LaVern Baker: Saved (1961) ... plus

LaVern Baker was one of the sexiest divas gracing the mid-'50s rock & roll circuit, boasting a brashly seductive vocal delivery tailor-made for belting the catchy novelties 'Tweedlee Dee,' 'Bop-Ting-a-Ling,' and 'Tra La La' for Atlantic Records during rock's first wave of prominence. Born Delores Williams, she was singing at the Club DeLisa on Chicago's south side at age 17, decked out in raggedy attire and billed as "Little Miss Sharecropper". She changed her name briefly to Bea Baker when recording for Okeh in 1951 with Maurice King's Wolverines, then settled on the first name of LaVern when she joined Todd Rhodes' band as featured vocalist in 1952. LaVern signed with Atlantic as a solo in 1953, debuting with the incendiary 'Soul on Fire.' The coy, Latin-tempo 'Tweedlee Dee' was a smash in 1955 on both the R&B and pop charts, although her impact on the latter was blunted when squeaky-clean Georgia Gibbs covered it for Mercury. An infuriated Baker filed suit over the whitewashing, but she lost. By that time, though, her star had ascended: Baker's 'Bop-Ting-A-Ling,' 'Play It Fair,' 'Still,' and the rocking 'Jim Dandy' all vaulted into the R&B Top Ten over the next couple of years. Her Atlantic records remained popular throughout the decade: she hit big in 1958 with the ballad 'I Cried a Tear,' adopted a pseudo-sanctified bellow for the rousing Leiber & Stoller-penned gospel sendup 'Saved' in 1960, and cut two more albums before leaving Atlantic in 1964. I included here the first, also titled Saved, from 1961, which consisted basically on early-'60s jazz, pop-tinged soul and R&B material. There was an interesting crew of guest stars on these sessions, among them Phil Spector on guitar, Sticks Evans on bass drums, and Taft Jordan on trumpet. Baker had a hit with a single from some earlier sessions, 'You're the Boss', with Jimmy Ricks. I added this song as a bonus track, along with six more which where released on a 1997 cd reissue by Sequel Records, the only one existing of this album, as far as I know. All these songs where recorded between 1959 and 1962 and include 'Bumble Bee', 'Shake a Hand', 'Shadows of Love' and 'Hey Memphis'. http://www.allmusic.com/

a

LaVern Baker performing 'Jim Dandy Got Married':

a