P.J. Proby is another pop music figure who has been around my existence, but I never heard his music until recently. I know I must have seen him on TV shows broadcast during the early 1960s, and I know his name. For one, he was the only figure besides Paul Revere & the Raiders with a hairstyle from the American Revolution. Culturally, I was allergic to any man wearing a ponytail then. Even my father had long hair, and his actions were even worse. He would have pigtails. That bothered me so much.
Proby was a major star in the United Kingdom during the Beatles era and came from Texas. He has a soulful voice and seems to be a man from Texas, but eventually, he found himself in England and worked with music biz visionaries such as Jack Good. Inspired by the film Tom Jones, Proby took the visual aspect of that character and became a sex symbol pop star. The legendary writer Nik Cohn based his novel I Am Still The Greatest Says Johnny Angelo on Proby’s life and career. He does have a voice, but so does Scott Walker, and I didn’t need two when I got the perfect ballad singer, Scott. And it seemed to me just by looking or comparing images of Scott with Proby that I should spend quality time listening to the Walker Brothers.
Fifty years later, I bought my first P.J. Proby record album, used primarily due to my curiosity about everything from 1965, as if to me now, that was the year that something fundamental started to happen. And since the copy I purchased was an original pressing, I can sense someone’s fingerprints from that era on the record, which means it is an artifact from that year. P.J. Proby, the album is big, sounding like putting a train in a small room. It is overpowering, over-the-top, and really fun.
This album is something that I think I would love, but it feels like I’m outside the house looking in, and this album is that soundtrack to that feeling or placement. Proby does a version of I Will, which I believe originally was a recording by Billy Fury, and I love Billy’s take on the song, but Proby’s arrangement or performance is not as enticing to me. On the other hand, he makes each song off this album his, but it feels like a foreign presence to me, and although I’m participating in the household, I don’t belong there.
Compared to the Walker Brothers, the album is artless, but its recklessness is beautifully chaotic. The songs are good, and some I know from other artists, but Proby’s versions are always over-produced, which makes any sentiment from the song become an abrasive act of communication. His version of the great Shangri-las’ She Cried is truly mawkish, but like the original recording, it is dramatic, but not with the poison that Mary and the girls committed to their recording.
Cohn’s novel I Am Still The Greatest Says Johnny Angelo is fictional but written by a journalist who knew the mechanics of British pop stardom and how it worked. He also wrote about music culture with a sense of a poet, and his love for culture, whether it’s vintage rock n’ roll or hip-hop, he somehow made it his own backyard. And I guess that when I bought this used, second-hand copy of P.J. Proby, I was entering not only this record but also the culture around it. Whenever anyone buys an old album, it is either to capture their past or youth, but people like me are looking for an entrance to another world that no longer exists. I share with Cohn an interest in P.J. Proby, but there is something untouchable about this artist. There is something there about him, but what is that there?
Thanks for filling in the gaps here. Been intrigued for a while about this Tex slash Brit invasion figure.