Review: LaVern Baker - LaVern Baker (1957)
Tracks: 1) Jim Dandy; 2) Tra La La; 3) I Can’t Love You Enough; 4) Get Up, Get Up (You Sleepy Head); 5) That’s All I Need; 6) Bop-Ting-A-Ling; 7) Tweedlee Dee; 8) Still; 9) Play It Fair; 10) Tomorrow Night; 11) That Lucky Old Sun; 12) Soul On Fire; 13) My Happiness Forever; 14) How Can You Leave A Man Like This.
REVIEW
Born two years after Ruth Brown and signed to Atlantic Records four years later than Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker had little choice but to settle for silver in the virtual competition between the two leading ladies of 1950s’ R&B — which, however, should not obscure such interesting trivia as, for instance, her first recording in 1951 (for the short-lived National label) called ‘I Want To Rock’ (actually, a nice example of pre-Atlantic jump blues); or the fact that, unlike Ruth Brown, she did have her own first LP of LP-exclusive material released fairly early in her Atlantic career (the record is very obscure and nothing special, but it is called LaVern and it really truly exists).
That said, LaVern Baker did join the ranks of Atlantic heroes relatively late (in 1953) and had fewer than 10 singles in total under her belt before the huge success of ‘Jim Dandy’ finally prompted Ertegün and Co. to add her to the list of artists generously graced with their own best-of LP in the label’s Rock & Roll series. Scarceness of material meant that, unlike Ruth Brown, LaVern also had to have quite a few B-sides pad out the vinyl’s grooves: more accurately, 7 out of 9 of her singles are on here in their entirety, which gives us a nice chance to have a comprehensive look at the scope of the lady’s talents, but also, unfortunately, makes us remember all the formulaic and fillerish principles of commercial pop music in its early days (though some might argue that those have not so much changed as impressively camouflaged themselves).
The good luck of LaVern Baker is that it took slightly more than a year for her to become one of Atlantic’s superstars; the bad luck is that the superstardom did not come to her as naturally as it did to some of the label’s other artists. As the bulk of her recorded output shows, LaVern was primarily a deep blues / soul singer — related by blood to the legendary Memphis Minnie, and stylistically close to the even more legendary Bessie Smith. These echoes are quite clearly felt in her very first single for the label, ‘Soul On Fire’, co-written by her with Ertegün and Jerry Wexler and being essentially a slow, sensual soul waltz with a fairly complex emotional landscape — a joyful and tragic ballad at the same time, with a brilliant move in the chorus when they represent the joy by slowly going up the scale ("..now you’ve set... my soul... on FIRE!") and the ensuing sadness by quickly sliding down ("...and I really had my fun" — note the past tense here). It is a wonderful vocal performance, but clearly not too innovative from a strictly musical perspective, and because of that, listeners failed to pay much attention to the new bright personality — the single flopped. (Do not miss the funny ‘Mack The Knife’ rip-off ‘How Can You Leave A Man Like This’ on the B-side — some fun electric guitar and piano interplay on that one).
Now cue forward to Miss Sharecropper’s third single, ‘Tweedlee Dee’, and watch the magic happen. Winfield Scott, mainly known for being a songwriting partner for Otis Blackwell (and thus, responsible for quite a few Elvis numbers), wrote this bouncy little novelty number with a Latin twist; no depth to it whatsoever, but quite a bit of naughty-sassy provocative attitude to justify the use of nursery language ("tweedlee-tweedlee-tweedlee-dot, how you gonna keep that honey you got?" is one of those coveted questions that every guy probably wants to be asked in his lifetime). Sooner or later, Atlantic Records would probably have to bring back and redefine ye olde silly playful vaudeville, and, accidentally, it was LaVern’s fate to help them do just that — in the process, she established her reputation on the R&B charts, but narrowly missed the chance to establish it on the general pop charts as well, after the song was essentially «stolen» by the Mercury label, who recorded a very similar, but predictably brushed-up and polished version with Georgia Gibbs on lead vocals for white audiences. (No badmouthing Georgia Gibbs as a solid entertainer in her own rights, but if you listen to the two versions back to back, the old cliché about the white man stealing the black man’s thunder really begins making much more sense than when you apply it to Elvis — who, at least, was always prepared to genuinely amplify the thunder rather than produce a diet version of it).
Anyway, this particular problem has most likely been remedied by time, since subsequent generations in their time travels are all much more likely to fall upon LaVern’s version rather than Gibbs’. A much worse problem was that the huge success of ‘Tweedlee Dee’ had locked LaVern into a formula — her very next single was named ‘Bop-Ting-A-Ling’, and another one released in 1956 was called ‘Fee Fee Fi Fo Fum’, and then another song was called ‘Tra La La’... get the pattern? The former was at least popular enough to be included on the LP, but the latter flopped completely and was written out of existence. The ultimate irony of it all is that these kiddie numbers, when you come to think of it, seem really more appropriate for the likes of Georgia Gibbs — with her powerful, rumbling, raspy vocals LaVern is clearly overqualified for this stuff.
Much to the label’s honor, they did let her stew in her own element every once in a while: thus, the B-side to ‘Tweedlee Dee’ was the cover of the old Lonnie Johnson ballad ‘Tomorrow Night’ (which she drives to a much more explosive climax than Lonnie, or Elvis, or anybody else ever did), and the slow waltz ‘Play It Fair’ was delivered with such tense passion that it gave her another big hit on the R&B charts, this time without any pandering toward the inner child in all of us (also, the B-side contains one of the most solemnly and anthemically recorded versions of ‘Lucky Old Sun’ I have ever heard). But still, for some reason most of these songs either gave us LaVern «Soul On Fire» Baker, the soulful queen of slow blues ballads, or LaVern «Tweedlee Dee» Baker, the consummate cabaret entertainer. Nothing like a ‘Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean’ or a ‘Wild Wild Young Men’ in the repertoire to send her off to the tougher corners of the R&B front.
A bit of a compromise was reached with ‘Jim Dandy’ — the first track on the LP because it was LaVern’s latest and biggest hit at the time, and, as it would soon become obvious, for all time. To be honest, primary credit here has to be given to the backing band, none of which can be identified with certainty (other than the Gliders on backing vocals): the drummer hits really hard, heavy, and precise while setting an almost breakneck tempo (for 1955 at least), the barrelhouse piano player does not stop his fluent and merry rollickin’ even for a second, and the brass players get into the groove like a bunch of bug-eyed arcade players. The song’s melody is still on the novelty side, but at least it no longer mimicks the ‘Tweedlee Dee’ formula, and the lyrics are more ironic than corny — sort of like The Perils Of Pauline condensed into two minutes ("Jim Dandy in a submarine / Got a message from a mermaid queen..."), poking harmless fun at cinematic stereotypes while essentially just providing fodder for LaVern’s rock’n’rolliest performance so far. Again, she seems overqualified for this business, but at least this time, nobody dared to steal her thunder (maybe because no white performer could see the right angle from which to approach these crazyass lyrics — LaVern, on the other hand, simply took the bull by the horns).
Of course, Atlantic Records could hardly fail to exploit this new success as well, saddling poor Miss Baker with nothing less than a direct sequel the next year (‘Jim Dandy Got Married’ — the only thing that’s funny about this is that it probably inspired Buddy Holly to follow up his own ‘Peggy Sue’ with ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ a year later), but this should hardly detract from the dippy genius of the original. That said, it pretty much crumbled any remaining hopes for LaVern to be recognized as a «serious» soul artist: ‘Tweedlee Dee’ and ‘Jim Dandy’ would forever remain her calling cards — and Atlantic Records flubbed their chance at hosting their own Queen of Soul all the way until the signing of Aretha, a good decade later. Fortunately, compilations like these are still available, providing the discerning listener with a good chance to make their own decision and enjoy ‘Soul On Fire’ and ‘Play It Fair’ as much as, or perhaps even much more than, the super-catchy novelty numbers which find more resonance in the lower than in the higher parts of one’s body (which lower parts is, of course, for you to decide, dear discerning readers).
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