Unforgettable

A cd was released in March, 2011 by the His Master's Choice label--HMC 011--that contains parts of Paul's Christmas gift to the other Beatles that Paul recorded in November, 1965.  Paul reportedly had four acetate records made of the tape he recorded:  three were for the other Beatles and one record was supposed to have gone to Jane Asher.
The His Master's Choice rerecording is taken from a tape of Paul and John's "recovered from the Lennon archives."  The cd is called Unforgettable. 
Paul and John used the tape to record song demos and John recorded over Paul's gift recording (see my last post about John's excerpt from Tales of Mrs. Tigglywinkle.)
The liner notes for the Unforgettable cd say that Paul was imitating a disc jockey and the cd had what survived of the original record--5 songs and Paul's introduction to them.
The songs give an idea of Paul's thinking at the end of 1965.

The songs are:
     1.)  Someone Ain't Right, cowritten by Doris Payne (a pen name for the singer Doris Troy.  More about her later.) and Gregory Carroll.  The song Paul played on the tape was Peter and Gordon's recording for their 1965 album, Hurtin' 'n' Lovin'.
     2.)  I Get Around, the Beach Boys' record.
     3.)  Don't Be Cruel, by Elvis Presley
     4.)  ( Love is Like a) Heat Wave, by Martha and the Vandellas
     5.)  Down Home Girl, by The Rolling Stones.

The lyrics of Someone Ain't Right describes Paul's relationship with Jane (?).  It talks about how the girl is avoiding him and how she had better make up her mind to be his.  The interesting part of the song is the lyrics that suggest that they weren't together "physically":
          Don't think you're clever
          Because you never
          Oooooo me, ee.
Paul was supposed to have had a romantic relationship with Jane.  So the song suggests that wasn't the case.

The I Get Around lyrics are interesting because they talk about how Paul is tiring of his current situation and how The Beatles are threatened:
          I'm gettin' bugged driving up and down the same old strip,
          I gotta finda new place where the kids are hip.
                          ---And---
          My buddies and me are getting real well known;
          Yeah, the bad guys know us and they leave us alone.

The Don't Be Cruel lyrics are similar in tone to the Someone Ain't Right lyrics:
          You know I can be found
          Sitting home all alone.
          If you can't come around,
          At least please telephone.

The Heat Wave lyrics describe a love relationship, but with Paul it was also talking about other things that were happening to him:
          Sometimes I stare in space
          Tears all over my face.
          I can't explain it, don't understand it:
          I ain't never felt like this before.
          But that doesn't mean it has me amazed,
          I don't know what to do, my head's in a haze,

But the last song--Down Home Girl--is the most interesting.  The lyrics talk about a girl whose perfume smells like turnips and kisses taste like pork and beans.  Is that Jane Asher?  The song describes a girl who dances in clubs:
          Everytime you monkey [note: a 1960's dance] girl
          You take my breath away.
But the most unusual lines are:
          I'm gonna take you back to New Orleans
          Down in Dixieland
                 --And--
          I can tell by your giant step
          You been walkin' through cotton fields . . . [!]
This is clearly not Jane Asher.  The song suggests that she was a black girl.  Who was she? 
It could have been Doris Troy.  She wasn't a Southerner but she was an American.  She cowrote and sang the 1963 pop hit, Just One Look.  She first visited England in 1965 where she sang back up vocals to Dusty Springfield's song, In The Middle of Nowhere.  (Remember The Beatles' Nowhere Man?  I connected the song with the contents of a play I think was used to menace Paul. See my post of April 23, 2011.) Troy moved to England in 1966 (or 1969, depending on the source) and made a career of singing background for The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Dusty Springfield and others.  She also was signed to Apple records by George Harrison in 1969, which suggests she had a past connection with The Beatles. 
But I'm thinking the black woman Paul apparently had a relationship with had a stronger personality than Troy because of Paul's 1966 interview with journalist Maureen Cleave where speaking of America he said,  "And it's a lousy country where anyone who is black is made to seem a dirty n*gger.  There is a statue of a good Negro duffing his hat and being polite in the gutter.  I saw a picture of it."  Paul might have been wanting to sour the future of the replacement Beatles (he knew he was leaving the group and that the "powers that be" had plans to keep the group going with look-alikes), but I also think his statement sounds like a man in love who was trying to impress the woman he was in love with. 
There's a possibility the black woman was Madeline Bell.  She is a soul/r and b singer from New Jersey who toured England and the rest of Europe in 1962 and 1963 in the Langston Hughes' play, Black Nativity.  She stayed in England after the close of the play and worked singing back-up gigs.  With Doris Troy, she sang back-up to In The Middle of Nowhere.  She became a close friend of Dusty Springfield and lived with her in several flats in 1965 and 1966.  It's interesting that in the 1966 French film that I think was about Paul--Masculin Feminin--the Paul character's love interest is a singer named Madeleine.  Madeleine in the film might be a composite of Ms. Bell and a (yet to be identified) French ye-ye singer that Paul was apparently in love with.  Also suggesting a connection, Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas was a close friend of Dusty Springfield.  (Springfield was credited (as they say) with helping popularize Motown record music in England when she convinced the producers of Ready, Steady, Go, the British TV music show she hosted, to film a special featuring Motown music.  She met Martha Reeves on the special and sang with her.)  So there are two direct connections in Paul's choice of songs--Doris Troy and Martha Reeves--and the possible indirect connection of Madeline Bell.

And, again, this opens up a new avenue to explore in finding out what happened to Paul.