Vanilla Fudge – "Take Me For a Little While" (1968)

Deep inside I know 

You’re never gonna love me

While “You Just Keep Me Hanging On” is the ne plus ultra of Vanilla Fudge cover records, I think their version of “Take Me for a Little While” – which was also released on the group’s eponymous debut album in 1967 – is also worthy of being inducted into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” COVER RECORDS HALL OF FAME. 

But the real reason I chose it is that I wanted to shine a light on the career of the very underrated artist who recorded the original version of “Take Me for a Little While” – the one, the only Evie Sands.

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You may not be familiar with Evie Sands, but you’re almost certainly familiar with several of the hit songs she was the first singer to record.

Evie Sands then

Unfortunately, if it wasn’t for bad luck, the young Evie Sands wouldn’t have had no luck at all.

From AllMusic:

Singer Evie Sands endured one of the more remarkable hard luck tales in pop music lore – time after time, her records seemed poised for chart success, only to fall prey to industry whim. 

The Brooklyn-born Sands’ husky, soulful voice first attracted the attention of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller's Blue Cat label in 1965, and upon signing with the company she entered the studio with the songwriting/production team of Chip Taylor and Al Gorgoni to record her debut single, “Take Me for a Little While.” 

Prior to the record's release, a test pressing was smuggled to executives at Chess Records, where Chicago soul singer Jackie Ross immediately cut her own version of the song; just as Sands' rendition of “Take Me for a Little While” cracked the R&B charts, Chess' marketing muscle assured that Ross' cover began receiving the lion's share of radio airplay, leaving the original in the dust. 

That’s bad enough.  But wait – there’s more:

The confusion and subsequent litigation severely hobbled Sands' fledgling career, and her follow-up, 1966's superb “I Can't Let Go,” was lost in the mire; a year later, the song became a major international hit for the Hollies. 

Moving to the Cameo label, in 1967 Sands resurfaced with the Taylor-penned “Angel of the Morning”; despite heavy early airplay, within weeks of the single's release Cameo went bankrupt, allowing Merilee Rush's recording of the song to top the pop charts a few months later. 

A lesser woman might have decided that success just wasn’t in the cards for her and walked away from the music business at that point.  But Evie Sands kept plugging away.

In 1969, her cover of Chip Taylor’s “Any Way That You Want Me” – originally released by the Troggs – spent 17 weeks on the Billboard “Hot 100.”  The next year she released her first album, also titled Any Way That You Want Me.

She subsequently released albums in 1975 and 1979 before retiring from performing for a number of years.  However, she carved out a niche for herself as a songwriter – the artists who recorded songs that she wrote or co-wrote included Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Karen Carpenter, Gladys Knight, and Dusty Springfield.

Evie Sands now

Sands returned to performing and recording in 1996, collaborating once again with her old friends, producer-songwriters Chip Taylor (the brother of actor Jon Voight) and Al Gorgoni, on the well-received Women in Prison album.

In the meantime, Evie became a skilled albeit eccentric guitarist.  From her own website:

She’s among the few who play lefty, with the strings upside-down (strung right-handed).  Pulling downward on bends instead of pushing up creates certain musical nuances different than guitars strung the traditional way.

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A couple of Facebook friends from California introduced me – virtually – to Evie Sands over a decade ago, when she was living in Los Angeles and playing guitar with Adam Marsland’s Chaos Band.  (One of her bandmates was Teresa Cowles, an accomplished bass player who portrayed the famed “Wrecking Crew” bassist Carol Kaye in the wonderful Brian Wilson biopic, Love and Mercy.) 

After hearing from those Facebook friends that I was a big fan, Evie sent me a copy of a compilation CD featuring the near-miss singles mentioned above, “Anyway That You Want It,” “Billy Sunshine” (a delightful piece of sunshine pop penned by Taylor and Golden that should have been a big hit when it was released in 1968) and several other songs.

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Click here to watch a video of Evie Sands performing “Take Me for a Little While” live on “Shindig.”  (That’s Darlene Love and the Blossoms singing backup.)

Click here to listen to Vanilla Fudge’s cover of that song.

Click here to buy the Vanilla Fudge recording from Amazon.