One of my own all time favourite 45s in my record collection is the one pictured above, Rico and The Ravens with their tremendous and monophonic killer 'Don't You Know b/w In My Heart' on Autumn Records & (2nd pressing) on Rally Records.Rico and The Ravens were a doo-wop vocal group based in the Philadelphia region during the early 60s, I unfortunately have no idea what year the 45 was released but at a guess I'd say it was around 1963/64??? I believe this was the bands lone recording too.
Doo-wop is one of my favourite musical genres and feel it is totally neglected and also heavily underrated. I love that the music is tragically honest and brutally true with regards to emotions, feelings and soul.
If American 60s garage group music for me represents the frustration, the moodiness and despair of 60s teen-hood, then doo-wop is the other side of the coin, it is the tender, the beautiful and dream-like aspect of being young in the 60s and best of all being young and in love.
This record ranks high up there in my opinion, it is a totally genius, raw sounding doo-wop record and in my mind I'd consider it to possibly be one of the best doo-wop records in existence, it certainly is one of my favourite records ever!!!
The song begins with heart-pumping ferocity, frantic guitar interjected bluesy licks added in part with bombastic drumming, the production of the record has the ultimate perfect recording sound and to top it off the song is complete with an amazing falsetto vocal by young Rico who sings amazingly throughout.
Every word of this song is sung like it's meant, teenage lust and tragedy is fully committed to vinyl with every ounce of emotion a teenage boy could ever feel in relation to love, yearning, desperation and desire.
Lyrics include some marvelous thought provoking genius such as "Don't you know? that I love you so? Baby can't you see that I need you??" .... They are simple words, but they are sung in such a manner whereby the vocal makes the hair particles on your arms stand-on-end and affect you in the most profound of ways.
I love this track, It means a lot to me in my personal life, I guess if I ever get married (doubtful I will anytime soon) this track will be the one which gets played when the knot is finally tied.
The B-side 'In My Heart' is a pretty cool doo-wop/R&B standard and I do dig it too, but this blog post is mainly about the genius of the flip side 'Don't You Know'.
Therefore ... have a listen below to this fantastic piece of superb genius from Philly and decide for yourself...
Thanks
Paul
I used to follow rico and the ravens to many venues on the phila. mainline. they were one of my favorite groups. saw them in philly at a college (mabye philly college of arts) one of the best shows at the time. i found out that rico was from pottstown, pa and jimmie faust the guitar player was from my hometown of paoli, pa. i followed them for several shows. they were more in the 1966 to 1968 time period
ReplyDeleteHey does anyone have a picture
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