Sharon Clark: Do You Want to Know a Secret
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The first word of this song is also our new theme: Listen. I can think of a number of great songs for this theme. Perhaps that is because songwriters feel a certain degree of insecurity. They come to a point where they feel they must ask us to listen to their work, regardless of how popular they may be at the time.
Certainly, The Beatles should not have had that problem. The whole world was listening, even in the early part of their career that this song comes from. On the other hand, ask any random group of people to make a list of Beatles songs, and Do You Want to Know a Secret will come pretty far down the list. The song is a fairly simple pop love song of the sort The Beatles once excelled at. Heard today, those “doo da doo” backing vocals sound pretty hokey. In part, however, that is because the later musical innovations of The Beatles made such devices all but obsolete. Indeed, I listened to many versions of this song to prepare for this post, and no one keeps the doo da doo’s.
Do You Know a Secret is not covered that often, and it seems to present a challenge to many who have tried. True, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas had a hit with it the same year the Beatles version debuted, but that early cover does not add much to the musical conversation. I listened to very unfortunate club, pop, jazz, and new wave versions that just completely lose track of the song. When I did find hints of where to take the song, it was in the world of jazz. Still, Sharon Clark, who is far more of a secret than she should be, is the only one who I heard who finds the way to make the song her own. Her small band Brazilian tinged version gives the song a sensual intimacy that is suggested by the lyrics. The doo da doo’s become a piano line that works perfectly with the song’s tropical groove. The vocal, if you are going to do the song this way, needs to be quiet but passionate, and Clark delivers beautifully.
