Baby’s In Black – Danny Ross
Recorded on June 6, 2010, original version recorded on August 11, 1964.
Danny Ross: Vocals
Marcia Woods: Flute, Clarinet
Holly “Awareness” Howard: Bassoon
Roger Greenawalt: Ukulele
Produced by Roger Greenawalt at Shabby Road Studio in Brooklyn, NY
About the Song
Give me a story that starts with a corpse and I’ll show you a cool track.
Baby’s In Black. An ominous title that stinks of death. Who’s dead?
The Beatles are a little paltry with their fictional violence. Not enough bodies for my taste. Most horribly the violence surrounding The Beatles was all too realistic.
Baby’s in Black ,like many early Beatle songs, is pure White Magic.
The key magical ingredient was Lennon and McCartney singing in harmony. It’s staggering. Such a good sound. No wonder an entire planet swooned in unison. Vocally deeply indebted to the under rated Everly Brothers, Baby’s In Black is also an outlier, a bit of a freak.
Firstly is it’s unusual meter, 12/8. That’s a triple meter, a sort of waltz to you civilians out there. The Beatles did very few songs in three. Celtic music is very triply; it gives this song a sexy complexity. You have a lilting rhythm with a spiky country blues overlay and morbid Goth Girl lyrics. It’s a totally unique construct. They never did anything remotely like this before or after. Another undeveloped innovation from their embarrassment of riches.
John’s right hand is ferocious. It is a selfless necessity engine of solidity. He’s a great rhythm guitarist. The mix, that is to say the balance between the sonic elements, is good. Lennon’s acoustic guitar blends fuzzily with Ringo’s cymbals, they are playing together, but with different rhythmic emphasis. It grooves like mad.
The fabulous brotherly vocals fly confidently over this solid foundation. John is very much the big brother. McCartney’s bassline is borderline bratty, it’s right on the line of doing it’s duty/drawing unnecessary attention to itself. The gooey a sweet spot that Paul usually manages to instinctively arrive at melodically is right there in his basslines too, they are uniquely singable. Their structure is strong. Bass has to be. Your bass player had better be conformist by nature, or your band is going to be in serious trouble. Ringo and Paul are a good team, temperamentally.
Darlings we haven’t even gotten to the best part of Baby’s In Black. The wicked, wicked narrative.
It’s easy to see from a 2010 perspective that Baby’s In Black is a teenage vampire movie.
It is sung from the point of view of a 200 -year old vampire stuck in a perfect teenage boy body. Very pale. He has unfortunately been compelled to feed on the local sheriff, who is also the father of the prettiest mortal teenage girl in town. The girl, understandably, is grief stricken. She’s not ready to date yet. That will take a sequel.
I actually categorize this as one of John’s Thug Life songs. Lennon was rough, he was a mean drunk, he had a temper. My interpretation is that Lennon has murdered this chick’s boyfriend in a gang fight. She’s the Natalie Wood from the enemy gang character. It doesn’t compute to Lennon that Natalie Wood would be extremely unlikely to date you if you had just murdered Robert Wagner. To his mind, she’s just being selfish and cruel in her grief.
The New Improved Roger version of Baby’s In Black features the awesome vocals of Danny Ross. I met Danny at SXSW this year, he showed up at The Beatles Complete On Ukulele as a guest vocalist. He blew me away, he has a fantastic instrument and knows what to do with it. Danny is a strong arranger, and we decided to go with woodwinds and uke only as our restricted palette. Two teenage virgins, Holly and Marcia, play the flute, bassoon, and clarinet. Our version is from Bella’s point of view.