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| Mickey & Sylvia |
Thanks to research done during an earlier (*and yet later) chapter in this series, I knew how one story ended going in. [*Ed. - I've pushed the first iteration of this series to the early 1980s, but I'm rebooting to fill in some gaps.] You may too, depending on your own travels....
The Hit
It neither lasted all that long nor rose all that high – just two weeks atop Billboard’s R&B charts, and only to No. 11 on the Pop charts – Mickey & Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange” has enjoyed a long, lingering run in pop culture. Movies that want to hearken to a certain time, place and/or mood in the length of an snippet of a song – the short-list includes Badlands, Casino and, most famously, Dirty Dancing – have used it, but it also lives on in reinterpretations by Paul McCartney, the Everly Brothers (gave ‘em a UK hit), and Peaches & Herb...and I recommend sticking with the original, for what it's worth.
The plucked, twanging, yet rich and variegated guitar stands out, along with the shuffling Latin beat and undertones and the vocals, which pine almost theatrically. They go back and forth in a playful call-and-response in the single’s bridge, but it’s mostly a dreamy duet with the two of them singing like two lovestruck kids holding hands...as they explore the pain and ecstasy of love in song. Despite being released in 1957 and has rock-guitar tones all over it, “Love Is Strange” listens more like a spin rock-influenced pop tune than rock-‘n’ roll. And what’s that than another way of saying Mickey & Sylvia’s most famous single grew from different roots. To borrow a quote from 2014 retrospective on Sylvia in Dazed Digital:
“Mickey and I were working at the Howard Theatre in Washington. Bo Diddley was on the same bill and he would play this chant where Jerome Green, his maraca player would say to him, 'Bo? How do you call your woman?' And Bo would say, 'C'mere woman!' And it went on like that until Bo finally says, 'Baby, my sweet baby'. I told Bo that he should record that tune, but when he took it to Leonard Chess, he told him it was nothin'.” Undeterred, and with Bo's approval, Sylvia rearranged the song to fit into the Mickey and Sylvia mode and then took the track to RCA subsidiary, Groove. That label too was unimpressed and it was only when Sylvia threatened to leave them all together, that they let her record ‘Love Is Strange.’ The result was a sensual, latin-flavoured call and response groove that became an overnight jukebox and radio sensation. All of a sudden they were the number one pop band in America.”
Another source, She Shreds, tightened the back-story into this thesis:
The Hit
It neither lasted all that long nor rose all that high – just two weeks atop Billboard’s R&B charts, and only to No. 11 on the Pop charts – Mickey & Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange” has enjoyed a long, lingering run in pop culture. Movies that want to hearken to a certain time, place and/or mood in the length of an snippet of a song – the short-list includes Badlands, Casino and, most famously, Dirty Dancing – have used it, but it also lives on in reinterpretations by Paul McCartney, the Everly Brothers (gave ‘em a UK hit), and Peaches & Herb...and I recommend sticking with the original, for what it's worth.
The plucked, twanging, yet rich and variegated guitar stands out, along with the shuffling Latin beat and undertones and the vocals, which pine almost theatrically. They go back and forth in a playful call-and-response in the single’s bridge, but it’s mostly a dreamy duet with the two of them singing like two lovestruck kids holding hands...as they explore the pain and ecstasy of love in song. Despite being released in 1957 and has rock-guitar tones all over it, “Love Is Strange” listens more like a spin rock-influenced pop tune than rock-‘n’ roll. And what’s that than another way of saying Mickey & Sylvia’s most famous single grew from different roots. To borrow a quote from 2014 retrospective on Sylvia in Dazed Digital:
“Mickey and I were working at the Howard Theatre in Washington. Bo Diddley was on the same bill and he would play this chant where Jerome Green, his maraca player would say to him, 'Bo? How do you call your woman?' And Bo would say, 'C'mere woman!' And it went on like that until Bo finally says, 'Baby, my sweet baby'. I told Bo that he should record that tune, but when he took it to Leonard Chess, he told him it was nothin'.” Undeterred, and with Bo's approval, Sylvia rearranged the song to fit into the Mickey and Sylvia mode and then took the track to RCA subsidiary, Groove. That label too was unimpressed and it was only when Sylvia threatened to leave them all together, that they let her record ‘Love Is Strange.’ The result was a sensual, latin-flavoured call and response groove that became an overnight jukebox and radio sensation. All of a sudden they were the number one pop band in America.”
Another source, She Shreds, tightened the back-story into this thesis:
