Little Anthony And The Imperials

Little Anthony & the Imperials "Goin' Out of My Head"

Hurt So Bad – United Artists 1964

Goin’ Out Of My Head

BETTER USE YOUR HEAD
GONNA FIX YOU GOOD
– (1966) United Artists – and in 66/67

Little Anthony And The Imperials had an enormous hit in the USA and a smaller one in the UK with “TEARS ON MY PILLOW”. And on United Artist UK (Veep USA).

GONNA FIX YOU GOOD – this eclipsed their other 45’s at The Twisted Wheel with this song requested again and again at the Saturday Night All-nighters. But we still loved all the others.

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The high-pitched falsetto vocals of Little Anthony – you’d be hard pressed not to think it was a girl –  set them apart from other Doo Wop groups, ‘I’m on the Outside Looking In’ ,’Tears on My Pillow’, ‘Two People in the World,’ ‘Wishful Thinking’ ,’Oh Yeah’, ‘So Much’,’Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop”, When You Wish Upon a Star’ ‘Going Out of My Head’, ‘Better Use Your Head,’ and ‘Hurt So Bad’ were a string of USA hits for them. Those listed above were their UK soul hits, all played throughout the 60’s decade at Manchester‘s Twisted Wheel and Blue Note Clubs. They produced a distinctive and absolutely soulful sound.

Little Anthony was still performing in 2014 (August) on the Soul Legends Live Tour hosted by David Gest.

Kev Roberts puts “Better Use Your Head” at position 39 on his Top 500 of Northern Soul and in 1976 a decade after its release it reached 42 in the UK pop chart: but like so many; aprox 100/out of his 500 were original Soul records like this one that were played a decade before re-emerging and classified a new as ‘Northern Soul’! So why “Gonna Fix You Good” only comes in a few hundred positions later at 334 on Kev Roberts Top 500, must be to avoid bunching! “HURT SO BAD” is still one of my favourites.

Little Anthony And The Imperials – Wikipedia