My Babe

My Babe lyrics >
(Little Walter Jacobs)

My baby don't stand no cheatin', my babe

Oh yeah she don't stand no cheatin', my babe

Oh yeah she don't stand no cheatin', 

She don't stand none of that midnight creepin'

My babe, true little baby, my babe

My babe, I know she love me, my babe

Oh yes, I know she love me, my babe

Oh yes, I know she love me,

She don't do nothin' but kiss and hug me

My babe, true little baby, my babe

My baby don't stand no cheatin', my babe

Oh no, she don't stand no cheatin', my babe

Oh no, she don't stand no cheatin',

Ev'rything she do she do so pleasin'

My babe, true little baby, my babe

My baby don't stand no foolin', my babe

Oh yeah, she don't stand no foolin', my babe

Oh yeah, she don't stand no foolin',

When she's hot there ain't no coolin'

My babe, true little baby, my babe

She's my baby (true little baby) ...

(Composed by Willie Dixon)

The Pirates Version revisited >

This is sticking-my-neck-out time, as i try to describe in more detail why this track hits me like a run-away truck right in the vitals every time.  If i listen really really critically, there is only one place in the whole song - which i read was recorded first-take! - where i feel a bit let down, and that's the lack of a drum-fill in just one of the breaks  (the last one) in Johnny Spence's terrific vocals -  fussy or what !? - it's there in all the other breaks and they are Frank Farley drum-fills of great quality.  Mick Green's introductory riff is perfect and sets up the shift i have spoken about on another page from shuffle to hard 4/4 power-rock beats.  The bass-lines swooping down again and again are totally right for the song and for weaving into what drummer and guitarist are doing - they are smooth and continuous whereas guitar and drums are slicing through bars like guillotines crashing down.  Often missing in modern records - the 'Dynamics' are perfect - moody and quiet in the opening verse, escalating in power and electricity with that insane shredded-axe guitar solo which is basically an assault at what ? - 32 to the bar ? - seen live it was a complete blur over the strings.  Where on earth did Mick Green get that from - was it ever done before by anybody ?  After the solo, driven on by the wonderful outbursts of 'Hey' & 'ComeOn' from, presumably, Johnny Spence - they really up the dynamics to full-on manic excitement - at that point i never want it to stop.   The interplay of Frank's pounding bang-on-the-beat drumming with Mick's back-beat chord-chopping and Frank's swirling bass-runs...exquisite.  What has it got in spades that so many other records lack ? - ATMOSPHERE - the achievment of a self-contained alternative REALITY to the one i know around me before i hit that play button - after the first three notes of the guitar-intro...dah-dah-dah ( d-e hammer on - c, > f-f-d-e-c, if in C maj, i think- what would a drummer know) normal life gets its nikes on and runs for the hills fast as it can.  It is a million miles from so many other genres of pop music - pretty much nothing in common with politically-engaged Dylan-type odes, or sweet West Coast ditties a la Mamas & Papas, or even the rocking stories of a Bruce Springsteen - all classy in their own right of course.  


The PIRATES 'My Babe' is massively PRIMAL, like its blues-roots, and like the Willie Dixon raw-material that it needed to ever get made - but where it differs from all other versions, including Willie's and Little Walter's and everyone else's, is in its AGGRESSION - maybe its Anger, or frustration...about what ?...with what ?...well, i cannot speak one word on this for The Pirates, but i know for sure that we (The Storms), from a sprawling working-class council-estate where thousands of townies were dumped ('relocated') after being bombed and slummed out of old Portsmouth had a taste for angry noise, confrontation, arguments with authority - just a need for upsetting the status quo with a drum-kit, three guitars, a few mics, and the biggest amps that could be afforded.  This impulse soon ran through much of the British rock & pop sub-culture - Punk arrived just over ten years after The Pirates crashed onto our ear-drums, and i saw The Pirates at a college-hall in the Ilford ( east London )  area around 1976/7 ( bit vague on the exact date), and the poster loudly proclaimed that they were the 'Original Punk Rockers' or something pretty close.  Anyone else see them at that gig ?   I left with ringing ears from being the usual idiot standing one yard from the PA stack...they were ringing 24 hours later...they're ringing like hell right now as i write this, but i can't blame The Pirates - drumming into close headphones many years later left me with incurable tinnitus - if you can avoid the same fate - DO !!!  One of the strange things about that 'punk' gig, was seeing them play more or less the same familiar set to a crowd of very young punk guys 'Pogo-dancing' with the usual bone-crunching mash-up right in front of the stage - but it all fitted fine.  It was easy to see why the promoters had decided to go with 'The Original Punk Rockers' on the posters.


The other, fundamental way The Pirates version differs from (probably) ALL the others - and there have been so many - is in the all-important shift of the beat from blues shuffle to hard-rock's brutal 4/4 - like a replacement of Nature by Industry, something 'organic' by something 'man-made'.  For a drummer, in this shift there is one crucial element that i guess most listeners wouldn't pick up on that much - the double bass-drum thump at the 3rd beat in the bar, with the first of the two hits being like a percussive version of a 'grace'note'. ( On the 'kick-drum' the other side of the pond. )  This heavy element is at the heart of thousands of British-Rock recordings from 1960 onwards.  As a 16-year old starting out to play covers of Cliff & The Shadows, Brian Poole & The Tremelos, The Gladiators, The Ventures, and then The Beatles and The Stones, i had the opportunity to stand by the side of the 'big stage' in old-style ballrooms,  and watch what drummers did in what were basically pre-World War 2 dance-bands as far as repertoire and playing-style was concerned.   The drummer, often quietly 'shushing' away with brushes, would have the bass-drum beater muffled by a big sheep-skin sleeve to give a very soft sound on the drum-head, and he would keep his foot flat on the pedal-board and just flick the pedal into contact with the head with not much more than the weight of his foot.  Rock-drummers were already lifting their heel way up high so as to get the ball of the foot slamming down onto the pedal-plate with the whole weight of the leg right up to the thigh coming into play.  ( This did a foot wedged into a Cuban-heel boot no favours at all! )  The dance-band drummer more often than not did no more with the bass-pedal than 'mark time' with a soft bump of the beater on the head at the 1st beat of each bar of the tune.  His aim was to blend in and give that timing to the band with the bass-drum, and i imagine that a band-leader then would have rapidly turned on any drummer who started to make a feature out of his bass-drum playing - but that is exactly what rock-drummers were required to do, as powerfully as possible.  Just think of a track like The Who's  "Can't Explain" - the bass-drum takes its place right up in the mix along with the lead-guitar and vocals, and the bass and bass-drum become fused in the beat ( see the Who video at the bottom of the page.)  Of all the literally dozens of covers of 'My Babe' that have been recorded, i might be risking a contradiction here, but from memory i would say that it is one of the crucial unique aspects of The Pirates version that theirs is the ONLY one to leave the old blues shuffle and go crashing into a new double-bass-beat-power-rock rendition.  In all the others -  Elvis, Dale Hawkins, Chuck Berry, Cliff Richard, Ricky Nelson, Peter&Gordon, Donald Byrd, Ronnie Milsap, Conway Twitty, Ramsey Lewis, Grant Green, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Ammons, The Everly Brothers, The Animals, The Steve Miller Band, Lou Rawls, Ike & Tina Turner, Bo Diddley, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Burgess & The Pacers, and of course, Willie Dixon and Little Walter.... the rhythmic heart of the old gospel origin of the song - 'This Train ( Is Bound For Glory') - lives on.  The Pirates transformation of that rhythmic structure of the classic song is symptomatic of and contributed to the emergence of a sound that would be recognisable as 'British Rock'.  All of this historical-cultural current also feeds into why The Pirates 'My Babe' became and remained my own, 'MyLastTrack'.


I'll finish for now ( probably add more at a later date)  by saying that My Babe was a very influential track amongst musicians even if the wider public weren't drawn to it in great numbers.  I believe that the sheer excitement the recording achieved was something that many other rockers dreamed of and reached for, but often fell short of.  With that insane solo, there is nothing like it that i know about, except for later bands who were inspired by and partly copied its feel (such as Dr.Feelgood) - so love it or hate it, it will always stand proud as a unique distillation of many of the elements that went into making 'British Rock' sound distinctive and recognisable within the wider pop & rock cultural landscape.  Its difficult to say this with any factual back-up, but i'd hazard the guess that if one listened to all the thousands of singles released in all the decades of American pop & rock & blues, there wouldn't be even one that sounds like a close relative of The Pirates 'My Babe' - some relatives there of course, even many, but not a CLOSE relative.  Disagreements with this statement most welcome !   Only ONE serious criticism -  it's TOO SHORT !!!


Some nicely varied recordings of 'My Babe' -


First up, DALE HAWKINS ( with the legendary Roy Buchanan on guitar ), 1957/8 ->

Second, ( date ?) the great man himself, BO DIDDLEY -> 

Third, from 1958, the heart-throb RICKY NELSON ->

Fourth, from 1969 and looking amazing in black leather with a red Gibson 335, a great version, but not the song being sung in the video unless i'm mistaken! - The King, ELVIS -

Fifth, a smooth, soulful and beautifully swinging live performance from Sonny Boy Williamson and The Animals, 1963, Newcastle, UK >

Sixth, with superb vocals, and a very sweet riff, a great version from The Steve Miller Band, 1986 >

Seventh, a 1965 version by the Everly Bros. which, though they are normally right up there with the legends of pop history, with a whole bus-load of classic songs to their credit, kinda leaves me speechless...baffled even...what IS that drum-beat doing ?  Included to show how far-ranging the interpretations of MyBabe have been >

And last but absolutely not least, the wonderful LIGHTNIN' HOPKINS with a fast, really swinging version from when ? ( anyone know date ? ) - this is a track that makes it easy to see how 'skiffle' developed years later, and took the UK by storm for a while... ( strangely, the star skiffler Lonnie Donegan hated the arrival of Rock&Roll - the 'devil's music' - and went public about his strong distaste for it...to many of us, he was a fine link in a long musical chain but he didn't get it apparently. ) ->

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------           

The WHO, 'Can't Explain', 1965, absolutely superb, Entwhistle and Moon in sweet synchrony on the bass-beats, wonderful footage of Mod dancing - but visual & audio stitched together for promo purposes.  When thinking about how HEAVY this genuinely was, remember that The Pirates had recorded My Babe two years before. Rumour has it that Pete Townshend was considerably influenced by the Kinks 'You Really Got Me', (1964), which was unbelievably heavy for the time. ( The Kinks other stomping hit of 1964, 'All Day And All Of The Night' is actually closer to 'Cant't Explain' in the beat - the Who placed it at a different spot in the bar.)  Here it is, with the excellent Mick Avory playing with the 'traditonal' left-hand grip that my left arm always refused to do!