Double Take: 'Hush' Billy Joe Royal / Kula Shaker
Robert Webb on cover versions
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Your support makes all the difference.Penned by the white R&B songwriter Joe South, "Hush" was a hit in 1967 for Billy Joe Royal, South's best friend, from Valdosta, Georgia. Royal, around on the country scene since the early 1960s, tuned in to gospel acts such as The Staple Singers, Southern R&B and Detroit's driving Motor City sound. "I know exactly what George Jones feels," he once said. "But I know exactly what Ray Charles feels, too."
Produced by South, "Hush" is an amalgam of all those influences: a mid-paced rocker with a down-home soul. The guitars twang, the drums slap, and a tambourine rings out like the bell atop a clapboard chapel. There's an irresistible "na-na-na" hook and an impassioned plea from Royal. The narrator has lost his girl, but he might hear her crying for him, if everyone would keep quiet: "Hush, hush, I thought I heard her calling out my name, y'all." After the hit, Royal's career took a dive. "Hard rock came in, and I didn't really fit in there anywhere," he said.
The group who rescued the song were Deep Purple. Their guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore, first heard it while living in Hamburg. "I thought it was a great song, and I also thought it would be a good song to add to our act, if we could come up with a different arrangement," he told one journalist. "Hush" was given the heavy treatment and was included on the band's debut album, Shades of Deep Purple.
The singer, Rod Evans, lacks Royal's urgent holler, but Blackmore screams through it. "We did the whole song in two takes," he said. "There's actually one part where the guitar is feeding back, sustaining. I have a tendency to switch pickups as I'm playing, almost like a nervous habit." Released as a single, it established the band in the US, reaching No4 in 1968.
In 1997, the early-Purple fans Kula Shaker made "Hush" a British hit, taking their soundalike version to No 2. It was recorded in one shot at LA's Sound City. Their singer and guitarist, Crispian Mills, is as gentlemanly as Rod Evans, but he sings it like he means it. "He's a really wild player," their producer commented. "He has great technique – the sound is in his fingers."
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