Vintage Track: The Spaniels “Baby, It’s You”
Gary, IN’s The Spaniels fit the mold of the early 1950s, all-male doo-wop group. The five-piece signed with local label Vee-Jay Records shortly after graduating from Roosevelt High School, joining a heavy-drinking blues man named Jimmy Reed as the first artists on the label’s roster. Vee-Jay would move to Chicago and grow into the largest black-owned record label prior to Motown, eventually becoming the first American label to sign an unknown British quartet called The Beatles. But, that’s a different story for a different day.
Released in the spring of 1953, “Baby, It’s You” was just the second 45 from Vee-Jay. The track climbed to number 10 on Billboard’s R&B charts. In and of itself, the song is not necessarily anything to write home about. Its sparse instrumentation and pitch-perfect harmonies serve as a shining example of the quintessential doo-wop tune, but The Spaniels would go on to have much larger hits such as “Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite.” Instead, “Baby It’s You” is noteworthy for its role as the earliest example of a problem that would plague Vee-Jay for the remainder of its existence – unexpected success.
Vee-Jay was ill-equipped to handle the demand for a track like “Baby It’s You.” The label was forced to lease the record out to close friend and eventual Vee-Jay general manager Art Sheridan (then with Chance Records) to handle national distribution. This would become a recurring saga in the tale of Vee-Jay Records, and one that would eventually mean their undoing. Listen to where it all began below.
Written by Rob Peoni
Video: Helvetia “Nettles”
Over the weekend, some friends of mine traveled down to Louisville for an evening with indie rock legends Built to Spill. A few days later, I found myself in their living room rehashing the highlights. Among the notable moments was the performance of opening act Helvetia, pronounced “hell-vee-shuh.”
The Portland, OR project is headed up by Jason Albertini. The band released their latest LP Nothing In Rambling on Joyful Noise Recordings earlier this month. The album is Helvetia’s seventh release in six years – a prolific pace. Their experimental brand of guitar-driven indie rock is a veritable melting pot of sounds that draws from psychedelic, shoegaze, alternative rock and more. In the past, this experimentation has led to a sonic space that occasionally felt crowded and over-saturated. Not so on Nothing In Rambling – a more restrained, focused release. Watch the video for “Nettles” below. Don’t sleep on an opportunity to catch Helvetia alongside Built to Spill on their handful of remaining tour dates.
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Written by Rob Peoni
Video: Tamaryn “Heavenly Bodies”
A little over a year after her debut LP The Waves, Tamaryn has resurfaced ready to release her sophomore effort entitled Tender New Signs via Mexican Summer. “Heavenly Bodies” follows “I’m Gone” as the second release to surface from the record and it features everything that makes her music so worth listening to: guitars droning off into the distance with Tamaryn’s vocals leading the listener on a one way shoegazed trip. The video itself is as subtle as the song, full of dulled colors with slow camera changes between shots of the band in and out of a raindrop-soaked window and shots of trees blowing in the wind. Essentially, it’s like taking the experience of looking at a lava lamp sitting on your bedroom window sill stoned for an hour or so and compacting that experience into four minutes and thirty seconds. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
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Written by Greg Dahman
Thought on Tracks 