In The Heart of Rock and Soul, Dave Marsh wrote that ‘Stand By Me’ is ‘as timeless as a basic black dress.’ The theme was gospel, the bass and percussion Afro-Cuban, ‘but the riffing cellos and soft quartet harmonies, the way the arrangement builds, adding instruments and growing more lush at each stage, is all pure Leiber-Stoller.’ We can see now that it was ahead of its time, prefiguring the work of Leiber-Stoller protege Phil Spector and the sound of Tamla-Motown. ‘Benny started to sing and I went to the piano and fleshed out the chords and came up with the bass pattern and Jerry said, ‘Ah, now we got a hit!’ And he was right.’ ‘I walked into our office, and Jerry and Benny were working on the lyrics,’ Stoller later recalled. Now came ‘Stand By Me’, written by King along with Leiber and Stoller. By 1960, King had broken with the Drifters and launched his own solo career with ‘Spanish Harlem’, a hit written by Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector. ‘There Goes My Baby’ was co-written by King and was his first lead vocal with the Drifters. The lush backing arrangement made use for almost the first time of a string section, and the single became a massive hit.Īnother summer rolled around and I found myself swooning to the strains of ‘Stand By Me’ which would become Ben E King’s most famous, enduring recording. That was 1959, and, barely a teenager, I was electrified by these songs. King only lasted a year with the group, but in those months he sang lead on the Drifters’ biggest singles, including ‘This Magic Moment’, ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ and ‘There Goes My Baby’. Ben E Kingīy 1958, King was part of another doo-wop group, the Five Crowns, who were hired to become a fresh version of the Drifters when the group’s manager fired all the original members in an attempt to reinvigorate the act. In high school he began performing with a street corner doo-wop group which won second place in an Apollo Theatre talent contest. Born Benjamin Earl Nelson in a small town in North Carolina in 1938, he first sang with his church choir before the family moved to Harlem in 1947. But, for all that, it’s a miracle, as much of one as that rose pushing it’s way up through the concrete of the city streets. There are subtly-stated strings, and the middle break features a soulful saxophone, but that’s basically all there is. It’s growing in the street right up through the concrete It only comes out when the moon is on the run It is a special one, it’s never seen the sun Like most singles in those days (it was released in 1960) it was as light as air, far from over-produced, consisting of little more than tinkling vibes, a plucked bass – and Ben E King’s glorious, velvety vocal: It was ‘Spanish Harlem’ that really got to me. Hearing the news brought back memories of listening to Radio Luxembourg under the bedclothes in the early sixties – back when the BBC Light Programme was a waste of time for teenagers, and before the advent of pirate radio. Last week we lost two giants of soul music – Ben E King and Percy Sledge.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |