Today's post is a slight continunce of yesterday's post concerning the 1967 song "The Dark End of The Street" as we discuss another song entitled "Nothing Takes The Place of You." For a couple of years in the mid-sixties, it was common for reggae music to sound more like R&B than modern reggae. Geographically, there was a steady flow of musicians from Chicago to New Orleans and from New Orleans to Jamaica. Here is an interesting example of how the different styles influenced the music they played.
Toussaint McCall had his only hit in 1967 when his version of "Nothing Takes The Place of You" hit #1 on the R&B charts. It is easy to assume that McCall had a great influence on The Righteous Brothers after listening to his arrangment. Little is known of McCall after the song was published. He would record one more album in 1976 and then fade away.
Experiencing slightly more longevity than Toussaint McCall was the next artist to record our featured song, Prince Buster. While McCall epitomized Chicago style R&B (even though he hailed from New Orleans), Prince added an early reggae element to the song which makes it easier to allow the sad lyrics to go unnoticed. Prince even added and changed the last verse of the song, completely changing the significance of the relationship the two lovers have.
Here are the original lyrics...
NOTHING TAKES THE PLACE OF YOU (McCall / Robinson) Toussaint McCall - 1967
I moved your picture From my walls And I replaced them Both large and small And each new day Finds me so blue Nothing Takes the place of you
I read your letters one by one And I still love you When it's all said and done And oh, my darling, I'm so blue Because nothing Oh nothing Takes the place of you
I, I write this letter It's raining on my window pane I, I feel the need of you Because without you Nothing seems the same
So I'll wait Until you're home Again I love you But I'm all alone And oh my darling I'm so blue Because nothing Oh, but nothing takes the place of you.
Listen to Prince Buster's version and note the line he adds...
So I wait until we meet at the dark end of the street and oh my darling I'm so blue Because nothing takes the place of you
Yesterday we discovered that this line had become synonomous with an affair and not a normal romance. One wonders is Prince changed the lyric in order to take on a more autobiographical meaning or if he was simply giving omage to James Carr.
Several weeks ago we took a look at "I Need Your Love So Bad" and the bad luck that followed everyone who covered the song. This week we will look at similar circumstances that surround a song entitled "The Dark End Of The Street." The song was written in 1966 at a DJ convention in Memphis by Dan Penn and Chips Moman.
From Say it One Time for the Broken Hearted (1998) by Barney Hoskyns...
"The song was written in about thirty minutes. Penn and Moman were cheating while playing cards with Florida DJ Don Schroeder. They wrote the song while on a break. “We were always wanting to come up with the best cheatin’ song. Ever,” Penn said. The duo went to the hotel room of Quinton Claunch, another Muscle Shoals alumnus, and founder of Hi Records, to write. Claunch told them, "boys, you can use my room on one condition, which is that you give me that song for James Carr. They said I had a deal, and they kept their word.”
After thirty minutes, an account of an adulterous couple was born in these lyrics...
At the dark end of the street that is where we always meet hiding in shadows where we don't belong living in darkness, to hide alone
You and me, at the dark end of the street You and me
I know a time has gonna take it's toll we have to pay for the love we stole It's a sin and we know it's wrong Oh, our love keeps going on strong
Steal away to the dark end of the street You and me
They gonna find us, they gonna find us They gonna find us love someday
You and me, at the dark end of the street You and me
When the daylight all goes around And by chance we're both down the town Please meet, just walk, walk on by Oh, darling, please don't you cry
You and me, at the dark end of the street You and me
Within a year, "The Dark End Of The Street" became a #10 for James Carr. A student of Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, Carr started out his career singing gospel music. Like Cooke, Carr eventually made his way to record secular music. The content of "The Dark End of the Street" was a far cry from his early music. Carr developed a bipolar disorder that crippled his work, temporarily ending his performing career when he "froze in front of an audience following an overdose of antidepressants." Alcohol and drugs forced him to be placed in a mental health facility. Carr died at the age of 58 of lung cancer. Ironically, his only other hit was titled "You Got My Mind Messed Up" which reached #25 in 1967.
With regards to Carr's version itself, every aspect is soulful and poignant. The airy instrumentation allows the listener to focus on the bittersweet lyrics. A female backup singer doubles his chorus to give the impression that they are in agreement about having to keep their love secret and in the past.
"The Dark End Of The Street" by James Carr
Two years after Carr had made "The Dark End Of The Street" famous, The Flying Burrito Brothers recorded a country version of the song for their album "The Gilded Palace Of Sin." Gram Parsons headed up the FBB after leaving The Byrds. As with Carr, many argue that "The Dark End Of The Street" was the climax of Parson's career.
In 1973, Gram Parsons began setting out on expeditions in the Joshua Tree National Forest in California. These trips were always accompanied by friends, drugs, and alcohol. During one of these trips, Parsons overdosed on a mixture of morphine and hard liquor in a hotel. Apparently fufilling a promise made while Parsons was still alive, his friend and manager Phil Kaufman stole the corpse from the airport while in transport to his family. Kaufman and Parsons had promised to cremate the body of whomever had died first and spread the ashes in Joshua Tree. Parson's manager had managed to steal the body but were chased off by cops before they could successfully cremate the corpse. The police returned the body to Parson's family who claim that Kaufman's "cremation attempt was little more than a drunken hatchet job, which succeeded only in mutilating roughly 60 percent of the corpse. Parsons' friends and family were upset to find out that Kaufman left 35 pounds of his charred body in the desert."
Parson's version of TDEOTS features a lap steel guitar that replaces in many ways the female chorus in the Carr version. The conversation seems like it is taking place between Gram and the guitar.
"The Dark End Of The Street" by The Flying Burrito Brothers
