One Hit No More, No. 8: The Exciters, "Tell Him," and Brenda & Herb

Add caption

If you ask most people who have heard The Exciters’ “Tell Him” what they liked about it, I’d put money down on that twinkling intro, which is brightened by someone merrily tapping on a xylophone. I’m guessing the vocals would come up too, belted out by lead singer Brenda Reid with a clarity that borders on digital/ABBA quality (so fresh, so clean). “Tell Him” wasn’t The Exciters only big hit, but it’s the only one they got all to themselves.

When you go deeper into their catalog, though, and listen to more songs, you’ll catch a theme: these ladies really want love. A surface read of the song’s message could translate as Reid and her back-up singers, Carolyn Johnson and Lillian Walker, throwing themselves at the men they want, almost desperately. If you put some thought into when this song came out - 1963 - that flips the dynamic on its head. Reid doesn’t just “know something about love,” she’s doing something about it. Dammit. Girl is gonna go get it.

That cultural reversal didn’t go unnoticed: it’s The Exciters’ gift to pop culture. As one biography put it:

“’Tell Him’ boasted an intensity that signified a sea change in the presentation and perception of femininity in popular music, paving the way for such tough, sexy acts as the Shangri-Las and the Ronettes.”

The Exciters’ planted a bigger footprint in pop culture than “Tell Him,” and another, sweet-hearted review highlights the injustice of making light of their impact: “in the USA they are lumped together with acts both sublime and ridiculous as ‘One Hit Wonders.’” They don’t deserve the cultural downgrade, because once you look, you see The Exciters slip into some curious places. “Tell Him” did more than pop up all over pop culture, and inspire multiple covers (not always good ones (and just plain bad ones*), it also inspired Dusty Springfield to go solo and switch up her sound (Wikipedia’s history includes a fantastic quote from her). Moreover, they had one more massive hit - just one later overtaken by a version put out by another act. If you know Manfred Mann (with or without his Earth Band), now you know he didn’t record the original of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”; The Exciters did, a year earlier, and with one less “Diddy.”

In fairness, The Exciters didn’t record the first version of “Tell Him.” It first came into the world as “Tell Her,” as song by Johnny Thunder (not Johnny Thunders), aka, Gil Hamilton. (The Exciters did it better, and on all levels.)

The group followed up their early success with couple minor hits - “He’s Got the Power” (that link shows them live; uneven audio) and “Get Him” - and they released five more albums and continued playing all the way to 1974. The Exciters relied on songwriters, starting with the legends who wrote “Tell Him,” but also a woman named Ellie Greenwich, who partnered with other songwriters on their other hits (the rest of the above). When that didn’t keep them in the spotlight, they tried a couple covers including a rephrasing of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “I Want You to Be My Girl” as “I Want You to Be My Boy,” and another of The Jarmels’ fairly clever tune, “A Little Bit of Soap” (The Exciters version).

Sometime after Johnson and Walker hung up their mics (you can barely hear the latter interviewed here), and after the people who replaced them fell away, Reid continued working with original band-mate future husband, Herb Rooney. They put out a couple UK-only hit as The Exciters, “Reaching for the Best” and, more famously (and my personal favorite from this whole experience), "Blowin’ Up My Mind,” which caught fire in the “Northern Soul” scene, a phenomenon that grew out of the Mods centered in England’s North. (Thereby inspiring The Commitments, probably? Maybe?) Reid and Rooney would later re-launch as Brenda & Herb, recording at least one album called, In Heat Again, a collection of seductive slow jams (and the cover of that graces the top of this post).

Their impact aside, if you sit down and just listen to a greatest hits collection by The Exciters, it’s nothing to get so excited about. They’re just a pop band, really, one whose stand-out quality was Reid’s voice. Their up-tempo songs share the same wide-eyed (peppy) quality, I found slower, heartbroken tracks like “Are You Keeping Score” and, even better, the sinuous “Hard Way to Go.” All in all, though, The Exciters went a long way for a band that started among some friends at a high school in Queens, New York.

* Glancing at the band that plays that cover, Hello, is one of those “god bless the internet” moments. It sounds like what it is - an English glam-rock band playing “Tell Him” - but, as I learned last night, that same band gave KISS’s Ace Frehley the only hit of his that I know.