A Conversation with Darlene Love – HuffPost 5.4.11

Mike Ragogna: Darlene, your new anthology, The Sound Of Love, covers a lot of territory, and it’s hard to know where to get started because you’ve had such a wonderful career. But let’s go all the way back to California, when you were a part of the The Blossoms. What was the origin of that vocal group, how did it all come together?

Darlene Love: Actually, it happened in Los Angeles. The others were in a wedding party, and I was one of the singers at the wedding. They approached me because they were looking to replace one of The Blossoms who left the group, so they asked me to join and I did, and eventually, I became the lead singer. I didn’t join to be the lead singer, but because everyone liked my voice, that’s what they made me. I actually started in this business as a background singer for The Blossoms.

MR: Yes, and the story goes that the group was discovered by Phil Spector.

DL: Right. Back in the day, we worked for his partner, Lester Sill, and Lester introduced me to Phil because he thought I was the stand-out voice in the group. Once Phil heard me sing, he began to record me under the group name of The Crystals. Phil had been having some problems with The Crystals. They already had some success with a couple of records before “He’s A Rebel” came out, and Phil hired me as a backup singer to do the lead vocals for “He’s A Rebel.” At the time, I knew that I was going to be doing this record under the name of The Crystals because a lot of people, in those days, were recording records that were being released with other names. Fortunately, I did wind up signing a contract with Phil Spector, and he changed my name from Darlene Wright to Darlene Love. That’s how I got the last name Love, which ended up being great, though I didn’t think that at the time!

MR: How young were you when all of this was happening?

DL: I was seventeen at the time.

MR: To a seventeen-year-old, what was it like being a part of these records?

DL: It was very exciting, but I had already been doing background vocals for some of the biggest names in the business at that time, although I never thought any of it would go anywhere because that was the mindset of a seventeen-year-old back in the ’60s. I thought, “Well, yeah, I’m recording these songs but nothing’s ever gonna happen with them.” But something did happen with them–“He’s A Rebel” went all the way to #1 on the charts, and Phil found that he had more luck with my voice coupled with The Crystals than he did with a group called Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans or as myself, Darlene Love. The Crystals records did much better than the Darlene Love records did.

MR: And you had the hit, “He’s Sure The Boy I Love.”

DL: Yes, I also recorded that album under the name of The Crystal, although, it wasn’t supposed to be under that name–that was supposed to be the first Darlene love record.

MR: What was the reasoning behind them changing it?

DL: It was one Phil Spektor’s tricks! He knew that he could use me and my voice any way he wanted–he could use it for The Crystals, or Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, or as Darlene Love. It was wherever he decided to put my voice. After I signed the contract, they could do that, though he did tell me that “He’s Sure The Boy I Love” was going to be my first record. He decided later that he thought that it would have more success under the name of The Crystals than it would under the unknown name of Darlene Love.

MR: Let’s talk a little more about Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans.

DL: Well, the name for that group just came out of the blue from Phil because he came up with the idea to record “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” from the movie Song of the South. It ended up being such a great song, but we didn’t have a group name to attach to it. As it turns out, the guy who sang the lead tenor part’s name was Bobby and so Phil just came up with the name Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans because in the ’60s, that’s what we called denim pants.

MR: What was it like working with Phil in the studio?

DL: It was great! At that time, he was just getting started, and by the time he reached 21, he already had three hit records. From the mid-to-late ’60s is kinda when he started losing it. But when I worked with him, he was just a producer trying to make a name for himself, and he did. As a matter of fact, he tried to make a bigger name for himself than he did for his artists.

MR: (laughs) So, with The Blossoms, also recorded background vocals for some pretty high profile projects at the time including Shelley Fabares’ “Johnny Angel,” right?

DL: Yeah, because we were friends with Lou Adler, and he was the record producer for that.

MR: What was your reaction to hearing your hit playing over the radio for the first time?

DL: Well, the first time I heard “He’s A Rebel” on the radio, I felt kind of bad because, technically, the record wasn’t mine. Everyone was running around talking about what a hit The Crystals had with the track, but it was The Blossoms and I who recorded it. We saw more songs with us singing background vocals on them then we did with our names on them.

MR: Do you remember what the first hit was that The Blossoms sang background on?

DL: Oh, wow, you’re asking me to go all the way back to 1957. (laughs) It was with Sam Cooke, I guess. He did “Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha” and “Chain Gang,” and I think that was the first time you could actually hear our background vocals. Everyone loved the tracks and knew who Sam was, so the whole idea of us being on his tracks was fantastic.

MR: Beautiful. The Blossoms also went on to sing background for The Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Tom Jones, as well as many others–are any of those records particularly special to you now?

DL: Of course, I would have to say the one that we sang on with Elvis because it was a part of The 1968 Comeback Special, which marked him coming back to the music industry because he was primarily doing movies at the time. So, once they recorded the special, it wound up being really great.

MR: And what about The Beach Boys?

DL: It was great working with them! We worked with them not to change their sound, it was more that they wanted more sound behind their vocals to make it sound even more full. That was the reason why Brian recorded us with The Beach Boys.

MR: And then there’s one of my favorite records ever, Johnny Rivers “Poor Side Of Town.”

DL: Yeah, that was great as well! Lou Adler was Johnny’s record producer, and the backgrounds on that song is so beautiful–I can hear it right now because it was one of those tracks where we really worked hard to make those vocals beautiful.

MR: The Blossoms also sang background on a few of his follow up hits, “Baby, I Need Your Loving” and “The Tracks Of My Tears.”

DL: Yes. Lou told us he was going to cover those records, and those sessions happened almost in one day. We started at maybe one o’clock in the afternoon, and we didn’t finish until maybe one o’clock in the morning because Lou wanted to finish those songs and get them onto the record. That was a fantastic experience as well. It was also kind of surprising for a white man to sing “Baby, I Need Your Loving” and do so well on it. (laughs)

MR: Johnny had so much soul in him. The Blossoms also worked with Dionne Warwick.

DL: Yes, we did, and, of course, I worked with Dionne for about 10 years as a backup singer on the road with her. We were on that hit track she had with The Spinners called “Then Came You.” We loved that record as well because we loved The Spinners, and for Dionne to record with them and have it become such a big hit was great.

MR: Also, The Blossoms did get to record singles on Bell Records, right?

DL: You name a label, we were on it. They didn’t quite know what to do with The Blossoms. We were on Bell, Challenge, Reprise, Columbia…we were all over the place. But because our sound wasn’t a black or white sound, it was more of a pop music sound, they didn’t know exactly where to put us in the realm of music. That’s why they had us all over the place, why they didn’t really choose one sound and keep us there. So, our sound just kept changing as we went to different labels.

MR: Plus you were also regulars on the television show Shindig!

DL: Yes, for two years, we were regulars on Shindig!, which was fun because we got to meet a lot of the stars of the day.

MR: And there’s your version of “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home).” What a classic.

DL: That session was actually an unbelievable session because that was the only original song that we recorded on that Christmas album. Who knew that that would be a song that people are still recording 50 years later? (laughs)

MR: Yeah, it’s truly great. Also, at the time, it was such an unusual thing to write and record new Christmas material because artists played it safe and stuck to the standards.

DL: That’s right. Really and truly, that’s probably one of the few Christmas songs recorded in the ’60s that’s actually a standard now.

MR: And it was written by the very wonderful Ellie Greenwich, one of my favorite Brill Building graduates. Did you have any adventures with her?

DL: Unfortunately, Ellie and I were never actually in the studio together. Phil was recording a lot of stuff in Los Angeles and I didn’t actually meet her until the ’80s when we did her show Leader of the Pack. But when we got together, we talked as though we had been together for years because we had been recording all of her songs. It was like some sort of reunion. But I got to speak with her about the songs, why they (Greenwich and Jeff Barry) wrote them and how they wrote them. Then, Phil would get a hold of them and change them however he liked.

MR: (laughs) Back on the subject of Phil Spector, were you ever able to watch the process of him transitioning a song from the initial listening stage to recording it?

DL: Well, Phil worked with Jack Nitzsche, the studio’s arranger. Most of what Jack did was chart out the songs because we couldn’t do anything without first having the charts. Phil was a musician, but he couldn’t do the arranging. My job was to be there to make sure that the key and rhythm was right. So, I stood in the control room and sang along while they were charting because I always learned the songs before they even started working on the charts so that the key would be correct when it was time to record. I might go out to lunch or something while they were actually laying down the band on a track because that could take forever since Phil always took the time to make the track exactly as he wanted it.

MR: Did being a part of all of that and working with Phil and recording all of this great music with the major artists of the time force you to grow up more quickly?

DL: Well, you have to remember that we were already professional singers before Phil came along. We had already done so much background work for big artists by the time we met him. So, when he came along, really, the only thing that changed is that we still did background vocals and I started singing lead vocals on some tracks. It really wasn’t that big of a change. By the time I finished with Phil, I was 20 years old, and that was around the time he started bringing in new artists like The Righteous Brothers and Tina Turner. Then, he left America and went to Europe to work with The Beatles and whoever else, and that was the end of my time with Phil.

MR: After such a beautiful and exciting career, what advice do you have for new artists?

DL: Have a love for the music and be very patient. That’s the bottom line. You can’t let anybody steal your dream.

Transcribed by Evan Tyrone Martin