My friend, the actor Ken Forman, is a web-hunter extraordinaire. He posted this to facebook and I swooned. Of course, it isn't real. Upon close examination, you can see the word "HIFI" behind the T in STEREO. But there's that one moment of bliss when everything seems right with the world. More at http://dangerousminds.net/comments/bust-a-gut-funny_albums_that_never_were_but_should_have_been
I knew Barbara Lynn's big hit, You'll Lose A Good Thing, but until my friend Paul Rapp posted a video of her performing it today I did not know that Barbara Lynn brings together everything I love, namely playing and singing songs she wrote while rockin' a ball gown and a Fender fucking guitar, in her case, a lefty Fender Esquire with a rosewood neck.
My afternoon started with the clip embedded below of a television appearance (anybody know what show this is?) singing Good Thing. Then I found this clip, from the same TV show but maybe at another time, of her doing Ray Charles' What'd I Say. Here, she's groovin' some white Capris, notable because at 16, this daughter of Beaumont, Texas started a pants-wearing all-girl band and became known as the "Black Elvis" around the so-called Golden Triangle. A girl is the Black Elvis? I mean, bow down!
What I also did not know until I went down the rabbit hole with her today was anything about the ridiculous number of mannerisms she shared with Jimi Hendrix, beginning with the shape of her open mouth, tilt of her head, a certain way of jerking her head and shoulders when the feeling is good, not to mention the thumb-over, the way she caresses the strings up and down the neck, it's totally uncanny. And since she is a little older than Hendrix and played the same R&B circuit he did, it's arguable that he stole a little of his presentation from her, though I can't find anywhere that that's been asserted. Let me be the first. You'll see what I'm talking about in this clip of It's Better To Have, from that same mystery TV show.
I kept searching and found this little video bio in which she charmingly declines to name the loser who inspired You'll Lose A Good Thing. There's reference to an appearance on American Bandstand, not online as far as I can tell, and a somewhat heartbreaking story of her wearing the dress she planned to wear on Bandstand on the day before the show and trying not to get it wrinkled.
Perhaps the best news of all is that she is beautiful and rockin' as ever, playing a Strat now, out on the festival circuit. I'm officially on a mission to see her. Meet me there!
