This song, written by Louis Jordan, comes from early in his career, when he was still in Harlem before he moved to Los Angeles and when he was a little more buttoned down. Well, he was always buttoned down, but his humor and the music more generally grew wilder, more absurd and frenetic, as he moved more into jump blues pure, with tongue-in-cheek attitudes Chuck Berry would put to grand use inventing rock ‘n’ roll. But I love Jordan’s more simple, deadpan delivery here. He never breaks character as a doleful but plucky and determined loser cast aside. A muted trumpet—probably Courtney Williams—smoothly locks down the melody for a verse, then Jordan enters with his dogged tale. He’s been rejected, but he’s not giving up. “I’m goin’,” he announces, as we seem to be arriving at the end of a breakup conversation. “But I’ll be back.” The charge is larceny of his love in the first degree, and he’s prepared to take real action. “Gonna bring my mom and pop / And I’m gonna bring a cop / Gonna make you give me back my love / Before I blow my top.” Jordan’s vocal avoids any menacing hint of a stalker, which is exactly what makes the tune work. Instead, he is more like Wile E. Coyote, overrunning the cliff and suspended in space before he realizes he is about to plummet to his doom. The singer probably doesn’t deserve what he’s getting, but ain’t that the way? The youtube page concludes the listening experience with perhaps the single greatest youtube comment of all time (in a field not at all competitive), the only one on the page in 11 years: “Thanks for posting. I’m going, but I’ll be back.”
No comments:
Post a Comment