My Baby Loves Lovin'

Elton John, flamboyant even then.

Every musician, no matter how famous they may become, has humble beginnings. Most never escape them, slogging away for decades in taverns and other venues of varying quality around the world. If they're lucky, connected and very good at what they do, they'll get the chance to play on a recording as hired help. Some musicians have made their career of exactly this; forsaking the charms of fame, which most studio players consider overrated anyway. There are hundreds of skilled players who've done plenty of studio work prior to their own name becoming better known by the public. Leon Russell and Glen Campbell are two that you may know. But then, there's the case of one Reggie Dwight, whom you know as Sir Elton John.

As late as 1970, Elton helped pay the rent and gain studio expertise as a session vocalist and piano player by doing sessions for British budget records that "re-created" the sound of current hit singles; a precursor to the legendary K-Tel collections in America, which typically presented 20 truncated versions of current pop singles, but at least those were done by the original artists. In these copycat recordings, Elton took on such vintage AM pop mothballs as Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime", "Up Around the Bend" by CCR, Badfinger's "Come & Get It", "Yellow River" by Christie and oddly, Nina Simone's classic, "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", along with a few stray songs that were hits only in the UK.

Tony Burrows

Of important note is that Elton was most often employed by varying assemblies of the songwriting and producing trio of Tony Macaulay, Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway. By 1970, Elton had anonymously lent his vocal and keyboard talents to several collections of faux hits. This production group also periodically employed a popular session vocalist named Tony Burrows, who had the distinction of performing the lead vocal on no less than 5 legitimate worldwide hit records by otherwise fictional bands, such as Brotherhood of Man ('United We Stand'), First Class ('Beach Baby') and Edison Lighthouse ('Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes'). These groups existed in name only. Session musicians would appear as the group for TV appearances. We'll have more on Mr. Burrows in a bit.

Elton John's contributions to these albums have been assembled in a CD release intended for budget bins. There are at least 4 different packagings of this music that I've seen. The album cover shown here is the most common and most representative of what the original cheap-o record albums looked like. This reissue, complete with scholarly liner notes, aspires to do nothing more than preserve this footnote in the budding superstar's career, and is of interest mostly to completists and novelty seekers like myself. At the time they were made, Elton, like any other employee, was paid his fee for doing the recording and that was that, so I am certain that Elton holds no rights whatsoever to these recordings or he likely would have squashed the release of this compilation.

These records were never intended to be taken seriously as artistic statements. They were made to squeeze a few quick pounds from casual, unsuspecting pop fans. Musically, for his part, Elton plays it straight; his vocal chops proved to have the necessary versatility and anonymity required of such projects. But, as far as unintentionally funny moments go, there are many. So much so, that it was difficult to pick just one song to feature.

Out of all the tracks on the album, the one that gives the best flavor of the time and what these knockoff records were about is the remake of "My Baby Loves Lovin'", a 1970 hit for the group, White Plains. I think you'll find that Elton's vocal on this track is unmistakably him. Enjoy!

The 1970 UK single picture sleeve.

The original version of the song was written by the afore mentioned Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway. It was recorded on 26 October 1969, and released on 9 January 1970 on the Decca imprint, Deram Records. A fellow you may have heard of named Tony Burrows performed the lead vocal for the single by the nonexistent White Plains, as was becoming his vocational habit. Why the production team thought it was necessary to re-cut a song that they already owned makes little sense, unless the motivation was either publishing money or solely to keep in line with the other retreads on those knockoff albums.

At any rate, here is the Tony Burrows-led faux band, White Plains with "My Baby Loves Lovin'". I think you'll agree it's a pop song very much of its time, but it does have an exuberance that is rarely heard today. Enjoy!

So where can one find the Elton John recordings? Well, there's 3 versions listed at Amazon. If you are so prone, you might score one of the Laserlight editions by digging in the bargain bins at your local big box store, as that was their intended destination anyway. The White Plains single is nicely remastered on the exponentially great series from Rhino Records, "Super Hits of the '70s: Have a Nice Day"; a set of at least 25 CD's released back in the early 90's. There was a box set that had the entire series in it, but that is now very rare and very spendy. It's much cheaper to cherry pick used copies individually.