PAT BOONE - “I’ll Be Home”
(15th June 1956)
It’s my belief that no pop song with a ’spoken bit’ can be all bad, though Pat Boone does his best to test my resolve with a lifeless, dreary epistolary ballad, good in 1956 for a grope and a smooch perhaps, but good in 2003 for nothing. Only point of interest - why isn’t Pat home? The army, you’d think - and talk of returning so he can start “serving you” hints he’s serving something else right now. But he also sings how “once more our love can be free” - can clean-livin’ Pat be in prison?! On the evidence of this inert offering, wherever he is it’s somewhere they censor the letters. 2
Site powered by
wichita lineman on August 28th, 2008
Most of these criticisms don’t chime right to me, and this is one of the harsher ratings on Popular. While he effectively started whitebread Xtian pop, I do find the better Pat Boone’s ballads (this Flamingos cover, Friendly Persuasion, Love Letters In The Sand) at least as effective as Love Me Tender - history tends to forget that he was seen as the good-guy sheriff to Elvis’s Man In Black throughout 56/57, and a genuine equal.
As a rocker Boone was as effective as David Whitfield, but the mellifluous “please wait for me” leading into the sweet octave change on I’ll Be Home anticipates Roy Orbison, Morten Harket, and a square-jawed, unbreakable sound that could well indicate incarceration for the wrong reasons: soldier, prisoner of war, or someone similar to Henry Fonda’s tragic character in The Wrong Man. In which case, Pat, I’m afraid she won’t be waiting.
DJ Punctum on August 28th, 2008
Rather fanciful projections there and I guess from an American perspective Korea and/or nascent Vietnam was/were in mind, i.e. our love can be FREE from those DIRTY COMMIES (since Republican ideas of “freedom” have always inclined to “freedom from” rather than “freedom to”).
Best coming out of jail love letter as pop song: “Care Of Cell 44″ by the Zombies.
Mark G on August 28th, 2008
The b-side being “Tutti Frutti”!
“She’s a real gone cookie, yes siree!”
wichita lineman on August 28th, 2008
Plenty of doo wop and soul songs about going off to serve the homeland (A Casual Look by the Six Teens being a fave of mine), and I never think of them as commie bashing. I’ve never heard the Flamingos’ original of I’ll Be Home, but I think projecting Republican ideas onto the song just because it’s Pat Boone is a little unfair.
Tutti Frutti, Ain’t That A Shame, Long Tall Sally: gawdelpus, these really are crimes against pop, Ain’t That A Shame in particular which sounds quite unpleasantly aggressive. Totally at odds with the genre, they remind me of Derek Nimmo’s tv appearance in bondage gear (DJP please tell me I didn’t dream this up).
Care Of Cell 44, yes siree. And, oddly enough another single from the same year about a gal coming out of prison, Kitty by Cat Stevens: “When my little Kitty gets out, there’s gonna be a party no doubt!”
Do these constitute genuine guilty pleasures?
DJ Punctum on August 28th, 2008
No, sir, you did not dream this up.
GP should be shot on sight but not for stupid reasons as per Maconie’s asinine column in this week’s Radio Times.
Billy Smart on August 28th, 2008
Nimmo came over very well in that clip, I thought. Within the confines of such an insert, he gave the punks a fair hearing.
Mark G on August 28th, 2008
I’d defend PB’s rock and roll cover versions, up till that point R&R was the devil’s work, after that it crossed over to the mainstream and people seeked the originals out.
wichita lineman on August 28th, 2008
Of historical significance, agreed, but they are so stiff that even the early British r&r covers swing by comparison (the Beverley Sisters’ Bye Bye Love!). Little Richard has always ‘thanked’ Pat, though, for unintentionally helping him break through.
Yes, hats off to Nimmo. It was more the image of him than his attitude that I recalled.
DJ Punctum on August 28th, 2008
The Beverley Sisters doing “Bye Bye Love”??? Thankfully that hasn’t passed under my radar.
I loved the Steeleye Span version, though. They also did a brilliant acappella cover of “Rave On.”
DJ Punctum on August 28th, 2008
This weather’s terrible. August? November more like!