"Doo Wah Diddy"
(Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich)
recorded in 1963
released in England on Sequel CD 713 in 1994

Why did it take thirty years for Jeff and Ellie's recording of Manfred Mann's international smash to see the light of day? Well, therein lies a tale . . . in December of 1963, they went into the studio with Brenda Reid and The Exciters and produced the original version of "Doo Wah Diddy". United Artists Records put it out as a single, and then promptly dropped the ball; they didn't promote it worth a damn, and it died on both the pop and R & B charts. Understandably, Jeff and Ellie felt robbed. They knew it should've been a hit. In fact, they believed in the song so much they decided to cut it themselves and release it as a Raindrops single. Just as they were finishing it up, Ellie got a call from Jerry Leiber. "Take a chill pill, sweet thing," he told her (a bit of creative license here)! "This British group, Manfred Mann, has just recorded 'Doo Wah Diddy', and you bet your last money it's gonna be a stone smash, honey!" And so it was! But in the aftermath, The Raindrops' version was thrown in a tape vault to languish for three decades. When it was finally issued on a British CD in 1994, I scrambled to get a copy. You'd best believe that once I heard it, I didn't want to know from the Manfred Mann version any more. This cut kicks ass and takes names! Listen up for the original lyrics: There he was/Just a-walkin' down the street/Singin' Doo Wah Diddy/Diddy DOWN/Diddy DOO/Poppin' his fingers/And shufflin' his feet/Singin' DOO Wah Diddy/Diddy DOWN Diddy DOO/He looked good/He looked fine/He looked good/He looked fine/And I nearly lost my mind/Before I knew it/He was walkin' next to ME/Singin' Doo Wah Diddy/Diddy DOWN/Diddy DOO/He took my hand/Just as natural as could be/Singin' Doo Wah Diddy/Diddy DOWN/Diddy DOO/We walked on/To my door/We walked on/To my door/And he STAYED a little more.* A fierce garage rock arrangement and Ellie Greenwich's sassy vocalizing make this one of my all-time favorite records. Can't get enough of it!

On the soundtrack album for Leader Of The Pack, the 1985 Broadway musical based on Ellie Greenwich's life, you hear a few snatches of the intro to "Let's Go Together", but the song is never identified. To hear it in its entirety, you'll have to track down this single, and it's well worth the effort. The song is tailor-made for hummin' and finger-poppin' . . . dig that stuttering piano, maple syrup harmony and honking Artie Kaplan saxophone! The big bad drums are still there, but Jeff and Ellie's production style has become a bit more polished. On the flipside is "You Got What I Like", a solo Greenwich composition. On top of a stumbling beat, Ellie coos I got you where I want you/I want you where I got you/I got you where I want you/Every night while Jeff Barry BOW-WOW-WOWs happily in the background. Tsk, tsk . . . where are those stickers labeled WARNING: SEXUAL CONTENT when we need 'em? Make no mistake, this is a great little bubble gum rocker, but should there be impressionable youngsters around while you're listening to it, clamp your hands over their virginal ears to guard against moral decay!

Talk about a bitchin' two-sider . . . The Raindrops' final waxing of 1964 finds Miss Ellie taking a more aggressive stance with her men. Whereas on earlier songs, she played the role of a lovestruck chick ripe for the plucking by any handsome high school Romeo who happened along, here we see a girl who's been around the block once or twice. Now she understands what BUTTHEADS menfolk can be, and she's not down with it any more, see? I've only got one more tear and then I'll be dry, she sniffs, wiping streaks of mascara from her face. I've only got one more tear/And baby, good-bye/Tell one more lie/Make me cry/By the time it hits the floor/I'll be gone/Won't be back no more/I'll just be gone, gone, gone, gone, yeah-yeah-YEAH.* You GO, honey! "One More Tear" is equal parts Ray Charles' "Hit The Road, Jack" and The Ikettes "Gong Gong Song", crossed with a smidgen of Nancy Sinatras "How Does That Grab You, Darlin?" It's a tasty mix! Flip it over, and you find a conventional boy-crazy number called "Another Boy Like Mine", but what the lyrics lack in assertiveness is made up for by the hook-laden production. This record has beats workin' everywhere! Hands clap, rhythm guitars jangle, the bass busts a move, the horns get righteous, and Jeff and Ellie provide crazy cool scat vocals throughout. "Another Boy Like Mine" was also cut by The Dixie Cups for their Chapel Of Love album. While their rendition jives along to a hip-swingin' New Orleans-flavored arrangement, The Raindrops' high energy version gets my nod every time I compare the two. In fact, this is my favorite Raindrops single.

Jeff and Ellie kept it in the groove for their final Raindrops single, which, like lots of other records from1965, shows a marked Motown influence. They really pulled out the stops for this production. They even got Artie Butler to write horn charts for a full brass section! When you hear that lethal drum intro slide into a crackerjack hand clapping groove, you know it ain't nothin' but a party. The strong gospel flavor of this 1957 Roy Hamilton number makes "That Boy John" sound like a funeral march in comparison, and the lively call-and-response vocal pattern is an excellent showcase for Ellie Greenwich's lead and background voices. So maybe the flipside is a forgettable instrumental (Miss Ellie had cut a vocal version of "My Mama Don't Like Him" a couple of years earlier under the name Kellie Douglas), but that hardly matters when you have a topside good enough to rock the house for hours on end. My copy of "Don't Let Go" is a white label DJ pressing, and I doubt it ever got past that stage. All the other Raindrops singles registered on the charts, and this one surely would have, too, if only it had been made available in sufficient quantities. But The Raindrops had already called it quits. Most likely, Jeff and Ellie decided to concentrate on their songwriting and limit their recording activities to singing demos. They'd placed an unprecedented number of songs with other acts in 1964, and over a dozen had landed on the charts. The royalties were rolling in steadily now, and they no longer had to "sing for their supper", so to speak! Even so, they'd both cut solo singles well into the early '70s, and in 1967, they'd even give the group thing one last try with a lone Atco Records 45 issued under the name The Meantime . . .

Jeff and Ellie are divorced now, and working on mostly separate endeavors. However, theyre still working in tandem to generate studio magic for their discovery Neil Diamond, whose career has taken off like a rocket. Ellies voice is still a saleable commodity (shell soon score her first hit solo single with the Bob Crewe-produced "I Want You To Be My Baby"), so the duo contrive to present it in an updated setting. The topside of this rare single reflects the bubblegum rock sensibility that Jeff Barry has recently embraced in his work with The Monkees. Its production mixes in a bit of psychedelia, too, but not so much that melody is sacrificed. Miss Ellie begins the song in an uncharacteristically down mood; when she declares its a Friday kind of Monday/everything is fine, we dont readily believe her. Urged along by surging strings, punchy horns, Jeffs insistent drumbeat, and her own overdubbed chant of umlaut umlaut (scat singing gone Germanic), her voice gradually becomes more animated. By the fadeout, shes definitely belting the lyric with conviction, but this record takes a little too much time to warm up. Not so the flipside! "Right Back Where I Started From" is the performance that proves Ellie Greenwich could sink her pearly whites into a blues rocker and give Janis Joplin a run for her money. Youve heard of bra-burning? Here Miss Ellie burns up the whole lingerie department! She kicks her early 60s cuteness to the curb and bares her soul with a ferocity thats startling. You can easily imagine her pounding the floor in vexation as she shouts Im a fool, fool, fool for you, baby! Her brilliantly vampy background vocal arrangement veers straight into Ike & Tina Turner territory; its just as effective as the one she did for Aretha Franklins "Chain Of Fools." For both Jeff and Ellie, "Right Back" pointed the way to a musical future fueled by the raw power of the blues.

So there you have it . . . all the musical evidence. Songs like "What A Guy" and "The Kind Of Boy You Can't Forget" sound light years away from the musical sophistication of "Sugar, Sugar," "River-Deep, Mountain-High," "I Can Hear Music," "Keep It Confidential" and other Barry/Greenwich creations to come. Also, Jeff Barry's production style wouldn't really begin to gel until he began working with Neil Diamond in 1966. However, there are clear stylistic links that are easy to find if you look closely enough. For example, "Doo Wah Diddy" is the direct forerunner of The Archies 1968 hit "Bang-Shang-A-Lang". The former was written from a female point of view, and the latter was written from a male one, but lyrically, the two songs are basically the same. The doo-wop flavor and jazzy scat singing that permeates Raindrops singles can also be found in abundance on records by The Shangri-Las, The Dixie Cups, The Jellybeans, The Butterflys, Sam Hawkins, Connie Francis, Neil Diamond, The Monkees, The Archies, Andy Kim, Robin McNamara and many other artists Jeff and Ellie worked with. It even can be argued that the million-selling Archies were a later version of The Raindrops! There was a different lead singer and additional members, but on early Archies waxings like "You Little Angel, You", "Everything's Archie (Archie's Theme)" and "Circle Of Blue", Toni Wines singing mirrors Ellie Greenwich's flawless harmony vocals (or could that be Miss Ellie for real?) and Jeff Barry's unmistakable bass accents can clearly be heard behind Ron Dante's lead. And of course, Jeff served as producer for both groups.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case! There can be absolutely no doubt that The Raindrops did indeed lay the foundation for Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwichs success. If The Raindrops had never existed, they undoubtedly would have still been successful; but then, we wouldnt have had their wonderful Jubilee platters to enjoy, records which basically served as demos to some of their most popular and enduring songs . . . the kind of songs you cant forget!