"Love is Blue" by Paul Mauriat hit me at 16 and with a new girl at homecoming, no less, and I was floored; throw in "Honey" by Bobby Goldsborro and we are on our way.
A little more Pop but "Wichita Lineman", and "Galveston" had the same effect on me. Same with "Alfie" and "Hurts So Bad", "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted" and "Walk on By" - my list of angst songs knows no bounds. Funny, that I was so moved by these tunes in my teens; I am sure you were and countless other guys.
As an aside my son while watching a rerun of "The Office" today discovered "Nobody But Me" by the Human Beinz". He wanted to know if I had ever heard of it. J.B. will know that this group was from Ohio; I'm not sure where but Youngstown sticks in me mind.
Bevo,
Ah yes, The Human Beinz was most definitely an Ohio band and they were originally Youngstown based but I believe they probably played more Cleveland area bars. They were kind of a mix of several local NE Ohio bands with their beginnings around 1963 or thereabouts.
They were pretty much a cover band with a strong influence once the British Invasion hit our shores in 1964. They , along with every garage band in the country, managed to record the classic "Gloria" but unfortunately there was a 6 month delay between the time they recorded their version and the producing of the 45 record which ended up cancelling the release !
The members were Richard "Dick" Belley lead vocals/guitar "Ting"Markulin on rhythm guitar, John Pachuta,bass and Mike Tatum, drums. They first recorded on the small label Elysian Records and release some tunes as The Human Beingz ( with a "g" in their name and one of their covers was of the Yardbirds " Evil Hearted You".
Somehow, the group was discovered by a Capital Records rep who was browsing through some record bins in the Youngstown suburb of Boardman.
In a real Hollywood discovery story, the group ended up in a Cleveland recording studio and played their unique version of an Isley Brothers song titled " Nobody But Me". Well, the rest is history, they took an obscure Isley Brothers song, gave it an upbeat garage band sound and believe it or not the song first broke on the black radio station market assuming the group was African-American ( they were not).
To add to the confusion there was another group about the same time recording on the Impact and Warner Brothers label called "The Human Beings".
In January of 1968 " Nobody But Me" peaked at number 8 on the top 40 charts. During 1968 they released two albums " Nobody But You" and "Evolutions". The closest they ever came to breaking into the Top 40 again was their cover of Bobby "Blue" Bland's classic, "Turn On Your Love Light" but reached no higher than #80 later in 1968, but was somewhat of a minor hit in Japan. Somehow I don't see Japanese audiences getting into American blues ?? Soon after a tour of Japan the boys decided to break up and were destined to become a staple in every garage band and bar band in the U.S. for decades to come and a genuine one-hit-wonder. I also find it strange that a group influenced by the British Invasion ends up having their only charted hit on a song originally recorded by an Ohio R&B goup. Go figure.
One final piece of trivia about the song " Nobody But Me" you may not be aware of ( you can really impress your son with this tidbit:
The song uses the word "No" more than 100 times in 2:16 and uses the word "nobody" 46 times and the word "yeah" is used 1 time.
The runner up for negativity is "Tell her No" by The Zombies which uses "No" 63 times in 2:08. Now go impress your son with that fact ! Tell him
you read on the AARP Boys, lol. PS: it's true .
JB
