BRENDA LEE
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1956–2007 |
Country / Early rock’n’roll |
Jambalaya (1956) |
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Album
released: Aug. 3, 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) Some Of These Days; 2) Pennies
From Heaven; 3) Baby Face; 4) A Good Man Is Hard To Find; 5) Just Because; 6) Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye; 7)
Ballin’ The Jack; 8) Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody; 9) Pretty
Baby; 10) Side By Side; 11) Back In Your Own Back Yard; 12) St. Louis Blues. |
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Together with Eddie Cochran and a
couple other artists, Brenda Lee is notoriously inconvenient to talk about
from an LP-based chronological framework. By the time her first album came
out (in August 1959, even though the actual sessions were held as early as
January of the same year), she had already spent almost three years in the
limelight of national attention, and put out almost a dozen singles,
including most of her biggest hits – ‘Jambalaya’, ‘Dynamite’, ‘Rockin’ Around
The Christmas Tree’, all of which we shall have to consider in the next review. Why? Because the Decca
label, to which Brenda was signed, apparently pursued a «great stuff for
singles, weird stuff for LPs» policy — at least in the actual case of Brenda
Lee, the amazing child prodigy who had captured the hearts of rocking
teenagers all over the country with her singles... and was now supposed to
capture the hearts of their parents with her first LP. You see, singles are
for kids, and long-playing albums are for grown-ups. No kid could possibly
lift something as heavy as an LP off the ground anyway... |
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Anyway, the
practice itself of having young(er) artists record sets of «oldies» with more
contemporary arrangements, to bridge the generation gap and everything, had
been well established by 1959, so there is nothing particularly revolutionary
about having Brenda Lee, the 14-year old rock’n’roller, turn to pre-war
material scattered all the way from Broadway to the Delta for her first
«conceptual» exercise. (See Bill Haley’s Rockin’
The Oldies from way back in 1957, for instance). One could squirm at the
album cover — even back then — for its corny display of reverence, though
discerning listeners in 1959 should have already been accustomed to the fact
that LP sleeve art hardly ever correlated properly with the actual musical
content of the vinyl disc. But could one, and should one, actually squirm at
the music? This would
naturally depend on your priorities. For instance, if you are a fan of the
classic Nashville sound, you can hardly go wrong with a set recorded by the
local A-grade team, including Harold Bradley, Grady Martin, and Hank Garland
on guitars, Floyd Cramer on the piano, Boots Randolph on saxophone, Bob Moore
on bass — all those same guys who fed and nurtured everybody from Patsy Cline
to Elvis in their Nashville days. This ensures that, even if the material is
rotten and the singer is inadequate, the overall sound shall still have
enough class. The actual
track selection is also chosen with care, focusing on catchy pop songs
amenable to a steady rock beat — in fact, some of them, like ‘Baby Face’ or
‘Just Because’, had previously already been tentatively transformed into
rock’n’roll numbers by the likes of, respectively, Little Richard and Elvis.
Other upbeat oldies, such as ‘Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye’, adapt themselves
better to being reinvented as «comical R&B» pieces à la Coasters
or LaVern Baker. Most of the songs, however, are slower and predictably sound
like contemporary mid-tempo country-pop — with major emphasis on contemporary, because if you happen
to be unfamiliar with the originals, there are very few indications (lyrics,
mostly) that these «grandma songs» were not actually written in 1959. Finally, there
is Brenda Lee herself, still below the age of 15, yet singing each of the songs
with complete understanding of their emotional content and a level of
maturity that often avoids singing ladies twice her age. Granted, her own
emotional range is not as wide as we might like it to be: for instance,
«vulnerability» and «melancholy» are words totally alien to her lexicon (at
the time, at least) — which is perfectly normal for a girl who had to be the
chief breadmaker for her family since age 10 (after her father died). So when
she tackles a grief-soaked tune like ‘St. Louis Blues’, she sings it the only
way she can — that is, like a powerhouse: her take on "I hate to see
that evening sun go down..." is that of an actual hater, all set to keep that blasted evening sun in the sky even
if it takes violating the laws of physics to do so. But while this attitude
is indeed barely compatible with lines like "I got the St. Louis Blues
just as bluest I can be", it still gives the song a new perspective. She
could never sing it like Bessie Smith anyway — all the more reason to give it
a brand new, «aggressive» spin, if only to show that in this case, the
granddaughter might actually have much bigger teeth than her grandma ever
had. Likewise, ‘A
Good Man Is Hard To Find’, which also used to be a classic Bessie
performance: here, Brenda and her crew cut out the opening verse ("My
heart is sad and I’m all alone...") because Brenda’s heart is not sad,
nor could it, at this point, be as sad as Bessie’s — then they transform the
rest of the song into an anthem of pure girl dominance, where "hug him
in the morning, kiss him every night, give him plenty loving, treat him
right" feels more like a procedure of chaining your man to yourself
rather than chaining yourself to your man, if you get my meaning. Considering
that Brenda Lee is one of those very rare women artists who has been happily
married to the same person (Ronnie Shacklett) since 1962, it looks like she
was the first one to follow her own (or, rather, Bessie’s) advice, so this
here is a clear-cut case of practicing what one preaches. (People like Johnny
Cash could learn a thing or two from the lady). This does not
imply that Brenda’s personality is completely free from tenderness; ‘Pennies
From Heaven’, ‘Side By Side’, and ‘Back In Your Own Backyard’ all have their
moments of empathy, compassion, and romance, although she always steers clear
of croony sentimentalism — rather, she simply does not know how to do it,
which is just fine by me. In all these cases, it’s more of a «strong, brawny
girl shows a good heart» kind of thing, totally in line with Brenda’s
reputation as «Little Miss Dynamite». It may not be the best way to sing such
songs, but I, for one, am not even sure that I would necessarily prefer the best way to sing such songs
— too much soul here and you risk plunging into suave cheapness. Throw in a
touch of grit, though, and you may lose some subtlety, but gain some...
honesty? Ah, whatever. These are decent takes. That said,
decent takes or not, my heart is
primarily with Brenda when she rips through songs such as ‘Just Because’, rivaling,
if not bettering, Elvis at his own game. Once again, Grandma, you did sing
really great songs, but now’s the time to sing them with just a bit more of
that «girl power». What could feel sweeter than taking that good old
misogynistic vibe and turning it back on the perpetrators? And how many
15-year old girls — in 1959, at least — were capable of injecting that much sneer and vitriol into a
super-energized putdown of the opposite sex? (Joan Jett, eat your heart out!) All in all, if you only know Brenda Lee through her biggest early hits
(which is most likely the case), do not be put off by the cornily
old-fashioned album title and cover — both of which actually look quite
ironic in light of the actual content. This here is really Little Red Riding
Hood kicking the shit out of the big bad wolf, rather than simply pampering
her grandma with cakes. I do realize that it is hard to get rid of a biased
impression based on a superficial listen — thus, the only current «review» of
this clearly forgotten record on RateYourMusic states: "Prime example of ‘finding a new talented
artist and being totally clueless what to do with her’" — nothing
could be further from the truth. Admittedly, I do not know if the idea of recording this «conceptual»
album stemmed from Brenda, or from her record label, or from her Nashville
producer, Owen Bradley, but the fact remains that her heart was clearly in
the project, and that she was fully successful in imbuing each of these songs
with her strong, snappy, youthful-but-mature personality. These songs may not
exactly be «rock and roll» in form, but they are very much so in spirit.
Besides, let us not forget that for Brenda, a country girl in her essence,
«rock and roll» was at best a passing phase, the same way it could be
construed for Johnny Cash and other country artists who were not above
letting their hair down every once in a while, but were typically happy to
stay lodged in a more «earthy» kind of tradition. |
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Album
released: August 1, 1960 |
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Tracks: 1) Dynamite;
2) Weep No More My Baby; 3) Jambalaya (On The Bayou);
4) (If I’m Dreaming) Just Let Me Dream; 5) Be My Love Again; 6) My Baby Likes
Western Guys; 7) Sweet Nothin’s; 8) I’m Sorry; 9) That’s
All You Gotta Do; 10) Heading Home; 11) Wee Wee Willies; 12) Let’s Jump The Broomstick. |
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Now this, of course, is the proper way to appreciate the real
difference that Brenda Lee brought to the world of popular music — proper,
but not optimal, since this 12-song retrospective of Brenda’s career from
1958 to 1960, released by Decca to capitalize on the smash success of
Brenda’s first #1 hit on the charts (‘I’m Sorry’), is, as usual, woefully
incomplete. Fortunately, nothing is easier in the digital age than to work
out a proper chronological playlist, based on Brenda’s well-fixed
discographies and sessionographies, and in the process, inflate this 12-song
shortie from August 1960 with at least as many extra titles. My perfect Brenda Lee album ends up being a
double LP, with 28 tracks, running close to 70 minutes — and while it does
have a slightly larger percentage of filler than Decca’s condensed original, it
also gives me a far more detailed and diverse portrayal of the artist. With
that said, let’s jump the broomstick, reshuffle the tracks, and look at
Brenda’s outstanding artistic curve from the start to the end of the Rule of
Rockabilly era, single by single. |
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It’s important
to note that the version of ‘Jambalaya’ presented on the LP, good as it is,
is not the original single from
1956, famously credited by Decca to «Little Brenda Lee (9 Years Old)» even though
she was already 11 at the time; the original single can
only be found on alternate compilations. It is big fun on the bayou, though,
to compare both versions. The early one, recorded in July 1956 with Grady
Martin and Jack Shook on guitars, is creaky, croaky, raw
Nashville-goes-rockabilly stuff, transforming Hank Williams’ ode to the
delights of Cajun food into friendly rock’n’roll fervor and giving us the
full range of Brenda’s vocal talent, from the perfectly choreographed hiccupy
rockabilly jumps to the deep throaty roar on the chorus, just as amazing to
see on an 11-year old as it would be on a 9-year old, honestly. But the
stereo re-recording from 1960 is no slouch, either. It is more polished, adds
extra layers of sax, piano, percussion, and backing vocals, and Brenda’s
voice is a little more restrained and mature, but it still gradually whips
itself into a frenzy with each new line in each verse, and besides, any
recording that has Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer, and Boots Randolph honing their chops at the same time is
automatically A-OK by me. They did not re-record, or re-release, the B-side to that single, though,
which is a pity, because ‘Bigelow 6-200’,
contributed by a couple of little-known rockabilly songwriters (Don Woody and
Paul Simmons), is, in some ways, even better than ‘Jambalaya’ — it’s just,
who are those guys to compete with Hank Williams? But this is an even rawer,
more guitar-heavy and rocking number that bears a certain resemblance to
Elvis’ Sun style as well as to the Burnette brothers’ ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’, although
Brenda’s subtle touch of croon in the "Bigelo-o-ow..." chorus still adds a poppy touch. Despite the
horny lyrics ("here’s the number
to call if you want my lovin’" is a pretty audacious line for an
11-year old to sing!), there is not so much sex in this song as pure rockin’
energy, making it a good candidate for the best rock’n’roll tune to be recorded
by a minor in the entire 1950s (if not ever!). Brenda’s second single, recorded at the same Nashville sessions in late
July 1956 but naturally released toward the end of the year, was just... weird. Seriously, ‘I’m Gonna Lasso Santa
Claus’, written by New Orleanian-Italian guy Frank Adorno (or Frankie
Adams), is one of the weirdest-sounding Christmas oldies I have ever heard.
That’s Don Helms on steel guitar opening the song — yes, the same Don Helms
who delivers the magnificent solos on Hank Williams’ ‘Hey, Good Lookin’ and
elsewhere — and that melody he plays, coupled with Bob Moore’s fast-paced
bass line, gives a thoroughly un-Christmas sound, more of a
Hawaii-goes-to-Japan kind of a thing. Meanwhile, Brenda allows herself to
sound a bit more childish this time (well, it would seem strange to deliver lines like "I’m gonna pop Santa Claus with my water
pistol gun" in a grown-up growl), but with the socially conscious
context of the lyrics ("And then
I’ll take his bags of toys and run / And bring to all the kids who don’t have
none") it still ends up sounding pretty serious. This combination of
weird lyrics, inventive singing, and especially the Helms / Moore interplay,
in my opinion, makes the song far more interesting than the comparatively
overrated ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’ (to which we’ll get in a bit),
and the B-side ‘Christy Christmas’ is no slouch either (I can’t quite figure
out what that keyboard is at the beginning of the track; sounds pretty Space
Age to me!). Recorded and released in January 1957, ‘One Step At A Time’
marked Brenda’s first minor appearance on the charts; with a different, less
prominent set of players (not too well compensated for by the addition of
backup singers) the sole emphasis here, on this fast-paced pop-a-billy
number, is on Brenda’s vocals, and she delivers once again, keeping the
strong tension in her voice throughout the entire performance — it might not
be too memorable once things quiet down, but it does keep you on your feet with the sheer application of her mind
power. Unfortunately, the B-side, ‘Fairyland’, is a corny show tune out of
the hands of Frankie Avalon’s resident songwriters, hardly salvageable even
through the rough charms of Brenda’s loud, rowdy voice (it’s real tough to
save songs expressly pre-written for suave, syrupy voices in that way). Good
news: there is not a single other
misfire like ‘Fairyland’ in the remainder of Brenda’s 1950’s catalog, showing
that either she had a good, strong head on her shoulders, or that the
business people around her happened to have good ones on theirs. Brenda’s next recording session (April 12, 1957) brought her her famous
nickname, even if, surprisingly, ‘Dynamite’ (one of the
authors of which was Mort Garson, later renowned for his experimentation with
space-age electronics) was never that much of a hit, stalling at #72 on the charts.
The song would also later be re-recorded in stereo for Brenda Lee, but this time the differences between the two
versions are more subtle; I am not sure about the usefulness of string
overdubs on the new version, but at the same time the backing vocals on the
1960 version are a bit less in-yer-face, making Brenda stand out more
properly. In any case, it’s just a catchy, danceable pop number on its own,
but Brenda’s roaring take on the DURRRNAMITE!
hookline takes it to the next level of excitement. Interestingly, the B-side,
‘Love You ’Til I Die’, is a song written unabashedly in Buddy Holly style
(with a very ‘Words Of Love’-like lead guitar running throughout), which
makes one wonder just how well Brenda’s powerhouse anthem style fits a
colorfully-jangly Buddy Holly environment. Perhaps not too well, but it doesn’t hurt to hear her try at least once. Also interestingly, the exact same songwriter pair (Diane Lampert and John
Gluck Jr.) contributed yet another song to the same recording session, but in
a completely different style — ‘One Teenager To Another’
is a bona fide R&B number in the style of Atlantic artists such as The
Drifters (some clear rhythmic and vocal parallels between this one and ‘Money
Honey’, for instance). The lyrics, dealing with the issue of schoolboys
bragging over their conquests ("Kiss
a guy, the kiss never ends / Talk will fly to all of his friends"),
sound surprisingly modern for 1957, though I wouldn’t say Brenda delivers
them with particular conviction — perhaps, having only recently turned 12 and
all, her own experiences with such situations were still rather limited.
Since we’re on the topic of being influenced by Atlantic, kudos to Brenda for
putting a cover of Ray Charles’ ‘Ain’t That Love’ on the B-side — obviously,
Little Cousin Brenda will never be able to steal that piece of burnin’ soul
away from Old Uncle Ray, but it’s still a pretty big achievement for a
12-year old. The single flopped on the charts, and so did the follow-up, recorded at
the end of 1957: ‘Rock-A-Bye Baby Blues’ is a rather unremarkable (apart from
Brenda’s typically excellent vocals) piece of slow rockabilly, while ‘Rock
The Bop’ will most likely stay in your memory only for its repetitive and
lexically bizarre chorus ("I’m old enough to chick and old enough to
rock the bop" — I think that’s the only time in my life I saw the word
‘chick’ used as a verb in such a context). Nor did she have any success with
‘Ring-A-My Phone’, recorded in a more straightforwardly Elvis-like manner and
not too interesting on the whole. BUT! Do not make the mistake of missing out
on ‘Little Jonah (Rock
On Your Steel Guitar)’ — Brenda does just fine on this fast-paced
variation on the classic ‘Little Baby’ / ‘Tweedle Dee’ chord progression, but
the real hero is the «little Jonah» in question, a.k.a. pedal steel guitarist
Buddy Emmons, one of the most expressive players of the instrument. In a
perfect world, this song should do pretty much the same for pedal steel
guitar that ‘Johnny B. Goode’ does for regular electric guitar, but,
unfortunately, it does not invent an original, instantly memorable riff;
instead, it just blows your mind with an incredible solo on which Mr. Emmons
smoothly performs just about every single trick possible on the pedal steel
at the time, packing them into a perfectly sensible sequence and then
stepping back to let Little Miss Dynamite take over. It’s the single greatest
vocal-instrumental duo on a Brenda Lee record ever, period, and most people
don’t even know about it, preferring instead to cluelessly rock around the
Christmas tree... ...and yes, this is precisely where we come to the single most famous
Brenda Lee song of all time. In one of the strangest publicity accidents of
all time, ‘Rockin’ Around The Chistmas Tree’ (hilariously, written by Johnny
Marks who wrote tons of Christmas songs despite never having been a
Christian) eventually became such a perennial Christmas favorite in the
States that many people today only
remember Brenda Lee as the original singer of ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas
Tree’. In all honesty, this isn’t even her best Christmas song — that honor would undoubtedly have to go to ‘I’m
Gonna Lasso Santa Claus’ — let alone her best song overall, but there is no
accounting for the Hand of Fate when it decides to play a naughty prank on
humanity and rub your intellectual snob noses in the futility of believing
that «time heals everything» when it so obviously doesn’t. For sure, it
sounds tasteful enough, and a bouncy little pop-rocker highlighted with
high-pitched electric guitar blasts is always preferable to a syrupy-stringy
crooning performance for Christmas, but it is precisely the relative
blandness and straightforwardness of the arrangement that makes it so
palatable to the common denominator spirit — where a song like ‘Lasso Santa
Claus’ can make you want to pay attention to both the musical and the lyrical
detail, ‘Rockin’ Around’ is just ideal background music to dance to and to
toast to without getting distracted. (Even the B-side, ‘Papa Noël’, is a
little more interesting, with lyrics that constantly back-reference
‘Jambalaya’ for a special «Cajun-themed» Christmas — but, of course, this is
no longer fit for the common denominator in the process). With the 1958-59 Christmas season behind us, we’re getting back to
secular business: ‘Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home’ is a fast and
jolly reinvention of an old Dixieland classic in the early rockabilly style
of ‘Just Because’, while the B-side, ‘Hummin’ The Blues Over You’, is one of
Brenda’s most blatant pop-Elvis imitations, and works as fine as any catchy
Elvis pop tune (with echoes of ‘Got A Lot O’ Livin’ To Do’ in particular).
Then comes the turn of Little Richard; although ‘Let’s Jump The Broomstick’
is credited to little-known songwriter Charles Robins and was first recorded
by Alvin Gaines &
The Themes (a black band, rather uncharacteristically recording in
Nashville), it is, overall, a rather transparent variation on ‘Slippin’ And
Slidin’, only deviating from the original at the end of each verse. Brenda’s
performance is as light and «safe» compared to Richard’s as the accompanying
yakety-sax from Boots Randolph is compared to Lee Allen and Alvin Tyler’s
kick-ass sax blasts on the original — but unless we plan on getting all
stuffy or something, ‘Let’s Jump The Broomstick’ is still a fun piece that
makes you want to move. Besides, there’s a positive message here! It’s like,
uh, Myra Brown’s love anthem for Jerry Lee Lewis or something! "My father don’t like it, my brother don’t
like it, come-a lil’ baby let’s jump the broomstick, come and let’s tie the
knot!" Somewhat ironically, ‘Let’s Jump The Broomstick’ would end Brenda’s most
quintessentially rockabilly and
generally least commercially successful period. The general American public,
so it seems, really did not want their little talented girls to rock — at
least, not unless it was around the Christmas tree — but when the little
girls slowed down the tempos and traded some of the power and aggression in
for a little more seduction, things clearly improved. Written by Ronnie Self,
an erratic and alcoholic songwriter who once had a dream to be the white
Little Richard (his ‘Bop-A-Lena’
does come surprisingly close) but eventually had to resign himself to helping
other people realize their dreams,
‘Sweet Nothin’s’ opens with Brenda’s most «girlie» "uh-huh honey, all
right!" up to date, and although it still has a pretty rhythmic and
hard-hitting R&B tempo, the basic theme is simplistic sentimental teen
romance with a strict parental check ("come in daughter, that’s enough for tonight" is like a bad
happy Hollywood ending tacked on to a drama). But the psst-psst whispering gimmick throughout the song worked well
enough for it to finally start climbing up the charts. I must say that I am
more partial to the B-side, though: ‘Weep No More My Baby’, a tight-rockin’
mid-tempo number with shades of both Hank Williams and gospel to it, is one
of the more memorable creations of John D. Loudermilk, the author of ‘Tobacco
Road’, and Brenda’s performance, sharp and slappy, perfectly matches the «lashing»
feel of the rhythm track, as well as begins revealing a certain emotional
depth that, perhaps, she was not yet capable of in the «Little Brenda Lee (9
Years Old) (Actually 11, But Who Gives A Damn?)» stage. That "weep no more, my baby, I’m a-comin’,
comin’ home to you" line actually hits hard, much harder than I’d
expected it to. Seeing that they may have struck gold with Ronnie Self’s involvement,
Decca chartered another song from him for Brenda, but allegedly held back on
releasing it, fearing that the recording might be considered «too serious»
for a 15-year old performer; when they finally did release it, it was only as
the B-side to Jerry Reed’s ‘That’s All You Gotta Do’, a romantic
string-filled pop-rocker which was also quite important for Brenda’s career —
it was essentially her first song to carry that distinctive
early-Sixties-lush-pop sound, showing that she was well at ease transitioning
from the somewhat homebrewn country-rockabilly stage into the atmosphere of
stage lights, backup singers, and glossed-up romanticism; that tough, jerky
roar she lets out at the beginning of each verse still shows, however, that
there’s quite a bit of dynamite left in the «little miss», so it’s more of a
compromise than a surrender. Still, the B-side eventually overtook the A-side, proving Decca wrong and
showing that audiences were more than willing to accept Brenda Lee in the new
function of torch balladeer. I’ve read occasional dismissive evaluations of
‘I’m Sorry’ in a «this is Brenda Lee wanting to be Patsy Cline and failing»
manner; unfortunately, I happen to be completely and utterly indifferent to
Patsy Cline, whose textbookishly perfect voice has no specific points of
interest, and I would take ‘I’m Sorry’ over ‘I Fall To Pieces’ or ‘Crazy’ any
day, simply because Brenda turns it into a bit of an exploration. There’s
sung parts and spoken parts, there’s crooning and there’s screaming, there
are cool bits of phrasing, like the «wise» little pause after the stern but... in the second verse; she’s really
trying to engage us here in this piece of teenage drama, instead of simply
trying to make it all sound as beautiful and as perfect as humanly possible.
This is absolutely not my preferred genre, but she does her best to make me
want to appreciate it. This is as far as Brenda Lee’s story goes until August 1960, when the
self-titled album was released — but a few more words have to be said about
the LP-only tracks here. Of these, Jackie DeShannon’s ‘My Baby Likes Western
Guys’ is particularly hilarious — no, really, it’s just about the
protagonist’s lover cheating on her with Western TV shows, what did you think? — and features some
beautiful Buddy Holly-style guitar licks to boot. Also from 1958, ‘Heading
Home’ is Brenda’s fair and square take on the powerful gospel style (the
lyrics are formally secular, but the vibe is absolutely the same as it is on
contemporary Elvis gospel recordings) — she’s no Mahalia, but she does pretty
great for a 14-year old. Finally, ‘Just Let Me Dream’, ‘Be My Love Again’,
and ‘Wee Wee Willies’ are just fun pop numbers with the usual tasteful
arrangements; not much to write about them individually, but I do like
hearing them over and over again. Summing up, I think that it is precisely what used to be acclaimed as
Brenda Lee’s chief asset at her time — that magnificent exceptional voice
coming from a pre-puberty body — that would later work against her:
skeptically-minded listeners tend to digest these songs with a «well yes,
this is really impressive coming from a 10/11/12/13/14-year old, but would it
ever hold up objectively against grown-up competition?» frame of mind.
However, the true opposition here is not really between a «pre-puberty» and
«post-puberty» Brenda Lee; it is actually between a «pre-fame» and
«post-fame» Brenda Lee, between the early, energetic, exciting, unpredictable
rockabilly years and the later, more «mature», «calm», and sentimental years
of country and pop as heralded by the likes of ‘I’m Sorry’ — and in this
respect, Brenda Lee’s career stages are not all that different from her chief
competitor on her own turf, Wanda Jackson, even if Wanda was already several
years older when she stepped up on stage. And yes, of course it is true that
a little girl with restricted agency in the late 1950s, based in Nashville
rather than, say, in Memphis (let alone Chicago), won’t ever be able to
achieve the same levels of reckless wildness as a Little Richard, a Chuck
Berry, or a Sun-era Elvis — but those who would insist that said little girl
had no true understanding of the spirit of rock’n’roll can leave their
opinions outside the doors for trash collectors, as far as I’m concerned.
Together with Rockin’ With Wanda, Brenda Lee — especially if you fatten
it up with bonus tracks from all the 1956–59 singles, as I have done — is one
of the few undisputable classics of 1950s’ female rockabilly, even if Wanda,
by way of historical and social circumstances, still firmly remains in the
lead. |
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Album
released: October 10, 1960 |
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Tracks: 1) When My Dreamboat Comes Home;
2) I Want To Be Wanted; 3) Just A Little; 4) Pretend; 5) Love And Learn; 6)
Teach Me Tonight; 7) Hallelujah I Love Him So; 8) Walkin’ To New Orleans; 9)
Blueberry Hill; 10) We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, And Me); 11) Build A Big
Fence; 12) If I Didn’t Care. |
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REVIEW In contrast with Brenda Lee, Brenda’s second LP for
Decca from 1960, released just two months after the first one, was a much tighter
affair, with all of its songs taken from but two multi-day sessions — one in
the spring of 1960 and one in the fall. One might just as well have called
the album This Is Brenda Now, as
opposed to the more «career-retrospective» mixed-bag nature of the
self-titled LP; unfortunately, «now» was 1960, and this meant that the
16-year old Brenda Lee had to act all grown up and serious, moving even
farther away from the hot rockabilly spirit of her early years. No more
‘Bigelow’ for this lady; nearly half of the songs are sentimental ballads,
and the rest walk the line between politely danceable Brill Building pop and friendly
Southern R&B with a professionally crafted ball and chain always attached
to the groove; surely what might be permissible for a kid has to be ruled out for a lady.
It’s weird, though, how Brenda manages to look more or less like both on that
front cover photo. |
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The big hit on here — Brenda’s second and last #1 on the charts —was ʽI Want To Be Wantedʼ, originally an Italian pop
song called ‘Per Tutta La Vita’ and translated into English by Kim Gannon,
the lyricist to ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’ and a bunch of other standards.
Like the absolute majority of Italian popular songs of the San Remo Festival
variety, I absolutely cannot stand the original Italian version(s) — corny
sentimental pap at its worst, mi
dispiace, all of my Italian friends — but the melody, with some
interesting chord changes between verse and bridge, had potential, and
Gannon’s new lyrics just about completely turned the song around: where the
original was just a puffed-up declaration of love dressed up in tattered
clichés, a poor paisan’s Petrarca at best, Gannon added a touch of
personal tragedy, which did not exactly turn the words into high poetry but
made it easier to empathize with the sentiment. It’s an interesting, and
largely successful, experiment in turning the generic sleazy
under-the-balcony plea of a «Latin lover» into a teenage girl’s moment of i-can’t-get-no-satisfaction
("I wanna be wanted right now /
Not tomorrow, but right now!"), even if we omit the slightly
uncomfortable circumstance of the words being written by a 60-year old dude.
Brenda catches on quickly, though, and there is no denying the deep sense of
yearning and unfulfillment here — I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most
of the record buyers for the single were female — so much so that it only
takes to hear her go "where is
this someone somewhere meant for me?" to understand why somebody
like the Beatles simply had to come
along, sooner or later. The plea for release (both spiritual and
physical) goes farther than that. ‘Teach Me Tonight’, the vocal jazz oldie
from about 1953 — essentially a song about losing one’s virginity to an older
partner, so that he can "help me
solve the mystery of it" — certainly sounds more, umm, believable coming from a 16-year old
Brenda Lee than a 30-year old Dinah Washington, although she sings the words
with so much power and confidence that in the end, it is not exactly clear
who’s teaching who in this context. (There’s so much sternness in the "One thing isn’t very clear my love /
Should the teacher stand so near my love" passage, it’s clear that this is one gal that’s definitely not
about to get victimized). Even after she has been properly taught tonight, it seems like Brenda
cannot get enough: in ‘Just A Little’, contributed by minor contemporary
songwriter Betty Chotas (finally, an actual woman songwriter!), she ends up all but terrorizing her partner
with her endless nagging. Lines like "You’re just about to make me lose my mind / I’m getting tired of
playing second fiddle" sort of imply that the gentleman prefers
locking himself up in the bathroom with a copy of Playboy to doing what’s right for the family — and the lady is
getting more than a little desperate, with the endlessly nagging (but catchy)
chorus confirming this on a second-by-second basis. Amusingly, the song would
undergo a sort of reverse fate to
‘Per Tutta La Vita’ / ‘I Want To Be Wanted’: in Europe, it would be picked up
by rising ye-ye star Sylvie Vartan and turned from ‘Just A Little’ into the
much more aesthetically complex ‘Je Suis Libre’, a
punchy declaration of girl-power with really interesting lyrics (the first
half is about freeing herself from the chains of her family and the second is
about wilfully embracing the chains of her new relationship — "Je serai la servante de mon maître
et seigneur" = "I shall
be the servant of my lord and master"). But at least this time
around, I can genuinely enjoy both versions (even if the ye-ye stylistics,
with its slightly clumsy adaptation of Anglo-American musical patterns to the
French language, has never been that much of a turn-on to me, much like the
entire «classic Russian rock» movement in the 1970s-1980s... but we’re
getting way too much off topic here, I’m afraid). The rest of the tracks fall into three little groups. The first one are
golden oldies from the likes of the Ink Spots and Nat King Cole (‘Pretend’,
‘If I Didn’t Care’, ‘We Three’), usually pitching corny strings against
passionate, but not too inventive deliveries — nobody would really want to
re-associate this stuff with Brenda Lee upon release. The second is a couple
of songs that seems to have been written specially for her — ‘Love &
Learn’, penned by Bob Montgomery, one of Buddy Holly’s chief songwriters, is
a nice, quiet Buddy-style trifle with an interesting «muffled» sax solo from
Boots Randolph, and Chuck Taylor’s ‘Build A Big Fence’ is like somebody
trying to... uhh, write a song for Ricky Nelson that would copy a song
written for Elvis, that sort of thing. It even directly quotes ‘I Got Stung’
(the "holy smokes and land sakes
alive" line)! But for all the condescending attitude, I really like
this stuff when the word of the day is «playful» — I wouldn’t mind an entire
album of such «trifles» for Brenda, as long as they offer nifty little
alt-takes on previously explored ideas. Because the third group is the
most befuddling: copies of recent and not-so-recent hits from the black
giants of R&B, namely Ray Charles (‘Hallelujah I Love Him So’) and Fats Domino (a whoppin’ three covers, from the recent ‘Walking
To New Orleans’ to the much older ‘When My Dreamboat Comes Home’ — and yes,
sadly there is also a ‘Blueberry Hill’ wedged between the two). They are all
finely and professionally recorded, and I can at least sort of see the point
of genre-inverting ‘Hallelujah’ — a womanly revenge on the egotistic sexism of
the original, since now it is the guy, not the girl, who has to go "every morning when the sun comes up, he
brings me coffee in my favorite cup". But a visual image of Brenda
Lee who is "walkin’ to New Orleans",
with her suitcase in her hand, because "New Orleans is my home"... nah. First of all, everybody
knows that to really get in the
spirit of Fats Domino, you have to weigh two hundred pounds, and with
Brenda’s tiny height and all, she wouldn’t probably get the achievement even
if she chomped on muffuletta sandwiches all day. Second, you have to sing as
if you do not give the slightest damn about all the troubles in the world —
you’re just shaking them off like water off a mangy dog’s fur — and that’s
not really Brenda’s style either, she’s a pretty troubled gal, or, at least,
a pretty focused one. She can’t
really relax like Fats does. That said, I cannot really dislike the record, and neither should
anybody, I believe. It still shows plenty of spirit, and even if in the long
run there is not much sense in Brenda Lee singing Fats Domino, the very fact
that she was ready and willing and able to land three Fats Domino tunes on an
LP in late 1960 — an era when nice young ladies like herself were generally
expected to bury themselves in the backlogs of Jo Stafford and Doris Day, if
not the Andrews Sisters — speaks volumes. (And how many nice young ladies
could be expected to give out that guttural roar on the second iteration of
the "moonlit waters will sing..."
verse in ‘When My Dreamboat...’?). The hooks, the playfulness, the strong
feminine vibe, the relative lack of arch-sweet sentimentality — all of this
makes This Is... Brenda a keeper.
Like Elvis Is Back!, this is a
«post-army» Brenda Lee album whose added «maturity» does not yet result in
flat-out «squareness», even if we can all shed a tear for the departure of
Little Miss Dynamite with her cutesy rockabilly flourishes of old. |
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Tracks: 1) Emotions; 2) Just Another Lie;
3) If You Love Me (Really Love Me); 4) Crazy Talk; 5) When I Fall In Love; 6)
Around The World; 7) Swanee River Rock; 8) Will You Love Me Tomorrow; 9) I’m
Learning About Love; 10) Georgia On My Mind; 11) Cry; 12) I’m In The Mood For
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REVIEW The tracklist of Emotions was compiled, this time
around, from seven different sessions, but most of them took place within a
short period of time (end of 1960 up to January ’61) and largely with the
same personnel. Some of the songs are simply outtakes from This Is... Brenda!, and the album as
a whole follows the same pattern — a mix of one or two contemporary big hits,
a bunch of Tin Pan Alley oldies, a couple of nice pop-rock numbers specially
written for the artist, and some homages to Brenda’s idols like Ray Charles
and Fats Domino. It’s a formula that worked well enough on the previous LP,
and it remains decent enough for Emotions
— a solid pop album with quite a backbone, once again proving that Nashville
was arguably the single best place
for an American artist to record pop music in the early 1960s: at the very
least, you could count on being backed with top-notch session musicians
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The big hit was ‘Emotions’, coincidentally recorded on the exact same day
as ‘I Want To Be Wanted’. The song, written by professional songwriter Ramsey
Kearney, had originally been a rather generic country hit for Carl Smith;
in his rendition, it feels like a watered-down Hank Williams tune. A couple
of years later, Mel Tillis completely rearranged the song, amended a lot of
the lyrics, and pitched it to Brenda in the form of a doo-wop ballad. It’s a
little less nuanced than ‘I Want To Be Wanted’, but it’s reasonably catchy
and the vocal delivery fully lives up to the standards of ‘I’m Sorry’. One
might grumble that Brenda is too obsessed with showing her vocal power to
properly nail the «emotional» side of this painful breakup anthem, but give
her a break — she was only 16 and if you’ve got that kind of vocal power when
you’re 16, what will it take to put an intentional leash on it? Besides,
there’s plenty of believable desperation at the finish line of "emotions, please leave me alone!"
— far more than in the average performance of the average 21st century «pop
diva». Unfortunately, the problem with her powerful 16-year old voice still
remains whenever she tries to tackle a giant. There are at least two covers
here that are far more than Brenda Lee can properly chew — one, of Edith
Piaf’s ‘Hymne A L’Amour’ (‘If You Love Me’ in English translation), and two,
of Ray Charles’ ‘Georgia On My Mind’. There’s nothing cringeworthy about
either: the passion is real, and the technical side is without reproach. But
Piaf has unique character, and Ray has unique soulful depth; Brenda Lee has
neither, and both covers come off as gimmicks — «can a 16-year old girl
really sing such mature masterpieces and not fall flat on her face?» — well,
no, she does not fall flat, but neither is she capable of giving her own
interpretation of the source material. She certainly sounds far more natural
and believable on ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’, though, again, in between the
original version by the Shirelles and the later «native» version by Carole
King herself, it is hardly likely that people will be frequently returning to
Brenda Lee for that question. So let’s just skip all the classic covers and all the Tin Pan Alley
re-runs and pay a little attention to the fresh or the little-known material.
‘Just Another Lie’ was originally recorded in 1958 by country singer Linda
Brannon in a minimalistic guitar-based arrangement, but here is reinvented as
an R&B number, melodically reminiscent of Chuck Willis’ ‘What Am I Living
For?’, and features one of the best arrangements on the entire album — a
funny, fuddy-duddy guitar rhythm, tasteful piano fills from Floyd Cramer,
Boots Randolph’s sax runs, and a moody, quasi-Stephane Grappelli violin part
deep in the background. Oh, and a fairly quiet, but piercing performance from
Brenda herself, of course. Still, my favorite two numbers on the record are the fastest, chirpiest,
and most energetic ones — ‘Crazy Talk’ and ‘I’m Learning About Love’ are both
unabashed, simplistic teen-pop anthems that, hard as it might be to admit, at
this point sit much more naturally with Brenda Lee than her attempts to fill
the boots of Piaf or Ray Charles. Both sound very much like contemporary
Elvis pop material (no wonder, as they are essentially recorded by Elvis’ own
musical team), and both are delicious: ‘Crazy Talk’ has Brenda and Boots
Randolph «babbling» against each other to express the art of being
tongue-tied next to one’s love interest, and ‘I’m Learning About Love’, for
once, brings back the «Miss Dynamite» snappy growl, mostly forsaken on the
album for the sakes of «maturity», but resurrected for this little
teenybopper anthem, catchy, sexy, and fun. Too bad there’s so little of this
kind of material on the album. Overall, Emotions continues to
suffer from (or maybe benefit from?) a split personality syndrome — there’s a
very clear, very intentional effort on Brenda’s part to come across as «deep»
and «mature», while at the same time she still ends up sounding more natural
and convincing whenever she sings something «shallow» and «immature». There
is not a single song on the record that I would be unable to enjoy; and yet,
at the same time, it cannot help but reek a little of exploitation (perhaps
self-exploitation, because I have no evidence of anybody forcing those Ray
Charles covers down Brenda’s throat), which ultimately explains why Brenda
Lee’s popularity waned so quickly once she came out of age — not because of
the British Invasion or anything, but simply because Brenda Lee singing
«serious songs» at the age of 21 no longer interested anybody who’d already
heard her singing all those songs at the age of 16. |
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Tracks: 1) Lover, Come Back To Me; 2) All
The Way; 3) Dum Dum; 4) On The Sunny Side Of
The Street; 5) Talkin’ ’Bout You; 6) Someone To Love Me (The Prisoner’s
Song); 7) Do I Worry (Yes I Do); 8) Tragedy; 9) Kansas City; 10) Eventually;
11) Speak To Me Pretty; 12) The Big Chance. |
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REVIEW Sometimes it’s just the itsy-bitsy
things, you know. There is not a whole lot of difference between the
performance of ‘Tragedy’, a melancholic country-pop ballad written by Fred Burch
and Gerald Nelson, as done
by The Fleetwoods — not the first recorded version, but clearly the one Brenda
was covering — and by Brenda Lee on this album. Of course, Brenda’s
super-professional Nashville recording is cleaner, deeper, more
multi-dimensional with the addition of backing vocals and strings, but none
of that really matters. What matters is that the Fleetwoods go "you’ve
gone from me, whoooah whoooah,
tragedy!" where Brenda goes "you’ve gone from me, whoa oh oh oh, tragedy!", leaving
the drawn-out whooah whooah’s to
the backing vocalists. It’s difficult to put into words what exact difference
does this «staccato-style» addition of a set of glottal stops throw into the
pot — but a direct analogy would be the same kind of thing that the Beatles
did to ‘Baby It’s You’ when they covered the Shirelles, adding that
teeny-weeny hiccup to "whoa-uh, many
many many nights go by" that Shirley Owens never had. Maybe there’s
a bit of implied emotional lightness to it, a tiny hint of rising above the
bleakness of the situation, or just a touch of self-irony. I don’t really know.
But one thing I do know for sure is that it makes the song more complex — and more fun. Even somewhat more
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That’s the key to appreciating Brenda Lee’s «early grown-up» period: she
has her own way of weaving adolescence into maturity and maturity into
adolescence that you wouldn’t easily get from any other artist at the time. This
is why, although All The Way is
basically just Emotions Vol. 2, with
most of the material recorded by the same musicians only a few months away
from the previous sessions, it is just as listenable and enjoyable, perhaps a
little thinner in terms of relative highlights but also, perhaps, a little
more consistent on the whole — at least this time around, she does not
attempt to take on the impossible, such as making Uncle Ray proud with
another ‘Georgia On My Mind’. Curiously, the lead single, preceding the LP by about a month or so, was
not a pop ballad this time, but a grittier (and also fluffier, at the same
time) pop-R&B hybrid, co-written by lady songwriters Jackie DeShannon and
Sharon Sheeley: in name and lyrics, ‘Dum Dum’ probably brought on memories of
LaVern Baker’s ‘Tweedlee Dee’, but in melody — and in spirit — it certainly
owed more to Bo Diddley’s ‘Diddy Wah Diddy’. After all that stuff like ‘Teach
Me Tonight’ and ‘I’m Learning About Love’, on ‘Dum Dum’ the Little Miss «not-yet-17»
Dynamite finally sounds like she’s ready to teach her partner a thing or two about having fun: that unaccompanied "I couldn’t love you any more than I do..."
line drips more sex than any random Marylin Monroe performance, and must have
been the primary reason for the
public to send this all the way up to #4, even if I still secretly hope that some
of that influence should be ascribed to Floyd Cramer’s mood-setting organ
part, eerily similar to the not-yet-recorded ‘Green Onions’ by Booker T &
The MG’s. It might be a little too cheesy and sleazy, but on the whole it’s
harmless, catchy fun that shows Brenda Lee now knows how to get «dirty»
without drowning in the dirt — so it’s actually a bit sad that it is the only
example of such an approach on the entire album. There are a few solid upbeat
recordings as well: the fast, playful cover of ‘Lover, Come Back To Me’ that
opens the LP works well for Brenda, as does her jog through Ray Charles’ ‘Talkin’
’Bout You’ (certainly more adequate than ‘Georgia’) and ‘Kansas City’ (although
I’d still rather have Wanda Jackson lead me through that one than Brenda Lee,
if we’re talking girls’ version of the song). However, all of these are
examples of delightful emotional exuberance rather than dominant sexuality, and
now we know that Brenda Lee can
handle dominant sexuality... hey, gimme more! Ah well, could be too much of a good thing anyway. So instead, try to dig
those ballads, like ‘Eventually’, another attempt to get Ronnie Self to
repeat the success of ‘I’m Sorry’ but a little less epic on the whole. I have
no idea why Brenda decided to sing the hook as "evenCHH... walleee!", making a weirdly unnatural syllabic
border; maybe she thought there’d be a whiff of the cigarette-holding femme
fatale image associated with that extra friction, or she just wanted to give
us something to think about within the context of this otherwise rather
unexceptional, if pleasant, melancholic shuffle that somehow feels far more
conventional than what she does with ‘Tragedy’. Then there’s the title track,
originally made famous by Sinatra back in 1957; not a great improvement, but
she does deliver a powerful finale that has to be respected, if not
necessarily admired. Where there is
an interesting improvement is in her interpretation of ‘On The Sunny Side Of The
Street’: this tune, rightfully performed by just about everyone from Ted Lewis
in 1930 to Armstrong and Sinatra as an optimistic bout of positive energy, is
taken at a slow, melancholic pace, feeling like anything but an attempt to cheer you up. Already the opening "Grab your coat and get your hat!"
gives sort of a "let’s get our
sorry asses out of this Shitsville!" vibe, and the very existence of
a «sunny side of the street» seems more like a questionable hypothesis than
an established fact. Maybe it was an accident, of course, but overall, this reversal of the
song’s original mood leads me to observe that Brenda’s image, as a whole, was
gradually turning over to the bleaker side — most of the ballads here have a
pessimistic, melancholic, or at least over-anxious atmosphere to them. With Side
A of the record ending in ‘Someone To Love Me (The Prisoner’s Song)’, and Side
B immediately picking up with Jerry Lordan’s ‘Do I Worry? (Yes I Do!)’, what
more evidence do you need to validate that kind of statement?.. Almost as if they realized at the last moment that the album was coming
out darker than expected, they finish it with two intentionally upbeat songs —
the danceable pop ditty ‘Speak To Me Pretty’ and the even faster-paced ‘Big Chance’,
which sounds like a cross between Elvis’ ‘Mystery Train’ and some passionate
gospel number. They’re likeable, and Brenda does an excellent job whipping
herself up into a frenzy on the latter, but they still cannot shake off the
idea that "this look I’m wearing,
it’s called a frown" (from ‘Eventually’) is the album’s slogan, regardless
of Brenda’s attempt to force a smile on the front sleeve. Which is all right
by me: Brenda’s brooding feels natural, only occasionally over-dramatic and
mostly quite reasonable for the «young adult» period. Throw in the usual Nashville
quality, and you get yourself another highly enjoyable, if not terribly
original or adventurous, mood piece from an era of innocence that did not
take its mood pieces more seriously than they deserved. |
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