Beyond The Guess Who: R. Dean Taylor- "There's A Ghost In My House"

Happy Halloween from Musings Of A Broken Record.

Welcome to Beyond The Guess Who. Each edition I cover a lesser-known or overlooked Canadian musical artist. This week: R. Dean Taylor.

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Around August, it suddenly hit me that I should probably cobble something together for Halloween. Thing is, I hate Halloween. As a kid, it was a fun holiday. As an adult, it just seems like an excuse to get drunk and buy a bunch of cheap, macabre decor. Despite this, there was the reasoning that the holiday could provide at least one interesting idea for a post. I turned out to be right.

Because retail is usually about a season ahead, over the summer we had a Halloween playlist going on at my work. One of the songs on it was “There’s A Ghost In My House” by R. Dean Taylor. I’ve been a fan of this song since first hearing it back in the good old MP3 blog days. I also remembered that Taylor is (conveniently) Canadian and thus a candidate for Beyond The Guess Who.

R. Dean Taylor had a pretty prolific career even if it was short on hits. His biggest hit, 1970’s “Indiana Wants Me” was so massive that it’s going to have it’s own post at some point.

This week, I’m focusing on Taylor’s earlier recordings, “There’s A Ghost In My House” getting a second wind after it became a favourite on the UK Northern Soul circuit, and his subsequent efforts in the UK to follow it up.

Taylor’s story begins in Toronto, Ontario on May 11, 1939. His recording career began in the early 1960s when he cut at least two singles for the Mala label. The second, “I’ll Remember” received some airplay in Canada, leading him to relocate to Detroit.

Taylor successfully auditioned for Motown and was signed as a songwriter and recording artist. From what I can gather about Taylor’s early years at the famous label, he worked closely with legendary songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland. He did record some sides, none of which were released. One, “My Lady Bug Stay Away From That Beatle”, an obvious Beatlemania cash-in was scheduled on Motown’s smaller V.I.P. imprint and ultimately unreleased.

I expected this to be dreadful but because it’s Motown and he was associating with Holland-Dozier-Holland, it’s shockingly fun for a Beatles cash-in record.

Eventually, Taylor put out a debut record during 1965 called “Let’s Go Somewhere”. Continuing his affiliation with Holland-Dozier-Holland, he cowrote the track with Eddie Holland and Motown songwriter James Dean. The song itself is more of a social issue number, though in the vein of Sonny Bono’s “Laugh At Me” as sung in the first verse:

“As I'm walking down the street
The people stop and they stare at me
They think I'm different and they wanna see
Why don't they let me be?”

Perhaps because Sonny Bono already proved his point, “Let’s Go Somewhere” wasn’t a hit. However, it was covered by British singer David Garrick the following year and used as a B-Side to his cover of The Rolling Stones “Lady Jane”.

Around this time, Taylor began notching up some songwriting credits for various Motown acts. Alongside Frank Wilson and Eddie Holland, he was a credited songwriter on The Temptations 1967 Top Ten hit “All I Need”.

Alongside Holland-Dozier-Holland, Taylor was also a credited songwriter on The Four Tops minor (#76) hit “I’ll Turn To Stone”. To be fair, it had the misfortune of being the B-Side to their classic hit “7 Rooms Of Gloom”.

One thing I’m noticing about Taylor’s work is it’s very much part of the UK Northern Soul sound, so it’s really no surprise that his music later had a second life.

This week’s focus, “There’s A Ghost In My House” was his next single as a recording artist. At the time, it flopped.

Honestly, it’s a good song. The closest artist to compare Taylor at this point in his career would be Johnny Rivers. Both singers were white artists recording in the soul/R&B category. This came to be known as blue-eyed soul.

Prior to his success with “Indiana Wants Me” Taylor recorded one more single, the equally good “Gotta See Jane”. Taylor’s recording career wound up being put on hold for a bit when Holland-Dozier-Holland decided to leave Motown to start the Invictus and Hot Wax labels where due to a contractual issue with Motown, they wrote together as “Edith Wayne”.

Because I plan to write about R. Dean Taylor again at a leter date, I’ll elaborate on all of this another time. The trio left Motown, and Taylor, alongside the rest of a production team called “The Clan”. The Clan, which consisted of Frank Wilson, Pam Swayer, and Deke Richards, briefly became the go-to team when it came to new material for Diana Ross And The Supremes.

They were behind this classic hit:

I didn’t realize until researching for this piece that the follow-up “I’m Livin’ In Shame” was actually a sequel:

Eventually, he resumed his recording career, scoring a huge hit with “Indiana Wants Me”. There were a few follow-ups, most of which were only minor hits. By 1974, Taylor had left Motown and recorded for his own Jane label as well as the Farr label.

The Northern Soul scene that came out of the UK started at some point in the 1960’s. Dave Godin of London record shop Soul City coined the term around 1970 when he noticed that Northerners visiting the city weren’t buying current American R&B records that were on the US charts, they were buying up lesser-known, more uptempo soul singles. “There’s A Ghost In My House” fit the bill.

Quite often, these records would carry over into the UK Top 40. Soon after scoring a belated hit with “Ghost”, Motown struck gold again when The Four Seasons brief foray on Motown, a brilliant track called “The Night” hit the Top Ten after it became popular on the Northern Soul scene.

In the UK, “There’s A Ghost In My House” hit #3 and Taylor was back in the spotlight as a recording artist.

I was really hoping for some footage of him on Top Of The Pops performing “There’s A Ghost In My House”, but instead only found footage of him on the Dutch show TopPop performing a late 1960’s B-side “Don’t Fool Around” instead. Still, it’s from 1974, so we know he made television appearances once his Motown tracks suddenly saw a resurgence.

Taylor scored two more smaller UK hits after this. The first, “Window Shopping”, was a new recording on Polydor via the Jane label. It was an older composition, though. The track itself was one of his 1960’s compositions. It had been recorded and went unreleased for years by 1960’s TV star Paul Petersen. Petersen had scored a 1960’s hit with the single “My Dad”. His musical output was strictly middle-of-the-road territory which makes it interesting to me that he somehow wound up recording for Motown eventually.

It sounds outdated for 1974 but fits in with the Northern Soul sound, so I get why this was a minor hit. Not to be outdone, Tamla Motown in the UK tried their luck with a reissued “Gotta See Jane” which just barely missed the Top 40 at #41.

Taylor continued to release singles in the US and Canada well into the early 1980s, but his UK recording career only lasted one more new single on Polydor, 1975’s “Walkin’ In The Sun”.

It’s more 1970s-sounding than his previous UK singles and I’m shocked this wasn’t at least another minor hit for him. It sounds a lot like Neil Diamond. Taylor had more success as a recording artist in the UK than he’d had closer to home and it’s odd to me that he didn’t become based over there instead. Maybe he simply didn’t want to.

“There’s A Ghost In My House” continued to live on and was even covered by The Fall. Taylor continued to record until his death in 2022. But that’s a story for another week.

Next Week: Bubbling Under returns with George Kranz