The Jaynetts (moved from MySpace thread)

[NormanD]

So lets see, who else is there.....The Jaynettes? That would be odd

No, The Jaynetts aren't on MySpace, but an Ace girl group compilation coming out shortly features a few of their songs. And here's a pic so we can pretend they've got their own page

Does anyone know what "Sally Go Round The Roses" is meant to be about? Various accounts suggest the stages of a mental breakdown, a lesbian love-affair gone awry, a religious experience, a drug influenced haze, or simply a dance tune.....

[Adam Blake]

"Sally Go Round The Roses" by The Jaynetts is one of my favourite records. I was very happy to find an original US 45 of it. On the 'B' side is an instrumental version but if you listen really hard you can hear the vocal track "bleeding" through onto the instrumental track. This makes a creepy record even creepier! I wonder if they'll put that on the Ace comp. I got another of their records but it was not in the same league.

Apparently, it was also Andy Warhol's favourite record and in 1963-64 he used to have it on permanent repeat at The Factory while he was working. Perhaps fearful that their cool might be in danger, his associates asked him: "Hey Andy, when're you gonna change the record?".
"When I understand it", was the Warholian response.

Presumably Andy took it off at some point - perhaps in early '65 in order to allow the Velvet Underground to plug their amplifiers in. Maybe he understood it by then, but he's dead and he ain't tellin'...

[Des]

Is that the same song Tim Buckley does a version of on Sefronia?

[Ted]

Is that the same song Tim Buckley does a version of on Sefronia?

It is. Not nearly as good as the Jaynettes version. Sometimes Tim Buckley can just sound too much like himself. Mannered is the word, i think.

It's one of my favorite scratchy 45s too.

Cheers
TW

[Adam Blake]

Pentangle did a pretty creditable folkie version on "Basket Of Light" - but still no match for the original.

[Charlie]

"Sally Go Round The Roses" by The Jaynetts is one of my favourite records. .

Maybe this record is the litmus test of this forum - I never met anybody as nuts about it as I am, but here it emerges that several of you are too.

It was produced by Abner Spector, which for a while I took to be a pseudonym of Phil, although it sounds nothing like his records. Where Phil had so many musicians in the studio, you couldn't distinguish one from another, Abner builds this one round the sound of the piano, played by a musician I used to know the name of but have momentarily forgotten. I probably identified him in Sound of the City, but I'm too lazy to go and get it right now.

There was a Californian group in the early 1970s called Joy of Cooking, for whom I held great hopes that were never quite fulfilled. They reminded me of 'Sally' on their first album and then actually did a version of the song on their second. Good, but nobody could ever capture the strangely menacing quality of the Jaynetts, mostly created by the echo, I think.

The actual message is straightforward enough - Sally's boyfriend is two-timing her. What the record manages to do is convey how sickening that discovery can be.

Oh Sally don't you go, don't you go down town
Saddest thing in the whole wide world, see your baby with another girl

[Ted]

I probably identified him in Sound of the City, but I'm too lazy to go and get it right now.

Artie Butler who (it says here) went on to arrange the Shangri-Las hits on Red Bird records.

Cheers
TW

[Charlie]

Artie Butler who (it says here) went on to arrange the Shangri-Las hits on Red Bird records.

Exactly, thanks Ted

Artie was New York's piano man of the time and played on Tim Hardin's records among countless others

[Adam Blake]

Also, Grace Slick's Great Society did a version of it, but again, no match for the Jaynetts. Yes, it's about a bunch of girls telling their friend that her boyfriend is two-timing her, but what are "The Roses"? Are they telling her to avoid a particular place? The truth is, I don't want the mystery solved.

It's like a rock'n'roll version of the mystery of "She Moves Through The Fair". What happens to HER? Why does she die after moving through the fair, with just one star awake, as the swans of the evening move over the lake? And then her ghost appears to her lover that night to re-affirm: "It will not be long, love, till our wedding day".... What does that mean? That he's going to die too? Discovering that your betrothed is dead when she comes to you as a momento mori?

Brrrrrrrr!!!!!

[Dayna]

I've always liked that song a lot.

Sally Go Round The Roses

[Con Murphy]

Also, Grace Slick's Great Society did a version of it, but again, no match for the Jaynetts. Yes, it's about a bunch of girls telling their friend that her boyfriend is two-timing her, but what are "The Roses"?

...and what's the secret they won't know? Is being two-timed that shameful, or is it something else? Maybe it's just the delivery and our ingrained reaction to the notion of roses and going round (ie ring a ring o' roses), but there is something spooky about the song.

[garth cartwright]

Yes, an absolute classic! Dave Marsh, in his book on 45s The Heart Of Rock & Soul calls it the "spookiest and most exotic of all girl group discs." Further info he adds is that pianist Artie Butler - a Lieber/Stoller understudy - played everything on the record but the guitar.

I can see why Warhol and Slick loved it cos it has a spaced out feel that could be taken to represent the opiate experience.

[NormanD]

...he adds is that pianist Artie Butler - a Lieber/Stoller understudy - played everything on the record but the guitar.

I've read that the drummer is Buddy Miles, later of Express and Band Of Gypsies fame. Mind you, one can't trust all that's posted on t'interweb. The words for this song are consistently wrong, every site you look at.

[NormanD]

Here's a message I recently received from Artie Butler, which gives the background to "Sally....":

Hi Norm D,

I just read your inquiry as to who played the drums on "Sally Go Round The Roses." It was me.

I often get a lot of e-mail and questions about the making of the record, so here is a reprint of an article from some music magazine of an interview that I gave. I hope this gives you and some others some answers to the questions about "Sally Go 'Round The Roses" and it's "MYSTERIES".

Artie Butler

Since I made the record, I have heard so many strange tales about it. Everything from secret messages from Saturn in the lyric, ghosts etc.

There was nothing wrong with the equipment in the studio. I was going for a very different sound. I recorded in mono one instrument at a time. I played all of the instruments except the guitars. Al Gorgoni played that. Each time I added another layer, I went to another tape machine. I used 2 Ampex 350 tape machines @ 7 1/2 IPS. I kept going from one machine to the other and changed the EQ and the reverb (echo .. as we called it back then in the Jurassic recording period) on each layer to give it the strange sound. Each time I added another layer, the sound kept getting more distant sounding due to the tape hiss. That is why I changed the EQ and the reverb on each layer. It let the new layer "speak" over the previous layer.

There was not much of a song to begin with, so I felt I had to create something that would make it it's own thing. I had this sound in my mind before I started.

The studio was called Broadway Recording Studios. It was located in the Ed Sullivan Theater building. The same building that David Letterman does his show in. The address was 1697 Broadway, located between 53rd and 54th street. How could I forget that stuff.

I remember the guy who asked me to do it for him hated it and screamed that I wasted his money. He said I would never work again and all of that kind of crap that everyone new has to hear at least once. I told him I felt he was wrong, and that he should listen to it for a few days. I tried to tell him that it was a different kind of sounding record, and that the unique quality was what made it work. He thought I was a moron.

I brought the record to Leiber & Stoller. They went crazy over it and offered to buy it from him and give him back all of his money. When I told him that Leiber & Stoller loved it, he had different thoughts about it. Soon after the record became a hit, I started getting calls to work for other people. The guy never paid me any money for making the record, but he did give me an arrangers credit. In retrospect, I did get paid. I have been working ever since. He asked me to complete the "Sally" album for him, but I told him he would have to pay me for the record which was already a hit, before I would work for him again. He decided not to give me any money and actually laughed in my face. I have not heard about anything that he has done after that record. He actually had people calling me to work for him using a different name.

I guess everyone who starts out in the business gets screwed once or twice in the beginning of their career. In all of my years of being in the music business, that was the only time I took a hit and never got paid. I have been asked to make another updated version of it a few times. However I never tried. I did not want to piss off the ghosts on Saturn. I hope this explains the record to you. To be real honest when I go to New York and drive or walk past the building, I do get a little sentimental.

How could I not?

Artie Butler - 1992 - interview

(Thanks to www.spectrop.com the best music site around for all this kind of info)

[Charlie]

I was going for a very different sound. I recorded in mono one instrument at a time.

Thanks for this Norman. I assume the man who never paid Artie was Abner Spector, credited as producer on the record although what Artie did should have entitled him to be named producer.

The technique of overlaying each additional instrument, copying from one tape machine to another, was pioneered by Les Paul (yes, the guitar man) and carried on by many others including Lee Hazelwood on Duane Eddy's records and Phil Spector on The Teddy Bears' 'To Know Him is to Love Him'.

Each generation of tape lost the impact of what was there before, and it required the producer to record some things really loud on the early stages, so they would still be heard four or five generations later. It's a bit like what happens if you copy photographs - the blacks and whites start to go grey.