I watched Blue Valentine tonight...
- Thread starter One4Deuce
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Slaimon Khan Shah
SLAIMON KHAN SHAH = SHAOLIN MONK/S OF ISLAAM
THANK YOU.
ADLT
make u feel sum type a wave
realest shyt i ever saw
michelle williams reminded me so much of my ex in this, same mannerisms and errything. shyt really fukked with me for a minute
me 2
michelle williams reminded me so much of my ex in this, same mannerisms and errything. shyt really fukked with me for a minute
me 2
An early blurry group shot of Penny & The Quarters.
“You and Me” by Penny & The Quarters is a Demo Recording Someone Found at an Estate Sale
Gino Sorcinelli
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Published in
Micro-Chop
5 min read
Dec 17, 2016
Singing was a constant presence in the lives Columbus, Ohio natives Nannie “Penny” Sharpe and her brothers Donald, John, and William “Preston” Coulter. Now known to the world as Penny & The Quarters, the four siblings always found a way to make music together, no matter what the occasion. “We’d sing all the time, in church, in the house,” Sharpe told The Guardian in a 2011 interview. “We’d stand around, helping whoever’s turn it was to wash dishes that week, singing together.”
The Spotify version of Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label.
After hearing that a local Columbus, Ohio record label needed regional talent in 1969, the sibling group decided to take their love of music to the next level. The ensuing trip to Harmonic Sounds studio landed them some backup vocal work, leading to long days at the studio filled with endless takes. Sharpe, who was only 19 at the time, didn’t always love the process. “We would go over there every Saturday morning and stay all day, from 7am to 4pm,” Sharpe told The Guardian. “I remember thinking: ‘Do we have to stay all day?’”
Once she honed her skills as a backup singer, Sharpe wanted a chance for her family to have their own stage. She worked up the courage to ask Harmonic songwriter Jay Robinson to work with them, “to polish us up,” Sharpe told The Guardian. “I remember he used to emphasize to us to enunciate those words, and he liked the phrase ‘my, my, my, my’ to illustrate.”
Once the group felt Robinson had appropriately polished their sound they hit the studio, with Robinson penning an original song titled “You and Me” for them. The fateful recording of their now-famous song was a one-take demo where we can hear Sharpe utilizing the “my, my, my, my” mentioned above several times. One of The Quarters later said that the group didn’t know someone was recording when they performed “You and Me”. “I didn’t even realize they were recording,” Sharpe’s brother Preston told Eric Lyttle of The Other Paper, a now defunct Columbus newspaper that broke the story about the song’s origins. “We were just trying to get ourselves on record."
An early photo of Nannie “Penny” Sharpe. (Photo Credit: Numero Group)
For Penny & The Quarters, the recording session at Harmonic Sounds was their one and only. After Sharpe’s brief stint as a backup vocalist, she went on to work as a mail sorter for 30 years and is now retired. The group’s demo reel went into storage and remained untouched for the next 35 years.
Then, according to the Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label liner notes, Columbus record collector Blake Oliver was checking local yard sales for hidden gems in 2005 — a regular Saturday morning ritual for him. During his travels he stumbled upon an estate sale where a box of tapes caught his eye. The Other Paper reported that the tapes eventually made their way to Numero Group owner Rob Sevier and renowned Ohio soul expert Dante Carfagna. After giving them a listen, Carfagna and Sevier realized the tapes were demos and unreleased recording from Harmonic Sounds.
A post from The Numero Group noted that “You & Me” “was found tacked onto a studio reel of various artists.” The label fell in love with the song right away but couldn’t figure out who the performers were. They talked to anyone and everyone they could find who knew about the Columbus scene, “including retired DJs, producers, and important local artists.” Though they turned over every stone imaginable, nobody could tell them anything about Penny & The Quarters. Despite their lack of knowledge regarding the song, they put it on their Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label compilation. The label admitted that may have neglected it a bit at first, as “it may’ve ended up a bit buried on our original compilation, as #18 of 19 tracks.”
An early photo of The Quarters. (Photo Credit: Numero Group)
The Other Paper article explained how the story of Penny & The Quarters took a surprising turn when Ryan Gosling was visiting his PR agent two years after the release of Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label. During Gosling’s visit, his agent played him some songs from the compilation and he was immediately struck by “You & Me”. A short time later he approached Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance about using the song in the film. The director loved the song and agreed, giving the unreleased demo cut from Ohio recording yet another act in its ever-evolving story.
As “You & Me” made it’s way from forgotten demo to soul compilation to Ryan Gosling movie in the span of 5 years, Penny & The Quarters were unaware of the song’s resurgence. According to The Other Paper, that changed when Sharpe’s daughter Jayma was having dinner with a friend who brought up the song. Jayma had the sneaking suspicion that the singer could be her mother once she did some cursory internet research.
The official Blue Valentine music video for “You and Me”.
After learning of her song’s resurgence some 40 years later, Sharpe couldn’t believe it had found such a broad and passionate fan base. “It is a cute song, but I had totally forgotten about it,” she admitted to the Columbus Dispatch in 2011.
Sadly, Jay Robinson passed away before the song made it on the Blue Valentine soundtrack, and Sharpe’s brother Donald died in 2014. Despite the loss of some of the original artists involved with the song, it continues to endure.
In the end, “You and Me” seems to have taken on a life of its own and will likely continue to inspire new listeners for many years to come. As The Numero Group said on their website, the song “could not be suppressed: not when Prix failed to release it; not when Penny & the Quarters were forgotten; not when Numero stuck it at the bitter end of a much overlooked compilation.”
feelosofer
#ninergang
This movie made me take Ryan Gosling seriously as an actor not that he was ever bad but he really grew in this role. This was an excellent movie though.