Following the Rolling Stones and their taking the number one spot with a blues number, Georgie Fame flips the coin to bring a jazz swing to the masses with his version of 'Yeh Yeh'. Though originally an instrumental tune recorded with a good time Latin vibe by Mongo Santamaria in 1963, Fame's version has a definite hint of the Soho jazz scene about it's groove, of goateed hipsters fingersnapping their approval to Charles Mingus in a London coffee house straight out of 'Absolute Beginners' (either the film or the book, take your pick). Fame is sufficiently steeped in that scene to make it convince and 'Yeh Yeh' fair motors along with a rootsy panache that's at least the equal of Santamaria's, but while the Blue Flames blow up a quiet storm, it's with Fame's own vocal that follows the original horn riff that the wheels come off. The vocalese lyrics supplied by Jon Hendricks are awkward and stuffy: "Well every evening when all my day's work is through, I call my baby, and I ask her what shall we do. I mention movies, but she don't seem to dig that, and then she asks me, why don't I visit her flat" - it takes a sly tongue to make that mouthful fit the metre and Fame's Lancashire dialect fumbles where it should flow until his delivery renders 'Yeh Yeh' like an early Wright Brothers prototype that bumps across the ground without ever getting fully and properly airborne - Matt Bianco made a far better fist of it on their 1985 version. Fame is better on the "We gotta do that! We gotta do that! Yeh, yeh. We gotta do that! We gotta do that" refrains where he almost scats, but it's not enough and for the most part 'Yeh Yeh' is a little too smug and too knowing for it's own good, a song playing to its audience like an in-joke that only a clique will appreciate.
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