Nobody's

Thinkin' about it - SAMAR 119From the same New York label that had the excellent Icemen and Gloria Parker comes this one-off by the Nobody’s. ListenThinkin’ About It is basically a male solo vocal, with the girls only arriving on the chorus and in the last 30 seconds, despite the group credit on the label. The song itself has some fine bluesy chords and interesting lyrics, and the arrangement is full of good things like the very churchy organist, blue guitar licks and a full horn section. The lead singer is right on the button with his vocal – a lovely performance for sure. Toe tapper flip (not the James Brown song) has a wonderful gospel opening and continues in righteous vein throughout. The 45 was put together by that interesting character Chris Towns.

UPDATE ~ Hans Diepstraten has been in touch with a very interesting theory about this 45. He writes "I have a hunch that this is actually the Five Royales moonlighting. Not only was the song cowritten by Lowman Pauling, but also the sound of the record is 100% Five Royales style including the vocal stylings, the instrumentation, everything! Also one of the other co-writers is Johnny Terry who was in the Famous Flames when JB did Pauling's Think... "Thinking"/"Last time" is one of my favourite double-header 45s and was a popular play in the Surinam Soul scene over here in Amsterdam back in the day." That all certainly has the ring of truth about it. Fascinating!

I'm very grateful to Hans for getting in touch.

Discography

ListenThinkin’ about it / This may be the last time ~ SAMAR 119 (1966)

 

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