The Drifters, Save the Last Dance for Me

 

 

The Drifters don't get quite the credit that more monumental soul bands like The Four Tops and The Temptations do but their Greatest Hits stands up to as much scrutiny as anybody's. For out and out best record, I'd have put Like Sister and Brother in but this playlist can't, and isn't intended to, be any sort of chart.

That was Cook and Greenaway with Stephens who achieved,

It's such a small town girl, news travels faster than a sigh,
Everybody wants to know about the next man's secret, so everytime we meet upon the street, we've got to keep it....

Like sister and brother we'll wave to each other, we don't want all the world to know, we are really lovers
So we'll talk about the weather 'til we're alone together
And all the world will fade and die, and baby there is only you and I 

 

and it wouldn't be out of place in any All-Time list.  It's Save the Last Dance for Me, though,  on account of the bass voice doing that Inkspots, doo-wop part from the days when they first set out as far back as 1953 with Clude McPhatter but, more recognisably, since 1959 with Ben E. King but he moved on, too, so that it was Johnny Moore out front in the 1970's and still authentically a Drifter when I saw them in the King's Theatre in Southsea in the 1990's.  It was thus The Drifters but perhaps not at their glorious best. The King's can be a tawdry, down-market place of entertainment and these days rarely does better than tribute acts and these Drifters were only one Johnny Moore away from being one, too. At the time I understood there had been 57 Drifters since they began. We don't complain that the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra don't still have the same line up as when they started but in pop music, T. Rextasy aren't T. Rex.

One was glad of what one had until the finale when a sinister, Dickensian baddie tour manager came on to intimidate the audience to chant, 'Drifters, Drifters' and create some North Korean-style hysteria before the encore. It was a sad occasion for that. The younger Drifters,  not born until long after the group's finest time, were not to blame. They were earning a living but it all felt a bit demeaning.

Much, much later, Odyssey were advertised after Lilian Lopez had died and her son had taken over the lead role but that meant it wasn't really Odyssey any more and there was no way I was paying to see that.