Chapter Twenty-Two
Before Willa Mae, while we were still living in Brooklyn, Gerry and I were rehearsing one day in 1961 with the Cookies. I was then pregnant with Sherry. Baby Louise was alternately being fussed over by the women, held by Gerry, or attended to by me. Hearing me say, not for the first time, that I really needed a dependable babysitter, Dorothy recommended a teenager she knew. At seventeen, Eva Narcissus Boyd was whip smart, cheerful, hardworking, and wonderful with Louise. Pop legend has it that Gerry and I heard her singing around the house and said, “Stop! We mustrecord that voice!” The truth is, we knew Eva could sing when we hired her. With one of her older sisters covering child care, Eva often sang on our demos.
In 1962, Dee Dee Sharp had a #1 hit called “Mashed Potato Time” on a Philadelphia-based label called Cameo-Parkway. Gerry and I wrote “The Loco-Motion” with Dee Dee in mind and recorded the demo with Eva singing lead. But Cameo-Parkway was a self-contained hit factory. Dee Dee and her producers didn’t want or need material from outside writers. If Cameo-Parkway’s success hadn’t already been enough motivation, their failure to consider a song that Donnie’s golden ear had identified as a hit prompted Donnie to establish Dimension Records, on which he would release Aldon songs sung by artists under Aldon’s control, with Aldon writers producing the records. It was Donnie who gave our babysitter her professional name: Little Eva. “The Loco-Motion” was Dimension’s first release on June 8, 1962.
Donnie’s instinct was literally on the money. It didn’t take long for “The Loco-Motion” to reach #1, where it remained for seven weeks. Our catchy little dance tune would subsequently be recorded by a diverse assortment of artists over the next several decades, among them Grand Funk Railroad in the seventies and the Australian entertainer Kylie Minogue in the eighties.
Though “The Loco-Motion” alludes to dance movements, neither Gerry nor I had envisioned an actual dance. Eva had to invent one for personal appearances. Standing beside a locomotive for publicity photographs, with “The Loco-Motion” playing on loudspeakers, Eva moved her body that day in imitation of the arm that drives a locomotive, and a dance was born.
Eva’s success had a downside for us—or, more accurately, for me. With Eva’s career as our babysitter pretty much over, I was once again doing all three of my old jobs: songwriting, child care, and household management. The latter included (and this is only a partial list) cooking, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the toilet, making beds, endless laundry, endless diapers, grocery shopping, picking up dry cleaning, and reconciling our monthly bank statements. When I interviewed potential replacements for Eva, I was very careful to communicate a requirement, second only to the ability to care for our children, that the applicant possess neither a good singing voice nor the desire to become a famous recording artist.
Donnie was so pleased with the success of “The Loco-Motion” that he put Gerry in charge of producing other artists. Soon Dimension became a strong independent label, and Gerry was recognized as a talented producer with good instincts, a good ear, and the necessary perspective to keep everyone focused on the desired end product. When we wrote a song, Gerry often guided me toward the realization of a concept I didn’t fully understand until later. Though we worked as a team in the studio, he was credited as the sole producer and paid accordingly. At the time, this seemed logical. Production credit was customarily given to the person in the control booth, and Gerry’s contribution was essential. But I arranged and conducted. Sometimes I was a band member. Sometimes I sang background. And I often directed other singers with hand and body movements from a position close by in the studio. We both did what we did because we loved the work. But because I believed sole credit was important to my husband, it never even occurred to me to ask for a coproducer credit on any of the Dimension records.
Clearly I could have benefited from the women’s liberation movement. But women’s lib didn’t fully come into its own until later in the sixties. I had no trouble valuing Gerry, but I didn’t know how to value myself. And yet, as much as I valued Gerry, it would turn out not to be enough.