What were you doing when you were 15? Playing in some "Green Day" wanna be band, earnestly straight edge...maybe playing in Modest Mouse or making out with Calvin Johnson...all of the above perhaps? Thats cool and all, but whatever it was prolly not as brilliant as this...
Thats Darrow Fletcher, a Chicago singer, when he recorded that teenage lament in 1966 he was...yep...15..."Young Misery" was his second 45.
Here is an even more stunning 45 "What Good Am I Without You", I think it's his best, it's a 1967 Detroit production from Don Mancha and a Mike Terry...on this Darrow was 16.
Darrow was recording occasionally as late as 1987, but he never broke nationally. During the '60s his Groovy label sides afforded him some touring of the major black theater circuit, and his regional charting/sales were strong enough to warrent MCA signing (his step fathers's Johnny) Haygood's productions of Darrow for release on their smaller labels - Revue, Uni and Congress. On the MCA labels he has another solid handful of sides, but none match the excitement of his '60s sides. He eventually faded away till he played in the UK at the Cleethorpes Weekender, 2006 and more recently, this past January, at NYC's Dig Deeper. He'll turn 60 next year.
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