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Paul Anka
I Can't Help Loving You / Can't Get Along Very Well Without Her - 7"
RCA - 1966
Michael Panontin
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You knew Paul Anka was Canadian, right? And of course you knew he was responsible for a string of sappy hits like 'Diana', 'Lonely Boy' and 'Puppy Love' in the late fifties and early sixties. But did you know that the Ottawa-born singer also wrote the theme to The Johnny Carson Show as well as Tom Jones' uber-sexy smash 'She's a Lady'? No? Well then I guess you'll be pretty surprised to find out that a couple of his records are revered by all those northern soul anoraks across the pond in the UK.
Anka was born in 1941 to a Syrian-American father and a Lebanese-Canadian mother, who ran a local restaurant called The Locanda, located right downtown on the corner of Laurier and Bank. Anka cut his chops in the St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral choir under the direction of Frederick Karam, but he also found time to hang out at his parents' restaurant, which was a popular spot for Ottawa journalists back then.
It was at The Locanda that the thirteen-year-old singer met radio host Gord Atkinson, who would later invite Anka and his high school band the Bobbysoxers onto his radio show on CFRA-AM. He recorded his first single, 'I Confess', in 1956. And then in 1957, still a month or so shy of his sixteenth birthday, he took $100 that his uncle had given him and made his way down to New York City to record his chart-topping 'Diana'. For the next six years, Anka would land no fewer than 17 songs in the top-20 south of the border. And, as far as the standard narrative goes, he would completely disappear from view, unable to compete with the rise of the British Invasion, then psychedelia, and then glam and metal and, well, you name it, only to virtually rise from the dead in the mid-seventies with more syrupy successes like '(You're) Having My Baby' and 'Times of Your Life'.
Except that there is so much more to the story.
In the mid-sixties, Anka's recording career had sunk to its lowest point. From 1964 to 1968, the singer launched a total of twelve straight uncharted singles, and RCA Victor obviously had no choice but to change tack. So in the summer of 1966, with Anka in the very depths of his slump, the label issued what was, as an industry advert at the time described it, "a hard-rockin' new single with that drivin' Detroit beat!". 'I Can't Help Loving You', written by Artie Schroeck and Jet Loring and arranged by Charles Calello, was about as northern soul as one could get without actually standing in Berry Gordy's studio on West Grand Boulevard. And though it tanked like the other eleven singles, it would later be resurrected at the Wigan Casino as a bona fide floorshaker in the years to come.
If we are to believe the posts on the Soul Source site, 'I Can't Help Loving You' was discovered by producer Simon Soussan, who first unearthed it on one of his many cratedigging excursions to the US in the early seventies. He was visiting a record shop in Providence, R.I. owned by the late, great soul expert Al Pavlow. Soussan was one of the first of the original soul rebels to make the trek across the pond and allegedly the first European digger Pavlow had ever met.
Pavlow's selection of singles was legendary and when Soussan feasted his eyes on it, he "went bonkers, flying through his 45s, pulling records and every so often playing a few". Pavlow apparently had never seen such enthusiasm in a customer, but when he caught site of the producer's keepers, he was somewhat perplexed. When he asked him what he was looking for, Soussan played a few seconds of the Sequins on Renfro and then the Soul Twins' 'Quick Change Artist', telling Pavlow that "I want records that sound like this".
Pavlow pulled out a Paul Anka record he thought might interest him, but Soussan supposedly looked back at him "like he was a cretin, and continued to rip into the masses of 45s". About 15 minutes later, Pavlow put on a record and the shop speakers shook to the opening bars of 'I Can't Help Loving You', and then Soussan apparently dropped the records in his hands all over the floor and raced over to the counter, asking, "What the fuck is this?" To which Pavlow smugly replied, "It's the Paul Anka record I told you you might like!"
By now both 'I Can't Help Loving You' and Anka's 1968 blue-eyed stormer 'When We Get There' have become as good as certified gold for northern soul obsessives. Still, there are purists out there who resent the incursion of a white pop artist onto their beloved soul scene, which probably explains their relatively modest price points - a few hundred dollars each for mintish copies. But in an ironic twist to the doo wop days, when black vocal groups saw blanched 'white' recordings of their songs climb up the charts, a version of 'I Can't Help Loving You' was cut in 1968 by Jimmy Breedlove - a black singer, no less - but it...um...pales in comparison to the marvelous original.
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