Sunny

Description

Due to the 50th Anniversary of the song "Sunny", in the summer of 2016 Trocadero releases a number of titles related to Bobby Hebb's evergreen. The 1966 original album on a 180 gram deluxe-LP + 8 page folder, and as a digipak CD + booklet. No soul singer of the 1960s boasted the singular array of contrasting influences that Bobby Hebb brought to the table. Hebb came up primarily country in his hometown of Nashville, proceeded to immerse himself in the hip New York jazz and R&B scenes, and had his biggest hit in 1966 with the self-penned 'Sunny', a pop classic and evergreen, a world hit and one of the most recorded songs of the century, too. Before 1961 was over, Hebb set out for New York, where he got to know R&B veterans King Curtis, Bernard Purdie, and Jimmy Castor. Bobby landed a booking at a nightspot known as the Blue Morocco that lasted for more than a year. The joint was owned by Joe Robinson and his wife Sylvia. Mickey Baker and Sylvia had posted a 1957 R&B chart-topper with their hit duet "Love Is Strange". Between hanging out at a jazz club called Freddie's where he met Thelonious Monk and Stanley Turrentine, Hebb was soon ready to try out a solo singer-songwriter act on the Big Apple circuit. Bobby Hebb's brother Harald was murdered outside a Nashville nightclub on the day after President Kennedy's assassination in November of 1963, but contrary to legend, those tragedies weren't the primary catalysts for Hebb to write "Sunny." They may have figured into it somehow, along with some sad times he'd experienced and the Civil Rights struggle then in full swing. In one interview, he mentioned being lyrically inspired by a purple New York sunrise after a long night out on the town. Although producer Jerry Ross was headquartered in Philadelphia, Ross conducted his Mercury sessions at New York's Bell Sound with a coterie of top session men that included guitarists Vinnie Bell and Eric Gale. "Most of the records that I did early on that were R&B, my background singers were Nickolas Ashford, Valerie Simpson, and Melba Moore," said Ross, who recruited Joe Renzetti, a former Philly session guitarist, as his arranger for Hebb's first Philips session and many of his subsequent dates for the label. Surprisingly, "Sunny" was the last song waxed on February 21, 1966 at Bell Sound. First up was "Bread," a surging soul number about filthy lucre written by Hebb that would end up the flip side of "Sunny." Then came the Jimmy Roach-penned rocker "I Am Your Man" (featuring one of Bobby's fieriest vocal performances) and a relentless "Love Love Love," the work of Ross and Renzetti. Finally, before time ran out that auspicious day, they got around to laying "Sunny" on tape. Bobby's inspiring lyrics and riveting vocal were exquisitely supported by Renzetti's modulating arrangement, steadily building excitement from start to finish. "Sunny" broke out during the spring of '66, topping Cash Box's pop charts and catapulting to #2 pop and #3 R&B in Billboard as it went gold. Suddenly Bobby was in high demand, appearing on ABC-TV's Where The Action Is and Bill "Hoss" Allen's syndicated program The!!!!Beat. Hebb appeared as one of the preliminary acts on The Beatles' last American tour that summer along with The Remains, The Cyrkle, and The Ronettes, playing huge venues that included Chicago's International Amphitheater and New York's Shea Stadium. Over in Great Britain, they could not get enough of "Sunny." In September of 1966, no less than three versions charted, Bobby's own followed closely by covers from a solo Cher and a homegrown Georgie Fame.