THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,800) The Whyte Boots/Lori Burton — “Let No One Come Between Us”
This “excellent girl-group number[]” (Pop Matters, https://www.popmatters.com/lori_burton_breakout-2495674691.html) and Breakout‘s “best tune. . . . Showcasing Burton’s sexiest voice, the song had a breezy, highly commercial blue-eyed soul feel. . . . [that] should have enjoyed massive radio success. (http://badcatrecords.com/BURTONlori.htm) Burton first released it as the B-side to her great Shangri-La [see #1,203] homage “Nightmare”, taking on the guise of the Whyte Boots. Oh, let these Whyte Boots walk all over me!
Ritchie Unterberger writes schizophrenically about Breakout, Burton’s sole LP:
- “[Breakout is] impressive, well-produced pop-soul with New York’s sophisticated brand of pop-rock production.” (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lori-burton-mn0000234908#biography)
- “[Breakout] is decent pop/blue-eyed soul, though it might be more promise than fulfillment. [Burton] has a very good earthy voice, delivering both cool sensual low growling and impassioned rasp at the most climactic points. The songs are a mixture of soul and densely produced New York mid-’60s pop/rock, and while they’re OK, there isn’t that obvious hitbound tune. Indeed, sometimes the sources or models are pretty apparent.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/breakout-mw0000342022)
Unterburger tells us of Burton:
Together with Pam Sawyer, Lori Burton formed one of the better New York pop/rock songwriting teams of the 1960s, although not too many of their songs were widely known hits. Their “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” gave the Rascals their first chart entry; “Baby Let’s Wait[]” . . gave the Royal Guardsmen [see #661] a hit; Patti LaBelle & the Blue Bells did “All or Nothing”; and Prince Harold did “Forget About Me.” Burton and Sawyer were briefly signed to Motown as songwriters and were one of the few (if not the only) female production teams on the New York rock scene in the mid-’60s. Burton was also a recording artist and is most known as the lead voice on the Whyte Boots’ “Nightmare,” one of the most accurate approximations of the Shangri-Las ever recorded. She was also a very credible blue-eyed pop-soul singer, though, with a low and sometimes raunchy voice. She began recording as a solo act for Roulette in the mid-’60s and in 1967, issued a hard-to-find album, Breakout . . . . [I]t is unfortunate that Burton did not have the chance to develop further as a recording act in her own right. Burton and her husband, recording engineer Roy Cicala, began writing and producing together in the late ’60s. Cicala became a top engineer in the industry and owner of the Record Plant (East) Studios in New York City, working on several John Lennon [see #29, 113, 520, 522, 1,473] albums. Burton sang backup vocals on Lennon’s “#9 Dream” in the mid-’70s, and recorded some tracks around that time that Lennon helped produce with Cicala.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lori-burton-mn0000234908#biography
“Sawyer . . . went on to pen hits such as the Supremes’ [see #762] “Love Child” and David Ruffin’s [see #510] magnificent “My Whole World Ended” for the fabled imprint, splitting in 1968 from a partner who had become impatient with record-industry bureaucracy.” (https://www.popmatters.com/lori_burton_breakout-2495674691.html)
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