“Moments Like This” Trendells: Songs I Love, Part XXI
Posted: August 2nd, 2010 | Filed under: Music, Ruminations | 1 Comment »
Like a carny barker at the Shelby County Fair, the unique trombone riff lures you into the song.
Then you’re enveloped like a summer evening’s fog at a lookout over the city with pitch perfect, adenoidal four part harmony.
The scene is set.
Then with a teen whine for the ages, Johnny Hourigan’s voice — think Nick Cage’s Charlie Bodell in “Peggy Sue Got Married” — soars over the top of Bill Mathley, Joe Bergman and Jim Settle’s chorus.
Moments/ Moments like this/ With her, embracing/ Sharing a kiss/Make me realize/ The meaning of paradise.
Doo wop defined a simpler time in the 50s and early 60s. It was to the mid 20th century as Schubert’s romantic odes were to the early 19th.
Settle’s paen to young love is as good as any that came out of Louisville at the time. With all due respect to my buddy Cosmo, whose “It’l Be Easy” with The Sultans was the first #1 local doo wop charter in town, and The Monarchs “Look Homeward Angel,” which went national, “Moments Like This” is the one.
Here’s why:
I first heard that opening nasty slide in the fall of ’69. Some guy had a copy of 13 by Request. I asked “what the hell is THAT?” It was of course a compilation of Louisville music from the early to mid sixties. It completely blew me away. Sensational stuff and the the lead singer for the Tren-Dells had the perfect teen voice. To think this record is unknown and the Four Season garbage is regarded as classic and representative of the era makes me almost physically ill.