….When I won’t like to go to the parties no moreAnd I won’t like to do a thingWell bless my soulWhen I get so oldTill have to walk around with a cane – The Supremes “Those D.J. Shows” (1961)
The thing is I’ve never have been, never will be much of a party animal.
Sure, I’ll holler with gusto singing with Claudine Clark on “Party Lights” when it comes on. In reality, I’m not gonna feel like I’m missing out on much if my boyfriend is going with Mary & Sue down the street to live it up. I don’t even have to worry about either parent grounding me. That’s been true for the better party of 25 years. But my god I find most parties, especially if the crowd expands over 10, absolutely exhausting.
Too often the music is just what I would consider bad.
They’re LOUD.
There’s often nowhere to sit.
I have no clue where to put the trash or recycling, so I end up holding a damn plate or red solo cup the whole damn time.
Whatever y’all consider party food often is just not the business.
I’d rather chill out on some indica edibles than drink anyways. For health reasons, I shouldn’t be drinking anyways. Don’t let the conversation dip beyond the weather if you really want to like people, in my opinion. I’m a hater, for real for real. Don’t seek me out at parties unless you wanna hear that I think Mandami is just as much a Libra DEI fraud as AOC was. This just leads into me dragging AOC who is just as much of a fraud as Kamala Harris is to me. You’re probably wondering why I’m bringing electoral politics and identity into discussing records. I swear I have a point.
Heaven help you if you start saying you love Nina Simone or Kendrick Lamar.
It’s more about the people that actually shift the tastes. The ones that truly have the talent often are the ones that do the yeoman work. They don’t necessarily get the credit of fame or notoriety. This is often because they’re so deeply engrossed in creativity that they could give less of a shit about how it’s marketed.
There’s a reason so many former girl group singers just went to jobs as Bank Tellers, Telephone Switch Board Operators or becoming nurses. They almost universally got back to the artform when they had time. They are the ones that never see the spotlight. Ask me about the unpaid chapter I wrote in Colin Bedell’s first astrology book. I’ve been here all the time, just a tier below notoriety, happy to just do what I need or want to do to make my way in the world.
I’m often happy with what I create on my own. My soul depends on those individual special relationships that are formed when somebody really ‘gets’ the ‘why’ of what I do, what or who I love or why I try to do existence differently. I really have no time or patience with people that misunderstand me. So, I just don’t go to parties. For the life of me, I can’t stand making small talk. Much as I love some friends that love a good party, I have some opinions about how they feel when those superficial social connections go south. I kinda chuckle when they go to yet another party, hoping for a different result from the same tired crowd.
At the core of it, I’m probably closest to the people that are equally introverted as me. The people that prefer the lessons of well thought out lyrics and beautiful arrangements. We love to study the works of people still here or long gone for some deeper truth. There’s a reason why ‘soul’ music is called ‘soul’ music. I’m decidedly intellectual enough. I’ve been called ‘too smart for my own good.’ I’m frankly okay with that. I’ve thought and theorized about plenty in this life.
What I enjoy most is when I let go of thinking and calculating. Most social situations when faced with new people require that. I love feeling, in all of its complexity. I’d rather spend time devoted to someone I’ve felt things out with over many new and full moons. A core component that makes that work is being honest, being unvarnished, being truthful in that 1:1 ratio of connection. It gives my soul a purpose for even being in this body in this existence. I can know a lot, which will either be documented and clarified via peer review. Feeling is so individual yet so universal. I love that it fries my brain until mine finally shuts up.
What I feel is deeply personal, so I like to cut to the chase, deal with the facts if you will, and relish the additional time the clarity of reality leaves for me to know what my emotions are. This is where we waltz into 1965 thru some shared Queer Gen-X to millennial cultural transfer via the internet and in parallel, Lesley Gore’s unseen guide to mainstream success, Miss Barbara Jean English.
She turns 80 this August 22nd.
I spent a great deal of my twenties and thirties virtually and physically ‘crate digging’ for gold. The less robust my finances, the more pirated MP3s. Of course when money was ‘better’ I went for the physical copy of what may exist still. As this list series proves, I’m more prone to seek out what was cast as ‘women’s records’ or girl groups from post WWII into my childhood. I’ve long, before I even had words for it, knew I wasn’t gonna be doing any version of heterosexual courtship. I think my parents got the hint too when I took a little bit too strongly to Tina Turner’s Private Dancer LP when I was three years old.
My first independent with my own allowance money went to a copy of Diana Ross and The Supremes Greatest Hits, Volume II. They sold the original #1 gatefold LP as separate cassettes in 1987. I had fallen in love with “Stop! In The Name of Love” playing at the Sunnyvale Town Center Mall in late 1986. I begged to go shopping there, hoping to overhear the song echo from the P.A. systems as my mom returned to buy pantyhose from Lane Bryant over and over again. I’ve had a 40 year love affair with the “Back In My Arms Again” B-side “Whisper You Love Me, Boy” that carries over to my romantic expectations in my current life.
Writing like this comes out of the fact that when Tumblr was a ‘thing,’ 16-20 years ago, it was one of the easiest places to upload a MP3 to share with the general ether of the digital commons. I’ve built one of my longest term digital friendships with John Hamilton this way. John is a tad bit older than me and lives in the rust belt. He is a lot closer to many of the production hubs of not just great hits, but plenty of obscurities that got ‘lost’ on their way to listeners ears. I think I’ve said it before, but the Bay Area was nowhere as friendly to record making as even Cleveland, Ohio in the 1960’s.
15 years ago, after I had been posting for a few years, building to an almost-daily clip, John sent me a message complimenting my selections. I forget how it descended into discussing the how and why we bonded with similar records. We somewhat spoke of both of our abilities to step into those records for some psychological analysis of why courtship and relationships for us went a ‘certain’ way counter to the heterosexual narratives or typical ‘diva’ worship that makes martyrs of women in pop music.
We aren’t much for either the Barbra Streisand or Beyonce camp when it comes to camp. We aren’t too biased to the Judy Garland and gals era either, but we can understand and appreciate them. That tends to push us into our mutual love of raising ourselves on Nick @ Nite, AMC and Turner Classic Movies. We will always have something ridiculous to say about Harriet Craig or The Tammy Grimes Show.We’ve definitely ranked the butts of Dick York versus Dick Van Dyke. We’ve delighted at the nudes of the late great George Maharis, wondering which guest stars did he bed on the traveling set of Route 66.
One day John sent me a bundle of MP3s as a zip file. They were songs not available digitally 15 years ago. I’m struggling to remember if it was Terri Thornton that recorded “Detroit Freeway.” I might have to dig really deep in my maxed out Dropbox account to figure out the dilemma. I forget if John saved the MP3s from the Spectropop! website, or the newly reactivated Cue Castanets site.
A lot of them were hard to score in their original format; whether 45rpm singles, LPs or bootleg tapes/CDs. Among them was this 1965 single featuring Barbara Jean English. On both sides of early 1965 Reprise released single she’s backed by Dee Dee Warwick, Sylvia Shemwell, Cissy Houston and Estelle Brown. The topside, “Small Town Girl” was covered by Dusty Springfield and released in 1966-67 depending on which side of the Atlantic you were on. It’s from the same U.K. LP that gave us Dusty’s well-known cover of another favorite of mine, Baby Washington’s forever covered but never a big hit “I Can’t Wait Until I See My Baby’s Face.”
We’re real girl group heads.
We could teach a class at any Liberal Arts College in the rust belt on the subject.
Honestly? If you wanna save higher education….
anyways…
Barbara Jean English started her career YOUNG.
She was 11 years old when she joined The Clickettes.
While the NYC based girl group never charted in any significant way nationally, They released a slew of singles between 1958 and 1962 that were equally as influential on that transition period between Doo-Wop crooning and smooth soul that started to dominate the airwaves in 1963. Barbara’s piquant voice is at the center of the majority of those Clickettes singles for a reason. It’s both worldly and wise, fragile but tough. It’s probably on the feistier, fighting side and shares qualities of bravado that are similar to Delores ‘La La’ Brooks of The Crystals, if in a higher register.
Barbara also was one of the many ‘demo’ queens of The Brill Building in New York City. Just like Dionne Warwick, or Dee Dee backing her on this song, she made a decent living putting down vocals on rough sketches of tunes from the pens of Goffin & King, Greenwich & Barry, perhaps Bacharach & David and assorted others in midtown Manhattan. Her relative youth compared to the then 22 year old elder Warrick sister probably made her seem less worth the investment to make her a solo star while she still was in high school.
Her guide vocal is the one that Lesley Gore did a note for note approximation of on “It’s My Party.” Ironically, as I mention it, La La Brooks also would have encountered Barbara Jean’s voice as well. Phil Spector cut a version of “It’s My Party” as well on The Crystals that didn’t see release. Helen Shapiro, ironically copying Dusty Springfield coming to the states to record with her brother in late 1962, cut a version of “It’s My Party” in February, 1963 in Nashville.
It’s weird also because 3 of the women that had contact with the song were all born in 1946. Helen Shapiro is a Libra (September 28). Gore was about 3 months older than English, and had nowhere near the professional credentials her fellow teenager had when Gore, with Quincy Jones as mastermind (along with the more anglicized from Goldstein stage name) took the tune to #1 in 1963. Barbara dedicated more time to actually pursuing a solo recording career after she graduated high school, releasing an average of 1-2 singles a year through 1966.
She returned to recording in the early 70’s, ironically, again, releasing tunes that Dusty Springfield would cover again (notably “Breaking Up A Happy Home”). John and me have been notoriously addicted to songs that give more than a whiff of ‘alternate universe Dionne Warwick.’ There’s a huge subgenre containing women as young as Barbara Jean and as old as Rosetta Tharpe’s muse and sometimes lover, Marie Knight, belting out cheating anthems to off-kilter time signatures like “A Little Too Lonely” from 1965.
Barbara Jean’s one doesn’t disappoint. It literally has Warwick’s legit family as the background group on the record.
“Is that Dee Dee I detect?”
John asked me, whether quizzing the tuning of my ears or finally having some to ask that would ‘get it’ about the background vocals. The sorrowful howls that frame Barbara’s aching lead, the plea for some truth after some clear romantic gaslighting are indeed Dee Dee and family a year before the younger Warrick sister made the R&B Top 10 with “I Want To Be With You.” Like The Royalettes biggest hit single, her bowdlerized cover of the show tune from Golden Boy froze at #41 Pop as 1965 became 1966. Back here on Barbara Jean’s single there’s the pensive march of that horn section intro. It’s at the same time very much about the business. So what is the business is how much you should invest in boxes of Kleenex™ after you know what’s what?
Don’t keep me on a string…
…if your sweet love is a one time thing…
Oh Oh…
The tone is decidedly sad, bracing for the impact of another set of lies. It gives gentle center stage for the teetering vulnerability of Barbara’s interpretation of the lyric. It hit me a certain way immediately on the first listen some 15 years ago. If I were to say it more plainly, this is the song that perfectly soundtracks the chaotic shambles of any of my intimate relationships before I was 30. Problem is, more often than not, I was no way near as brave as Barbara Jean was with being vulnerable. I too often buried my head in the sand.
I would rather play the song in the comfort of my own home and sing along. To a degree I still do. If I were to sing for an audience, it’s decidedly one I’d give a try. I’ve had a lot of practice on this number. It’s been one of the most consistent comfort against the shenanigans that have lead to the horror laced romantic comedies that I retraced photographically this spring throughout California. There was something about hearing such a level of weathered anticipation of heartbreak from someone that was calendar age young.
Barbara Jean was all of 18 when she recorded the song as the winter of 1964 gave way to that season bleeding into 1965. She had also been a recording artist for 7-8 years by the time she went into the studio to record this. There’s something I can’t exactly put a name on still so strongly identifying with the song more than 60 years after it was recorded, 15 years after I was blessed with being ‘seen’ by someone else’s portrayed vulnerability. There’s photos I look back at with the same weariness, knowing they had the same hopes of being told the truth. Like Barbara Jean on this song, I knew the truth anyways. I had hoped that the truth was different from what I already knew.
She had long been a leading lady in interpretation of lyrics because she had lived enough life, witnessed or experienced just enough to nail the see-saw of wanting to be loved yet knowing that it comes almost automatically with heartbreak. I wish I had given myself the same grace given how long I had been studying her and her peers a lot sooner in my life. If there’s no success in the relationship effort, the cry fades into sealing up the fractures for the next attempt. It’s interesting to wonder, given her less consistent output, if this was planned at a part of an intentional storyline. Her July, 1964 release, “I’ve Got A Date” decidedly points to that direction.
Don’t make me…
need your kiss…
…If you’re gonna
hang me up like this…
There’s the dual edged sword of fortitude and fright in her interpretation. The pauses in her phrasing beg to hold off a truth she most likely already knows. If listened in succession with the intended promoted side, it gives the eager desire for worldly accomplishments of “Small Town Girl” the extreme depth the intended hit is trying to gloss over. “Small Town Girl” is all beautiful, bushy tailed bright eyed hubris that I love as well. We all should dream big. We can hope that we aren’t alone in our pursuits. We often chase material success to hide certain wounds, often enough they are like the ones described in “Tell It Like It Is.”
7 years after John shared the file with me, I found a copy of the single in Mississippi records in Portland. It was a few months after some of these photos were taken. It was a few weeks before I brushed my hurt feelings off and made some significant headway in the whole “I can make a living off of being a DJ!” life that I lived in Portland. I still think of how I made it to the papers. I was Williamette Week famous.
It’s really weird to do a Google search these days about yourself and see what AI churns up about you, by the way. Google Gemini makes me seem like so much more of a big deal than I actually am. Google’s AI waste as I put in my own stage name makes it sound like I’m hosting a party in some bar on Saturday night still. Th reality is I’m sitting on my couch on another Saturday Night, letting records play in the ashes of the colonial project.
It was all truly thanks to someone like John Hamilton. Relationships that matter sometimes are with someone that has help me understand myself far deeper than words can say. I would never trade a party night out for an opportunity to DM John and gossip, talk about boys or talk about records. Trust me being an introvert has its perks. I honestly will never seek to change this part of my personality. If I did, I truly wouldn’t know who I’d even be.
As seen in the YouTube link after the break that takes you to a ‘homecoming’ set I did in Oakland a few months later, I often would softly open or close a set with this song. It’s a tribute to me wanting you to cut the bullshit. I’m not here for the small talk. Save me both of our precious time. I’d rather have the truth of heartbreak. I can always go back to my records, for they, and for the time being, John will be there.
I lost that copy when the mess of my heart failure diagnosis created housing and property chaos in 2023. John found another copy for me. He sent it as a birthday gift for my 42nd birthday. May I have this copy ‘til the day I die. Hopefully when I’m settled in Philadelphia, I’ll head to the rust belt side of the state of Pennsylvania so we can go crate digging together for once.
..Should I believe?
…All that they say?
…Is it a lie?
I hear you love them, then leave them, then laugh at the tears that they cry…
If you clicked the link in the song title, you are intro’d to one of the two copies of the song that are easily listenable on YouTube. It’s not on any streaming platforms that I know of. Say a little prayer for people like me and John. Bless us for all the heartbreaks and misunderstandings we experience from existing in this world. If it weren’t for us, so much about feeling out this life would be lost. Wish us all the love we deserve. Wish that, despite all of what goes on around all of us, that the treasures of good music never stop.
