Thursday music corner: Youthful R&B artist James Ray first recorded as Little Jimmy Ray because he was just five feet tall. After a period of poverty and homelessness, he attained his first success in 1962 with his release of Rudy Clark’s waltz-timed song If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody, which was a top 10 hit on the Billboard R&B charts and made number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop charts. That song would soon enter the Beatles’ repertoire after Paul McCartney heard it playing in Brian Epstein’s NEMS store in Liverpool; it later charted in the UK thanks to a version by Freddie and the Dreamers.
Got My Mind Set On You, another Clark composition, was first heard by Beatle George Harrison on his 1963 solo visit to the US, six months before the band’s culture-redefining Ed Sullivan Show appearances. During a visit to his sister in rural Illinois Harrison discovered Ray’s album, which features the song. Ray’s career was sadly cut short by his death in New York from a drug overdose in 1963, aged only 22. (Rudy Clark would go on to write The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss), a major hit for Betty Everett in 1964 and Cher in 1990).
Twenty-four years later Harrison recorded his own version of Got My Mind Set On You, which became his third and final solo number-one single on the US charts. Harrison’s cover also topped the pop charts in Australia, Belgium, Canada and Ireland, and in New Zealand it reached number 4. The song was kept from the number-one spot in the UK charts by T’Pau’s China In Your Hand. Reflecting its ubiquity, Harrison’s version was parodied by Weird Al Yankovic’s 1988 song (This Song’s Just) Six Words Long. Ray’s version returned to prominence in 2021 with its inclusion in Edgar Wright’s soundtrack for his swinging-London horror film, Last Night in Soho, featuring Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy and Dame Diana Rigg.
James Ray – Got My Mind Set On You (1962)
No comments:
Post a Comment