Review: The Drifters - Save The Last Dance For Me (1962)

Tracks: 1) Save The Last Dance For Me; 2) I Count The Tears; 3) Somebody New Dancin’ With You; 4) Jackpot; 5) No Sweet Lovin’; 6) Sweets For My Sweet; 7) Mexican Divorce; 8) When My Little Girl Is Smiling; 9) Some Kind Of Wonderful; 10) Please Stay; 11) Nobody But Me; 12) Room Full Of Tears.

REVIEW

In this deep, deep retrospect I almost find it cute how those (usually meandering and meaningless in their complimentary syrup) liner notes for old LPs from the halcyon days of the pop music industry always remember to forget to even mention, let alone discuss, the internal goings-on within the band — even when this has a crucial impact on the structure and quality of the LP. Here, for instance, a fictional lady called Georgia Winters — the editor-in-chief of teen girl mag 16 Magazine invented by real editors Jacques Chambrun, Desmond Hall, and George Waller — glowingly writes about how "the Drifters have never been a group to stand still" but carefully avoids mentioning any single Drifter by his real name. Is this because «Georgia Winters» never even bothered to learn the names, or is this a delicate attempt to avoid reminding us that by the time this LP came out on the market, the Drifters were already on their fifth or sixth lead singer? Once again, the LP is a real hot mess, chronologically randomized to throw the listener off the track — although at least this time around, the body of the group remains more or less intact throughout. The heads continue to roll, though.

The actual chronology of the singles included here stretches from February 1962 all the way back to August 1960 — the date of the official release of the title track, still sung by Ben E. King who had, however, by that time already left the Drifters to start his solo career three months earlier; and I bet he spent several really tense months in the fall of 1960 doubting over whether he made the right decision, before history redeemed him with the success of ‘Spanish Harlem’ and ‘Stand By Me’. Because ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’ somehow managed to become the Drifters’ biggest commercial hit of all time, their only #1 on the general charts and arguably the one song that still most frequently comes to mind whenever the Drifters are mentioned (at least, if you’re a certified boomer).

Written by the Pomus-Shuman duo and traditionally produced by Leiber & Stoller, the song again restored the formula of mixing soulful vocals, Latin rhythms, and schmaltzy strings — its overall mood and message is, in fact, not far removed from the earlier ‘Dance With Me’, except that ‘Dance With Me’ was about the early stages of courting ("maybe we’ll be lovers when the music ends") and ‘Save The Last Dance’ is all about the jealous stages of an ongoing relationship ("don’t forget who’s taking you home and in whose arms you’re gonna be"). It is certainly more inventively crafted and catchy than its predecessor — Pomus and Shuman make clever use of the rapid-fire internal rhyming ("every dance with the guy who gives you the eye...") and each verse is like one perfect gliding circle across the ballroom. It’s also allegedly more personal (since Doc Pomus was wheelchair-bound as a result of polio, it is rumored that he specifically wrote the lyrics about his wife in whose dancing activities he naturally could not partake at the wedding reception, although, for the sake of accuracy, the song was written in 1960 and the wedding took place in 1957), and, well, basically, tells a more interesting story than ‘Dance With Me’ never really tried to do.

For that matter, it’s also not particularly difficult to sing if you know how to do breath control, which is one reason why there have been tons of cover versions, starting already with Dion and even Jerry Lee Lewis himself already back in 1961; most of the covers capitalize on the happiness rather than the drama, but you can’t really blame them because that is what the Drifters and Ben E. King do, too, or those ethereal butterfly-like violins that steal the second bridge away from the lead vocalist. It’s all a little fluffy, quite handy if you use it for the soundtrack to practice your hot Latin dance moves, but it’s still graceful melodic perfection. Does it deserve to be the «greatest Drifters’ song of all time»? No, because the Drifters were capable of a large emotional spectrum, and this is just one area of it. Do I understand why it is the best-selling Drifters’ song of all time? Sure I do. It’s in the same ballpark with The Nutcracker and the Hochzeitsmarsch, that’s why.

The funny thing is that its B-side, ‘Nobody But Me’ (not to be confused with the slightly later Isley Brothers’ hit by the same name), also written by Pomus and Shuman and originally designed to have been the A-side before commercial sensibility took over, is pretty much the equal of ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’ in terms of prettiness and catchiness — a little less complex, though, because it has no bridge section distinct from the verses — and might even be its superior in terms of soulfulness, due to King’s ecstasy in the chorus. Although the strings are more persistent here (on ‘Save The Last Dance’ they are only really prominent during the instrumental break), ‘Nobody But Me’ has more of a gospel feel to it and comes across as less of a «sellout». But it never ingrained itself in public memory with the same impact as ‘Save The Last Dance’, which is just one of those odd mysteries of hive psychology we have to live with.

Because of the huge success of the single, Atlantic made an effort to dig out another Pomus-Shuman-written, King-sung track from the vaults before fully handing the reins over to the new lead singer: this was ‘I Count The Tears’, and, of course, it did not manage to repeat the success of its predecessor, though #17 on the general charts was still fairly respectable. If there might be a problem, it is that the song seems tailor-made for the likes of Del Shannon rather than a bona fide R&B group: a rhythmically steady melancholic pop song with all the right vocal moves for a gorgeously heartbroken white teen pop idol of the 1960–1962 brand. But turns out that this problem is more theoretical than anything — it’s a cool recording! The na-na-na-na-na-na late at night harmonies are fun, the imaginary-revenge lyrical shift from first to third person (you never even notice when I’ll sit and count the tears has become he’ll sit and count the tears), the bitter-sweet teenage drama intonation of I have counted every day since you’ve been away, it’s all good. Ben even does his best to sing like Del Shannon. And the original is better than the Searchers’ cover from 1964 — more soulful, more full, more satisfying because of all the backing vocals. (The Searchers could never reproduce those gorgeous bell-accompanied falsetto woo-woos before the start of each verse).

Speaking of new lead singers, it was not until February 1961 that the King-less Drifters could finally assemble for a new studio session, after a lengthy period of trying out several lead vocalists and finally settling on Rudy Lewis (formerly Charles Rudolph Harrell). By all accounts, Rudy was a nice guy and he had a pleasant, inoffensive tenor slightly reminiscent of Sam Cooke’s, but with less depth to it; he was also no stranger to dangerous substances, leading to his becoming an early member of Club 27 in 1964, but, fortunately for humanity, he still left behind a solid legacy of hits marking the Fourth (and Last Truly Relevant) Age of The Drifters. And what a better way to mark the start of a Fourth Age than by entering into a partnership with Carole King and Gerry Goffin, the new rising stars of Brill Building who had only just demonstrated their golden touch with the Shirelles and Bobby Vee?

Not that I am a particularly big fan of this original recording of ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’. Apart from a bouncier, poppier, slightly Latinized (the Leiber-Stoller touch again) rhythm, Lewis and Co. seem to be re-embracing some of the ancient doo-wop stylistics here, and the strings are more syrupy than seriously expressive. Carole’s own version of the song, which she would release a decade later on Music, adds the heart-melting touch of intimacy and shyness, whereas this here is pure rose-colored happiness and nothing else, not to mention that melody-wise, it is far from the most striking examples of Carole’s chord-spinning or vocal-hook-crafting magic. Still, it’s every bit as perfectly romantic as any of the preceding Ben E. King hits, and one absolutely cannot excuse Rudy or Leiber and Stoller of «misrepresenting» the song.

The same recording session from February 1961 yielded material for the Drifters’ next two singles as well. ‘Please Stay’ was provided by Burt Bacharach; I am no big lover of Burt Bacharach, but I think that even big lovers of Burt probably will not want to defend this early piece of writing as anything more than a romantic trifle (though it did end up charting higher than ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’). (In 1966, it went on to become a much bigger hit for The Cryin’ Shames when they slowed it down, added stately baroque organ, and ultimately turned it into a solemn operatic hymn — which, I am afraid to say, did not really do the song much good at all).

Much more fun was ‘Sweets For My Sweet’, an upbeat and lightly-humorous, tongue-in-cheekish romantic ditty from the tried’n’true team of Pomus-Shuman. Instead of strings, here you have a tasteful piano riff driving the song (played by Mort Shuman himself), delightful backing vocals from a bunch of ladies (allegedly including Dionne Warwick with her sister and Doris Troy!), and several percussionists giving the song an Afro-Cuban touch. It’s also a trifle, but an unpretentious one that easily wins over with all the cuteness — and while most people are probably more familiar with the Searchers’ version, which replaces the original piano with a Mersey-style jangly guitar pattern, it does not substantially improve on the original at all (though it’s a fair homage in its own rights).

Pomus and Shuman are also responsible for both the A- and B-side of the next single: ‘Room Full Of Tears’ is pretty much a conventional Mexican mariachi ballad with orchestral strings taking on the function of brass and fiddles, while ‘Somebody New Dancin’ With You’ could be thought of as an anti-climactic sequel to ‘Save The Last Dance With Me’ (provided the lady deuteragonist of the song has not heeded her unfortunate lover’s advice after all) — it’s kinda tragic and funny at the same time. Both tunes feel like trifles, though, and it’s no surprise that they pretty much failed to chart, showing some of the Drifters’ lowest results in years.

At this point, it may have looked like there was an ongoing unseen, highly indirect, battle around the Drifters: the «older» way of songwriting, as illustrated by the Pomus-Shuman duo, and the «newer» way, as represented by several young faces from the Brill Building, chief among them Carole King and Gerry Goffin — who, at that time, seemed to have a better idea of what the young audiences really wanted for themselves. And thus, after the commercial fiasco of ‘Room Full Of Tears’ came ‘When My Little Girl Is Smiling’, which bounced the Drifters back all the way to #28 from a shameful #72. It’s one of Carole and Gerry’s lighter, simpler numbers, without any real tricky psychological underlayers, but the lyrics tell their own special story — some good advice for them ladies here on how to deal with their men when they get unruly — and the cool thing is that the melody basically uses the ‘What’d I Say’ chord sequence, just transposing it to a different key, which makes the song into a hybrid of romantic pop and danceable R&B. And they bring in harps to play it, for the first time in Drifters history, I think (the strings appear on top eventually during the instrumental break, mimicking the vocal countermelody, but the rhythm part is mostly harp-based). Once again, Leiber and Stoller come out shining.

This is where the LP comes in: with ‘Little Girl’ once again pulling the Drifters out of the muck, Atlantic remembered that it had been at least a year and a half since they offered the band the full album treatment, and diligently assembled most of the A- and B-sides from all of that period in one place. Of course, since nothing they did afterwards beat the commercial punch of ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’, they still had to give the song top billing and name the album after it, despite the fact that Ben E. King was lead vocalist only on 3 out of 12 of the tunes here. But at least this time around it was not two completely different sets of Drifters, as on Greatest Hits, and overall I would say that the bigger difference here is illustrated by the Pomus-Shuman vs. Goffin-King division rather than the contrast between King and Lewis (even if they do have fairly distinct vocal tones and ways of singing).

Of the hitherto unmentioned B-sides I’d only make a quick sidenote about ‘No Sweet Lovin’, the B-side to ‘Please Stay’. If you feel that it sticks out like a sore thumb, you’re absolutely right: it is a «boogie-wop» outtake from the immediate post-McPhatter era, with Bill Pinkney on vocals — hilariously outdated, but fun. Another, more modern, outtake that became an LP-only track is the slow-paced country-blues ‘Jackpot’, which, for some weird reason, reminds me of ‘The Jack’ by AC/DC, not just because of the name, but also because of the slow tempo and the prominent role of the syllable "jack" in the chorus. Surely the mind works in mysterious ways, but couldn’t the same be true of the Young brothers and Bon Scott? In any case, ‘Jackpot’ is a bit of a stylistic mish-mash curiosity, combining very Fifties-style rhythmics with very early Sixties-style arrangement tactics, so it’s definitely a step up from pure filler, and certainly more impressive than a bunch of those go-nowhere B-sides like ‘Mexican Divorce’.

Overall, the LP turns out to be quite consistent, with the transition from the Ben E. King period to the Rudy Lewis era marked by many more triumphs than embarrassments. But, of course, it almost goes without saying that by this time «The Drifters» was more of a trademark, employed by the powers-that-be at Atlantic to test out the talents of their songwriters, arrangers, and producers, than a moniker for some distinct artistic entity. Clyde McPhatter and Ben E. King were notable individuals with their own styles and ideas; Johnny Moore and Rudy Lewis were decent singers who could handle a tune and little more than that. Not that this comes as a big surprise — vocal groups tend to be even more of a «tool» in the hand of their managers than individual singers-not-songwriters — but if you ever felt weird for being familiar with ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’ or ‘Up On The Roof’ or any other of those big hits without remembering to whom it originally belonged, that weird feeling would certainly have to do with this particular arrangement of circumstances.

Still, even conveyer production can be terrific as long as the right people are running the conveyer, right? And with Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Doc Pomus, Mort Shuman, Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Jerry Wexler, Ahmet Ertegun, and other people with talent to burn and vision to spare sitting steady behind the wheel while the big road of popular music kept offering new opportunities, you really couldn’t go wrong even in those allegedly «retrograde» interim years between the two big waves of rock’n’roll music, which may have seemed boring and limp to more radical minds but in reality were quietly building up the foundations for the sky-scraping pop edifice to be mounted in the next few years.

• Only Solitaire: The Drifters reviews