Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Only A Fool Breaks His Own Heart - Muisto vain jää


The vocal duo Jouko ja Kosti recorded "Muisto vain jää" (Left with just a memory) on their first single in 1968 (the B-side finnpicked earlier, see here) It turned out to be a number one hit for them and launched a successful, yet short career. The song was originally recorded by US jazz singer Arthur Prysock in 1965. This version got some airplay but didn't chart. In the following year the tune was picked up by Jamaican musicians Mighty Sparrow and Byron Lee and made it hit in Jamaica and later also in UK, where it surfaced with first ska wave. In 1968 Tom Jones recored it for his album "Delilah", and I guess that's how it found it's way to Finland. There's an insteresting story of the song's origin, here. The song is often errornously credited to Slinger Francisco (Mighty Sparrow’s real name), and apparently he hasn't always been very particular in correcting this information ;-) We present here the Arthut Prysock version (although it's not the original, but re-recorded in the 80's) and the SECOND version by Mighty Sparrow and Byron Lee.

Here's the triplet:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for giving the correct history of this song and its writers.

Sincerely,

Norman Bergen (composer)

Arrowman said...

That would I say too...
I've always thought Tom Jones was the original, but once again...
my enormous and abysmal knowledge of music has been proved wrong... :(
And I do know a lot of it with 30 years collecting and background searching experience and through the years I have read "few" books and encyclopedies about music...but as I said before here, even I have lack of knowledge and more to learn after discovering this blog....
Thanks again for filling up my knowledge... as they say, it's never too late to learn more in life....