THE CASCADES, "MY BEST GIRL" C/W "SHE WAS NEVER MINE TO LOSE," CRC CHARTER 1018 (REL. 10/1964)

 

The Cascades had a first-time-out hit with their classic “Rhythm of the Rain” in 1962. None of their subsequent singles had a fraction of its impact, but they continued to create high-quality pop music that sold well on their home turf of San Diego, California. In their lead singer, John Gummoe, the group possessed one of the great pop music voices of the 1960s. Gummoe was also a fine songwriter.

Dropped by their first label, Warner Brothers imprint Valiant, The Cascades appeared on four labels in 1963 and ’64, including RCA-Victor. This king of the musical heap specialized in picking up promising groups and fumbling with them. After their lucky strike with Elvis, RCA proved inept at understanding youth music. As the ‘60s wore on they became a bit more with-it, but many worth artists had their careers damaged by RCA’s inept handling of their recordings.

Despite the band’s talent as performers, The Cascades never played on their own recordings. The LA “Wrecking Crew,” who were reliable session players, robbed many a young group of being themselves on the records that bore their names. In retrospect, this reliance on a small talent pool of slick pros created a false impression of West Coast music. No one realized they weren’t hearing the groups whose names were on the record labels and covers. With rare exceptions, it was them on vocals only.

Some local artists, like Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and producer Phil Spector, utilized the Wrecking Crew because they’d play what you wanted them to play exactly as you demanded. To a martinet, such musicians were ideal. But their constant presence makes all LA recordings of the ‘60s kinda sound alike to their detriment.

Today we’ll hear a one-off 1964 single for the small Charter label, where it was released alongside one of my favorite moody girl-group items, “I’ve Got Better Things to Do” by Sandi and The Accents. Charter was home to washed-up artists and naïve new acts, and by this time The Cascades fit that first category. Not that they’d lost their way: for white harmony pop, their work is excellent, and many of their later singles had chart appeal. Their time with RCA-Victor did them no favors, as the label was terrible promotions-wise and didn’t care about its artists. Their sink-or-swim attitude, retained from the dawn of the recording industry, doomed thousands of promising acts to instant oblivion and foundered many careers who saw the alliance as a step up.

The Charter single sounds muddy and lo-fi against the mastering and production of the Victor records. It gives the group a chance to sound like themselves. This calls back to their Valiant Records days—only with much worse EQ. The group’s two songs suffer from this audio prison-of-mud but their appeal still comes through.

“My Best Girl” is a rare up-tempo, happy song from these assayers of heartbreak a garage-band take on the general Beach Boys/Jan & Dean vibe. I believe we hear the group as a group, and not as nervous vocalists parked in from of Hal Blaine and his cronies, on this low-budget, hole-in-the-wall effort. That’s to their benefit. They were a tight band from all those live appearances and it’s a pity they seldom got the chance to be themselves on record. This lightweight but agreeable item was co-written by John Gummoe, who composed the darker flipside on his own.

Cash Box liked this record but dumped it on their last page of reviews for 11/14/1964.

“She Was Never Really Mine to Lose” harks back to the sound of “Rhythm of the Rain” and is just as downcast. With a similar Eastern-tinged melody and busy harmony backup by the other Cascades, Gummoe double-tracks his way through another tale of well-parsed woe, as he narrates with a brave face as if to spite the sadness of the story.

A creepy electric keyboard enters the scene for a solo, alongside the chiming celeste, for an unearthly effect in contrast to the grounded, dense harmony vocals of this quintet. This might have been too wordy and thoughtful to break into Beatle-mad 1964’s pop charts, but it remains a fine piece of work—although you may want to have a funny cat video cued up after you hear the song.

The group’s next single, another one-off for Liberty Records, is their very best. It was played last year on the Facebook version of this project, and those posts are still all up and operational for those who dare to tread on that fascistic social media terrain. (I understand that many people use it as a necessary connection to older relatives; you gotta do what you gotta do. But remember—it’s owned by a treacherous white nationalist racist fascist betrayer of democracy.)

Tomorrow: Wilbert Harrison lopes his way through another of his delightful singles for Fury Records. No “Kansas City” soundalikes on this 1960 goodie. One side is a second version of a fine song by Rose Marie McCoy and Charlie Singleton, which he first recorded in 1955.