Brenda & The Tabulations - Dry Your Eyes (1967) ...plus

Brenda and the Tabulations had an overnight success in early 1967 with the smooth, uptown ballad ‘Dry your eyes’. Like many overnight successes, Brenda Payton and the three Tabulations (Maurice Coates, co-writer with Brenda of many of their tracks, Eddie Jackson and James Rucker) never did re-achieve the same amount of success, but they did have a steady run of medium size chart hits that lasted until 1977; in all, 16 Top 50 R&B hits. This reissue of their Dionn LP Dry Your Eyes, contains all the A sides and B sides of the five 45 releases they had on Dionn in 1967, including ‘When You're Gone’, which is a bonus track, not included on the original album. Subsequent single releases on Dionn in 1968 and 1969 are not included here, though I have added two of them myself, ‘That's the Price You Have to Pay’ and ‘The Touch of You’, both from 1969. Brenda & the Tabulations later recorded chart hits for Top & Bottom, Epic, and Chocolate City. Did I mention they were from Philadelphia? I know you know, but just for the record. As for the music: what we have here is plenty of subtle, orchestrated Philly style ballads: the title track of course and, notably, a nice version of Smokey's ‘Who's Loving You’, ‘Stay Together Young Lovers’, and the LP only track ‘Oh Lord What Are You Doing To Me’. The cover of the Marvelettes' ‘Forever’, taken at a midtempo pace, may cater to northern soulies, as well as ‘Hey Boy’, which was used as a B side on no less than three 45's. The version of Gershwin's classic ‘Summertime’ is also interesting. This is the kind of work that we soul fans should be thankful for, and especially, of course, all you Brenda & the Tabulations fans out there. http://www.melingo.com/.

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