Sandy Posey “featuring I Take It Back”

This is an excellent Sandy Posey record—maybe her third album, from 1967. I don’t know if I like it more than the others I have—possibly. I’m not going to get them out and play them all and compare them, right now, okay? I’ll save that for a rainy day. The songs are all good—if there’s a real standout, killer song, it’s “Halfway to Paradise.” Who wrote that one? Oh, Carole King and Gerry Goffin—which shouldn’t even surprise me—on how many records is the best song written by them? Who did this song first? Billy Fury’s version and Tony Orlando’s version are similar—and I do recognize one or both, from my little kid radio days, I guess. I don’t like them nearly as much as this one—why? First of all, their singing is good, but l like Sandy Posey’s just as much, better—and then, it’s the arrangement on this record—it really makes that song something different. There’s no specific credited arranger on this song, so maybe it was the producer, Chips Moman. I’m wondering if this was recorded in Memphis at his American Sound Studio? At any rate, some excellent studio musicians are also making this song what it is. I don’t know who—no credits mentioned on this MGM product. How did they do it back then? No internet, no social media—I guess word of mouth—maybe everyone paid more attention.

Besides that song, my next favorite is “Bread and Butter”—what a great name for a song—it makes me want to write a song with that title. Because where are you going to go with that? Besides either, “you’re,” “he’s,” or “she’s” my bread and butter—i.e., it’s about sex. (Which, in this song, the key change highlights.) Not to be confused with The Newbeats classic (“He likes bread and butter/he likes toast and jam”—that brainworm)—which is literally about bread and butter (unless it’s, as I suspect, about cunnilingus). Anyway, this one—you can’t get much more corny—but the thing is, this song is so catchy, you don’t care. Well, you do care, that’s the point. It’s a great song—written by Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. I could never touch it—so… abandoning that project. It’s maybe my favorite on the record. But that’s taking nothing away from the rest—what else? Last song, “Come Softly to Me,” another classic. “I Take It Back” reminds me of a Skeeter Davis song (maybe she did this one, I don’t know)—it has a talking part verse and sung chorus—it’s good. Sandy Posey and Skeeter Davis get compared with each other, sometimes, it seems (well, there’s a back-to-back record, one on each side). I always think of S.D. as more country and S.P. as more pop—but that’s not strictly true, and it varies from record to record—and even on single records. Plus, I haven’t heard everything by each of them! What else? “Standing in the Rain” is a catchy, emotional, sad song. “The Big Hurt” is another bummer song—in a good way! “Sunglasses” is one that Skeeter Davis did do, for sure.

Good back cover liner notes, by Martha Sharp—anyone who uses an expression like: “I was flipped right out of my mind”—is going to keep me reading! She’s a songwriter—wrote “Single Girl” and “Born a Woman”—hits from the earlier records. None on this record, she says, because “she got lazy.” But at least she provided the excellent, funny, liner notes. And then there’s that cover photo! Almost life-size Sandy Posey—but if it was any bigger, it would be too intense. She is emerging from the bottom left corner, half side-ways and coming at us—the room is dark—you can almost make out some furniture. Super shallow focus, so that even the mole on her left collarbone is a bit blurred, and the sequined party dress partially abstracted. Of course, her face and eyes (crucial) are in sharp focus—I guess the pupils are what you “focus” on—which (this sounds like a joke, but it’s true) is because that’s what you focus with. You can look right inside her pupils, here, and practically see the photographer. It makes me think of that scene in Blade Runner (1982) where Deckard “enhances” a photo to such a degree as to derive clues from the reflection in some glass. (Sandy Posey’s dress also makes me think of the snake scales left behind by the replicant, Zhora—same movie.)