LA Playlist: “TOWER OF STRENGTH”

“Tower of Strength” by Gene McDaniels

Expanding one’s music library is an art form of sorts.  It is not a blind amassing.  It involves a lot of tasting, keeping your ears open and being open to unfamiliarity.  This last one is particularly difficult, especially as one gets older.

With the rise of music sharing sites like Pandora, finding new ditties has never been easier.  But how do you cherry-pick with so many options?

I found the early 60′s billboard topper “Tower of Strength” by Gene McDaniels while listening to the Adam Carolla Show.  He was interviewing Phil Spector’s very young wife Rochelle.  After she went on for about 30 minutes about her husband’s innocence and how she did his awful crazy-man haircut for the trial, she finally dropped the penny: she’s a singer and has an album coming out.  Are you sitting down?  She’s awful!

Rochelle then off-handedly mentioned she played professional trombone years ago, and Adam leapt on it.  She humorlessly poo-pooed his enticing her to utilize the trombone in her album.  Adam then explained there was only one person to ever successfully use trombone in a pop song.  ”Tower of Strength.”

It’s one helluva jaunty trombone opener.  It’s a peppy, retro, mildly cheesy number about a guy too chicken shit to break up with his awful girlfriend.

It’s a really sweet find, and I highly suggest you all seek it out too.