Review: Chad & Jeremy - Sing For You (1965)

Tracks: 1) Coloring Book; 2) What Do You Want With Me; 3) From A Window; 4) If You’ve Got A Heart; 5) No Other Baby; 6) Donna, Donna; 7) Girl From Ipanema; 8) Four Strong Winds; 9) Only Those In Love; 10) You Know What; 11) Sleep Little Boy; 12) My How The Time Goes By.

REVIEW

1965 was the one and only year when it was all really happening for Chad & Jeremy — it was, after all, the definitive year for wild uninhibited sex between folk and rock, and even if Chad & Jeremy’s version of the act was strictly vanilla, there was quite an active market for that as well. They would have no fewer than three distinct LPs issued in the US that year, as compared to only one in their native homeland, although the actual hits would become fainter and fainter: out of seven (!) singles they grinded out that year, only one (‘Before And After’) hit the US Top 20, and only three made an impact on Chad and Jeremy’s favorite type of charts — «easy listening». The first of these was the only one not to end up on an LP and, frankly, also the most boring, a musically predictable cover of a Rodgers-Hammerstein showtune (‘If I Loved You’, from the 1945 musical Carousel) which must have made them look even more square, if at all possible.

Still, the duo’s albums when they were still in their relative prime may be worth checking out, if only because they were allowed a bit more creative freedom and general fun on them — the singles had to follow the model established by ‘A Summer Song’ and ‘Willow Weep For Me’, but the albums were less predictable... well, a bit less predictable, because, on one hand, it is a little surprising to hear Chad & Jeremy cover ‘The Girl From Ipanema’, but then when you think about it, it is not surprising at all, in fact, soon enough you begin to ask yourself the question — «how could I ever doubt that, sooner or later, Chad & Jeremy would cover ‘The Girl From Ipanema’? Antônio Carlos Jobim must have written the song specially for Chad & Jeremy to cover it! Astrud and João Gilberto must have dreamed of Chad & Jeremy covering it! You look up the concept of ‘DESTINY’ in any encyclopaedia and they show you a smiling picture of Chad & Jeremy in the studio recording ‘The Girl From Ipanema’!» Naturally, there is not a single reason in the world for anybody to hear Chad & Jeremy singing ‘The Girl From Ipanema’, but that doesn’t change a single thing about the sturdy threads of fate upon which, in shiny golden runes, is carved out the prophecy — «not one year shall pass between the release of a worldwide sensation such as ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ and a cover of it by Chad & Jeremy».

Other songs on Chad & Jeremy Sing For You that you no more need to hear than you need to see Gus van Sant’s remake of Psycho are ‘My Coloring Book’ (honestly, I don’t think that song needs to be known in more than one version at all, just pick a number, any number), ‘Donna Donna’ (yes, it is touching to see a couple of nice British lads try out a classic Yiddish song, but what exactly do they contribute other than their usual husky voices?), and ‘Four Strong Winds’ (what would they add to that one after both the Seekers and the Searchers thoroughly explored it? leave the poor girl alone already!). All of that sounds nice and cutesy in the usual Chad & Jeremy way, and that’s it.

Of the non-original compositions on the album, slightly more interesting is their take on ‘From A Window’, a relatively unsophisticated Lennon / McCartney composition originally donated to Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas. It is useless to compete with the Beatles themselves, especially if you were reincarnated as one half of Chad & Jeremy, but it can make more sense to compete with the Beatles’ lapdogs, and on this particular occasion I would say that at least Jimmie Haskell’s production of the song, surprising as it may be, knocks the ground from under George Martin’s feet — the rather mushy and muddy piano-based version of the Dakotas is replaced by a sharper, crunchier folk-rock sound, with the soft distortion of the electric guitar power chords forming a nice contrast with the echoey vocals of the duo. Kramer’s ‘From A Window’ was rather wobbly and seemed to come out from somewhere underground, whereas this version clearly descends on you from above — and the boys make better use of the song’s vocal potential, working harder on the high register and all; I also far prefer the slightly more complex acoustic instrumental break here to the Dakotas’ rather rudimentary electric solo on the original version. Not that the song is all that good or anything — the Beatles themselves would probably not have used it even on Please Please Me — but it fits in very well with Chad & Jeremy’s overall aesthetics.

Of course, the real reason why one might want to give the LP a try is to hear the original material, songs that were actually penned by Stuart, Clyde, and their American buddy Russell Alquist specially for the album, and pronounce the ultimate judgement based on their quality. Here, it is interesting to note that they make another small step toward the aesthetics of the Mersey beat, rather than in the direction of «Euro-balladry» — the first original single from the album, ‘What Do You Want With Me’, is a clear attempt to write something in the style of all those second-rate Beatle donations, and the result is a catchy song with a pinch of its own melancholic charm. It surreptitiously weaves in a straightahead Beatles quote ("a love like ours..." in the bridge section is sung exactly as it is done in ‘And I Love You’), it has plenty of chord changes throughout the verse-chorus sequence, and the melodic journey from the opening "what do you want with me" to its repetition as the closing line is something that Paul might have seriously appreciated.

The other Stuart / Clyde composition, ‘No Other Baby’, is the duo’s only attempt at a bit of «rocking out» — ooh, dark menacing opening chords! moody organ! sharp, shrill, distorted electric lead! a wild scream before the break! faster tempo! fast and complex bluesy guitar instrumental break! and how about those lyrics, eh? "Lots of other women say be my daddy do / But I don’t want no other baby but you". Oh you manly studs, you. But seriously, it comes across as a bit of giggly fun — Chad & Jeremy trying to be the Yardbirds or something, and they almost succeed. At least, when you listen to something like this, it is possible to believe they could have consistently rocked out on the level of, say, ‘Honey Don’t’.

There is also quite a bit of original songwriting in the final four-song stretch of the album, but those tunes are neither as melodically impressive as ‘What Do You Want With Me’ or as good-mood-ridiculous as ‘No Other Baby’. ‘You Know What’ is a fast country-rock shuffle with yet another nod to the Beatles (the repetitive "...until the day I die, until the day I die!" fade-out coda is exactly the same as "I wanna be your man!" — and, in fact, the entire song could have easily been a back-gift for Ringo); Alquist’s ‘Sleep Little Boy’ seems to be a variation on some Jewish lullaby, continuing the vibe of ‘Donna Donna’; and ‘My How The Time Goes By’ is just a corny, catchy little pop conclusion — they could have sold this one to the Dave Clark Five, probably.

Overall, the album produces a more lightweight feeling than Yesterday’s Gone — perhaps it is the relative lack of that Euro-autumnal mood and the relative increase of naïve Beatlisms that is responsible, as well as a higher percentage of classic tunes covered by just about everybody (I much preferred them when they were doing ‘Dirty Old Town’ rather than ‘Coloring Book’). But «lightweight» does not mean «ugly» or «unlikeable»; at this point, they were still doing their own thing, and that thing still made certain diet-artistic sense at the beginning of 1965.