About The Song
This is the hit from the summer of 1959 which put the Drifters back on the charts after a long career slump, but it was with an entirely new set of musicians. In 1958 the group’s manager George Treadwell, who owned the name, fired the group and replaced them with members of a group called The Crowns and added Ben E. King as lead singer. Their first session was produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were known as a songwriting team but were also well known producers. The took a very unorthodox approach to the record, which worked and gave the new Drifters their first hit. Stoller explained, “We slapped on soaring strings, and exotic baion beat, kettledrums, timpani and every other god-damn sound we could think of.”
This was a very chaotic recording, with the tympani out of tune and Ben E. King’s vocals coming in too soon at the beginning. With all the instrumentation going on, Leiber said that the first time he heard it on the radio, he thought he was picking up two stations.
The writing credits on this song are split five ways between Leiber and Stoller, Ben E. King (listed under his real name Benjamin Nelson, Drifters manager George Treadwell, and Lover Patterson, who helped give King his start in the business and wrote some songs with the singer. Exactly who came up with what contributions to the song remains unclear.
“There Goes My Baby” went on to score #2 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the R&B chart. It is also ranked #193 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
This song pioneered the idea of having a full orchestra backing with strings accompaniment to enhance the emotional impact of R&B music. To this point, most R&B records were produced with the same instrumentation the groups would have on live performances. Thus it formed a bridge between doo-wop, which was dying at the time, and soul music, which had yet to peak.
Video
Lyrics
… Bom-bom (do-do-do-do-do)
There she goes (do-do-do-do-do)
There she goes (do-do-do-do-do)
Bom-bom (do-do-do-do)
Bom-bom (do-do-do-do)
… There goes my baby, moving on down the line
Wonder where, wonder where, wonder where she is bound?
I broke her heart and made her cry
Now I’m alone, so all alone
What can I do, what can I do?
… There goes my baby (whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh)
There goes my baby (yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah)
There goes my baby (whoa-oh-oh-oh)
There she goes, yeah, there she goes
… I wanna know if she loved me
Did she really love me?
Was she just playing me for a fool?
I wonder why she left me
Why did she leave me so all alone?
So all alone?
I was gonna tell her that I loved her
And that I need her
Beside my side to be my guide
… I wanna know where is my – (do-do-do-do-do)
Where is my baby? (Do-do-do-do-do)
I want my baby (do-do-do-do-do)
I need my baby (do-do-do-do-do)
Yeah, whoa-oh-oh
… There goes my baby
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
There goes my baby