This really does seem to be just about the dyingest summer I can recall. Now we have to say goodbye to yet another link to great things past, singer/songwriter Ellie Greenwich. She was an artist whose work ran the gamut from the ridiculous ("Do Wah Diddy" comes to mind) to the sublime: "Chapel of Love," "Leader of the Pack," and the song heard here, "River Deep, Mountain High."
For reasons unknown, this 1966 video looks like nothing so much as the musical number dropped from Night of the Living Dead, and, as always, the Ikettes frighten me deeply. Still, even lip-synching (sometimes) to the Invisible Orchestra of Ike, Tina sings the hell of out it (also as always), and its one of those songs that just always makes you feel better - it's that rare thing, an enthusiastic take on romantic obsession, on love as a force of nature, unstoppable. As, I think, the best work of Ellie Greenwich will prove to be.
