It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Goin’ Out of My Head” by Little Anthony and the Imperials
January 6, 1965
“Goin’ Out of My Head” by Little Anthony and the Imperials
#1 on the RPM Top Singles Chart (Canada), January 4-10, 1965
Doo-wop’s keening falsetto leads, street-corner swing, and yearning romance helped establish the sound of early rock ‘n’ roll. Unfortunately, career longevity was not one of the genre’s defining features; most groups were lucky to score one hit. By the early ’60s, doo-wop as a commercial genre had mostly retreated back into the alleys and subways from which it had emerged, yet its DNA was so embedded in contemporary pop that its influence continued to persist. Doo-wop’s smooth, multi-dimensional vocal harmonies and high tenors cropped up in rock bands like the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys, and in Motown groups like Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (itself originally a doo-wop act).
Brooklyn-based Little Anthony and the Imperials had every appearance of being yet another of doo-wop’s casualties. The group had scored a Top 5 hit in 1958 with “Tears on My Pillow,” but none of their follow-ups came close to matching its success. After just one more entry into the Top 40, 1960’s novelty tune “Shimmy, Shimmy, Ko-Ko-Bop,” lead singer “Little Anthony” Gourdine left the group in 1961 for a solo career. The rest of the Imperials carried on without him. Both seemed destined to fade into obscurity.
A funny thing happened, though. In 1963, Little Anthony rejoined the Imperials, and the group left End Records for United Artists’ DCP label. There, they reconnected with childhood friend Teddy Randazzo, who had earned a few hits in the ‘50s as a member of the group the Three Chuckles, and had co-written “Pretty Blue Eyes” for Steve Lawrence, which had reached the Top 10 on the pop charts in early 1960. Randazzo, now working as a songwriter/producer for DCP, helped update the Imperials’ teenage sound to something more adult, wrapping their harmonies in lush symphonic arrangements and epic melodrama.
The Imperials’ first single with Randazzo, 1964’s “I’m on the Outside (Looking In),” launched a surprise comeback for the group, peaking at #15 in the pop charts and becoming their biggest hit since their first one six years earlier. The group’s follow-up, “Goin’ Out of My Head,” did even better, climbing to #6 in the United States and all the way to the top of the charts in Canada. The Imperials had officially made the transition from rock ‘n’ roll kids to pop sophisticates.
At first, the polished, lite-symphonic arrangement of “Goin’ Out of My Head” seems to veer dangerously close to banal adult contemporary. But the throbbing headache of a bass pulse that opens the song suggests that the song won’t be quite-so-easy listening, as do the fragmented verses, continually breaking off and circling back to Gourdine’s quivering yet insistent repetitions of “I think I’m goin’ out of my head, yes I think I’m goin’ out of my head … ”
His claims of pending insanity are confirmed when Gourdine’s coyly entrancing coo swells into an operatic soar of unexpected power, not unlike a timid Dr. Jekyll being overtaken by a surging, raging Mr. Hyde. He thrashes about the lines “night and day! / day and night! / night and day and night!” so that the accents fall against the beat, adding to the sense of mental instability (as well as enhancing the record’s similarities to a Burt Bacharach production). While the theme of being “crazy” for someone recurs frequently in pop, “Goin’ Out of My Head” actually makes vivid the obsessive mental processes and overriding angst of someone who is truly on the edge of sanity.
Little Anthony and the Imperials would follow “Goin’ Out of My Head” with “Hurt So Bad,” a similarly dramatic ballad that attempted to translate the agony of love into palpable form. It made the Top 10 in both Canada and the US, but would prove to be their last single to chart so high in their home country. (In Canada, however, both “Take Me Back” and “I Miss You So” would also climb into the Top 10.) As swiftly as Little Anthony and the Imperials returned to the pop landscape, they vanished again.
Naturally, however, a group that had its most glorious run the second time around wouldn’t be kept down for long. The Imperials mounted another comeback in 1969-70, their sweet sound back in vogue thanks to Philly soul. While it wasn’t the overwhelming success of their previous eras, they still notched several respectable hits. Yet the group’s run of exquisitely agonized ballads in the mid-’60s, forms the legacy by which Little Anthony and the Imperials will best be remembered, with the aching, gorgeously fractured “Goin’ Out of My Head” foremost among them.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
