El Somnambulo’s fave tunes for October includes a psychedelic cover of this 1963 girl-group nugget by the Jaynetts, who are considered a one-hit wonder but didn’t really exist at all.
The Jaynetts and the song were both the brainchildren of an A&R man for Chess Records named Abner Spector, who wrote and produced a hit for the Corsairs the year before. Girl groups were all over the charts at the time, so he asked Zell Sanders, owner of J&S records and manager of a girl group called the Hearts, to assemble one. Sanders also wrote “Sally Go ‘Round the Roses” with Spector’s wife, basing it on the children’s rhyme.
Spector apparently had a hard time deciding who was and wasn’t a Jaynett – there are at least 10 different singers on the track, five of them credited. Arthur Butler, who went on to a long career as a producer and arranger, did most of the instrumental work, and the reverb he added to each gave the record its unusually spooky sound. The mysterious “secret” in the lyrics gave rise to all sorts of urban myths about what the song was really about. It went to No. 2 on the Hot 100 in October 1963.
The first city where “Sally Go ‘Round the Roses” broke out was San Francisco, which might be why Grace Slick used to cover the song with the Great Society, her band before the Jefferson Airplane. This might be where Dave Alvin got the idea to turn the tune into a psychedelic jam.
