Hello
friends! Tonight, the Dial turns it’s receivers toward the “The
Heartland”, and finds a tune that would be filed under “country”
in your local record store… remember those? But our spotlighted
track is not a typical country barnburner, nor a twangy heart
wrenching ballad. Tonight we bring you an a capella rendition of a mid
‘60s top 10 hit, a remake that shares as much in common with
barbershop quartet than traditional country. Let’s all give a
listen to Southern Pacific and “I
Go To Pieces”.
“When
I see her coming down the street… I get so shaky and I feel so
weak…”
A
cover of Peter & Gordon's 1965 US #9 pop hit, and written by
early rock pioneer Del Shannon, Southern Pacific’s “I Go…”
peaked on the US country singles chart at #31 in 1990, with no top 40
crossover at all. Given the pop landscape of 1990 (NKOTB, MC Hammer,
Vanilla Ice, hair metal), it’s not at all surprising that the song
wasn’t pushed to Top 40 stations.
What’s
sad though, is many major market country stations didn’t bother to
play it either. The two main concerns from program directors was that
the song was a capella, and thus contained no “country”
instrumentation (which, of course, was the whole point of the style –
duh!) , and that it was a 1960s pop cover. To that, I say, SO WHAT? A
great song is a great song, as the smaller stations adventurous
enough to play it learned when their request lines lit up from
listeners wanting to hear more spins of SP’s remake. But without
the mass market acceptance from the major market stations, the single
charted much lower than it deserved.
“I
tell my eyes look the other way… but they don’t seem to hear a
word I say…”
Growing
up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, my parents frequently listened to
WXTR-FM, an oldies station, which at that time meant ‘50s and ‘60s
rock, pop and soul. So whenever a new remake hit the Top 40 like
Billy Idol’s “Mony
Mony”,
or Simply Red’s “If
You Don’t Know Me by Now”,
I was already well familiar with the originals, and was among the
first of my classmates to recognize them as remakes of Tommy James
and the Shondells, and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.
Peter
& Gordon’s original “I Go…” was an oldie that I enjoyed
singing along with on WXTR, but I expect that I never would have
encountered Southern Pacific’s remake had it not been for a radio
contest…
“I
remember what she said when she said…
‘Goodbye
baby. We’ll meet again soon, maybe. But until we do… all my best
to you’
I’m
so lonely, I think about her only.”
Our
local country station, WMZQ, took out a full page ad in The
Washington Post, listing their entire playlist (song title, artist,
and the time each song would air) for a certain day. I’ve long
since forgotten the actual point to the contest, but I used that
playlist that day to “hunt” for remakes, tuning in when I thought
I would be hearing an interesting cover tune, with a blank cassette
tape at the ready. In addition to “I Go…”, that list helped me
discover Ronnie Milsap’s “Since
I Don’t Have You”,
his version of the 1958 classic by The Skyliners (to be covered again
a few years later by Guns N Roses).
So
check it out, and let me know your thoughts on it. Would Southern
Pacific’s 60s cover have been a country top 10 if the major markets
had been behind it? I tend to think so. And stay tuned to the Dial,
where the more you listen… the MORE you remember!
“I
go to pieces and I wanna cry… I go to pieces and I almost die,
everytime... My baby… passes by.”
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