Shoes (Reparata song)
| "Shoes" | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 UK picture sleeve |
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| Single by Reparata | ||||||||||||||
| A-side | Shoes | |||||||||||||
| B-side | A Song for All | |||||||||||||
| Released | 1975 | |||||||||||||
| Format | 7" single | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | 1975 | |||||||||||||
| Length | 3:01 | |||||||||||||
| Label | Polydor and Dart | |||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Eric Beam | |||||||||||||
| Producer | Steve and Bill Jerome, Lou Guarino for Nami Records | |||||||||||||
| Reparata singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
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"Shoes" is a 1975 single by Reparata.
Contents |
[edit] Origins, recording, style
The song was originally recorded in the early 1970s by Felix Harp, a band from Trafford and Level Green, Pennsylvania, for their album Time to Give. The music and lyrics are by bandmember Eric Beam. The album was not released until in 1977, but "Shoes" was released as a single in 1973, renamed "She Didn't Forget Her Shoes (Johnny and Louise)" on Lou Guarino's NAMI label as NAMI 2011, produced by Guarino himself.
In 1974, Love Generation and The (New) Settlers both released versions of the song as singles, in Germany and the UK respectively. The following year, Guarino produced the recording by Reparata, using a remix of the original Felix Harp backing track. The co-producers were Steve and Bill Jerome.
Reparata was the stage name of Mary O'Leary, founder and lead singer of Reparata and the Delrons, whose recordings the Jeromes had been producing since 1964. O'Leary had given up performing live with the group in 1969 to concentrate on a teaching career, but she still released occasional Reparata records.
"Shoes" was described by one critic as a "bizarre wedding song"[1]. The lyrics tell the story of Johnny and Louise's wedding day, and the contributions of various relatives and friends to the wedding. The song is not about shoes, although it does include the line "Mother didn't give her abuse / she didn't forget her shoes". A family wedding is an unusual subject for a pop song, although not unique: the 10,000 Maniacs' song "My Sister Rose" on their In My Tribe album has a similar subject and similar bittersweet mood.
In its musical style, "Shoes" has what one commentator calls "a Middle Eastern feel".[2] The recording uses an eclectic range of instruments including harpsichord, Jew's harp, bazouki (which is namechecked in the line "Tom brings his band / bazouki in his hand") and tambourine and adds some vocal shouts and cheers. There is an electric guitar solo, and some children's backing vocals, which have been wrongly (and perhaps facetiously) credited to Mary O'Leary's sixth grade students[3]. One blogger describes the song as "Boney M meets Dusty Springfield"[4]. Another blogger comments that "This is one weird ’70s song. It sounds like “Gypsy Wine” meets “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” meets “Bohemian Rhapsody” meets “Hair” meets “Another Brick in the Wall” ... meets some dude playing the harmonica/harpsichord meets a bunch of frogs on helium."[5].
This mixture of styles creates an "absurdly catchy"[6] and unique record, which has been variously described as "discoish"[7] and "Spooky bazouki"[8] and as sounding like it was written by [the maverick US pop and rock group] Sparks.[9]
The celebratory lyrics of "Shoes" are undercut by Reparata's understated vocal delivery. She sings in a much lower register than she had used on previous recordings as lead singer of the Reparata and the Delrons, and some listeners have believed they were listening to a male vocal.[10] This ambiguity of the singer's gender adds to the strange mood of the record.
Summarising the sound and mood of "Shoes", one blogger comments that
"... despite the surface bonhomie, the music's thrust is slightly threatening and more than slightly unreal, particularly in the middle section when the beat cuts out to let through an ethereal cloud of dishevelled angel choirs ... [While] Reparata's voice strolls as serenely as Carole Bayer Sager's, [it] cannot dispel the feeling that something isn't quite right with the scenario"[11].
[edit] Personnel
- David Adomites (bass guitar, keyboards)
- Michael Ardisson (drums, percussion)
- Eric Beam (keyboards)
- Billy Hricsina (lead guitar)
- David Lenart (lead guitar, slide guitar, mandolin)[12]
- Mary "Reparata" O'Leary (vocals)
[edit] Distribution, success
Mary O'Leary had formed Reparata and the Delrons in 1962, and was their lead singer. The group disbanded in 1973, but O'Leary had not performed live with them since 1969, although she had released some singles under the name of Reparata. Promoted to lead singer of the group at live shows from 1969, Lorraine Mazzola had also used the name Reparata. She continued to do so after the group disbanded, calling herself Reparata Mazzola when she formed Lady Flash as Barry Manilow's back-up group in 1975. At the same time, Mary O'Leary released her latest Reparata single, "Shoes".
The single was released in the UK for promotional purposes only on 18 October 1974 on Surrey International Records as SIT 5013, with "A Song for All" as the B-side.[13] Before the formal release, Lorraine Mazzola launched a lawsuit for sole use of the name, after an advertisement ran in Billboard magazine claiming that Manilow's back-up singer was "the real Reparata". In a 2005 radio interview, O'Leary explained that this seriously affected the success of "Shoes" because the single had to be removed from sale during the case: "When the record came out, being done by Reparata, the record was squashed because, quote unquote, Reparata was with Barry Manilow. Believe me, it's a whole big megillah..."[14] O'Leary won the case when Mazzola did not show up at the hearing,[15][16] but in an interesting twist, Mazzola has legitimately used the name Reparata ever since, because she legally changed her given name from Lorraine to Reparata.[17]
The song's writer, Eric Beam, has referred to a separate legal problem that hampered the record's release and success, unrelated to the dispute over the Reparata name. In Beam's account, O'Leary had recorded her vocal for Polydor one day after her UK record contract with Dart Records had ended. Despite O'Leary only adding her vocal to an existing backing track, which could have feasibly been done in one day, Beam says that Dart Records alleged that the single had been recorded for Polydor while O'Leary was still under their contract. According to Beam, Dart won the case.[18][19]
In the end, Polydor pressed and distributed two identical versions of the "Shoes" single in August 1975: one had a Dart label (although in the Polydor format),[20] and the other had a regular Polydor label.[21] Both releases had the same catalogue number, 2066 652, and the same picture sleeve, which used the logos of both labels.[22]
Sales were combined for chart purposes, and despite the record's legal troubles, "Shoes" did have some success, especially in South Africa, where it reached #6 in January 1976[23] "Shoes" was on the playlist of BBC Radio 1 and reached #43 in the UK in October 1975.[24] That same month, in the US it reached #92 on the Hot 100.
"Shoes" was included on the 1975 Ronco compilation 20 Blazing Bullets[25] and on the 1976 Polydor compilation Super Disco,[26] also released as 20 Original Top Hits.[27]
[edit] Cult classic
"Shoes" is included on all three of the Reparata and the Delrons "Best of" compilations, despite being a solo single that was recorded some years after the group's other material. Until becoming available again on the compilations in the 2000s, and via music- and video-sharing websites, it had rarely been heard in the media since its release.
Consequently, comments about the record on websites and blogs show that it had become something of a cult in the decades since its original release, with an unusual sound that had stuck in people's minds for over 30 years, sometimes without them knowing the identity of the song or singer. People from a range of countries comment that although they had not heard the song in many years, they remembered the tune or a specific lyric, and went searching for it online.[28][29][30][31].
The record's cult status was confirmed when, in a 1989 interview with the NME, the singer Morrissey listed "Shoes" as one of his 14 favourite "Singles to be Cremated With".[9] "Shoes" was the most recent record on Morrissey's list by some five years, with all the others dating from between 1959 and 1970. When Morrissey appeared on the Desert Island Discs radio programme in 2009 and chose his eight favourite records, neither "Shoes" nor any of his other favourites from the 1989 NME interview were included.[32][33]. However Johnny Marr, Morrissey's bandmate in The Smiths, has been quoted as confirming that both men were fans of the record[34], and the it has been suggested that the introduction to their 1987 song "A Rush and a Push and This Land is Ours" is a homage to the intro to "Shoes".
[edit] Other recordings
After the original 1973 version of "Shoes" by Felix Harp, the German group Love Generation recorded the song, retitled "Johnny and Louise (She Didn't Forget Her Shoes)", and it was released as a single in 1974.[35][36] In the same year, the British folk group The (New) Settlers released a version on York Records as YR218 with a different title again, "She Didn't Forget Her Shoes".[37]
After Reparata's version, in 1976 a French language version of the song, called "Le Mariage" was recorded by Sylvie Vartan.[38]
In 2011, the Greek group Trifono added their own lyrics to Eric Beam's music, calling the song "I Agapi Zei" ("Love Lives").[39]
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=59&release=4668>
- ^ Spectropop Reviews 2005
- ^ http://sweetestkitty.tumblr.com/post/16693256102/years-later-reparata-left-the-delrons-in-the
- ^ http://sweetestkitty.tumblr.com/post/16693256102/years-later-reparata-left-the-delrons-in-the
- ^ http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/reparata-and-the-delrons?before=1310361218
- ^ http://www.chachacharming.com/article.php?id=9&pg=2>
- ^ http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Frontrow/2301/reparata.html&date=2009-10-25+10:51:53
- ^ <http://blow-up-doll.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_archive.html
- ^ a b http://www.morrissey-solo.com/article.pl?sid=05/09/05/1613253 Morrissey-solo | Morrissey's "Singles To Be Cremated With" download (list from NME, 1989)
- ^ Yahoo! Groups
- ^ The Blue In The Air: REPARATA: Shoes
- ^ http://badcatrecords.com/BadCat/FELIXharp.htm
- ^ http://www.45cat.com/record/sit5013
- ^ Interview with Mary O'Leary, Lost and Found, WMBR-FM/88.1, 15 November 2005
- ^ Cha Cha Charming magazine
- ^ Mick Patrick, booklet in 2005 Ace Records Best of compilation
- ^ http://finance.idaho.gov/PR/Archive/1997/mspco.pdf
- ^ http://badcatrecords.com/BadCat/FELIXharp.htm
- ^ http://feeds.feedburner.com/Dwp
- ^ http://www.7tt77.co.uk/DART.html
- ^ http://www.45cat.com/record/2066562
- ^ http://musikkurier.blogspot.com/2011/04/reparata-shoes.html
- ^ .South African Rock Lists Website - SA Charts 1969 - 1989 Songs (S)
- ^ Chart Stats - Reparata - Shoes
- ^ http://www.discogs.com/Various-20-Blazing-Bullets/release/1297083
- ^ http://lescharts.com/showitem.asp?titel=Super+Disco&cat=a
- ^ http://australian-charts.com/showitem.asp?interpret=Reparata&titel=Shoes&cat=s
- ^ http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BYXX_QeRj-o
- ^ http://www.dutchcharts.nl/showitem.asp?interpret=Reparata&titel=Shoes&cat=s
- ^ http://wwwtheothersideofparis.blogspot.com/2009/11/musical-monday-reparata.html
- ^ http://eyebite.tv/Video/video/1cDAdbWmWkI/Reparata-SHOES.html
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/29/morrissey-desert-island-discs
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/d8176a1c#b00p068y
- ^ http://www.passionsjustlikemine.com/influence-music.htm
- ^ http://www.45cat.com/rec ord/ua35709a
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C18Ms50htV8
- ^ http://www.45cat.com/record/yr218
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLWewUqlp9w
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ddg18IcJE
[edit] External links
- Full recordings of "Shoes" on YouTube and MySpace Videos
