Dobby Dobson – Don’t Make Me Over b/w some thoughts…
Dobby Dobson
Listen/Download – Dobby Dobson – Don’t Make Me Over
Greetings all.
Welcome to the middle of the week.
I’d like to get things started by addressing a comment left in a recent post (about the latest episode of the Funky16Corners Radio Show) that I was somehow ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’.
This pissed me off for a couple of reasons, First and foremost that I’ve tried to maintain Funky16Corners as a positive site, and would hope that those of you that stop by to participate would honor that concept. This doesn’t mean that I expect a constant flow of praise (or any praise at all…). If I get something wrong, or you really don’t dig what I’m doing, you’re more than welcome to say so. I’d just rather you do it in a constructive fashion.
Not knowing the commenter in question, and considering the brevity and brusqueness of his comment, I can’t be sure exactly what it was that he saw as the “bottom of the barrel”, but since the show remarked about was composed entirely of reggae, ska and rock steady, I’ll go ahead and assume that was the nature of the problem.
The Funky16Corners blog has been around for more than five years (and the web site almost five more years before that) and those of you that have been along for a longer section of the ride already know that the sounds posted and written about in this space might at first appear to be very diverse, but like one of those crazy 3-D magic eye pictures, given the proper amount of concentration, a clearer picture will come into focus.
What you will end up seeing in this case is an illustration of my musical sensibility, at least as it applies to the history of black music in the latter part of the 20th century (and occasionally beyond). Over the years Funky16Corners has featured mainstream soul, funk, jazz, Northern Soul, fusion, breaks and beats, island soul (i.e. all parts of the reggae/ska continuum), library music, funky prog, R&B, all styles of music that have captured my interest over more than 30 years of listening and collecting music, and all connected, whether or not the connection is immediately obvious.
I’ll readily admit that my tastes have not always been so broad, and I also understand that many people come to the blog with much more specific interests. I understand that not everyone is going to dig a record like Judy Street’s ‘What’, or the Horace Andy 45 I posted a few weeks ago, but that’s cool since the interwebs are an unspeakably vast place where you will undoubtedly find something else to listen to until our tastes intersect (as they will inevitably do) once again.
Not everyone digs as many kinds of music (or books, or movies, or TV shows) as I do, but as anyone who knows me well will tell you (especially my wife) my brain is kind of crazy like that, and that I have managed to divert part of my ongoing stream of consciousness in one place as well as I have is something of a miracle (which is why I maintain a second blog).
This also has a lot to do with time. I’ll be 48 years old this year, and thanks to growing up in a house where music was treasured I’ve been listening to, collecting and studying music since I was a kid. While there are people out there that might be able to devote almost four decades to a much narrower focus – something that has produced great scholarship on specific genres of music like jazz and the blues – I’ve spent much of that time following my ears wherever they go. There have certainly been periods of extreme concentration, where I got deep into a specific sound to the exclusion of everything else, but since it’s all about the connections, I always come to a fork in the road less traveled and continue on to something new.
While the focus at Funky16Corners has always been fairly clear, there is hardly a style of music that I don’t listen to. Though the largest part of my collecting is reflected in the music written about here and at Iron Leg, someone getting a closer look at the stuff that lines the walls of the Funky16Corners Record Vault and Podcasting Nerve Center might walk away with more questions asked than answered, but that’s OK too.
The tune I bring you today is another Jamaican 45, by an artist that has been featured here once before (as part of Funky16Corners Radio v.74), Dobby Dobson.
I’ve mentioned here in the past that I got into Jamaican music via the UK mod/Two-tone revival of 70s and 80s (though the first ska cover I ever heard was the Hooters version of Don Drummond’s ‘Man In the Street’), and though I’ve come to love later reggae and dub, I always find my way back to ska and rock steady. Though the rhythms were often different, there is no denying that the sounds coming out of Jamaica and the UK in the 60s were anything but another variety of the music we call soul.
Dobby Dobson started recording in the 60s as part of the duo of Chuck and Dobby, and later with groups like the Virtues. He went on to record as a solo artist for a variety of Jamaican labels and producers, eventually working as a producer himself before emigrating to the US.
Dobson’s outstanding cover of the Bacharach/David tune ‘Don’t Make Me Over’ (a 1963 Top 40 hit for Dionne Warwick) is interesting for a couple of reasons. If the organ intro sounds familiar it’s because it’s basically a lift of the melody of the Tornados 1962 worldwide hit ‘Telstar’. How the organist (or producer Rupie Edwards) came to this unusual juxtaposition is a mystery, but ultimately it’s a groove. The song also works really well, lifted from its original off-waltz time arrangement and placed into the chugging rock steady rhythm. Dobson’s vocal may lack the epic scope of Warwick’s original, but that’s cool too since it’s interesting to hear the song delivered from the male perspective.
I haven’t been able to nail down an exact date on this 45 (since it appears to have been released on a few different labels) but it looks to have been recorded in 1969 or 1970.
I hope you dig the tune (and understand where I’m coming from) and I’ll be back later in the week.
Oh, and I assure you, I’m NOWHERE near the bottom of the barrel…
Peace
Larry
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Themocracy
A note in haste: solid writing, excellent music, and worth visiting several times a week. I’ve learned a lot via the Funky 16. Thanks for the good stuff.
Keep up the good work Larry.
Keep on keeping on
Bottom of the Barrel???I really enjoy your detours into other territories as much as the core of the F16C. Please keep them coming.
I adore your site, you always seem to be slipping something tasty into my mp3 player. So if someone comes on here and claims that your scrapping the bottom of the barrel to them I say, “That some bad-ass barrel”.
ugh pardon my OCD….”That IS some bad-ass barrel”
I’ve been listening to ska/rocksteady/reggae fan since the 60’s and this really is amongst the cream of the crop. A lot of Jamaican-produced records include snippets of popular tunes – and this is an unusual cover as he actually sings the correct words. I’ve been silently following the site for quite some time and although some of the stuff is not to my taste, I always feel better for having listened to it!
Right on, Larry! Bottom of the barrel? That guy must have been talking about his own, very limited brain capacity. No one in his right mind would ever post such a comment about you and your excellent website. F16C is, and will always be, the pillar, the rock, the foundation. Peace, Ingmar
Bottom of the barrel? Even if that was true (it’s not) we are visitors to a hell of a high-quality barrel! From the comments here, a LOT of us think the same. Keep on Keeping On Larry.
Larry, don’t change a thing. If this is scraping the barrel then keep scraping away! Seriously this is one of the only music blogs I make sure to visit on a weekly basis. You’re always suprising me with new stuff. Thanks for that! I for one am digging the ska stuff too…Great stuff.
Thanks everyone!
HEY LARRY, WOW! I HAVEN’T HEARD THAT SONG FOR SO MANY YEARS. THANKS FOR RECOGNIZING IT I’M GONNA MAKE SURE THAT YOU GET SOME OF MY NEWER STUFF SOON. SEND ADDRESS. THANKS AGAIN, MUSIC ALONE SHALL LIVE, DOBBY DOBSON
hello larry i adore your site music lives on in my soul i am lucky to be a fan and follower of dobby dobson dont make me over is a beautyful song i sugest you release it on cd ,you have a buyer.
Amen Larry.
I find that you give yourself beaucoups in your blog, and I would like to put more comment, but I do not well speak English, I am really sorry, because you deserve a lot of compliment!