“Darling, I Swear That It’s True”
by Ritchie Marsh
1962 song
When young Richard Marsh was striving for pop stardom, he seemed to be trying everything. See "Darling, I Swear That It's True", a silly song that backed his original version of "They Say" on a 7″ from 1962. The artist credit on the record read Ritchie Marsh; Sky Saxon hadn’t found his name yet.
"Darling, I Swear That It's True", unfortunately, is as puffy and inconsequential as its name suggests. Impossibly high-voiced and exuding a studied innocence, Sky’s singing on this simplistic tune is pure to the point of being suspicious. Is anyone this angelic? And how could a backing organ be that wheezing and melodramatic?
"Darling, I Swear That It's True" is agreeable, that’s for sure. But it doesn’t grab the listener and feels like a step backwards in Sky’s budding young career. To think that shortly this guy will helm "Evil Hoodoo" is hard to fathom.
In 1983, "Darling, I Swear That It's True" was included on the European rarities LP New Fruit From Old Seeds; soon after that it was on one side of a rare promo 45 from the French Jukebox magazine. (Copies of this are sometimes sold with a black and white photocopied picture sleeve but those sleeves were not part of the original.) The 1982 LP Bad Part Of Town did not feature "Darling, I Swear That It's True" but subsequent CD versions do.
Finally, the song is on the 2003 LP Sky Saxon Presents "A Starlight Date With Richard Marsh", drenched in oppressive noise reduction.
