I first heard this on Trouble's show on WFMU a few years ago. Having spent my 1980s teenage years as a devotee of those other Smiths, I was intrigued that this US Columbia 45 from 1968 wasn't better known. (NB: the above video features an Italian CBS pressing with a nice picture sleeve).
This brooding lament was written by Buzz Clifford, who had achieved earlier success with "Baby Sittin' Boogie" in 1961. Despite this auspicious start, Clifford's solo career failed to take off and he concentrated on songwriting for other artists including Kris Kristofferson and Lou Rawls. There are echos of these two in the soulful country arrangement of "Now I Taste The Tears", with its loping beats and sweeping strings also reminiscent of Bobbie Gentry's "Ode To Billie Joe". The song builds to a dramatic orchestral crescendo and the pay-off line: "Walk into my bedroom, then I find my gun". This allusion to a violent murder/suicide might give a clue to why the track, apparently released in April 1968, might have quietly dropped off the airwaves. This was after all the month when Martin Luther King was assassinated.
"Now I Taste The Tears" was also covered by the Fearns Brass Foundry and the Beacon Street Union. Both are worth a listen.
Little is known about the Smiths. There are reports on the Internet that the group subsequently became the better known act Smith (purportedly discovered by Del Shannon), who signed to ABC Dunhill and enjoyed chart success with their cover of the Shirelles "Baby It's You" and album "A Group Called Smith". Can anyone confirm the connection?
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