BARBARA LEWIS: HELLO STRANGER (1963)
1) Hello Stranger; 2) Puppy
Love; 3) On Bended Knees; 4) My Heart Went Do Dat Da; 5) My Mama Told Me; 6)
Gonna Love You Till The End Of Time; 7) Would You Love Me; 8) Longest Night Of
The Year; 9) Does Anyone Want A Lover; 10) We're Too Young To Marry; 11) Love
Is A Castle; 12) Think A Little Sugar.
In the early 1960s, mainstream R&B was
going through much the same crisis as mainstream rock'n'roll, caught up in the
drive to make teen-oriented music sweeter and softer — and so, if you ever
wondered, like me, how could Atlantic Records switch its focus from the
harsher, cooler, more ass-kicking sound of Ruth Brown to the tender, fragile,
bubblegummier sound of Carla Thomas and Barbara Lewis, well, do not forget that
it was essentially the same relation as between Gene Vincent and Ricky Nelson.
Despite being marketed as an R&B artist, there was really very little
R&B about Barbara Lewis and quite a bit of pop. But, now that we are long
out of that time loop and no longer feel any pressure to choose one over the
other, who cares?..
Even though Barbara's debut album is quite a
rarity nowadays (it did get an official CD release, but has probably been out
of print for years now), there is one
outstanding thing about it: it was completely self-written — yes, that's right,
not just the hit singles, but every
single track here is credited exclusively to Barbara Lewis and nobody else. How
she got Atlantic to trust her on that is not entirely clear, but it most
probably had to do with the big commercial success of ʽHello Strangerʼ — a song
with a strange, subtle charm, emanating from John Young's organ riffs, backing
vocals from the Dells, and Barbara's own croon, half-sexy, half-sad, and,
lyrically and attitude-wise, probably more aligned with Sinatra than with Ray
Charles. The song does not even have an explicit vocal hook (unless
"shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby" counts), essentially becoming a hit
based on atmosphere more than melody.
The funniest thing is that both of the other
two single A-sides included on this record, ʽMy Heart Went Do Dat Daʼ and
ʽPuppy Loveʼ, are far catchier — the former is a lushly orchestrated twist
number that tries to express the same kind of first-time excitement that is
found on ʽI Saw Her Standing Thereʼ, the latter a piece of hard-to-resist
bubblegum that shows Barbara is as good at describing situations of emotional
disappointment as she is with sudden teenage crushes. Cool, cuddly numbers with
decent musicianship, yes, but neither of them captured the national heart as
strongly as ʽHello Strangerʼ — perhaps because the nation felt some sort of
intangible intrigue in Lewis' performance, as opposed to complete clarity and
one-dimensionality of the other two.
On the whole, her songwriting is surprisingly
diverse: the songs include straightforward doo-wop numbers (ʽOn Bended Kneesʼ),
Brill Building-style teen-pop (ʽMy Mama Told Meʼ), a bit of very light R&B
(ʽGonna Love You Till The End Of Timeʼ is pretty much a cuddlier re-write of
ʽMoney (That's What I Want)ʼ — well, nobody claimed Barbara Lewis was a
completely original songwriter), some
jazz-pop (ʽWould You Love Meʼ), and slow orchestrated balladry (ʽLove Is A
Castleʼ). «Great» is not a word I'd associate with any of this, though, for
some strange reason, the otherwise bland pop ditty ʽWe're Too Young To Marryʼ
is distinguished by a highly melodic, inventive, and energetic string passage
that is resolved with an amusingly Beethoven-esque flourish. But it's all
pretty, listenable, tasteful, and the diversity helps you form the impression
that you are actually listening to some sort of artistic statement, rather than
a simple bunch of filler quickly produced as packing material for the hit
single. As far as I'm concerned, that's sufficient grounds to give the record a
thumbs up
— it is not every day, admit it, that you run across a pop album from 1963
where all the songs have been written by the artist (even if, admittedly, some
of these songs did not involve that
much songwriting); in fact, as far as labels such as Atlantic and Motown are
concerned, I am not sure that (barring professional songwriters who also had
their own bands, like Smokey Robinson) there was even a real precedent.
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