Review: LaVern Baker - Saved (1961)

Tracks: 1) Saved; 2) For Love Of You; 3) Manana; 4) My Time Will Come; 5) Shadows Of Love; 6) Must I Cry Again; 7) Bumble Bee; 8) Shake A Hand; 9) Don Juan; 10) Wheel Of Fortune; 11) Senor Big And Fine; 12) Eternally.

REVIEW

Some chronological justice is probably served by the fact that LaVern Baker started out about three years later than Ruth Brown — and, consequently, her chart successes also ran out about three years later. Brown never succeeded in making the transition to the early Sixties; her last singles that sold well were all recorded in 1959, and she was either unable or unwilling to make friends with any of the trendy songwriters on the scene, most importantly, Leiber & Stoller, whose chief clients on Atlantic Records at the time were The Coasters but who wouldn’t mind curating some of the other artists as well. And LaVern had the useful distinction of being able to make it as both a serious, monumental, emotional soul singer and a tongue-in-cheek vaudeville performer; it was her skill of being equally convincing when singing ‘Soul On Fire’ and ‘Jim Dandy’ that ensured her commercial survival almost to the beginning of the British Invasion (though it would be rash to directly blame the Beatles on her eventual disappearance from the charts).

Anyway, listening to this next bunch of singles and a few LP-only tracks assembled on Saved does occasionally show that we are dealing with an artist out of the past — a few of the songs have that early 1950s R&B sheen all over them — but on the whole, this is hardly a nostalgia fest, and, more importantly, it’s a fun record, brimming with energy and excitement where so many other singers would simply prefer to dissolve themselves in syrupy strings and succulent sentimentality, so characteristic of mainstream pop around 1960-62. There are a few orchestrated ballads here, but even on those LaVern pushes forward with a fiery gospel or hot Latin spirit, rarely, if ever, allowing herself to step out of her «tough girl» persona, though maybe this wasn’t really such a tremendous achievement, considering that persona was her own nature. A Dionne Warwick she was most certainly not born to be.

There is no question that the title track — released as a single in April 1961 and becoming Baker’s biggest hit in two years — is the primary highlight here. How many people saw the album cover in record stores and passed it by, disappointed by the idea of their favorite R&B belter becoming a straightforward gospel singer? And how many people actually saw the Leiber & Stoller credit before putting on the song, completely unaware of its tongue-in-cheek nature? If you do so wish, you can try and play it straight, like a genuine exuberant redemption dance from a certified sinner; ultimately, though, the simplistic symmetry of the lyrics ("I used to smoke / I used to drink / I used to smoke, drink / And dance the hoochie koo..") and the arch-hyper-ecstatic overdrive of the groove betray the song as a good-natured parody on the genre, though on the formal level it’s literally immune from any criticism on the part of any God-fearing pundit. Certainly LaVern belts the lyrics out with a completely straight face on, but, you know, when that line about "I’m in that soul saving army / Beating on that big bass drum" is dutifully echoed by six crashing beats on the big bass drum in question, it’s impossible not to smile. It’s more of a ‘Jim Dandy’ song than a ‘Soul On Fire’, that’s for sure. Mahalia Jackson wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot cross — but leave it to Jerry and Mike to end up as the writers of one of the catchiest gospel tunes ever made.

I have listened to several later covers of the song, by the way, from The Band’s tribute version on 1973’s Moondog Matinee to the recent live resuscitation by Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa (ugh!), and all of them are doing the same mistake — playing it as more of a rock’n’roll number, with an unnecessary aggressive component, when in reality it’s a vibe that’s 50% pure giggly hilariousness and 50% sarcasm. It is interesting, though, that LaVern was on an actual bit of a gospel kick at the end of 1960: prior to ‘Saved’, Atlantic had issued her cover of Sister Rosetta Thorpe’s famous ‘Didn’t It Rain’ — with plenty of spirit and an impressive arrangement, though obviously not enough to wrestle the song away from Sister Rosetta. The decision to switch to a subtly parodic angle, on the other hand, was brilliant, because LaVern had this bit of inborn vaudeville comedy genius, and Leiber & Stoller came up with the perfect recipe.

Nothing else on the album quite matches the energy and catchiness of this masterpiece, but I’d say that ‘Bumble Bee’ at least comes close. The song was originally written by Leroy Fullylove and recorded with his own group, The Tads — the original demo, for a very long time, remained unreleased because the Atlantic executives apparently decided that the song was just perfect for their already established star, LaVern Baker, and almost literally stole it from Fullylove (even adding Baker as a co-writer on the original release), changing nothing in the melody but giving the song a fuller and somewhat more inventive rearrangement. The most inventive touch is the «bumble bee» guitar riff, probably played by technology wiz Mickey Baker in such a loud and naggy manner, it almost overshadows Baker’s vocals; but we shall also have to admit that LaVern’s "...a bumble bee, an EVIL bumble bee!" is more expressive than Fullylove’s original vocal part, and that the extra vibraphone solo is deliciously beautiful in tone and phrasing. (The song itself would later be covered by The Searchers in 1965, which was the first version I’d heard; but in this case, it sounds positively tame and cuddly next to LaVern’s performance). It might be instructive to note that the song made it into the Top 50 on the general pop charts, but did not register at all on the R&B ones — apparently, LaVern’s African-American audiences were not impressed with the general «pop» vibe of the song (‘Saved’, on the contrary, was a bigger hit on the R&B charts, for quite transparent reasons).

Other than ‘Saved’ and ‘Bumble Bee’, both classics for the ages, the material on Saved ranges from nice to mediocre. There is nothing particularly cringeworthy, and there is a fair amount of genre diversity to keep one entertained, but it’s unlikely that any of the other songs might produce some sort of special effect on you. We see that there are clear attempts to try and market LaVern as a sort of «black female pop Elvis»: one of the songs, ‘Shadows Of Love’, comes from Otis Blackwell and feels as if it were very specifically written for Elvis’ voice but somehow accidentally ended up with Atlantic (LaVern sings it much too high, I sense a desperate craving for Elvis’ deeper baritone) — and another, ‘Señor Big And Fine’, is a slightly corny tango number from the Doc Pomus / Mort Shuman team, again quite reminiscent of the average Latin-style numbers peddled to Elvis by his songwriters. Not that this was a particularly new development: the Elvis touch for LaVern was already evident as early as 1958’s ‘Substitute’ — a cross between ‘Treat Me Nice’ and ‘Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me’ — but it is surprising that they even tried to project the different stages of Elvis’ evolution from rock’n’roll to pop onto Baker. Come to think of it, was ‘Tomorrow Night’ also a shadowing of the King, rather than Lonnie Johnson?..

Anyway, the problem is that there’s just too much trying to be somebody else here. Other than Elvis, LaVern covers Peggy Lee (‘Manana’), The Hilltoppers (‘Must I Cry Again’), and even Charlie Chaplin (‘Eternally’, the song from Limelight). One song that is credited to herself is ‘For Love Of You’, but it is nothing to write home about — it’s actually another re-write of ‘What Am I Living For?’, completely redundant in the presence of ‘I Cried A Tear’. And finally, one more Leiber & Stoller contribution, ‘Don Juan’, is a lightweight bit of bossa nova with weak hooks and lyrics that don’t really match the title (you’d expect a song about Don Juan to cover the subject of adultery at least, but it goes somewhere completely different: "Don Juan, your money’s gone / And when your money’s gone, Don, your baby’s gone" — what? how? why?). It’s all perfectly listenable, but thoroughly unnecessary; in fact, I’d rather prefer it if they had at least completed the Elvis trans­formation and turned the whole thing into an Atlantic shadow of Elvis Is Back! — that way, I’d have more to write about and we could carve out the impression of a curious pop/R&B phenomenon, regardless of whether you’d like to store it in your heart or not. As it is, Saved — the LP — ends up a mixed bag of imitations and innovations, with one foot firmly in the present and the other one still bogged in already obsolete Fifties’ conventions. Yet it does prove that, of all the Atlantic veterans signed to the label when the original R&B vibe was still king, LaVern Baker was the only solo artist on the label that could still remain at least partially fresh and relevant in the early 1960s — long enough, at least, to keep the flame burning until the full-on establishment of Motown and the early British Invasion.

• Only Solitaire reviews: LaVern Baker