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Right vs Wrong


JSngry

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14 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

 

demetriss-tapp-lipstick-paint-a-smile-on-me-coral.jpg

She sound black...:shrug[1]: She probly going whitefaced for the publicity photo...:w At least the first one had a more R&B feel to it.

When I was growing up on Lawnguyland, a bass player friend of mine was taking lessons from a guy who said he wrote "Only in America", and we all thought he was a local boy who made good. When I looked it up, his name doesn't appear as the songwriter. Maybe he played on the JATA session...

Edited by sgcim
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9 hours ago, sgcim said:

She sound black...:shrug[1]: She probly going whitefaced for the publicity photo...:w At least the first one had a more R&B feel to it.

How in hell's unholy name do you hear that? That's nothing but Country! The tic-tack bass alone should be enough, but Demetriss Tapp's voice is so very NOT "black". And those lyrics...that's a country song.

I had not heard of Demetriss Tapp (a name which strengthens my theory that what uninformed "white people" don't get is that country white and country black have more in common than the enemy enourages them to realize...country is country, period!) until this, but apparently she's one of those people who have survived several decades of the industry and came out alive and self-directed, after a fashion.

https://www.amazon.com/My-Most-Requested-Demetriss-Tapp/dp/B075G4717L/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Demetriss+Tapp&qid=1564747296&s=dmusic&search-type=ss&sr=1-1#customerReviews

 

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What bugs me more than anything else about that Nancy Adams version is the harmony, like they're trying to be "jazzy" but with no sense of a point to it, no reason whatsoever, just put some weirdass reharm in there, hey, it will be a hip pop record then, right? WRONG.

But dig this - Nancy Adams was (later?) married to Fred Huddleston, who wrote the exquisite "Growin' My Own" that Le Grand Mellon did for Columbia. so maybe Huddleston got her out of whatever Hovering Hell Of Hipsquare Incompetency that resulted in that record. As one who prays for the redemption of all souls, even the evil ones, I certainly hope so.

Oh, but, "Lipstick Paint A Smile On Me" was a Merle Kilgore song. Certainly not HIS fault.

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Well, the vocals at the very begining of the Tapp version do sound a bit like someone might have singled out one singer from one of those early 60s black girl groups and it might have come out like this. But as the song goes on it obviously isn't black (and not the countriest of country either IMO but rather overproduced. and slickened up - not a big wonder if Owen Bradley was involved).

Merle Kilgore as the songwriter gives the country origins of the song away, though.

Demetriss Tapp isn't a name I had heard before either. Must have come from a period when odd-sounding names weren't considered a hindrance to popular success by the A&R people (Tupper Saussy is another one of those monikers that just sound strange IMO as a stage name).

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Country people got some names, now. "Demetriss Tapp"...I coulda gone to high school with her (although I didn't). Never mind who my wife went to high school with in Boomer, West Virginia!

Y'all come live here for a while, in the American South, in a warm weather/agricultural climate and around people of entirely rural heritage (or what's left of it....more than you might think). Don't form assumptions based on impressions and/or limited and controlled exposures. Come see the real world of the real people.

Nothing about that record sounds "black", it couldn't be anything but a "country" record. Soulful, yes, plenty. But it's a "country" soul, and the way the "discussion" has been formed over the decades, "country" is coded as "white", and "soulful" as "black". That's bullshit, it really, really is, but there we go again with categories making it too easy to think without thinking, to feel without feeling.

Nancy Adams, however...just file that one under WRONG.

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20 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Country people got some names, now. "Demetriss Tapp"...

 

Like the name of the Woodstock festival photographer mentioned in a link in that thread "over there"? Burk Uzzle? Country folk too? A name that could have been invented by anycartoonist and sounds like it sprang right out of the "Toonerville Trolley"? :g

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16 hours ago, JSngry said:

What bugs me more than anything else about that Nancy Adams version is the harmony, like they're trying to be "jazzy" but with no sense of a point to it, no reason whatsoever, just put some weirdass reharm in there, hey, it will be a hip pop record then, right? WRONG.

But dig this - Nancy Adams was (later?) married to Fred Huddleston, who wrote the exquisite "Growin' My Own" that Le Grand Mellon did for Columbia. so maybe Huddleston got her out of whatever Hovering Hell Of Hipsquare Incompetency that resulted in that record. As one who prays for the redemption of all souls, even the evil ones, I certainly hope so.

Oh, but, "Lipstick Paint A Smile On Me" was a Merle Kilgore song. Certainly not HIS fault.

I didn't listen to the whole Tapp song, just the beginning, and she was singing some short rhythms in the beginning, but when I listened to the chorus the second time, she brought out her whiteness pretty clearly.

Nancy Adams was double tracking her voice on the beginning of her version, and then I turned it off.

Give me Tracy Nelson over those two, any day.

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53 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

Like Elvis? :lol:

Actually that's another name I had wondered about, trying to figure out how the "getting used to" factor may change perceptions (which may be very subjective, as I had become aware VERY early on of the name of old-time fiddler Elvis Alderman so this WAS a precedent that may have "normalized" things to me). What set the Demetriss or Tupper names and similar ones apart, though, is how you can willingly choose such odd names as MARKETABLE STAGE names. A&R men have been known to interfere in lesser cases even back in those days.
Anyway, in the Presley case the family name isn't all that "out" so the combination doesn't appear as weird as some of those mentioned here. 

Ah, "what's in a name" ... ;)

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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1 hour ago, Captain Howdy said:

I remember reading or seeing an interview with someone from Memphis reflecting on the first time he heard of Elvis: "now that was a funny name!"

I don't think it's a matter of willingly choosing odd names as MARKETABLE STAGE names; I assume they were real names (who would make up names like that?) and either the A&R men didn't care to change them or they insisted on keeping them. 

That's the point. I do realize these were REAL names. I just wondered why they would (or could) want to go ahead with these when in other cases A&R men changed much less bizarre names.

I remember having read about the "funny name" comment about early Elvis too. Which leads me to believe that it also is a matter of "getting used to".

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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