Bettye Scott and The Del-Vetts “Good Feeling”

• Listen to this songs on youtube: Good Feeling
• Listen to these 45s in a Spotify playlist here with other 45s from the blog (though note, spotify doesn’t have all / many of the songs featured on the site so some playlists may be incomplete or feature slightly different versions than the original 45s I’m referring to here.
• Download the songs by clicking the title above

Today we have a crisp, upbeat number from chicago by the unfortunately mysterious Bettye Scott and her backing group the Del-Vetts. The song is beautifully produced and engineered- punchy drums right up front, the clean chicka-chicka of the guitar providing some momentum and a horn section that provides tons of emphasis but never over powers the song. Bettye handles both the softer parts and the wailing with equal skill. Just listen to the “such a good feeling, just about to lose my mind” lines in the second verse. Wonderful stuff!

The Teako label was a small operation out of Chicago run by Ed O’Kelly who seemed to be primarily a business mind who was also affiliated with the Lock label, a subsidiary of the Toddlin Town label and also had a pretty small catalog, the most notable being The Lovelites minor hit “How Can I Tell My Mom and Dad.”

I wish I had more to share, usually Chicago records are some of the easier ones to research or put pieces together with names on the labels since there was so much interplay with all the artists, studios, engineers etc, but this one isn’t forthcoming with biographical info. I’ve also said it before but records like this are what make 45s such an exciting format; these records sometimes just popped up based on a good song, a motivated artist or A&R, a local hit or dance or any number of other cultural tides shifting. The 45 was an easy way to try and get a hit for small labels and artists so we end up with all these wonderful outliers that exist outside of the major label machinery.

As always, if anyone has more info about this record I’d love to more but for now we’ll love it for the great music and hope some day we can give Bettye and the Del-Vettes their credit.

Till next time,
-George / Snack Attack

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