The Bright Lights and You Girl

This week, I received quite a few emails about my post on Jackie Paris and Anne Marie Moss's 1974 album, Live at the Maisonette. Many readers asked about the song that Moss sings solo, The Bright Lights and You Girl. So I did a little digging. The song was written by Sayde Shepherd, who, it appears, brought the song to Ray Charles in 1967. The song first appeared on his Portrait of Ray album, released in March 1968, and was published by Charles's Tangerine Music.

After doing a little online research, I found that Shepherd's name only comes up in Bodies and Soul: Musical Memoirs, a book by poet Al Young published in 1981. Unfortunately, Google Books wouldn't let me expose the entire passage. Here's what I could pull up, though it's unclear who's doing the talking:

"Yeah, I love [Bright Lights] too," he says. "Took us a long time to get all that down—the rhythm section tracks, the band, the background stuff. It's written [words and music] by a lady right here in the neighborhood named Sayde Shepherd. She comes in with a few things every now and then. Ray wants to sign her as a songwriter, but she always laughs and says , 'I'm just a housewife.'" I also found that she worked for Tangerine Music.

My guess is that Young had interviewed Oliver Nelson (above), who was one of the arrangers on the album, along with Rene Hall and Sid Feller. To my ears, that's a Nelson arrangement on the Charles recording. I'm not sure which "neighborhood" Nelson was referring to at the time and in which city.

Here's the Anne Marie Moss version once again, followed by the Ray Charles original and six cover versions:

Here's Anne Marie Moss...

Here's the Ray Charles studio recording in late 1967...

Here's Tom Jones recording live in the summer of 1969 at the Las Vegas Flamingo...

Here's Bobby Troup in 1969...

Here's Gene "Duke of Earl" Chandler in 1970...

Here are the Whispers in 1981...

Here's Seks Bomba with a retro version released on Operation B.O.M.B.A. in 1999...

And here's guitarist John Bishop in 2012...

Bonus: Here's Ray Charles performing the song live...

And here he is in 1975 in Spain...