I'm Into Something Good, Herman's Hermits (1964)

PBS is airing one of its perennial oldies programs to raise money, and I happened to tune into it this past week right at the point where the sunniest vestige of the British Invasion, Peter Noone, launched into I'm Into Something Good, the debut single of the band known as Herman's Hermits (often pronounced with dropped H's for maximum effect). I'm telling you that opening riff is loaded with some sort of happiness elixir, because my mood went from one thing to the other in seconds flat. It was positively medicinal.

The song was penned by none other than Carole King and her then-husband, Gerry Goffin, and like so many songs of the British Invasion groups at the outset, theirs was not the first recorded version. A member of the Cookies, Earl-Jean McCrae, released her version as a solo artist earlier the same year, although I have no memory of it whatsoever. Some of the Cookies later became Ray Charles' Raelettes. And I didn't realize this, but they were the original singers of Chains, also written by King and Goffin, and later covered by the Beatles on the Please Please Me LP.

Mickie Most, who was producing the Animals and the Nashville Teens, took a shine to a demo he was given of the boys from Manchester. He thought Noone looked like the late President John F. Kennedy (maybe so, but not with that snaggletooth he had at the time), which was a selling point any day of the week during that time period. Though just a teenager, Noone had been acting since childhood, playing a bloke named Stanley Fairclough in the long-running British TV series Coronation Street, among other roles, and had a definite stage presence, as front men go.

Most's strategy for success with the group involved concocting a repertoire of sweet, usually bouncy, non-threatening songs that made them seem squeaky clean despite the fact that they had the same threatening haircuts as the Beatles did. Herman's Hermits were actually more popular in the U.S. than they were in their native land, where in some instances no one bothered to release some of their American hits, which always had a decidedly English feel to them (Herman's Hermits went out of their way to affect English accents, including ones not their own, while other groups were more keen on sounding like they could be from anywhere). The group spent almost all of 1965 on this side of the pond, touring and fending off screaming teenyboppers at every turn in exactly the same manner as the Beatles did, and selling about as many records.

Despite being musicians in their own right, Most favored the use of session musicians for Hermits' records - musicians which included, at various points, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones (the latter arranging many of their songs, according to Noone). While a dizzying string of hits was to follow into 1968 - some of which were quite nice, others of which were too cloying for my tastes - ultimately being a singles band doomed them as album-oriented radio evolved and flourished. (Their cover of Sam Cooke's Wonderful World was delightful, I thought.)

Noone, who also continues to act, has for years made the scene with a version of the Hermits wherever the 60s is being revived and reminisced over. He has come here to Akron, Ohio, on numerous occasions and I have not gone to see him. His appearance on this PBS show was so therapeutic, however, that I may have to check him out if he comes again. Reliving the past seems to agree with him - he's the healthiest looking rocker from that era out there, and still has a head of shining hair. And I think he may have had that snaggletooth snapped out as well!

I will play us out with Dandy, but not the version Herman's Hermits did - Ray Davies wrote it, which somehow I managed to not know, and the Kinks originally recorded it.

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, Shirelles (1961)

no he will not still love you tomorrow
but wonderful song.
- youtube commenter

It's a topic we can all go on and on about, but in little more than two minutes, Carole King and Gerry Goffin nailed in a song the emotional tightrope a girl (or woman) walks when she gives herself to a boy (or man) sans commitment with Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.

Fellow blogger and friend Cornbread Hell (thanks, Rick!) sent me something yesterday that told the story of how this song got written. King dashed off the melody and left it for her then-husband and fellow songwriter Goffin before going out to play mah-jongg! The song had to be ready to present to the Shirelles the next day, according to Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller.

This was pre-fulltime-Brill Building employment; he was working at a chemical company, she was home with their baby and they squeezed in the writing in off-hours. Arriving home, Goffin was inspired to give voice to the insecurities of a girl in love to put the finishing touches on a song that, for the times, was pretty out there in its direct allusion to sex outside of marriage and the risks thereof. (King's own version on the Tapestry LP is worth a listen.)

The Shirelles were the first American girl group to have a #1 hit; this was that hit. They'd been performing since 1958 out of New Jersey, appearing at the Apollo Theater that year and eventually becoming a sensation that influenced musicians who came after them, male and female alike, for years. It's a classic case of the magic that can ignite when people are fortunate enough to work well together and are blessed with the perfect material to showcase their talents. Soldier Boy, Dedicated to the One I Love, Baby It's You - all great songs that the Shirelles just knew instinctively what to do with. (Their first song to chart, I Met Him on a Sunday, they wrote themselves.)

Ten years after they were honored as pioneers by the Rhythm & Blues Foundation in 1994, David Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer wrote a tribute in Rolling Stone in which he describes seeing three of the original four members - Shirley Alston Reeves, Beverly Lee and Doris Kenner - perform together at that event after a long hiatus. (Micki Harris was already deceased by then.) Describing how the years just seemed to slip away, it's clear the Shirelles lived the dream that many girls of my generation could only imagine - raising your voice in song and having others appreciate it.

Brown Earth, Christmas In My Soul, Laura Nyro (1970)

I can't narrow it down to one, so I'm serving up two Laura Nyros from one particular album - Christmas and the Beads of Sweat (not a Christmas LP, by the way) - each showcasing the strengths of this otherworldly singer and brilliant composer who was better known for the scores and scores of songs others covered than for her own recordings.

Nyro never sought and actually shunned fame, and her prodigious output became the platform from which others' careers often skyrocketed. The first song of hers that I ever heard was Blood, Sweat and Tears' hit recording of And When I Die.

Brown Earth is a beauty, overflowing with the joy of being alive, the kind of song that is so uplifting one can only just surrender to it. On this lush arrangement, Nyro is backed by the Swampers, a well-respected group of session musicians from that crucible of great American music, Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Christmas in My Soul, which was produced by the Rascals' Felix Cavaliere, is one of the most devastatingly searing indictments of the injustices and failings of that time in history I have ever heard. Achingly beautiful on every level from a musical standpoint, its uncompromising truths are harrowing to listen to, though it concludes with a sort of catharsis that envisions it could all be turned around. I typically do not fail to break into tears during this verse: Now the time has come to fight / Laws in the book of love burn bright / People you must win for thee / America her dignity / For all the high court world to see / On Christmas. Lyrics that have as much, if not more, relevance now than they did then.

Neither of these two songs is on youtube. The album's best known song (and the only one Nyro did not write, ironically) is, however, so here she is singing Carole King and Gerry Goffin's Up On the Roof.