All-Music Guide notes: “Providing the soundtrack to numerous biker and teen exploitation movies in the mid- and late ’60s, Davie Allan & the Arrows bridged the surf and psychedelic eras. Their driving, basic instrumentals featured loads and loads of fuzz guitar, as well as generous dollops of tremolo bar waggling and wah-wah. The guitarist and his band first made their mark with the minor hit ‘Apache ’65,’ a version of the Shadows/Jorgen Ingmann’s instrumental classic ‘Apache’.” That record had peaked at No. 64; “Blue’s Theme” – recorded for the soundtrack of the Peter Fonda movie, The Wild Angels – got to No. 37.

Heading closer to the bottom of the Hot 100 from August 5, 1967, we find the only entry for the Blades of Grass, a sunshine pop band from the East Coast. All-Music Guide notes that the performance of the group’s only charting single, “Happy,” wasn’t helped by the fact that another pop group, the California-based Sunshine Company, released its own version of “Happy” at the same time. The Sunshine Company’s version got to No. 50 while the version by the Blades of Grass got only to No. 87. Of the two, I prefer the Blades of Grass’ version, which was in its second week at that peak position forty-three years ago today; a week later it was out of the Hot 100.

I never knew the name of the boy/girl duo Jon & Robin until this week, although I recall hearing their one Top 40 hit somewhere. That hit, “Do It Again A Little Bit Slower,” went to No. 18 earlier in 1967 (credited in the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits to “Jon & Robin and The In Crowd”). I know, however, that I’d never heard until this week the record that Jon & Robin had bubbling under the Hot 100 forty-three years ago today: “Drums.” The record was at No. 109 on August 5 and in the next two weeks, it climbed to No. 100, where it spent two weeks before falling back to the “Bubbling Under” section and then disappearing.

That should do it for today; actually, that should do it for the rest of the week. The Texas Gal and I are going to go out to play for a while, and I suggest you do the same before summer slides away completely. I’ll be back with Odd and Pop next week, maybe Monday, certainly – all things going well – by Tuesday. Be well.