Eddie Holland – Leaving Here
Eddie Holland
Listen/Download – Eddie Holland – Leaving Here
Greetings all.
I hope you all had a good weekend.
I was recovering from yet another surgical adventure (expected if not planned) and walked out of the hospital knowing that there will be more in the future.
It’s not just that this has become a huge inconvenience, but even moreso a constant source of demoralization. I wouldn’t even mind that much of it didn’t require trips to the hospital, and usually anaesthesia. It always takes me a couple of days to get right after a procedure, thanks in large part to the haze that tends to follow you around after you’ve been put under. There isn’t even that much physical pain involved. I have a fairly high threshold for discomfort, but the pain in this case takes the form of a kind of wave of inconvenience, with people having to take off work, babysitters procured and an already tight schedule getting a couple of new speedbumps inserted into it.
I for one will be fine in a couple of days. The problems I have are not generally painful (providing that the proper medical steps have been taken) but I’m always haunted by the specter of another visit to the doctor/radiologist/hospital, which in most cases, I’d trade for a little actual pain.
My whining aside, I am spending the weekend (when this was written) chilling, doing nothing remotely strenuous and trying to get my brain back on the tracks.
The tune I bring you today has been a huge fave for decades, but it was a few years before I actually heard the version you see before you today.
Back in the garage/mod days, one of the really important UK R&Beat touchstones was the music of the Birds. If you paused for a second there, you’re not alone since the band in question existed during the same time period as the US Byrds (McGuinn, Clark, Hillman et al) and there was some legal friction when the US band alit in the UK.
Fortunately for the UK band, the few, brilliant records they created could never be confused with folk rock of any variety. The Birds laid down some of the heaviest, razor sharp versions of US R&B ever recorded, as well as a couple of well crafted originals, and eventually a bit of freakbeat to close things out.
One of their finest records, and a huge number among my crowd at the time was their version of Eddie Holland’s ‘Leaving Here’. The song was covered by some of their contemporaries as well, but nobody came within a mile of the Birds for pure heat.
My own band at the time, the Phantom Five tore up our own ragged but right version of ‘Leaving Here’ pretty much every time we plugged in.
As I stated previously, it was a few years before I heard the original, eventually picking it up on a ‘Hard to Find Motown’ CD comp that turned me on to a fair number of other classics. The song would eventually be covered by the Who, the Tages, Jimmy Hannah and the Dynamics (a personal fave) and eventually by Motorhead and Pearl Jam.
Truth be told, though I dug the Holland OG from the start, it was a few more years before it edged the Birds version out of my consciousness and took the lead.
It was a while (like two more decades) before I’d grab my own copy of the Holland 45, with the gods of the interwebs smiling on me as I picked it up for what the mighty Ralph Kramden once referred to as a ‘mere bag of shells’.
Holland was – of course – part of songwriting legends Holland/Dozier/Holland. Though all three members of the famous triumvirate recorded their own records, Eddie Holland was by far the most prolific, recording well over a dozen singles (mostly for UA and Motown) between 1958 and 1964. ‘Leaving Here’ (written by Holland and Lamont Dozier) was released in 1963, and while it didn’t make much of a dent Stateside, quickly became a fave of London’s R&B obsessed longhairs.
Eddie Holland’s original is a fast moving dancer with piano and horns providing the backing, and a prominent snare drum laying down the beat. Holland’s vocal is great, though it’s not hard to understand why he would have settled for a lucrative career as a composer and producer considering the talent he was surrounded by on a daily basis.
It’s a great soul dancer, and I hope you dig it as much as I do. I’ll be back later in the week with more music (and less complaining).
And, despite all the aggravation, know that I won’t be leaving here any time soon.
Peace
Larry
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Themocracy
Oh man, I’m sorry to hear about your operations and the alarming prospects of more to come. All I can say is that I hope thinhs will get better.
Hi Larry – hope you’re feeling better – and all the best for whatever you have to go through in the future. And depsite all that you still manage to come up with another gem! I always liked the Isleys version until I heard Mr Holland – it can’t be beaten!
Gail
Wishing you the best in your recovery, hopefully the great tunes will help out.
Hi Larry, I know how it feels to beat a regular path to the hospital. I hope that your recovery will be speedy and that you can keep on sharing such great music as this one with us.
My own copy of this song is on a well worn and treasured UK Tamla Motown LP that I haven’t seen in far more than the couple of decades that it’s taken you to find this single. I have to agree, this is THE version.
Regards
Dave
Larry, all the best to you on the health front.
Quick technical suggestion – if you’re interested: on mono (and only mono!) 45s, put a double-Y cable (which combines the RCA R/L channels together and then splits them again) in the chain between the deck and the DAC, or collapse the track to mono after you’ve digitized it.
This has the effect of canceling out the stereo information – which, if it’s mono, can only be surface noise. It doesn’t have any effect on sound quality – if the sound is in both channels, which all the mono music information would be, it will remain in pristine form.
See the results of collapsing this track to mono here: https://www.divshare.com/download/11361469-370
Thanks so much for all the great music over the years!
nice! glad to see you finally got a copy!
Great 45, one of those weird ones that I’ve only ever seen as a white label promo. Anyone got a stock copy??