NOTE: This is a pre-production transcript and may not match the final show precisely.
Hello, and welcome to the next episode of How Good It Is, a weekly podcast that takes a closer look at songs from the rock and roll era, and we check out some of the stories behind those songs, and the artists who made them famous.
My name is Claude Call, and I feel allllllllll right, yeah yeah.
Hey, donât forget to check out the website: How Good It Is Dot Com, where you can find some stuff that I found interesting, and some other stuff that doesnât necessarily fit well into the podcast.
Also, go follow and âLikeâ the showâs Facebook page, which has some other stuff that keeps everyone busy. You can find it at Facebook dot com, slash, How Good It Is Pod.
As ever, this show is one of the featured shows on the Podcast Republic app. If youâre looking for a great podcatcher thatâs always innovative, this is the one to get. Go check it out in the Google Play Store or look for the link on my webpage.
Trivia! Iâve got an interesting trivia question for you this time around. There is only one singer/songwriter whose work has been covered by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Iâm not talking about one song here, they each did a song that originated with this person. I know my original guess was wrong, so letâs see how you do. Iâll have an answer for you at the end of the show.
Like so many other tunes, the Isley Brothersâ song âShoutâ was the result of a happy accident.
[HEâS GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS]
Ronald Isley, along with brothers OâKelly, Ernie, Vernon and Marvin and Rudolph were exposed to music at an early age. Their mother was a pianist and choir director at the Baptist Church in Cincinnati where they lived, and Ronald described it as an emotional, physical place. It was one of those churches, he said, where people would shout âHallelujah!â and fall to the floor. And mom would put the five of them up in front of the church and get them to sing for the congregation. Ronald says he wasnât nervous, in fact he was kind of fascinated by the preacherâs ability to hold the audienceâs attention.
In the early 1950s the Isleys formed a gospel group which did okay, but tragedy struck the family when brother Vernon died, and around the same time so did their father, OâKelly Senior. In order to earn some money for the family, Ronald, OâKelly and Rudolph turned to doo-wop music. He noted that a lot of gospel groups were doing the same thing, since gospel and doo-wop have a lot in common.
In 1958 the group moved to New York and met with a talent scout named Richard Barrett, who took them to an independent record producer named George Goldner. They recorded a few songs for him, and began playing some shows on the East Coast. About a year later, the bigger labels were looking to sign the Isley Brothers, and they settled on RCA Records. Their first hit was this song, called âIâm Gonna Knock on Your DoorââŚ
[IâM GONNA KNOCK ON YOUR DOOR]
âŚitâs not a bad record, but in retrospect I donât think there was a lot about it that made it stand out. Itâs a pretty typical sound for the genre.
In 1959 the Isley Brothers were booked into Philadelphiaâs Uptown Theater as part of a Soul Revue hosted by a local disc jockey. This show operated much like the Motown Revues, in that there was a large number of acts, each doing one or two songs, and they would get up, do their thing and then rush off quickly while the MC did a little patter to get the next act on stage. The other thing that was common in those days was that it wasnât a big deal for musical artists to perform songs from other artists. Thatâs why there are several versions of âNot Fade Awayâ or âStand By Meâ out there. Largely it was because artists often didnât write their own material, so it would get shopped out to a bunch of different people. So it was just an accepted practice.
[LONELY TEARDROPS]
And since the Isleys didnât have a huge track record as far as chart
appearances were concerned, their stage repertoire still consisted mostly of
covers of other artistsâ work. And one of their favorite songs to perform was
Jackie Wilsonâs 1958 hit, âLonely Teardrops.â Ronald Isley recalled that the
performance got such a great reaction from the crowd, that the Isleys were
moved to the last act on the bill, to give the show a strong close. In Ronaldâs
opinion, this was great because the audiences left the theater thinking of the
Isleys on their way to the record store, not somebody else.
Now, âLonely Teardropsâ has a section where Jackie Wilson does a call-and-response with the backup singers, where he sings âSay you willâ and they respond in kind, and toward the end of the song he just starts ad-libbing: âSay it right now babyâ. The whole thing has a very gospel structure to it, and this is what Ronald Isley drew upon while performing the song.
He says that it was at one of the Philadelphia performances that he saw the crowd was REALLY responding well to the song. They were standing up and shouting their approval, and it took him back to his church days. In turn, he decided that he didnât want it to end just yet, so he began to ad-lib, much like Jackie Wilson would, and he sang âYou knowâŚyou make me wanna SHOUTâ, and the band picked up immediately what he was up to, and they gave him that beat that throws you on its back and starts galloping away. The audience went berserk, and he kept ad-libbing lines like âKick my heels up andââ and then a pause so the audience and his brothers could answer with âSHOUTâ. So in the beginning it wasnât so much of a song, as it was a bit to extend the song he was already singing, and to keep up the audienceâs energy.
But they decided it was worth exploring as a song, and they started developing something while they continued the revue over the next several days. One of Ronald Isleyâs big inspirations was this 1954 recording from Ray Charles: âI Got A Womanâ. The opening of the song, clearly had its influence, but listen also to the beat of the songâŚ
[I GOT A WOMAN]
So when the revue ended, the Isley Brothers returned to New York and told their producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore about what had happened, and they immediately suggested that a record be cut.
Peretti and Creatore encouraged the Isleys to bring all of their friends into the studio, to help foster the show feel, and they chose all of the musicians to play on the record, with a single exception:
[PART 2 EDIT]
The person playing the organ was Herman Stephens, who played with them in that church back in Cincinnati.
Now, when the single was first released, it was broken into two parts. Side A ends with âNow wait a minuteâ and side B begins with the long organ note and âI feel all right.â And in fact, the last time I bought a copy of this on a 45, which would have been the late 1980s, it was still a two-part single. This is kind of peculiar if only because both halves can easily fit on a single side of a 45. The only reason I can think of for breaking the song into two is that the total length is close to four and a half minutes, depending on how long you pause between the two halves of the song. And thatâs a song length that just wouldnât do on pop stations in 1959, and I have to guess that it only got limited airplay, and probably only a single side, and thatâs why the record peaked at Number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100. So it didnât do great on the pop charts, but its sheer longevity is what made Shout the Isley Brothersâ first single to go gold, meaning that it sold one million copies. For those of you who are confused by that definition, remember that a gold single sells a million but a gold album only has to sell 500,000.
[JOHNNY OâKEEFE]
About a month after the record was released in September of 1959, Australian performer Johnny OâKeefe performed the song on his show, called Six OâClock Rock and released it as a single, where it went to Number Two there.
In 1962, Joey Dee and the Starlighters took the song to Number Six, having already nicked the call-and-response ending for âThe Peppermint Twistâ a year earlier. Meanwhile that same year, the Isleys charted again with the song but it only went to Number 94.
[LULU]
In 1964, Scottish singer Lulu, who was billed at the time as Lulu and the Luvvers took the song to Number 7 in the UK, and that was her debut on the pop charts anywhere. Lulu, by the way, was only 13 years old at the time. If sheâs sounding a little rougher than youâre used to hearing, itâs because she supposedly had a bad cold when she recorded it. You can see a video of her lip-synching the song on âReady Steady Goâ, and itâs a bunch of fun, especially since she gives the song a full ending, and you also notice that she stops lip synching just a couple of seconds too early. Oops.
[OTIS DAY]
So yeah, there have been lots of covers of the song but perhaps the most notable, and the one thatâs probably most responsible for the Isleys going gold, is the one that was performed by Otis Day and the Knights in the 1978 film National Lampoonâs Animal House. Now, letâs be clear: Otis Day and the Knights were a totally fictional band created to perform in the movie, and the guy you see in the film is an actor named Dewayne Jessie. The songs sung by the band were sung by Lloyd Williams, who later put together a real-life band and performed on tour. Incidentally, DeWayne Jessie is the brother of Young Jessie from The Coasters, and if the bass player in the movie band looks familiar, well, youâd be right: thatâs Robert Cray. Otis Day and the Knights only released one album, which was produced by George Clinton in 1989, and if youâre looking for the same recording you hear in the film, well, prepare to be a little disappointed because they made a new recording for that album. Itâs not bad specifically, itâs just not the same recording.
For what itâs worth, the song has its own dance as such, which mostly gives you permission to get out on the dance floor and do whatever, until the Isleys get to the âa little bit softer nowâ part, in which youâre expected to bring your body closer and closer to the floor. Most people donât realize how many times they sing âa little bit softer nowâ and they wind up literally dancing on the floor while lying down, and then they gradually rise up again for the âa little bit louder nowâ part. Itâs a great dance to do if you canât dance.
And as far as the Isley Brothers are concerned, while this song was a modest hit for them at first, like so many other artists, it didnât translate into instant stardom. Their next couple of singles for RCA tanked and they were dropped by the label.
[TWIST AND SHOUT]
It wasnât until 1962 that they finally scored on the Scepter label with âTwist and Shoutâ, but real success came to them in 1965 when they signed on with Motown Records. Their Motown track record wasnât amazing either, but it gave them the ramp-up they needed for their later success with Buddah and then Columbiaâs Epic label. But I guess I can save that for a future show.
Hey, itâs time to answer this weekâs trivia question. Back on Page Two Iâd asked about the singer/songwriter whose work has been covered by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. That would be Arthur Alexander.
Alexander was mostly known as a country songwriter and a soul singer, and while he enjoyed middling success as a performer, heâs better known for writing songs that other artists have covered. As far as these three artists are concerned:
[MEDLEY: Anna/You Better Move On/Sally Sue Brown]
- The Beatles recorded Alexanderâs song âAnna (Go to Him)â for their 1963 debut album, and by the way, listen to the job Ringo does replicating the original beats;
- The Rolling Stones covered âYou Better Move Onâ in 1964, where it appeared on the EP The Rolling Stones and on the US album Decemberâs Children (and Everybodyâs);
- And it was in 1988 that Bob Dylan recorded âSally Sue Brownâ for his album Down in the Groove.
And, thatâs it for this edition of How Good It Is.
If you want to get in touch with the show, you can email us at HowGoodPodcast@gmail.com,
Or you can follow the show on Twitter at How Good It Is Pod.
You can also visit, like and follow the showâs Facebook page, at facebook dot com, slash How Good It Is Pod.
Or, you can check out the showâs website, How Good It Is Dot Com, where you may find a few extra bits.
Thanks, as usual, to Podcast Republic for featuring the show.
Next time around, weâre going to find out How Good It Is when Shel Silverstein writes your material.
Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you then.