FRANKIE LAINE – “Hey Joe”
The horns equal MAN ON THE PROWL thing gets further reinforced as Frankie Laine follows up a mega-hit by throwing everything he can at “Hey Joe” – brass all over the shop, a guitar solo (again!) (a much better one than Guy Mitchell’s I might add), backing singers, tumbling rhymes and an outright bizarre vocal style which stretches line-endings to breaking point and ends up sounding like proto-Dylan (“I’ll tell you face to face I mean to steeeeeeeal / Her from yeooooow“). It’s the most vigorous thing to top the charts since Kay Starr but for all its incident it never really gels.
5
Tom, you’re mad! This is one of the most fun things I’ve discovered poking back through the pre-Beatles era on this thing. Alternately swaggering, sweaty, and desperate, with humor that resonates. I can relate to the people who made this a hit. They seem like real people and not strange curiousities from a previous universe.
I’d also like to think of this as some sort of flipside to, say, “Wedding Bells” – now the old gang of buddies is breaking up, but not so much because of weddings but because of an effort to break one up.
And that solo is wild!
Give it up for pedal steel maestro Speedy West!
So, this isn’t the usual “Hey Joe”?
No, nothing to do with the other “Hey Joe” with the other “wild solo.” Wouldn’t it have been great if it had been, though?
The second number one in a row to employ a much more rhythmic, uptempo & lively backing except this is a good deal busier and I think I can hear a kitchen sink in there somewhere as well. Frankie seems to have cheered up a little since his previous hit and it sounds like he’s having a ball (with his crazy pals in tow). If I was Joe I wouldn’t trust this bunch, and I think I’d be grabbing my girl and catching the nearest stagecoach outta town.
Frankly, I think Joe’s pretty much already lost this one.
I’m more familiar with the Carl Smith version (featured on Columbia Country Classics Vol 2) which is a fine rattler, but this is an entertaining reading of a very likeable song.
I agree with Doctor Casino – this is great 50s pop. Like the Guy Mitchell UK #1s, I don’t think it made much impression at all in Frankie’s US homeland. I wonder why our tastes differed so much on these occasions.