THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
Oklahoma’s Ted Taylor gave us a stunning ’64 R&B A-side romp, and then the UK’s Ted “King Size” Taylor gave us an equally stunning cover the same year. They were not related — this was just meant to be!
1,607) Ted Taylor — “Somebody’s Always Trying”
“Where has this little belter been all my life?” (thedivinemrm5852, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z9A4DbWlA0) It is “a magnificent uptempo dance floor filler with a pounding rhythm, powerful drums, rocking horns and a great frantic, exasperated vocal from Taylor as he anxiously frets about all the men trying to get off with his fine woman. Thrills to the max.” (Bayard, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/ted-taylor/somebodys-always-trying-top-of-the-world/)
Of TT, Folk Arts Rare Records writes that:
[T]he greatest Soul singer you’ve never heard of[,] Ted Taylor was chronically unappreciated throughout his career. He had a fairly large hit with the amazing track “Be Ever Wonderful” and found success amongst Southern Black audiences. Ted Taylor grew up in Oklahoma, where he mostly listened to Country & Gospel music. The amazing R.H. Harris, the original lead vocalist of the Soul Stirrers, was a particularly strong influence. And the Country influence somehow makes sense. Taylor’s vocal delivery is always tense, with frequent vibrato and extreme ups & downs. Emotions always running wild. This combined with his extreme, one of a kind falsetto, makes for a damn fine recipe of Southern Soul. Taylor’s career traversed many different eras: childhood Gospel, teenage Doo-Wop, the golden age of Soul, 70’s Funk, Disco and the 1980’s Blues revival circuit. Ted did it all. He moved to L.A. in his teens and joined the Santa Monica Soul Seekers. This band soon became the well known Doo-Wop group The Cadets (a.k.a. The Jacks), who put out some killer sides on the Modern & RPM labels. Ted was with them from 1955-1957, where they had pretty big hits with “Why Don’t You Write Me” & “Stranded In The Jungle”. By 1958 Taylor decided to embark on his solo career. Makes a whole lot of sense considering his remarkable talent. It’s a shame that Ted Taylor is so unknown. But he was definitely a staple on the jukebox in the Jukes & Lounges of the South. . . . The guy could rock the house like none other, and he also had a voice that could make you cry. If you’re ever looking for some sensational slow dance music, this is it. Deep Soul mixed with this falsetto, yes please.
https://www.folkartsrarerecords.com/record-of-the-day/ted-taylor-somebodys-always-trying/#more-225
Bill Dahl adds:
Soul-blues singer Ted Taylor unleashed his stratospheric, falsetto-driven voice on a wide variety of material during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, his gospel heritage never far from the surface. Taylor first entered the studio as a member of the Cadets and Jacks, a Los Angeles R&B vocal group with two names that recorded for Modern. By the late ’50s, Taylor was signed to Ebb, and a myriad of other imprints soon followed (notably Duke, where he waxed his first version of the sugary ballad “Be Ever Wonderful”), Okeh (his sides for the Columbia subsidiary were done in Chicago and Nashville), and Ronn, where he spent nearly a decade.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ted-taylor-mn0000029156#biography
1,608) King Size Taylor — “Somebody’s Always Trying”
Bayard:
[This is KST and the Dominoes] finest moment . . . a top-notch cover of Ted Taylor’s marvellous original. . . . The King Size Taylor rendition is outstanding, uptempo stonking*, intense British rhythm & blues, led by guitar and thumping drums, with King Size’s marvellous, powerful vocal really demonstrating his reputation was fully deserved, as he bemoans the fact that other men are always chasing his girl and trying to tempt her away from him.
Bayard tells us of King Size:
The Dominoes (of which King Size Taylor subsequently became frontman) were a very early Liverpool group who had a big influence on all the subsequent Liverpool groups, including The Beatles. The band originally formed in north Liverpool, England in 1957, evolving out of a school skiffle group called the Sinners. . . . In 1958 local butcher by trade Ted “Kingsize” [6’ 5’’] Taylor . . . joined the band as lead vocalist and guitarist. . . . The group acquired a strong local following and Taylor developed a reputation as one of the best rock and roll singers in the Liverpool area and for his flamboyant character . . . . King Size Taylor & The Dominoes first performed at the Cavern Club in January 1961, when they featured 17 year old singer Cilla White, who was mistakenly renamed Cilla Black later that year by Bill Harry in an article in his magazine Mersey Beat. . . . Cilla Black sang regularly with The Dominoes until 1962. In the summer of 1962, the band . . . went to Hamburg, where they appeared regularly at the Star-Club. . . . King Size Taylor & The Dominoes secured a record contract with Decca in Germany in 1963 . . . . The band issued a number of 45s between 1963 and 1965 . . . . The Dominoes disbanded in late 1964. In 1967 Taylor quit the music business and returned to his former trade of a butcher in Liverpool.
Bruce Eder adds:
Guitarist-singer Edward “Ted” Taylor started out in music while still at school in 1956 . . . as [a] member[] of the James Boys Skiffle Group . . . . Meanwhile, the Dominoes were formed in the summer of 1957 out of the remnants of a Liverpool skiffle band called the Sinners, who gave up skiffle and switched to rock & roll after they saw the movie Rock Around the Clock . . . [T]hey evolved into the Bobby Bell Rockers, arguably the first rock & roll band in Liverpool . . . . In the summer of 1957, James Boys played a gig with the Dominies and thereafter decided to give up skiffle music. In the end, Ted Taylor . . . joined the Dominoes . . . . with his name tacked onto its front end in 1960. They made their debut at the Cavern Club in January of 1961 backing Cilla Black, who became an unofficial fifth member of the group at numerous gigs over the next year. . . . [T]he Dominoes were a farm team for numerous other Liverpool bands . . . . In 1961, the band was voted the sixth most popular group in Liverpool . . . . During the summer of 1962, Kingsize Taylor & the Dominoes went to Hamburg for the first time, where they quickly established a serious audience. They spent a three-month residency at the Star Club . . . . [and] were signed to the Philips label and started cutting records that year . . . The group also worked under the pseudonym the Shakers for Polydor . . . . By 1964, they were able to record for the Star-Club imprint on Ariola, where they cut a very solid body of two dozen rock & roll numbers. By this time, however, the extensive time they’d spent in Hamburg had taken its toll. Although no one quite recognized it at the time, with the signing of the Beatles to Parlophone in the summer of 1962, a sudden shift took place in the focus of music in Liverpool. . . . [which] was now acting like fly paper to dozens of record producers and hundreds of ambitious talent managers. The Dominoes, for all of their reputation and the quality of their music, weren’t there to be discovered by the producers . . . . [T]he nature of what constituted the Liverpool sound had been established and solidified for the public. And it didn’t include one, much less two saxophones, which is exactly what Kingsize Taylor & the Dominoes had in their lineup and their sound. . . . Taylor kept working in Hamburg . . . before he organized a new band, called the New Dominoes . . . . They endured into 1965 playing engagements in Germany, but by 1966 Kingsize Taylor was cutting records for English Decca and Polydor as a solo artist. Taylor finally left the music business in 1967 . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kingsize-taylor-the-dominoes-mn0001810037#biography
* “Stonking”?! No, Bayard didn’t mean to write “stinking”. “Stonking” is British slang. “The OED says . . . that it’s either an adjective meaning ‘tremendous’ or ‘great’ or an intensifying adverb . . . and that it derives from the British WW II military slang ‘stonk,’ meaning a concentrated artillery bombardment.” (Ben Yagoda, https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/2022/10/06/stonking/)
Samantha Fish ’17:
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