{"id":756,"date":"2010-07-27T18:07:02","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T23:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/funky16corners.lunarpages.net\/?p=756"},"modified":"2012-08-03T16:11:48","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T21:11:48","slug":"the-exciters-do-wah-diddy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/?p=756","title":{"rendered":"The Exciters – Do Wah Diddy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>\"Example\"<\/strong>
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\nThe Exciters<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>\"Example\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Listen\/Download – The Exciters – Do Wah Diddy <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Greetings all. <\/strong>
\nIs every one all up in the Simon and Garfunkel<\/strong>, i.e. feeling groovy?
\nThe heat continues unabated, which wouldn\u2019t bear mentioning, except for the fact that I went outside on Sunday to do yard work and ended up like one of those sweat-soaked, sun stroked chain gang fools in a Cool hand Luke stylee and ended up with just enough strength to crawl into bed, slap on my iPod and pass out about halfway into the first song.
\nHonest to jeebus it\u2019s been a brutal summer hereabouts, and with me all pale and as sun-phobic as the next Morlock, I\u2019m not digging it too much.
\nDon\u2019t get me wrong\u2026I like it when it\u2019s hot, but like 85-ish. Once you break the 90 degree line, every time you set foot out of doors you can almost hear the cliched snippet of Delta blues slide guitar they always play when some poor slob is about to get run out of some dusty backwoods burgh (or vanish forever, depending on the movie).
\nThat said, I\u2019m lucky enough to be able to step back inside to the refrigerated (as they used to say in the olden days) air of the house, where my records sit safely, unwarped by the heat, and the beer chills in the fridge-o-manator so that I may do the same on the davenport.
\nThat said, I was wondering what to post this fine day, and thought that something, summery, yet upbeat, with just a soupcon of history might fit the bill.
\nWanna hear it? Here it is\u2026<\/em>
\nI\u2019ve made mention – and demonstrated via example – that I am an absolute fiend when it comes to hunting down original versions of famous tunes in the soul, funk, blues and rock oeuvres. In fact, some day I\u2019m gonna have to get my shnizzle together and whip them on y\u2019all in podcast form, or maybe over at the old Funky16Corners Radio<\/strong> thing.
\nHunting these things down, mainly via the heavy blues explosion of the late 60s led me down into the sounds of the Delta, the Piedmont and into Texas where many of these tunes were born.
\nOf course, not every OG harkens back to the 20s and 30s, many of them were more recent creations, i.e. first committed to wax during the 50s or even the early 60s, with the R&B and soul, and electric blues performers that exerted a much more significant influence on the British Invaders of \u201864 and beyond.
\nOne of these artifacts, that I\u2019d known about for decades, but only scored a copy of earlier this year is the track I bring you today.
\nI\u2019ll assume that literally everyone reading this has heard the version of \u2018Do Wah Diddy Diddy\u2019 by Manfred Mann<\/strong>, which was a huge hit in 1964, and has forever after been a staple of oldies radio. Featuring the voice of Paul Jones<\/strong> (one of the more soulful singers of his time) the Manfred\u2019s version, like many of their storming covers of blues and soul material actually does justice to the original (and maybe exceeds it in some respects).
\nThat original was recorded by the Exciters<\/strong> the year before. Their version only reached #78 on the Pop charts, quite a letdown after their biggest hit \u2018Tell Him\u2019 which was Top 20 earlier in 1963, and is also a cornerstone of oldies radio.
\nWritten by Jeff Barry<\/strong> and Ellie Greenwich<\/strong>, the Exciters\u2019 original is still a slamming slice of soulful group action, with pounding drums, and a wild lead vocal by Brenda Reid<\/strong>. The production by the geniuses (and my idols) Leiber and Stoller<\/strong> is spot on, and a little rawer than you might expect from a group often thought of as a \u2018girl group\u2019 (even though there was a guy – Herb Rooney<\/strong> –\u00a0 in their ranks).
\nThe instrumentation is pretty basic, with drums and piano backing the singers, followed by a horn section. Things get a little more ornate in the bridge, but you\u2019d never mistake it for a Phil Spector<\/strong> production, though the chimes in the instrumental break lean in that direction a tiny bit.
\nGive it a close listen and you can almost imagine you\u2019re there watching Leiber and Stoller building it bit by bit.
\nThough they\u2019re known mainly as songwriters, they deserve a lot of credit for their work producing and arranging records<\/a> as well, especially in an era where the best of the Brill Building-related writers were all making strides in that regard.
\nThe Exciters remained together into the early 70s, though their last chart record was a 1966 cover of the Jarmels\u2019 <\/strong>\u2018Little Bit of Soap\u2019. You should also be on the lookout for their Northern Soul stormer \u2018Blowing Up My Mind\u2019 from 1969 (I know I\u2019m still looking for a copy\u2026).
\nIt\u2019s a great cut, and I hope you dig it.<\/p>\n

Peace<\/strong><\/p>\n

Larry<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>\"Example\"<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Check out the Funky16Corners Store at Cafe Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

PS Head over to Iron Leg for some great instrumental pop.<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Exciters Listen\/Download – The Exciters – Do Wah Diddy   Greetings all. Is every one all up in the Simon and Garfunkel, i.e. feeling groovy? The heat continues unabated, which wouldn\u2019t bear mentioning, except for the fact that I went outside on Sunday to do yard work and ended up like one of those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[58,46,14,69,12,18],"tags":[166,164],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cover-songs","category-digging","category-funky16corners","category-original-versions","category-soul","category-soul-45","tag-funky16corners","tag-soul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMKgo-cc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3053,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions\/3053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}