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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

I'm Still a Virgin / Shit Talk It's January 15th, 2013 And You're in a Rad Garage Band - GFY - The Wailers

Posted by Mike Nipper on Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 1:51 PM

Originally an instrumental group from Tacama, Worshington, the Wailers' B side, "Dirty Robber," the flip of "Mau Mau", was the first BEAT song of the then-coming bea era to be recorded and pressed. That is to say, the Wailers were the first white kids to write/play/record such a strict black R&B song AND have the nerve to actually SING. Not that it really mattered. The single charted Top 100 on the strength of the A side, but "Dirty Robber" didn't reverberate at all; instrumental groups remained the thing.

Uh... that ain't no rock-a-billy or teen/pop, "Dirty Robber" is some RAW, and studied, R&B... from white kids. Huge for 1959. For all their weight the Beatles' records followed, in England, about a thousand days later. In the US the Beatles were even longer in arriving.

The Wailers of course were the most important group in the Northwest for many years, most of the other local groups during the late '50s/early '60s were doing their best to pretend to be the Wailers. Also, it was their 1960 arrangement and 1961 recording, as by Rockin' Robin Roberts, of Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" the Kingsmen, in 1963, would attempt to cover that gave us one of rock's most important standards and a song which also sent the FBI on a snipe hunt. Um... yeah, all that happened before the Beatles hit over here as well...