If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody

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If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody is a 1961 song by James Ray. The Beatles covered it live in 1962. No recording of The Beatles playing it has been heard by the public. However, a tape, recorded in Mid-1962 at The Cavern Club, was auctioned off. It contained this song. The public may never hear it, as Paul McCartney bought the tape and it was not issued on The Beatles Anthology, leading some to believe it is of poor quality.

Live Performances

George Harrison recalls first finding the song in Brian Epstein's record store. Harrison remembers, "Brian had a policy at NEMS of buying at least one copy of every record that was released. If it sold, he'd order another one, or five or whatever. Consequently, he had records that weren't hits in Britain, weren't even hits in America. Before going to a gig we'd meet in the record store, after it had been shut, and we'd search the racks like ferrets to see what new ones were there. That's where we found artists like Arthur Alexander and Ritchie Barrett (Some Other Guy was a great song), and records like James Ray's If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody. These were songs which we used to perform in clubs in the early days, and which many British bands later started recording. Devil In Her Heart and Barrett Strong's Money were records that we'd picked up and played in the shop and thought were interesting." If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody was popular among audiences because of it's obscurity and how different of a group it made The Beatles. Paul McCartney recalls, "There were millions of groups around at that time - The Blue Angels, The Running Scareds - but they were mostly lookalike groups; The Shadows and Roy Orbison had a lot of followers. Then there were groups like us, more into the blues and slightly obscure material. And because we had the unusual songs, we became the act that you had to see, to copy. We started to get a lot of respect. Guys would ask where we'd got a song like If You Gotta Make a Fool Of Somebody from - we'd explain it was on a James Ray album. The Hollies came to see us once and came back two weeks later looking like us! We were in black turtleneck sweaters and John had his harmonica and we were doing our R&B material. The next week, The Hollies had turtleneck sweaters and a harmonica in their act. This is what had started to happen. We would come back to Liverpool and Freddie and The Dreamers would be doing If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody as their hit number. (Freddie Garrity saw us playing that song in the Oasis Club in Manchester and took it.)" Besides it's obscurity, many fans and bands were attracted to the song because of it's unusual time signature for a pop group. Paul McCartney recalls, "...we'd used to do If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody, a cool three-four blues thing. And other bands would notice that and say, 'Shit man, you're doing something in three-four.' So we'd gotten known for that."

Personnel

Source

  • LENNON, J., MCCARTNEY P., HARRION G., STARKEY R., 2002, The Beatles Anthology, Chronicle Books -- Buy it on Amazon.com
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