KAY STARR – 'Comes A-Long A-Love'

While I’ve only heard this particular song a few times, Kay Starr’s “Side by Side” was one of the first songs I could sing along with as a child. Her voice had a certain sharpness about it that made it sound a bit perky and even cheeky, but altogether fun. Many of her recordings (like those of Patti Page or Mary Ford) took advantage of studio technology with double tracked vocals, so that she was singing harmony with her own lead–nothing special about it now, but it was quite novel in the early 50s.

The sense of fun here sets it apart from other early 50s number ones, many of which are just too lugubrious for their own good. I quite agree about this sounding more “modern” that most other titles from this period. What I hear in “Comes A-Long A-Love,” though, could have found a place a decade later. Perhaps it’s the sharp-edged vocal, but after listening to this, I could almost imagine a young Cilla Black singing it. It might have suited her.

The name seems to ring distant bells but I don’t recall actually hearing this tune before I started reading ‘popular’. It’s big, bright & breezy but not very substantial (a blueprint for modern pop ?) aimed squarely, I would imagine, at the dancefloor.

Marcello @ 4: Depends what you mean by Red Indian. Kay Starr is – she’s still alive, of course, like Al Martino, Jo Stafford and Eddie Fisher, which might put these early charts into some kind of perspective – three-quarters Iroquois and one quarter European, so she’s not the only full-blooded Native American to top the British charts. I haven’t made a study of which performers had Indian blood but certainly Marvin Rainwater did, and so of course did Jimi Hendrix. There’s almost certainly others.

Got time on my hands so:
Desert Island Discs Watch(Up to 11/04/11)
Vic Oliver(Comedian/Actor)1955.

The NME says: ‘”Comes” gets an invigorating vocal from Kay Starr who socks the number over with a big beat. The Mooney outfit lends able support but one background phrase is monotonous and could have been varied for better effect.’ They much preferred the b-side, Three Letters.

So farewell then Kay, who leaves us at the age of 94 today. I think that leaves Doris Day as the earliest UK Number 1 solo artist still with us.

This one’s fun, and proof that pop music could swing even before Elvis, Bill Haley, Chuck and co. The wordplay in the lyrics, the way they’re all strung together and rat-a-tatted through, jars a bit however. 6 for me.