CARLA THOMAS: GEE WHIZ (1961)
1) Gee Whiz; 2) Dance With Me;
3) A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening; 4) Your Love Indeed; 5) Fools Fall In
Love; 6) To The Aisle; 7) The Masquerade Is Over; 8) A Love Of My Own; 9)
Promises; 10) It Ain't Me; 11) For You; 12) The Love We Shared.
On one hand, this was straightforward nepotism
in action: the main reason why we got to hear Carla Thomas' voice is that
father Rufus wielded enough influence to promote her as a serious act, first as
part of an attractive father/daughter duet, then as a solo performer in her own
right. On the other hand, who cares as long as there actually was something
serious to promote? Carla had the looks, the voice, the charisma, and even a
certain amount of composing talent — at the very least, the song that made her
a star was always credited to Carla herself and nobody else.
Not that ʽGee Whizʼ is some sort of outstanding
masterpiece, but it helps to contrast it with the other ʽGee Whizʼ, a soft teen-pop number done by The Innocents that
very same year — just to remember how passionately wild this Carla Thomas vocal
would have sounded back then on the radio, next to the precious china of the
vocal harmonies by a bunch of sweet, cuddly white boys. The right word would
probably be juicy — she's got that
slightly raspy, deep, thick coating on her vocal cords, neither like the blues
mamas of the day nor like the jazz crooners, but much more in line with
sweet-hot teenage romance, like a blueprint for the soon-to-be typical female
voice of Motown or Phil Spector's girl groups (Ronnie Spector is probably the
closest one in timbre). Back in 1961, she was probably a unique presence on the
Atlantic label — their other performers were either too soft (Barbara Lewis) or
too hard (Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker), so there was nobody like Carla to get that
teenage blood boiled to the proper temperature.
Throw in some teenage slang (the title of the
song), some passionate orchestration for the song's waltzy tempo, and an
intentionally seductive tone in every detail, and there's little wonder why
ʽGee Whizʼ became such a success. The problem, as always, was with following it
up: Carla was immediately set up for a full LP of material that she simply did
not have — and so the majority of the tunes here are covers, most of which just
sound like ʽGee Whizʼ, but are less interesting, e.g. ʽYour Love Indeedʼ by
father Rufus, a very similar waltz but without any prominent lyrical/vocal
hooks. She performs everything with honor — the fast-paced cover of The
Drifters' ʽFools Fall In Loveʼ is every bit as fun as the original — but the
arrangements are generic and monotonous, and even Carla's vocals eventually
become a bit grating.
Her own songwriting is further represented on
the second side of the album, where it turns out that the girl is actually far
more somber than ʽGee Whizʼ would suggest: ʽA Love Of My Ownʼ has her
complaining about being unable to score, ʽIt Ain't Meʼ lets us know that even
when she does score, she still ends
up cheated, and only ʽFor Youʼ reinstates some hope that everything might eventually end up fine (but might
also not). None of these songs stray too far away from the Fifties Progression
or other clichés of the era, though, so Carla's vocal timbre is pretty much the
only reason why they might still be worth a listen. And, as I said, the
orchestrated arrangements are all typical of the era — the first side ends
with an orchestral florish concluding ʽTo The Aisleʼ, and then the second side
opens with precisely the same florish for ʽThe Masquerade Is Overʼ, which
sounds fairly comical in the digital age when you no longer have the benefit of
a slight table-turning pause.
Ultimately, this is skippable — and you can
always have ʽGee Whizʼ by itself on the unexpendable Atlantic Rhythm'n'Blues compilation — but it does signal the
arrival of a substantial talent, and it would be fairly easy for a fool to fall
in love with the sound of that lovely voice even if it were made to sing twelve
variations on the theme of ʽThe Itsy Bitsy Spiderʼ. Not that the record
executives were too happy about nurturing and promoting that talent at first —
she did not get her second chance at an LP until four years later, and in the
meantime, was occupied by such odd cash-ins as 1963's ʽGee Whiz, It's
Christmasʼ (which has nothing whatsoever to do with the original ʽGee Whizʼ,
but merely reflects the record industry's treatment of record buyers as trainable
Pavlov dogs).
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