1973's "Misdemeanor" is one of the strangest R&B songs I ever heard. When I was 17 I worked in a record store, and local DJ's used to come by with boxes of promo albums which the owner would buy for the "used" section. A girl who was a bass player spun this for me -- it was an R&B hit, but not on the San Francisco FM's. I remember she likened the weird harmonies and chord changes to Stockhausen, perhaps over-intellectualizing a bubblegum single?
Foster Sylvers had a hell of a falsetto, but then he was only 11. The song is just bizarre. I could swear I hear xylophone on it, and it's dry as a bone, no echo. Maybe the EMT was down that day. The Sylvers got commercial and sold more records a few years later, hitting with "Boogie Fever", produced by Freddie Perren (a wonderful man, one of the nicest clients I ever had). A string of other hits followed. I think the family was from Memphis, but I bet their hits were recorded in L.A.
While fishing the web I came across a site that calls "Misdemeanor" an early hip-hop influence. Well, it's jumpy, that's for sure. Hard to imagine that these lines could be sung in any kind of way that flows, but somehow it works.
"...Take in stride
Love and devotion
Don't confide
Its the tracks of lost emotion
Let it glide
Its gonna subside she stole my heart loved her from the start.
Watcha gonna do
When I think I'm in love
And I catch my girl doin' me wrong
Too bad
It's just enough to slip back in the start
Like when you get your first ticket for illegal parking...
But its just a misdemeanor
You gotta get-a over it
Oh he loved her from the start..."