Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Percy Sledge performing his classic When A Man Loves A Woman.
CD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1965-1966, various artist, Time-Life Music, 1997
Susie Roberts, Rick’s youngest sister was stuck. No, not stuck in some car stuck place on some desolate road looking for sir galahad to show up and rescue the fair damsel, pulling might and main to win her favors. And, decidedly, not stuck on some Clintondale High Math class Pythagorean Theorem math problem looking for the square root of some distance from point A to point B. She had Lenny Linsky for that, and for any other mathsciencehistoryenglish problem that she needed resolved. Yes, Lenny was that way about her. As were a few others, a few hopeless others, not willing however to join Lenny in the slave quarters. Everyone, hopeless or hopeful agreed, that while Susie was not up to speed in the mechanical or smarts departments she was cute (not knock-down drag-out beautiful but pretty enough, pretty enough not to have to worry about mechanics or math now, and probably ever), tall, blonde, real blonde if you can believe that in this day, this 1966 day in age, pert, and miss personality. And in the final analysis isn’t that what you want in a high school honey?
That though is exactly where Susie’s stuck problem comes in. See she is stuck on a soda jerk over at Doc’s Drugstore in North Adamsville. And not just any of Doc’s five jerks (yes, I know soda jerks, but let’s just shorthand this thing as jerks, no slander intended, okay) but Jeff Brigham. Yes, Jeff Brigham the big time politico, student body version, who had his picture taken with Robert Kennedy at some Northeast anti-war student conference where they were mapping out ways to end the war in Vietnam. And that is really where the problem comes in. Jeff, bright, agile, good-looking Jeff, these days has no time for Susie, well, Susie no brains, although not really no brains but more no political brains. And why should a sophomore, a good-looking sophomore girl in the year of our lord, 1966, have to care about war, about black civil rights, about whether Red China should be in the United Nations or not, or about which way America should be going just to keep up to speed with a jerk.
Something is out of whack and Susie can’t figure an angle to get to Jeff. Hey, any other time Jeff would be so much putty. Jerk proud, like the others at Doc’s, just to have Susie come in and talk to them. But, damn, Susie muttered under her breath they aren’t Jeff. And as many signals as she has given Jeff when she plays Doc’s juke box, plays it to perdition, and tries to interest him in talking about songs like The Temptations’ crooning My Girl; Otis Redding’s be-bopping I’ve Been Loving You Too Long; Barbara Lewis practically begging her man to get what he wants on Baby, I’m Yours; and when she turns the volume up for Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman he just smiles his non-committal smile and starts talking about whether Robert Kennedy should, or should not, run for President in 1968, or some such thing. And then Susie fumes under her breath, the times are damn well out of joint.
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