The Shondells - I Gotta Tell It

A good week to everyone. I haven't posted here much lately which I have to apologize for. Nothing but pure laziness on my part. I've gotta thank Brian for all of his excellent posts that have sort of kept us afloat the past several weeks. Speaking of Brian, I also want to wish him a happy belated birthday. He turned 45 back on December 3rd. Thanks Brian, for all of the help with the blog these past 3+ years.

I had a request from an anonymous someone, who left a comment on the blog the other day. He or she wanted me to post The Shondells' "I Gotta Tell It", a record that I listed in my most recent St. Louis record haul post. Being that I already had the record digitized, I decided to get it up on the blog right away. I like getting requests, anyway and am happy to oblige, whenever possible.

There have been a few outfits called the Shondells over the years, the best known, of course, being the Tommy James led band. Today's bunch of Shondells were a girl group from Pomona, CA. The only real info I have about the membership is listed right on the label, where vocals are credited to Novella Simmons and Shirlee Brooks. "I Gotta Tell It" is from 1962 and is the second of four singles the girls released on the King label, all in the 1962 or '63 time frame. In fact, the King singles seem to comprise their entire recorded output.

The song, itself, has a standard girl group vibe, with the singer trying to tell everybody how fine her guy is. The backing vocals warn her to hush her mouth before someone comes along and steals him away. The instrumentation is fairly sparse, with drums, guitar, hand claps and an organ bridge. I'm probably missing something in there but you get the idea.