Sally Go Round the Roses: A Ghost Story

The Jaynetts Meet The Third Mind

In 1963, a female singing group called the Jaynetts made their only hit called "Sally Go Round the Roses." It stood out from every other girl-group song of the era because of its haunting lyric and freakish sound. Though it could be heard on every pop station in America (it peaked at No. 2 for two weeks in early September, 1963), you didn't know whether the radio station was right next door with a 50,000 watt signal, or beamed through the static of a low-wattage station a thousand miles away.

It was produced at Broadway Studios in New York by Abner Spector, no relation to Phil; Abner was an A&R man for Chicago's Chess Records. Abner Spector recorded hit singles by artists who would almost never be heard from again, notably the Corsairs ("Smoky Places"), and the Jaynetts. For many years Sally Go Round the Roses (Tuff 13), recorded at Broadway Studios in Manhattan, and released on Spector's Tuff label, a Chess subsidiary, was among the most valuable collector's items at record fairs and overpriced oldies stores.

I own two near-mint condition copies of the Tuff 13 LP, bought new for 49 cents each when a Denver department store was closing and liquidating its once ample record section. But before you look for the Maserati in my driveway, know that I occasionally talked to people at record fairs selling this album for $400. I was educated into the disorderly economics of the business when I was told that "a record is worth only as much as a person was willing to pay for it." Despite its rarity and unbelievable cool factor, I was told though many people were willing to sell the Jaynetts album for that much, hardly anyone ever bought one. In today's Discogs online vinyl marketplace, demand certainly outweighs supply, which should mean a seller's market, but median sales average closer to $100, with a low of $29 to a high of around $290.

The other tracks on their Tuff album are girlish pop-r&b typical of 1963 filler tracks, including the novelty "Bongo Baby," which failed to cash in on whatever brief "bongo rock" wave might have appeared. A number were co-written by George David Weiss, who collaborated on hits as diverse as Ella Fitzgerald's vocal version of "Lullabye of Birdland," and "Can't Help Falling in Love," (with Hugo and Luigi),  the 1961 and for the rest of eternity hit by Elvis Presley. The audio fidelity is normal.

Not the title song: "Sally Go Round the Roses" is a recording so strange that if we could see ahead just two years, we'd notice it as a precursor of acid-rock. It is the one track on the album arranged and conducted, according to the credits, by Artie Butler, at the start of a prolific career. It was his first arranging credit, and Butler put together the whole track before the vocals were added. He describes the process on his website:

"I recorded the entire record on an old Ampex tape machine at 7 1/2 IPS mono. I played all the instruments except the guitar. First I played the piano. Then I added the drums. When I added the bass, I borrowed the secretary's lipstick and marked the locations of the notes I needed on the upright bass . . . since I did not play bass at all. Then I played the B3 organ and tambourine.

Next I brought in Al Gorgoni and Carl Lynch to play the guitar parts, since I did not play guitar. Al and Carl were two of the busiest and best guitar players in the New York recording scene. After that I added the singers. Each time when I added another element I added a different type of reverb. Each generation seemed to add to the distinct sound of the record."

In those days, I'm surmising, each generation of a 7 1/2 IPS tape meant audio degeneration. The vocals sound recorded in two different cardboard boxes; the instruments come and go in and out of clarity, the volume rises and sinks, and sometimes almost disappears. The key instrument, a vamping organ, is here now, almost gone later.

The original songwriting credits go to Zell Sanders and Lona Stevens. "Miss Zell," as the totally cuckoo backcover lines notes credited to Abner Spector say, was the manager of the Jaynetts, and the mother of group member Johnny Louise. (I say "cuckoo" liner notes because almost every other word is in quotes, such as "soul" and perhaps "a" and "the"). Johnnie Louise Richardson was the experienced member, having been part of the duo Johnnie & Joe and, the duo who had the 1957 hit, "Over the Mountain, Across the Sea." Lona Stevens later married Abner Spector. The other members of the Jaynetts were Ethel Davis and Mary Sue Wells.

"It is Mary Sue you hear chanting the low solo answers in 'Sally Go Round the Roses', but, it remains for Ethel to feel and give her outstanding 'Gospel treatment' to the high soaring melody line over and above the girls' harmonic rondelay parts." Like this:

I listened to "Sally Go Round the Roses" again recently, and obsessively (the Pentangle and Tim Buckley are among the many who also did versions of it) because this much covered song has been brought to life again by one of my favorite musicians, guitarist Dave Alvin. The brilliant curatorial California guitarist, songwriter, and America's greatest roots-rock theologian (the Blasters, X, the Knitters, and a whole lot of bands with his own name on it, including the Guilty Ones), has a new version of "Sally" with his psychedelic jam band known as The Third Mind.

Third Mind's two albums for Yep Roc Records, The Third Mind and new Third Mind 2, are boundary breakers: the other members, including Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker), David Immergluck (Counting Crows), and Michael Jerome (Better Than Ezra, Richard Thompson Band) and singer Jesse Sykes float through time and space like steampunk characters from Cowboy Bebop. Both feature a small handful of songs played long and fruitful: the first album had Alice Coltrane's "Journey in Satchindananda," Fred Neil's "The Dolphins," and "East-West," the signature jam for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1966, featuring the dual guitar genius of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. There was also a Roky Erickson song from the 13th Floor Elevators called "Reverberation" and an instrumental original called "Claudia Cardinale," a sweetly executed tribute to films the Italian movie star might have played in the 1960s.

The Third Mind 2 continues to play with a similar mix of source material. "In My Own Dream" is the title song of a 1968 Butterfield Blues Band album during its late soul-horn period, after Bloomfield left the band to help form the Electric Flag. And don't you know it, Third Mind applies its deep dharma to one of the Electric Flag's signature songs from 1968, "Groovin' is Easy." Except that it's not. Groovin', that is. Groovin' is not easy, at all. It never was. There's another Fred Neil song ("A Little Bit of Rain"), and "Why Not Your Baby" by Gene Clark and Doug Dillard from their Dillard & Clark moment, also in the late 1968.

What do these songwriters have in common? Early death. Gene Clark, Fred Neil, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, all left the planet with incomplete lives, cut short by drug and alcohol abuse or overdoses. And Sally, of "Sally Go Round the Roses"? I think she was murdered. Jesse Sykes certainly makes it sound that way, a restless, wandering ghost, out for revenge, or at least recognition. We'll pick that up later.

Sykes also sings "Groovin' is Easy" counter-intuitively, like "groovin'" is hopeless to strive for. She sounds like a sleepless P.J. Harvey singing the Young Rascals songbook. It is very effective, this dark groovin'. Sykes is a Seattle-based singer who has had a group called Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter. The Sweet Hereafter is also the name of a critically acclaimed but relentlessly depressing 1997 movie by the Canadian director Atom Egoyan in which 14 children in a small rural community are killed in a school bus accident. Sarah Polley plays the one survivor.

What is the song about? It sounds like a nursery rhyme to which young girls might jump rope. But it also sounds like an apparition. After Sally is told to go round the roses, she is told, "roses they can't hurt you." That is trickster talk. Of course roses can hurt you! Pluck a rose from a bouquet and you might prick your finger on a thorn. Roses are red, so is blood.

There is another specific warning: "Sally don't you go/don't you go downtown." The warning is repeated, with this detail added: "Saddest thing in the whole wide world/see your baby with another girl." And there are more warnings, about roses: "They won't tell your secret (no the roses won't tell your secret)." And a chorus: "Sit and cry where the roses grow/ You can sit and cry, not a soul will know."

In the nearly 11 minute version by The Third Mind, Jesse Sykes sings like a keening, angry ghost. In fact, it is possible that the version Sykes was more familiar with was that sung in 1965, a real acid-rock jam, by Grace Slick and her band the Great Society, which she left to join Jefferson Airplane. There's a terrific guitar solo on the Great Society's long live version 1965 version, likely played by Darby Slick, Grace's brother in law (she was married to drummer Jerry Slick). Grace, as you might imagine, sings "Sally Go Round the Roses" with a wounded raga rage, with "Titanic" crushing the iceberg power. Sykes, successfully, sings with controlled howls of this ghost ship in a fog-shrouded mist, a surrender to the void. Alvin, though he goes long and deep, always comes back to serve the song. He's never lost, whether his solos on his other records are 12 bars, or here, many times longer.

But suppose there is a specific ghost named Sally wandering the darkened hallways of early rock and roll. Let's call her Long Tall Sally.

In "Long Tall Sally," Little Richard sings: "I saw Uncle John with bald-head Sally/He saw Aunt Mary coming and he jumped back in the alley." Well, Sally was warned not to go downtown, where she might just run into her crush, Uncle John. (I know we are traveling through time and space here. It's what we do.)

We always thought Uncle John and bald headed Sally ("Long tall Sally she’s built for speed/she got everything Uncle John need") got away with their dalliance, although the narrator seems to be a voyeur. It even taught Paul McCartney how to "whoo!" on the Beatles excellent cover. But what if they didn't. Have some fun, that is.

Suppose Aunt Mary went downtown to look for John and Sally: The song as much as says so, as Little Richard opens with: “Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John/He claim he has the misery but he’s havin’ a lot of fun.”

There were rumors in the church, in the community. She saw her baby with another girl. Mary saw them jump in the alley, cornered them, and opened fire with her Colt Third Model derringer .41, perfect for a woman's purse. She wasn't a particularly good shot, so she missed or grazed Uncle John. But one of those bullets killed Sally. In the South, in 1957, police didn't waste much time on black-on-black crime, even murder.

Let's think: Uncle John and Aunt Mary skedaddled home, where Mary took the chastened man back to church, and prayed for Sally's soul. He never looked at another women again. Long tall Sally? Buried in a potter's field, in an unmarked grave. Every year someone threw some rose petals in the direction of where Sally might have been buried. In "Sally Go Round the Roses," she returns from the dead, looks around and wonders: "Can't I get a goddamn headstone?"