For nearly all the great post-World
War II rhythm and blues vocal groups, complete or nearly complete
packages of their releases are available on CD. But one nagging
exception has been the Dominoes. The owners of the
King-Federal catalog have been reluctant to release much of it or to
lease it to others. Rhino turned out an excellent 20-song greatest
hits package in 1993, but other Dominoes releases have been haphazard
and incomplete. So when Acrobat Records in the U.K.
announced its new Dominoes Collection, it seemed like a collector's
dream come true. It contains all their single records
between 1951 and 1959 on the Federal, King, Jubilee, Decca, Liberty
and RoZan labels, in order of release. That's 88 songs on three CDs,
everything except some uninteresting Liberty album cuts.
A comprehensive history of the Dominoes
by Marv Goldberg is available at his website. The liner notes of
this collection are an abridged version. The group made the R&B
charts 11 times between 1951 and 1953, and once in 1957. Their success was due mainly to their three high tenor leads: Clyde McPhatter,
Jackie Wilson and Gene Mumford. Clyde McPhatter was with the group
from 1950 to 1952 and sang the lead on 16 of these songs and an
alternate take. He left to form the Drifters, where he had even
greater success, and went on to have several hits on his own. Fortunately
for group leader Billy Ward, Jackie Wilson was available as his replacement. He led the
group 24 times between 1953 and 1956, before launching his own solo career
under the supervision of Berry Gordy, Jr. Gene Mumford, former lead
singer of the Larks, led the group only four times, but one of them
was their hit version of “Star Dust” in 1957.
The original Dominoes were Clyde
McPhatter, lead tenor; Charlie White, tenor; Joe Lamont, baritone;
Bill Brown, bass; and Billy Ward, pianist and arranger. Their first and biggest hit was an up-tempo novelty,
“Sixty Minute Man,” with Bill Brown in the lead. It was #1 on
the R&B charts for an amazing 14 weeks in 1951.
 |
| Original source unknown |
You may wonder how they got away with
such obvious sexual innuendos in 1951. In those days, airplay on
mainstream White radio stations was irrelevant, since they never
played any “race music” anyway. Chart success depended on
airplay on a small number of urban Black stations and on juke boxes,
where standards were more relaxed. Some cover for this song was
provided by the fact that its title was a commonly used sports term.
A “sixty minute man” was a football player who played on both the
first-string offensive and defensive teams, and therefore was on the
field for the entire game. Many pre-war football stars, such as Red
Grange, were sixty minute men, but the practice was gradually phased
out during the '50s.
Clyde McPhatter is generally
acknowledged to have been the greatest of all the R&B lead singers. He
sang in a soulful style typical of his gospel background. I always
marvel at his seemingly effortless intensity. The McPhatter-led
“Have Mercy, Baby” was #1 for an almost as amazing 10 weeks in 1952. The flip side,
“Deep Sea Blues,” also on this video, is a neglected classic.
Billy Ward came to show business after
a successful military career, achieving the rank of Captain. He
seemed to bring military culture with him, as he ruled the group much
like a drill sergeant. He paid the other group members an inadequate salary and did not socialize with them. He had an elaborate set of
rules governing all aspects of dress and behavior, 24/7, with fines
for violations. For example, group members were fined $50 for
leaving their hotel room at night, and $100 for failing to report a
fellow group member leaving his room. When the group played in
Clyde McPhatter's home town, he was forbidden to visit his family.
Not surprisigly, there was a lot of turnover. In 1952, Ward began billing the group as Billy Ward and His Dominoes. When
McPhatter quit, one reason he gave was that he was tired of
fans calling him “Mr. Ward.”
Jackie Wilson also had a great voice,
but with less nuance than McPhatter. He sang ballads in an almost
operatic style. Too many of them sounded like production numbers.
He became a better singer after leaving the Dominoes. “Rags to
Riches,” released in 1953, was a major milestone for the group.
It was a cover of a pop hit by Tony
Bennett, it was Wilson's first success as lead singer, and it appeared on the King label, rather than Federal, its R&B
affiliate. For the next few years, the group had a two-track career,
releasing R&B songs on Federal, and covers of pop songs
and standards on King. Ward had them imitate the style of the Platters. His
ultimate goal, which he eventually achieved in 1957, was to move the
group off the chitlin' circuit and into Las Vegas.
Beginning in 1954, the group went into
a long slump. Ward increasingly assigned himself the role of lead
singer (16 times) and his performances sometimes bordered on
incompetence. Apparently no one had the cojones
to tell him. The songs he wrote, usually with manager Rose
Marks, became increasingly trivial. Many of them were
quasi-religious pop tunes, the best known examples being “Christmas
in Heaven” and “St. Therese of the Roses.” After Wilson left,
things fell apart. However, the group had a brief revival in 1957, when
Ward had the good fortune to hire Gene Mumford, and “Star Dust”
and “Deep Purple” crossed over onto the pop charts.
So why is this collection not
recommended? There are two problems. First of all, almost all the
great songs are on the first CD, and after that, the pickings get
increasingly slim. I admit this puts the people who compiled
this collection in a bind. On the one hand, the set would
have been stronger if they had dropped 30 songs and put the rest on
two CDs. However, collectors like me would not have been satisfied
with this. We would always have wondered whether there were
hidden gems among the songs we hadn't heard. Sadly, I didn't find
any.
The other problem is more serious.
This collection is a bootleg assembled from source materials of
varying quality. Many of the cuts are muffled or contain seriously distracting
surface noise. Volume fluctuates considerably from song to song. As
an example of the carelessness with which the package was assembled,
the Jackie Wilson-led ballad “Until the Real Thing Comes Along,”
from 1953, which should have been on CD 2, is reversed with “Love,
Love, Love,” from 1952, on CD 1. Finally, on my CD 3, sound
quality goes seriously downhill from about the middle. Cut 24 skips
badly, and the remaining six songs will not track on either my CD
player or computer. I could send the set back as defective, but I
don't care much about these songs anyway, and it's possible the
entire run is damaged.
It sucks, but we may have to wait a few
more years for the definitive Dominoes collection. In the meantime,
you may want to try to find the now out-of-print Rhino set.
Disc 1: Do Something For Me;
Chicken Blues; Harbor Lights; No, Says My Heart; The Deacon Moves In
(with Little Esther); Sixty Minute Man; I Can't Escape From You;
Heart to Heart (with Little Esther); I Am With You; Weeping Willow
Blues; That's What You're Doing to Me; When the Swallows Come Back to
Capistrano; Have Mercy, Baby; Deep Sea Blues; Until the Real Thing
Comes Along; I'd Be Satisfied; No Room; Yours Forever; I'm Lonely;
The Bells; Pedal Pushin' Papa; These Foolish Things Remind Me of You;
Don't Leave Me This Way; You Can't Keep a Good Man Down; Where Now,
Little Heart?; Rags to Riches; Don't Thank Me; Christmas in Heaven.
(77 min.)
Disc 2:
Ringin' in a Brand New Year; My Baby's 3-D; Love, Love, Love;
Tootsie Roll; I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town; Tenderly; A
Little Lie, Handwriting on the Wall; One Moment With You (unedited
version); Three Coins in the Fountain; Lonesome Road; Little Things
Mean a Lot; I Really Don't Want to Know; Above Jacob's Ladder; Little
Black Train; Gimme, Gimme, Gimme; Come to Me, Baby; Can't Do Sixty No
More; If I Ever Get to Heaven; Cave Man; Love Me Now and Let Me Go;
Take Me Back to Heaven; Sweethearts on Parade; Learnin' the Blues;
May I Never Love Again; Give Me You; Over the Rainbow; Bobby Sox
Baby; How Long, How Long Blues; St. Therese of the Roses. (76 min.)
Disc 3:
Home is Where You Hang Your Heart; Will You Remember?; Come On,
Snake, Let's Crawl; Evermore; Half a Love; Rock, Plymouth Rock; 'Til
Kingdom Come; Star Dust; Lucinda; St. Louis Blues; One Moment With
You (edited version); Deep Purple; Do It Again; I Don't Stand a Ghost
of a Chance; To Each His Own; My Proudest Possession; Someone Greater
Than I; When the Saints Go Marching In; September Song; Solitude;
Sweeter As the Years Go By; Jennie Lee; Music, Maestro, Please;
Please Don't Say No; Behave, Hula Girl; That's How You Know You're
Growing Old; Lay It On the Line; These Foolish Things Remind Me of
You (alternate take); My Fair-Weather Friend; The Man in the
Stained-Glass Window. (74 min.)
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