Song of the Week: The Who (High Numbers) -- Zoot Suit and The Dynamics - Misery

We're back with the overly-hyped day three of our look at a few covers by The Who and their origins. Without further ado, I present to you...

In the earliest days of The Who, the band was largely generic and directionless. The Who's manager at that time, Pete Meaden, was trying to find a hook for The Who and endeavored to make the band "more mod." As a result he changed their name to The High Numbers (a "high number" being a term to refer to a person having a relatively high social rank in the movement) and took Pete Townshend to a mutual friend's house to listen to American soul and blues records to build out the band's repertoire. In the early Summer of 1964 the two Pete's settled on four songs they would lay down for their first recording session: Eddie Holland's Leavin' Here, Bo Diddley's Here 'Tis, Slim Harpo's Got Love If You Want It, and, perhaps the most obscure of these, The Dynamic's Misery. But Pete Meaden really wanted the records to be mod anthems. So, rather unscrupulously, Meaden rewrote the words to two of the songs in an effort to capitalize on the mod lifestyle. Got Love If You Want It became I'm The Face (the highest rank a Mod could achieve) and Misery became Zoot Suit.

Meaden claimed writing credit for both "originals". The record saw a tiny release on July 3, 1964. I believe about only 1000 were pressed on the Fontana label but without a recording contract. Meaden shopped it to record companies and the band sold or gave away the record to the mods who crammed into the Railway Hotel on the weekends to see their boys play. Not much came of it and it hardly sounds anything like the band who would go back into the studio a few months later to record Pete Townshend's first ever original, I Can't Explain.

The little known original song from which this number was pinched, as already noted, was called Misery performed by a Detroit group called The Dynamics. It was released in the US on Big Top records in October of '63. It even saw a release in the UK the next month when London records picked it up.

Back in 2010 we wrote an article on this record. Much to our pleasure, the original guitarist, Chris Bramlett, found the article and left us some nice comments, including information on the equipment he used. Please see that article here for more information. It says more than I need to in this space.

Disclosure note, I picked up the picture of the handwritten High Number's Zoot Suit from White Fang's fan page. A great resource run by one of the mods that inhabited that Railway Hotel in the Summer of '64. Note that the name The Who was crossed out on the label and replaced with The High Numbers!

Until tomorrow, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

Song of The Week: The Dynamics -- Misery

Please see the comments below to learn more information about this song from the guitarist who performed on this number, Chris Bramlett.

What a nice little gem we have for you today. Even if you are a big-time music collector, I bet most of you are not familiar with this song. But, it might, just might, sound familiar. That's because this song, Misery, was the subject of some pretty blatant plagiarism by Pete Meadon. He being the one-time manager of The Who.

Back in 1964, Pete Meadon briefly changed the name of The Who to the High Numbers in an effort to get them bigger with the mod movement in London (being a High Number meant that you were of some importance in the gang). In June, Meadon and Chris Parmeinter took the band into the studio to cut some self-funded tracks that would have a very limited 1000-run pressing on Fontana Records. The lads recorded 4 tracks that day: Eddie Holland's Leavin' Here, Bo Diddley's Here 'Tis, and Zoot Suit and I'm The Face. The latter two songs were credited to Meadon who, in another effort to get in with the mod movement, wrote lyrics which spoke to the mod experience. I'm the Face is a not so subtle rip-off of the oft-covered Slim Harpo number, Got Love If You Want It. Zoot Suit, a not so subtle rip-off of today's song of the week. It is unlikely that Pete Townshend even plays on Zoot Suit, but rather that a studio musician brought in by Meadon and/or Fontana plays the jazzy guitar riffs. To be blunt, the sound, style and quality of performance are not Townshend at all. In Dave Marsh's book, Before I Get Old: The Story of The Who, Marsh refers to Townshend's style and makes no mention of a studio musician. However, on the liner notes of Odds and Sods, Townshend says of the studio musicians on these High Numbers tracks: "Superb jazz guitar solo from somebody I don't recognize, fast piano from some pilled-up lunatic who probably made more in session fees that day than we did from the ensuing year's work." In Pete's new auto biography, he says he played on the session but that the work shows his style was not fully formed yet. You decide. 

But that is not our SoTW, Misery is. In 1963 a Detroit band called The Dynamics sauntered into the studio to record this nice cross-genre song. This is just one of those great songs that surprises me. The catchy guitar riff never seems to fit the rest of the song -- in a VERY good way. The singer's temporary falsetto always catches me off guard and the sax solo is a surprise considering how dominant the guitar is in the rest of the song. And then there's the exit vocals. "No-no!" How frickin' cool.

Enjoy your misery.