Fittingly, a week in the blog which has focused largely on distinctive, female vocalists from Sibylle Baier, through Binky Shapiro, Vashti Bunyan, Jane Weaver and Nico we end up wending our way to Evie Sands. Singer and songwriter. Just what the ultimate music obsessive is always looking for. A soulful, brassy, lived in voice. A beautiful, incredibly expressive face. And kudos. For uncovering something a little bit more obscure. A cult.
I count myself among this number of incurable obsessives of course and point to the existence and archive of this blog as testimony of my right to be part of this club. We spend half of our lives searching through stacks of records in dusty shops,hoping to chance upon the likes of this. Not following the well trodden path with Dusty Springfield, Janis Joplin or Grace Slick. Great though they all are, they're ultimately just too well known and mainstream for us, we're really looking for something hidden from sight. We're all really looking to chance upon someone like Evie Sands.
Evie's probably best known originally for Take Me For a Little While, a classic slice of early sixties girl band sound. Then there's the song posted above, I Can't Let Go, from 1965 which inexcusably was not the huge national hit it surely should have been. The Hollies had success with it a while later but their version is not a patch on hers. Sands had a long running career association with mighty American songwriter and producer Chip Taylor and between them they produced a series of beautiful and timeless recording in the sixties and early seventies.
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Leading to this, in 1969 which is surely her pop masterpiece. Another of Taylor's songs, much covered, originally by The Troggs, but also by the Liverpool Five and American Breed, but this is the version the world was waiting to hear. #53 in the American Billboard chart that year but a much more significant and slow burning local hit. And a classic.
Rediscovered in the early nineties by a bunch of British music obsessives. I wasn't aware of her until last night when Bobby Gillespie, the ultimate Rock and Roll librarian led me here with his online recommendation. Bobby knows! Evie's records are pure drops of sixties and seventies perfection and as good a way as any for a lazy Sunday morning to kick in.
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