Johnny Angel - Shelley Fabares
According to the Shorter Oxford English dictionary 1983 edition, an angel is:
"a ministering spirit or divine messenger; one of an order of spiritual beings superior to man in power and intelligence, who are the attendants and messengers of the Deity."
In the bible the angel is often represented as a potentially vengeful figure, often carrying a sword and reflecting the fiercer less forgiving nature of the pre New Testament God. Greek mythology's winged children of Eros, the erotes, gods of love and sexuality, also feed into visual representations of angels. Though supposedly gender neutral, angels were generally represented as men (Gabriel, Michael etc) although it wasn't until the 19th century that they began to be painted with breasts.
By the twentieth century, women were being regularly idealised as angels, as objects of beauty in body, spirit, and innocence. As most artists and poets in those patriarchal times were men, the depiction of women as pure angels often conveniently camouflages the lustful agenda of the "male gaze".
The song "Johnny Angel" unwittingly ties these themes together, and reverses them, the angel being the boy, adored from afar by the lovestruck girl, with distinctly heavenly female backing vocals, and while Shelley Fabares' warm vocal emanates innocence, you feel there are more erotes-inspired emotions at play as she sings
"He's got something that I can't resist....." and ".....how I want him".
While Shelley Fabares is nowadays mainly remembered in the US as an actress, particularly for her roles in sitcoms including "Coach" and "Mork and Mindy", she is still known in Europe for "Johnny Angel". This is ironic as she never thought of herself as a singer and the song was only released as a single after her character sang the song in a 1962 episode of ABC's hugely successful sitcom "the Donna Reed Show". The show was about a typical American family, a little heavy on the "sit" and light on the "com" when seen through today's eyes, but ran for eight years, from 1958 to 1966. Shelley Fabares played the teenage daughter of the family.
For the song's appearance on the show see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpzHQdxpDo
The track is suffused with angels, musical angels: the drummer is Hal Blaine, the greatest rock and pop drummer of the sixties (see other posts), the great Carol Kaye is on bass, and Glenn Campbell is on lead guitar. Best of all, the backing vocals are by the Blossoms, featuring the wonderful Darlene Love (search her name for numerous other Uncle Stylus posts), as great a set of angels as ever you'll see.
To expect the three black singers to be backing Shelley in a college bash in 1962 might be a bit much, even five years after the riots at Little Rock High School, but together they sang like angels all the way to the US number one spot.
African American angels. Now that's subversive.
Comments