Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters
While Clyde McPhatter’s groundbreaking contributions as a soul and R&B vocalist have gone generally undernoticed outside of music circles, his fervent voice and passionate delivery influenced such artists as Smokey Robinson, Ben E. King (one of his heirs in the Drifters), Aaron Neville and Jackie Wilson (his successor in the Dominoes).(© The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Inc)
“He was one of the first guys I ever listened to,” Robinson said shortly after McPhatter’s death in 1972. “When he first came on the scene with Billy Ward and the Dominoes, he was The Man.”
“Anything Clyde sings is a prayer,” Aaron Neville told Goldmine’s Bruce Sylvester. “When I was growing up, I don’t care what else was going on in the world - Jim Crow, all the other stuff - you could put on Clyde McPhatter and it would all disappear.”
I see this song in my head in Home and Away, with the kid doing a mime act and having a bath.
ReplyDeleteHome Alone, he mimes it in the bathroom and ends by putting on aftershave and screaming the house down.
ReplyDeleteI love that film, great slapstick comedy.
Of course. Home and Away. What a lapse.
ReplyDeleteHah! That's because it's there, night after night...
ReplyDeleteElvis Presley lifted McPhatter's phrasing on White Christmas almost intact for his own version.
ReplyDeleteHey Mick - probably made a nice change from ripping off/borrowing from Little Richard, Ike Turner etc
ReplyDelete