Review: Tony Sheridan - Just A Little Bit (1964)
Tracks: 1) Just A Little Bit; 2) Kansas City; 3) Save The Last Dance For Me; 4) Unchained Melody; 5) Get On The Right Track, Baby; 6) You’d Better Move On; 7) Skinny Minny; 8) Jambalaya; 9) Mary Ann; 10) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow; 11) My Babe; 12) Sweet Georgia Brown; 13) I Got A Woman.
REVIEW
Curiosity may not necessarily have killed the cat, but it sure made my life a bit difficult when I tried to hunt down Tony Sheridan’s only other LP from the 1960s. Called Just A Little Bit Of Tony Sheridan, it was released by Polydor some time in 1964 and later reissued under the title of My Babe on the Swedish-cum-German Karussell label. Apparently, an official CD version of it does exist (there’s an actual picture on Discogs with the Polydor label), but the album is difficult to locate digitally in its original form — some of the tracks may be scattered among all sorts of messy, chaotic compilations bearing the name of Tony Sheridan, and some might even be found credited to «Tony Sheridan and the Beatles», even though they were recorded at a time when the Beatles could only have supported Tony Sheridan out of mercy if he were dying of cancer or something. Anyway, I did my best to assemble what looks to be the correct version of the record from multiple sources (though I still have doubts as to this particular version of ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’; apparently Tony cut at least three or four of them in the early Sixties — at least this one is probably post-Beatles, since it includes the improvised lines "in Liverpool, she even dared to criticize the Beatles’ hair").
The band accompanying Tony on the album is alternately referred to in discographies as «The Beat Brothers» (no, that is not an alias for the Beatles!) or, more frequently, as «The Big Six» — in some ways, this large combo from Scotland, which augmented the standard rock band lineup with a brass section (sax and trumpet), might even be more interesting than Tony himself (hey, not a first for the man, right?); for instance, the sax player, Alex Young, was one of the elder brothers in the same extended Young family that included George, Malcolm, and Angus — except he actually refused to move to Australia during Scotland’s «big freeze» of 1963 (and thus deprived the future Easybeats or the future AC/DC of the opportunity to include a salaried saxophone player). He did move to Hamburg, though, together with the entire band, where they called themselves The Bobby Patrick Big Six and claimed to be big friends with the Beatles (although, truthfully, what British group that played in Hamburg in the early Sixties didn’t? Everybody wanted to be friends with the Beatles, especially in retrospect). Regardless, what they definitely did become was big friends with Tony Sheridan, whom they would be backing from approximately 1964 to 1967. (You can read much more about the band in this long write-up from Nick Warburton, as well as listen to some samples of their own recordings — fairly bland, particularly the limp and by-the-book cover of the Beatles’ ‘Nowhere Man’, but generally listenable).
In any case, returning to Sheridan, it is clear that he made an effort in 1964 to present himself as a rocker-cum-soul man, far more influenced by the American R&B and soul scene than by distilled rock’n’roll. There are still a number of leftovers from the earlier, wilder days, such as a fast-paced, rambunctious ‘Jambalaya’ inherited from Jerry Lee Lewis rather than Hank Williams or Fats Domino, and another recording of ‘Skinny Minny’. But generally, this is soulful R&B all the way — paying homage to the Drifters (‘Save The Last Dance For Me’), Arthur Alexander (‘You Better Move On’), even the Shirelles (‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’), and especially Ray Charles: not only does Tony cover the lesser known ‘Mary Ann’ from Ray’s debut album, but he also goes for a monumental, long-winded ‘I Got A Woman’ modeled not on the short single version of the song, but on the extended rave version from At Newport, together with the slow, «deceptive» intro.
It’s actually better than one could think — Sheridan’s strong, deep voice had always been his chief asset, and on the whole, he puts it to better use during his Big Six period than in the earliest Hamburg days; he is certainly a more natural crooner than rock’n’roller. But «more natural» does not automatically make you the best of the best, or even outstanding, and there is little in these performances that would suggest an ability to do something interesting, challenging, or even modern with that vocal talent. Every single track here, both from a vocal and instrumental perspective, is strictly perfunctory: the kind of performance you might enjoy very much while gobbling down your dinner at B. B. King’s Bar & Grill, then spend all your way home in deep thought about what it was that you enjoyed more — the show, or the dinner. At best, memories of one will be inextricable from memories of the other, the same way that no amount of recorded output and no attempt at a change of image could ever free poor Tony from forever remaining in the status of a footnote to you-know-who.
One concluding observation that came into my mind from playing the original Ray Charles Newport performance of ‘I Got A Woman’ back-to-back with Tony’s interpretation is that of balance, and how important it is to the emotional effect that a group effort can have on people. Ray knows fairly well that he is the major star of the show, yet he is careful enough to give the backing band some space — staying just a bit away from the mike so that you can switch your attention, at will, to the relentlessly pounding rhythm section or the brass groove; in a way, it feels as if Ray himself is driven by the music and his rapid-fire vocalizations are a direct consequence of being uplifted by his band members. On Tony’s version, it feels as if the singer and the backing band are much less coordinated, with the singer almost swallowing the microphone so that you are forced to concentrate on him all the time, without any serious chance to focus your attention on whatever it is the Big Six are doing. But if even Ray Charles himself knows that he is not going to pull that groove out all on his own, how on Earth could Tony Sheridan get that much more confident?..
I guess it goes without saying, in the end, that hunting down Tony Sheridan’s post-Beatles material should be qualified not just as a historical, but rather as a meta-historical activity — but on the other hand, there is absolutely no harm in trying, although I think that the only musical moment that mildly amused me on this record was when they used the old gruff distorted tone of the Burnette brothers’ ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’ and ‘Honey Hush’ for the performance of ‘My Babe’: those are some tasty dark-chocolate guitar licks out there, and they sound ridiculously edgy even for 1964, despite going all the way back to 1956. Other than that, take this review simply as a personal certification that Tony Sheridan was an all-around nice fellow and had good taste in music, but that not everybody who hang around the Beatles in Hamburg automatically became a forgotten genius — and the same goes for the Big Six / Beat Brothers as well.
Only Solitaire: Tony Sheridan reviews