Review: P. J. Proby - I Am P. J. Proby (1964)
Tracks: 1) Whatever Will Be Will Be; 2) It’s No Good For Me; 3) Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu; 4) The Masquerade Is Over; 5) Glory Of Love; 6) I’ll Go Crazy; 7) Question; 8) You Don’t Love Me No More; 9) Don’t Worry Baby; 10) Just Call And I’ll Be There; 11) Louisiana Man; 12) Cuttin’ In.
REVIEW
Before Tom Jones as the epitome of the «corny soul-pop belter with great voice and horrible taste», there was P. J. Proby — maybe with a bit of an amendment, to the effect that he had a slightly less great voice than Tom Jones, but also a slightly better sense of taste. Born in Texas (as James Marcus Smith) and having started out as an artist in California, where he recorded his first small batch of flop singles, Proby relocated to the UK in 1964 and remained there for most of his life, essentially qualifying as a UK rather than US artist — although his Texan childhood must certainly have had an impact on his singing style and general manners; at the very least, unlike most UK-based soul singers, it is formally impossible to accuse the man of a «lack of authenticity» — provided one assumes that «authenticity» is dictated by one’s birth certificate, that is.
Proby’s shining window of opportunity remained open for about one year — from sometime around mid-’64, when his cover of the oldie ‘Hold Me’ (with Jimmy Page on rhythm guitar!) rose to #3 on the charts, to sometime around mid-’65, when he did good with a couple of covers from West Side Story. During that period, he was somewhat of a sensation, earning his fair share of swooning girls who treated him with the same kind of reverence one would usually reserve for Elvis; and for good reason, because Proby had what it takes — one of the strongest voices and one of the most energetic presences on the UK stage. There was plenty of young bands around who could do justice to the spirit of American rhythm and blues, and people like Mick Jagger or Eric Burdon were powerful and charismatic frontmen with unique singing styles; but sometimes what you really needed was THE frontman, a solo artist with the spotlight on him all the time, and finding a really gritty one, the British equivalent of a James Brown or a Jackie Wilson, was a pretty tough challenge. Long John Baldry kind of did this for the blues-oriented market for a while, but the soul-oriented market remained hungry.
In stepped P. J. Proby, fresh from Texas and California, combining a bit of the Southern grit of the former with a bit of the laissez-faire attitude of the latter and showing them Brits what it really meant to be a solo performing artist. In his earliest performances, he still used to hold back a bit, as you can see, for instance, in his segment during the Around The Beatles TV show, where he belts out a powerful medley of ‘Walkin’ The Dog’ and ‘Cumberland Gap’ while almost completely focusing on the singing; soon enough, he’d be going all Elvis on his audiences, spraying them with gallons upon gallons of Soul (or Sweat, whichever you might prefer to call it).
Considering that it took him a trans-Atlantic change of residence to reach that kind of success, and that even the success itself only lasted for a very short while, you might be tempted to conclude — without even hearing a single song of his — that P. J. Proby was a fluke, a phoney, and an embarrassing con man who simply profited from the availability of an open space on the market and was pushed out of it as soon as better candidatures came along. And you would not be entirely wrong about that; but I believe that if you at least give the man’s debut, the suitably arrogantly titled I Am P. J. Proby, a good listen, you will come to the conclusion that you were not entirely right, either.
Unfortunately, simple research does not disclose the playing credits on the album, produced by notorious UK pop producer Charles Blackwell and released on the Liberty label (available sources are even in conflict with each other over the date of release — some say 1964, others go for 1965). The arrangements are, nevertheless, quite sharp and energetic, with a lively rhythm section, passionate guitars and pianos, and triumphant brass parts — all of them strictly supportive, never letting themselves overshadow the main attraction. The track list mainly consists of contemporary R&B and pop hits, or golden oldies rearranged or even completely rewritten for the new Age of Soul, although Blackwell manages to slip in two numbers of his own for good measure (unsurprisingly, they are the weakest of the lot). And Proby himself gives almost each single tune a reading that is somewhere in between «sincerely from the heart» and «strictly tongue-in-cheek», so that it is hard to tell just how serious the man is trying to be, or whether he is merely pulling our leg all the time.
The very first tune, for instance, is a cover of Doris Day’s hit ‘Que Sera Sera’ (here under its English title), but not the way you hear it in Hitchcock’s movie — instead, Proby selects a recent cover version by the American vocal group The High Keyes as his inspiration, following their manner of remaking it into an R&B groove that steals its main melodic hook from ‘Twist And Shout’. To be fair, Troy Keyes sang the song more powerfully than Proby, but the original Atlantic arrangement and production was far weaker — call it a battle of raw talent against the pop-churning machine, if you wish, but there is no denying that there is a certain element of spontaneous mischief in Proby’s voice as well. (Amusingly, this arrangement of the song quickly took on a life of its own, and the very next year would be taken to the top of the Australian charts by local star Normie Rowe — even though Normie’s recording was most likely modeled after P. J. Proby’s and, frankly, added absolutely nothing to it).
Seriously-sounding, emotionally overdriven material like ‘It’s No Good For Me’ (originally written by the Elvis-associated team of Bill Giant, Bernie Baum, and Florence Kaye and recorded by such soul singers as Gene Chandler and Johnny Nash) are interspersed with humorous vaudeville such as Huey Smith’s ‘Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu’ — and I am tempted to say that P. J. actually does a better work with the latter than the former. Both of these numbers show signs of overacting, but dramatic wipe-my-sweat-off-my-bare-chest overacting is corny, whereas comic look-at-me-I’m-a-madman overacting feels almost rebellious in comparison. Plus, I simply prefer Proby when he is in his «naughty» vocal range, shredding his voice to pointed shards instead of putting on a romantic show for the ladies. He even manages to pull off a convincing James Brown impersonation on ‘I’ll Go Crazy’, where he tries to reproduce Brown’s performance note-for-note and inflection-for-inflection and nails the man’s theatrics to a tee (not that this makes a whole lot of sense now, in comparison to the England of 1964, which had never even seen the real James Brown up close).
Still, perhaps the biggest advantage of this record as a whole — not even of Proby himself — is how it is able to take several raw (in the negative rather than positive meaning of the word) cuts from American soul records, whose full potential was only hinted at on the underdeveloped and underproduced originals, and transform them into powerful anthems. The best example is ‘Question’, a song originally written and recorded by Lloyd «Mr. Personality» Price, but sounding like a semi-completed demo version in all of its aspects — musical arrangement, backing vocals, lead singing — next to the loud, cocky, well-polished performance on I Am P. J. Proby. Even before P. J. steps up to the mike, the brass section delivers a tight fanfare, the rhythm section kicks in like a powerful machine, and the backing vocalists chant the title with loud, properly sustained notes — once he does step up, he pummels Price into the ground. Admittedly, Price wrote the song, and as its songwriter he might not have felt obligated to give it his whole punch; meanwhile, Proby, like any interpreter, is left with the obligation to prove the worth of his remake — but that he does with resolve and gutsiness, making ‘Question’ into the un-question-able highlight of the album. He does more or less the same thing with Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson’s ‘Cuttin’ In’; and although I do not know exactly whose interpretation of ‘Glory Of Love’ he is following here (probably not the classic doo-wop version of The Five Keys from 1951, but rather the one done by the Velvetones, because of the spoken word intermission), once again, the arrangement and production improve drastically on almost everything I’ve heard.
There is exactly one spot on the entire album where Proby falls flat on his face — and that is when he attempts to put his stamp on the Beach Boys’ ‘Don’t Worry Baby’. On almost every other song, his backing band and his producer were capable of overcoming the technical limitations of the original recording, and Proby’s own vocals were generally sufficient to match or outperform the original singers. But when it comes to the Beach Boys around early 1964, one of the few American bands that already placed a huge emphasis on the studio itself as a musical instrument and an even huger emphasis on Apollonian vocal harmonies as the main expression vehicle for their art — well, in Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson’s own words, "sorry partner, I’m cuttin’ in on you". Not that they even try on this one: all of a sudden, the production feels flat as a splattered cardboard box, featuring none of the depth of the original — and, on top of that, Proby’s vocals, especially when they melt down into the sickeningly sweet falsetto, are inexcusable for the song. What can we do? No amount of chameleon magic can make one and the same person sound equally convincing as an avatar of James Brown and of Brian Wilson — you either do a good James or a decent Brian, but if you try to do both, you’re probably Jimmy Fallon and you shouldn’t even be here.
Still, everybody is entitled to a mistake or two when treading untested waters, and on the whole, P. J. Proby does a much, much better job of treading here than I would have expected just by reading about the guy and looking over the track listing. Of course, the lack of original songwriting and the fact that soul singing in the UK would soon be moving up to the next level pretty much kills off the potential of any long-term impact here. But if ever you want to briefly go back in time and look at how the kids did it back in the innocent days of early Beatlemania, P. J. Proby is a pretty good place to start.
Only Solitaire: P. J. Proby reviews