The Shirelles, "Till My Baby Comes Home" c/w "Que Sera Sera," Scepter SCE 12150 (rel. 6/1966)

 

By 1966, The Shirelles, who’d brought the girl-group sound to the top of the mainstream pop charts at the decade’s start, couldn’t get arrested. Their sound, which they continued with brio (and without emulating The Supremes, as many established groups did), was no longer hip. Their records weren’t in decline; they continued to choose strong material and lead singer Shirley Alston’s vulnerable, conversational voice improved with time.

They were fortunate that Florence Greenberg, owner of Scepter and Wand Records, stood by them. Her musical empire was built on the girls’ early hits and it had grown to one of New York’s best purveyors of r&b and soul. Greenberg might have considered the group her good-luck charms. She failed to publicize their later singles, and perhaps assumed their reputation spoke for itself. Before 1965, it did; that was the year of The Supremes, whose massive mainstream hits forced an alteration of the female pop-r&b sound.

All the Motown wannabes who surface after The Supremes’ chart-topping pop hits attest to the music world’s ambulance-chasing philosophy. If A is a big hit, let’s make B’s next record sound just like them. People like that.

The public’s skepticism worked against that theory, with few exceptions. The Toys scored some solid pop hits with their shameless replication of the Supremes’ sound; most others failed (and thus became Northern Soul favorites). In 1966, though other groups had chart success with cover versions of Shirelles material, no one was doing Shirelles sound-alikes.

1966 saw the release of four Shirelles singles. One charted at #122—“Bubbling Under” the Billboard Hot 100. Today’s release, a summer 1966 single, coupled an excellent song penned by Rudy Clark and a remake of a song recorded by Doris Day for an Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller. “Til My Baby Comes Home” is a superb piece of bluesy, atmospheric pop-soul, with Alston getting het up over a Latin-flavored bed of percussion, strings and muted brass.

This account of a woman who awaits the amorous return of her guy, and how she whiles away the day in anticipation, feels like a page from a young girl’s diary. The other Shirelles have more to do than usual, and their interplay with Alston’s voice is a delight. This sounds like a hit to my ears, but in 1966 it was a hard pass for the music world in general. Not mentioned in any of the music biz magazines, it came and went without most listeners’ knowledge.

“Que Sera Sera” was the second Doris Day song The Shirelles co-opted. They had a 1962 hit with their version of “Everybody Loves a Lover.” This ’66 side takes a stronger Latin feel and ups the soul quotient. The resemblance of this 1956 song to “Hang on Sloopy” and “Twist and Shout” is addressed in this bright, aggressive rethink of a song that debuted in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 remake of his 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The genteel strains of Doris Day’s original are gone. A stomping, celebratory vibe prevails, and the results are engaging and contagious. The girls sound like they’re having a ball with this song; this side might have had hit potential. I’m sure it sounded great coming out of a car radio or a transistor radio on the street. Too bad nobody got the chance to hear it!

The group’s next single, “Shades of Blue,” went through three editions, each with a different B-side. One of those got to #122, but their time on Scepter grew short. Five singles later, in 1968, The Shirelles were let go. They wound up at RCA-Victor in 1972-73 to no avail. Theirs is an excellent discography, which has been served well in CD reissues over the years; it seems likely their music will live on to reach new generations.

Tomorrow: The Daarts deliver a rockin’ ode to masochism, coupled with a tender-earthy ballad, on their lone release, a 1961 on the regional Dyna label.