Regular readers will know by now that, with cover versions, I tend to find it instructive to compare the present version of the song with what's gone before. And that's no less the case here; 'Release Me' is another much covered song that dates from 1946 and which stated life as a country tune. In his 1954 version, Ray Price and some scratchy fiddles do a passable Hank Williams that reads the song as the pleadings of a weak and broken man reduced to a blubbering wreck by a woman who won't let go. "Please release me let me go, for I don't love you anymore"- it's the reverse of Hank's own 'Your Cheatin' Heart' and though Williams never recorded 'Release Me', I can easily hear his dry bone whine singing both back to back. A further version from Kitty Wells the same year follows an identical blueprint but tells it from a female viewpoint and it works just as well. What didn't work was a 1962 version by Esther Phillips that took the song into unfamiliar R&B territory and without a map; Phillips is simply too forceful to deliver a lyric of submissiveness and she overcooks it to the point of parody. Put simply, I don't share her pain.
So where does Brit Humperdinck fit into all of this? Well his version takes the straw out of its mouth and stirs it on a lower flame with a thick ballad sauce just ripe to be crooned over. Humperdinck was always a reliable crooner and therein lies my main beef with this - like Phillips, Humperdinck's smooth delivery sounds far too in control of the situation for a man supposedly at the end of his rope. Humperdink's vocal transforms the shirt and tie formality of the lyric into something borderline patronising; where Price sounded down at heel and under the thumb, Humperdinck oozes a confidence that suggests he's going anyway and he only wants the woman's blessing as a sop to ease his conscience.
Humperdinck makes the song easy listening palatable, and as it was the biggest selling single of 1967 then many nerves were struck by it, but I'm afraid while I don't find it totally horrible, I struggle to sympathise, empathise or even believe a word he's saying. When (to take the example of another cover that got a big ballad makeover) Nilsson sings "I can't live, if living is without you" then I believe him, but there's a cosy falseness about 'Release Me' that kind of undermines the whole premise of the song which the intervening years (and artists like Nilsson) have only served to highlight.
And I think that's the chief reason why contemporary eyes are rolled whenever this is mentioned to focus on the Beatles song knocking one step behind at number two. Like Joe Dolce and his 'Shaddap You Face', 'Release Me' is probably now more infamously known for keeping 'Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane' off number one than on anything approaching its own merits. But I'm not going to labour that point here - if The Beatles' double A side came pre-loaded with an expectation that didn't catch fire with the general public then that's hardly the fault of this '.*
Maybe 'Release Me' did strike a genuine chord with a public overloaded and overdosed on the fab four and their ilk and keen for something more straightforward. The subsequent gravitas and weight of importance that has since attached limpet like to 'Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane' has done so to the detriment of 'Release Me's credibility, relegating it to almost a novelty tune on par with that Joe Dolce number. And wherever that's argued as being the case, I'm afraid I can't agree; 'Release Me' is a better recording than that. But then neither do I think it's a more deserving number one than The Beatles. In the final analysis, the passing years have given The Beatles the moral high ground while Humperdinck and 'Release Me', whatever their faults, remains the song recorded for posterity in the record books and statistics. Water has found its own level and I think all parties should be content with that.
* Ironically, lightning would strike twice in that respect too - fast forward to 1995 and a multi-media advertising campaign, weeks of teasers in the press and a five hour television show that still wasn't enough to take The Beatles 'Anthology #1' to the top of the album charts ahead of Robson and Jerome, two jobbing actors with a sideline in singing old standards. I bet the surviving Beatles smiled at that one (I was dearly hoping I could report that the album contained a version of 'Release Me', but alas it doesn't).
For my own part, The Crowd's charity cover of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' had the sixth form me chewing the carpet for keeping Marillion's 'Kayleigh' off number one. But that's another story again.
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