Macca's 'No Other Baby' Video

It wasn't until a few months ago, during a trip through Half Price Books, that I picked up Paul McCartney's Run, Devil, Run. That 2002 release initially didn't attract me because it was made up of oldies the young Macca enjoyed during his musically formative years in the 1950s along with faux-50s tunes of his own composition.

That is the project's make-up. But it works fantastically. McCartney loves the 50s music and pours the sort of passion into their performance here often thought lacking in his own original material through the years. This music is his first love and it shows.

Joined on a number of tracks by one of his favorite lead guitarists, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame, and a sterling band, virtually every track is a gem.

Surprisingly though, one of the two tracks I enjoy most is an old skiffle tune, 'No Other Baby.' In the liner notes, we're told:

The most obscure song on the album. It was released as a single in 1958 by a British skiffle group The Vipers. "I've no idea how this one got so embedded in my memory..." [McCartney says] "I never had the record, still haven't.

Here's the video. See if you don't find the tune as infectious as I do.



A funny thing about this video is that it seems to confirm McCartney's love of being photographed or filmed shaving. You see him doing this in pics that appear in the largely-forgettable Red Rose Speedway (1973). He shaves in the Say, Say, Say video with Michael Jackson. He shaves here.

Maybe Macca sees shaving as a decidedly masculine thing to do. Or, maybe he secretly wishes that he and not George Harrison, had been given the shaving seen in A Hard Day's Night.

Anyway, tell me what you think of the song.