Rainbow '65, Pts. 1-2

A high-charge live recording (the Regal Theater) from 1965 of a Curtis Mayfield song Chandler previously released on Vee Jay Records November 1962. The 1962 studio version was the flipside of an answer to Mary Wells' "You Beat Me to the Punch" called "You Threw a Lucky Punch." The original version was good and many jocks played it instead of the A-side, but the live version released three years later on Constellation Records made Chandler a hot chitlin' circuit commodity for years. Everyone wanted to see "the Duke" enact the throbbing ballad live; they wanted to see him drop to his knees and beg for forgiveness like he did on the live recording, muttering baby, baby, baby, baby over and over. Mayfield never, in a million years, envisioned his plaintive little ballad being dramatize the way Chandler did, but who's complaining? Mayfield reportedly loved the unexpected places Chandler took his compositions.