The Sapphires, "So Glad" c/w "Ev'ryone Knows," RCA-Victor 47-7357 (rel. 10/1958)
Evelyn Freeman Roberts was a composer, vocalist, arranger and businesswoman whose career straddled several decades. Her greatest legacy was as an educator. With her husband Tommy, she created The Young Saints Scholarships Foundation in Los Angeles in 1967. This non-profit offered free classes in music, dance and acting, among other entertainment skills, and helped many young performers discover their gifts and put them to good use. That's enough legacy for anyone.
Born in Cleveland, OH in 1919, the then-Evelyn Freeman was the sibling of another musician of note, Ernie Freeman. His Imperial Records instrumental discs aren't interesting to me, but they sold; they show up everywhere. Music mattered to the Freeman family, and Evelyn, who studied classical piano and was fascinated by jazz, decided on a music career after she met the legendary Black composer and bandleader Duke Ellington in the late 1930s. She formed her own swing band, which included brother Ernie on piano, and were a popular draw in the metro Cleveland area.
In wartime, some members were drafted and became the military's first Black jazz band, The Gobs of Swing. Evelyn remained a civilian and continued with a small band; its star was future r&b hitmaker Bullmoose Jackson. Then came a fateful meeting with gospel performer and composer Tommy Brown. He was the "star" voice of The Wings Over Cleveland Gospel Choir, and he introduced Evelyn to religious music. She composed material and arranged it for the a cappella choir. She soon became more popular than the choir's leader, who, in a fit of un-Christianly jealousy, canned her. Brown, who was Evelyn's partner, bowed out at they relocated to New York.
There, they reverted to secular music, performed in nightclubs, hob-nobbed with established stars such as Cab Calloway and Lionel Hampton, and wrote arrangements for other performers. Evelyn revived her jazz band and, as the 1950s rode on, gathered members of what I assume is a New York gospel choir to make today's one-shot single. Her voice and Tommy Brown's are heard on the two sides of a most unusual recording. This was part of RCA-Victor's program to flood the market with new faces--far too many for them to succeed--and hope that one might take off and become another Elvia, Mario Lanza or Jim Reeves.
So many one-shot records litter Victor's catalog of 1956-59. 99% of them failed. Victor didn't market these new performers; there is most often no trace of the records' existence in the pages of Billboard and Cash Box. These singles, when found, are always unplayed and like-new. Nobody knew they existed, so no one was able to play them. The label didn't care whether they swam or sunk. Each flop was a valuable tax write-off; if one did rise up into the public's radar, they reluctantly applied promotional effort.
Victor continued this flawed process through the end of the 45-rpm era; it was an act of contempt, intentional or not, towards thousands of hopeful acts who'd worked hard to get to this point. They represented thousands of others who never got within spitting distance of a recording contract or studio.
Thus, The Sapphires (no relation to the Northern Soul-friendly soul-pop group of the 1960s) made their two sides with producer Simon Rady in RCA's Manhattan studios. The A-side, "So Glad," feels most like straight gospel; it might have been an existing standard with altered lyrics. It wasn't copyrighted by Freeman and Brown, which suggests it comes from the public domain.
Gospel meets rock 'n' roll meets pop meets r&b meets...on this energetic, off-kilter blast of sound. We have what sounds like several Black church ladies in a mass of hearty harmony on a quasi-spiritual item, "So Glad," that is, I think, a love song. I think.
A rambunctious backup band propels these women into overdrive as they wail and testify their way through this breakneck bopper. These voices sound middle-aged and it's a fascinating contrast of material, arrangement and performers. The results are exciting and endearing, and these ladies sing their hearts out in RCA's excellent recording facilities. Frantic strummed guitars and a booting sax drive this one-of-a-kind side. Brace yourself!
"Ev'ryone Knows" has the voice of Tommy Brown and appears written for the session. The song was copyrighted by its composers on June 5, 1958, which suggests the session occurred prior to that date.
Brown's voice is eccentric, dramatic and has a bit of put-on to its delivery, somewhat like the early years of TV talk show host David Letterman. This song of social embarrassment and romantic disappointment doesn't ask for this wise-guy approach, but here it is. Again: sheer energy puts this one over, and it's so well-recorded one cannot resist.
Who was the market for this single? Those on the fence about gospel music? Listeners who wished to have a record make them woozy? Had RCA developed a marketing plan for The Sapphires, what...how...well, listen and you'll have questions of your own. Mind you, it's not amateurish in any department. These are seasoned vocalists on their A-game. It's just...well...listen...
Ms. Freeman further dabbled in pop and rock 'n' roll with Evelyn Freeman and The Exciting Voices, who issued a few singles, and in the downright weird pop song "The Jelly Coal Man," which was recorded by pre-rock pop star Frankie Laine among others. It's pure popcorn, with an insistent minor-key mood and hallucinatory lyrics.
In 1960, she recorded a gospel-themed LP for Imperial Records that introduced her classic pop-gospel song "Didn't It Rain?" It was a rewrite of a public domain piece, but her version generated new interest in the song, and it got multiple cover versions over the years.
From 1967 on, The Young Saints Scholarships Foundation dominated the now-married couple's lives. Among their students were Herb Alpert, future instrumental star of '60s easy listening and members of soul-pop outfit The 5th Dimension. Students performed for presidents and the Foundation was given awards and praise over the years. It continued into the 1990s.
Evelyn Freeman Brown lived for 98 years and passed on in 2017. Never a household name, she sustained a long and satisfying career in music, of which today's single is just a blip on her timeline.
Tomorrow: we play a 1969 single by The Shirelles, with songs by Ellie Greenwich and Chip Taylor, along with a treatise on the excesses of pop music at decade's close.
Again—two sides that are totally disparate. One wonders what part of the record buying public could these be aimed at. "So Glad" sounds almost like it could have been a lost song in a musical of the time—maybe 1957's "The Music Man" —with that frantic banjo sound? "Ev'ryone Knows" is a good doo-wop song with no doo-woppers in attendance. Youtube© has Frankie Laine singing "The Jelly Coal Man" and, you're right, it IS one weird pop song.
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