The music “has died” again
By Herb Drill
Once again, we’ve experienced a “day the music died.”
The original “day” was in Don McLean’s recording of “American Pie,” figuratively marking the Feb. 3, 1959 plane crash deaths of singers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and "The Big Bopper" (J P Richardson).
Now, for me, the music has “died” with the death of Bobby Hatfield, of the blue-eyed-soul duo the Righteous Brothers.
In a laudatory obituary, Philadelphia Inquirer movie critic Carrie Rickey reported Hatfield was found dead in a Kalamazoo, MI hotel, a half hour before he and duo partner Bill Medley were to perform at Western Michigan University. Hatfield, 63, had been feeling unwell for more than a day, Kalamazoo police said.
Every time I heard the Righteous Brothers on the radio or a CD, or saw them on a PBS “do op” special, I enjoyed “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” It was the terrific harmonizing, which Daryl Hall and John Oates couldn’t master on their “cover” of that recording. It also had a bittersweet chord, from remembering a former lover and her decision to sever our relationship, at a particularly inappropriate – to me, anyway – time.
Mr. Hatfield's heart-melting tenor, mixed smoothly and evenly with Medley's extraordinary baritone created some hot make-out music. You didn’t need something synthetic to stir you; the back seat of a Dodge would do nicely.
Sure, I enjoyed "Unchained Melody" and "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration," but 1964's "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," cited by Billboard as the most played radio song of all time was, as Ms. Rickey observed, "the most erotic duet between men on record." With Hatfield’s movements and the song’s “timeless emotionalism,” it was included in the sound track of the 1986 film Top Gun, and introduced the “brothers” to a new generation of listeners. "Unchained Melody" was featured prominently in the bittersweet – and at one point highly erotic - 1990 film Ghost.
Ms. Rickey reported: “Because their soul-stirring harmonies had the urgency of gospel music, those introduced to the Righteous Brothers on radio often assumed the white duo was black. It was Philadelphia disc jockey Georgie Woods, who is African-American, who first described their music as `blue-eyed soul’ when he introduced the pair at the Uptown Theater in 1965. Medley and Hatfield went on to score hits on the pop and rhythm-and-blues charts.’
Hatfield attributed the duo’s name to when he and Medley performed in a five-man band called the Paramours in 1962. After a number in an Anaheim, Calif. bar, a black Marine yelled out, "That was righteous, brothers!"
Robert Lee Hatfield was born in Beaver Dam, Wis., in 1940, and moved to Anaheim when he was four. He attended what is now known as California State University at Long Beach, and considered careers in pro baseball and music before he launched a band, the Variations. He was playing proms and frat dances when he met Medley, the Paramours' front man in 1962.
Ms. Rickey presented a touching finale: “The pair, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, split in 1968 to reunite in 1974 with the hit `Rock and Roll Heaven.’ With Mr. Hatfield's death, the song's lyrics - `if there's a rock-and-roll heaven, well, you know they've got a hell of a band’ - might be altered to `a hell of a singer.’
According to the Righteous Brothers' Web site, Booby Hatfield is survived by his wife, Linda, and two children. They, like us, won’t ever lose “that lovin’ feelin’.”