Way down in Egypt lay-and
August 28th, 2006
Ever since I was a little kid, when I thought “Leader of the Pack” (vrrrm! vrrrrrrm!) was the greatest song in the world, I’ve loved girl groups. They never seem to get too much respect, probably because they didn’t write their own songs, and they were mostly just manufactured by their producers. So? When the producer was Lou Christie, who cares?
The Tammys were one of Christie’s first groups, and I guess he went all-out on them. As much as I love the Bangles’ hit “Walk Like an Egyptian,” nothing can stop the Tammys’ “Egyptian Shumba” from being the greatest ancient Egypt-themed pop song of all time. Don’t even talk to me about that Steve Martin song. “Egyptian Shumba” is so bizarre that it’s almost a parody. The first squeaks at the beginning of the song sound like some Austin Powers thing, but nope, it’s a legit, amazing girl-group song, replete with screams and sighs. Handclaps must not have been invented yet by 1963, because this is such a perfect song that if rhythmic handclaps had existed, they would have been all over this song.
I first heard this song on Girls Go Zonk!, a nice one-disc compilation, but you can also get a whole CD of just The Tammys, called Egyptian Shumba: The Singles and Rare Recordings 1962-1964. The best idea, though, is to invest in the mondo box set One Kiss Can Lead to Another. It’s packed with about 75,890,279,852 amazing, unknown girl-group songs, from favorites like the Shirelles and Petula Clark and unknowns, as well.
This has nothing to do with “Egyptian Shumba,” but I may be posting less often here. I’m about to leave for a year in India, studying Urdu in the northern city of Lucknow. I’ll have an Internet connection, so I’ll try to continue to post songs. I might also start writing about my travels, here or somewhere else. We’ll see.