Tuesday's Twosome # 1

In general I love duets, those of the same-gender kind and even more so those of the mixed variety. So I thought about posting duets on Tuesdays and that's what I'll start today. There'll be some classic & well-known duets, some lesser known and some, probably, not much known or remembered at all. And they'll be mostly of the mixed variety. At least, that's my idea at the moment. Let's see what comes of it.

Today, Rufus & Carla Thomas from 1964. They did several duet singles for Satellite/Stax/Atco, and Stax # 151 was their first on the Stax label, released in April '64. »That's Really Some Good«, penned by Rufus Thomas, is conventionally considered the A-side and peaked at # 90 of Cash Box's Top 100 in mid-June. A little more famous, in retrospect, has become the B-side, »Night Time Is The Right Time«. It's a very close cover of Ray Charles's (& Margie Hendricks's) immortal song, but it doesn't really come close, I think, to Charles's original. Carla's presence is way not as forceful as Margie's. Still, it is a groovy tune. What has never ceased, say: disturbing me is that we have here father and daughter singing this highly charged lovers' tune. No, not in the sense we hear it so often in the news nowadays. I mean knowing that here's father and daugh- ter singing just doesn't fit this song, or does it? (The same problem poses itself with a number of other Rufus & Carla duets!) Well, never mind, it's about night time here and I'm not dogmatic about it.

Rufus & Carla [Thomas]: »Night Time Is The Right Time« / »That's Really Some Good« on Stax # 151 (1964):