Our kitchen radio when I was growing up was already old. It was a boxy thing with a shell of deep brown and gold plastic with a long, clear plastic window for the AM tuner. It had two knobs: on/off and tuning. No switch for FM, nothing to adjust the treble or the bass. It was either on or off. When you turned it on, it took a few minutes for the tubes to warm up.
The tuner was balky. Sometimes three or four rotations of the tuning knob moved the red indicator a half-inch; sometimes one rotation moved it an inch. Changing the station was a test of tenacity and finesse, and it was something that was rarely done, not just because it was difficult to find another station. The radio tuner was rarely changed because – as in many homes in Minnesota – the kitchen radio was almost always tuned to WCCO 830, the Twin Cities’ beacon.
At that time, there weren’t nearly as many radio stations as there are now. The FM band was home to only a few, and they mostly played what was called “beautiful music,” fit for elevators and dentists’ offices. On the AM dial, there were more stations, but still not near as many as today. And the further you lived from the Twin Cities, the less choice you had. As a result, most folks in outstate Minnesota – and at the time, that would have included St. Cloud, seventy miles from Minneapolis – tuned their radios to WCCO and kept them there.
At our home, about the only time we listened to the kitchen radio was in the morning, eating breakfast at seven o’clock before Dad went off to the college (later a university) and my sister and I headed off to school. As we drank our juice and milk and ate our cereal – quite often hot cereal during the Minnesota winter – we heard the world news for fifteen minutes, then the local and state news for ten minutes, and finally, at 7:25, five minutes of sports.
As the Sixties wore on, my sister – three years older than I – sometimes changed the radio on weekends or during summer days, setting the tuner carefully on 630 to bring KDWB’s Top 40 into the kitchen. And as the Sixties wore on even further and I also became interested in pop music, we each had our own radio and there was no need to change the station in the kitchen. So the radio remained tuned to WCCO for the rest of its long life. (It died sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, not long after I left home.)
WCCO was fine with me for most of the Sixties, though. Besides the five minutes of sports in the morning – and the school closing announcements on days of heavy snow – the only thing I needed from the radio was play-by-play sports. WCCO carried the Minnesota Twins, the Minnesota Vikings, the University of Minnesota football and basketball teams, and – starting in the fall of 1967 – the Minnesota North Stars. Many afternoons and evenings, I’d take the radio from its normal place – tucked in a corner of the kitchen counter – and move it to the kitchen table. I’d sit and read, bent over the table, the volume set fairly low, and listen to one game or another.
One evening in early 1968, when I was fourteen, I had the volume turned up a little higher than usual. I was alone in the house, my parents and sister having gone to some event at Tech High, where my sister was a senior. The North Stars were playing that evening, and during one of the breaks between periods, the little feature called “Sports Quiz” came on. I perked up.
“What sport,” the announcer asked, “is played in an enclosed court with a rubber ball and no racquets?”
Just as he finished his question, my sister came in the back door. I looked at the radio and blurted, “Handball! Handball!”
My sister looked at me oddly.
And the radio said, “That’s right! Handball!”
Her chin dropped, and I collapsed in giggles.
Whenever I tell that tale – and I’ve told it many times over the years – I’m reminded of another radio moment that happened the next June. My sister and I were in the kitchen, doing dishes after lunch, with the radio tuned to KDWB. The song ended, and the DJ began some patter about how important the day before had been.
“You know what yesterday was, don’t you?” he asked through the speaker. “You have to know what yesterday was. It was a big deal.” He paused. “So what was yesterday?”
There came a rhythmic figure picked on a guitar, with the end of the figure bringing in just a little bit of strings. It repeated, and then the voice told us what yesterday was:
“It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day . . .”
And my sister and I laughed and put away the dishes to the sounds of Bobbie Gentry and her Faulknerian tale of a Mississippi mystery surrounded by the mundane. The song was, of course, “Ode to Billie Joe,” a No. 1 hit the year before and the centerpiece of Gentry’s album of the same title, which also reached the top spot on the charts.
Bobbie Gentry – Ode to Billie Joe (1967)
62.57 MB mp3 rip at 320 kbps
Tracks:
Mississippi Delta
I Saw An Angel Die
Chickasaw County Child
Sunday Best
Niki Hoeky
Papa, Woncha Take Me To Town With You?
Bugs
Hurry, Tuesday Child
Lazy Willie
Ode to Billie Joe
It’s a pretty good album. If it has a flaw, it’s that Gentry – at the start of her career – didn’t quite have enough distinctive material for a full album. Several of the songs start with guitar figures similar to the one that opens “Ode to Billie Joe.” But there are some gems here.
“Mississippi Delta” rocks along, fittingly, a little gritty and swampy. “Chickasaw County Child,” although it has the musical weakness noted above, still works lyrically, setting out details to paint a larger picture, just the title track does. “I Saw An Angel Die” is a gentle piece that works well, too. “Niki Hoeky,” the only tune on the album not written by Gentry, works for the most part, with its surreal lyric, although it, too, starts with a guitar figure similar to that from “Ode to Billie Joe.”
The tracks as listed above are in the order that they were on my copy of the LP. Oddly enough, the track list on the back of the record jacket is different, with – among other changes – Side Two starting with “Ode to Billie Joe” instead of ending with it. In addition, “I Saw An Angel Die” is called “An Angel Died” on the jacket, and “Papa, Woncha Take Me To Town With You?” is listed as “Papa, Won’t You Take Me To Town With You?”
This rip was one of the first albums I found on the ’Net when I became aware of music blogs about a year ago. If I could remember where I got it, I’d say “Thanks!”
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
London, July 1969: 'Honky Tonk Women"
We’ll stay in 1969 this morning and take in a performance of the song that was No. 1 for most of our late August football workouts and for the first weeks of my junior year at St. Cloud Tech.
Earlier that summer, in June, the Rolling Stones basically fired Brian Jones, one of their founding members, and replaced him with Mick Taylor. Shortly thereafter, on July 3, Jones died at his home after being found unresponsive in his swimming pool; the coroner’s report called it “death by misadventure.”
Two days later, the Stones performed at Hyde Park in London, in a concert scheduled before Jones’ death and intended to introduce Taylor as their new guitarist. A brief memorial to Jones preceded the concert, which included this performance of “Honky Tonk Women.”
Earlier that summer, in June, the Rolling Stones basically fired Brian Jones, one of their founding members, and replaced him with Mick Taylor. Shortly thereafter, on July 3, Jones died at his home after being found unresponsive in his swimming pool; the coroner’s report called it “death by misadventure.”
Two days later, the Stones performed at Hyde Park in London, in a concert scheduled before Jones’ death and intended to introduce Taylor as their new guitarist. A brief memorial to Jones preceded the concert, which included this performance of “Honky Tonk Women.”
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
A Baker's Dozen from 1969, Vol. 2
Autumn approaches. Day by day, the signs accumulate: geese honking their ways across the sky in great V’s; the first tree on the boulevard abandoning its green cover for dusty brown or perhaps orange; and the slight chill hanging in the morning air, accompanied sometimes with a thin haze of fog in the low places.
There are other signs, less tied with nature’s hike toward the season: I drove past one of the three St. Cloud high schools the other afternoon, and the warming air there was filled with the demands of coaches and the grunted responses of athletes in pads as the football team went through its workout. And even more prosaically, the newspaper supplements have been filled for weeks already with advertising for back to school sales and promotions.
My junior year of high school began on a football field, although a different one than the one I drove past the other day. I was at the practice area next to Clark Field, home of the Tech Tigers. I wasn’t a player – my frame was too slight and my pace too slow. Rather, I was a manager, lugging a primitive medical kit between the field and the school a block away, tending to minor injuries, gathering and packing away loose footballs during and after practices, and running errands for the coaches.
And like the players and the three other managers, I hung around the locker room and the training room between and after practices. (This was not today’s complex weight training room but rather a small room with three tables, a tall medicine cabinet, an old refrigerator and a primitive whirlpool bath.) We’d trade jokes and stories –many of them vulgar and tasteless, of course – and listen to the radio, always tuned to KDWB, one of the two Twin Cities stations devoted to airing the Top 40.
In any one hour, we might hear “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies, “Lay, Lady, Lay” by Bob Dylan, “Grazing in the Grass” from the Friends of Distinction,” “Crystal Blue Persuasion” from Tommy James and the Shondells, Tony Joe White’s “Poke Salad Annie,” Zager & Evans’ “In the Year 2525” and two of the Beatles’ trio of “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”
And there was one song that we in Minnesota heard far more than listeners anywhere in the country did: “Pain” by the Mystics, a Twin Cities group also known as Michael’s Mystics. The song was No. 1 for two weeks in mid-August on KDWB’s Top 40 chart. It was a great summer for radio, and a great time to turn sixteen, which I did the Friday of the first week of school.
The beginning of a school year was always a time of great hopes: the hope that I’d like all my classes and teachers; the hope that I would find a place to fit in, a group of kids with whom I had some connection beyond sharing the same crowded hallways; the hope that the football team would succeed and that for the first time I would be able to feel like a part of that success; and the hope – this one a long-recurring wish – that I might find a young lady with whom to spend sweet time.
Well, the football team went 6-3 and wound up being ranked ninth in the state by the Minneapolis Tribune. As there were no playoffs, the newspaper’s ranking was all we had to strive for, especially since we were not a member of any conference and played an independent schedule. We took some pride in the fact that our three losses were to the teams the newspaper ranked first, second and third in the state: the suburban powerhouse Edina Hornets, the Austin Packers from near the Iowa border, and the Moorhead Spuds from the Red River Valley in the far northwest.
My classes and teachers were fine, although I struggled with third-year French. I never really did find that group of kids I sought. I spent some time hanging around in the locker room with the football team and – during winter – the wrestlers, for whom I was a second-year manager, and I also spent time with students who focused on music, as I was in the orchestra and the concert choir. I never did find a place, really.
Nor did I find that young lady. But several of the young women I knew became good friends, which in the long term is worth a great deal. At the age of sixteen, however, it’s difficult to think about anything other than the short term.
One fine moment of the year came in mid-September, when the first dance of the year had live music, provided by the Mystics. With my pal Mike – also a football manager – I hitched a ride from Tech to the dance at the old Central School, where we hung around the edges of the dance floor, listening to the music and watching the dancers. We didn’t dance a step all evening, but the Mystics were pretty good, and we got to hear their hit, the first time for either one of us to hear a band perform a Top 40 hit live.
And that’s where we’ll start this Baker’s Dozen for 1969.
“Pain” by the Mystics, Metromedia single 130
“Wooden Ships” by Crosby, Stills & Nash from Crosby, Stills & Nash
“Where’s the Playground, Susie?” by Glen Campbell, Capitol single 2494
“To Be Alone With You” by Bob Dylan from Nashville Skyline
“Love and a Yellow Rose” by the Guess Who from Wheatfield Soul
“More and More” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from Blood, Sweat & Tears
“All Along The Watchtower” by Brewer & Shipley from Weeds
“Joker (On A Trip Through The Jungle)” by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band from In The Jungle, Babe
“Woman” by Zager & Evans from In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)
“Nobody” by Three Dog Night from Captured Live At The Forum
“Nitty Gritty” by Gladys Knight & the Pips, Soul single 35063
“Cherry Hill Park” by Billy Joe Royal, Columbia single 44902
“London Bridge” by Bread from Bread
A few notes on some of the songs:
One can argue which version of “Wooden Ships” is better, this one from Crosby, Stills & Nash or the version released later the same year on Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers album. (David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane wrote the song.) The CS&N version is a little more sleek and polished, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a compliment here. Nevertheless, both recordings of this enduring song are worth hearing.
When folks talk about Glen Campbell’s hits, they often forget about “Where’s The Playground, Susie?” and that’s too bad. It’s a fine performance of another Jimmy Webb song. It likely gets ignored because it only reached No. 26 on the pop chart, rather than climbing into the Top 10, as had “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston,” Campbell’s previous two releases to reach the Top 40.
“Love and a Yellow Rose” is a Guess Who album track that sprawls and wanders through simulations of Indian ragas, Gregorian chant (I think), standard pop rock and the kind of silly declamatory stuff that lead singer Burton Cummings was prone to (when he wasn’t writing hit singles, that is). As odd as “Love and a Yellow Rose” is, it’s not the strangest track on the album; that honor goes to the even sillier “Friends of Mine,” in which Cummings channels the still-living Jim Morrison.
“Joker (On A Trip Through The Jungle)” is a not-bad album track instrumental by Charles Wright and his group, but Wright and his band are better remembered for their singles, including the sweet “Love Land” from 1969, and 1970’s funky “Express Yourself.”
“Woman,” another album track, is Zager & Evans’ attempt at sweet and subtle, and the music is nice, but the lyrics are pretty vapid and unsubtle. I think that was the case, however, with pretty much everything the group did. It’s short, which helps.
Billy Joe Royal’s “Cherry Hill Park” is one of those guilty pleasures from the Top 40, and at the time, was just a little bit naughty: “Mary Hill was such a thrill after dark . . . in Cherry Hill Park.” Pretty tame these days, but still fun to listen to.
As always, bit rates will vary.
There are other signs, less tied with nature’s hike toward the season: I drove past one of the three St. Cloud high schools the other afternoon, and the warming air there was filled with the demands of coaches and the grunted responses of athletes in pads as the football team went through its workout. And even more prosaically, the newspaper supplements have been filled for weeks already with advertising for back to school sales and promotions.
My junior year of high school began on a football field, although a different one than the one I drove past the other day. I was at the practice area next to Clark Field, home of the Tech Tigers. I wasn’t a player – my frame was too slight and my pace too slow. Rather, I was a manager, lugging a primitive medical kit between the field and the school a block away, tending to minor injuries, gathering and packing away loose footballs during and after practices, and running errands for the coaches.
And like the players and the three other managers, I hung around the locker room and the training room between and after practices. (This was not today’s complex weight training room but rather a small room with three tables, a tall medicine cabinet, an old refrigerator and a primitive whirlpool bath.) We’d trade jokes and stories –many of them vulgar and tasteless, of course – and listen to the radio, always tuned to KDWB, one of the two Twin Cities stations devoted to airing the Top 40.
In any one hour, we might hear “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies, “Lay, Lady, Lay” by Bob Dylan, “Grazing in the Grass” from the Friends of Distinction,” “Crystal Blue Persuasion” from Tommy James and the Shondells, Tony Joe White’s “Poke Salad Annie,” Zager & Evans’ “In the Year 2525” and two of the Beatles’ trio of “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”
And there was one song that we in Minnesota heard far more than listeners anywhere in the country did: “Pain” by the Mystics, a Twin Cities group also known as Michael’s Mystics. The song was No. 1 for two weeks in mid-August on KDWB’s Top 40 chart. It was a great summer for radio, and a great time to turn sixteen, which I did the Friday of the first week of school.
The beginning of a school year was always a time of great hopes: the hope that I’d like all my classes and teachers; the hope that I would find a place to fit in, a group of kids with whom I had some connection beyond sharing the same crowded hallways; the hope that the football team would succeed and that for the first time I would be able to feel like a part of that success; and the hope – this one a long-recurring wish – that I might find a young lady with whom to spend sweet time.
Well, the football team went 6-3 and wound up being ranked ninth in the state by the Minneapolis Tribune. As there were no playoffs, the newspaper’s ranking was all we had to strive for, especially since we were not a member of any conference and played an independent schedule. We took some pride in the fact that our three losses were to the teams the newspaper ranked first, second and third in the state: the suburban powerhouse Edina Hornets, the Austin Packers from near the Iowa border, and the Moorhead Spuds from the Red River Valley in the far northwest.
My classes and teachers were fine, although I struggled with third-year French. I never really did find that group of kids I sought. I spent some time hanging around in the locker room with the football team and – during winter – the wrestlers, for whom I was a second-year manager, and I also spent time with students who focused on music, as I was in the orchestra and the concert choir. I never did find a place, really.
Nor did I find that young lady. But several of the young women I knew became good friends, which in the long term is worth a great deal. At the age of sixteen, however, it’s difficult to think about anything other than the short term.
One fine moment of the year came in mid-September, when the first dance of the year had live music, provided by the Mystics. With my pal Mike – also a football manager – I hitched a ride from Tech to the dance at the old Central School, where we hung around the edges of the dance floor, listening to the music and watching the dancers. We didn’t dance a step all evening, but the Mystics were pretty good, and we got to hear their hit, the first time for either one of us to hear a band perform a Top 40 hit live.
And that’s where we’ll start this Baker’s Dozen for 1969.
“Pain” by the Mystics, Metromedia single 130
“Wooden Ships” by Crosby, Stills & Nash from Crosby, Stills & Nash
“Where’s the Playground, Susie?” by Glen Campbell, Capitol single 2494
“To Be Alone With You” by Bob Dylan from Nashville Skyline
“Love and a Yellow Rose” by the Guess Who from Wheatfield Soul
“More and More” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from Blood, Sweat & Tears
“All Along The Watchtower” by Brewer & Shipley from Weeds
“Joker (On A Trip Through The Jungle)” by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band from In The Jungle, Babe
“Woman” by Zager & Evans from In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)
“Nobody” by Three Dog Night from Captured Live At The Forum
“Nitty Gritty” by Gladys Knight & the Pips, Soul single 35063
“Cherry Hill Park” by Billy Joe Royal, Columbia single 44902
“London Bridge” by Bread from Bread
A few notes on some of the songs:
One can argue which version of “Wooden Ships” is better, this one from Crosby, Stills & Nash or the version released later the same year on Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers album. (David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane wrote the song.) The CS&N version is a little more sleek and polished, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a compliment here. Nevertheless, both recordings of this enduring song are worth hearing.
When folks talk about Glen Campbell’s hits, they often forget about “Where’s The Playground, Susie?” and that’s too bad. It’s a fine performance of another Jimmy Webb song. It likely gets ignored because it only reached No. 26 on the pop chart, rather than climbing into the Top 10, as had “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston,” Campbell’s previous two releases to reach the Top 40.
“Love and a Yellow Rose” is a Guess Who album track that sprawls and wanders through simulations of Indian ragas, Gregorian chant (I think), standard pop rock and the kind of silly declamatory stuff that lead singer Burton Cummings was prone to (when he wasn’t writing hit singles, that is). As odd as “Love and a Yellow Rose” is, it’s not the strangest track on the album; that honor goes to the even sillier “Friends of Mine,” in which Cummings channels the still-living Jim Morrison.
“Joker (On A Trip Through The Jungle)” is a not-bad album track instrumental by Charles Wright and his group, but Wright and his band are better remembered for their singles, including the sweet “Love Land” from 1969, and 1970’s funky “Express Yourself.”
“Woman,” another album track, is Zager & Evans’ attempt at sweet and subtle, and the music is nice, but the lyrics are pretty vapid and unsubtle. I think that was the case, however, with pretty much everything the group did. It’s short, which helps.
Billy Joe Royal’s “Cherry Hill Park” is one of those guilty pleasures from the Top 40, and at the time, was just a little bit naughty: “Mary Hill was such a thrill after dark . . . in Cherry Hill Park.” Pretty tame these days, but still fun to listen to.
As always, bit rates will vary.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Renee and the Four Tops
It was nearly impossible, during the autumn of 1966, to escape the Left Banke.
Even one who didn’t listen avidly to pop music heard, seemingly everywhere, the violins and reedy vocals that dominated the Left Banke’s hit “Walk Away, Renee.” During its ten-week stay in the Top 40 – and it seemed a longer time than that – the record peaked at No. 5 and became one of the enduring earworms of the 1960s. Just a ten-second snippet of the song is liable to embed the song in one’s mind for hours.
That’s not to say that “Walk Away, Renee” is not a beautiful record. It is. The group’s chief writer, Michael Brown, wrote “Renee” with friends Bob Calilli and Tony Sansone, but he wrote most of the rest of the group’s oeuvre on his own. In doing so, Brown showed a skill in composition far greater than one would expect a teenager to have, and his craft in writing lyrics was also obvious, though not as astounding as his composition skills.
And the song, whether its strains came from a hand-held transistor radio, from the backseat speaker in a car or from a larger radio set at home, drew listeners in. The clearly sung chorus – “Just walk away, Renee; you won’t see me follow you back home.” – contrasted with the muffled vocals of the verses, leaving listeners to wonder exactly why Renee was being dismissed. I recall numerous discussions after school and on weekends of exactly what the words were and what did they mean?
(I looked at the lyrics for the first time ever today, as I was writing this, and finally resolved a question that I’d pondered very occasionally for the past forty years. I’d wondered if there truly were a sunglasses reference in the lyrics, for I’ve always heard the words “Foster-Grants” in the song. It turns out that I was mishearing the words “forced to cry.”)
Those types of conversations – detecting the accurate lyrics to a popular song – are less frequent now, I assume, with the existence of so many lyric sites on the ’Net. There still might be challenges in divining the meanings of lyrics, though. (And not all sites are all that accurate, of course. I recall one lyrics site that misheard one song’s words “I’m from the barrio” as “I’m from the bayou.”)
In the years since we first heard of the singer’s unrequited love for Renee, there have been numerous covers of the song. One of the more evocative versions came from Vonda Shepard for the television show Ally McBeal in late 1990s. That’s a little more recent than I like to deal with here, so I’ve selected one of the earliest cover versions of the song, that by the Four Tops.
At first thought, the pairing seems odd. The Four Tops’ greatest success came with more forceful work, songs like “Standing In The Shadows Of Love” and “Bernadette,” not with the light, airy strains of something like “Walk Away, Renee.” But lead singer Levi Stubbs and his partners – backed by the superlative Motown studio players – do a pretty good job with the song, and the resulting single (Motown 1119) reached No. 14 on the pop chart in the early spring of 1968.
And it’s easier to understand the lyrics, too.
Four Tops – Walk Away, Renee (1968)
Even one who didn’t listen avidly to pop music heard, seemingly everywhere, the violins and reedy vocals that dominated the Left Banke’s hit “Walk Away, Renee.” During its ten-week stay in the Top 40 – and it seemed a longer time than that – the record peaked at No. 5 and became one of the enduring earworms of the 1960s. Just a ten-second snippet of the song is liable to embed the song in one’s mind for hours.
That’s not to say that “Walk Away, Renee” is not a beautiful record. It is. The group’s chief writer, Michael Brown, wrote “Renee” with friends Bob Calilli and Tony Sansone, but he wrote most of the rest of the group’s oeuvre on his own. In doing so, Brown showed a skill in composition far greater than one would expect a teenager to have, and his craft in writing lyrics was also obvious, though not as astounding as his composition skills.
And the song, whether its strains came from a hand-held transistor radio, from the backseat speaker in a car or from a larger radio set at home, drew listeners in. The clearly sung chorus – “Just walk away, Renee; you won’t see me follow you back home.” – contrasted with the muffled vocals of the verses, leaving listeners to wonder exactly why Renee was being dismissed. I recall numerous discussions after school and on weekends of exactly what the words were and what did they mean?
(I looked at the lyrics for the first time ever today, as I was writing this, and finally resolved a question that I’d pondered very occasionally for the past forty years. I’d wondered if there truly were a sunglasses reference in the lyrics, for I’ve always heard the words “Foster-Grants” in the song. It turns out that I was mishearing the words “forced to cry.”)
Those types of conversations – detecting the accurate lyrics to a popular song – are less frequent now, I assume, with the existence of so many lyric sites on the ’Net. There still might be challenges in divining the meanings of lyrics, though. (And not all sites are all that accurate, of course. I recall one lyrics site that misheard one song’s words “I’m from the barrio” as “I’m from the bayou.”)
In the years since we first heard of the singer’s unrequited love for Renee, there have been numerous covers of the song. One of the more evocative versions came from Vonda Shepard for the television show Ally McBeal in late 1990s. That’s a little more recent than I like to deal with here, so I’ve selected one of the earliest cover versions of the song, that by the Four Tops.
At first thought, the pairing seems odd. The Four Tops’ greatest success came with more forceful work, songs like “Standing In The Shadows Of Love” and “Bernadette,” not with the light, airy strains of something like “Walk Away, Renee.” But lead singer Levi Stubbs and his partners – backed by the superlative Motown studio players – do a pretty good job with the song, and the resulting single (Motown 1119) reached No. 14 on the pop chart in the early spring of 1968.
And it’s easier to understand the lyrics, too.
Four Tops – Walk Away, Renee (1968)
Monday, August 27, 2007
From 'Faithful' to 'Slim Slo Slider'
My reading pile just gets larger and larger, as does my pile of things to listen to. We’ll talk about the listening pile another day.
Strewn across my worktable at home right now are five books: A thriller called A Necessary Evil; a combined biography of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis called Three Roads To The Alamo; a Richard Bachman book titled Blaze “discovered” recently by Stephen King; a Dean Koontz novel titled By The Light Of The Moon; and Faithful, a book about the 2004 Boston Red Sox.
I enjoy baseball history almost as much as I enjoy doing popular music history, and Faithful is the book I’m spending more time with right now. It’s a pretty good read, even though I know how it turns out: The Boston Red Sox win the World Series. And that makes the book’s existence remarkable. It was a team project from writers Stewart O’Nan (a novelist whose books I have not read, an omission I will correct soon) and Stephen King (most of whose stuff I have read many times more than once).
Their idea was to write day-by-day about the 2004 Boston Red Sox season, each of them keeping a record of their thoughts and reactions to the flow of the season. Those entries are in the book, as are occasional email exchanges between the two. Underlying the project, of course, was the sad and occasionally pathetic history of the Boston Red Sox, who had not won a World Series since 1918 but had lost four of them in the intervening years, all in seven games. Only two other teams in North American professional sports had endured longer stays in the wilderness: the Chicago White Sox, whose last title at the time of the 2004 season had been in 1917, and the Chicago Cubs, who last were Series champions in 1908. (The White Sox ended their long drought in 2005, the season following the one that O’Nan and King chronicled.)
The reader of Faithful needs, obviously, to be a baseball fan: There’s a lot of game dissection, lots of sports chat. But the reader need not be a Red Sox fan to understand the point of the book, which is that a true fan supports his team in all times, not just in the good times. In other words, a true fan remains, to use O’Nan and King’s title, faithful. As I said, one need not be a Red Sox fan to understand; I am a fan of the Minnesota Vikings and thus understand all one needs to know about enduring through fallow seasons and promises unmet.
The magic of Faithful, of course, is that O’Nan and King planned to collaborate on a book about the futility of yet another season supporting a good baseball team that once again fell short. Being Red Sox fans, they could envision nothing more, even as they hoped for a different and victorious ending. Their worst fears seemed about to come true in October when the hated New York Yankees took a three games to none lead in the second round of the playoffs.
I haven’t read that far into the book yet. I’m at mid-season, so I don’t yet know how the two writers greet the impending collapse of yet another season. Nor do I know how they react when – at the last possible moment – the Red Sox salvaged their season and went on to win eight straight games and their first World Series title in eighty-eight years.
There are sometimes rewards for being faithful.
Now, all that has nothing to do with the album I’m sharing today. I’m having such a good time reading Faithful that I wanted to write about it. And I guess that provides the most tenuous link possible: I enjoy listening to Johnny Rivers and want to share one of his albums.
The album is Slim Slo Slider, a 1970 release that continued Rivers’ string of solid albums that peaked with 1968’s Realization (which I consider one of the great forgotten albums of the rock era). Recording a mix of his own material and songs from some of the great writers and performers of the era, Rivers laid down an aural canvas of life in California – and to some degree in the entire U.S. – as the 1960s turned into the 1970s. From Changes in 1966 through Rewind (1967), Realization (1968) and Slim Slo Slider (1970) and culminating in 1971’s Home Grown, Rivers kept up an astounding level of quality, and each of those albums is worth seeking out. (He continued to record, of course, but his succeeding albums were not quite as powerful.)
(I don’t have Changes, but I’ve heard it once or twice and loved it. I found Rewind and Realization on a two-fer CD that is still available. Friends have given me rips of both Slim Slo Slider and Home Grown; they were available on a two-fer CD, but that now seems to have gone out of print.)
The highlights of Slim Slo Slider are Rivers’ takes on John Fogerty’s “Wrote A Song For Everyone,” Tony Joe White’s “Rainy Night In Georgia,” and Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic.” Morrison also was the source for the title track, which appears as a prologue and as the album’s closer.
As always, Rivers is backed by some of the best studio musicians of the time, including James Burton on guitar and dobro, Larry Knechtel on keyboards, Jim Horn on saxophone and flute and Hal Blaine on drums.
Track list
Slim Slo Slider (prologue)
Wrote A Song For Everyone
Muddy River
Rainy Night In Georgia
Brass Buttons
Glory Train
Jesus Is A Soul Man
Apple Tree
Into The Mystic
Resurrection
Enemies and Friends
Slim Slo Slider
Johnny Rivers – Slim Slo Slider (1970)
56.17 MB mp3 rip at 128 kbps
Addendum:
Thanks to fulks at GF for the original post!
Strewn across my worktable at home right now are five books: A thriller called A Necessary Evil; a combined biography of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis called Three Roads To The Alamo; a Richard Bachman book titled Blaze “discovered” recently by Stephen King; a Dean Koontz novel titled By The Light Of The Moon; and Faithful, a book about the 2004 Boston Red Sox.
I enjoy baseball history almost as much as I enjoy doing popular music history, and Faithful is the book I’m spending more time with right now. It’s a pretty good read, even though I know how it turns out: The Boston Red Sox win the World Series. And that makes the book’s existence remarkable. It was a team project from writers Stewart O’Nan (a novelist whose books I have not read, an omission I will correct soon) and Stephen King (most of whose stuff I have read many times more than once).
Their idea was to write day-by-day about the 2004 Boston Red Sox season, each of them keeping a record of their thoughts and reactions to the flow of the season. Those entries are in the book, as are occasional email exchanges between the two. Underlying the project, of course, was the sad and occasionally pathetic history of the Boston Red Sox, who had not won a World Series since 1918 but had lost four of them in the intervening years, all in seven games. Only two other teams in North American professional sports had endured longer stays in the wilderness: the Chicago White Sox, whose last title at the time of the 2004 season had been in 1917, and the Chicago Cubs, who last were Series champions in 1908. (The White Sox ended their long drought in 2005, the season following the one that O’Nan and King chronicled.)
The reader of Faithful needs, obviously, to be a baseball fan: There’s a lot of game dissection, lots of sports chat. But the reader need not be a Red Sox fan to understand the point of the book, which is that a true fan supports his team in all times, not just in the good times. In other words, a true fan remains, to use O’Nan and King’s title, faithful. As I said, one need not be a Red Sox fan to understand; I am a fan of the Minnesota Vikings and thus understand all one needs to know about enduring through fallow seasons and promises unmet.
The magic of Faithful, of course, is that O’Nan and King planned to collaborate on a book about the futility of yet another season supporting a good baseball team that once again fell short. Being Red Sox fans, they could envision nothing more, even as they hoped for a different and victorious ending. Their worst fears seemed about to come true in October when the hated New York Yankees took a three games to none lead in the second round of the playoffs.
I haven’t read that far into the book yet. I’m at mid-season, so I don’t yet know how the two writers greet the impending collapse of yet another season. Nor do I know how they react when – at the last possible moment – the Red Sox salvaged their season and went on to win eight straight games and their first World Series title in eighty-eight years.
There are sometimes rewards for being faithful.
Now, all that has nothing to do with the album I’m sharing today. I’m having such a good time reading Faithful that I wanted to write about it. And I guess that provides the most tenuous link possible: I enjoy listening to Johnny Rivers and want to share one of his albums.
The album is Slim Slo Slider, a 1970 release that continued Rivers’ string of solid albums that peaked with 1968’s Realization (which I consider one of the great forgotten albums of the rock era). Recording a mix of his own material and songs from some of the great writers and performers of the era, Rivers laid down an aural canvas of life in California – and to some degree in the entire U.S. – as the 1960s turned into the 1970s. From Changes in 1966 through Rewind (1967), Realization (1968) and Slim Slo Slider (1970) and culminating in 1971’s Home Grown, Rivers kept up an astounding level of quality, and each of those albums is worth seeking out. (He continued to record, of course, but his succeeding albums were not quite as powerful.)
(I don’t have Changes, but I’ve heard it once or twice and loved it. I found Rewind and Realization on a two-fer CD that is still available. Friends have given me rips of both Slim Slo Slider and Home Grown; they were available on a two-fer CD, but that now seems to have gone out of print.)
The highlights of Slim Slo Slider are Rivers’ takes on John Fogerty’s “Wrote A Song For Everyone,” Tony Joe White’s “Rainy Night In Georgia,” and Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic.” Morrison also was the source for the title track, which appears as a prologue and as the album’s closer.
As always, Rivers is backed by some of the best studio musicians of the time, including James Burton on guitar and dobro, Larry Knechtel on keyboards, Jim Horn on saxophone and flute and Hal Blaine on drums.
Track list
Slim Slo Slider (prologue)
Wrote A Song For Everyone
Muddy River
Rainy Night In Georgia
Brass Buttons
Glory Train
Jesus Is A Soul Man
Apple Tree
Into The Mystic
Resurrection
Enemies and Friends
Slim Slo Slider
Johnny Rivers – Slim Slo Slider (1970)
56.17 MB mp3 rip at 128 kbps
Addendum:
Thanks to fulks at GF for the original post!
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Saturday Single No. 27
One more indication of the passage of time: I used to see my friends at weddings, and then at baptisms. And now, we meet at funerals.
I talked Tuesday to both Rick and Rob, my childhood friends. Their mother, 91, was not doing well. After a few days in the hospital, she’d been moved to a hospice, and it was just a matter of time, Rob told me. But she was alert and comfortable, he said.
The inevitable call came the next morning. And so did the memories.
In every neighborhood full of children, there is, I imagine, one home where the kids congregate. In our neighborhood, it was Rick and Rob’s house. They and their three sisters filled the house with friends, and their mom welcomed all of us with a smile and a great tolerance for juvenile noise and mischief. From the time I was three until my last visit about a month ago, that smile was constant every time I walked through the door.
I’m sure there were times when we tried her patience, those of us who were her children’s friends and found her home a good place to gather. I recall times when there had to be at least twelve or more visiting kids in the house, as friends of all five of her children gathered on a rainy day or perhaps in the cold of winter. It could get noisy, whether that noise was the pounding of footsteps up and down the stairs, the sounds of a cap gun battle in the wilds of the basement, the beat of pop and rock music coming from a portable record player or two, or the raucous din of eight teens of various ages playing the card game Pit at the kitchen table.
The Soviet Union used to award a medal called the Hero Mother Award or something like that. Rick and Rob’s mom deserved whatever equivalent we could come up with. Not just for welcoming all those friends for all those years, although a smile in the face of twenty or more years of rambunctious children and teens is heroic enough. There were other, more serious challenges she faced through the years.
She was widowed thirty-five years ago, with three of her children yet to graduate from high school. In the past twenty or so years, she faced challenge after challenge to her health: a heart attack, open-heart surgery, breast cancer and lung cancer. And every time, she dealt with it, got back up and went on, living her life in her long-time home – which she shared with one of her daughters – and sitting late into the night in her favorite chair by the window, reading book after book.
At the same time, her home remained a haven, a safe and kind place to visit for the four who had moved away, for their spouses, and for her eleven grandchildren. Just as it was a haven for at least one of those kids who grew up in the neighborhood, one who now wishes he’d visited a lot more often than he did.
Her family and friends said goodbye to her today, laying her to rest next to the husband she lost so long ago. There were – as there should be at all such occasions – tears and laughter both. As we waited to go into the church, I had a chance to ask Rob if he knew what some of his mom’s favorite popular music was. He called over his youngest sister, who lived with their mom. She said their mom liked Frank Sinatra. So for Rick and Rob, and for their three sisters, and most of all, for their mom, here is Frank Sinatra backed by the Tommy Dorsey Band in 1940 performing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” today’s Saturday Single.
Tommy Dorsey Band and Frank Sinatra – I’ll Be Seeing You (1940)
I talked Tuesday to both Rick and Rob, my childhood friends. Their mother, 91, was not doing well. After a few days in the hospital, she’d been moved to a hospice, and it was just a matter of time, Rob told me. But she was alert and comfortable, he said.
The inevitable call came the next morning. And so did the memories.
In every neighborhood full of children, there is, I imagine, one home where the kids congregate. In our neighborhood, it was Rick and Rob’s house. They and their three sisters filled the house with friends, and their mom welcomed all of us with a smile and a great tolerance for juvenile noise and mischief. From the time I was three until my last visit about a month ago, that smile was constant every time I walked through the door.
I’m sure there were times when we tried her patience, those of us who were her children’s friends and found her home a good place to gather. I recall times when there had to be at least twelve or more visiting kids in the house, as friends of all five of her children gathered on a rainy day or perhaps in the cold of winter. It could get noisy, whether that noise was the pounding of footsteps up and down the stairs, the sounds of a cap gun battle in the wilds of the basement, the beat of pop and rock music coming from a portable record player or two, or the raucous din of eight teens of various ages playing the card game Pit at the kitchen table.
The Soviet Union used to award a medal called the Hero Mother Award or something like that. Rick and Rob’s mom deserved whatever equivalent we could come up with. Not just for welcoming all those friends for all those years, although a smile in the face of twenty or more years of rambunctious children and teens is heroic enough. There were other, more serious challenges she faced through the years.
She was widowed thirty-five years ago, with three of her children yet to graduate from high school. In the past twenty or so years, she faced challenge after challenge to her health: a heart attack, open-heart surgery, breast cancer and lung cancer. And every time, she dealt with it, got back up and went on, living her life in her long-time home – which she shared with one of her daughters – and sitting late into the night in her favorite chair by the window, reading book after book.
At the same time, her home remained a haven, a safe and kind place to visit for the four who had moved away, for their spouses, and for her eleven grandchildren. Just as it was a haven for at least one of those kids who grew up in the neighborhood, one who now wishes he’d visited a lot more often than he did.
Her family and friends said goodbye to her today, laying her to rest next to the husband she lost so long ago. There were – as there should be at all such occasions – tears and laughter both. As we waited to go into the church, I had a chance to ask Rob if he knew what some of his mom’s favorite popular music was. He called over his youngest sister, who lived with their mom. She said their mom liked Frank Sinatra. So for Rick and Rob, and for their three sisters, and most of all, for their mom, here is Frank Sinatra backed by the Tommy Dorsey Band in 1940 performing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” today’s Saturday Single.
Tommy Dorsey Band and Frank Sinatra – I’ll Be Seeing You (1940)
Friday, August 24, 2007
Roy Orbison's Last Statement
I don’t have a lot to say today – we’re busy and a bit preoccupied here today. So I’m just going to leave you with a very nice album from 1989.
The album, Mystery Girl, turned out to be Roy Orbison’s curtain call, released in early 1989 after his death in December 1988. Following his work with the Traveling Wilburys in 1987, Mystery Girl was the best-selling album of Orbison’s long career. It should be noted, however, that albums, per se, were not the measure of success during the years when Orbison was most popular. Singles were a better measure during his prime years, and Orbison had twenty-two Top 40 singles between 1960 and 1966; nine of the them were in the Top 10, and two – “Running Scared” from 1961 and “Oh, Pretty Woman” from 1964 – reached No. 1.
Recorded with the help of Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne from the Wilburys and with help as well from Bono and a stellar cast of backing musicians, Mystery Girl can be haunting, and not only because it was a posthumous release. Its best songs – “In The Real World,” “She’s A Mystery To Me,” “California Blue” and “Windsurfer,” come to mind quickly – echo the sense of loss and fate that pervaded Orbison’s best singles from the 1960s.
(This is not my rip; I found it elsewhere on the ’Net, but I’ve decided to upload it anew, as the CD has gone out of print and prices for used copied are rising. Enjoy!)
Track list:
You Got It
In The Real World
(All I Can Do Is) Dream You
A Love So Beautiful
California Blue
She’s A Mystery To Me
The Comedians
The Only One
Windsurfer
Careless Heart
Roy Orbison – Mystery Girl (1989)
84.28 MB mp3 rip at 320 kbps
The album, Mystery Girl, turned out to be Roy Orbison’s curtain call, released in early 1989 after his death in December 1988. Following his work with the Traveling Wilburys in 1987, Mystery Girl was the best-selling album of Orbison’s long career. It should be noted, however, that albums, per se, were not the measure of success during the years when Orbison was most popular. Singles were a better measure during his prime years, and Orbison had twenty-two Top 40 singles between 1960 and 1966; nine of the them were in the Top 10, and two – “Running Scared” from 1961 and “Oh, Pretty Woman” from 1964 – reached No. 1.
Recorded with the help of Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne from the Wilburys and with help as well from Bono and a stellar cast of backing musicians, Mystery Girl can be haunting, and not only because it was a posthumous release. Its best songs – “In The Real World,” “She’s A Mystery To Me,” “California Blue” and “Windsurfer,” come to mind quickly – echo the sense of loss and fate that pervaded Orbison’s best singles from the 1960s.
(This is not my rip; I found it elsewhere on the ’Net, but I’ve decided to upload it anew, as the CD has gone out of print and prices for used copied are rising. Enjoy!)
Track list:
You Got It
In The Real World
(All I Can Do Is) Dream You
A Love So Beautiful
California Blue
She’s A Mystery To Me
The Comedians
The Only One
Windsurfer
Careless Heart
Roy Orbison – Mystery Girl (1989)
84.28 MB mp3 rip at 320 kbps
Thursday, August 23, 2007
'A Simple Twist of Fate' - Bob Dylan, 1975
Found a nice piece of Bob Dylan footage over at Youtube this morning.
Here's Bob doing "A Simple Twist of Fate" one of three songs he performed for a show called The World Of John Hammond, celebrating the life and career of the famed Columbia Records executive who secured for the record label a superlative roster of musicians, including Dylan himself.
The show was evidently aired Dec. 13, 1975 from the studios of WTTW-TV, Chicago, with a simulcast on New York City's WBAI-FM radio.
Joining Dylan are Rob Stoner on bass, Scarlet Rivera on violin and Howie Wyeth on drums.
It's always fun to hear Dylan's excursions into different lyrics when he performs live. It seems to me that he's more prone to do that with songs that, like this one, come from Blood on the Tracks, which had been released just months before this performance.
Here's Bob doing "A Simple Twist of Fate" one of three songs he performed for a show called The World Of John Hammond, celebrating the life and career of the famed Columbia Records executive who secured for the record label a superlative roster of musicians, including Dylan himself.
The show was evidently aired Dec. 13, 1975 from the studios of WTTW-TV, Chicago, with a simulcast on New York City's WBAI-FM radio.
Joining Dylan are Rob Stoner on bass, Scarlet Rivera on violin and Howie Wyeth on drums.
It's always fun to hear Dylan's excursions into different lyrics when he performs live. It seems to me that he's more prone to do that with songs that, like this one, come from Blood on the Tracks, which had been released just months before this performance.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
A Baker's Dozen from 1982
When I settled on 1982 as the year for this morning’s Baker’s Dozen – after dabbling with the ideas of 1963 and 1964, two other years still unexplored – I wasn’t entirely hopeful.
I know I listened to the radio during the year – most likely to the station in the Twin Cities that at the time played “the hits of the Sixties, the Seventies and today” without playing all of the Top 40. Nothing very rude or raucous came out of the station’s studios. Not being a radio guy, I’m not sure what the format was called; I think today it would be called “Adult Contemporary.”
I thought about 1982 while the RealPlayer was sorting mp3s, though, and I realized that I couldn’t independently recall hearing a lot of music during the year. In fact, only one song came to mind, “Wasted On The Way” by Crosby, Stills & Nash, which I recall hearing as I drove through Iowa on my way to check out the graduate school at the University of Missouri. And I thought it was odd that I would remember so little music; after all, music has been one of the main foundations of my life. And on a practical level, a good part of a reporter’s workweek is spent driving to and from things, and I always had the car radio on. And the radio frequently provided the background to evenings at home, as we didn’t watch much television. But what did I hear? I really don’t recall.
Oh, I know what some of the music from 1982 was, having dug into it later and filled in the record collection with things I missed. But I must have been on autopilot that year, for I have no hooks of memory on which to hang any songs.
Still, the Baker’s Dozen is pretty decent selection:
“It’s Raining Again” by Supertramp, A&M single 2502
“Walking on a Wire” by Richard & Linda Thompson from Shoot Out The Lights
“Marina Del Rey” by George Strait, MCA single 52120
“Take A Chance With Me” by Roxy Music from Avalon
“Thank You For The Promises” by Gordon Lightfoot from Shadows
“Still In Saigon” by the Charlie Daniels Band, Epic single 02828
“Straight Back” by Fleetwood Mac from Mirage
“Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes from the soundtrack to An Officer and a Gentleman
“Cleaning Windows” by Van Morrison from Beautiful Vision
“I Can’t Survive” by Jimmy Johnson from North/South
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find (Pittsburgh)” by Bruce Springsteen at the Power Station, New York
“Take Me Home” by Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle from the soundtrack to One From The Heart
“Roll Me Away” by Bob Seger, Capitol single 5235
A few notes on some of the songs:
Supertramp was in the middle of a pretty good run when the jaunty “It’s Raining Again” was released. It was the British group’s seventh Top 40 hit and the sixth to reach the Top 20 in a three-year period. The song reached No. 11, but it was the band’s last stay in the Top 20.
“Walking on a Wire” comes from Shoot Out the Lights, the last project that Richard and Linda Thompson released before they divorced. Listeners might assume that the edginess of the material came from the tensions of the pending split, but All-Music Guide notes that most of the material was at least a couple years old. Nevertheless, there is an edge to Shoot Out the Lights that isn’t as pronounced in the couple’s earlier work. “Walking on a Wire” is typical, but the entire album is worth a listen.
I don’t have a lot of George Strait music, but for some reason, I find that “Marina Del Rey” grows more and more charming every time I hear it. Maybe it’s the dissonance of the place: One doesn’t think of a country boy taking his vacation in Marina Del Rey. Someplace on a southern river or the Gulf Coast seems more likely. But “Marina Del Rey” works, a judgment with which country listeners agreed in 1982: the record reached No. 6 on the country charts.
Gordon Lightfoot’s “Thank You For the Promises” is one of those songs that can nearly always move me to tears. Much of the album from which it comes, Shadows, is somber, and this track is typical of those parts of the record.
Jimmy Johnson is a native of Mississippi and brother to soul/R&B singer Syl Johnson. North/South, the album from which “I Can’t Survive” comes, is a nice serving of third-generation Chicago blues.
The last two songs, as stylistically different as any two can be, are a fitting conclusion, especially since it’s a random pairing. Both of them – “Take Me Home” overtly and “Roll Me Away” more implicitly – are about finding home, that physical and emotional place where one can rest.
As always, bit rates will vary.
I know I listened to the radio during the year – most likely to the station in the Twin Cities that at the time played “the hits of the Sixties, the Seventies and today” without playing all of the Top 40. Nothing very rude or raucous came out of the station’s studios. Not being a radio guy, I’m not sure what the format was called; I think today it would be called “Adult Contemporary.”
I thought about 1982 while the RealPlayer was sorting mp3s, though, and I realized that I couldn’t independently recall hearing a lot of music during the year. In fact, only one song came to mind, “Wasted On The Way” by Crosby, Stills & Nash, which I recall hearing as I drove through Iowa on my way to check out the graduate school at the University of Missouri. And I thought it was odd that I would remember so little music; after all, music has been one of the main foundations of my life. And on a practical level, a good part of a reporter’s workweek is spent driving to and from things, and I always had the car radio on. And the radio frequently provided the background to evenings at home, as we didn’t watch much television. But what did I hear? I really don’t recall.
Oh, I know what some of the music from 1982 was, having dug into it later and filled in the record collection with things I missed. But I must have been on autopilot that year, for I have no hooks of memory on which to hang any songs.
Still, the Baker’s Dozen is pretty decent selection:
“It’s Raining Again” by Supertramp, A&M single 2502
“Walking on a Wire” by Richard & Linda Thompson from Shoot Out The Lights
“Marina Del Rey” by George Strait, MCA single 52120
“Take A Chance With Me” by Roxy Music from Avalon
“Thank You For The Promises” by Gordon Lightfoot from Shadows
“Still In Saigon” by the Charlie Daniels Band, Epic single 02828
“Straight Back” by Fleetwood Mac from Mirage
“Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes from the soundtrack to An Officer and a Gentleman
“Cleaning Windows” by Van Morrison from Beautiful Vision
“I Can’t Survive” by Jimmy Johnson from North/South
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find (Pittsburgh)” by Bruce Springsteen at the Power Station, New York
“Take Me Home” by Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle from the soundtrack to One From The Heart
“Roll Me Away” by Bob Seger, Capitol single 5235
A few notes on some of the songs:
Supertramp was in the middle of a pretty good run when the jaunty “It’s Raining Again” was released. It was the British group’s seventh Top 40 hit and the sixth to reach the Top 20 in a three-year period. The song reached No. 11, but it was the band’s last stay in the Top 20.
“Walking on a Wire” comes from Shoot Out the Lights, the last project that Richard and Linda Thompson released before they divorced. Listeners might assume that the edginess of the material came from the tensions of the pending split, but All-Music Guide notes that most of the material was at least a couple years old. Nevertheless, there is an edge to Shoot Out the Lights that isn’t as pronounced in the couple’s earlier work. “Walking on a Wire” is typical, but the entire album is worth a listen.
I don’t have a lot of George Strait music, but for some reason, I find that “Marina Del Rey” grows more and more charming every time I hear it. Maybe it’s the dissonance of the place: One doesn’t think of a country boy taking his vacation in Marina Del Rey. Someplace on a southern river or the Gulf Coast seems more likely. But “Marina Del Rey” works, a judgment with which country listeners agreed in 1982: the record reached No. 6 on the country charts.
Gordon Lightfoot’s “Thank You For the Promises” is one of those songs that can nearly always move me to tears. Much of the album from which it comes, Shadows, is somber, and this track is typical of those parts of the record.
Jimmy Johnson is a native of Mississippi and brother to soul/R&B singer Syl Johnson. North/South, the album from which “I Can’t Survive” comes, is a nice serving of third-generation Chicago blues.
The last two songs, as stylistically different as any two can be, are a fitting conclusion, especially since it’s a random pairing. Both of them – “Take Me Home” overtly and “Roll Me Away” more implicitly – are about finding home, that physical and emotional place where one can rest.
As always, bit rates will vary.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
They Got Their Mojo Working
According to All-Music Guide, there are almost 300 recordings of the blues standard “Got My Mojo Working” (or “I Got My Mojo Working” or variations thereof) on CDs currently in print. And that doesn’t begin to touch those recordings of the song on vinyl or on CD that are no longer in print.
Probably the most famous name that pops up on those lists is that of Muddy Waters, the Mississippi native who was one of the creators of the Chicago blues in the years following World War II. From what I’ve heard, Waters got hold of the song after hearing a live performance by Ann Cole, who had recorded the song – written by Preston Foster – in 1956. Waters and his band made the song their own, so much so that when various British and American rock and blues-rock groups began to record the song in the mid-1960s, they frequently credited Waters with writing it.
I don’t know if Muddy did much to disabuse those performers of the idea that he wrote the tune. At AMG, about two-thirds to three-quarters of the listings for the song are credited to Preston Foster – including most of Waters’ recordings. The rest still list Muddy Waters as the composer either under that name or under his birth name of McKinley Morganfield.
Even if he didn’t write the song – and I don’t know if he actually claimed to have written it or not – Waters was the reason it became as well known as it did. And even a partial list of those who recorded “Got My Mojo Working” after that is interesting: Etta James, British bluesman Alexis Korner, Manfred Mann, Elliott Murphy, Rotary Connection, Shadows of Knight, Junior Wells, Steve Winwood, Long John Baldry, Canned Heat, Gatemouth Brown and on and on. The wisdom of pairing some of those acts – and many I did not mention – with the song is debatable, but there’s no doubt that it’s one of the most widely covered songs in the blues library.
One of the best covers, listed as “I Got My Mojo Working,” came from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, released in 1965 on the group’s eponymous debut album. Drummer Sam Lay handles the vocal with Butterfield (on blues harp) and guitarists Elvin Bishop and Mike Bloomfield providing a tasty backing. (Jerome Arnold on bass and Mark Naftalin on organ round out the group.) The result shows that Butterfield’s group was more adept at getting inside the sense of the blues as well as the sound than many of the other groups that were playing the blues at the time.
If I have a complaint about Butterfield’s version, it’s that it’s a hair too fast, but that’s a minor quibble. The recording remains a good example of why the Butterfield Blues Band was among the cream of the mid-Sixties groups that brought the blues to a far wider audience than the music had ever known.
Paul Butterfield Blues Band – I Got My Mojo Working (1965)
5.73 MB mp3 at 224 kbps
Probably the most famous name that pops up on those lists is that of Muddy Waters, the Mississippi native who was one of the creators of the Chicago blues in the years following World War II. From what I’ve heard, Waters got hold of the song after hearing a live performance by Ann Cole, who had recorded the song – written by Preston Foster – in 1956. Waters and his band made the song their own, so much so that when various British and American rock and blues-rock groups began to record the song in the mid-1960s, they frequently credited Waters with writing it.
I don’t know if Muddy did much to disabuse those performers of the idea that he wrote the tune. At AMG, about two-thirds to three-quarters of the listings for the song are credited to Preston Foster – including most of Waters’ recordings. The rest still list Muddy Waters as the composer either under that name or under his birth name of McKinley Morganfield.
Even if he didn’t write the song – and I don’t know if he actually claimed to have written it or not – Waters was the reason it became as well known as it did. And even a partial list of those who recorded “Got My Mojo Working” after that is interesting: Etta James, British bluesman Alexis Korner, Manfred Mann, Elliott Murphy, Rotary Connection, Shadows of Knight, Junior Wells, Steve Winwood, Long John Baldry, Canned Heat, Gatemouth Brown and on and on. The wisdom of pairing some of those acts – and many I did not mention – with the song is debatable, but there’s no doubt that it’s one of the most widely covered songs in the blues library.
One of the best covers, listed as “I Got My Mojo Working,” came from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, released in 1965 on the group’s eponymous debut album. Drummer Sam Lay handles the vocal with Butterfield (on blues harp) and guitarists Elvin Bishop and Mike Bloomfield providing a tasty backing. (Jerome Arnold on bass and Mark Naftalin on organ round out the group.) The result shows that Butterfield’s group was more adept at getting inside the sense of the blues as well as the sound than many of the other groups that were playing the blues at the time.
If I have a complaint about Butterfield’s version, it’s that it’s a hair too fast, but that’s a minor quibble. The recording remains a good example of why the Butterfield Blues Band was among the cream of the mid-Sixties groups that brought the blues to a far wider audience than the music had ever known.
Paul Butterfield Blues Band – I Got My Mojo Working (1965)
5.73 MB mp3 at 224 kbps
Monday, August 20, 2007
An Odd Memory of Rick Nelson
I have one indelible memory regarding Rick Nelson.
No, it’s not the first time I heard “Hello Mary Lou” or one of his other hits. I was far too young for his hits of the 1950s and early 1960s to matter much to me as radio fare. Nor am I thinking of either of his two chart hits in the 1970s – “She Belongs To Me” and “Garden Party” – although I liked both of them.
No, I’m recalling a hole in the wall tavern somewhere in the old city of Vienna, an Austrian dive, if you will.
I’d already had a far more interesting time in Vienna than I’d bargained for. Arriving on a Wednesday evening in late March, I’d learned that spring break for Austrian university students was underway and hostel spaces and cheap hotel rooms in Vienna were more rare than cheap beer. I stood near the information kiosk in the main train station, pondering my options. I was thinking of getting on a train leaving the city, riding and sleeping halfway through the night and then getting off that train and catching the next train back to Vienna, again getting as much sleep as I could on the way back. (With a rail pass, there would be no cost, but whatever rest I got would be less than good. But I’d done it before.)
Then a woman about my age came up to me, trailed by a young man. “Are you looking for a place to stay?” Hopeful and leery at the same time – maybe they ran a small hotel, or maybe they were into things more weird than I wanted to contemplate; I did not know – I nodded. She turned to him and said something in a language I didn’t recognize. He responded in the same language, and she turned to me and said, “This is my fiancé, and he’s arrived here a few days ago from Hungary. He knows a place where people who come here from Hungary stay.”
I was tired and it sounded better than getting on a train and switching directions in the middle of the night. So I walked with them as they led the way out of the station and north into an older neighborhood. On the way, the young woman told me that she was originally Hungarian but had emigrated to Canada when she was very young and had come to Vienna to meet her fiancé, who had just left Hungary. A mile or so later, we entered a building and went up a flight of stairs, and the Hungarian fellow knocked on a door. An older woman opened it and spoke German to him.
And then came the most odd negotiations I have even been part of. The proprietor of the boarding house, for that’s what it was, spoke German. The Hungarian fellow translated that into Hungarian and spoke to his fiancé, who translated his words into English for me and then sent my response back up the line, through Hungarian into German. After a few moments, the owner ushered us inside to show me the room I would rent for the night. (I planned on three nights in Vienna, but I was still leery.) We went through one room with two beds into a second bedroom. I saw I could lock the second room from the inside, which reassured me a little, but the bed needed changing. And I waved my hands and began to leave. No, no, said the young woman, the bed would have clean sheets in a matter of minutes. Was I hungry? There was a good Hungarian restaurant down the block, and by the time we got back, I would have clean sheets.
So we went and ate Hungarian goulash: tender beef chunks in a paprika and sour cream sauce over noodles. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had, the impact heightened, I imagine, by the oddness of its circumstances. After we were done, we went down the block and up the stairs, and the room that would be mine – with a bed, a sink, and a table and chair at the window overlooking the street – was cleaned and ready for me. I still didn’t like the idea of going through another bedroom to get to mine, but it was late, and I could lock my door from inside. The landlady gave me towels and showed me where the shower and other facilities were, and I settled in.
I ended up spending two nights there. And I spent two days seeing the sights of Vienna in the company of two young women from West Virginia, Cathy and Betty, and a guy from Canada named Louis, whom I met during my first morning there. During the afternoon of our second day together, as we wandered through the central part of the city, we thought it was time for a beer or two. After a few blocks, we saw an open door into what looked like tavern that might have seen better days, but there were people laughing at a couple of tables and there were some empty tables. So we trooped in and found chairs and ordered mugs of dark beer.
Louis and I saw the jukebox on the far side of the room, and we headed over. There were only two songs in English: Tammy Wynette’s 1968 hit “Stand By Your Man” and Rick Nelson’s “Hello, Mary Lou” from 1961. We dropped some money in the machine and sat down, laughing and drinking pretty good beer with Cathy and Betty, watching customers come and go.
And we became aware that the clientele, except for Cathy and Betty, was all male. The men would enter, go to the tables occupied by the laughing people – all women, we now noticed – and soon make their way to a side door, each man accompanied by a woman. We were in a brothel!
Cathy and Betty began to sing along with Tammy: “Stand by your man! Give him two arms to cling to and something warm to come to when nights are cold and lonely.” Louis and I laughed into our beers.
The song ended, and the jukebox started playing “Hello, Mary Lou.” As the young Rick Nelson’s voice competed with the laughter of the idle working girls at the two tables near the bar, Louis leaned forward. We all leaned in to hear him. And, looking at the working girls up front, he said, “Which one’s Mary Lou?”
Laughing most of the time, we finished our beers and left. A couple of passers-by on the street did double-takes when they saw that Louis and I were followed out of the place by two rather attractive young women.
And every time I hear “Hello, Mary Lou,” well, there I am in a Viennese brothel.
That holds true for the live version of the song on today’s album: Rick Nelson In Concert (The Troubadour, 1969), on which for some reason the song is listed as “Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Heart.” It’s a pretty decent album, recorded at a time when Nelson was trying to get his recording career off the ground again. He would have a couple of hits in the next year or so – “She Belongs To Me” and “Garden Party,” as I indicated above – but he never did catch the imagination of the listening public the way he had years before.
And in a way, that’s too bad. The work he did later in his career – starting with this live album – was nicely done, starting as country-tinged rock and moving to full country rock (and a little rockabilly) in the late 1970s and early 1980s before his death in a plane crash in 1985.
In Concert presents a nice mix of three of his originals, three Bob Dylan covers and covers of songs by Fats Domino, Tim Hardin, Eric Andersen and Doug Kershaw and a few other things, including, as I said above, “Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Heart,” which was written by Gene Pitney. It’s a pretty good listen.
(The band is: Randy Meisner on bass, Pat Shanahan on drums, Allen Kemp on guitar and Tom Brumley on steel guitar.)
Tracks:
Come On In
Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Heart
Violets Of Dawn
Who Cares About Tomorrow/Promises
She Belongs To Me
If You Gotta Go, Go Now
I’m Walkin’
Red Balloon
Louisiana Man
Believe What You Say
Easy To Be Free
I Shall Be Released
Rick Nelson – In Concert (The Troubadour, 1969) [1970]
53.43 MB rip from vinyl at 192 kbps
Afternote:
It seems that on the tags for the album, I mis-spelled “troubadour.” Sorry about that!
No, it’s not the first time I heard “Hello Mary Lou” or one of his other hits. I was far too young for his hits of the 1950s and early 1960s to matter much to me as radio fare. Nor am I thinking of either of his two chart hits in the 1970s – “She Belongs To Me” and “Garden Party” – although I liked both of them.
No, I’m recalling a hole in the wall tavern somewhere in the old city of Vienna, an Austrian dive, if you will.
I’d already had a far more interesting time in Vienna than I’d bargained for. Arriving on a Wednesday evening in late March, I’d learned that spring break for Austrian university students was underway and hostel spaces and cheap hotel rooms in Vienna were more rare than cheap beer. I stood near the information kiosk in the main train station, pondering my options. I was thinking of getting on a train leaving the city, riding and sleeping halfway through the night and then getting off that train and catching the next train back to Vienna, again getting as much sleep as I could on the way back. (With a rail pass, there would be no cost, but whatever rest I got would be less than good. But I’d done it before.)
Then a woman about my age came up to me, trailed by a young man. “Are you looking for a place to stay?” Hopeful and leery at the same time – maybe they ran a small hotel, or maybe they were into things more weird than I wanted to contemplate; I did not know – I nodded. She turned to him and said something in a language I didn’t recognize. He responded in the same language, and she turned to me and said, “This is my fiancé, and he’s arrived here a few days ago from Hungary. He knows a place where people who come here from Hungary stay.”
I was tired and it sounded better than getting on a train and switching directions in the middle of the night. So I walked with them as they led the way out of the station and north into an older neighborhood. On the way, the young woman told me that she was originally Hungarian but had emigrated to Canada when she was very young and had come to Vienna to meet her fiancé, who had just left Hungary. A mile or so later, we entered a building and went up a flight of stairs, and the Hungarian fellow knocked on a door. An older woman opened it and spoke German to him.
And then came the most odd negotiations I have even been part of. The proprietor of the boarding house, for that’s what it was, spoke German. The Hungarian fellow translated that into Hungarian and spoke to his fiancé, who translated his words into English for me and then sent my response back up the line, through Hungarian into German. After a few moments, the owner ushered us inside to show me the room I would rent for the night. (I planned on three nights in Vienna, but I was still leery.) We went through one room with two beds into a second bedroom. I saw I could lock the second room from the inside, which reassured me a little, but the bed needed changing. And I waved my hands and began to leave. No, no, said the young woman, the bed would have clean sheets in a matter of minutes. Was I hungry? There was a good Hungarian restaurant down the block, and by the time we got back, I would have clean sheets.
So we went and ate Hungarian goulash: tender beef chunks in a paprika and sour cream sauce over noodles. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had, the impact heightened, I imagine, by the oddness of its circumstances. After we were done, we went down the block and up the stairs, and the room that would be mine – with a bed, a sink, and a table and chair at the window overlooking the street – was cleaned and ready for me. I still didn’t like the idea of going through another bedroom to get to mine, but it was late, and I could lock my door from inside. The landlady gave me towels and showed me where the shower and other facilities were, and I settled in.
I ended up spending two nights there. And I spent two days seeing the sights of Vienna in the company of two young women from West Virginia, Cathy and Betty, and a guy from Canada named Louis, whom I met during my first morning there. During the afternoon of our second day together, as we wandered through the central part of the city, we thought it was time for a beer or two. After a few blocks, we saw an open door into what looked like tavern that might have seen better days, but there were people laughing at a couple of tables and there were some empty tables. So we trooped in and found chairs and ordered mugs of dark beer.
Louis and I saw the jukebox on the far side of the room, and we headed over. There were only two songs in English: Tammy Wynette’s 1968 hit “Stand By Your Man” and Rick Nelson’s “Hello, Mary Lou” from 1961. We dropped some money in the machine and sat down, laughing and drinking pretty good beer with Cathy and Betty, watching customers come and go.
And we became aware that the clientele, except for Cathy and Betty, was all male. The men would enter, go to the tables occupied by the laughing people – all women, we now noticed – and soon make their way to a side door, each man accompanied by a woman. We were in a brothel!
Cathy and Betty began to sing along with Tammy: “Stand by your man! Give him two arms to cling to and something warm to come to when nights are cold and lonely.” Louis and I laughed into our beers.
The song ended, and the jukebox started playing “Hello, Mary Lou.” As the young Rick Nelson’s voice competed with the laughter of the idle working girls at the two tables near the bar, Louis leaned forward. We all leaned in to hear him. And, looking at the working girls up front, he said, “Which one’s Mary Lou?”
Laughing most of the time, we finished our beers and left. A couple of passers-by on the street did double-takes when they saw that Louis and I were followed out of the place by two rather attractive young women.
And every time I hear “Hello, Mary Lou,” well, there I am in a Viennese brothel.
That holds true for the live version of the song on today’s album: Rick Nelson In Concert (The Troubadour, 1969), on which for some reason the song is listed as “Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Heart.” It’s a pretty decent album, recorded at a time when Nelson was trying to get his recording career off the ground again. He would have a couple of hits in the next year or so – “She Belongs To Me” and “Garden Party,” as I indicated above – but he never did catch the imagination of the listening public the way he had years before.
And in a way, that’s too bad. The work he did later in his career – starting with this live album – was nicely done, starting as country-tinged rock and moving to full country rock (and a little rockabilly) in the late 1970s and early 1980s before his death in a plane crash in 1985.
In Concert presents a nice mix of three of his originals, three Bob Dylan covers and covers of songs by Fats Domino, Tim Hardin, Eric Andersen and Doug Kershaw and a few other things, including, as I said above, “Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Heart,” which was written by Gene Pitney. It’s a pretty good listen.
(The band is: Randy Meisner on bass, Pat Shanahan on drums, Allen Kemp on guitar and Tom Brumley on steel guitar.)
Tracks:
Come On In
Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Heart
Violets Of Dawn
Who Cares About Tomorrow/Promises
She Belongs To Me
If You Gotta Go, Go Now
I’m Walkin’
Red Balloon
Louisiana Man
Believe What You Say
Easy To Be Free
I Shall Be Released
Rick Nelson – In Concert (The Troubadour, 1969) [1970]
53.43 MB rip from vinyl at 192 kbps
Afternote:
It seems that on the tags for the album, I mis-spelled “troubadour.” Sorry about that!
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Saturday Single No. 26
We probably watch too much television, the Texas Gal and I. It’s the path of least resistance, I guess, to plop down on the couch in the evenings – her with a craft project in hand, me with a book or a magazine – and keep an eye on the tube.
We are fans of reality TV. We like Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, American Idol, and So You Think You Can Dance. She also sometimes watches The Bachelor, a show I at best devote half an eye to. There are, of course, some dramatic shows that we also watch: Numbers, Friday Night Lights and Cold Case chief among them.
Now, that may not seem like a lot of television, but the hours do add up. Add to that the time spent on my part following the fortunes of the Minnesota Twins, Vikings and Wild as well as a couple of University of Minnesota athletic teams, and sometimes I wonder about the amount of time devoted to watching. As I said, however, I’m frequently reading something during many of those shows, and the Texas Gal is almost always working on one craft project or another, so it’s not entirely lost time.
In some cases, I’m not sure it would be entirely lost time anyway. For one, Friday Night Lights is an extraordinarily well-written drama, with strong characters, a good cast and
well-developed secondary story lines. The primary story line, that of the high school football team seeking a state title, was pretty pro forma during the show’s first season; I will be interested to see what wrinkles the show’s writers and producers can find for the second season. To say it might be the best dramatic show on television is to damn it with faint praise; it’s more fair to the show to say that it’s got a chance to rank among the best television dramas ever.
The other show that crosses my mind as one that has some value might be a surprise. It’s So You Think You Can Dance. Along with the entertainment value inherent in the drama of seeing thousands of dancers winnowed down to one champion, I see some positives in the show. The judges – including producer Nigel Lithgow – truly seem interested in providing at least some education about dance to the audience. We’ve watched the show all three seasons, and every once in a while, we realize we’ve learned something. We might be watching a quickstep, for instance, and one of us will say to the other, “His frame isn’t very good” and the other will nod.
Three years ago, I couldn’t have told you what a quickstep was, much less know the importance of a dancer’s upper body frame while performing one.
Okay, so what I’ve learned is likely less than a textbook’s worth, and it’s not nuclear physics. But I truly get the sense that – along with making a buck, which I realize is the primary purpose of the show – Lithgow and the other producers and judges are interested in leading viewers to know more about dance. From the frequent focus on the various choreographers to the sometimes very specific critiques of the performances, viewers come away, I think, with a better appreciation of dance as an art form. And I can see viewers using the show as a starting point, either as dancers or as fans of serious dance, and that would not be a bad thing.
So what does all this have to do with a Saturday Single? Well, during Wednesday evening’s final competition, one of the dancers took the stage dancing to what was billed as “I Gotcha” from the soundtrack to Fosse, the musical. The Texas Gal said, “That may be where they found that song, but it’s not where it came from. I remember the original.”
I did, too, but only vaguely at best. During a commercial, I ran “I Gotcha” through All-Music Guide. No composer credit was given for the musical’s song by that title. The fact that the credits for Fosse didn’t list a composer didn’t mean anything. Incomplete information abounds on the ’Net, of course. There were a few others songs titled “I Gotcha,” but the one that kept nagging at me was the one by Joe Tex, the funky single (Dial 1010) that went to No. 2 in 1972. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the same song, at least at first.
I pondered the song at odd moments for a couple of days. Maybe it was the Joe Tex song. So I dug around and found a copy of Tex’s version. Same song. The Texas Gal was right. I guess it had been so long since I’d heard Tex’s version that I’d forgotten about it. And if I hadn’t heard it in a while, then not many people have. So Joe Tex’s “I Gotcha” is today’s Saturday Single.
Joe Tex – I Gotcha (1972)
We are fans of reality TV. We like Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, American Idol, and So You Think You Can Dance. She also sometimes watches The Bachelor, a show I at best devote half an eye to. There are, of course, some dramatic shows that we also watch: Numbers, Friday Night Lights and Cold Case chief among them.
Now, that may not seem like a lot of television, but the hours do add up. Add to that the time spent on my part following the fortunes of the Minnesota Twins, Vikings and Wild as well as a couple of University of Minnesota athletic teams, and sometimes I wonder about the amount of time devoted to watching. As I said, however, I’m frequently reading something during many of those shows, and the Texas Gal is almost always working on one craft project or another, so it’s not entirely lost time.
In some cases, I’m not sure it would be entirely lost time anyway. For one, Friday Night Lights is an extraordinarily well-written drama, with strong characters, a good cast and
well-developed secondary story lines. The primary story line, that of the high school football team seeking a state title, was pretty pro forma during the show’s first season; I will be interested to see what wrinkles the show’s writers and producers can find for the second season. To say it might be the best dramatic show on television is to damn it with faint praise; it’s more fair to the show to say that it’s got a chance to rank among the best television dramas ever.
The other show that crosses my mind as one that has some value might be a surprise. It’s So You Think You Can Dance. Along with the entertainment value inherent in the drama of seeing thousands of dancers winnowed down to one champion, I see some positives in the show. The judges – including producer Nigel Lithgow – truly seem interested in providing at least some education about dance to the audience. We’ve watched the show all three seasons, and every once in a while, we realize we’ve learned something. We might be watching a quickstep, for instance, and one of us will say to the other, “His frame isn’t very good” and the other will nod.
Three years ago, I couldn’t have told you what a quickstep was, much less know the importance of a dancer’s upper body frame while performing one.
Okay, so what I’ve learned is likely less than a textbook’s worth, and it’s not nuclear physics. But I truly get the sense that – along with making a buck, which I realize is the primary purpose of the show – Lithgow and the other producers and judges are interested in leading viewers to know more about dance. From the frequent focus on the various choreographers to the sometimes very specific critiques of the performances, viewers come away, I think, with a better appreciation of dance as an art form. And I can see viewers using the show as a starting point, either as dancers or as fans of serious dance, and that would not be a bad thing.
So what does all this have to do with a Saturday Single? Well, during Wednesday evening’s final competition, one of the dancers took the stage dancing to what was billed as “I Gotcha” from the soundtrack to Fosse, the musical. The Texas Gal said, “That may be where they found that song, but it’s not where it came from. I remember the original.”
I did, too, but only vaguely at best. During a commercial, I ran “I Gotcha” through All-Music Guide. No composer credit was given for the musical’s song by that title. The fact that the credits for Fosse didn’t list a composer didn’t mean anything. Incomplete information abounds on the ’Net, of course. There were a few others songs titled “I Gotcha,” but the one that kept nagging at me was the one by Joe Tex, the funky single (Dial 1010) that went to No. 2 in 1972. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the same song, at least at first.
I pondered the song at odd moments for a couple of days. Maybe it was the Joe Tex song. So I dug around and found a copy of Tex’s version. Same song. The Texas Gal was right. I guess it had been so long since I’d heard Tex’s version that I’d forgotten about it. And if I hadn’t heard it in a while, then not many people have. So Joe Tex’s “I Gotcha” is today’s Saturday Single.
Joe Tex – I Gotcha (1972)
Friday, August 17, 2007
Valerie Carter's First Solo Excursion
Back in the late 1990s, during those years when I haunted Cheapo’s vinyl room three or four times a week, there was always plenty of newly arrived material to look at. At a guess, I’d say that between 200 and 300 LPs made their way each day into the bins at the front of the room.
That’s not an immense amount of vinyl to flip through, even if you’re doing two or three days’ worth of bins during a visit. But it is enough records to keep the time-conscious flipper from taking a close look at each record. Of course, the vast majority of the records that were coming into a popular place like Cheapo’s were familiar, either things I already had at home or things that I was aware of and, for one reason or another, had already decided against acquiring. So closer looks weren’t necessary, most of the time.
Every once in a while, though – and I’m sure this has happened to every record digger at one time or another – you flip past an LP and go on for three or more records and then stop, thinking, “What was that?” So you go back and pull out the record that caught your attention. Sometimes, it’s not something you recognize at all. And after a few years of digging through albums, you know there’s a reason it caught your eye. So you set it aside and go on.
Today’s album was one of those. It was a late April Sunday in 1999, and I imagine that having nothing any better to do, I biked over to Cheapo’s to look at what was being saved for me behind the counter and see what had come in during the last day or two. And as I flipped through the new stuff, I paused and – as described above – went back a couple of records.
The record that caught my attention was pretty non-descript. It had a white cover with a black and white portrait of a young woman in the middle. She had shoulder-length hair – it looked like it might have been light brown – and her bangs were in her eyes. There was a dusting of freckles across her nose, and she was wearing a funky hat and an odd necklace. It said late 1970s post-hippie stuff to me. Across the top of the jacket, I read her name, Valerie Carter, and the album title, Just A Stone’s Throw Away. And I processed that in just a second or two, certainly far less time than it took to write about it.
What had caught my eye, besides the funky hat and the freckles? I didn’t know. I didn’t recall ever hearing about Valerie Carter. So I looked at the back and began to nod as I read the list of participating musicians: Linda Ronstadt, Deniece Williams, Maurice White and Lowell George among the background singers; and Lowell George, Jeff Porcaro, Bob Glaub, Tom Jans, John Sebastian, Jackson Browne and a few other recognizable names listed as musicians.
Well. Los Angeles-style singer-songwriter pop rock from – I looked at the bottom of the back – 1977. I had LPs by Ian Thomas and Tower of Power set aside to buy already. I shrugged and put Valerie Carter in the pile.
And it turned out to be not too bad a record, one that got good reviews in most places and now seems to be out of print and only available as an import CD. Don’t get me wrong – this is not a lost classic. But it’s pretty good.
It turns out, according to All-Music Guide, that Valerie Carter got to know Lowell George of Little Feat when she was a member of the country folk band Howdy Moon and George produced the group’s one album. George became her mentor and introduced her to the folks who would play on Just A Stone’s Throw Away, which was her debut. She released another album in 1979 and then released nothing more until the late 1990s, when she put out two more solo albums. According to AMG, she’d stayed in the industry in the intervening years doing session work, and her list of credits at her AMG page is, in fact, impressive.
So what to make of Just A Stone’s Throw Away? Well, like a lot of the records that were coming out of L.A. at the time, it can be a little too slick at moments. But it has other moments that are very nice, too. The album’s best track is the first one, Carter’s sweet take on “Ooh Child,” the song that was a 1970 hit for the Five Stairsteps. “Face of Appalachia” haunts with its banjo and its odd dissonant tones.
Further into the record, “So, So Happy” and “City Lights” sound like tracks from an Earth, Wind & Fire session, which – if you read the credits – is no surprise: both tracks were produced by Maurice White, EW&F’s drummer and leader. And the title track, “A Stone’s Throw Away,” has a nice gospelly feel, while “Cowboy Angel” flirts with country rock.
The rest is pretty standard late-1970s Southern California pop rock, except for the last track on the record. That track, “Back To Blue Some More,” doesn’t work. Carter does a fine job on the vocal – as she does throughout the entire album – but it’s not enough to save the track, which wanders around in a jazzy haze, kind of like a grocery shopper trying to find the beef jerky at three in the morning.
As I said, the album isn’t a lost classic, but it’s a pretty good listen, and Carter acquits herself well as she moves from genre to genre. I would guess that her other work is worth seeking out.
(The record had a few pops here and there. It seemed worth sharing here anyway.)
Track listing:
Ooh Child
Ringing Doorbells In The Rain
Heartache
Face Of Appalachia
So, So Happy
A Stone’s Throw Away
Cowboy Angel
City Lights
Back To Blue Some More
Valerie Carter – Just A Stone’s Throw Away (1977)
44.78 MB mp3 rip from vinyl at 192 kbps
That’s not an immense amount of vinyl to flip through, even if you’re doing two or three days’ worth of bins during a visit. But it is enough records to keep the time-conscious flipper from taking a close look at each record. Of course, the vast majority of the records that were coming into a popular place like Cheapo’s were familiar, either things I already had at home or things that I was aware of and, for one reason or another, had already decided against acquiring. So closer looks weren’t necessary, most of the time.
Every once in a while, though – and I’m sure this has happened to every record digger at one time or another – you flip past an LP and go on for three or more records and then stop, thinking, “What was that?” So you go back and pull out the record that caught your attention. Sometimes, it’s not something you recognize at all. And after a few years of digging through albums, you know there’s a reason it caught your eye. So you set it aside and go on.
Today’s album was one of those. It was a late April Sunday in 1999, and I imagine that having nothing any better to do, I biked over to Cheapo’s to look at what was being saved for me behind the counter and see what had come in during the last day or two. And as I flipped through the new stuff, I paused and – as described above – went back a couple of records.
The record that caught my attention was pretty non-descript. It had a white cover with a black and white portrait of a young woman in the middle. She had shoulder-length hair – it looked like it might have been light brown – and her bangs were in her eyes. There was a dusting of freckles across her nose, and she was wearing a funky hat and an odd necklace. It said late 1970s post-hippie stuff to me. Across the top of the jacket, I read her name, Valerie Carter, and the album title, Just A Stone’s Throw Away. And I processed that in just a second or two, certainly far less time than it took to write about it.
What had caught my eye, besides the funky hat and the freckles? I didn’t know. I didn’t recall ever hearing about Valerie Carter. So I looked at the back and began to nod as I read the list of participating musicians: Linda Ronstadt, Deniece Williams, Maurice White and Lowell George among the background singers; and Lowell George, Jeff Porcaro, Bob Glaub, Tom Jans, John Sebastian, Jackson Browne and a few other recognizable names listed as musicians.
Well. Los Angeles-style singer-songwriter pop rock from – I looked at the bottom of the back – 1977. I had LPs by Ian Thomas and Tower of Power set aside to buy already. I shrugged and put Valerie Carter in the pile.
And it turned out to be not too bad a record, one that got good reviews in most places and now seems to be out of print and only available as an import CD. Don’t get me wrong – this is not a lost classic. But it’s pretty good.
It turns out, according to All-Music Guide, that Valerie Carter got to know Lowell George of Little Feat when she was a member of the country folk band Howdy Moon and George produced the group’s one album. George became her mentor and introduced her to the folks who would play on Just A Stone’s Throw Away, which was her debut. She released another album in 1979 and then released nothing more until the late 1990s, when she put out two more solo albums. According to AMG, she’d stayed in the industry in the intervening years doing session work, and her list of credits at her AMG page is, in fact, impressive.
So what to make of Just A Stone’s Throw Away? Well, like a lot of the records that were coming out of L.A. at the time, it can be a little too slick at moments. But it has other moments that are very nice, too. The album’s best track is the first one, Carter’s sweet take on “Ooh Child,” the song that was a 1970 hit for the Five Stairsteps. “Face of Appalachia” haunts with its banjo and its odd dissonant tones.
Further into the record, “So, So Happy” and “City Lights” sound like tracks from an Earth, Wind & Fire session, which – if you read the credits – is no surprise: both tracks were produced by Maurice White, EW&F’s drummer and leader. And the title track, “A Stone’s Throw Away,” has a nice gospelly feel, while “Cowboy Angel” flirts with country rock.
The rest is pretty standard late-1970s Southern California pop rock, except for the last track on the record. That track, “Back To Blue Some More,” doesn’t work. Carter does a fine job on the vocal – as she does throughout the entire album – but it’s not enough to save the track, which wanders around in a jazzy haze, kind of like a grocery shopper trying to find the beef jerky at three in the morning.
As I said, the album isn’t a lost classic, but it’s a pretty good listen, and Carter acquits herself well as she moves from genre to genre. I would guess that her other work is worth seeking out.
(The record had a few pops here and there. It seemed worth sharing here anyway.)
Track listing:
Ooh Child
Ringing Doorbells In The Rain
Heartache
Face Of Appalachia
So, So Happy
A Stone’s Throw Away
Cowboy Angel
City Lights
Back To Blue Some More
Valerie Carter – Just A Stone’s Throw Away (1977)
44.78 MB mp3 rip from vinyl at 192 kbps
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Elvis Presley: 'That's All Right' (1968)
So what else can I do today but share a video of Elvis Presley?
After all, it has been thirty years today since his death, and when one adds up the influence he had on music and popular culture, one comes to a conclusion not far from that penned in the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide: “Elvis Presley is by far the most important single figure in the history of rock & roll, and possibly the most important in American popular music, a giant of the modern era.”
It's true: More than fifty years after Elvis first stepped into the studios at the Memphis Recording Service, it is impossible to assess the state of pop and rock music without taking his large shadow into account. So instead of assessing things today, instead of taking the machine apart to see how it works, I thought we’d just sit back and enjoy.
I looked for a video of Elvis’ early television performances, but those that I could post here seemed either to have studio recordings dubbed over the visuals or were interrupted one way or another. What I came up with is a performance of “That’s All Right,” Elvis’ first hit, taken from the 1968 television special that sparked his late 1960s comeback.
There’s a bit of byplay with the band and then the introduction of the band members, but when Elvis finally takes up his guitar, one gets a sense – more so than one can from any of the jump-suited performances of the 1970s – of what the fuss was all about in the mid-1950s.
After all, it has been thirty years today since his death, and when one adds up the influence he had on music and popular culture, one comes to a conclusion not far from that penned in the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide: “Elvis Presley is by far the most important single figure in the history of rock & roll, and possibly the most important in American popular music, a giant of the modern era.”
It's true: More than fifty years after Elvis first stepped into the studios at the Memphis Recording Service, it is impossible to assess the state of pop and rock music without taking his large shadow into account. So instead of assessing things today, instead of taking the machine apart to see how it works, I thought we’d just sit back and enjoy.
I looked for a video of Elvis’ early television performances, but those that I could post here seemed either to have studio recordings dubbed over the visuals or were interrupted one way or another. What I came up with is a performance of “That’s All Right,” Elvis’ first hit, taken from the 1968 television special that sparked his late 1960s comeback.
There’s a bit of byplay with the band and then the introduction of the band members, but when Elvis finally takes up his guitar, one gets a sense – more so than one can from any of the jump-suited performances of the 1970s – of what the fuss was all about in the mid-1950s.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
A Baker's Dozen from 1971, Vol. 2
In the later months of 1971, during my freshman year at St. Cloud State, I began spending a lot of my time hanging around the studios of KVSC, the campus radio station, then only about four years old. I did odd jobs at the station and put together a five-minute sportscast three or four days a week.
At the time, the station’s programming was still classical music for much of the day, with only the evenings given up to a very loose rock format. That changed sometime in the spring of 1972, when we staff members voted overwhelmingly to rock full-time. The only impact that had on me was that I no longer had to spend three hours a week thumbing through the classical records to find pieces of the right length to fit into an afternoon’s format. (The first format I put together was one that I built around Antonín Dvorák’s “New World” symphony, one of my favorite classical pieces. The program director said okay, but pointed out to me a schedule of symphonies set to be the centerpieces of each day’s afternoon programming. I think my insertion of Antonín’s work into the schedule bumped something by Mozart off the list, but I figured Wolfgang didn’t need the exposure anyway.)
So after the revolution – our vote to move to full-time rock saddened our faculty adviser, who then left that position – I spent less time down in the programming office and more time in the studios, cataloging new records and shelving stuff that came out of the studio after being played. I still did my sportscasts. As the academic year went on, I also did some late-night newscasts and some remote broadcasts, adding my analysis to play-by-play broadcasts of Huskies’ basketball and hockey games.
But as much as I learned about news and sports operation, I learned more about music. I spent most of my free time in the studio, even when I had no tasks there, sitting with other staffers on the tattered couches in the room that passed as our lounge. We spent hours dissecting and passing judgment on music new and old, drawing a somewhat flexible line between what was popular and what was serious rock. There were things, we decided with our accumulated wisdom, that could be both. And even before we went to rock fulltime, we listened to rock fulltime, playing it on the turntable in Studio B and ignoring the classical music we were putting on the air from Studio A.
One afternoon, probably sometime early in 1972, I was working on my sportscast for the five o’clock news program. As Long John Baldry’s voice came from the speaker in the lounge, telling us all not to lay no boogie-woogie on the king of rock and roll, the station manager came in, visibly anxious.
“Does anybody know anything about this concert tonight in the auditorium?” she asked.
I’d seen the posters. “I think it’s a group from South Africa that uses its music to protest the apartheid system in their home country,” I said. At the time, “apartheid” was not nearly as well known – as a word or a system – as it would become. Given that, the others in the station offices stared at me, as did the manager. She asked me, “Have you ever heard their music?”
I shook my head. No, I hadn’t.
She said, “Well, don’t worry about that. After you get done with your sports at 5:30, would you hang around and interview them on the air?”
Interview? Live? My stomach clenched. “I don’t know that much about them,” I said.
“You know more than the rest of us,” she replied.
So at 5:30, when I normally would have made my way out of Stewart Hall toward my ride home, I sat nervously at a table with four members of the African musical group (I have long since forgotten the group’s name) and talked with them about their music and its origins and what they hoped to accomplish with it through their performances. If I remember accurately, the fifteen minutes ended with a brief live performance of one of their songs.
Whoever had the next shift took over after that, and the musicians left, smiling, heading for their nearby dressing room. I sat in the chair and trembled for a few minutes. The station manager told me I’d done a good job and offered a few pointers for next time. The idea that there would be a next time was reassuring.
That evening, Rick and Rob came over to play some table-top hockey, and I had the radio tuned to KVSC, as I almost always did that winter. We were between games when the program director – manning the booth that evening – ended one long set of music and prepared to begin another.
“This next one,” he said, “is for one of our staffers who did a good job in a tight spot this afternoon.” He mentioned my name and then said, “Here’s Leon Russell from The Concert for Bangladesh, ’cause I know he digs it!”
Rick and Rob stared at me, and I grinned as Leon began to pound the piano.
A Baker’s Dozen from 1971, Vol. 2
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash/Youngblood” by Leon Russell from The Concert for Bangladesh
“Stealin’” by Taj Mahal from Happy Just To Be Like I Am
“Future Games” by Fleetwood Mac from Future Games
“Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones from Sticky Fingers
“Rock Me On The Water” by Johnny Rivers from Home Grown
“Smiling Faces Sometimes” by Undisputed Truth, Gordy single 7108
“Behind Blue Eyes” by the Who, Decca single 32888
“Out In The Cold” by Carole King from the Tapestry sessions
“Love Has Fallen On Me” by Rotary Connection from Hey Love
“Ha Ha Ha” by Sisters Love, A&M single 1325
“Gone Dead Train” by Crazy Horse from Crazy Horse
“Sing Me A Song” by Rick Nelson from Rudy the Fifth
“Watching The River Flow” by Bob Dylan, Columbia single 45409
Some notes on a few of the songs:
Leon Russell not only starts this selection – which was random after the opening tune – but he ends it as well, as he produced, and played piano on, Bob Dylan’s single “Watching The River Flow.” At the time, Leon was about as big as one could get in rock, having pretty much run Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour the year before and then getting a star turn at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh in August of 1971. One of the best moments for me of the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash/Youngblood” medley is the wordless call and response duet Leon gets into with, I believe, Claudia Lennear (misspelled Linnear in the album notes).
“Wild Horses” might be the prettiest song the Rolling Stones ever recorded. Being the contrarians that they are, however, it’s also one of the saddest and most desolate songs they ever put on an album.
Speaking of pretty, sad and desolate, all three adjectives apply as well to the Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes.” Was there something in the water in 1971? More likely, there was something in the air. (With apologies to Thunderclap Newman and its 1969 hit.)
Happy Just To Be Like I Am, the album from which Taj Mahal’s “Stealin’” comes from, was one of his better explorations in roots music, as it included some forays into Caribbean rhythms as well as some of Taj’s idiosyncratic takes on the blues.
As always, bit rates will vary. Enjoy!
At the time, the station’s programming was still classical music for much of the day, with only the evenings given up to a very loose rock format. That changed sometime in the spring of 1972, when we staff members voted overwhelmingly to rock full-time. The only impact that had on me was that I no longer had to spend three hours a week thumbing through the classical records to find pieces of the right length to fit into an afternoon’s format. (The first format I put together was one that I built around Antonín Dvorák’s “New World” symphony, one of my favorite classical pieces. The program director said okay, but pointed out to me a schedule of symphonies set to be the centerpieces of each day’s afternoon programming. I think my insertion of Antonín’s work into the schedule bumped something by Mozart off the list, but I figured Wolfgang didn’t need the exposure anyway.)
So after the revolution – our vote to move to full-time rock saddened our faculty adviser, who then left that position – I spent less time down in the programming office and more time in the studios, cataloging new records and shelving stuff that came out of the studio after being played. I still did my sportscasts. As the academic year went on, I also did some late-night newscasts and some remote broadcasts, adding my analysis to play-by-play broadcasts of Huskies’ basketball and hockey games.
But as much as I learned about news and sports operation, I learned more about music. I spent most of my free time in the studio, even when I had no tasks there, sitting with other staffers on the tattered couches in the room that passed as our lounge. We spent hours dissecting and passing judgment on music new and old, drawing a somewhat flexible line between what was popular and what was serious rock. There were things, we decided with our accumulated wisdom, that could be both. And even before we went to rock fulltime, we listened to rock fulltime, playing it on the turntable in Studio B and ignoring the classical music we were putting on the air from Studio A.
One afternoon, probably sometime early in 1972, I was working on my sportscast for the five o’clock news program. As Long John Baldry’s voice came from the speaker in the lounge, telling us all not to lay no boogie-woogie on the king of rock and roll, the station manager came in, visibly anxious.
“Does anybody know anything about this concert tonight in the auditorium?” she asked.
I’d seen the posters. “I think it’s a group from South Africa that uses its music to protest the apartheid system in their home country,” I said. At the time, “apartheid” was not nearly as well known – as a word or a system – as it would become. Given that, the others in the station offices stared at me, as did the manager. She asked me, “Have you ever heard their music?”
I shook my head. No, I hadn’t.
She said, “Well, don’t worry about that. After you get done with your sports at 5:30, would you hang around and interview them on the air?”
Interview? Live? My stomach clenched. “I don’t know that much about them,” I said.
“You know more than the rest of us,” she replied.
So at 5:30, when I normally would have made my way out of Stewart Hall toward my ride home, I sat nervously at a table with four members of the African musical group (I have long since forgotten the group’s name) and talked with them about their music and its origins and what they hoped to accomplish with it through their performances. If I remember accurately, the fifteen minutes ended with a brief live performance of one of their songs.
Whoever had the next shift took over after that, and the musicians left, smiling, heading for their nearby dressing room. I sat in the chair and trembled for a few minutes. The station manager told me I’d done a good job and offered a few pointers for next time. The idea that there would be a next time was reassuring.
That evening, Rick and Rob came over to play some table-top hockey, and I had the radio tuned to KVSC, as I almost always did that winter. We were between games when the program director – manning the booth that evening – ended one long set of music and prepared to begin another.
“This next one,” he said, “is for one of our staffers who did a good job in a tight spot this afternoon.” He mentioned my name and then said, “Here’s Leon Russell from The Concert for Bangladesh, ’cause I know he digs it!”
Rick and Rob stared at me, and I grinned as Leon began to pound the piano.
A Baker’s Dozen from 1971, Vol. 2
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash/Youngblood” by Leon Russell from The Concert for Bangladesh
“Stealin’” by Taj Mahal from Happy Just To Be Like I Am
“Future Games” by Fleetwood Mac from Future Games
“Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones from Sticky Fingers
“Rock Me On The Water” by Johnny Rivers from Home Grown
“Smiling Faces Sometimes” by Undisputed Truth, Gordy single 7108
“Behind Blue Eyes” by the Who, Decca single 32888
“Out In The Cold” by Carole King from the Tapestry sessions
“Love Has Fallen On Me” by Rotary Connection from Hey Love
“Ha Ha Ha” by Sisters Love, A&M single 1325
“Gone Dead Train” by Crazy Horse from Crazy Horse
“Sing Me A Song” by Rick Nelson from Rudy the Fifth
“Watching The River Flow” by Bob Dylan, Columbia single 45409
Some notes on a few of the songs:
Leon Russell not only starts this selection – which was random after the opening tune – but he ends it as well, as he produced, and played piano on, Bob Dylan’s single “Watching The River Flow.” At the time, Leon was about as big as one could get in rock, having pretty much run Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour the year before and then getting a star turn at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh in August of 1971. One of the best moments for me of the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash/Youngblood” medley is the wordless call and response duet Leon gets into with, I believe, Claudia Lennear (misspelled Linnear in the album notes).
“Wild Horses” might be the prettiest song the Rolling Stones ever recorded. Being the contrarians that they are, however, it’s also one of the saddest and most desolate songs they ever put on an album.
Speaking of pretty, sad and desolate, all three adjectives apply as well to the Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes.” Was there something in the water in 1971? More likely, there was something in the air. (With apologies to Thunderclap Newman and its 1969 hit.)
Happy Just To Be Like I Am, the album from which Taj Mahal’s “Stealin’” comes from, was one of his better explorations in roots music, as it included some forays into Caribbean rhythms as well as some of Taj’s idiosyncratic takes on the blues.
As always, bit rates will vary. Enjoy!
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A Jewel From Among The Glass
Elvis Presley came to mind the other day. I noticed a mention on one blog or another over the weekend that, come Thursday, Aug. 16, it will have been thirty years since his death.
I never quite got Elvis, at least as far as any real emotional connection went. By the time I was listening to rock and pop, the years when he set the standard for rock ’n’ roll – either with what he recorded in the 1950s or during his comeback in the 1960s after his military service – were long gone. I liked what I heard from him as the 1960s turned into the 1970s – “Kentucky Rain,” “In The Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds” were three great singles – but beyond being a good listen when he came up in the radio rotation, he didn’t mean that much. And his last Top Ten hit, 1972’s “Burning Love,” did absolutely nothing for me.
So when I heard on a hot August afternoon that he’d died in Memphis, it didn’t have much impact. Oh, I didn’t quite shrug it off. I knew Elvis’ death mattered in the wider scheme of things. It just didn’t matter much to me. That might have been because I hadn’t yet done enough digging into the history of rock ’n’ roll to appreciate Elvis’ place in its popularization. I was aware that he’d caused a pretty big ruckus in the years just after I was born, what with the sneer, the gyrating hips and, at the center of it all, the music.
Listening to the music today, it sounds pretty tame, from the Sun records releases – “That’s All Right,” “Mystery Train” and the rest – to the sounds of his debut LP on RCA, 1956’s Elvis Presley. What was radical and, to some, offensive, is now so mild – especially in its beat – as to be a curio. Still, the Elvis Presley album, with “Hound Dog,” “Heartbreak Hotel, “Blue Suede Shoes” and so many more extraordinary tracks, is one of the most important albums in rock history because Elvis’ popularity among working class and middle class youth in the U.S. is one of the foundations on which all of modern pop and rock was built.
Not that there weren’t other building blocks along the way; there were many. But as Sun Records’ Sam Phillips knew, someone like Elvis – with his synthesis of musical styles and his charisma – was the key. The list of musicians essential to the development of rock and pop music is a fairly brief one, and Elvis is one the big blocks in the foundation that was laid during the 1950s. (Off the top of my head, the others from the 1950s on whom the history of the music rests are Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly. Did I miss someone? If you think so, let me know.)
Anyway, my point is that now I understand Elvis’ historical impact, which I know I didn’t grasp entirely on that hot August afternoon when I heard he’d died. Nevertheless, except for his three hit singles of 1969 and 1970, his music still does not touch me. I don’t get the same visceral kick when I hear “Don’t Be Cruel” or “All Shook Up” or “Hound Dog” as I do when I hear “I Saw Her Standing There” or “Gimme Shelter” or even “American Pie.” I appreciate the music, but I don’t necessarily love it.
Even so, when one explores Elvis’ incredibly huge catalog, there are jewels hidden among the glass. One of the more interesting places to look for those jewels is among the many movie soundtracks of the early 1960s. The movies were mostly dreadful – was any modern performer’s manager as utterly shortsighted as was Col. Tom Parker? – but the soundtracks were on occasion worth a listen. One of those was the soundtrack to the 1966 movie Spinout, which includes some bluesy numbers as well as a nicely done cover of Bob Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time.”
So, to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis’ passing this week, I’ve chosen for a Tuesday Cover his version of “Down In The Alley” from that Spinout soundtrack. Originally recorded by the Clovers for a 1956 Atlantic single, the song has been covered by a few other folks along the way, including the Chambers Brothers and Ronnie Hawkins. Elvis does a pretty good job with it.
Elvis Presley – Down In The Alley (1966)
3.88 MB mp3 at 192 kbps
I never quite got Elvis, at least as far as any real emotional connection went. By the time I was listening to rock and pop, the years when he set the standard for rock ’n’ roll – either with what he recorded in the 1950s or during his comeback in the 1960s after his military service – were long gone. I liked what I heard from him as the 1960s turned into the 1970s – “Kentucky Rain,” “In The Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds” were three great singles – but beyond being a good listen when he came up in the radio rotation, he didn’t mean that much. And his last Top Ten hit, 1972’s “Burning Love,” did absolutely nothing for me.
So when I heard on a hot August afternoon that he’d died in Memphis, it didn’t have much impact. Oh, I didn’t quite shrug it off. I knew Elvis’ death mattered in the wider scheme of things. It just didn’t matter much to me. That might have been because I hadn’t yet done enough digging into the history of rock ’n’ roll to appreciate Elvis’ place in its popularization. I was aware that he’d caused a pretty big ruckus in the years just after I was born, what with the sneer, the gyrating hips and, at the center of it all, the music.
Listening to the music today, it sounds pretty tame, from the Sun records releases – “That’s All Right,” “Mystery Train” and the rest – to the sounds of his debut LP on RCA, 1956’s Elvis Presley. What was radical and, to some, offensive, is now so mild – especially in its beat – as to be a curio. Still, the Elvis Presley album, with “Hound Dog,” “Heartbreak Hotel, “Blue Suede Shoes” and so many more extraordinary tracks, is one of the most important albums in rock history because Elvis’ popularity among working class and middle class youth in the U.S. is one of the foundations on which all of modern pop and rock was built.
Not that there weren’t other building blocks along the way; there were many. But as Sun Records’ Sam Phillips knew, someone like Elvis – with his synthesis of musical styles and his charisma – was the key. The list of musicians essential to the development of rock and pop music is a fairly brief one, and Elvis is one the big blocks in the foundation that was laid during the 1950s. (Off the top of my head, the others from the 1950s on whom the history of the music rests are Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly. Did I miss someone? If you think so, let me know.)
Anyway, my point is that now I understand Elvis’ historical impact, which I know I didn’t grasp entirely on that hot August afternoon when I heard he’d died. Nevertheless, except for his three hit singles of 1969 and 1970, his music still does not touch me. I don’t get the same visceral kick when I hear “Don’t Be Cruel” or “All Shook Up” or “Hound Dog” as I do when I hear “I Saw Her Standing There” or “Gimme Shelter” or even “American Pie.” I appreciate the music, but I don’t necessarily love it.
Even so, when one explores Elvis’ incredibly huge catalog, there are jewels hidden among the glass. One of the more interesting places to look for those jewels is among the many movie soundtracks of the early 1960s. The movies were mostly dreadful – was any modern performer’s manager as utterly shortsighted as was Col. Tom Parker? – but the soundtracks were on occasion worth a listen. One of those was the soundtrack to the 1966 movie Spinout, which includes some bluesy numbers as well as a nicely done cover of Bob Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time.”
So, to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis’ passing this week, I’ve chosen for a Tuesday Cover his version of “Down In The Alley” from that Spinout soundtrack. Originally recorded by the Clovers for a 1956 Atlantic single, the song has been covered by a few other folks along the way, including the Chambers Brothers and Ronnie Hawkins. Elvis does a pretty good job with it.
Elvis Presley – Down In The Alley (1966)
3.88 MB mp3 at 192 kbps
Monday, August 13, 2007
A Southern Classic
I’m not going to be writing much today. I’m a bit under the weather and I’ve also ignored my chores list for way too long. But I do have an album to post today:
In September of 1968, Candi Staton made her way to Rick Hall’s Fame Studios in Florence, Alabama, and began the recording sessions at that legendary studio that would result in her first album, I’m Just A Prisoner, released the next year.
Considered one of the landmark albums in the history of southern soul, I’m Just A Prisoner helped put Fame Records more on the map than the company already was and made Staton an R&B/soul star.
While the album itself is still out of print, one can cobble it together from various CD reissues of Staton’s work, and that’s what I’ve done here. I wonder what’s keeping it from being released on its own?
Track listing
Someone You Use
I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart (Than A Young Man's Fool)
You Don’t Love Me No More
Evidence
Sweet Feeling
Do Your Duty
That’s How Strong My Love Is
I’m Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin’)
Another Man's Woman, Another Woman's Man
Get It When I Want It
Candi Staton - I'm Just A Prisoner (1969)
23.73 MB mp3 rip at 128 kbps
(Thanks to Red Kelly’s The B-Side for confirming some details.)
In September of 1968, Candi Staton made her way to Rick Hall’s Fame Studios in Florence, Alabama, and began the recording sessions at that legendary studio that would result in her first album, I’m Just A Prisoner, released the next year.
Considered one of the landmark albums in the history of southern soul, I’m Just A Prisoner helped put Fame Records more on the map than the company already was and made Staton an R&B/soul star.
While the album itself is still out of print, one can cobble it together from various CD reissues of Staton’s work, and that’s what I’ve done here. I wonder what’s keeping it from being released on its own?
Track listing
Someone You Use
I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart (Than A Young Man's Fool)
You Don’t Love Me No More
Evidence
Sweet Feeling
Do Your Duty
That’s How Strong My Love Is
I’m Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin’)
Another Man's Woman, Another Woman's Man
Get It When I Want It
Candi Staton - I'm Just A Prisoner (1969)
23.73 MB mp3 rip at 128 kbps
(Thanks to Red Kelly’s The B-Side for confirming some details.)
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Saturday Single No. 25
In the spirit of Vinyl Record Day, slated for tomorrow, August 12, I’ve dipped into my small collection of singles and ripped today’s offering from a 45. (My Vinyl Record Day post is here.)
During the early 1970s, when I was trying to gather everything the Beatles had recorded – at least those recordings that had been released on Capitol or Apple – a couple of things struck me as odd. First of all, there was the LP titled Hey Jude or, in some cases, The Beatles Again. It was released in February 1970, to fill the gap between the previous autumn’s Abbey Road and Let It Be, slated for release in May. When I picked it up in August of 1970, I realized that it was made up of songs from throughout the years the Beatles recorded together, starting off with “Can’t Buy Me Love,” a 1964 single, and ending with “The Ballad of John & Yoko,” a 1969 single. In between came things like “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” from 1966, “Hey Jude” from 1968 and some other things.
It was a great LP to listen to, but in terms of sliding it in the stacks, it was hard to say where it fit in the Beatles’ recording career. And of course, it didn’t really fit, except that it brought out on LP things that had only ever been released on 45s up to that point. In Britain, it was quite common for groups to release singles – or four-song EPs – and then not include those songs on LPs. In the U.S., that wasn’t often done; singles were routinely pulled from albums to spur sales of those albums. It had, however, been done by Capitol with the Beatles: The recordings on Hey Jude were among those that had been released as singles or B-sides in the U.S. without appearing on LP.
The other oddity: With a little bit of digging, as “Hey Jude” and the rest of the songs played on my stereo in the late summer of 1970, I learned that there were some 45s I was going to have to find, containing four officially released Beatles recordings that had not been released on LPs. They were the single version of “Let It Be” and its odd B-side “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number),” the George Harrison-penned “The Inner Light,” which was the B-side to the “Lady Madonna” single, and “I’m Down,” released as the B-side to “Help!”
I eventually got all four, and over the years, when I’ve found a copy of those in better condition, I’ve upgraded. And I’ve collected later LP releases that included those four: The single version of “Let It Be” showed up on the 1973 anthology titled 1967-70. “I’m Down” was included on Rock & Roll Music in 1976. “The Inner Light” and “You Know My Name” eventually showed up on Rarities, released in 1980.
Of those four – and I still have the 45s for all of them – “I’m Down” and “Let It Be” are far better than the others. “You Know My Name” was a bad joke, and “The Inner Light” was Harrison’s first attempt at sharing his developing interest in Eastern philosophy and religion and was fairly stiff. To choose the better recording between the “Let It Be” single and “I’m Down,” however, is difficult. They’re both remarkable recordings. The “Let It Be” single is far better than the version eventually released on the album of the same name, and “I’m Down” has one of the best rock vocals that Paul McCartney ever put on tape; that and the instrumental support he gets from his band-mates makes it one of the rockingest things the Beatles ever did.
And they buried it on a B-side!
So, ripped from vinyl, “I’m Down” is today’s Saturday Single.
Beatles – I’m Down (1965)
3.46 MB rip from vinyl at 192 kbps
Afternote: Don’t forget to keep checking out the weekend’s Vinyl Record Day posts in the blogswarm organized by J.B. of The Hits Just Keep On Comin’. Again, others participating are:
AM Then FM
Bloggerhythms
Davewillieradio
Flea Market Funk
Fufu Stew
Funky16Corners
Good Rockin’ Tonight
Got the Fever
Ickmusic
In Dangerous Rhythm
It's Great Shakes
Jefitoblog
Lost in the 80s
Py Korry
Retro Remixes
The "B" Side
The Hits Just Keep On Comin’
The Snack Bar
The Stepfather of Soul
Three-Sixty-Five45s
Underground Vault of Records, Music and all kinds of Stuff
You Must Be From Away
During the early 1970s, when I was trying to gather everything the Beatles had recorded – at least those recordings that had been released on Capitol or Apple – a couple of things struck me as odd. First of all, there was the LP titled Hey Jude or, in some cases, The Beatles Again. It was released in February 1970, to fill the gap between the previous autumn’s Abbey Road and Let It Be, slated for release in May. When I picked it up in August of 1970, I realized that it was made up of songs from throughout the years the Beatles recorded together, starting off with “Can’t Buy Me Love,” a 1964 single, and ending with “The Ballad of John & Yoko,” a 1969 single. In between came things like “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” from 1966, “Hey Jude” from 1968 and some other things.
It was a great LP to listen to, but in terms of sliding it in the stacks, it was hard to say where it fit in the Beatles’ recording career. And of course, it didn’t really fit, except that it brought out on LP things that had only ever been released on 45s up to that point. In Britain, it was quite common for groups to release singles – or four-song EPs – and then not include those songs on LPs. In the U.S., that wasn’t often done; singles were routinely pulled from albums to spur sales of those albums. It had, however, been done by Capitol with the Beatles: The recordings on Hey Jude were among those that had been released as singles or B-sides in the U.S. without appearing on LP.
The other oddity: With a little bit of digging, as “Hey Jude” and the rest of the songs played on my stereo in the late summer of 1970, I learned that there were some 45s I was going to have to find, containing four officially released Beatles recordings that had not been released on LPs. They were the single version of “Let It Be” and its odd B-side “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number),” the George Harrison-penned “The Inner Light,” which was the B-side to the “Lady Madonna” single, and “I’m Down,” released as the B-side to “Help!”
I eventually got all four, and over the years, when I’ve found a copy of those in better condition, I’ve upgraded. And I’ve collected later LP releases that included those four: The single version of “Let It Be” showed up on the 1973 anthology titled 1967-70. “I’m Down” was included on Rock & Roll Music in 1976. “The Inner Light” and “You Know My Name” eventually showed up on Rarities, released in 1980.
Of those four – and I still have the 45s for all of them – “I’m Down” and “Let It Be” are far better than the others. “You Know My Name” was a bad joke, and “The Inner Light” was Harrison’s first attempt at sharing his developing interest in Eastern philosophy and religion and was fairly stiff. To choose the better recording between the “Let It Be” single and “I’m Down,” however, is difficult. They’re both remarkable recordings. The “Let It Be” single is far better than the version eventually released on the album of the same name, and “I’m Down” has one of the best rock vocals that Paul McCartney ever put on tape; that and the instrumental support he gets from his band-mates makes it one of the rockingest things the Beatles ever did.
And they buried it on a B-side!
So, ripped from vinyl, “I’m Down” is today’s Saturday Single.
Beatles – I’m Down (1965)
3.46 MB rip from vinyl at 192 kbps
Afternote: Don’t forget to keep checking out the weekend’s Vinyl Record Day posts in the blogswarm organized by J.B. of The Hits Just Keep On Comin’. Again, others participating are:
AM Then FM
Bloggerhythms
Davewillieradio
Flea Market Funk
Fufu Stew
Funky16Corners
Good Rockin’ Tonight
Got the Fever
Ickmusic
In Dangerous Rhythm
It's Great Shakes
Jefitoblog
Lost in the 80s
Py Korry
Retro Remixes
The "B" Side
The Hits Just Keep On Comin’
The Snack Bar
The Stepfather of Soul
Three-Sixty-Five45s
Underground Vault of Records, Music and all kinds of Stuff
You Must Be From Away
Friday, August 10, 2007
Celebrating Vinyl: At 2,906 And Counting
As mentioned here earlier, it’s time to celebrate Vinyl Record Day at Echoes In The Wind this weekend with a blogswarm. Organized by the DJ at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’, the weekend swarm will feature posts here and at these other fine music blogs:
AM Then FM
Bloggerhythms
Davewillieradio
Flea Market Funk
Fufu Stew
Funky16Corners
Good Rockin’ Tonight
Got the Fever
Ickmusic
In Dangerous Rhythm
It's Great Shakes
Jefitoblog
Lost in the 80s
Py Korry
Retro Remixes
The "B" Side
The Hits Just Keep On Comin’
The Snack Bar
The Stepfather of Soul
Three-Sixty-Five45s
Underground Vault of Records, Music and all kinds of Stuff
You Must Be From Away
The actual day selected as Vinyl Record Day is Sunday, Aug. 12, which turns out to be the 130th anniversary of the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison.
Now, old Tom didn’t invent the vinyl record. That came quite a bit later. Edison used wax cylinders to record sound, and around 1900 came the invention of the 78 rpm record made out of shellac. Both had obvious drawbacks. The wax cylinders were soft and could melt too easily, and 78s were heavy and more fragile than china. The dual problems of durability and weight were solved in 1948 when engineers at Columbia and at RCA invented the LP and the 45, respectively. But celebrating vinyl on the anniversary of old Tom’s breakthrough in recording sound just feels right.
So how should the vinyl record be celebrated? Well, by talking about record collecting.
But instead of talking in generalities, I thought I’d look at my collection and the milestone records. Which record was the 100th? Which was the 2,500th? And how about the numbers in between? I should note that having many times bought multiple LPs on the same day made it difficult to specify in some cases exactly which record was, say, the 500th I ever bought. I decided that any record bought the day I reached a milestone number was eligible, and I selected the record I thought most interesting.
I should also note that every mp3 shared in this post is a rip from the vinyl being discussed. There are a few pops here and there, as a result.
A third note: This will be a very long post.
No. 1: Honey In The Horn by Al Hirt, September 5, 1964, St. Cloud, Minnesota. This 1963 release was the first record I can recall that was specifically mine. It was a present from my sister for my eleventh birthday. I’d been playing cornet for about three months, and after hearing “Java,” which reached No. 4 on the pop chart that year, I’d begun to look at Big Al as my model. “Java” is no longer my favorite song on the record. More than any other track, I love Al’s incredible work on “I Can’t Get Started,” a song that most horn players have left alone since Bunny Berrigan’s definitive version in 1937. But the track I’ve decided to share is “Malibu” because, well, it just sounds like 1963 to me: There’s a couple in a car. It’s night, and they’re heading out of the city on the Pacific Coast Highway, maybe actually heading toward the beaches of Malibu. They’re in a convertible, maybe a Thunderbird, and its headlights slice through the post-midnight darkness. He’s probably something in show biz, maybe beginning a career in the business side of television, and she, well, she might work for the same network or studio. And life is good, with the soft sounds of the horn and the choir providing the soundtrack as they glide north through the night into the future.
No. 100: Mancini’s Angels by Henry Mancini, May 15, 1977, St. Cloud, Minnesota. I was just finishing college at St. Cloud State, and one day, down by the television studio, there was a box of records the radio station didn’t want. I grabbed a bunch, and this was one of them, a 1977 release that had Mancini and his pals performing not only the “Theme from Charlie’s Angels” but such classics as “Evergreen,” “Car Wash” and “Silver Streak.” (Just from this entry alone, it becomes obvious that I rarely throw anything out of the collection.)
No. 200: Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan, June 19, 1987, St. Cloud, Minnesota. I got this 1965 release as a gift from a lady friend with whom I was trying to acquire a complete collection of Dylan’s works. We succeeded at that, at least, and when we split up, I got the records. The track I’ve ripped is “She Belongs To Me.” I first heard the song when Rick Nelson took his version to No. 33 in early 1970. Although I like Nelson’s version, there’s nothing like the original.
No. 300: Cruisin’ 1967 by various artists, June 8, 1988, Minot, North Dakota. This is one of a series of LPs put out in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Increase Records. Each album centers on one year and packages hits from that year in the context of a Top 40 station, featuring a different announcer from a major market in the U.S., complete with jingles and commercials. The 1967 album, released in 1984, features Dr. Don Rose of WQXI in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s an interesting curio, but this one is the only one in the series I ever bought.
No. 400: Gaucho by Steely Dan, December 10, 1988, Minot, North Dakota. I likely got this 1980 album from the bin at the Minot Public Library, as December is not a month for garage sales, and there’s no price tag on the jacket, as there would be if I bought it retail, even second-hand. Library records are usually in bad condition, and I tend to avoid them. If that’s where I got this, then I did well, as it’s in pretty good shape. It’s an okay album, but it’s not my favorite Steely Dan album; I prefer Pretzel Logic.
No. 500: Chicago VI by Chicago, February 17, 1989, Minot, North Dakota. This 1973 album came from a pawnshop in downtown Minot, where every record was $2.50 or something like that. I didn’t get there a lot during my two years on the North Dakota prairie. These days, I imagine I’d be checking the new arrivals every couple of weeks, at least. I decided to share “What’s This World Comin’ To?” because, to my ears, it’s one of the last times Chicago really rocked.
No. 600: Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, July 11, 1989, Edina, Minnesota. I went on a binge in the Minneapolis suburbs after I moved back from the prairies in mid-1989, buying something more than thirty records my first month back in Minnesota. As to this 1967 album, well, it’s essential for any serious attempt at a good collection. I love “The Wind Cries Mary.”
No. 700: Tap Root Manuscript by Neil Diamond, June 2, 1990, Conway Springs, Kansas. This album came out in 1970, and I always meant to buy it but for some reason never looked for it. I ran across it and finally bought it on a Saturday morning of garage sale stops during a three-month stay in Kansas. I’m sharing “Done Too Soon,” which after thirty-seven years remains one of my favorite songs.
No. 800: Wet by Barbra Streisand, April 3, 1991, Columbia, Missouri. I’ve never been a big Babs fan, so I must have grabbed this 1979 release for something less than a dollar at a garage sale. I was teaching at a women’s college and beginning my final project for a master’s degree at the University of Missouri at the time. College towns are always good used music locales: I got some very nice albums during my two stays in Columbia.
No. 900: Wild Things Run Free by Joni Mitchell, September 5, 1992, Minneapolis. I must have been spending birthday money when I picked this 1982 release up. I think I bought it new, and it fits in with the other Joni releases on the shelf even though it’s not a favorite of mine. I think this is one of Joni’s experiments that wasn’t real accessible.
No. 1000: Great Hits by Eddie Cochran, May 5, 1993, Minneapolis. The pace of buying is accelerating here, and so is the scope of my purchases. This is a collection put together in 1983, and it’s not bad, considering that Cochran had only three singles reach the Top 40 before he died in a car crash in 1960. I’ve ripped “Pink Peg Slacks” a 1956 recording that was released as Liberty single 10204.
No. 1100: My Baby Loves Lovin’ by White Plains, October 15, 1993, Richfield, Minnesota. This 1970 bit of studio Bazooka is pretty hacked up, but I only spent fifty cents for it as I made my way home through the suburbs one day. I got a good Al Stewart and a few other things at the same stop, so it wasn’t a total loss.
No. 1200: Burgers by Hot Tuna, August 4, 1995, Eden Prairie, Minnesota. I’d left the newspaper in Eden Prairie for a job in downtown Minneapolis in July, and one Sunday morning I got a call from the woman who’d coached gymnastics at Eden Prairie High: She and her husband were clearing out their old vinyl. Did I want it? I headed out to the southwest suburb pretty quickly and got this little gem from 1972 and another forty or so records. Best find of the batch? Probably two albums by Bonnie Koloc, a little-known singer/songwriter whose stuff I intend to post here soon.
No. 1300: History of Hi Records, Vol. Two by various artists, October 8, 1996, Minneapolis. I got this 1988 release and its companion first volume on a very odd Saturday morning. Unattached at the time, I went on a blind date, meeting a woman of similar age at a farmer’s market in Richfield, a suburb just south of Minneapolis. After wandering around the small market in a chill wind, we made our way to a record store in Minneapolis, one new to me. We browsed for a while, and when I went to the register to pay for the two Hi LPs and a book, she laid her two records on top of mine at the counter. The clerk rang them up on my tab as I stood there stunned. I paid and didn’t say anything, but I never called her for another date. I’ve ripped “You Made Me What I Am” by Erma Coffee, one of the lesser-known artists for Hi, the home of Al Green and Ann Peebles, among others. It was released in 1973 as Hi single 2253.
No. 1400: Beaucoups of Blues by Ringo Starr, July 26, 1997, Minneapolis. This is perhaps the most odd record of Ringo Starr’s career. A straight country, featuring some of the best sessions players in Nashville at the time, this 1970 release was Ringo’s second solo album following the break-up of the Beatles. It’s not something I listen to very often, but I’m glad it’s on the shelves.
No. 1500: Lady Day Blues by Billie Holiday, February 14, 1998, Minneapolis. By this time, I was stopping by Cheapo’s several times a week, checking the new arrivals every few days and keeping a bag full of holds behind the counter. I’d either buy the records or put them back in the bins each Saturday. This 1972 release on the AJ label is a goulash of performances from throughout Holiday’s career. Its only real attraction is the first release of a 1939 recording of “Don’t Be Late” with saxophonist Lester Young.
No. 1600: Gerry Rafferty by Gerry Rafferty, June 6, 1998, Minneapolis. This 1978 release – following Rafferty’s No. 2 hit “Baker Street” and the album City to City, which reached No. 1 – is a compilation of work from earlier in Rafferty’s career. Taken from two albums recorded in the early 1970s when Rafferty was part of a duo called the Humblebums, the record gives a look at his work in the days before Stealer’s Wheel. I’ve ripped the track “Steamboat Row,” which appears to be an edit of the version the Humblebums recorded in 1970.
No. 1700: Faragher Brothers by the Faragher Brothers, August 4, 1998, Minneapolis. When I pulled this 1976 release from the stacks, I didn’t remember a thing about it, so I dropped it on the turntable as I was writing. It’s inoffensive pop rock with mellow vocals and a few horn flourishes, kind of a Pablo Cruise meets James Pankow of Chicago. The only name in the credits that rings any bells is that of producer Vini Poncia, who played numerous parts on Ringo Starr’s 1973 album Ringo and co-wrote “Devil Woman” for that album with Ringo. A year from now, I imagine I’ll have forgotten all about the Faragher Brothers again.
No. 1800: Caribou by Elton John, October 24, 1998, Minneapolis. I picked up this 1974 LP to help fill a gap. About this time, I realized I was low on stuff by Elton John and began looking for some. This release from 1974, a time when Elton was nearly king of the musical universe, fit nicely on the shelves.
No. 1900: Sonny Terry by Sonny Terry, December 5, 1998, Minneapolis. This was part of the Great Blues Grab at the local Salvation Army store. As I wrote once before, the manager of the store called me when someone dropped off about twenty boxes of nearly mint condition rock and blues albums. This 1965 release of archival performances on the Everest label is one of the relatively few records released during Terry’s lifetime – he died in 1986 – that did not also include his long-time partner, Brownie McGhee.
No. 2000: Dinner With Raoul by the Bliss Band, January 30, 1999, Minneapolis. I think this came in a box of records I bought at a church rummage sale. I’d often buy entire boxes of records – if most of them appeared to be in good shape – at rummage sales and garage sales, then sort through them, keep the ones that intrigued me and then sell the rest at Cheapo’s and a couple other places. I’d generally do no worse than break even, and I'd still have the records that interested me. I’ve ripped the track “Rio” from this 1978 album, which was produced by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. Like the Faragher Brothers above, the Bliss Band sounds to me a bit like Pablo Cruise or the Little River Band, both of which were hitting the charts about the time Dinner With Raoul was recorded. There's a touch of Steely Dan in there, too.
No. 2100: The Babys: Anthology by the Babys, March 19, 1999, Minneapolis. A decent greatest hits album from 1981, this was another attempt to fill a (small) gap in the collection. I still do like “Isn’t It Time?”
No. 2200: Copeland Special by Johnny Copeland, May 10, 1999, Minneapolis. I was pretty much grabbing any blues LPs I found in good shape at Cheapo’s around this time, adding to the collection that started in earnest the previous December at the Salvation Army store. Copeland – who died in 1997 – was a pretty decent blues guitarist and singer who hailed from Houston, and this 1981 album was his first. I’ve ripped the title track, “Copeland Special,” which features the wonderfully named Brooklyn Slim on harmonica.
No. 2300: James Cleveland and introducing the Gospel Girls, by Rev. James Cleveland, June 13, 1999, Minneapolis. This LP, which was released on Savoy around 1960, as far as I could ever find out, is one of several gospel albums by African-American artists that I bought around this time. I’d seen the Twin Cities Community Gospel Chorus perform at a street fair, and as I was digging into the blues roots of rock, I decided to dig into the gospel roots of soul. On the back of the jacket, Savoy offers a copy of the label’s entire catalog for ten cents. I wonder if the offer’s still good.
No. 2400: Enigma by P. J. Proby, October 1, 1999, Minneapolis. Albums at Cheapo’s were priced according to quality and rarity. Most LPs in fine condition would cost you $3.60. Every once in a while, you’d find one that was a bit rare and that would run you $4.20. (The store’s owner siphoned off the truly rare LPs the store received; I wish I could have seen his collection.) This 1966 LP by folkie/rocker/singer-songwriter Proby – who was a star in England but never too prominent here – was priced at $5.30, which meant it was rare. I didn’t know much about it, but I grabbed it. It turned out to be kind of a chunky mix of roots and rock and folk, and I like it. I’ve ripped the track “Niki Hoeky,” which was also recorded by artists as diverse as Redbone, Aretha Franklin and the Ventures.
No. 2500: Still ’Round by Michael Gately, December 7, 1999, Richfield, Minnesota. Like the Faragher Brothers and Bliss Band records above, when I pulled this from the stacks, I looked at it and had no idea what it sounded like. So I dropped the needle on it. First came a somewhat funky introductory track with a saxophone solo. But the first vocal track put me in mind of England Dan & John Ford Coley, and then came a country rock thing, followed by more mellowness. After that, it was early 1970s singer-songwriter stuff. All I could ever find out about this record was that it came out in 1972 on the Janus label. By the price tag – sixty-nine cents – I can tell it came from a thrift store on Penn Avenue where I could occasionally find some treasures. This isn’t one of them.
No. 2600: We Got A Party by various artists, October 13, 2000, Minneapolis. Subtitled “The Best of Ron Records, Volume 1,” this turned out to be a nice little gem. I’m not sure where I got it – no price tag – so I’m guessing a garage sale. A 1988 release on the Rounder label, the LP collects fourteen tracks released as singles on the New Orleans-based Ron label from 1958 through 1962. Some of the familiar names are here – Professor Longhair, Irma Thomas, Robert Parker – along with some less prominent folks, including a performer named Paul Marvin. According to the notes, Marvin started life as Marvin Geatreaux and also went by the moniker Little Mummy. That was too odd to ignore, so I ripped Marvin’s 1959 single “Hurry Up,” which was released as Ron 322.
No. 2700: Typical American Boys by the Chad Mitchell Trio, June 22, 2002, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Still living in the Twin Cities at the time, the Texas Gal and I drove up to my hometown of St. Cloud on a June Saturday. We saw a parade, visited my folks and went to a few garage sales, one of which provided this 1965 release of super-bland folk. It’s a reminder of what college campuses sounded like in the years before Bob Dylan went electric and rock became something to think about. I’m reminded of the scene in the movie Animal House when John Belushi’s Bluto smashes the folk singer’s guitar.
No. 2800: Let’s Take A Sentimental Journey by various artists, May 20, 2004, St. Cloud, Minnesota. I got almost fifty albums that day. And I wish I didn’t own any of them. They were my dad’s, and I brought them home when Mom was getting ready to move after Dad died. Well, I guess I always knew I would end up with the records, and cataloging them when I brought them home was an afternoon of memories: Among them were Pearl Bailey, the Ray Charles Singers, Guy Lombardo, and about twenty excellent classical records from the Music Heritage Society. (My sister and I used to tease Dad when he was buying the Heritage Society records during the 1960s, and all he said was, “You’ll be glad to have them someday.” He was right.) There was a five-record set by the Mystic Moods Orchestra. And four Reader’s Digest boxed sets, one of which was Let’s Take A Sentimental Journey, which came out in 1970. From that box, I’ve selected a 1961 live performance by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra of “Sugar Foot Stomp.” The song was originally known as “Dippermouth Blues” and was first performed in the 1920s by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band; the high point of the song each night was a two-chorus solo by King Oliver himself on cornet. When the great Louis Armstrong moved from second chair in King Oliver’s band to first chair in Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra in 1924, he brought the song, now known as “Sugar Foot Stomp,” with him, and he brought King Oliver’s solo, too, note for note. In 1934, Henderson broke up his band and became an arranger for Benny Goodman, and he brought “Sugar Foot Stomp” and its cornet/trumpet solo, still played – note for note – as King Oliver first played it. And in this 1961 performance, following the first, brief solo by Goodman on clarinet, the horn player follows with King Oliver’s solo, played just as the King had done about forty years earlier, now about eighty years ago.
No. 2900: Harper Valley P.T.A. by Jeannie C. Riley, April 24, 2007, St. Cloud, Minnesota. There are very few places that sell any vinyl in St. Cloud these days. There are a few thrift stores, but I’ve rarely found anything in them worth bringing home. The only other place is the Electric Fetus downtown, with a small selection of new records and a slightly larger offering of used records. I stop in there about once a month, see what’s new in the used CD bins and take a look at the vinyl. Every once in a while, I find a record I’d forgotten about entirely. That was the case with this one. I don’t know that I ever aspired to have Harper Valley P.T.A., but I do recall when the title track was on the radio. (It was No. 1 for a week in the fall of 1968, and the LP went to No. 12, which has to make it one of the more successful crossovers from the country charts to the pop charts.) Along with the tale of the widowed mother calling out the hypocrites – with that sweet twanging guitar or dobro – the LP was almost a concept album, with its other vignettes of late 1960s life in a small southern town. Since I don’t hear it often on the oldies stations, I’ve ripped the title track, “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” to share here.
No. 2906: Another Day in Paradise by Bertie Higgins, August 1, 2007, St. Cloud, Minnesota. My most recent acquisition. A while back, I wrote about how I was certain I had a copy of this album somewhere and then learned to my surprise that I was wrong. Well, I saw it on my latest trip downtown, and laughing, I couldn’t resist. (The fact that it was priced at seventy-eight cents with thirty percent off helped.) And of course, I have to share “Key Largo,” which went to No. 8 in the summer of 1982. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.
AM Then FM
Bloggerhythms
Davewillieradio
Flea Market Funk
Fufu Stew
Funky16Corners
Good Rockin’ Tonight
Got the Fever
Ickmusic
In Dangerous Rhythm
It's Great Shakes
Jefitoblog
Lost in the 80s
Py Korry
Retro Remixes
The "B" Side
The Hits Just Keep On Comin’
The Snack Bar
The Stepfather of Soul
Three-Sixty-Five45s
Underground Vault of Records, Music and all kinds of Stuff
You Must Be From Away
The actual day selected as Vinyl Record Day is Sunday, Aug. 12, which turns out to be the 130th anniversary of the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison.
Now, old Tom didn’t invent the vinyl record. That came quite a bit later. Edison used wax cylinders to record sound, and around 1900 came the invention of the 78 rpm record made out of shellac. Both had obvious drawbacks. The wax cylinders were soft and could melt too easily, and 78s were heavy and more fragile than china. The dual problems of durability and weight were solved in 1948 when engineers at Columbia and at RCA invented the LP and the 45, respectively. But celebrating vinyl on the anniversary of old Tom’s breakthrough in recording sound just feels right.
So how should the vinyl record be celebrated? Well, by talking about record collecting.
But instead of talking in generalities, I thought I’d look at my collection and the milestone records. Which record was the 100th? Which was the 2,500th? And how about the numbers in between? I should note that having many times bought multiple LPs on the same day made it difficult to specify in some cases exactly which record was, say, the 500th I ever bought. I decided that any record bought the day I reached a milestone number was eligible, and I selected the record I thought most interesting.
I should also note that every mp3 shared in this post is a rip from the vinyl being discussed. There are a few pops here and there, as a result.
A third note: This will be a very long post.
No. 1: Honey In The Horn by Al Hirt, September 5, 1964, St. Cloud, Minnesota. This 1963 release was the first record I can recall that was specifically mine. It was a present from my sister for my eleventh birthday. I’d been playing cornet for about three months, and after hearing “Java,” which reached No. 4 on the pop chart that year, I’d begun to look at Big Al as my model. “Java” is no longer my favorite song on the record. More than any other track, I love Al’s incredible work on “I Can’t Get Started,” a song that most horn players have left alone since Bunny Berrigan’s definitive version in 1937. But the track I’ve decided to share is “Malibu” because, well, it just sounds like 1963 to me: There’s a couple in a car. It’s night, and they’re heading out of the city on the Pacific Coast Highway, maybe actually heading toward the beaches of Malibu. They’re in a convertible, maybe a Thunderbird, and its headlights slice through the post-midnight darkness. He’s probably something in show biz, maybe beginning a career in the business side of television, and she, well, she might work for the same network or studio. And life is good, with the soft sounds of the horn and the choir providing the soundtrack as they glide north through the night into the future.
No. 100: Mancini’s Angels by Henry Mancini, May 15, 1977, St. Cloud, Minnesota. I was just finishing college at St. Cloud State, and one day, down by the television studio, there was a box of records the radio station didn’t want. I grabbed a bunch, and this was one of them, a 1977 release that had Mancini and his pals performing not only the “Theme from Charlie’s Angels” but such classics as “Evergreen,” “Car Wash” and “Silver Streak.” (Just from this entry alone, it becomes obvious that I rarely throw anything out of the collection.)
No. 200: Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan, June 19, 1987, St. Cloud, Minnesota. I got this 1965 release as a gift from a lady friend with whom I was trying to acquire a complete collection of Dylan’s works. We succeeded at that, at least, and when we split up, I got the records. The track I’ve ripped is “She Belongs To Me.” I first heard the song when Rick Nelson took his version to No. 33 in early 1970. Although I like Nelson’s version, there’s nothing like the original.
No. 300: Cruisin’ 1967 by various artists, June 8, 1988, Minot, North Dakota. This is one of a series of LPs put out in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Increase Records. Each album centers on one year and packages hits from that year in the context of a Top 40 station, featuring a different announcer from a major market in the U.S., complete with jingles and commercials. The 1967 album, released in 1984, features Dr. Don Rose of WQXI in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s an interesting curio, but this one is the only one in the series I ever bought.
No. 400: Gaucho by Steely Dan, December 10, 1988, Minot, North Dakota. I likely got this 1980 album from the bin at the Minot Public Library, as December is not a month for garage sales, and there’s no price tag on the jacket, as there would be if I bought it retail, even second-hand. Library records are usually in bad condition, and I tend to avoid them. If that’s where I got this, then I did well, as it’s in pretty good shape. It’s an okay album, but it’s not my favorite Steely Dan album; I prefer Pretzel Logic.
No. 500: Chicago VI by Chicago, February 17, 1989, Minot, North Dakota. This 1973 album came from a pawnshop in downtown Minot, where every record was $2.50 or something like that. I didn’t get there a lot during my two years on the North Dakota prairie. These days, I imagine I’d be checking the new arrivals every couple of weeks, at least. I decided to share “What’s This World Comin’ To?” because, to my ears, it’s one of the last times Chicago really rocked.
No. 600: Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, July 11, 1989, Edina, Minnesota. I went on a binge in the Minneapolis suburbs after I moved back from the prairies in mid-1989, buying something more than thirty records my first month back in Minnesota. As to this 1967 album, well, it’s essential for any serious attempt at a good collection. I love “The Wind Cries Mary.”
No. 700: Tap Root Manuscript by Neil Diamond, June 2, 1990, Conway Springs, Kansas. This album came out in 1970, and I always meant to buy it but for some reason never looked for it. I ran across it and finally bought it on a Saturday morning of garage sale stops during a three-month stay in Kansas. I’m sharing “Done Too Soon,” which after thirty-seven years remains one of my favorite songs.
No. 800: Wet by Barbra Streisand, April 3, 1991, Columbia, Missouri. I’ve never been a big Babs fan, so I must have grabbed this 1979 release for something less than a dollar at a garage sale. I was teaching at a women’s college and beginning my final project for a master’s degree at the University of Missouri at the time. College towns are always good used music locales: I got some very nice albums during my two stays in Columbia.
No. 900: Wild Things Run Free by Joni Mitchell, September 5, 1992, Minneapolis. I must have been spending birthday money when I picked this 1982 release up. I think I bought it new, and it fits in with the other Joni releases on the shelf even though it’s not a favorite of mine. I think this is one of Joni’s experiments that wasn’t real accessible.
No. 1000: Great Hits by Eddie Cochran, May 5, 1993, Minneapolis. The pace of buying is accelerating here, and so is the scope of my purchases. This is a collection put together in 1983, and it’s not bad, considering that Cochran had only three singles reach the Top 40 before he died in a car crash in 1960. I’ve ripped “Pink Peg Slacks” a 1956 recording that was released as Liberty single 10204.
No. 1100: My Baby Loves Lovin’ by White Plains, October 15, 1993, Richfield, Minnesota. This 1970 bit of studio Bazooka is pretty hacked up, but I only spent fifty cents for it as I made my way home through the suburbs one day. I got a good Al Stewart and a few other things at the same stop, so it wasn’t a total loss.
No. 1200: Burgers by Hot Tuna, August 4, 1995, Eden Prairie, Minnesota. I’d left the newspaper in Eden Prairie for a job in downtown Minneapolis in July, and one Sunday morning I got a call from the woman who’d coached gymnastics at Eden Prairie High: She and her husband were clearing out their old vinyl. Did I want it? I headed out to the southwest suburb pretty quickly and got this little gem from 1972 and another forty or so records. Best find of the batch? Probably two albums by Bonnie Koloc, a little-known singer/songwriter whose stuff I intend to post here soon.
No. 1300: History of Hi Records, Vol. Two by various artists, October 8, 1996, Minneapolis. I got this 1988 release and its companion first volume on a very odd Saturday morning. Unattached at the time, I went on a blind date, meeting a woman of similar age at a farmer’s market in Richfield, a suburb just south of Minneapolis. After wandering around the small market in a chill wind, we made our way to a record store in Minneapolis, one new to me. We browsed for a while, and when I went to the register to pay for the two Hi LPs and a book, she laid her two records on top of mine at the counter. The clerk rang them up on my tab as I stood there stunned. I paid and didn’t say anything, but I never called her for another date. I’ve ripped “You Made Me What I Am” by Erma Coffee, one of the lesser-known artists for Hi, the home of Al Green and Ann Peebles, among others. It was released in 1973 as Hi single 2253.
No. 1400: Beaucoups of Blues by Ringo Starr, July 26, 1997, Minneapolis. This is perhaps the most odd record of Ringo Starr’s career. A straight country, featuring some of the best sessions players in Nashville at the time, this 1970 release was Ringo’s second solo album following the break-up of the Beatles. It’s not something I listen to very often, but I’m glad it’s on the shelves.
No. 1500: Lady Day Blues by Billie Holiday, February 14, 1998, Minneapolis. By this time, I was stopping by Cheapo’s several times a week, checking the new arrivals every few days and keeping a bag full of holds behind the counter. I’d either buy the records or put them back in the bins each Saturday. This 1972 release on the AJ label is a goulash of performances from throughout Holiday’s career. Its only real attraction is the first release of a 1939 recording of “Don’t Be Late” with saxophonist Lester Young.
No. 1600: Gerry Rafferty by Gerry Rafferty, June 6, 1998, Minneapolis. This 1978 release – following Rafferty’s No. 2 hit “Baker Street” and the album City to City, which reached No. 1 – is a compilation of work from earlier in Rafferty’s career. Taken from two albums recorded in the early 1970s when Rafferty was part of a duo called the Humblebums, the record gives a look at his work in the days before Stealer’s Wheel. I’ve ripped the track “Steamboat Row,” which appears to be an edit of the version the Humblebums recorded in 1970.
No. 1700: Faragher Brothers by the Faragher Brothers, August 4, 1998, Minneapolis. When I pulled this 1976 release from the stacks, I didn’t remember a thing about it, so I dropped it on the turntable as I was writing. It’s inoffensive pop rock with mellow vocals and a few horn flourishes, kind of a Pablo Cruise meets James Pankow of Chicago. The only name in the credits that rings any bells is that of producer Vini Poncia, who played numerous parts on Ringo Starr’s 1973 album Ringo and co-wrote “Devil Woman” for that album with Ringo. A year from now, I imagine I’ll have forgotten all about the Faragher Brothers again.
No. 1800: Caribou by Elton John, October 24, 1998, Minneapolis. I picked up this 1974 LP to help fill a gap. About this time, I realized I was low on stuff by Elton John and began looking for some. This release from 1974, a time when Elton was nearly king of the musical universe, fit nicely on the shelves.
No. 1900: Sonny Terry by Sonny Terry, December 5, 1998, Minneapolis. This was part of the Great Blues Grab at the local Salvation Army store. As I wrote once before, the manager of the store called me when someone dropped off about twenty boxes of nearly mint condition rock and blues albums. This 1965 release of archival performances on the Everest label is one of the relatively few records released during Terry’s lifetime – he died in 1986 – that did not also include his long-time partner, Brownie McGhee.
No. 2000: Dinner With Raoul by the Bliss Band, January 30, 1999, Minneapolis. I think this came in a box of records I bought at a church rummage sale. I’d often buy entire boxes of records – if most of them appeared to be in good shape – at rummage sales and garage sales, then sort through them, keep the ones that intrigued me and then sell the rest at Cheapo’s and a couple other places. I’d generally do no worse than break even, and I'd still have the records that interested me. I’ve ripped the track “Rio” from this 1978 album, which was produced by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. Like the Faragher Brothers above, the Bliss Band sounds to me a bit like Pablo Cruise or the Little River Band, both of which were hitting the charts about the time Dinner With Raoul was recorded. There's a touch of Steely Dan in there, too.
No. 2100: The Babys: Anthology by the Babys, March 19, 1999, Minneapolis. A decent greatest hits album from 1981, this was another attempt to fill a (small) gap in the collection. I still do like “Isn’t It Time?”
No. 2200: Copeland Special by Johnny Copeland, May 10, 1999, Minneapolis. I was pretty much grabbing any blues LPs I found in good shape at Cheapo’s around this time, adding to the collection that started in earnest the previous December at the Salvation Army store. Copeland – who died in 1997 – was a pretty decent blues guitarist and singer who hailed from Houston, and this 1981 album was his first. I’ve ripped the title track, “Copeland Special,” which features the wonderfully named Brooklyn Slim on harmonica.
No. 2300: James Cleveland and introducing the Gospel Girls, by Rev. James Cleveland, June 13, 1999, Minneapolis. This LP, which was released on Savoy around 1960, as far as I could ever find out, is one of several gospel albums by African-American artists that I bought around this time. I’d seen the Twin Cities Community Gospel Chorus perform at a street fair, and as I was digging into the blues roots of rock, I decided to dig into the gospel roots of soul. On the back of the jacket, Savoy offers a copy of the label’s entire catalog for ten cents. I wonder if the offer’s still good.
No. 2400: Enigma by P. J. Proby, October 1, 1999, Minneapolis. Albums at Cheapo’s were priced according to quality and rarity. Most LPs in fine condition would cost you $3.60. Every once in a while, you’d find one that was a bit rare and that would run you $4.20. (The store’s owner siphoned off the truly rare LPs the store received; I wish I could have seen his collection.) This 1966 LP by folkie/rocker/singer-songwriter Proby – who was a star in England but never too prominent here – was priced at $5.30, which meant it was rare. I didn’t know much about it, but I grabbed it. It turned out to be kind of a chunky mix of roots and rock and folk, and I like it. I’ve ripped the track “Niki Hoeky,” which was also recorded by artists as diverse as Redbone, Aretha Franklin and the Ventures.
No. 2500: Still ’Round by Michael Gately, December 7, 1999, Richfield, Minnesota. Like the Faragher Brothers and Bliss Band records above, when I pulled this from the stacks, I looked at it and had no idea what it sounded like. So I dropped the needle on it. First came a somewhat funky introductory track with a saxophone solo. But the first vocal track put me in mind of England Dan & John Ford Coley, and then came a country rock thing, followed by more mellowness. After that, it was early 1970s singer-songwriter stuff. All I could ever find out about this record was that it came out in 1972 on the Janus label. By the price tag – sixty-nine cents – I can tell it came from a thrift store on Penn Avenue where I could occasionally find some treasures. This isn’t one of them.
No. 2600: We Got A Party by various artists, October 13, 2000, Minneapolis. Subtitled “The Best of Ron Records, Volume 1,” this turned out to be a nice little gem. I’m not sure where I got it – no price tag – so I’m guessing a garage sale. A 1988 release on the Rounder label, the LP collects fourteen tracks released as singles on the New Orleans-based Ron label from 1958 through 1962. Some of the familiar names are here – Professor Longhair, Irma Thomas, Robert Parker – along with some less prominent folks, including a performer named Paul Marvin. According to the notes, Marvin started life as Marvin Geatreaux and also went by the moniker Little Mummy. That was too odd to ignore, so I ripped Marvin’s 1959 single “Hurry Up,” which was released as Ron 322.
No. 2700: Typical American Boys by the Chad Mitchell Trio, June 22, 2002, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Still living in the Twin Cities at the time, the Texas Gal and I drove up to my hometown of St. Cloud on a June Saturday. We saw a parade, visited my folks and went to a few garage sales, one of which provided this 1965 release of super-bland folk. It’s a reminder of what college campuses sounded like in the years before Bob Dylan went electric and rock became something to think about. I’m reminded of the scene in the movie Animal House when John Belushi’s Bluto smashes the folk singer’s guitar.
No. 2800: Let’s Take A Sentimental Journey by various artists, May 20, 2004, St. Cloud, Minnesota. I got almost fifty albums that day. And I wish I didn’t own any of them. They were my dad’s, and I brought them home when Mom was getting ready to move after Dad died. Well, I guess I always knew I would end up with the records, and cataloging them when I brought them home was an afternoon of memories: Among them were Pearl Bailey, the Ray Charles Singers, Guy Lombardo, and about twenty excellent classical records from the Music Heritage Society. (My sister and I used to tease Dad when he was buying the Heritage Society records during the 1960s, and all he said was, “You’ll be glad to have them someday.” He was right.) There was a five-record set by the Mystic Moods Orchestra. And four Reader’s Digest boxed sets, one of which was Let’s Take A Sentimental Journey, which came out in 1970. From that box, I’ve selected a 1961 live performance by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra of “Sugar Foot Stomp.” The song was originally known as “Dippermouth Blues” and was first performed in the 1920s by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band; the high point of the song each night was a two-chorus solo by King Oliver himself on cornet. When the great Louis Armstrong moved from second chair in King Oliver’s band to first chair in Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra in 1924, he brought the song, now known as “Sugar Foot Stomp,” with him, and he brought King Oliver’s solo, too, note for note. In 1934, Henderson broke up his band and became an arranger for Benny Goodman, and he brought “Sugar Foot Stomp” and its cornet/trumpet solo, still played – note for note – as King Oliver first played it. And in this 1961 performance, following the first, brief solo by Goodman on clarinet, the horn player follows with King Oliver’s solo, played just as the King had done about forty years earlier, now about eighty years ago.
No. 2900: Harper Valley P.T.A. by Jeannie C. Riley, April 24, 2007, St. Cloud, Minnesota. There are very few places that sell any vinyl in St. Cloud these days. There are a few thrift stores, but I’ve rarely found anything in them worth bringing home. The only other place is the Electric Fetus downtown, with a small selection of new records and a slightly larger offering of used records. I stop in there about once a month, see what’s new in the used CD bins and take a look at the vinyl. Every once in a while, I find a record I’d forgotten about entirely. That was the case with this one. I don’t know that I ever aspired to have Harper Valley P.T.A., but I do recall when the title track was on the radio. (It was No. 1 for a week in the fall of 1968, and the LP went to No. 12, which has to make it one of the more successful crossovers from the country charts to the pop charts.) Along with the tale of the widowed mother calling out the hypocrites – with that sweet twanging guitar or dobro – the LP was almost a concept album, with its other vignettes of late 1960s life in a small southern town. Since I don’t hear it often on the oldies stations, I’ve ripped the title track, “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” to share here.
No. 2906: Another Day in Paradise by Bertie Higgins, August 1, 2007, St. Cloud, Minnesota. My most recent acquisition. A while back, I wrote about how I was certain I had a copy of this album somewhere and then learned to my surprise that I was wrong. Well, I saw it on my latest trip downtown, and laughing, I couldn’t resist. (The fact that it was priced at seventy-eight cents with thirty percent off helped.) And of course, I have to share “Key Largo,” which went to No. 8 in the summer of 1982. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Muddy Waters, 1960: Got My Mojo Workin'
A couple of weeks ago, a Baker’s Dozen from 1960 included the reprise of “I Got My Mojo Workin’” as performed by Muddy Waters and his band at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival.
A little bit of digging on Youtube provided the entire performance although the beginning of the reprise seems to have been edited out and an announcer talks over it, too.
Still, it’s a good clip and it gives a chance to see one of the giants of blues – indeed of American music – at his peak. Enjoy it!
A little bit of digging on Youtube provided the entire performance although the beginning of the reprise seems to have been edited out and an announcer talks over it, too.
Still, it’s a good clip and it gives a chance to see one of the giants of blues – indeed of American music – at his peak. Enjoy it!
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
A Baker's Dozen from 1968 (Vol. 2)
We didn’t take a lot of vacation trips when I was a kid.
Oh, Dad had vacations from his work at St. Cloud State, but we rarely traveled. We might spend a few days at a rental cabin on a lake somewhere north of St. Cloud. Frequently, August found my mother, my sister and I spending two weeks – with Dad coming down for the second week – at Grandpa’s farm in southwestern Minnesota, picking and freezing corn and green beans, canning tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables and butchering chickens.
We did make one major trip, however, in the late summer of 1968. My sister had spent eight weeks studying in France that summer and was scheduled to fly into Philadelphia on her return. My mom’s sister and her family lived in Reading, Pennsylvania, not far at all from Philly, so about a week before my sister’s return, Mom and Dad and I hopped into that same Ford Custom and headed southeast through Wisconsin.
We drove through Wisconsin Dells, with its souvenir shops and snack stands and its gaudy signs advertising boat tours and duck rides and treats, my head turning this way and that as we drove the city’s main street. (The city remains much the same, based on a 2006 visit; the only difference is that water parks abound on the city’s outskirts, along the I-94 route that I’m not sure existed in 1968.)
We made our way along turnpikes through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In a hotel room in Morton’s Grove, we watched on television as the Democratic Party selected its vice-presidential candidate in downtown Chicago – just a few miles distant – while outside the convention hall, police clubbed and savaged protesters in what was later categorized as a “police riot.”
Among the stops as we made our way to Reading were Notre Dame University and its Golden Dome in Indiana; Blue Hole and Mystery Hill in Ohio (the first a pond said to be too deep to measure and the second one of those places where gravity is said to be skewed and water and other things run uphill); the birthplaces of Thomas Edison in Ohio and President James Buchanan in western Pennsylvania.
We toured for a few hours the Civil War battlefield at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and spent half a day at the battlefield at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. The ebb and flow of the 1862 battle at Antietam was too complex for me to grasp it as we drove from site to site there, but the next day, at Gettysburg, I stood on Cemetery Ridge and looked west to where, in 1863, the Confederate lines had been and from where Gen. George Pickett’s men had marched in the charge that has since been named for him.
The air had that odd stillness that seems to descend on every battlefield. It’s a quiet that seems to touch every place where too many men have fallen in defense of one ideal or another. And it weighed heavily at Gettysburg, especially at that point where Pickett’s Charge broke on the Union line, the Confederate soldiers having come nearly a mile through a storm of cannon shells and rifle balls.
That stillness, that weight of history, had gathered at some of the other places we saw on that trip, whether en route, in Pennsylvania, or on our way back to Minnesota. Few places were as somber or as haunting as Gettysburg, though. With my cousins, we visited Valley Forge near Philadelphia and then toured the historic sites in the city: Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, the Betsy Ross house, Benjamin Franklin’s grave. A couple of days later, with my sister safely returned, the four of us left Reading and went to Washington, D.C., for a day.
We toured the White House and wandered freely through the Capitol building (something that is sadly unthinkable today, I would guess), saw our nation’s founding documents at the National Archives and some of the Smithsonian Institution’s museums. But the most sobering moments had been late in the afternoon the day before at Arlington National Cemetery, another place where that silence descends, most notably at the gravesite of John Kennedy, assassinated less than five years earlier.
From Washington, we drove west, heading across the midsections of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. We visited friends and saw sites related to Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, and then toured several places related to author Mark Twain in the touristy but congenial small town of Hannibal, Missouri. From there, we headed north toward home.
It was a lot to absorb for a teenage boy, even one as tuned to history as I was. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a copy of Bruce Catton’s short history of the Civil War and dug into that when we got home. (Catton’s longer works are still on my list of things to read, as is Shelby Foote’s history of the conflict.) And as I read, I sorted through the places we’d seen, things I’d learned on that long trip. I guess, almost forty years later, I’m still sorting.
And when Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” popped up while I was compiling a random selection of songs from 1968, I was at first amused. Then it seemed appropriate to hear “We’ve all gone to look for America.” That’s what we were doing in the late summer of 1968, I guess – looking for America – and I think that’s what many of us are still doing today.
“My Days Are Numbered” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from Child is Father to the Man
“I Am A Pilgrim” by the Byrds from Sweetheart of the Rodeo
“Roll With It” by the Steve Miller Band from Children of the Future
“Handbags & Gladrags” by Love Affair from Everlasting Love Affair
“Rocky Raccoon” by the Beatles from The Beatles
“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” by Jerry Butler from The Soul Goes On
“I Just Want To Make Love To You” by Muddy Waters from Electric Mud
“Good Feelin’” by the Peanut Butter Conspiracy from For Children of All Ages
“America” by Simon & Garfunkel from Bookends
“Through An Old Storybook” by Sweetwater from Sweetwater
“I Got You Babe” by Etta James from the Tell Mama sessions
“Do You Know The Way To San Jose?” by Dionne Warwick, Scepter single 12216
“The Weight” by the Staple Singers from Soul Folk In Action
A few notes on some of the songs:
In Friday’s post on horn bands, I mentioned Blood, Sweat & Tears’ debut album, Child is Father to the Man. “My Days Are Numbered” is one of the better tracks on the album and, to my mind, gives a good example of Al Kooper’s hopes for the band before some of the other band members jettisoned him.
The Love Affair’s version of “Handbags & Gladrags” is not the best version out there of that great song; I like Chris Farlowe’s take on the song, and Rod Stewart’s version might be definitive. But the little-remembered Love Affair at least battled the song to a draw.
Electric Mud was Chess Records’ attempt to make Muddy Waters more current, putting the venerable bluesman together with what All-Music Guide calls “Hendrix-inspired psychedelic blues arrangements.” The record sold fairly well, but Waters didn’t like it, and the results are more of a curio than anything substantial today. (Chess did the same thing in 1968 with Howlin’ Wolf, and the results were, if anything, worse.)
Sweetwater was an odd band that featured flute, congas and cello as well as the traditional trappings of a rock band, and its music reflects that, with results ranging from remarkable to “What in the hell were they thinking?” Sweetwater was the group’s debut album, but in 1969 – during which the band was the first group to take the stage at Woodstock – lead singer Nansi Nevins was injured in a car crash and required years of physical therapy. The group recorded two albums without her and then faded away until 1997, when Nevins and some of the other original members reunited.
As always, bit rates will vary. Enjoy!
Oh, Dad had vacations from his work at St. Cloud State, but we rarely traveled. We might spend a few days at a rental cabin on a lake somewhere north of St. Cloud. Frequently, August found my mother, my sister and I spending two weeks – with Dad coming down for the second week – at Grandpa’s farm in southwestern Minnesota, picking and freezing corn and green beans, canning tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables and butchering chickens.
We did make one major trip, however, in the late summer of 1968. My sister had spent eight weeks studying in France that summer and was scheduled to fly into Philadelphia on her return. My mom’s sister and her family lived in Reading, Pennsylvania, not far at all from Philly, so about a week before my sister’s return, Mom and Dad and I hopped into that same Ford Custom and headed southeast through Wisconsin.
We drove through Wisconsin Dells, with its souvenir shops and snack stands and its gaudy signs advertising boat tours and duck rides and treats, my head turning this way and that as we drove the city’s main street. (The city remains much the same, based on a 2006 visit; the only difference is that water parks abound on the city’s outskirts, along the I-94 route that I’m not sure existed in 1968.)
We made our way along turnpikes through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In a hotel room in Morton’s Grove, we watched on television as the Democratic Party selected its vice-presidential candidate in downtown Chicago – just a few miles distant – while outside the convention hall, police clubbed and savaged protesters in what was later categorized as a “police riot.”
Among the stops as we made our way to Reading were Notre Dame University and its Golden Dome in Indiana; Blue Hole and Mystery Hill in Ohio (the first a pond said to be too deep to measure and the second one of those places where gravity is said to be skewed and water and other things run uphill); the birthplaces of Thomas Edison in Ohio and President James Buchanan in western Pennsylvania.
We toured for a few hours the Civil War battlefield at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and spent half a day at the battlefield at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. The ebb and flow of the 1862 battle at Antietam was too complex for me to grasp it as we drove from site to site there, but the next day, at Gettysburg, I stood on Cemetery Ridge and looked west to where, in 1863, the Confederate lines had been and from where Gen. George Pickett’s men had marched in the charge that has since been named for him.
The air had that odd stillness that seems to descend on every battlefield. It’s a quiet that seems to touch every place where too many men have fallen in defense of one ideal or another. And it weighed heavily at Gettysburg, especially at that point where Pickett’s Charge broke on the Union line, the Confederate soldiers having come nearly a mile through a storm of cannon shells and rifle balls.
That stillness, that weight of history, had gathered at some of the other places we saw on that trip, whether en route, in Pennsylvania, or on our way back to Minnesota. Few places were as somber or as haunting as Gettysburg, though. With my cousins, we visited Valley Forge near Philadelphia and then toured the historic sites in the city: Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, the Betsy Ross house, Benjamin Franklin’s grave. A couple of days later, with my sister safely returned, the four of us left Reading and went to Washington, D.C., for a day.
We toured the White House and wandered freely through the Capitol building (something that is sadly unthinkable today, I would guess), saw our nation’s founding documents at the National Archives and some of the Smithsonian Institution’s museums. But the most sobering moments had been late in the afternoon the day before at Arlington National Cemetery, another place where that silence descends, most notably at the gravesite of John Kennedy, assassinated less than five years earlier.
From Washington, we drove west, heading across the midsections of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. We visited friends and saw sites related to Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, and then toured several places related to author Mark Twain in the touristy but congenial small town of Hannibal, Missouri. From there, we headed north toward home.
It was a lot to absorb for a teenage boy, even one as tuned to history as I was. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a copy of Bruce Catton’s short history of the Civil War and dug into that when we got home. (Catton’s longer works are still on my list of things to read, as is Shelby Foote’s history of the conflict.) And as I read, I sorted through the places we’d seen, things I’d learned on that long trip. I guess, almost forty years later, I’m still sorting.
And when Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” popped up while I was compiling a random selection of songs from 1968, I was at first amused. Then it seemed appropriate to hear “We’ve all gone to look for America.” That’s what we were doing in the late summer of 1968, I guess – looking for America – and I think that’s what many of us are still doing today.
“My Days Are Numbered” by Blood, Sweat & Tears from Child is Father to the Man
“I Am A Pilgrim” by the Byrds from Sweetheart of the Rodeo
“Roll With It” by the Steve Miller Band from Children of the Future
“Handbags & Gladrags” by Love Affair from Everlasting Love Affair
“Rocky Raccoon” by the Beatles from The Beatles
“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” by Jerry Butler from The Soul Goes On
“I Just Want To Make Love To You” by Muddy Waters from Electric Mud
“Good Feelin’” by the Peanut Butter Conspiracy from For Children of All Ages
“America” by Simon & Garfunkel from Bookends
“Through An Old Storybook” by Sweetwater from Sweetwater
“I Got You Babe” by Etta James from the Tell Mama sessions
“Do You Know The Way To San Jose?” by Dionne Warwick, Scepter single 12216
“The Weight” by the Staple Singers from Soul Folk In Action
A few notes on some of the songs:
In Friday’s post on horn bands, I mentioned Blood, Sweat & Tears’ debut album, Child is Father to the Man. “My Days Are Numbered” is one of the better tracks on the album and, to my mind, gives a good example of Al Kooper’s hopes for the band before some of the other band members jettisoned him.
The Love Affair’s version of “Handbags & Gladrags” is not the best version out there of that great song; I like Chris Farlowe’s take on the song, and Rod Stewart’s version might be definitive. But the little-remembered Love Affair at least battled the song to a draw.
Electric Mud was Chess Records’ attempt to make Muddy Waters more current, putting the venerable bluesman together with what All-Music Guide calls “Hendrix-inspired psychedelic blues arrangements.” The record sold fairly well, but Waters didn’t like it, and the results are more of a curio than anything substantial today. (Chess did the same thing in 1968 with Howlin’ Wolf, and the results were, if anything, worse.)
Sweetwater was an odd band that featured flute, congas and cello as well as the traditional trappings of a rock band, and its music reflects that, with results ranging from remarkable to “What in the hell were they thinking?” Sweetwater was the group’s debut album, but in 1969 – during which the band was the first group to take the stage at Woodstock – lead singer Nansi Nevins was injured in a car crash and required years of physical therapy. The group recorded two albums without her and then faded away until 1997, when Nevins and some of the other original members reunited.
As always, bit rates will vary. Enjoy!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Lee Hazlewood, 1929-2007
Lee Hazlewood, who wrote, produced and performed both country and pop, died last Saturday, August 4, at the age of 78. While never in the front ranks of country’s performers during his long career, he did have a brief bout of pop prominence in the mid-1960s.
That was the time when he wrote and produced recordings by Nancy Sinatra, Frank’s daughter. The most prominent of the singles, certainly, was the iconic “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’,” which was No. 1 for a week in February of 1966. From that time through October of 1967, Hazlewood wrote and produced five more Top 40 hits for Sinatra: “How Does That Grab You Darlin’?” (No. 7), “Friday’s Child” (No. 36), “Sugar Town” (No. 5), “Love Eyes” (No. 15), and “Lightning’s Girl” (No. 24).
Sinatra and Hazlewood also had some success as a recording duo. When their duet, “Summer Wine,” became a hit a year after it was released as a 1966 B-side to a Sinatra single, Hazlewood and Sinatra recorded an album, Nancy and Lee. Three singles from the album hit the Top 40: “Jackson” went to No. 14, “Lady Bird” reached No. 20, and the eerie “Some Velvet Morning” peaked at No. 26. Two other albums of duets followed, the last in 2004.
In 1967, Hazlewood also produced Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s chart-topping version of C. Carson Parks’ “Somethin’ Stupid.” Along with producing for Sinatra and other performers like Duane Eddy, Hazlewood had his own recording career, of course. All-Music Guide, which calls him “one of the music world's most irascible geniuses,” lists more than twenty albums. His last, Cake or Death, released in 2006, provided listeners with his take on his impending demise from renal cancer.
I’m nothing like an expert on Hazlewood’s work, especially his country stuff. But what I know of it, I like. It’s sufficiently quirky to stand out in the crowded arena of mainstream pop, and his best songs, like the previously mentioned “Some Velvet Morning” and “Summer Wine,” can sneak inside you a little more with each listening until they’re almost haunting. Somewhere along the line, I think I said that Hazlewood’s songs can be over-written – meaning that he sometimes added too many elements that didn’t always hang together easily in a cohesive whole – and that’s true, I think, based on some of the material he wrote for Sinatra. But that’s a style in itself, if the writer is aware of that fragmentation. And Hazlewood knew what he was doing, as a writer, a producer and a performer.
Looking for a cover song this morning, I verified my first hunch: I don’t have any of Hazlewood’s solo work. So I took a look at his duets with Sinatra. I have most of Nancy and Lee, including two covers: “Storybook Children,” written by Chip Taylor and Bill Vera (both of whom are better known for other songs) and “Jackson,” written by Gaby Rodgers and Billy Edd Wheeler. Of the two, I think “Jackson” is the better song and the better performance.
Jackson – Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood (1967)
That was the time when he wrote and produced recordings by Nancy Sinatra, Frank’s daughter. The most prominent of the singles, certainly, was the iconic “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’,” which was No. 1 for a week in February of 1966. From that time through October of 1967, Hazlewood wrote and produced five more Top 40 hits for Sinatra: “How Does That Grab You Darlin’?” (No. 7), “Friday’s Child” (No. 36), “Sugar Town” (No. 5), “Love Eyes” (No. 15), and “Lightning’s Girl” (No. 24).
Sinatra and Hazlewood also had some success as a recording duo. When their duet, “Summer Wine,” became a hit a year after it was released as a 1966 B-side to a Sinatra single, Hazlewood and Sinatra recorded an album, Nancy and Lee. Three singles from the album hit the Top 40: “Jackson” went to No. 14, “Lady Bird” reached No. 20, and the eerie “Some Velvet Morning” peaked at No. 26. Two other albums of duets followed, the last in 2004.
In 1967, Hazlewood also produced Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s chart-topping version of C. Carson Parks’ “Somethin’ Stupid.” Along with producing for Sinatra and other performers like Duane Eddy, Hazlewood had his own recording career, of course. All-Music Guide, which calls him “one of the music world's most irascible geniuses,” lists more than twenty albums. His last, Cake or Death, released in 2006, provided listeners with his take on his impending demise from renal cancer.
I’m nothing like an expert on Hazlewood’s work, especially his country stuff. But what I know of it, I like. It’s sufficiently quirky to stand out in the crowded arena of mainstream pop, and his best songs, like the previously mentioned “Some Velvet Morning” and “Summer Wine,” can sneak inside you a little more with each listening until they’re almost haunting. Somewhere along the line, I think I said that Hazlewood’s songs can be over-written – meaning that he sometimes added too many elements that didn’t always hang together easily in a cohesive whole – and that’s true, I think, based on some of the material he wrote for Sinatra. But that’s a style in itself, if the writer is aware of that fragmentation. And Hazlewood knew what he was doing, as a writer, a producer and a performer.
Looking for a cover song this morning, I verified my first hunch: I don’t have any of Hazlewood’s solo work. So I took a look at his duets with Sinatra. I have most of Nancy and Lee, including two covers: “Storybook Children,” written by Chip Taylor and Bill Vera (both of whom are better known for other songs) and “Jackson,” written by Gaby Rodgers and Billy Edd Wheeler. Of the two, I think “Jackson” is the better song and the better performance.
Jackson – Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood (1967)
Monday, August 06, 2007
Coming Attraction: Vinyl Record Day!
A while back, the DJ at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ found the website for Vinyl Record Day, a celebration commemorating the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison on August 12, 1877.
Being the sort that shares his goodies, he got in touch with a number of music bloggers and organized a blogswarm. Over the coming weekend, Aug. 10 through 12, those of us involved will all have a post that in some way connects with vinyl records. I’m not sure what others are going to do, but I’m going to dig through the collection and find out which records were my 100th, my 200th and so on, and see what there is to say about those specific records.
And, as always, I’ll be presenting my customary Baker’s Dozen of mp3s.
So, along with the DJ and me, who’s taking part? Here’s the list, every one a fine blog:
AM Then FM
Bloggerhythms
Davewillieradio
Flea Market Funk
Fufu Stew
Funky16Corners
Good Rockin’ Tonight
Got the Fever
Ickmusic
Jefitoblog
Lost in the 80s
Py Korry
Retro Remixes
The Stepfather of Soul
It should be a fun weekend. Be sure to stop in.
Being the sort that shares his goodies, he got in touch with a number of music bloggers and organized a blogswarm. Over the coming weekend, Aug. 10 through 12, those of us involved will all have a post that in some way connects with vinyl records. I’m not sure what others are going to do, but I’m going to dig through the collection and find out which records were my 100th, my 200th and so on, and see what there is to say about those specific records.
And, as always, I’ll be presenting my customary Baker’s Dozen of mp3s.
So, along with the DJ and me, who’s taking part? Here’s the list, every one a fine blog:
AM Then FM
Bloggerhythms
Davewillieradio
Flea Market Funk
Fufu Stew
Funky16Corners
Good Rockin’ Tonight
Got the Fever
Ickmusic
Jefitoblog
Lost in the 80s
Py Korry
Retro Remixes
The Stepfather of Soul
It should be a fun weekend. Be sure to stop in.
Ambergris: In The Valley Of The Horn Bands
I remember when I heard Chicago for the first time: It was early in the spring of 1970, and I had a cassette tape of new stuff to listen to. There was a fairly new – or at least newly prominent – radio station in the Twin Cities, and I’d learned that it wouldn’t come in at our house, at least not without rigging a lead from the television antenna. A friend of mine in the high school orchestra had mentioned listening to the station – KQRS – through his stereo at home, so I gave him a blank tape and asked him to run it some evening so I could get an idea what the station was like.
A few days later, he handed me the tape as orchestra practice began. And that evening, after finishing my homework, I popped it into my recorder and pressed “Play.”
This was an era when radio stations – especially those on the FM band – were often pretty free form. Never having worked in professional radio, I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve had the sense from college classmates who went into radio that at many FM stations of the time, DJs were given far more control than today over what they played, as long as it rocked. I’d frequently listened late at night to an AM station in Little Rock, Arkansas – KAAY – and its “Bleecker Street” program, which presented a wide mix of stuff, almost all of it very good and sometimes very edgy. So I knew – from what I’d heard about KQRS and from my forays into the ether, hearing new sounds over distant signals – that I was likely to hear stuff that would be challenging and would be almost certainly absent from the Top 40 that I heard on other stations.
I don’t recall all of the tracks on that tape. I do remember “Peace Frog” and “Blue Sunday” from the Doors’ Morrison Hotel, as well as Country Joe & the Fish’s “Fish Cheer” followed by the “I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin’-To-Die Rag.”
But the tracks that had the greatest impact on me were “Wake Up, Sunshine” and the first two-thirds of the “Ballet For A Girl In Buchanon,” from Chicago’s second album. I liked “Wake Up, Sunshine,” but when Chicago’s horns ripped into the descending riff that opens “Make Me Smile,” the first portion of the multi-track “ballet,” I was hooked. The syncopation, the swirling horns, and the sense that the singer was singing about his life instead of just lyrics – it all grabbed me hard. And not long after that, I went out and bought Chicago II, the first rock LP I’d bought with my own money, I think.
I’d heard horns in a rock band before, of course. I had Blood, Sweat & Tears’ self-titled second album on tape. But BST’s stuff – as nice as the album was, and it remains a favorite – didn’t feel like Chicago’s. I don’t know that I could have put it into words then, as I was only beginning to think critically about the sounds I listened to, but the difference was that Blood, Sweat & Tears sounded like a jazz group that added a rock rhythm section, which Chicago was a rock group that added horns.
(The lead singers may have had something to do with it. While BST’s David Clayton-Thomas had not yet become the scenery-chewer he would be with later BST albums and on his own, his vocal idiosyncrasies and a sense of desperation in his performances made him at times verge nearly into parody. That was certainly not the case with Chicago’s singers. Had I heard the original Blood, Sweat & Tears, with Al Kooper on lead vocals [and a few other personnel differences, too], I might have had a different response. As I was, it took a few years before I caught up to the first version of BST and its Child Is Father To The Man album, which remains worth hearing.)
Given the success of BST and Chicago, horn bands began to proliferate. Bill Chase took his stratospheric trumpet into the Top 40 with “Get It On” in the summer of 1971. It’s a good track, but it’s a bit frenetic, even for the time; I prefer the group’s version of “Handbags & Gladrags” from their self-titled debut. The group’s time was brief; Chase and a few others were killed in a 1974 plane crash, heading for a gig in Minnesota.
A few other bands come to mind as well, though they were not received as well by critics, nor did they have long careers. Ides of March had one of the great singles of the time with “Vehicle” off its similarly titled album; it reached No. 2 in the spring of 1970. The group had several more albums in the early 1970s but never hit the charts again (although they get a nod for tossing a sly quote of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” into “Superman,” their second single). The Canadian group Lighthouse reached No. 24 in the autumn of 1971 with “One Fine Morning,” which is still a nifty piece of ear candy.
And one of the more odd horn rock happenings, as I understand it, was the rise of Crow’s “Evil Woman,” which reached No. 19 in late 1969 and early 1970. That chart date means that the single was released before Chicago’s second album but after BST’s second. One wonders about the influences that led to the tough horn-driven single. One wonders even more after reading – in more than once place – that the single’s producers grafted the horn parts on top of Crow’s recording and that the band members were angry, as the single didn’t come close to approximating their sound.
And then there was Ambergris with its self-titled 1970 release. Who? Good question.
I recall seeing the record in the stores, with its odd cover of a close-up of a rooster’s head. I don’t know that I ever heard any of it, nor do I recall any of my friends ever talking about it, and music was one of our two major topics of conversation. (As we were all sixteen, seventeen or eighteen at the time, you can figure out the other major topic all too easily.)
Ambergris, as it turned out, was a one-shot album from a band formed by Jerry Weiss, who’d played keyboards with the first version of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Leaving before the group recorded the second album, he formed Ambergris and got Steve Cropper of MG’s fame to produce it. It’s not groundbreaking in the way that the first BST album was or in the way that Chicago’s first two albums were. There are hints of Latin influences in some of the tracks, while some of them sound as if they could easily have been lifted from sessions by BST or Chicago. Highlights, from my listening, are “Play On Player” and “Walking on the Water.”
The personnel, according to rateyourmusic.com, is: Jerry Weiss (bass, keyboards), Larry Harlow (keyboards), Charlie Camillari (trumpet), Harry Max (trumpet, bass), Jimmy Maelen (vocals), Billy Shay (guitar, harmonica), Lewis Kahn (trombone), Glenn Jon Miller (trombone) and Gil Fields (drums).
It’s not spectacular, but it’s a pleasant listen. I think you’ll enjoy it. (Thanks to wonderboy at GF for the rip!)
Track listing:
Something Happened To Me
Play On Player
Gotta Find Her
Chocolate Pudding
Forget It, I Got It
Walking On The Water
Sunday Lady
Home Grown
Soul Food
Endless Night
Ambergris – Self-Titled (1970)
53.06 MB mp3 rip at 192 kbps
A few days later, he handed me the tape as orchestra practice began. And that evening, after finishing my homework, I popped it into my recorder and pressed “Play.”
This was an era when radio stations – especially those on the FM band – were often pretty free form. Never having worked in professional radio, I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve had the sense from college classmates who went into radio that at many FM stations of the time, DJs were given far more control than today over what they played, as long as it rocked. I’d frequently listened late at night to an AM station in Little Rock, Arkansas – KAAY – and its “Bleecker Street” program, which presented a wide mix of stuff, almost all of it very good and sometimes very edgy. So I knew – from what I’d heard about KQRS and from my forays into the ether, hearing new sounds over distant signals – that I was likely to hear stuff that would be challenging and would be almost certainly absent from the Top 40 that I heard on other stations.
I don’t recall all of the tracks on that tape. I do remember “Peace Frog” and “Blue Sunday” from the Doors’ Morrison Hotel, as well as Country Joe & the Fish’s “Fish Cheer” followed by the “I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin’-To-Die Rag.”
But the tracks that had the greatest impact on me were “Wake Up, Sunshine” and the first two-thirds of the “Ballet For A Girl In Buchanon,” from Chicago’s second album. I liked “Wake Up, Sunshine,” but when Chicago’s horns ripped into the descending riff that opens “Make Me Smile,” the first portion of the multi-track “ballet,” I was hooked. The syncopation, the swirling horns, and the sense that the singer was singing about his life instead of just lyrics – it all grabbed me hard. And not long after that, I went out and bought Chicago II, the first rock LP I’d bought with my own money, I think.
I’d heard horns in a rock band before, of course. I had Blood, Sweat & Tears’ self-titled second album on tape. But BST’s stuff – as nice as the album was, and it remains a favorite – didn’t feel like Chicago’s. I don’t know that I could have put it into words then, as I was only beginning to think critically about the sounds I listened to, but the difference was that Blood, Sweat & Tears sounded like a jazz group that added a rock rhythm section, which Chicago was a rock group that added horns.
(The lead singers may have had something to do with it. While BST’s David Clayton-Thomas had not yet become the scenery-chewer he would be with later BST albums and on his own, his vocal idiosyncrasies and a sense of desperation in his performances made him at times verge nearly into parody. That was certainly not the case with Chicago’s singers. Had I heard the original Blood, Sweat & Tears, with Al Kooper on lead vocals [and a few other personnel differences, too], I might have had a different response. As I was, it took a few years before I caught up to the first version of BST and its Child Is Father To The Man album, which remains worth hearing.)
Given the success of BST and Chicago, horn bands began to proliferate. Bill Chase took his stratospheric trumpet into the Top 40 with “Get It On” in the summer of 1971. It’s a good track, but it’s a bit frenetic, even for the time; I prefer the group’s version of “Handbags & Gladrags” from their self-titled debut. The group’s time was brief; Chase and a few others were killed in a 1974 plane crash, heading for a gig in Minnesota.
A few other bands come to mind as well, though they were not received as well by critics, nor did they have long careers. Ides of March had one of the great singles of the time with “Vehicle” off its similarly titled album; it reached No. 2 in the spring of 1970. The group had several more albums in the early 1970s but never hit the charts again (although they get a nod for tossing a sly quote of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” into “Superman,” their second single). The Canadian group Lighthouse reached No. 24 in the autumn of 1971 with “One Fine Morning,” which is still a nifty piece of ear candy.
And one of the more odd horn rock happenings, as I understand it, was the rise of Crow’s “Evil Woman,” which reached No. 19 in late 1969 and early 1970. That chart date means that the single was released before Chicago’s second album but after BST’s second. One wonders about the influences that led to the tough horn-driven single. One wonders even more after reading – in more than once place – that the single’s producers grafted the horn parts on top of Crow’s recording and that the band members were angry, as the single didn’t come close to approximating their sound.
And then there was Ambergris with its self-titled 1970 release. Who? Good question.
I recall seeing the record in the stores, with its odd cover of a close-up of a rooster’s head. I don’t know that I ever heard any of it, nor do I recall any of my friends ever talking about it, and music was one of our two major topics of conversation. (As we were all sixteen, seventeen or eighteen at the time, you can figure out the other major topic all too easily.)
Ambergris, as it turned out, was a one-shot album from a band formed by Jerry Weiss, who’d played keyboards with the first version of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Leaving before the group recorded the second album, he formed Ambergris and got Steve Cropper of MG’s fame to produce it. It’s not groundbreaking in the way that the first BST album was or in the way that Chicago’s first two albums were. There are hints of Latin influences in some of the tracks, while some of them sound as if they could easily have been lifted from sessions by BST or Chicago. Highlights, from my listening, are “Play On Player” and “Walking on the Water.”
The personnel, according to rateyourmusic.com, is: Jerry Weiss (bass, keyboards), Larry Harlow (keyboards), Charlie Camillari (trumpet), Harry Max (trumpet, bass), Jimmy Maelen (vocals), Billy Shay (guitar, harmonica), Lewis Kahn (trombone), Glenn Jon Miller (trombone) and Gil Fields (drums).
It’s not spectacular, but it’s a pleasant listen. I think you’ll enjoy it. (Thanks to wonderboy at GF for the rip!)
Track listing:
Something Happened To Me
Play On Player
Gotta Find Her
Chocolate Pudding
Forget It, I Got It
Walking On The Water
Sunday Lady
Home Grown
Soul Food
Endless Night
Ambergris – Self-Titled (1970)
53.06 MB mp3 rip at 192 kbps
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Saturday Single No. 24
I wandered through the collection last evening, half of my attention on the random tracks the RealPlayer was bringing up and half on a baseball game. None of the songs that popped up seemed to intrigue me. Some stuff by The Band wandered past, as did tracks from Big Mama Thornton, John Fred & His Playboy Band, Elvis, Mavis Staples and others.
Nothing grabbed me. And the Twins were losing to Cleveland.
Then the Texas Gal came into the room and asked how the selection was going. Not well, I told her. She came to the computer and told me to sort for songs from 1963, so I did. It’s actually a year that I haven’t done much with.
I scrolled down the list of 270 songs recorded, or at least released, in 1963, and the Texas Gal pointed to the name of Mississippi John Hurt and then to a single track. Amazingly, even though I have more than sixty of his recordings, this is the first time that the name of Mississippi John Hurt has appeared in this blog.
He’s often called a bluesman, having come to wide public attention during the blues boom during the 1960s, but that’s not quite right. He was more of a folk singer, or what would have been called a “songster” in the years before World War II. He sang some bluesy material, yes, but he also sang traditional folk songs as well as his own compositions, all backed by his complex and delicate guitar work. He is not what one thinks of when one hears the words “Mississippi bluesman.”
His music is definitely worth seeking out, whether you’re talking about the tracks he recorded for the Okeh label in the late 1920s or his recordings late in his life after he was “rediscovered” by blues enthusiasts in the 1960s. The most representative of those might be the 1963 recordings he did for the Library of Congress, now packaged by the Fuel label as D.C. Blues: Library of Congress Recordings. I have a fondness for the live recordings made during a 1964 performance at Oberlin College in Ohio that are now packaged by the Aim label as The Best of Mississippi John Hurt.
The track the Texas Gal selected for me comes from the Library of Congress recordings. She said she just liked the title, and that’s why Mississippi John Hurt’s “Nobody’s Dirty Business” is today’s Saturday Single.
Mississippi John Hurt – Nobody’s Dirty Business (1963)
3.63 MB mp3 at 128 kbps
Nothing grabbed me. And the Twins were losing to Cleveland.
Then the Texas Gal came into the room and asked how the selection was going. Not well, I told her. She came to the computer and told me to sort for songs from 1963, so I did. It’s actually a year that I haven’t done much with.
I scrolled down the list of 270 songs recorded, or at least released, in 1963, and the Texas Gal pointed to the name of Mississippi John Hurt and then to a single track. Amazingly, even though I have more than sixty of his recordings, this is the first time that the name of Mississippi John Hurt has appeared in this blog.
He’s often called a bluesman, having come to wide public attention during the blues boom during the 1960s, but that’s not quite right. He was more of a folk singer, or what would have been called a “songster” in the years before World War II. He sang some bluesy material, yes, but he also sang traditional folk songs as well as his own compositions, all backed by his complex and delicate guitar work. He is not what one thinks of when one hears the words “Mississippi bluesman.”
His music is definitely worth seeking out, whether you’re talking about the tracks he recorded for the Okeh label in the late 1920s or his recordings late in his life after he was “rediscovered” by blues enthusiasts in the 1960s. The most representative of those might be the 1963 recordings he did for the Library of Congress, now packaged by the Fuel label as D.C. Blues: Library of Congress Recordings. I have a fondness for the live recordings made during a 1964 performance at Oberlin College in Ohio that are now packaged by the Aim label as The Best of Mississippi John Hurt.
The track the Texas Gal selected for me comes from the Library of Congress recordings. She said she just liked the title, and that’s why Mississippi John Hurt’s “Nobody’s Dirty Business” is today’s Saturday Single.
Mississippi John Hurt – Nobody’s Dirty Business (1963)
3.63 MB mp3 at 128 kbps
Friday, August 03, 2007
A Baker's Dozen for Minneapolis
Things like this aren’t supposed to happen. Bridges aren’t supposed to fall down.
No, we didn’t lose anyone. No relatives or friends were on the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis Wednesday evening when it groaned and tumbled into the Mississippi River. But in the larger sense that I think everyone out there understands, those were our friends and neighbors: those who stood dazed on a section of highway sitting on the water, those who helped get the crying children out of that precariously perched school bus, those who crawled up the steep remnants of the bridge and helped others do the same, and yes, those – evidently and thankfully few – who remain lost and in the water still.
The Texas Gal’s sister called us about 6:30 Wednesday evening, asking if we were okay, adding that she knew that sometimes the Texas Gal has to go to Minneapolis for her work. I was confused by her question. We were watching the news, but we were running about fifteen minutes behind, as I’d put the television on pause while we got dinner together. When she told me what had happened, all I could say was “What?” The words made no sense.
Listening, I carried the phone into the living room. The Texas Gal said later that from the look on my face, she thought that someone in one of our families had died. We changed the channel to bring the television up to current time, said goodbye and hung up. Then the Texas Gal and I sat there, stunned, and watched the news for more than three hours.
I called my sister’s house and talked to my brother-in-law. Everyone was safe. We got a couple more calls from Texas, friends seeing if we were okay. And we were, of course. Except that we weren’t. From time to time, things happen that shred the verities in our lives: The doctor has bad news. Someone swallows something the wrong way. A summer storm spawns tornadoes. A car runs a red light into another car’s path. And a bridge falls into the river.
We live less than a mile from the Mississippi River and cross it frequently – the Texas Gal does so every day and I do a couple times a week. When I lived in Minneapolis eight years ago, I drove on the I-35W bridge every day on my way to work. Crossing the river safely is something we’ve taken for granted, just like those folks who were driving on Interstate 35W Wednesday night took it for granted. We might not for a while. So we – like most Minnesotans and like our friends all around the country – weren’t entirely okay. We were better off than those souls caught in the horror and better off than their families and friends, certainly, but we were shaken.
Now, all the various agencies will go about their jobs. In not that long a time, the last unfortunates will be found and identified. The shattered and twisted bridge will be removed and studied. A new one will be designed and begin to rise. People will point fingers in blame, some in honest outrage and some, sadly, for political gain.
And as all of those things happen, shock and grief will eventually wane – not for some time yet, but eventually – and the wounded will heal. We’ll move forward, having been reminded that every day, we are all no more than one instant from disaster. We always have been and we always will be. It sometimes takes something like a bridge falling into a river to remind us of that and thus to remind us to take nothing for granted, ever.
So if you have children, if you have parents, if you have brothers and sisters, if you have friends, then let them know how much they matter to you. Today.
A Baker’s Dozen for Minneapolis:
“Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel from Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)
“Follow” by Richie Havens from Mixed Bag (1968)
“East of Ginger Trees” by Seals & Crofts from Summer Breeze (1972)
“Every Grain of Sand” by Bob Dylan from Shot of Love (1981)
“The Circle Game” by Tom Rush from The Circle Game (1968)
“Whispering Pines” by The Band from The Band (1969)
“Get It While You Can” by Janis Joplin from Pearl (1970)
“Long As I Can See The Light” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fantasy single 645 (1970)
“Page 43” by Graham Nash & David Crosby from Graham Nash/David Crosby (1973)
“We Are Not Helpless” by Stephen Stills from Stephen Stills (1970)
“Seems Like A Long Time” by Rod Stewart from Every Picture Tells A Story (1971)
“I Shall Be Released” by Joe Cocker from With A Little Help From My Friends (1969)
“Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, The End” by the Beatles from Abbey Road (1969)
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Howlin' Wolf on ‘Shindig,' May 1965
One of the nicest – and earliest – tributes a rock band ever paid to one of its influences took place on the ABC-TV show Shindig on May 26, 1965. Never coy about giving credit to their influences, the Rolling Stones told the show’s producers that they’d perform on the show only if Howlin’ Wolf, the great Chicago bluesman, performed as well.
(Jimmy O'Neill, the host of the show, claimed on air during the show and in interviews later that he came up with the idea of having the Wolf on Shindig as a gesture to please the Stones, but from what I’ve read over the years, that’s a flat-out lie.)
It was Howlin’ Wolf’s television debut, and with the Stones and the Shindig regulars sitting around him or swaying on high stools as they watched, he gave the show’s millions of viewers a riveting performance of “How Many More Years?”
(Jimmy O'Neill, the host of the show, claimed on air during the show and in interviews later that he came up with the idea of having the Wolf on Shindig as a gesture to please the Stones, but from what I’ve read over the years, that’s a flat-out lie.)
It was Howlin’ Wolf’s television debut, and with the Stones and the Shindig regulars sitting around him or swaying on high stools as they watched, he gave the show’s millions of viewers a riveting performance of “How Many More Years?”
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
A Baker's Dozen from 1981
One of the over-used epigrams of the 1960s was the quotation from Plato: “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.” It seemed hip at the time to envision the structure of society crumbling when faced with the works of the Grateful Dead, the Velvet Underground, MC5 and the Rolling Stones (among many, many others). One wonders how the denizens of Woodstock Nation – or Altamont Nation, for those with a darker, more cynical bent – would have fared had the “walls of the city” truly been shaken.
It’s an interesting idea: Had the late 1960s actually been an era of revolution, how would the followers of tie-dyed fashion, the children of the suburbs, have fared in the new society following a true revolution? Probably pretty poorly, I would imagine. The new leaders, those deemed sufficiently pure ideologically, would most likely have found the vast majority of the so-called revolutionaries to be dilettantes at best, bent on changing their personal circumstances rather than the societal structure that gave them generally comfortable lives. I have the mental image of thousands of young people banished to bleak farms in the countryside, undergoing education and orientation to revolutionary ideals as they grow strawberries and potatoes. “This ain’t what I signed up for,” I can hear one or another say. “I just wanted to drop out and find a chick in San Francisco!”
It’s hard to say how close American was to an actual revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One can read the histories and memoirs of the era – Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage comes to mind – and not get a real sense. Despite the forty-year-old regrets on the far left end of the political spectrum and the still-potent rage that resides on the far right, it seems to me that the political upheaval of the times flared out without having much impact. (The civil rights and women’s movements, on the other hand, changed American life immensely, but those are other topics for perhaps other days.)
The real revolution, when it came along, was cultural, and it was in Plato’s “mode of the music.” I’ve seen a number of reviews, analyses and think-pieces in magazines and newspapers over the past couple of years – sorry, but I don’t have specific citations – that indicate that once more an American music form has become the world’s predominant music. Those pieces note that in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, rock ’n’ roll became the world’s music (though rock was recycled for a time through British sensibilities) and the same thing has happened in the last twenty years with hip-hop.
Now, I’m not anything like an expert on hip-hop and its stylistic cousins. I like some of it, have some in the collection, but it’s not my music. I do note its importance, though. And these thoughts about modes changing and the quaking walls of the city came about today because of the last track that came up while I was compiling my random list of thirteen songs from 1981.
“The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five was one of those tracks that change the music universe and continue to echo into the world at large. In his 1989 book The Heart of Rock and Soul, Dave Marsh puts the track at No. 179 and calls it “the Birth of the Nation” of hip-hop. He also notes, “play this first masterpiece of hip-hop at the crushing volume at which it was intended to be heard and s**t will start shakin’ you never imagined had any wobble in it.”
Marsh goes on to say that “hardly anybody outside the New York City area has ever even heard the damn thing.” That may have been true in 1989, when copyright difficulties – arising from the multitude of clips taken from other performers’ tracks – got in the way of Grandmaster Flash and his colleagues. But if nothing else has, the advent of the ’Net in the nineteen years since Marsh wrote has spread “The Adventures . . .” and other, similar, compiled tracks worldwide. So, if one accepts the idea that hip-hop has in the last nineteen years become the soundtrack to the world, the last track on today’s Baker’s Dozen is what the real revolution sounded like when it began.
A Baker’s Dozen from 1981
“Old Photographs” by Jim Capaldi from Let The Thunder Cry
“I Can’t Stand It” by Eric Clapton, RSO single 1060
“Fire On The Bayou” by the Neville Brothers from Fiyo On The Bayou
“The Innocent Age” by Dan Fogelberg from The Innocent Age
“Carry On” by J. J. Cale from Shades
“Edge of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks from Belladonna
“This Little Girl” by Gary U.S. Bonds, EMI America single 8079
“Waiting On A Friend” by the Rolling Stones from Tattoo You
“Queen of Hearts” by Juice Newton, Capitol single 4997
“Upper Mississippi Shakedown” by the Lamont Cranston Band from Shakedown
“I Could Never Miss You (More Than I Do)” by Lulu, Alfa single 7006
“Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind & Fire, ARC single 02536
“The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Sugar Hill single 577
A few comments on some of the other tracks:
Jim Capaldi’s “Old Photographs” is a beautiful song, tinged with regret the way most memoirs should be. But it’s a long way from the sometimes edgy work Capaldi and his mates in Traffic did once upon a time.
Just like Harry Chapin – whose song “Sequel” showed up here the other week – Dan Fogelberg is a polarizing musician: One either finds his work compelling or finds it overblown. In general, I like it, though I did think that his double album The Innocent Age flirted with lyrical pomposity. Even so, it was musically gorgeous.
If the Gary U.S. Bonds track sounds like Bruce Springsteen, well, there’s a reason. Springsteen and Miami Steve Van Zandt produced the track and a good portion of the album it came from, Dedication. Springsteen’s admiration for Bonds, and his love of Bonds’ early 1960s recordings of “Quarter to Three” and “New Orleans,” is no secret, of course.
I was glad to see “Upper Mississippi Shakedown” by the Lamont Cranston Band make the random list. St. Cloud has a baseball team in a regional summer college league, the River Bats, and hearing the Cranston track while sipping a cold beverage and taking in the early evening sights of a small baseball park is a fine experience, indeed!
As always, bit rates will vary.
Afternote:
Okay, so I was mathematically challenged while writing this post. It's been eighteen years since Dave Marsh wrote, or at least published, his book. And it's been twenty-six years since “The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel” was released and began to shake the walls of the city.
It’s an interesting idea: Had the late 1960s actually been an era of revolution, how would the followers of tie-dyed fashion, the children of the suburbs, have fared in the new society following a true revolution? Probably pretty poorly, I would imagine. The new leaders, those deemed sufficiently pure ideologically, would most likely have found the vast majority of the so-called revolutionaries to be dilettantes at best, bent on changing their personal circumstances rather than the societal structure that gave them generally comfortable lives. I have the mental image of thousands of young people banished to bleak farms in the countryside, undergoing education and orientation to revolutionary ideals as they grow strawberries and potatoes. “This ain’t what I signed up for,” I can hear one or another say. “I just wanted to drop out and find a chick in San Francisco!”
It’s hard to say how close American was to an actual revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One can read the histories and memoirs of the era – Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage comes to mind – and not get a real sense. Despite the forty-year-old regrets on the far left end of the political spectrum and the still-potent rage that resides on the far right, it seems to me that the political upheaval of the times flared out without having much impact. (The civil rights and women’s movements, on the other hand, changed American life immensely, but those are other topics for perhaps other days.)
The real revolution, when it came along, was cultural, and it was in Plato’s “mode of the music.” I’ve seen a number of reviews, analyses and think-pieces in magazines and newspapers over the past couple of years – sorry, but I don’t have specific citations – that indicate that once more an American music form has become the world’s predominant music. Those pieces note that in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, rock ’n’ roll became the world’s music (though rock was recycled for a time through British sensibilities) and the same thing has happened in the last twenty years with hip-hop.
Now, I’m not anything like an expert on hip-hop and its stylistic cousins. I like some of it, have some in the collection, but it’s not my music. I do note its importance, though. And these thoughts about modes changing and the quaking walls of the city came about today because of the last track that came up while I was compiling my random list of thirteen songs from 1981.
“The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five was one of those tracks that change the music universe and continue to echo into the world at large. In his 1989 book The Heart of Rock and Soul, Dave Marsh puts the track at No. 179 and calls it “the Birth of the Nation” of hip-hop. He also notes, “play this first masterpiece of hip-hop at the crushing volume at which it was intended to be heard and s**t will start shakin’ you never imagined had any wobble in it.”
Marsh goes on to say that “hardly anybody outside the New York City area has ever even heard the damn thing.” That may have been true in 1989, when copyright difficulties – arising from the multitude of clips taken from other performers’ tracks – got in the way of Grandmaster Flash and his colleagues. But if nothing else has, the advent of the ’Net in the nineteen years since Marsh wrote has spread “The Adventures . . .” and other, similar, compiled tracks worldwide. So, if one accepts the idea that hip-hop has in the last nineteen years become the soundtrack to the world, the last track on today’s Baker’s Dozen is what the real revolution sounded like when it began.
A Baker’s Dozen from 1981
“Old Photographs” by Jim Capaldi from Let The Thunder Cry
“I Can’t Stand It” by Eric Clapton, RSO single 1060
“Fire On The Bayou” by the Neville Brothers from Fiyo On The Bayou
“The Innocent Age” by Dan Fogelberg from The Innocent Age
“Carry On” by J. J. Cale from Shades
“Edge of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks from Belladonna
“This Little Girl” by Gary U.S. Bonds, EMI America single 8079
“Waiting On A Friend” by the Rolling Stones from Tattoo You
“Queen of Hearts” by Juice Newton, Capitol single 4997
“Upper Mississippi Shakedown” by the Lamont Cranston Band from Shakedown
“I Could Never Miss You (More Than I Do)” by Lulu, Alfa single 7006
“Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind & Fire, ARC single 02536
“The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Sugar Hill single 577
A few comments on some of the other tracks:
Jim Capaldi’s “Old Photographs” is a beautiful song, tinged with regret the way most memoirs should be. But it’s a long way from the sometimes edgy work Capaldi and his mates in Traffic did once upon a time.
Just like Harry Chapin – whose song “Sequel” showed up here the other week – Dan Fogelberg is a polarizing musician: One either finds his work compelling or finds it overblown. In general, I like it, though I did think that his double album The Innocent Age flirted with lyrical pomposity. Even so, it was musically gorgeous.
If the Gary U.S. Bonds track sounds like Bruce Springsteen, well, there’s a reason. Springsteen and Miami Steve Van Zandt produced the track and a good portion of the album it came from, Dedication. Springsteen’s admiration for Bonds, and his love of Bonds’ early 1960s recordings of “Quarter to Three” and “New Orleans,” is no secret, of course.
I was glad to see “Upper Mississippi Shakedown” by the Lamont Cranston Band make the random list. St. Cloud has a baseball team in a regional summer college league, the River Bats, and hearing the Cranston track while sipping a cold beverage and taking in the early evening sights of a small baseball park is a fine experience, indeed!
As always, bit rates will vary.
Afternote:
Okay, so I was mathematically challenged while writing this post. It's been eighteen years since Dave Marsh wrote, or at least published, his book. And it's been twenty-six years since “The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel” was released and began to shake the walls of the city.
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