What astonished everybody at the time of its release — and still astonishes me — is that the rhythmic impulse is carried by timpani. I’m still not sure what else is back there, other than the guys and the string section. Brushes? Triangle?
What astonished everybody at the time of its release — and still astonishes me — is that the rhythmic impulse is carried by timpani. I’m still not sure what else is back there, other than the guys and the string section. Brushes? Triangle?According to Jerry Lieber, the only instruments used to make that record were the tympani (which the hired session musician couldn't re-tune, hence the unusual sound of its skin!), four violins, one cello, one bass. The reason the record has a somewhat booming sound is because the studio in which it was recorded was a large, high room with a lot of natural reverb. Lieber has also said he and partner Mike Stoller became enthralled with the Brazilian baion rhythm and wanted to apply it to an R and B side. (The pair would also keep it simple, in terms of numbers, when producing Ben E. King solo sides as well.)
I can think of a few others who were influenced by "There Goes My Baby" to think in terms of less being more. Maybe the classic example: the Four Seasons' "Candy Girl" and "Rag Doll." "Candy Girl," appropriating another Brazilian motif (the bossa nova) for its rhythm, features only the four singers, electric bass, drums (played by their usual go-to session man Buddy Saltzman), and---in separate fills---a piano and an electric organ (the near-signature gliss that ties the middle eight to the final chorus), though neither showed up together anywhere else on the record.
"Rag Doll," on the other hand, boiled Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" down to basics---for such a booming sounding single, the only instruments are the four voices, Season guitarist Tommy DeVito and bassist Nick Massi, session ace Saltzman behind the traps, and a glockenspiel. Which was a great way to tell a story triggered when Season keyboardsman and chief songwriter Bob Gaudio was accosted by a squeegee girl as he approached the Lincoln Tunnel on the way home to New Jersey, had nothing smaller than a $5 to give her, and was haunted by the look of her in his rearview mirror as he turned toward the tunnel. "She looked like a rag doll," he thought . . .
The Drifters, "Save the Last Dance for Me" (Lieber & Stoller, producers)
Ike & Tina Turner, "Save the Last Dance for Me" (Lieber & Stoller's protege, Phil Spector, producer)
This song becomes even more poignant when you discover that Doc Pomus, who wrote its lyric, wrote it as a kind of love letter to his wife---Pomus was crippled by polio and could only get around on crutches, leaving himself unable to dance . . . while his wife was a stage dancer. This was Pomus's way of telling her he wouldn't let his handicap get in the way of her work.
I did some digging and although I can’t find any of the credited musicians on “There Goes My Baby” which would give clues as to whether there were multiple percussionists or not, I did find some interesting stuff. The original writing credits went to then Drifters, Benjamin Nelson (Ben E. King), Lover Patterson & George Treadwell, although producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had the copyright in 1958, over a year before any of those lads had joined the combo and there is a rumored demo with Clyde McPhatter prior to Ben. E. King replacing him. It was released near the end of 1959 by the newly reformed group (with all new personnel), and is arguably one of the first hits of the doo-wop Rock’n’Roll era to feature strings, certainly the biggest and most enduring number one record to do so. I’ve counted it on over 300 compilation albums alone, interestingly, over 200 of them released since the year 2000!
The most amazing legend about the session is that the song was almost not released at all. Atlantic executive Jerry Wexler was unhappy with it, particularly with the out-of-tune tympani! My tinnitus is so bad (after 30 years of beating things for a living and competing with Marshall amps) and the goofy upright bass player jumps around so much that I can’t even hear that nuance, but, I’ll take Mr. Wexler’s word for it. I think the brush effect you hear is actually an acoustic guitar strum, but my ears aren’t what they once were and an MP3 hasn’t the spectrum of the master tape Wexler heard. There is a lot of “bleed” in the mix, because in those days it was common to record the entire orchestra on a single microphone. There was likely a second mic for the singers, but still, isolation booths were not used in those days, multiple tracks were unheard of and the instruments bleed into the vocal mic, muddying up the mix. It is still a masterpiece despite any flaws due to primitive technology.