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| He's coming straight for us! |
The Hit
The source material continues to deliver songs I do not know…
The packaging is enticing - I mean, the possibilities of a name like “Hurricane Smith” - and the title, “Oh, Babe What Would You Say” sounds era-specific, e.g., easy-listening, care-free (self-absorbed?). A little shimmer announces the song, then the horns come in with a swinging, happy melody - so far, so good - and the beat plays at a simple, upbeat finger-snapping clip…and then Hurricane Smith starts singing.
I can handle a wide variety of singing styles: starting from actual barking, passing through atonal yelling, up to voices so nasally that you’d swear it’d take the power of helium to pull them off (and yet the artiste needed none), and onward up to voices of pure velvet that make you want to weep at their beauty. I’ve loved vocals that fell many, many miles short of pitch-perfect, in other words, but they should possess a certain quality that compliments either the music or the project - and I’ve certainly heard worse voices than Hurricane Smith’s. He carries the tune nicely through some of the verses, but he definitely strains to hit notes outside that range and often fails to reach them; something like growling comes and goes. It doesn’t really add anything to what he does, at least not beyond a sort of homely sincerity. The whole thing comes off as a game attempt at karaoke, basically.
It feels like a novelty act, a put-on, maybe some famous person’s musical alter-ego. But it wasn’t.
The Rest of the Story
Norman “Hurricane” Smith had a remarkable career, no question. He was the sound engineer for The Beatles early career, everything up to Rubber Soul. He moved over to producing after that where he had a hand in making Pink Floyd famous, working on their albums The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma. It is very hard, in other words, to be more at the center of mid-to-late-60s English rock than Smith - and that’s before throwing producing credits for the Pretty Things’ S. F. Sorrow, aka, “one of rock’s first concept albums,” onto the pile.
The source material continues to deliver songs I do not know…
The packaging is enticing - I mean, the possibilities of a name like “Hurricane Smith” - and the title, “Oh, Babe What Would You Say” sounds era-specific, e.g., easy-listening, care-free (self-absorbed?). A little shimmer announces the song, then the horns come in with a swinging, happy melody - so far, so good - and the beat plays at a simple, upbeat finger-snapping clip…and then Hurricane Smith starts singing.
I can handle a wide variety of singing styles: starting from actual barking, passing through atonal yelling, up to voices so nasally that you’d swear it’d take the power of helium to pull them off (and yet the artiste needed none), and onward up to voices of pure velvet that make you want to weep at their beauty. I’ve loved vocals that fell many, many miles short of pitch-perfect, in other words, but they should possess a certain quality that compliments either the music or the project - and I’ve certainly heard worse voices than Hurricane Smith’s. He carries the tune nicely through some of the verses, but he definitely strains to hit notes outside that range and often fails to reach them; something like growling comes and goes. It doesn’t really add anything to what he does, at least not beyond a sort of homely sincerity. The whole thing comes off as a game attempt at karaoke, basically.
It feels like a novelty act, a put-on, maybe some famous person’s musical alter-ego. But it wasn’t.
The Rest of the Story
Norman “Hurricane” Smith had a remarkable career, no question. He was the sound engineer for The Beatles early career, everything up to Rubber Soul. He moved over to producing after that where he had a hand in making Pink Floyd famous, working on their albums The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma. It is very hard, in other words, to be more at the center of mid-to-late-60s English rock than Smith - and that’s before throwing producing credits for the Pretty Things’ S. F. Sorrow, aka, “one of rock’s first concept albums,” onto the pile.
That cuts both ways, for good or ill. Most of what anyone wants to know about Hurricane Smith revolves around questions of what it was like to work with The Beatles and Pink Floyd. And, for anyone interested, you can watch a series of interviews in which Smith’s son, Nick, asks him about all that (Spotify included those same interviews on the version of the album I listened to). A couple clips of him performing his own material is out there as well - the internet never forgets anything, so long as someone wants to find it - and, to be uncharitable about it, he performs as well as he sings. Since this series focuses on what became of the people who made that one famous hit, the story of Hurricane Smith begins and ends with how he landed his one hit.
That said, Hurricane Smith penned a couple of famous songs, at least if you look beyond American shores. His personal recording career started with a tune he wrote with John Lennon in mind, “Don’t Let It Die.” (Which, on listening to it again, poses the question: are you sure? I kid, I kid! (though, honestly, he does sound like he’s dying through that chorus.)) He played it for another producer, a guy named Mickie Most, who thought enough of it to encourage him to release. Smith did and it climbed to No. 2 on the UK charts. “Oh, Babe What Would You Say” came out the following year (1972) and, to my continued surprise, blew up on both sides of the Atlantic, climbing all the way to No. 1 on Cashbox and No. 3 on the Billboard (it went to No. 4 in the UK).
Hurricane Smith continued to record and release singles - I mean, who wouldn’t feel further encouraged? - but follow-ups like “My Mother Was Her Name,” “Beautiful Day, Beautiful Night,” and “To Make You My Baby” failed to go anywhere notable, never mind the top. He dabbled in touring for the next couple years - two of them on “the then thriving North of England cabaret circuit” - but he hit dead-ends there as well. His career did, however, have one more iconic moment - i.e., the release of an instrumental titled “Theme From an Unmade Silent Movie,” which became an unofficial theme song for Aston Villa F.C., thanks to a local celebrity named Tony Butler “on his sports show in an attempt, often successful, to encourage the region’s local football teams to score a goal.” The City of Birmingham orchestra even gave it the classical treatment in 2008.
For all the snark and asides in the above, again, Hurricane Smith had one hell of a career - e.g., he was active in the making of so much late-20th century pop culture. He wrote a memoir titled John Lennon Called Me Normal - which he did as a nod to Smith’s "unflappable" demeanor - and that probably gives more material specifically about Hurricane Smith. That’s the story I’d hoped to read, and maybe it lives online somewhere, but I never found it.
About the Sampler
With only one album to mine, I didn’t take the time to make a sampler. And, as noted above, Hurricane Smith’s body of work was the meeting of a lark and a novelty. It’s not an insult to your mother’s name or anything, and I hope none of the above gives that impression….it’s just that there’s so much music out there. And one has to pick and choose now and then…even when he’s really terrible at it.
Still, in the spirit of the project (i.e., what else did he do?), here are some more Hurricane Smith classics: "An Englishman in New York," "I Don't Know Why I Love You," and...yeah, "Don't Hide Your Love Away" (where I think he found his vocal range) and "Hotcha Ma Chotcha"
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