The Roots of Georgie Fame: R & B, Soul, Ska, and Jazz

In one of those infinite universes out there, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones never made it big. Instead, the sounds of the British mods—1950s R & B, 1960s soul, ska, and hip jazz tunes—swept the world, led by my man Georgie Fame. I wouldn’t really want to do without the British invasion, but…

Because we have to operate in the universe we’re given, Georgie Fame, aka Clive Powell, remains a fine but relatively unheralded (at least in the U.S.) singer and organist who had a bunch of hits in the 60s and an excellent musical career in the years since. I’ve been a Fame fan since I first heard Yeh-Yeh, his biggest U.S. hit aside from The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde (not a favorite of mine). Years later, I picked up the U.S. pressing of his first studio album and subsequently have collected as many of his LPs and CDs as I could. I recently ordered an elaborate, five-CD box set of all of his 1960s recordings via Juno Records in the UK ( a good price and excellent service, I might add) and will be talking about it here in the near future.

Meanwhile, Ace Records has assembled a first-rate collection of originals that Georgie covered in his heyday: Georgie Fame Heard Them Here First. From soul (Sweet Thing by the Spinners in their lesser-known Motown days) to R & B (Pink Champagne by Joe Liggins and the Honey drippers) to obscure funky instrumentals (Soul Stomp by Earl van Dyke), and including Jamaican sound system classics (Dr. Kitch by Lord Kitchener—risqué!) and King Pleasure’s version of Eddie Jefferson’s jazz anthem Moody’s Mood for Love, Fame covered the best. Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke, Paul Anka (!) and more—this is a great anthology whether you dig Georgie or not. Ace does its usual fine job of annotating each track with interesting info, with lots of photos.Here are a couple of my personal favorites, from Mose Allison and Joe Hinton.