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Despite the implication of a story, a specific predicament, the song is abstract. He could be talking to God, or to the Devil. He could be speaking of someone or something he’s never had. He might not even be addressing an actual lover. The singer might be speaking from the cradle of his lover’s arms, or chasing her down a street, or watching the lights of her train diminish in the night he might be crouched alone in an alleyway, or wandering an empty house, or smiling for all the world to see while his words rattle, unspoken, inside his skull. The song doesn’t tell a story so much as express a condition. Instead of describing feelings in the smooth lyrical surface of a tune you could whistle or at least hum, the singer created the impression of sounds rising untamed from the rawness and obscurity of a soul that refused all masks. A simple gimmick but, as “Please, Please, Please” progressed, the lead singer’s initial passion only intensified, and it became clear that the reversal of foreground and background voices reflected a deliberate emotional attitude that brought a bold new energy and freedom to the spirit of black popular music. Its genesis lay in a rearrangement of the standard “Baby Please Don’t Go,” so that the rhythmic backup line became the lead, and the melodic lead was relegated to the chorus. After his fourth “Please,” the rest of the group filled in softly behind him, crooning, “Please, please don’t go,” until the lead singer’s colossal voice surged back over theirs: “Please, please, please.” That was the name of the song, the same word thrice, and, like all truly original things, this song had a past to which it simultaneously paid tribute and bid adieu. With each repetition, he invested the monosyllable with a different emotional accent and stress-prayer and pride, impatience and invitation-and although there was ache in his voice, he did not sound like a man pleading so much as commanding what was rightfully his. Then he cried out again, “Please,” and again and again, “Please, please,” at heartbeat intervals. When the tape started rolling, he cried out the word “Please” with an immensity of feeling that might, more conventionally, have been reserved for a song’s climax. He had to stand on an overturned Coca-Cola crate to get his mouth level with the mike. The lead singer was shorter than the others. One played guitar, another played piano, but the station’s recording equipment picked up the instruments so faintly that the tape they made that day is often recalled as an a-cappella performance. Forty-seven years ago, at a radio station in Macon, Georgia, five young men stood around a microphone and sang a song.