Customer Reviews

Best Of: You Talk Too Much

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is not Joe "Boogaloo" Jones.

This Joe Jones is fun tho, and his "California Sun" (which predates the Riviera's version is hot.

"You Talk Too Much" is a hilarious almost monolog. It spawned several "answer" songs

Several other nice tunes, he reminds me a bit of Fats Domino. Too bad it's out of print. The big hit (You Talk Too Much) can be found on VA compilations tho.

Amazon should pay us amateurs for correcting all these mistaken listings

If you're actually looking Joe Jones, you'll never find him on the Amazon search, as the false "Boogaloo" (another Joe Jones), ruins it. (I put his name and a song title up on "Scroogle" to get here.) For those of you old enough to remember "California Sun" by the Rivieras,('64?), you're gonna -love- the original 1961 version. For one thing, the real words are way better, and the band is tighter and funkier. (I guess the Riv's record company paid out more payola, because -this- should have been the bigger hit, if music had anything to do with it.) "You Talk too Much", of course, was the hit, but everything else on this CD is as good or better.

Born on August 12, 1926 in New Orleans, Joe Jones served for a while as a pianist-cum-valet for the great B.B. King before attempting to branch out on his own. The problem right from the start was evident - he didn't have that great a singing voice, and so records like Adam Bit The Apple b/w Will Call on Capitol 2951 in 1954, and You Done Me Wrong b/w When Your Hair Has Turned To Silver on Herald 488 in 1956 were failures insofar as national recognition was concerned.

He then turned up at Morris Levy's Roulette Records where, in 1958, he had two singles released - with similar results. Neither Every Night About Eight b/w a horrible cover of Ella Fitzgerald's A-Tisket A-Tasket on Roulette 4083 and To Prove My Love To You b/w the equally ill-advised The Prisoner's Song on Roulette 4087 went absolutely nowhere. Another side cut - but not released - that year was a humerous ditty called You Talk Too Much, written by a New Orleans pianist named Reggie Hall.

When nothing else ensued at Roulette, Jones cut no further discs until 1960 when he somehow connected with Joe Ruffino and his Ric label. There he recorded a new version of You Talk Too Much and this time, with I Love You as the flip on Ric 972, it began to make some noise on both the Pop Hot 100 and the R&B charts in September. Until Levy heard it and immediately laid claim to the song, pointing to the song cut at Roulette and the contract under which Jones had been working at the time which precluded doing the same song for any other record business for five years. Switched to Roulette 4304, the song climbed all the way to # 3 Hot 100 and # 9 R&B by October.

The follow-up One Big Mouth b/w Here's What You Gonna Do on Roulette 4316 was one big flop, however, and in April 1961 he barely escaped becoming a member of the One-Hit Wonder club when California Sun topped out at # 89 Hot 100 b/w Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone on Roulette 4344. That was followed by another flop, The Big Mule b/w I've Got A Uh Uh Wife on Roulette 4377.

Jones then turned to producing, a vocation he perhaps should have pursued sooner, as he would have much better luck at that with the likes of The Dixie Cups and Alvin Robinson. I would recommend this only to hopeless collectors like myself who must have everything related to hit singles - but certainly not at the used price being asked at this writing. And really, 26 tracks are about a dozen too many in this instance. The liner notes are hardly worth the time as well.

Henry Glover is the prime moving force behind Joe Jones, writing and arranging a number of the songs here. If you like New Orleans-style R&B, you will appreciate Henry Glover. He doesn't advance the genre, but somehow is creative within it. One example here is "The big mule," an homage to Jimmy McCracklin's dance songs, particularly "The walk." The rhythm, the harmonizing horns and the lyric (his) all scream Jimmy, but it's all Henry's own work. There's lots more of this musical referencing, much of which is probably over my head, but it's all good listening.

I guess, Joe Jones will always be remembered as a one hit wonder. But nevertheless, it was a great record !!