The Honeybirds, "Who You Gonna Run To" c/w "Ain't That Just Like A Boy," Coral 62414 (rel. 5/1964)
Though the early recordings of The Beatles and other British invaders teem with cover versions of Black girl group songs, the real deal was sidelined for a spell. There is an inherent racism in play here, but at the time no one noticed. Those in The Beatles' orbit were too busy raking cash into their coffers. Some of the more cringy aspects of the British bands--those, like Mick Jagger and Manfred Mann's singer Paul Jones, who attempted to sound Black--have not aged well. Beat groups who tucked into songs like The Cookies' "Chains," The Shirelles' "Baby It's You" and "Boys" (three tracks that appear on The Beatles' UK debut LP Please Please Me) stand up better six decades later; they celebrate the energy and elegance of the songs rather than attempt a serious blackface.
Gregory Carroll, who'd been in the music world since the late 1940s, was a beneficiary of British cover-versions; his "Just One Look," co-written with his frequent partner Doris Payne (BKA Doris Troy), got a major UK cover by The Hollies, who took longer than usual to break through to an American audience. (They also covered, alongside several other UK bands, the follow-up, "What'cha Gonna Do About It," with its ska-adjacent rhythm.)
There was no reason for music people to believe that American artists would cease to exist in the face of The Beatles, et al, but there were several months of diminished returns. A new act without an image, like The Honeybirds, stood zero chance of success when the single came out on Decca's Coral subsidiary that May. It did well enough that retail copies were pressed; a Canadian edition exists as well.
One side of this one-shot attempts to crack the Phil Spector wall-of-sound codex; we'll save that for last. "Who You Gonna Run To?" is producer Carroll's song, co-penned with Benny Hall, Jr., a minor player with ties to Detroit's soul scene. It's a classic girl-group kiss-off song with a Motown-esque chonky r&b sound and excellent call-and-response vocals from whomever these young women were.
You can hear the potential UK beat-group cover versions, sung by an adenoidal teen from the provinces, as The Honeybirds' performance plays out. And while it's a formula song, it sounds great and is sung with an urgency of great appeal. A year earlier it might've gotten on the charts. In spring 1964...nope. Nice try, though.
"Ain't That Just Like a Boy" appears to be the intended A-side. It has a quasi-Phil Spector production. Co-written by Robert Spencer, another hard-working figure in the Manhattan music world, and Artie Ripp's wife Phyliss (in her only known composition), it doesn't lay the Spector sound on too heavy and coasts on the vocal strength of the singers. They're really quite good, with an above-average leader and solid, earthy harmony support. They do the back-and-forth routines with poise; this wasn't their first time in front of a microphone.
They made have made other one-off records; I hope I'll recognize their voices on some other obscure single. There are bound to be others.
Tomorrow: Jeanette "Baby" Washington returns with a fine 1961 single for Neptune Records.
It's interesting to me that many of these one-offs get released on major labels' subsidiary labels—and, then, they don't get the push or the notice that they should. Tax write-off? Who knows. These were both great records in the girl group genre. Glad you keep finding these coulda-shoulda-been hits.
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