Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick

Author:Peter Guralnick [GURALNICK, PETER]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316206754
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

A very young Joe Tex. (Ed Salamon/Michael Ochs Archives)

There is no doubt that his live appearances were gaining him a considerable following. It was a personal following, though, that attended the shows on the basis of James’s reputation as a performer, not his records, and even with constant bookings it was difficult to support a group. The Flames disbanded in discouragement in April of 1957, and James started going out as a single for a while. Meanwhile his continued lack of record sales was causing Syd Nathan, no great believer in the first place, to lose what faith he had. Nathan in fact was on the verge of cutting him loose when James came up with a song while playing the famous Palms of Hallandale in Florida, and he and Clint Brantley put up their own money and cut a dub to try to convince Nathan to let his one-shot star back in the studio. The song was “Try Me,” a classic gospel-edged plea, somewhat reminiscent of “Please, Please, Please” both in its form (traditional) and in its sentiment (an odd combination of mental toughness and emotional vulnerability). It remained subject to the influence of doo-wop, but with its continued juxtaposition of James’s scarred tenor and the smoothly hypnotic vocal backdrop of the Famous Flames it was doo-wop gone strangely awry. On September 18, 1958, James went back in the studio after an absence of nearly a year and cut four sides under the nominal supervision of King a&r man Andy Gibson. By December “Try Me” had made #1 r&b and even reached Top 50 pop. On the strength of this hit James made his New York debut at the Apollo, where he appeared down on a bill starring Little Willie John and the vaudeville team of Butterbeans and Susie. After New York he was booked into the Howard, the Royal, the Uptown in Philadelphia—he had finally broken out of the small time, it seemed, and was playing the long dreamt-of r&b circuit. At the Uptown he came face-to-face with sobering reality, as he appeared on a bill that featured a group called the Vibrations, who had a particularly polished stage act. “Man, they ate us alive,” recalled Famous Flame Bobby Byrd, who had rejoined James in the wake of the record’s success. “That was the first time we’d really been beaten at our own game; they really had their act together. After the shows in the South, that taught us all a lesson.”

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