Leftovers: Little/Few (=Small)

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Back when the few/little theme was up, I had this idea that small was also a variation on Little/Few, and so had put down a few words about Small Faces. There were a couple of sentences that actually made it as far as the Blogger drafts page but ended up expiring there. Sadly - for some reason, I then deleted the draft altogether. Note to self: leave your unpublished drafts so you can use them as Leftovers. Doh. But I more or less remember what I had written and was able to recreate most of it.

What I remember is that the band started as Small Faces and then became became Faces, and that Rod Stewart was the lead singer. One of the better known Small Faces' hits was Itchycoo Park.

It would be understandable if you were to get confused about the Ronnies in the band. I did. Small Faces' original lineup included Ronnie Lane on bass (whose  later Rough Mix with Pete Townshend is one of my favorite albums) When the band switched to being Faces, Ronnie Wood joined the lineup playing guitar. 

The UK music scene was fairly fertile ground during this time, and the two bands provided lots of cross pollinations with bits and pieces of a little Jeff Beck, Humble Pie, the Who ...

So, to complete the circle and tie this to the original theme, here is a little collection of Small Faces:

Little/Few: A Little Less Conversation

 

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I particularly like a good cover. To the extent that more than once, I have shone a light on musicians most of us have never heard of, but whose music has shown up in a YouTube search.

I've never given Elvis Presley much love or credit but do realize that he was incredibly influential. One of my posts here includes a clip of him doing Little Sister (but it would have been the Ry Cooder version that sparked that post (and of course means that that "little" is off limits.) 

Belatedly, it seems to me that if you don't give Elvis P. credit, you are denying an awful lot of history. The number of people who end up being internationally known by a single name are few. Ghandi, Stalin..need I go on? Equally curious is that our Seuras chose this time around to focus on "the other Elvis" who, although not commonly known by one name, comes a close second when this name is mentioned.

As I read read the somewhat improbable history, I am a little amazed at the progression Elvis followed: numerous setbacks, unlikely advances, timely appearances on TV shows like Ed Sullivan that propelled his rise and then spiraling disintegration ending in his early death.

A Little Less Conversation came out of a 1968 movie and didn't reach terribly high on any music charts. The 2001 remix by Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL) did considerably better, reaching the number one position in several countries.

Little/Few: Little Eva

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When she was fifteen years old, Eva Boyd moved from North Carolina to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and worked as a maid and occasional babysitter. We’d probably never have heard of Boyd if it weren’t for two important facts. First, she had a great voice, and second, the couple she babysat for was Carole King and Gerry Goffin. 

There’s a story that King and Goffin wrote “The Loco-Motion” for Boyd because they liked her dancing style, but that’s supposedly apocryphal. In fact, they originally wrote the song to capitalize on the craze for “dance songs” for Dee Dee Sharp, who’d had a dance song hit with “Mashed Potato Time,” but she declined. Boyd had sung the demo version, and when Sharp passed, they returned to Boyd, and the record was released in 1962 under Boyd’s nickname, “Little Eva,” on Don Kirshner’s Dimension Records. Because there was no existing “Loco-Motion” dance, Little Eva had to create one. You can see her, to some degree, and the background dancers, to a greater degree, doing the dance in the video, which was recorded in 1965 on the TV show Shindig!, and is the only video of her singing the song (although I’m pretty sure she’s lip synching). 

“The Loco-Motion” became a big hit—hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ending the year as the No. 7 biggest song of 1962. It later charted in other countries again in the 70’s and 80’s. There’s another story that Eva was only paid $50 for the song, but since she didn’t own it, it is likely that $50 was her weekly salary, which was at least 3 times what she was making from babysitting. Goffin and King mined Boyd’s troubled personal life for the song, "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss),” a creepy song about abuse recorded by The Crystals, which I wrote a little about here (scroll down...), but is best mostly forgotten. 

After her success with “The Loco-Motion,” Boyd was stereotyped as a “dance song” artist, and had trouble getting good material, despite her talent and close ties to the Goffin/King family, although another of her dance song, “Let’s Turkey Trot,” gets dusted off every year for Thanksgiving (as does “Mashed Potato Time,” for that matter) and she was able to tour during the 1960s. She retired from music in 1971, basically penniless. Until a hit cover of the song by Kylie Minogue in 1988 (which Boyd said she didn’t like) raised her profile enough to hit the oldies circuit. Boyd was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2001 and she died in 2003.