Shoe-less In America Part One: Sandie Shaw

SANDIE SHAW-(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me/Don't You Know U.S. Reprise 0320 1964

Dangenham, Eseex's most famous Ford factory worker Sandie Shaw (real name Sandra Goodrich) was launched on America in November 1964 with her second British single, "There's Always Something There To Remind Me" (U.K. release Pye 7N 15704 two months earlier) a good two decades before it was bludgeoned to death with synths by Naked Eyes on America radio every five seconds in the 80's. It's nothing on the Lou Johnson version which this pretty much attempts to replicate right down to the tandem horns and backing female vocals (a fact I was not aware of this until the mid 90's when I read an interview in a fanzine with an original 60's British mod who slagged off his girlfriend back then for liking this and topping her up by playing her the Lou Johnson 45) .

Sandie Shaw will always be a double edged sword for me.  There are times where her voice catches me in the wrong way and sounds like she's shrieking and others where I'm more interested in the arrangements/production . Regardless I will always have a place in my heart for this song, it was the first track I'd ever heard by her on this ultra dodgy PRT records double LP in the mid 80's called "Purple Hearts From Pastures Gone" when I was pretty much into anything made in the U.K. in the mid 60's and okay though as indicated earlier it's not a patch on the Lou Johnson version it's still enjoyable. The B-side "Don't You Know" has all the production trappings of a mid 60's Dionne Warwick/Burt Bacharach record, but it does absolutely zip for me as it's utterly unmemorable.

For foot fetishists only.  One of my fave Sandie Shaw pics.

Sandie's 60's material is pretty much everywhere as Castle communications throws her catalog (along with that of The Kinks, Searchers, Foundations and Bowie's three Pye 45's) at anything in the hopes that it will stick to it. I've been long served by the two CD compilation "The '64-'67 Complete Sandie Shaw" for the better part of two decades now.

 

 Hear "Don't You Know":

http://youtu.be/ZV55mxXKQ6U

Eye candy from a 60's Dutch teen magazine, anorexia!