Sneak of the Week: Norma Tanega, “A Street That Rhymes at Six A.M.”

Pop stardom didn’t fit this boundary-pushing troubadour.

For a brief bit, Norma Tanega was an unlikely pop star, but it was always her destiny to be a musical maverick. Back in 1966, she became briefly famous for one song. About 50 years later, she became known for another. This story is about neither of those.

Tanega was a California native with a Filipino/Panamanian background. Like legions of other creative young singer/songwriters in the ‘60s, she made her way to Greenwich Village. But this is a tale of two Normas; the other one is Norma Kutzer, a Brooklyn-born poet who collaborated with Tanega on several songs. They roomed together for a time, and one of Tanega’s songs, “Walking My Cat Named Dog,” emerged from their real-life experience of wanting a dog in a no-dogs building and settling for simply naming their cat “Dog.”

 

The lighthearted folk-rock tune, released on co-producer Bob Crewe’s short-lived New Voice label, turned out to be a Top 40 hit, landing Tanega on TV shows like American Bandstand and its U.K. equivalent, Ready Steady Go. It ultimately earned enough of a niche in pop culture consciousness to be covered for decades to come, by everybody from Barry “Eve of Destruction” McGuire to They Might Be Giants.

But as Tanega’s debut LP revealed, radio-friendly pop songs were the exception rather than the rule in her repertoire, about half of which (unlike her hit) were co-written by Kutzer. Tanega’s other tunes—especially the ones with Kutzer’s captivatingly quirky lyrics—were far enough outside the box and ahead of their time to ensure her subsequent absence from the charts.

That was far from the end of her story, though. She never stopped making forward-looking music. She did quit the U.S. for a while, relocating to England, where, among other things, she began a long-term romance with Dusty Springfield.

Tanega would remain below the mainstream radar for most of her life, still making music outside the margins of conventionality and commerciality. But the inclusion of Tanega/Kutzer’s droll 1966 exploration of mortality “You’re Dead” in the opening of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s horror-comedy What We Do in the Shadows triggered a revival of interest in Tanega’s music. Especially when it became the theme of the long-running TV series based on the film, shortly before her passing on December 29, 2019, at age 80. But that isn’t the song we’re here for either.

“A Street That Rhymes at Six A.M.” is the other single from Tanega’s debut album, the one that flopped as quickly as the other one flew. But for all the undeniable charms of Tanega’s lone hit, its unheralded counterpart is more arresting and innovative.

It’s framed by guitar and cello riffs that seem to blend blues and raga, and propelled by an understated but hip-swiveling folk-rock rhythm section. Tanega’s deadpan delivery of Kutzer’s mordantly poetic musings on nonconformity gives off the perfect blend of sardonic sharpness and post-Beatnik cool. For a lot of artists, it would have been a peak. For Tanega, it was the sound of her just getting started.

-Jim Allen

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