Influential, but overlooked in favor of the people who covered her.
4 By Betty Everett – 1963 – Past Daily Soundbooth: Soul Patrol Edition
Click on the link here for Audio Player – 4 by Betty Everett – 1963 – Vee-Jay Records (session masters)
The history of Rock may not have exclusive rights to the stories of the overlooked and underrated, but they have more than their fair share of them.
Case in point – Betty Everett. Probably best known by most oldies aficionados for her trademark Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss), which as been a staple of most 60’s Soul retrospectives since reissues began. She recorded a substantial amount and recorded a lot of memorable songs. Trouble was, most of them were covered by other artists who went on to score massive hits from them, with Betty Everett receiving little more than a passing nod. Her first single for Vee-Jay was a minor 1963 hit, You’re No Good, which was recorded by a number of artists and became a smash hit for Linda Ronstadt. However, Betty did the original.
Tonight, as part of our occasional Soundbooth feature – I’m running four songs featuring Betty Everet during her Vee-Jay tenure. You’re No Good, I Can’t Hear You, Can I Get To Know You and The Shoop-Shoop Song.
If they sound a little different from what you’ve been used to hearing, it’s because they are from the original multi-track session masters and most likely haven’t been heard that way in a very long time.
So if you’re familiar with Betty Everett, you may not be all that familiar with these. If you’re not familiar with Betty Everett, have a listen to one of the bright lights of 60s Soul, who left too soon and was overlooked in the process.
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Nice one, Gordon! I must’ve heard Betty’s version of “I Can’t Hear You” at some point, but forgotten about it–Dusty Springfield covered it later, and that’s the version I always think of. (Lulu did a nice cover as well as her follow-up to “Shout”.) But this version’s wonderful!
One small niggle…Betty’s version of the great Clint Ballard song “You’re No Good” was actually the second version released. The first was by the woefully overlooked Dee Dee Warwick, and is SO worth listening to…Lieber and Stoller produced it for Jubilee Records. It’s on the great Rhino boxset “One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost And Found”, but there’s a few YouTubes of it as well. (I put one of them up myself.) Anything you can find by Dee Dee (especially the earlier stuff) is well worth the listen–much as I love her sister, even Dionne said that Dee Dee was the best singer in the family. There’s a great grey-market compilation on Marginal Records from 15 years ago or so, and a serviceable collection on Mercury.
Anyway, I don’t think I’ve heard these Betty Everett songs ever sound so good–cheers!
Thanks Anna – I left out the Dusty Springfield version because I realized it was a well covered song (there was a Swingin’ Blue Jeans version) and at the risk of leaving someone out, just said it was covered a lot. Sadly, I forgot about the Dee Dee Warwick version – my bad. And thanks for the props on the sound of the tracks – I remixed them when I was working at Vee-Jay and I suspect they didn’t get used as the company went into disrepair again and things got lost, including projects I was working on. Oh well . . .