The Very Best Of The Shirelles (compilation album) by The Shirelles

From Repo 12/24/2017 01:26

THE PROFESSIONALS

Sha la la la la… (Baby, It’s You)

Do Be Do Be Do... (Everybody Loves a Lover)

They were just regular-old boy crazy teenagers like the rest of us. Talked into entering the talent show by their music teacher supposedly. Luckily for all of us, they were positively obsessed with the local radio R&B station WWRL, so they decided to write a song. Their own song. “I Met Him on A Sunday.” And what happened next, they never could have imagined. A random girl in their high school positively LOVED the song. And knew her Mom - Florence “Force of Nature” Greenberg — was looking to break into the music business. So our heroines auditioned for her. In Florence’s banal living room. And that was it. Life took over. The situation was out of their control. Because the was not Florence Greenberg. This was Florence “Veritable Force of Nature” Greenberg. And you pretty much had to be for a woman in the late 1950s to her very own DIY record label - Scepter Records. She was indie way before there was indie. I mean she makes Ian Mackay look like a freakin’ slacker.

You see Florence Greenberg was positively enamored with the music industry. Once her children got into high school in the NYC suburb of Passaic , she’d got pulled into the gravitational field of Manhatten. And hang out at this place called The Turf. It had the besets location in the whole world as far as Florence was concerned - right next door to the Brill Building. So she’s hang there. Talking to songwriters at times, but mostly just soaking in its energy. The excitement. The chaos. All these people hustling songs. It was filled with life. Producers from the nearby Brill Building would just stop in and yell ”We Need a bass player! Who plays bass?” It must have been positively delirious.Especially for a housewife from Jersey.

The Shirelle girls themselves never wrote another hit. It didn’t matter. The machinery was in place. The professionals of The Brill Building were brought in. Producer Luther Dixon moved in. And he and the songwriters from the Brill building such as Gooff-King became chiefly responsible for the rest of their hits. Hell, even Mrs. Greenberg herself helped write one.

And that was good thing! Because while “I Met Him a on Sunday” is a cute boy crush song, it honestly doesn’t hold a candle to the rest of the cuts on this comp. The attention to detail, the choruses, the sense of humor - the writing is top notch through & through - and you immediately know why the Brill Building became legendary. And you value the work of the professionals.

But what makes The Shirelles so god honestly notable is the little things . The things that take guts. Add just enough daring. How they paint outside the lines of a traditional pop songs. Add just enough snarling proto-punk attitude and city smarts to their songs. And that’s the key to a great POP song. Give us the sticky sweet but also a little something extra. Something with heart. Something creative. Something just a bit deferent so that it gets you noticed.

And that’s mostly due to Florence. I mean she’s the one who knew NOT to mess with “Louie, Louie” by The Kingsmen despite the fact that the one microphone for the vocals was not working. The vocals instead just bled into the instrumental mic. And she had the ear to realize that THAT’S what made it exceptional. What made it cool.


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Tomorrow is his wedding day and you’ll keep quiet if your smart! (Foolish Little Girl)

Grade: A- It’s crazy. I mean I knew the girl groups were a huge influence on punk and all. You can’t be a record geek and not know that. But I never knew how positively porto-punk some of these songs were. The opening belted line of “Dedicated To The One I Love” is positively New York Dollish. In fact, David Johnason’ entire personna seems to be culled together from snippets of these songs. Or take a looksie at stuff like the taunting, chiding refrain “tomorrow is his wedding day and you’ll keep quiet if your smart” from “Foolish Little Girl”. It’s meta way before there was meta. It’s like something lifted straight from KD’s music diary. Or The Leftovers for that matter. It makes me giddy to hear the roots of punk in these here songs. That inimitable New York City attitude. So do yourself a favor this Christmas season and don’t wait as long I did to figure that out. Because this shit is porto-punk gold.