Gene Barge, U.S. Bonds and ‘Quarter To Three,’ the Little Record That Shouldn’t Have, But Did
One of the nice things about audio recordings is that after an artist is gone, we still have the music.
In the case of Gene Barge, one of the last great rock ’n’ roll saxophone sidemen, that means a whole stack of wax, at the top of which sits “Quarter to Three.”
Gene Barge, who was 98 when he died February 2 at his home in Chicago, has been well and widely eulogized by, among others, Bill Friskics-Warren in the New York Times. While he had his frustrations along the way, like not always getting paid, he left a splendid musical trail.
He started playing the saxophone because he felt it was the closest musical instrument to a human voice and he played it for more than 70 years, helping shape major hits like “If You Wanna Be Happy” by Jimmy Soul, “C.C. Rider” by Chuck Willis and “Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass.
He toured in the summer of 1982 with the Rolling Stones. He produced gospel records for Chess and Stax. You can hear him on a Public Enemy record. He played behind Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Bo Diddley and top-level early R&B groups like the Turbans, Dells and Five Keys.
He named his first combo, the Church Street Five, after the address of an evangelical church in his native Norfolk, Virginia. The pastor there was the charismatic Daddy Grace, sometimes called Daddy G, and after Barge became known in the music biz, that became his nickname as well.
Which brings us to “Quarter to Three.”
As a quick history lesson for those unfortunate enough to be under 70, “Quarter to Three” was a №1 hit for Gary “U.S.” Bonds in the summer of 1961.
While U.S. Bonds initially had a brief run in the rock ’n’ roll spotlight, late 1960 to 1962, he became a survivor. Years after his last marginal hit — “Seven Day Weekend,” which some of us would argue was his best record — he was resurrected by Steve Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen, who loved “Quarter to Three” and famously played it for years as one of his encores. In 1981 Springsteen wrote Bonds a new song, “This Little Girl,” that reached №11 on the charts and helped ensure him ongoing visibility for live performances.
He’s never gotten the mansion on the hill, but he’s navigated things well enough to be a familiar figure at celebrity golf tournaments. “People always want to hear ‘Quarter To Three’,” he said in a 1983 interview. “And I never get tired of singing it.”
Like more than a few other rock ’n’ roll classics, “Quarter To Three” didn’t arrive on a straight path.
U.S. Bonds, who grew up “idolizing singers like Jackie Wilson and Clyde McPhatter,” had scored his first hit a few months earlier with “New Orleans,” a nice funky record with a catchy chorus.
“New Orleans” was one of many records that demolished the myth of rock ’n’ roll going dormant from the time Elvis entered the Army in 1958 until the Beatles showed up in 1964. Those years spawned some splendid music and planted the seeds for the explosion to come.
Still, there were a lot of one-hit wonders then, and U.S. Bonds didn’t do well with his second single, “Not Me,” which just wasn’t as good.
So when Bonds and the musicians convened for their next session with Frank Guida, the producer/owner of Norfolk’s Legrand records, they had to regain the momentum — without any sure-bet song.
One thing this session did have was a new saxophone player: Gene Barge.
“Gene was a good friend of mine,” said Bonds, who though a few years younger was a fellow veteran of the Virginia circuit.
Barge also had a recent Legrand release that hadn’t sold well: an instrumental called “A Night With Daddy G” by the Church Street Five.
By later rock ’n’ roll standards, the Church Street Five was an odd combo, closer to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five of the 1920s. Where the core of most rock ’n’ roll bands would become lead guitar, bass guitar, drums and keyboards, the Church Street Five had Barge’s saxophone with drums, bass, piano and trombone.
But “A Night With Daddy G” was catchy and melodic, and it had the right beat for the dance craze of the day, the Twist.
“So one night in the studio, while we were celebrating, they asked me to put lyrics to it,” said Bonds. “It took about 15 minutes.”
Barge later told Virginia Living magazine that it took about 10 minutes. That historical discrepancy may never be resolved, but the resulting lyrics do sound as if they were composed quickly. That doesn’t make them bad: “He was swinging on the sax with the girls a-bloom / And I was dancing all over the room.”
There have been apocryphal stories over the years that the wine had been flowing in the studio that night and that by the time “Quarter to Three” rolled around — the song, not the hour — everyone was hacking around and not even thinking they were recording.
Bonds, Barge and Guida have all said that’s not true. They did, however, want the record to sound like it was capturing a big old live party.
“We got everyone in the room who wasn’t a singer and told them just to make noise,” Bonds said.
The musical accompaniment was easy: “A Night With Daddy G.” The lyrics required some tooling. “We did two or three takes,” Bonds said, “and then I did vocal overdubs.”
By the time all the layers had been added, Bonds’s vocals remained clear, while the background chatter is mostly a jumble until, just before Barge’s sax blasts in and Bonds starts singing, someone yells, “Like right now!” You couldn’t have a better kickoff to a two-and-a-half minute party.
“Quarter to Three” wasn’t the first rock ’n’ roll record to become its own party, not after the likes of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” or “Slippin’ and Slidin’ “ or Wanda Jackson’s “Let’s Have a Party” — or for that matter, Stick McGhee’s “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee.”
But it was good one, and it didn’t hurt sales, buzz or airplay that all that muffled chatter at the beginning led some suspicious people to swear they heard improper sexual suggestions.
They didn’t. “There were no dirty words in ‘Quarter to Three’,” Bonds said. “There’s no way we would have said anything like that. There were families in the studio. [When the accusations surfaced] I tried to explain all that, which just shows how stupid I was. Rumors can’t be quieted.”
What is true is that “Quarter To Three” sounds like it was recorded with the microphone in someone’s back pocket. Its lyrics are not Cole Porter. It came out on a tiny label with limited promotion and distribution.
And yet it was America’s №1 record for two weeks — a phenomenon that happened more often before the Beatles turned rock ’n’ roll into something large corporations began to control. Not all those indy records were good. This one was very good.
“I don’t think we realized what we were doing,” Bonds said in 1983. “Norfolk, Virginia, is not a major record city. We were like country bumpkins. It wasn’t carefully planned. We were just having fun, and in trying to do that, we came up with something unique.”
