Cause Baby It's You

Music has always moved me, even in my impressionable elementary school years when I was growing up in a deep urban area near downtown Dallas. I suppose I was first affected by music when monthly, our music teacher received an LP record and accompanying literature for us students to read. On the recording were excerpts and longer works of classical masterpieces that would enchant me that week and those hours I listened to and read about a new world opening to me. Also, I remember the Dallas Symphony Orchestra would invite us each year to attend a few free concerts on Fridays (during school), and they'd bus the bunch of us over to Fair Park for culture infusion. At about this time, too, I was beginning to take an interest in songs I heard on my transistor radio, learning and singing along with the lyrics, even those we thought were naughty! If I had to select a single tune that sticks out foremost in my mind then, that song would be "Baby It's You" by The Shirelles. I was simply mesmerized by its melody and heartfelt message. As a young boy in that busy, wonderful summer of 1963, so much was occurring in my world as was the world in general. It was before the beginning of my 6th grade year at the neighborhood David Crockett Elementary School (in an old building that remarkably resembled the Alamo!) I had finally arrived with the top-dog class on campus before we were again demoted and shipped off to a junior high stalag next year. If I recall correctly, innocent affections were beginning to well up inside of me for this special girl Cathy Davis who was in a grade below me...butterflies in my stomach, etc. I had met her at the Christan church gymnasium where all us kids met Saturdays to skate cheap, drink mass quantities of soda, and treat ourselves to rock-hard ice cream sandwiches dispensed from a frozen vending machine. Anyway, I was away and out of state vacationing and visiting most of that summer and missing her terribly, so my memories of that time were highly sharpened. Lying there on my pallet in the dark, listening on the AM radio dial to a station far away, as she was as well, this song seemed to speak to me.

It's not the way you smile that touched my heart
It's not the way you kiss that tears me apart
But how many many many nights go by
I sit alone at home and cry over you
What can I do
Can't help myself
Cause baby it's you

I couldn't wait to get back to Texas to see her again, talk to her, and hold her hand while we skated around the rink to other music we loved. Also, I couldn't wait till school began again. So much it was and would be expected of me this year--my teachers wanted me to take some lead roles in plays and other student activities; the principal planned to put me in the lead as hall monitor and to help with safety at the school crosswalks; and Coach Grisley was counting on me in my second year of football as one of the "senior" guys to step up and go for the goal line for the Black & Gold! All this I hoped that Cathy would notice and be proud of me, as I was in myself more than at any other time in my life up to that point. I wanted so much to impress her and to do the best I could because I really liked her like no other!

It doesn't matter what they say
I know I'm gonna love you any old way
What can I do
When it's true
Don't want nobody, nobody
Cause baby it's you

It did turn out as I had dreamed and hoped it would (except I failed to get over the goal line that season). I was fortunate to have her for my first real school-mate romance, if that's what we would call it? What I remember was special times spent with her, riding my bike over to where she lived afternoons after school. We'd just sit on the steps of the long sidewalk leading up to her big house, laughing and talking till dark. My family took flight to the suburbs soon after school was out that year, and we moved away. I never saw her again. One thing that I still have of her that's tangible (of value) to me that I can take out from time to time is a store-bought valentine made out "To Gary S. From Cathy." I can't help myself...down all these years, I think of her sometimes, especially when I'm lying in the dark listening to a FM station playing those favorite "oldies," and I happen to hear the familiar and favorite refrain

Cause baby its you.