JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

What to do while waiting for the giant cargo ship Ever Given to get unwedged from the Suez Canal?

I feel sure a pair of 6EE, New Balance athletic shoes I ordered a few weeks ago are on that ship, but there’s not a thing I can do about it, so I might as well quit stewing.

(News bulletin: Ten hours after posting this, the Ever Given has been freed and is moving again.)

In the meantime, how about some Oldies? One thing about the Oldies is they help clear the mind when you’re feeling beleaguered. Because I feel like I need a little boost, we’re starting off this set with a song by Gene McDaniels called “Tower of Strength.”

McDaniels was born in KCK and grew up in Omaha. His first big hit was “A Hundred Pounds of Clay,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1961. “Tower of Strength” was his third single. It was co-written by Burt Bacharach and got to No. 5.

I love the way McDaniels periodically gasps for air in this song — and then there’s that willowy trumpet.

McDaniels lived to be 76 but died as a self-described hermit in Maine in 2011.

Here we go…”Tower of Strength.”

**

Next we turn to a truly great R&B song, “Can I Change My Mind,” by Tyrone Davis.

This song came out in 1968, and in 1969 it replaced Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it through the Grapevine” at the top of Billboard’s Hot R&B Singles chart. On the Billboard Hot 100, “Can I Change My Mind” rose to No. 5.

Oddly, I do not remember this song from 1969. It wasn’t until years later — can’t remember when — that it exploded into my consciousness. I’ve had the vinyl LP for decades now. That opening guitar lick, repeated throughout the song, is hard to shake from the system. The only thing I don’t care for is the song’s ending; it just trickles away unsatisfactorily, with Davis emitting a mournful plea. But overall it’s a killer.

Another song that’s hard for me to sit still to is one by The Crests, called “The Angels Listened In.” The Crests’ biggest hit was their first, “16 Candles,” which went to No. 2 in 1958. “The Angels Listened In” came along the next year and made it only to No. 22, but, like “16 Candles,” it never gets old.

An interesting thing about The Crests is they were the first interracially mixed doo-wop group, consisting of three African American members (including a woman), a Puerto Rican and an Italian American. The white guy, Johnny Mastrangelo, who later just went by Johnny Maestro, was the lead singer.

Johnny lived in Islip, NY, until 2003. He died of cancer on March 24, 2010, at his home in Cape Coral, Fl. He was 70. The founder of the group, J.T. Carter, was still living as of 2018.

The song features lively back-up singing and novel lyrics…

The angels listened in, when they heard me crying
The angels listened in, there’s no denying
They sent one with lovely charms
One who really thrills my arms,
My darling, the angels sent you

To finish up this set, we slow things down a bit with “This Guy’s in Love with You,” by Herb Alpert. It was one of the few songs in which Alpert, a trumpeter, sang. Wikipedia says, “Although Alpert’s vocal skills and range were limited, the song’s technical demands suited him.”

The pace, the phrasing and the opening keyboard contribute to the song’s soulfulness, as do the words and music by the brilliant team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David didn’t hurt.

Here’s how the record came about. Alpert sang it to his first wife in a 1968 CBS Television special titled Beat of the Brass. Wikipedia says the song was not intended to be released, but after it was used in the television special, CBS was reportedly deluged with calls from people asking about it. So, Alpert released it as a single two days after the show aired. It went to No. 1 in June 1968 and stayed there four weeks.

1968 was a good year for Herb Alpert and a good year for me.

A month before the song hit No. 1, I graduated from college in my hometown of Louisville, KY. That summer I got my first job in journalism at The Kentucky Post and Times Star in Covington, KY. I was living across the Ohio River, renting a room in a house in Cincinnati. It was my first time living away from home, except for active duty in the Army Reserve. I felt like I had wings and there was no limit to the horizon. And I never imagined the songs that I was listening to would, in a couple of decades, be called “Oldies.”