‘Oh Me, Oh My, I’m A Fool For You, Baby . . .’

 by whiteray

So, it’s the first week of February, a week before Valentine’s Day. And I think that this week and next, we’ll write about love songs. 

I’m sixty-eight, and the Texas Gal and I have been together for nearly twenty-two years. (The anniversary of our meeting is sometime next week; we’ve never been able to decide if it happened on February 15 or 16, 2000.) Before that for me came twenty-eight years as an adult and several years as a moony adolescent, some of which found me married or in relationships and some of which found me alone, often longing for my affections to be returned. 

Let’s go back to February 1970, about mid-way through my junior year of high school. I was home from school with flu or sore throat or perhaps just my general weariness from playing what a columnist from the St. Cloud Tech High School newspaper called High School Parchesi. Anyway, I was home, sitting up in bed, reading, as the RCA radio that had once belonged to my grandfather played softly on my bedside table, tuned – as was almost always the case – to KDWB, one of the Twin Cities’ Top 40 stations. 

And on that morning as I nursed either my stomach or my throat or my spirit, I heard a song start with a cushion of strings and some subtle percussion, and then a smooth voice floated over the top with a knowing “Hmmm mmm-mmm.” And Lulu sang: 

To make you laugh, I’d play the fool for you
Although the people turn and stare.
I’d give my everything to keep you, boy.
It breaks my heart when you’re not there 

And after another verse came the chorus: 

Oh me, oh my, I’m a fool for you, baby
Oh me, oh my, well, I’m crazy, said I’m crazy
Oh me, oh my, I’m a fool for you, baby
Let your lovelight shine on me 

My head changed the words “keep you, boy” in the third line to “know you, girl,” and I stared at the radio as Lulu sang, envisioning a face that I saw nearly every day and looking as well at something that was at least a thousand miles distant and as near as my heart. And I wondered, not for the first time nor for the last, how songwriters and singers could know so well who I was and how I felt. 

The desire to attain the unattainable and the fear of losing those things most precious are, I now know, universal. But, like so many millions of others, when I was sixteen, I was sure I was the only one. And as I hoped that my most precious person might someday feel the same as I did, Lulu’s song – and a few others – became precious as well. 

The song came from the pen of songwriter Jim Doris, whose page at discogs.com shows numerous versions of “Oh Me Oh My (I’m a Fool for You Baby)” and a few other songs, none of which trigger any memories for me. Lulu’s recording was the first, and cover versions followed, of course. Some of those who took on the song were known quantities like B.J. Thomas, Barbara Mason, Benny Mardones, and Bill Medley. Then there were folks not so well known, like Bobby Gosh, William E & Friends, Lloyd Terrell, Walter Jackson, and Sinfonia ’72. 

One very good cover came from Aretha Franklin, who used the song as the first track on her 1972 album Young, Gifted and Black. But for today, we’ll stick with Lulu’s original, remembering that sixteen-year-old lad from 1970 who was trying, without much success at the time, to figure things out.