Listen: Blame It On The Bossa Nova / Eydie Gorme
Blame

Michael Alago got a pair of tickets for Frank Sinatra at Meadowlands in ’90 and made me crazy until I agreed to drive us over to New Jersey for the show. Am I ever glad he did. The seats were fantastic, maybe 6 rows back. The show was an event and in the round. One of the walkways was very, very close. Not that Frank ventured down them much. He was 75 and it was to be was his last area appearance ever.

Support act that night: Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme. Now they traveled those ramps a bit more, with between song banter that was risque, 50′s nightclub style and funny as hell. The music was easy listening, clearly catering to the demographic in attendance. Michael and I were the youngest people there without a doubt.

I was really hoping Eydie Gorme would break into at least a snippet of ‘Blame It On The Bossa Nova’, I mean it’s her biggest chart success ever (#7, ’62). When comically introduced as a bigger hit than husband Steve Lawrence ever had, she did what seemed like an extended version, shaking the dance down the ramp with her partner. Our evening was made…well not counting Nancy Sinatra sitting near us in the audience.

I remember ‘Blame It On The Bossa Nova’ from the adult radio station playing at Carmen’s Babershop, where I’d get my haircut as a little boy. Always a fascinating half hour or so of records that now fit in perfectly as bachelor pad classics, it was where I first heard the song.

Makes sense now why it caught my ear. Brill Building. It’s one by writers Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, and they’ve written a lot of songs we all know. Basically, girl group stuff.

Also loved this short period for Columbia. The orange label and and matching sleeve didn’t last long.

Listen: Cry Baby / Garnet Mimms & The Enchanters GarnetCry.mp3

I’ll admit it. I had not heard this record, nor seeked it out, until Janis Joplin recorded her version of ‘Cry Baby’ in ’71. I’d seen Garnet Mimms’ records mentioned occasionally in the obscure sections of Billboard: like Bubbling Under The Hot 100, or listed as a possible minor hit in the ‘Chart’ section of their Singles Review page (the catagories were ‘Top 20′, ‘Top 60′ and ‘Chart’, in that order). Seemed like an eternity, those eight years between his release and hers. Now it’s just a blink.

Her rendition would make anyone want to seek out the original. She just tore it apart. Certainly Garnet Mimms’ RnB version had to be great too. Taste in black music Janis Joplin certainly had.

Garnet Mimms & The Enchanters’ ‘Cry Baby’ was worth the search. Turns out he’d sang in many gospel groups, as well as with Sam Cooke, before being drafted. Once discharged in ’57, he hit the circuit again before forming The Enchanters in ’62. They cut ‘Cry Baby’, and it went on to sell a million units, peaking in Billboard’s pop charts at #4. Within a year, the group disbanded.

Composed by then struggling Brill Building staff writers Norman Meade and Bert Russell (aka Bert Burns), and produced by Jerry Ragovoy, ‘Cry Baby’ is a now perfect snapshot of New York RnB in it’s heyday.