Listen: Daylight / Georgie Fame
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I think this song may qualify as a bit of a guilty pleasure, as it is a touch schmaltzy, although my pal Phil, who has super taste in music, loves it – then again, it was written by Bobby Womack and now a sought after hit on the Northern Soul circuit. Plus Georgie has such a great voice, and the whole idea that he perfected his sound doing all-nighters at the Flamingo Club on Wardour Street in London during the swinging 60’s alongside Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, is, well, all I really need. Basically he always emulated Mose Allison and conventiently helped invent mod-jazz in the process.
As with some of his early hits like ‘Get Away’, this was produced by the late, great Denny Cordell. When I worked at Island in the early 90’s, Chris Blackwell brought Denny in to oversee A&R. Most everybody got their noses out of joint by his arrival but not me – I mean this was the guy who had produced The Move (He did the whistle sound, fingers to mouth, on ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’), and help start Deram and Regal Zonophone, and then Shelter. So we hit it off immediately, and I often think of the many great times (and meals – he was a serious cook) I had with Denny. Plus he introduced me to so many people from the UK, all of whom would stop by to see him when passing through town. I remember when he brought Tony Colton into my office. He was the vocalist for Heads Hands & Feet (who I became an instant fan of when seeing them open for Humble Pie). Tony had also produced a then obscure, now kind of appreciated gem: ON THE BOARDS by Taste. So this was a big deal to me.
Yeah, Denny was a great great pal….he produced this track as part of the 2nd album Georgie made for Island that the company then proceeded not to issue – still! I mean what hasn’t been released at this point? Island was a great place in many ways, but they had a very bad habit of making albums and not releasing them. I know of a few still in the vaults from Marianne Faithfull, and unfortunately countless others from The Smoke to Don Covay.
So this track, ‘Daylight’, and it’s B side, ‘Three Legged Mule’ came out in ‘77 as a 7″ & 12″ single, and has finally been reissued as part of the ISLAND YEARS ‘74 – ‘76 anthology.
