Sometimes I get to thinking that I’m a real mean guy. A hard ass, a walking scowl, one gruff customer, a storm system coming in from the south, a beer bottle that’s been pissed in, a bruised banana, a carcinogenic soul with an abortion clinic dumpster for a heart, a dead dandelion in a winter field, a tornado that carries away your kitten, a broken cookie jar, bad news in old blue jeans, a hair in your fettuccine alfredo, a spoonful of bitter medicine that doesn’t help, a straight-up jerk, a bad dream, a bus station restroom, a carton of curdled milk, a human skull that you find in the grass on your Easter picnic, a soiled towel, one foul fella.
I think you get the picture.
Put on the heavenly R&B hits of The Platters though, and I go from sour to swooning li’l flower in about two notes. I get sensitive. I get all tender. I get goopy. I get to almost feeling bad about that time when I told an annoying table at a comedy club that they looked like a “children of incest” support group.
Twenty years ago, when I was a goofy lovelorn teen who constantly listened to oldies radio, The Platters ripped out my heart every time I heard them. Achingly romantic singles such as “My Prayer” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” made me think of all the girls I liked in school and fired up virginal visions of searing emotional connections (finally expressing the real me to a cute girl—groan), kissing, and holding hands. You know the drill. I was the corniest cornball off the stalk.
Now I’m older and slimier and no longer even have those emotions (and good riddance), but these songs are still real beauties. It’s the ultimate slow dance music. Lead tenor Tony Williams has a voice that makes the nighttime stars twinkle just a little brighter and the arrangements are spare or tastefully lush at exactly the right times.
The Platters no longer make me dream naive dreams, but they do make me sway and sing along like a real silly Billy, which is pretty much all I want from music nowadays.