By Gerry Goffin and Carole King
I bought a copy of this way back in 1963 when Steve and Eydie (Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme) recorded it. It was a sizeable UK hit, charting at #3. It was less successful in the USA, reaching #28.
In the early 70s we always had songs on open reel tape for students to sing along to in the language laboratory, and I duly taped my single, and it proved an enormously popular singalong, especially as we had lots of Swiss students and they loved playing with the harmonies … like The Welsh, the Swiss are natural choral singers. It’s the mountains, I suspect.
Years later, collecting Goffin & King songs I was shocked to find it wasn’t on any of the compilations I have, and Carole King never mentions it. Why? The CD sets above, three in Ace’s wonderful ‘Songwriter’ series, then a triple CD set and single CD don’t include it. OK, Steve and Eydie don’t look cool, but then Go Away Little Girl by Steve Lawrence is a Carole King favourite. The follow up to I Want To Stay Here was another Goffin-King song, Can’t Stop Talking About You. That was also a Steve and Eydie hit (US #35), and doesn’t appear on any of the compilations either, though the “non-hit” version by Tobin Matthews does. You sense there’s a story here.
So in spite of its 1963 hit status, you’d have to say it’s a less well-known song now. I couldn’t find a CD version, so had to send Vince a CDR copy of my original vinyl 45.
Miki and Griff did a cover, and then Tiny Tim did (fortunately I’ve never heard it). Later Dusty Springfield did it with The Pet Shop Boys in 1990.
When we came to write In English 3 and we were seeking real songs, it came to mind. I remembered a long conversation with Norman Whitney over dinner (Belgium? Italy?) about using real songs for teaching, and Norman made the point that early 60s material was a glorious area for finding catchy, singalong songs with clear lyrics. Karen and I chose three songs from that era for In English. (The publishers strongly wanted a gap fill exercise on this one – a bit pointless to me. You do a song, then you do a song. You don’t twist it into an exercise). Good pronunciation recognition and practice on wanna and gonna.
This is another Vince Cross production. I think it’s remarkable in that he went for the “Woolworth’s Embassy Label” exact cover route and succeeded.
I found the illustration.
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