Ro Ro Rosey

The first time you listen to Ro Ro Rosey, the opening riff grabs you by surprise: that guitar sound that coils like a spiral, with that Latin air reminiscent of Ritchie Valens’ La Bamba, but with a grittier twist, as if it had been run through a soft distortion pedal. It’s not just the rhythm, which pulses with a sticky *diddley beat*, but that sense that the song is about to unravel at any moment, as if the musician couldn’t contain what comes next. The harmony is built on just three chords, but the trick lies in how Morrison stretches them, in how the harmonica weaves in and out like a whisper between the phrases, and in that detail of the female backing vocals added in the single version, which give the chorus an unexpected shine. It’s a song that sounds like an impromptu party in a New York alleyway, with the door ajar and cigarette smoke slipping between the notes.

They recorded it in a single day, March 28, 1967, at A&R Studios in New York City, with the same musicians who had shaped Brown Eyed Girl just weeks earlier. Bert Berns, the owner of Bang Records and producer of the session, seems to have given Morrison free rein: the lyrics speak of a sixteen-year-old girl, the same muse who appears in Cyprus Avenue and other early tracks, but here the nostalgia has a sour edge. The narrator remembers her as “the apple of his eye,” but now she lives “high up on the tree-lined avenue,” and when he sees her, all he can manage is a stammered “oh uh uh uh uh,” as if time and distance had stolen his words. The song was released as a single that same year, right after the success of Brown Eyed Girl, but it didn’t replicate its chart performance: Billboard called it an “infectious folk-rocker that should climb fast,” while Cash Box described it as a “powerful, funky rhythmic piece,” but in the end it faded into commercial obscurity. That said, the track sneaked into several compilations from his Bang Records era, as if fans knew there was something more here than just a follow-up: a spark of that raw energy that would later define his sound.