JIMMY ARMSTRONG, "I'M GOING TO LOCK MY HEART" C/W "COUNT THE TEARS," ENJOY 1016 (REL. 6/1963)

“Hey, this Jimmy Armstrong single is really good. Why haven’t I done this one on the Jukebox?”

The answer revealed itself once I opened the WAV file in Audacity. It’s an Enjoy Records release. Every Enjoy 45 I’ve found has serious condition problems. I think the brittle, flimsy styrene they used is the culprit. Enjoy 45s are more prone to damage than any other imprint I know of. Look at them the wrong way and they’ll develop a series of clicks and pops.

As I surveyed the sound file, I saw hundreds of instances of thuds, thumps and clumps that ClickRepair had failed to eliminate. I would need to do them all by hand. I sighed and spent an hour diminishing some 300 flaws on both sides of this single. The ClickRepair program gets most small issues, and it is sophisticated enough to discern what is musical content and what is damage or dust. Large thuds often baffle it; it considers it the equivalent of a cymbal crash or a blast from a trumpet and leaves it in.

Here’s what a typical styrene recording looks like pre-clean-up:

And after clean-up, as I am able to boost its volume, since Audacity will not go into distortion and it reads the ‘volume’ of the big thumps as a signal that cannot be enlarged, the same file (at the same point) looks like this:

There are always a few micro-clicks I detect when I play the cleaned file. The easiest way to subdue a click or pop (if it is isolated, and not part of a loud moment) is to reduce its volume to match that of the music. It then blends in and isn’t audible.

Well, that’s what I had to do with both sides of today’s record: isolate the thuds (which were unique to each of the two stereo channels), reduce their volume (which, sometimes, takes three or four attempts to perfect), grouch to myself and to the cheapskate ethos of Enjoy Records and hear small portions of each song many, many times in the process.

Most of the time I’m lucky; a record will clean up without many of these post-mortem operations. But this pair of stunning deep-soul performances needed extra TLC. There are still a few minor thumps here and there; I let those go as they’re low-volume enough you might not notice them.

There’s some behind-the-scenes stuff for ya. Onto the record in question.

Jimmy Armstrong was ahead of the soul music curve in 1963 when he rendered two intense songs penned by label owner/producer/composer Bobby Robinson, who also ran Fire and Fury Records. Those two labels seldom (if ever) use styrene. Enjoy may have been planned as a low-cost imprint—all-styrene all the time. Thus, as with early Motown and as with New Orleans label Minit, styrene is all there is for many superb Black music performances that deserved so much better than they got.

Lest we forget, the music business was more about business than music. Its producers, arrangers and artists were passionate about their work, but label executives saw their work as so much sausage to be packaged and put on sale. 45-rpm records were ephemeral objects; once their season of popularity faded, they were worthless. Who would care about old records? What was the point? New ones came out all the time. Why not buy those and throw out the ones from last month?

We are fortunate for the labels who saw their music as something of lasting value. They treated it with worth, packaged it well and made sure it went to the stores on good quality vinyl—records that would last for decades if treated with care. A heavy-vinyl RCA-Victor or Capitol 45 is like a hardcover book. Enjoy’s singles are cheap paperbacks. Read ‘em once, get rid of ‘em. This brutal attitude made hundreds of powerful performances compromised in their commercial form. Labels like Enjoy didn’t ever spring for vinyl; their disc jockey editions are also on styrene. So-what if they sounded bad? The station could blame it on poor reception. And what did it matter? New records came out by the hundreds every week. No one cared about the old ones.

Jimmy Armstrong’s intense, larynx-shredding performances on these two sides sound five or six years ahead of their summer 1963 release. I must quote the mysterious Sir Shambling on this performer and this single: "...amongst the rawest soul of the early 60s, real throat tearing stuff…features a quite astonishingly harsh vocal – deep soul buffs of course will lap it up but it will come as a bit of a shock for those used to more routine singers..."

1963 was the first year of deep soul music, though it wouldn’t be official in name until 1965. Records like today’s veered away from pop-music influence and got to the roots of Black musical expression. It went back to gospel singing, work songs, folk music and the heart of the blues. It combined the most rural of Black music tradition and brought it to the urban world of recording studios and record companies.

This was the opposite of what Berry Gordy or Curtis Mayfield hoped to achieve. They sought to build a bridge for Black and white music to cross over and co-exist. This bridge was urgent and necessary and thousands of fine recordings came of this sincere effort. Deep soul turned its back on all that. It was polarizing isolationist music. It set out to appeal to Black audiences and dared white listeners to take it in. It was revolutionary—not peace-making. Deep soul declared that such peace was not possible while racism and bias still defined American society.

By the end of the 1960s, deep soul had become part of the musical status quo—a style emulated and commodified by white producers, songwriters and artists. Janis Joplin’s approach was based 100% on early deep soul recordings. Hers was a loving tribute, and not intended as exploitation, but it exploited Black music all the same—as did all other white performers who approached the style.

But that’s what the music business did best. Something new came along; people in power took notice, declared “I want some of that,” and paid their way into it. They caught it, labeled it and, in an ideal commercial scenario, profited. If that last part didn’t happen, they cut their losses and lay in wait for the next new thing to appear.

None of that was in the picture when Jimmy Armstrong laid down the two sides of this single. Both were penned by producer Robinson, who had a hand in the development of this intense, non-commercial sound. Many Fire and Fury sides from the late 1950s on are harbingers of this style, which was just rhythm and blues; no distinctions were yet made.

Atlantic Records’ Solomon Burke was the first artist to find success with this new style, and he’d already had a couple of major hits by the time this single appeared. “I’m Gonna Lock Up My Heart” borrows from Burke’s approach, which was co-created with sympathetic white producer/songwriter Bert Berns. That said, Burke sounds mellow in comparison with this recording.

The churchy sound, with femme gospel choir, is an obvious tie to Solomon Burke’s sound. Armstrong’s high-voltage performance pushes the envelope to its breaking point. And he’s restraining himself on this side, as you’ll soon hear for yourself:

>>> Hear it HERE! <<<

Cash Box deemed “Count the Tears” as “danceable.” I suppose so, but…how could anyone do something so mundane as Jimmy Armstrong bears his heart and soul on this long, jazz-flavored outburst? This more complex song gives the singer a bigger stage for his biggest emotions. My throat hurts from hearing this performance. The gospel choir is often stunned into silence by Armstrong’s raving gravel voice. Imagine your average white cheerleader of 1963 hearing “Count the Tears.” Her beehive hairdo might tremble as uncertainty overcame her. What is this, she might think, and how is it possible? That was the intended effect of these early deep-soul excursions.

>>> Hear it HERE! <<<

Armstrong made several other singles of equal intensity—all too rich a dish for mainstream appeal. His talent was recognized and admired by his peers, but he had no lifeline to throw to white listeners. The UK soul snobs discovered him, and revere him, but that did him no good when he was trying to make a career of music. He ceased recording by the end of the 1960s and vanishes from the horizon thereafter.

I will always think of him when I de-click records in the future.

Tomorrow: Atlantic Records released a few rockabilly sides, among them a corking 1957 single by Dean Beard, Sun Records wanna-be and stylistic outlier. A good start to an uncertain week.