The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 19/04/11
The First Class - "Beach Baby" (1974)
Let's have some uplift here, shall we?
How is it possible that a song written by an English couple in a house in South West London and performed by a group of session musicians encapsulate the whole feeling of California sun'n'surf as well as anything produced on the West Coast a decade before?
Well, it's just one of those magical things, I suppose. The First Class were a studio outfit put together by songwriter and producer John Carter. Carter (né Shakespeare) had had hits in the sixties as both writer (for - among others - Mary Hopkin and Herman's Hermits) and performer (as The Ivy League), but concentrated more on songwriting as the seventies approached.
This was the biggest of his hits, co-written with his wife Gill in their home in East Sheen, put together in the studio with the versatile singer Tony Burrows, and released on Jonathan King's UK records in the early summer of 1974.
It's beautifully put together, from the point of the song itself (with its imagery of the heights of surferdom), in the exuberant vocals of Burrows, and in the arrangement and production, which had that densely-layered feel which evoked the whole sixties California schtick.
On that point, two small musical oddities to note: firstly, the descending horn line at about 3:05 is a direct steal from...erm...homage to Sibelius (the third movement of his Fifth Symphony, to be precise). Secondly, from about 4:35, the same horns play the first line of the melody of the Flowerpot Men's classic 1967 single Let's Go To San Francisco...which was co-written by...John Carter.
Enjoy, dude, it's tubular!
