After a maddening couple of hours fighting with Roxio and digging deeper into exe files than someone as clueless as I should ever dig, my digital world is back on track and I the finer things in life can be the focus before drifting off to sleep. Thankfully, the new P.J. Proby compilation has arrived and I can confirm that the good folks at EMI UK have done a fine job. The long awaited digital version of "Just Like Him" sounds gorgeous and forty-some year old 45s can now get a long deserved rest.
P.J.'s buddy, Jackie DeShannon, wrote "Just Like Him" just for him - maybe as consolation for losing the girl he stole from Elvis to Bob Colbert. For me, "Just Like Him" is a chance to play a variation of Barbie; dressing P.J. in various outfits and placing him in different settings where he can stroll forlornly with an occasional scanning of the heavens in search of answers never forthcoming. My favorite locale is on a beach in the fading hours of the boardwalk, giving him an opportunity to come upon a nearly deserted bandstand where he stops to watch couples dancing from sheer boredom. Clinging to each other out of desperation, their feet try to do right by that breath-taking string section that shines like the stars in the sky during the middle eight.
Jackie DeShannon was never short on lyrical romance and P.J. never passed up on drama and putting them together created cinematic fodder for my childish fantasies of happy endings. That I've had a crush on her for as long as I can remember and a bizarre fascination with him for nearly a decade allows me to widen the screen to Cinemascope proportions and saturate the color until their as vivid as the hope in P.J.'s final "...just like him" at the fade out.
Sticking around for the credits reminds me that major respect should be given to the somewhat unsung producer, Ron Richards, best known as the man who discovered The Hollies and as the probable producer of the LP version of "Love Me Do"; the pale faced English guy clearly stakes a claim in the beginnings of soul, both black and blue-eyed, with this record. Jack Nitzsche has been suspected of being the uncredited arranger and even though it doesn't quite fit anyone's travel schedule, the strings certainly fit Jack.
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