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Any solo Elvis Costello show where he plays “So Like Candy,” Girls Talk,” “The Only Flame In Town,” “Every Day I Write The Book” “The Other End of the Telescope” and “Sneaky Feelings” is more than oke with me, and even though I had to scoot and miss “His Latest Flame,” I can’t say that there are very many EC songs I’d rather have heard. Oh, maybe something else from This Year’s Model in place of “Little Triggers,” but since I saw a batch of those tracks at the last Spinning Wheel NYC show, how can I do any whining? These one-man shows are take-what-you-get affairs, and he does a lot of set-scrambling, so who knows what might come up tonight or in a couple of days at the Capitol or on any other stops? A Bacharach-Costello tune? “Party Girl” in place of “Girls Talk”? With a catalog this deep, it’s hard to imagine things going irredeemably off the rails. Go, and you just might be lucky enough to see Elvis sing the ancient tune “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home,” which he’s been throwing into the mix from time to time.
The song goes back more than 80 years, had a big vogue in the 1950s when Johnnie Ray, Nat “King” Cole, Dean Martin and others took it out for a stroll (it feels like an Eisenhower-era song to me, but that’s probably because those were the versions I got to know first), and besides Elvis, next-generation singers like Van Morrison, Willie Nelson and James Taylor have found its casual pace enticing. It’s a song that inspires whistling (Elvis did some, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he lifted the idea from a recording by Ted Weems or Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edwards, or maybe Bing Crosby). You’ll notice that those are all guy versions, and that’s how the lyrics are slanted (there’s a little over-aggressive groping that goes on, which I’ll get to later), but that didn’t stop the women from chiming in, starting with (in my library at least), the adorable Annette Hanshaw in the early ‘30s, and then a few of the usual gals: Ella, Judy, Jo Stafford. Lee Morse.
Not many versions kick off with the verse; I’d never heard it until I discovered Hanshaw’s record (last night’s Elvis performance was probably the first time I’ve heard it since). Annette, an “agreeable baby,” enjoys going out dancing, going to the movies, but confesses that she and her date have “real fun” when all that activity is out of the way and they’re heading back at the end of the evening. The rest of the story you might be familiar with: arms linked, the boy and the girl take a long walk, interrupted by some petting, and a stop for some late barbeque, and here’s where the song gets a little confusing. The whole scenario is about this walking. It’s there in the name of the song. But in a second bridge, our couple somehow winds up in a car.
“I’m afraid of the dark, so I make him park
Outside of my door ‘til it’s light
I said if he’d try to kiss me I’d cry
He dried my tears all through the night”
Park” might mean simply something like “perch,” I suppose…
She makes it sound so playful and flirtatious, and I’m pretty sure she’s exaggerating about all the crying, but when a guy sings that bridge (“She said if I’d try…” etc) it feels as though he’s taking advantage. The “I dry her tears all through the night” line got a laugh at the Elvis show, and after the song he remarked about how the line about getting her powder all over his vest was kind of sneaky old-timey innuendo. I suppose that’s true, but we already know there’s some messing around going on, and the powder, like her mussed-up hair and his askew tie, is just some deft lyrical evidence (words by Roy Turk, music by Fred E. Ahlert; Turk, by the way, also wrote the 1927 lyrics for “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” later popularized by the other Elvis).
I didn’t think there were any truly bad versions of “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home.” How off the mark could you get with such a jaunty, undemanding tune? But then I found out that Paul Anka had done it, and there went that theory (there are also Jerry Vale and Jimmy Roselli versions apparently). There’s a pretty funny Mickey Katz parody, ‘Schlepping My Baby Back Home” (she’s overweight, see…), and my favorite instrumental take is the one Oscar Peterson and Stephane Grappelli did together, but hearing Elvis do it sent me down the old (Tin Pan) alleyways, and lead me to one I never knew by Louis Armstrong, and a doo-wop version (of course) by a group called Penny & The Overtones. I wouldn’t have expected to encounter the song right after “Only Flame In Town,” but that’s only one reason why you drop into an Elvis Costello show when you have the opportunity.
Also: when are She & Him going to cover this song?
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