Jimmy Ruffin – 96 Tears
Haiiiiii-YA!
Listen/Download -Jimmy Ruffin – 96 Tears
Greetings all.
I hope all is well on your end.
Before we get started this week, I would like to let you know that the entire Funky16Corners clan will be walking in the 2011 Monmouth/Ocean County POAC (Parents of Autistic Children) Walk for a Difference on April 2, 2011.
As you may have gleaned via mentions here over the past few years, or by the prominent link in the sidebar, my wife and are the proud parents of two sons with Autism Spectrum Disorders. We are extremely fortunate that they are both high-functioning, and all-round wonderful kids.
We are also very lucky to have an organization like POAC operating locally. They provide information, training for professionals and parents, as well as a wide range of activities for the kids.
The walk (held again this year at the local minor league baseball park) raises money to help make sure that POAC can continue providing much needed services to the kids and their families in our communities.
If this sounds like something you can get behind, click on the this link (or the logo above) and you will be taken to a secure donation page for the team we’ll be walking with and donate whatever you can afford.
Anything you can do to help will be greatly appreciated.
That all said, how about some music?
While I’ve known of Jimmy Ruffin since I was a kid (who among us hasn’t heard his 1966 hit ‘What Becomes of the Brokenhearted’?), and later learned that he was the brother of David Ruffin of the Temptations, I never knew much beyond that.
Then late last year I’m out digging and what should I pull out of a moldy box but an LP with Jimmy Ruffin on the cover whipping a little soulful martial arts on the kids.
That album, 1968’s ‘Ruff’n Ready’ was initially of interest because it contained his version of one of my favorite Motown cuts, ‘Lonely Lonely Man Am I’, also recorded by the Velvelettes (as ‘Lonely Lonely Girl Am I’, by far the finest version of the tune) as the Temptations.
When I got the record home and gave it a spin, I discovered that among its many treasures was a smoking cover of Question Mark and the Mysterians ’96 Tears’.
The tune, a grungy epic in its original Mich/Mex garage-a-delic form has been covered a number of times – seldom successfully – the finest (that I’d heard before) being Big Maybelle’s recording on Rojac.
Interestingly, most of the material on ‘Ruff’n Ready’ wears the influence of 1968 on its sleeve, moving in a vaguely funky direction, yet ’96 Tears’ sounds like it could have been recorded two years before, with a pulsing, almost Northern beat, opening with one of those patented Funk Brothers snare/rack-tom combos that adorn countless Motown recordings.
It is very groovy indeed, highly danceable and manages to do justice to the OG.
I hope you dig it and I’ll see you on Wednesday.
Peace
Larry
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Themocracy
Picked up a copy of this last year too Larry.Was hoping to find a 45 but I don’t think they exist? Great version and a great album.Aretha’s version is’nt too shabby either.
Tony
I don’t think there’s a 45, and I didn’t mention it in the piece but I wonder if this was recorded before the rest of the album, maybe.something that was already in the can?
Larry