Tracks: 1) Cry; 2) My Heart Belongs To Only You; 3) Stormy Weather (Keeps Rainin’ All The Time); 4) Tenderly; 5) Lonely Life; 6) The Way I Am; 7) Try A Little Tenderness; 8) Mood Indigo; 9) You Belong To My Heart (Solamente Un Vez); 10) Indian Love Call; 11) One More Time; 12) I’m Comin’ On Back To You.
REVIEW
As mentioned in the previous review, Wilson’s tribute to Al Jolson was a strictly LP-oriented project; as befitted the epoch, his principal means of survival remained the single medium, and in that respect, 1961 was one of the busiest years of his career, with no fewer than six different singles (as opposed to 3-4 per year since 1958) filling up the market, most of them nicely charting within the Top 20 on the R&B charts and the Top 100 on the general pop charts, though none of them in the same commercial league with ‘Reet Petite’ or ‘Lonely Teardrops’. By the end of the year, Brunswick dutily put some (not all) of them together, mixing them with some additional outtakes and what-not; essentially, By Special Request is a fairly representative look of what Jackie Wilson was like in 1961 — and the look is predictably mixed, though the record in general seems to have definitely aged better than You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet. As usual, let us simply take a quick wheat-and-chaff roll through the singles — there’s no reason to spend more time on this stuff than it deserves.
The first of the new singles was also the best: ‘I’m Comin’ On Back To You’, written by Al Kasha and Horace Ott, is an almost impeccable Isley Brothers-style dance-soul number — well, you could accuse it of not being particularly inventive in the melody department, resting largely on stock chords and key changes from the well-worn shelves of the business, but the arrangement is downright glorious from the start, with keyboards, strings, horns, backing vocals, and Jackie’s own falsetto lead-in providing a massively joyful adrenaline punch. Honestly, the song is all but made by its first twelve seconds — we put those strings in a rocket ship, we blast them off into the stratosphere, and as they fly higher than any man (or any violin) has flown before, bursting with pride and all, they get there only to discover that Mr. Wilson has beaten them to the punch with his upper range. It is totally exhilarating, and it is clear why it is so short — such tension and excitement could not be sustained for much longer than two minutes. The B-side, ‘Lonely Life’, also written by Al Kasha, was not too bad, either: a slightly unusual mash-up of R&B and spaghetti-western musical elements, smoothly switching tempos and featuring Jackie’s pathetically-tragic delivery well on top of the backing vocal seabed. Nice bit of drama — should have actually been the A-side from a conceptual point of view, since ‘I’m Comin’ On Back To You’ is essentially the happy ending to the romantic torment of ‘Lonely Life’.
The follow-up, ‘Years From Now’, actually did not make it onto the album, for whatever reason (it certainly wasn’t the least successful of his singles’ run for 1961); perhaps because it is fairly standard mid-tempo R&B with comparatively little to latch on to, as is the B-side ‘You Don’t Know What It Means’, a piece of slow soulful Vegasy blues-de-luxe that might just as well be encountered on a B. B. King record with electric guitar instead of strings. I respect how Jackie is giving his all to bring the songs to life, so fans of his voice shouldn’t miss out on these numbers, but the backing tracks never live up to his stamina in both of these cases, unlike with ‘I’m Comin’ On’.
The next choice (which does appear on By Special Request) was even more corny: ‘My Heart Belongs To Only You’, a glamorous saccharine ballad originally done by Bette McLaurin and June Christy back in 1952. This may not be quite the level of Al Jolson antiquity, but the base principle is the same: maudlin stuff from days gone by, brought up to speed with louder and more bombastic instrumentation and louder and more bombastic vocals. Leave this one off the list and trade it for the B-side, ‘The Way I Am’, a more recent composition that attempts (a little less successfully) to emulate the energetic exuberance of ‘I’m Comin’ On’ — apart from being melodically fun and danceable, it’s got a proto-‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ lyrical vibe to it ("don’t try to change my beat, babe, I ain’t your Sunday hat" is actually a fabulous lyrical twist!), and I’m all for anything mischievously demolishing the corniness of ‘My Heart Belongs To Only You’, so bring it on!
Unfortunately, the rest of By Special Request was once again padded out with old standards: ‘Stormy Weather’, ‘Try A Little Tenderness’, ‘Tenderly’ — only Duke Ellington’s ‘Mood Indigo’ stands out as a classier choice, except that vocal versions of ‘Mood Indigo’ tend to ruin or completely forsake the musical appeal of the original instrumental, and Jackie’s version is no exception. As usual, Jackie is more interesting when he selects at least relatively more recent material, such as Churchill Kohlman’s ‘Cry’, which opens the record — a song originally recorded in 1951 by Little Donna Hightower, but one that had apparently acquired a second life of its own in the early Sixties: my current collection alone includes cover versions by Sam Cooke (off Hits Of The 50s), Roy Orbison (off Sings Lonely And Blue), and Brenda Lee (off Emotions), all released within one and the same year of 1960. Brenda basically copied Roy’s country-pop arrangement, but Cooke’s version was different — a little more jazzy than poppy — while Jackie steers the song into a more soul-blues direction. In this four-way battle of giants, Roy should be awarded top prize (he’s really the only one who milks the song for all of its broken-hearted melancholy potential), but at least Jackie is not guilty for stealing anybody else’s vision of it (like Brenda is, though we probably shouldn’t judge her too harshly for her good intentions).
Overall, By Special Request is certainly a more rewarding listen than the Al Jolson tribute; but the only song I would like to whisk off it for my best-of Jackie Wilson collection is ‘I’m Comin’ On Back To You’ (maybe with ‘The Way I Am’ as a supporting bonus track if there’s enough digital space). Clearly, Jackie’s biggest problem at the time — much the same way it was with Elvis as his white-boy reflection — was relying on inferior songwriters, and then on dusty stock material when even inferior songwriters were unavailable. Considering that he was still at the peak of his vocal powers, one can only imagine what he could have done with material from the likes of, say, Leiber & Stoller, or Goffin & King. Then again, maybe not — with his notoriously «clean» and «glitzy» image, he would probably end up stripping Leiber & Stoller songs of their humor and irony, and Goffin & King tunes from their raw emotionality.
Only Solitaire reviews: Jackie Wilson
Do you ever think about the fact you might be one of the only human beings in history who might ever have such deep knowledge of some of these smaller releases? This is basically historian work at this point (and in a good way!)