The Drifters: C/D, S&D

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Pre-"There Goes My Baby": At the very least, we must agree that Clyde McPhatter was a motherfucker -- check out "Let the Boogie Woogie Roll" for an insane exuberance Elvis only caught every once in a while.

Post-"There Goes My Baby": I think it was impossible for me to really like this stuff until I completely divorced myself from NYC oldies radio -- which practically treats this stuff as the Ground On Which We All Stand On -- for about decade.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 16 May 2004 20:04 (twenty-two years ago)

McPhatter era: "Whatcha Gonna Do"

post-McPhatter: "Save the Last Dance for Me"

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Monday, 17 May 2004 06:16 (twenty-two years ago)

there's lost of post-mcphatter stuff that's as good as the big hits but which has been forgotten by oldies radio.

i have those early-cd-era double-cd comps which are great, although the liner notes (very good) are printed in 4-pt type. "up on the roof" is really a-number-1 killer no matter how often it gets played.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 17 May 2004 06:45 (twenty-two years ago)

I like that this is phrased as if "There Goes My Baby" is the Rock of Gibraltar or something. Which it is. It's funny, the first time I actually played it--not heard eight-seconds splurbs on late-night TV ads or whatever (and no I haven't seen Mean Streets, sorry), I almost went into shock--it's so raw! There's nothing smooth about it, the strings included.

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Monday, 17 May 2004 06:49 (twenty-two years ago)

"save the last dance for me" is gorgeous.

― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 17 May 2004 13:42 (twenty-two years ago)

well in "there goes my baby" the strings are way out of tune, but in a consistent and interesting way. makes it sound vaguely...arabic.

did you guys know that doc pomus's brother is this shady famous divorce lawyer? he was profiled two weeks ago in the new yorker. (pomus = author of "save the last dance for me" etc.)

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 17 May 2004 19:10 (twenty-two years ago)

i went to elementary school with doc green's son. we used to play metroid together.

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 17 May 2004 19:36 (twenty-two years ago)

five years pass...

Can't believe this is the only Drifters thread....

This is awesome

http://991.com/newGallery/The-Drifters-Greatest-Hits-484510.jpg

Despite the title and misleading sleevenotes, it's really a collection of the first year or so of the Ben E. King Drifters - There Goes My Baby, Magic Moments, B-sides and odds and ends- rushed out by Atlantic.

The triple whammy of Sadie My Baby, Honky-Tonky, and, especially, Baltimore....if you think this Drifters was all those ballads (great as they are) think again - they must have absolutely tore it up live.

― sonofstan, Saturday, 24 April 2010 07:38 (sixteen years ago)

fourteen years pass...

One-and-a-half threads, sort of, but ditto, thought there'd be more--there are at least three legitimate versions of the band itself (Clyde McPhatter group, Ben E. King group, and a few years between).

Bought this recently, another one of those ridiculously cheap public-domain collections:

https://i.postimg.cc/y8Kgp36N/drifters.jpg

I've had the basic Drifters' Golden Hits collection for a long time, the one with "There Goes My Baby," but--haven't played it for ages--I never really took notice of something glaringly obvious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUV9-MN71o0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5NtzB-voZo

Surprised there wasn't a famous "He's So Fine"/"My Sweet Lord"-type lawsuit.

― clemenza, Friday, 17 May 2024 05:31 (two years ago)

There probably wasn't because "Let's Live..." was an Italian song given new English lyrics, so finding out who to sue (plus Italy's less than ideal copyright laws) might have been more trouble than it was worth.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 17 May 2024 15:05 (two years ago)

The original "Let's Live For Today" ("Piangi con me" = "Cry With Me")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtijYC5gxVQ

Confusing matters further, it was performed by an English band called The Rokes.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 17 May 2024 15:15 (two years ago)

Haha, in the slideshow accompanying that Rokes track, they include several pics of the Drifters, so the similarities have been noted!

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 17 May 2024 15:19 (two years ago)

Interesting...The Drifters' production team was very much aware of it:

The composer/producer team of P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri, who managed the Grass Roots' recordings, were also enthusiastic about the song, with Sloan being particularly enamored with the similarities that the song's chorus had to the Drifters' "I Count the Tears".

They didn't seem too worried about a lawsuit.

― clemenza, Friday, 17 May 2024 15:34 (two years ago)

(Grass Roots' production team, I meant.)

― clemenza, Friday, 17 May 2024 15:35 (two years ago)

When did the big plagiarism lawsuits begin? The Harrison case was in the mid-'70s. Was there something before that? When did Chuck Berry's people sue the Beach Boys?

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 17 May 2024 15:43 (two years ago)

Early 60s, iirc, soon after it was released.

― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Friday, 17 May 2024 17:15 (two years ago)

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