A new, occasional, series featuring stories that may or may not be 100% true, but they add to the mythology of rock 'n' roll regardless.
Most people presume that Soft Cell's chart-conquering 80s version of Tainted Love was a cover of the 1965 Gloria Jones original, which was only ever a b-side, written by this guy...
...Ed Cobb, former member of 50s Hollywood band The Four Preps, who sounded like this...
Of course, the Gloria Jones version was rediscovered in the 70s by Northern Soul DJs in the UK, which I'm pretty sure we all believed was where Marc Almond and Dave Ball first heard it.
However, this may well not be the case. There is some evidence to suggest that the version Marc and Dave were familiar with is actually this 1975 disco cover by Ruth Swann...
I'm not claiming that to be apocryphal though - maybe Marc and Dave knew both versions. No, the interesting bit of this story (for me anyway) involves Ruth Swann, who was actually a session singer, and may well have been this lady...
...Diana Foster... aka Miss Dee Dee, Connie Laverne, Jackie O... et al. The thing with session singers was, they turned up, took a flat fee for singing their part, then buggered off and let the producers call them whatever they felt like. Maybe. The point being, the apocryphal story about Ruth Swann is that after she'd got the bus home, the producers couldn't remember her name... but could remember that she said she lived about the Swan pub... so they chose the name Ruth Swann.
Could be bullshit, but I like the story, so here it is, repeated for posterity on the web of lies.
Further to this, discogs is trying its best to convince me that Diana Foster was actually Jill Saward, who went on to become the female vocalist in Shakatak. But I can't find any evidence for that, either on Jill's own website, or her iffypedia entry. So it could well be nonsense.
Detective Rol is on the case!
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