"There Goes My Baby" is a song written by Ben E. King and the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller for The Drifters, Ben E. King does lead. They used a different song structure than they had in their previous successes with Clyde McPhatter. The combination of new style and new group fit and the song reached number two on the Hot 100 and number one on the R&B chart, in the summer of 1959. [1]. The Atlantic Records release was Ben E. King debut recording as lead singer of the group.
The lyrics are loosely structured, almost free-form at a time when rhyming lines were mandatory. The accompaniment features a violin section playing saxophone-like riffs in rock and roll style. The lead voice is in high gospel-style.[2]
(There goes my baby) Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
(There goes my baby) Yeah, yeah, yeah,yeah
(There goes my baby) Whoa-oh-oh-oh
(There she goes) Yeah! (There she goes)
This recording introduced the idea of using strings and elaborate production values on an R&B recording to enhance the emotional power of black music. This pointed the way to the coming era of soul music as the popularity of the doo-wop vocal groups peaked and faded. Phil Spector studied this production model under Leiber and Stoller, working on The Drifters records.[3]
The song ranked 193 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
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