ELIZABETH RAMSEY is dead and rock ‘n’ roll heaven is full of joy. For those of us left to contend with still earth-bound versions, we are sadder. Beside Ramsey, many so-called rock ‘n’ roll artists are well-dressed charlatans and fakes.
Ramsey started in the days of Clover Theater and some such places. It was the gilded era of real talents, homegrown artists who had no access to sources of music except what they heard over the radio and vinyl records. Those were the days also when singers were duplicates or triplicates of stateside artists. Diomedes Maturan who would outgrow his “voice-alike,” if we are to borrow the current term, was the Perry Como of the Philippines. Pete Cruzado, who also sounded like Como, was more the Tony Bennett of the period and, sometimes, the Steve Lawrence. The great Dulce Din was the Sarah Vaughn. We even had our own Joni James and Jo Stafford, names that used to glitter but whose names are now consigned to our own long-term memory loss.
Elizabeth Ramsey did not become the local counterpart of anyone great out there in the continent. She was much too original to be like them. If people think she was the Eartha Kitt of the Philippines, it was because Ramsey also sang “Waray-Waray,” that song popularized by Kitt herself.
Having lived in those years when recording of performances was rare, Elizabeth Ramsey’s showstoppers are preserved in many YouTube postings.
Ramsey sang tirelessly in German Moreno’s Walang Tulugan. Credit goes to Moreno who has this unabashed nostalgia for those singers in the heyday of Clover and Manila Grand Opera House. In one of these episodes, Ramsey covers the classics popularized by the Platters. The songs are “My Prayer” and that grand warhorse of a love song, “Only You.” Ramsey’s version of “My Prayer” is, in my book, the best ever done in the Philippines. Her voice goes raspy and brassy but as she submerges in those low notes, the voice turns velvet and lovely.
You can access her two covers in Moreno’s show, with one showing her much older and singing what she termed a “slow” song. “My Prayer” is turned into a tender and funny ditty dedicated to a good friend. Elizabeth Ramsey is noted for making fun always. She can talk, it seems forever, but when she opens her mouth to sing, you better sit up straight and get ready to be in awe and be prepared to shout expletives and exclamations. RJ, or Ramon Jacinto, who is an artist devoted to rock ‘n’ roll, knows the real deal. He guested Elizabeth in many of his gigs and the legendary singer always proved why she was a legend. There is one show (you can also watch it via YouTube), where Elizabeth is shown going down a flight of stairs while RJ is playing hard on the guitar. The arrangement is such that by the time the singer has reached front of the stage, she is expected to sing. As expected, Elizabeth shows a mock displeasure. She goes into a spiel that is as old as her shows then. She teases the audience with her age. The remarks are corny, and Elizabeth goes near RJ and signals that she is ready to sing. She shouts “Hala Bira!” and all hell breaks loose. It’s Little Richard’s “Rip It Up” she is channelling, the rhythm sterling silver and the beat sparkling diamond in precision and jump. For those in the audience who knew Elizabeth Ramsey, it was a loud reunion; for those who did not know her and, perhaps, found her habit of thrusting her pelvis repulsive, they could only break into raging applause. You could hear wolf whistles as Elizabeth segues into another Little Richard hit, “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” ending with the song “I Saw Her Standing There.” The original Beatles beat is just a memory. Her book being a wide open one, we can only imagine the little black girl in a small provincial town in the Visayas dreaming of becoming a singer, her name, Elizabeth Ramsey, huge and vulgar and brilliant on the marquee.
Ramsey was a master in disparaging herself. She had eternal jokes about her dark skin and how her mother who would turn her eyes away from baby Elizabeth during breast-feeding. Elizabeth would talk about the Jamaican father who had many women, and a mother who was beautiful but who was dirt poor and who, in the end, got neglected. There was never any attempt to be politically correct (what’s that, Elizabeth would maybe ask) because life was very tough when she was young. The world had no political correctness when she was slugging it out for her dream.
Elizabeth got her dreams and more. Her name blazed on the marquee of Clover and other theaters. She continued to sing well into her 80s, her voice burnished and searing even as the years went by.
In the 1970s it was bruited about that some female singers refused to perform with Elizabeth Ramsey because she was always an inveterate scene-stealer. Indeed, she would never stop moving and making all those horrible movements. A comic Elizabeth Ramsey, however, is still an act that can be dealt with. But artists had learned how not to perform with Elizabeth Ramsey when she became serious. The great comic, after all, was a marvelous tragedienne.
Was it the birthday of her famous daughter, Jaya, that Elizabeth Ramsey materialized from behind. Without missing a beat, she went into the first bars of the standard “Portrait of My Love,” turning the romantic song into blues, the notes as dark as Ramsey’s skin—and just as lovely.
We will miss Elizabeth Ramsey as we miss now those golden years of vocalists who were raised in the hardships of the post-war years, when the world was mellow and the music just rip-roaring and loud and grand and beautiful.
Rip it up with the angels, Elizabeth Ramsey, our Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.