Some pop music transcends the boundaries of its own world and soars. Some pop music is on a higher emotional and spiritual plane, somewhere between where you are right now and paradise. Every generation throws them up, and in the golden age of American popular music, when AM radio was king/queen, that type of record hit the airwaves like an avalanche. One of the loveliest records I ever heard as a teenager remains one of my undoubted favourites to this very
moment.
The Crystals were a teenage vocal group from New York City, vying for the same small space as The Shirelles and countless others. They were brought to the attention of Phil Spector, who with Los Angeles music biz veteran Lester Sill had founded Philles records in 1961. Spector was a hustler with one eye constantly on the prize, Sill knew the industry inside out. They picked up The Crystals and began a journey to change the teen based music on the radio forever. In that netherworld between the death of rock ‘n’ roll and the British invasion, Spector established himself as the hit maker supreme, the first tycoon of teen, the man with the golden touch. First of these was “There’s No Other Like My Baby” written by him and plugger Leroy Bates. It took the gospel of the church and transformed it into a powerful, secular hymn to young love. The lead vocal is by eighteen year old Barbara Alston, whose youthful tones give it that warm heart wrenching feeling. She sings every word and note as a declaration of absolute undying love in a way only teenagers can. It is, no matter how florid I make it sound, serenely beautiful on every possible level. It was one of the records at that time that gave pop an “X factor”. This would be the element and sound that would change the game forever – that factor being ‘soul.’ It was released in the USA in the weeks before I was born in November 1961 and became a massive hit in the early months of the following year. It put Spector on a path of five years of madness, in which his star kept ascending, culminating in the quasar like implosion of both his fragile ego and career with Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High” in 1966. The Crystals became his lab rats, on whom his ever changing sonic experiments were carried out in the name of popular music. Despite their potential hit making abilities, he often replaced them in the studio with session legends Darlene Love and The Blossoms, who became an almost permanent fixture on their records. Some of the group’s biggest hits had no Crystals performing on them at all. This was common practice at the time and probably is to this very day. I found this song via a cover on “The Beach Boys’ “Party!” LP when I was an adventurous kid. Brian Wilson’s take knocked me over like a bowling pin. It was one of those tunes that as a young’un you just can’t get enough of, constantly on heavy rotation, never off the turntable. About a year later I found a Crystals Greatest Hits album second hand in Probe Records and the original just sent me. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over it. It remains every bit as magical and lovely this morning as I’m playing it now. At times it has induced floods of tears of unbridled joy, stabbing me right in the heart and reminding me that pop music can give you that fantastic
feeling of how good it is to be alive. I have no idea what science is involved in creating works of extreme beauty like this. Maybe alchemy, or some other long since forgotten skill. What precious elements were combined to make this awe inspiring whole, it really is a thing of mind blowing wonder. Sometimes I feel like I’m just a helpless child. Sometimes I feel like a king. But that’s another story. Enjoy. X
The Crystals – There’s No Other Like My Baby. Philles 100. October 1961.
bernie@happening-things.com 