THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,335) The Guess Who — “Baby Feelin’”
The Guess Who (see #758, 1,140) took Johnny Kidd & the Pirates’s “1959 rocker ‘Feelin’’ . . . altering the title slightly to ‘Baby Feelin’’ before stamping their own brand on it [on this ‘66 LP track and B-side], transforming it into a raucous [and incendiary] slab of ‘Garage’”. (John Manship Rare Soul, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFKPAQPoXiE&pp=ygUZVGhlIGd1ZXNzIHdobyBiYWJ5IGZlZWxpbg%3D%3D)
Joe Viglione explains that:
[“Feelin’” was] written by Johnny Kidd, who penned the first Guess Who hit, “Shakin’ All Over,” which put them on the map . . . . [It] opens with that Johnny Kidd & the Pirates riff “Shakin’ All Over” made famous, but this version would make Roky Ericsson smile. Vintage ’60s stuff.
Surprisingly, the track from the It’s Time LP (above) is the truly wild and raucous version — the one for the ages — while the B-side (below) is much more subdued. Go figure.
Richie Unterberger writes about It’s Time:
Though this Canadian LP was issued under the Guess Who name, the group still hadn’t quite completed its evolution from its prior incarnation as Chad Allan & the Expressions. Indeed Allan himself was still in the band during sessions for the recording . . . . But a couple British Invasion covers and . . . “Don’t Act So Bad” excepted, every song was written by Randy Bachman. Even more crucially, much of the material went in a decidedly harder-rocking direction than much of what the group had previously cut, with newcomer Burton Cummings injecting a new raunchiness into the material on which he sang lead vocals. . . . Overall it’s the effort of a band still finding their style . . . . But of the many such bands making derivative records such as this, the Guess Who were by this point one of the best such acts, both as musicians and writers. . . . Even if this isn’t as original as the best British and American groups of the time, or indeed as Guess Who themselves would later become, it’s still respectable and at times quite exciting . . . .
As to Johnny Kidd, Mark Deming tells us that:
When the first wave of rock & roll hit Great Britain in the mid-’50s, kids went wild for it just as they did in the United States, but it was a while before the U.K. began producing top-shelf rock acts that could hold their own against the American originators. Early British rock was dominated by gimmicky acts . . . but while Johnny Kidd & the Pirates inarguably had a gimmick — Kidd wore an eye patch on-stage and he and his band all wore pirate getups — they also sounded tougher and grittier than their peers, and with 1960’s “Shakin’ All Over,” they wrote and recorded one of the first undeniably great U.K. rock tunes. Kidd had a good voice, but what was more important was his willingness to push the attitude factor a bit on numbers like “Shakin’ All Over,” “Please Don’t Touch,” “Growl,” and “Feelin’,” where he sounded less like a teen-oriented crooner and more like a genuine rock & roll shouter. . . . [H]e died in an auto accident in 1966 . . . . Kidd was, along with Billy Fury, one of the U.K.’s first authoritative rock & roll vocalists, and his band was tight and fiery, delivering the goods with style and swagger . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/album/please-dont-touch%21-the-1959-1962-recordings-mw0000855172
Here is the 45 version:
Here are Johnny Kidd & the Pirates:
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Didn’t know there was a different version of this song by Them Guess Who!
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