I pray at night that you'll come back to me....

Nice to be back in New Orleans. The weather is gorgeous. I'm a happy girl.

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The original release version of "For Every Boy There's A Girl" is rarely heard. In fact, I think the only time it's been re-issued was on the Instant label LP, titled "All These Things". But isn't that a misprint? Isn't the actual song on the album the flip-side of this 45, "I've Done It Again"? Wasn't the mistake corrected on the Bandy re-issue of the comp? Or is it the other way around? I don't own either pressing, so I can't check.

Doesn't really matter. The point being that if this version of the song has been re-issued, it was 30 to 40 years ago. The only version now available is different. It's been stripped of it's gorgeous flute track.

Usually, I'm all for chucking silly overdubbed vocals and the like, but in this case the so-so backup singing was left in place and the very reason I paid attention to the 45 in the first place was taken away. It's a nice song, in fact, it's beautiful, but whoever decided to cut the flute part is an idiot. Be sure and tell 'em I said so.

This is the only Aaron Neville single released on Jack Banashak's Instant label. Given that Neville was busy recording for Parlo at the time, it makes me wonder if the song wasn't recorded earlier than it's 1967 release date would suggest. Neville recorded for Minit [owned at that time by Banashak] between 1960 and 1963 with Allen Toussaint. Perhaps Banashak was hoping to cash in on the huge success of "Tell It Like It Is" by issuing an older unreleased track?

I could be entirely wrong, but it does seem odd that a lone single by Neville showed up on a Banashak owned label, four years after the last one, with no producer/arranger credit, and a flip-side song credited to "Naomi Neville", aka Allen Toussaint.

Hope ya'll enjoy the tune....

You're a hard nut to crack...re-post/re-up

[I'm surprised at the high download numbers for my re-post of Tony Owens "I Got Soul". I guess this re-posting thing isn't as stupid as I imagined. Here's another one that got lost in the Divshare debacle.]

This record grows on me with time. The trumpet part is totally sweet.

It's the last single issued on the Parlo label before the fall of the House of Cosimo. A shocking event at the time. Cosimo Matassa went bankrupt trying to keep up with the overwhelming demand for Neville's earlier record on Parlo, Tell It Like It Is.

With Matassa's studio closed, his pressing plant shuttered, and his distribution company, Dover, gone, it suddenly became very much harder to run a small label in the city and the music business in New Orleans was never the same

Matassa's assets were seized by the IRS, Parlo closed it doors, Neville never saw a dime from his hit record....

A very sad story, one in which it's hard to find a villain. After all, what was Matassa supposed to do? He had no major label backing and yet he's got orders for millions of records coming in. So, he keeps the presses running full blast, hoping that enough money comes back, soon enough, to cover costs.

In retrospect, perhaps it was a bad bet.....but ya know, those involved were in the business of making/selling records and they had a major hit on their hands...I tend to think there was no real choice.

Funny though, that a major label didn't try to step in after the record hit big....it's the one piece of this puzzle which doesn't make any sense at all.

Funny too that the record I'm offering today ever got pressed. It makes me think that up till the very end, it looked like everything might just work out....that is, until it didn't.

Anyway, it's cool tune...as far as I can tell it sank like a stone when it was released.

Enjoy

All your folks will be dressed in black...

Aaron Neville's first single.

Seeing as how some of the discographies I've been using are consistently showing themselves to be wrong, I'll make a slightly educated guess and say this is from 1960.

Enjoy...