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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Walk Away Renee - diffs

The Left Banke's original, slightly baroque version:





Below, the late, great Levi Stubbs howls it out with the Four Tops. Think this is mostly mimed but it's hard to tell if Levi is live on the mic or not (Mowtown would often use a trick of re-recording the lead vocal to give it a live feel whenever their performers where going on a live TV show).

It is quite funny that none of them can do any kind of dance move, except Larry Payton (the chubby bass singer on the right).

Anyhoo, Abdul Faqir (on the left here) is the only one left alive from this great group.  Levi died after a long battle with throat cancer (don't smoke kids!);  Lawrence Peyton died from liver disease. Obie Benson died recently also - he had written What's going on (which became Marvin Gaye's greatest classic) after being horrified when witnessing hippie kids getting ruthlessly beaten by the police on Sunset Strip in L.A. in the 60's.

Obie tried to give the tune to people like Joan Baez, but with no success, until Marvin took it in the early 70's and broke the Mowtown mould forever.

2 comments:

  1. OMG terrible ! lol the best version i have heared so far is the one with Vonda Shepared :) but nice blog, dont think you will find my blog as your type lol :P

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  2. Thanks for the comment Music Lover. I guess that different people like different kinds of music!

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