THE GREAT BIG PLAYLIST

THE VERY BIG PLAYLIST 


Chapter 1: 
Lots of Strings and Other Things:
Early Soul Music



    Soul music of the early 1950s urbanized country blues. Producers rounded off the rough edges of Mississippi Delta explosions and toned down the ferocity of Chicago enthusiasm while redirecting and compacting all that shaved energy into a lulling, harmonic structure—often accentuated by strings—while pushing the vocals far up front. Fast or slow, the best melodies left an impression far beyond their duration. The lyrics, phrased, delicate and deliberate, sang of the vulnerability inherent in the new sophistication. “When this old world starts getting me down/And people are just too much for me to bear,” from the Drifters beatific “Up on the Roof,” is the perfect embodiment of that sensibility. As we are drawn to the city as the host of civilization and as it is drawn to us, the pressures that accompany the pleasures of social interaction threaten to consume the consumers. During those extended moments, the city itself provides its own refuge, a place where refugees can stare off into eternity just long enough for the pressure to subside. Early soul music, more than anything that came before it, promised that we could have it all: the bustle and the calm, the excitement and the solitude, poverty and riches, pain and bliss.



 Johnny Ace:
“Pledging My Love.” Duke. 1954. Pledging My Love

    John Marshall Alexander is known almost exclusively for his Christmas Eve death while playing Russian roulette in 1954. That’s a tragedy as well because Johnny Ace, as he is known to the militant coterie of fans he continues to amass, was a first rate soul singer with just enough verve to push back the midnight blues that always lurked behind the edge of a quaver. Memphis-based Sun Records recorded two songs of Ace playing piano and singing way back in 1952, although something hadn’t clicked because Sun President Sam Phillips never got around to releasing them. Within two years the singer found himself on a tour sponsored by Duke Records to promote the recently-recorded “Pledging My Love.” During a five-minute break between sets, an explosion opened a sieve through which those midnight blues eternally pour.

The Drifters:
 "There Goes My Baby"
“Money Honey.”
“If You Cry True Love, True Love.”
“This Magic Moment.”
“Save the Last Dance for Me.”
“Some Kind of Wonderful.”
“Up On the Roof.”
“Another Night with the Boys.”
“On Broadway.”
“Under the Boardwalk.”
”Saturday Night at the Movies.”
“White Christmas.”
“Adorable.”
All available on All-Time Greatest Hits. Atlantic. 1987.
   When the darkness compels across an unseen ocean whose roar and clap assures its presence, when the solitary sounds of a summer’s night are the clopping march of tall heels on gray sidewalks, when the muffled argot of enriched hormones emerge from art deco shadows, and when the pre-dawn sky’s baffling paradox grins and scowls sheets of oblivious tears—at such times the music of The Drifters is certain to be sneaking up from some crevice in the memory. So we spin the dial and rediscover “Money Honey,” a genuine contender for the honor of best song about the complications, frustrations, and fitful bleedings inherent in a prolonged cash flow problem. Moving the red line up the tuner’s face, “There Goes My Baby” greets us. Those disobedient strings added by producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller take rhythm and blues into the Milky Way conflux of soul. “Moving on down the line,” sings Ben E. King, far from his normal range, and the Latin rhythm, with its classical undertones, integrates a perfect duality that only intensifies sorrow. Somewhere between AM and FM we link arms with “On Broadway,” another Leiber and Stoller production, this time with a young Phil Spector on guitar, Rudy Lewis singing lead, and that by-now familiar Latin beat. “Under the Boardwalk” steals the next dance, pitting Johnny Moore’s lead against the translucent Bert Berns production, one which enlists an orchestra’s worth of percussion in search of a summer evening filled with the natter of crickets. Finally, before the chill of dawn calls us home, we cut one last rug to “This Magic Moment.” Written by the masters of sublime, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, driven by baion bass galore encircling Ben E. King’s lead vocal, the swirl sanctifies a moment of anticipated ecstasy, a moment stretched across the clouds in our eyes.[i]

The Jewels. "Hearts of Stone"


    The five-member Jewels emerged from mixed backgrounds in Gospel-styled music and disc jockeying on R&B radio stations. Rudy Jackson, the final member to join The Jewels (so named because Rudy’s sister said they would metaphorically sparkle), wrote the raw jump blues, “Hearts of Stone,” the one song in their catalogue that intertwines the rhythms of R&B with the passionate crooning of country-based Gospel. Otis Williams and the Charms did the same song with a slightly more commercial (harder driving, softer delivery) arrangement, competition from which prevented The Jewels’ original from receiving its share of airplay. On the white national charts, the Fontaine Sisters did a cleaned up Wonder Bread rendition. Today it is easy to find copies of the inferior versions. But just try to lay hands on the best, the one by The Jewels. Singers Johnny Torrence, Dee Hawkins and Rudy Jackson sing with the purest hearts of anyone this side of John Fogerty, someone who, twenty years later, did his own version as well.
.
Little Willie John. Fever
“All Around the World.”
“Need Your Love So Bad.”
“Fever.”
“Look What You’ve Done to Me.”
“Until You Do.”
“Let Them Talk.”
“She Thinks I Still Care.”
“There is Someone in This World for Me.”
All available on The Early King Sessions. Ace. 2002.


    Little Willie John is one of the fifteen or so greatest soul singers of all time. And back in 1953 when he was discovered by Johnny Otis, no one even called the genre soul music. It was then still thought of as rhythm and blues. Otis took Willie John to Cincinnati’s Syd Nathan. Syd recorded a number of brilliant John songs. “Fever” is a matter-of-fact, outré casual declaration of the way one man’s symptoms of illness can be another’s proof of vitality. “Let Them Talk” posits a violently angelic acceptance of rumor mongering parasites gnawing at the backyard fence separating mice from meat. But the desolation was only beginning. How do we get through the longest and loneliest night of our lives, asks “Need Your Love So Bad,” especially when we know tomorrow night will be even longer, even lonelier?
    Satisfying as George Jones’ country version of “She Thinks I Still Care” was, Little Willie John understood the song better. In John’s superior rendition, he pretends he’s moved beyond needing the woman who was not only the greatest happiness of his life, but the only happiness he will ever know. After all this, “There is Someone in This World for Me” is almost a relief, its mathematics stating that soft, sad and jumpy equals nervous exhaustion as the despair resonates through unlit foliage.
He died in prison of a homicide conviction. It is spooky thinking about that prison sentence. Even with the few string arrangements bedding the tender and fragile vocals, these songs creak with something more sinister than the average Friday night at the haunted house. All of these songs express a paralyzing need. They speak of love as absolution. And they suggest unpleasant consequences for denying that special request.

The Spaniels. “Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight.”Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight
Because of its unfortunate inclusion in the film Three Men and a Baby, contemporary audiences have come to hear this song as a lullaby. George Lucas pieced it into American Graffiti, where it rightfully belongs. Lucas’ teenage American city might not be Gary, Indiana, from whence The Spaniels and Vee Jay Records hailed, but Lucas captured the ambiance just right and flavored the night with the ultimate frustrated goodnight kiss. In reality, it is an act of restrained emotion as the lead singer comes to terms with the fact that the date is over while he is just getting started. “Now my mother and my father might hear if I stay here too long/One kiss and we’ll part and you’d be going/Although I hate to see you go.” So ends The Spaniels’ only major doo-wop soul hit. But familiarity with the untimely interruption between kissing goodnight and staying the night remains painfully eternal. Lead singer James “Pookie” Hudson wrote the song, he claimed, based on his own unfortunate experiences. In the context of the rest of their work, this brilliant meshing of Gospel harmony and earthly anticipation encircles the evening like a nimbus. Had The Spaniels not passed on a chance to record an original version of “The Twist,” their name might represent more than a mere footnote in most histories. In The Playlist, they score points for just such a decision.

LaVern Baker. “Tweedle Dee.” Atlantic. 1954.Tweedle Dee




    Spurred on by the Bessie Smith songs she heard as a teenager, LaVern Baker became a great R&B singer who had good reason to be bitter about her own finest songs. Her work with Columbia Records was unsuccessful, so she signed with independent label King and still went nowhere fast. Finally, in 1953 she signed with Atlantic where she had hits with “Tweedle Dee,” “Bop-Ting-a-Ling” and the less lyrically profound “Play It Fair.” But “Tweedle Dee,” which should have signaled the beginning of her career, actually began its demise. Georgia Gibbs of Mercury Records did a cover version of that song at the same time. It sounded almost identical to Baker’s (which is not surprising, since Mercury used the same musicians and arranger on their song that Atlantic had used), and went to Number Two on the pop charts. Baker’s original stalled at Number Fourteen. LaVern later estimated that Gibbs’ version cost her $15,000 in lost royalties.

The Moonglows. “Sincerely.” Chess. 1955.Sincerely
Harvey Fuqua, Bobby Lester, Alexander Graves and Bill Johnson were collectively among the most moving vocal groups of the Fifties. “Sincerely,” “The Ten Commandments of Love” and “Blue Velvet” are lush, soul-pumping diamonds. “Sincerely,” their biggest hit, constructed a musical bridge between the cool smooth Mills Brothers and the grittier texture of rock ‘n’ roll. Lead singer Fuqua went on to an impressive career as a house writer and producer at Motown, an appropriate move since a very young Marvin Gaye joined The Moonglows right after “Sincerely” hit the charts.

The Skyliners. “Since I Don’t Have You.” Calico. 1959. Since I don't have you
    A white R&B quintet was a rarity in the late 1950s. The exception that validates the notion was lead singer Jimmy Beaumont and backers Janet Vogel, Joe Verscharen, Walter Lester and John Taylor. This ethereal ballad was their only major hit, although they did follow up with “This I Swear” and “Pennies From Heaven.” But “Since I Don’t Have You” holds its place as their testament to the ages. Beginning with a drum snap rhythm and violins from an outer space concerto, the backing singers all start at different places and converge just as Beaumont begins: “I don’t have plans and schemes/I don’t have hopes and dreams.” Then, spinning his voice from upper to lower registers like a descending aircraft, recovering at the last possible instant, he admits, “I don’t have anything/Since I don’t have you.”

[i] It must be understood that The Drifters is a name. This cold fact is essential in following the course of the music made by people umbrella’d by that moniker. Former Domino Clyde McPhatter recorded a solo version of “Money Honey” that Atlantic Records auteur Jerry Wexler produced. Wexler was dissatisfied with the results, however, and sought a richer sound. So McPhatter returned with cohorts Billy Pinkney and Andy and Gerhardt Thrasher. Hoping to evoke the calm mood of wood tossing up on the shore, for the purposes of that recording they called themselves The Drifters. The year was 1953. Their re-recording of “Money Honey” did not drift. Instead, it soared to Number One on the R&B charts.
   It was this McPhatter version of The Drifters that sculpted a few more R&B classics over the next year and a half, the best of which, “White Christmas,” out-glorifies Bing Crosby himself. However, the military arm of Uncle Sam called up Clyde’s number and without his leadership the group slouched into a commercial lump. George Treadwell (who owned the rights to the group name) fired the singers after they exchanged unpleasantries with a honcho at the Apollo Theatre. Treadwell replaced them with The Crowns, the group that soon became the new Drifters. This equally outstanding line-up featured Ben E. King and three backing singers.     Producers/writers/arrangers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller added strings to the new group’s Gospel harmony sound and invented soul music. Of course, this new sound was being invented elsewhere, most notably by a young former Gospel singer named Faye Adams.
   Up and coming Brill Building writers delivered brilliant street smart masterpieces conveying the teenage and post-teenage experience. Splendid production and passionate songwriting notwithstanding, substantial credit for the new group’s success goes to its lead singer. That’s Ben you hear on “There Goes My Baby,” one of the two or three “first” soul songs, as well as “Save the Last Dance for Me” and “This Magic Moment.” But by May 1960, King was out, enraged over his salary of $75 a week. His replacement, Johnny Williams, only sang lead on one Drifters’ hit, “If You Cry True Love, True Love.” Treadwell, who knew a good singer when he heard one (as well as how to piss one off) recruited vocalist Rudy Lewis to take over the top spot. Lewis brought brilliance to “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Another Night with the Boys,” “Up on the Roof” and “On Broadway.” When Lewis died in 1964, Treadwell had to eat some pride and called upon early Drifter Johnny Moore. Johnny had sung lead on pre-King hits “Ruby Baby” and “Drip Drop,” both later covered to better effect by Dion DiMucci. But Moore earned his pay with “Adorable.” Once Treadwell elevated the singer’s status, Moore kicked out with “Under the Boardwalk” and “Saturday Night at the Movies.” But by that time the British Invasion had hit the American shores and it was time for the groups The Drifters helped inspire to carry the bouncing ball.


THE PLAYLIST 2 & 3Solo By Myself: Male Soul Singers
    Atlantic Records thrived on an attitude of experimentation within a framework of self-discipline. Founding brothers Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun willed into existence the first independent label whose very lifeblood surged for the sole purpose of fertilizing an environment in which the best of all music would flourish. The Erteguns and financier Herb Abramson launched their enterprise in 1947. As studious jazz hounds, the brothers recognized that great music required more than a great band and a great singer. The people behind the microphone contributed just as much—and often more—than the more visible artists whose names appeared on the finished products. So Ahmet was moderately delighted to have the singers Ruth Brown, Joe Turner and “Stick” McGhee on his roster. He was outstandingly delighted to have producer Jerry Wexler, engineer Tom Dowd, and arranger Jesse Stone. Alone and together, these three men, along with Ahmet’s quirky knack for recognizing marketable songs (and a business savvy second to no one’s), polished and grooved out a Latin dance-based, saxophone-driven sound that influenced the next decade-and –a-half of R&B and soul artists. Through sheer will and drive these impresarios created some of the most endearing and moving music of all time.




    While the Erteguns were signing their first acts, McMinnville, Tennessee’s own Randy Wood noticed that the electrical appliance store he owned and operated never seemed to have any of the records his customers wanted. What they wanted was rhythm and blues. The manufacturers and distributors of R&B knew they had a market; they just didn’t know how to get to that market. Wood expanded his store first into a mail order house, then converted it into a full time record store, and once he could no longer keep up with the demand, he launched his own label. He called it Dot. Soon discs by Ivory Joe Hunter, Brownie McGhee, and Shorty Long would display the Dot label.
Dot was instrumental, as it were, in fomenting a trend that took the meat from a lot of music originating on its own label. In the early 1950s, three main types of radio programming existed: pop (which meant strictly white songs for white listeners), country music (still marketed for whites, but considered less refined than the pop stations), and rhythm and blues (aimed squarely at the black market, at least until disc jockey Alan Freed aimed it at everybody). Recognizing the profit potential in the pop market, Wood began recording cover versions of R&B acts using squeaky-clean nonentities such as Pat Boone and Billy Vaughn. So, for instance, Imperial Records would record Fats Domino’s version of “Ain’t That a Shame,” which played heavily on the R&B station, and Dot would redo the song for Pat Boone and release it as “Isn’t That a Shame.” But the best artistic decisions don’t always (if ever) happen in the boardroom. The label’s Nashville representative liked the sound of a young Arthur Alexander and signed him to work with producer Rick Hall. The label’s heritage to soul music was firmly in place.
    Cover songs were nothing new to Hugo Peritti and Luigi Creatore, two record producers who entered the business making stars out of people such as Mercury Records’ Georgia Gibbs, the queen of covers. Hugo and Luigi, as they remain known, used their earnings to produce easy-listening hits for Perry Como. But their supreme contribution to soul music came from their work with a young Sam Cooke, fresh from his Gospel days with the Soul Stirrers. The producers yearned to stay with a formula they understood: slick slop for goyem. But Cooke’s magic emerged in spite of their efforts to soften his edges. The result was a no-compromise combination for RCA that remains among the most passionate soul works ever waxed.
    Thanks to the pioneering work of these labels and producers, the foundation existed for the likes of Bobby Bland, Solomon Burke, Ray Charles and others to scale down the often ornate and lush arrangements while adding grit and husk to their own sound, thereby shifting the sound of R&B into a far more dance-oriented music that still retained the earliest jubilee effects of Gospel.

 Ray Charles. Ray Charles Live! Atlantic. 1973.





    Before Ray Charles became a narcissistic, jingoistic pander to the worst aspects of the national character (and not coincidentally a recipient of Pepsi’s largesse), he earned his living as a big deal blues hound whose sped-up salties, deeply incandescent vocals and innovative piano figures made his disquieting physical jerks and spins acceptable to whites. He was, deservedly, the best-selling black performer of the pre-Motown1960s. Live!, which gives great moments from 1958 and 1959 (just when his career was crossing over and taking off), offers the playful, the serene, the caustic and bullying, the upbeat and the borderline psychotic. With two great versions of "The Right Time," the gloriously agonized "Drown in my Own Tears" and the show-stopping interplay between Charles and the Rayettes on "Wha'd I Say" the others stand out effortlessly and with grandeur. Music theoristsmay emphasize tension and release; Ray Charles the practitioner elicited a tension so pleasurable, the release was unnecessary.

 Bobby “Blue” Bland. The Best of Bobby Bland. MCA. 1974.





    To be smooth and to shimmy-grind at the same time, and to do both well is a rare thing. But “Blue” has been doing both extremely well since the late 1950s. He hasn’t had much pop success, but he sure do sound good, especially on "I Pity the Fool,""Turn on Your Love Light" and "Farther on up the Road." The drums and trumpets on the latter song, for example, create an incredibly seductive tension between one another. Ta-daw tuh-da-taw tee-dah! scream the horns. The drummer takes his cue and rattles off the percussive opposites just as Bland sneaks in with the words “Somebody’s gonna hurt you like you hurt me,” as smooth and angry a moan as ever was recorded. The key to his artistic success is his ongoing ability to let the listener hear bitterness, tragedy and occasional rage behind the audial mask of total self-control.

 Jackie Wilson. The Jackie Wilson Story. Epic. 1983.





    Everyone from Elvis Presley and Van Morrison to Chrissie Hynde has played homage to Wilson, an appropriate state of affairs given the strength of the man’s work (at least the work captured on this album) and the horrible, lingering debilitation that spent nearly ten years in causing Wilson’s death. But in his life there were orchestras happening in the high notes he reached on "Higher and Higher."Scaled-down symphonies duck-walked through "Reet Petite": and "Doggin' Around" and especially "That's Why." Most collections overachieve (after all, Jackie Wilson released ninety-nine singles and thirty albums, not counting posthumous issues) and include far too much of his overly polished work that reeks of someone trying too hard to go showbiz, sort of a black Bobby Darin, if you will. This is the ultimate, spared-down dream collection.

 Brook Benton. "Rainy Night in Georgia." Atlantic. 1959.





    Tony Joe White, whose only other claim to recognition was in singing his own “Polk Salad Annie,” wrote this perfect mood piece for Brook Benton, whose only other claim to recognition was in writing “A Lover’s Question” for Clyde McPhatter.

 Sam Cooke



"You Send Me."
"Only Sixteen."
"Wonderful World."
"Summertime."
"Chain Gang."
"Cupid."
"Twistin' the Night Away."
"Having a Party."
"Bring It on Home to Me."
"Another Saturday Night."
"Shake."
"A Change is Gonna Come."
All released on RCA.
   What we have here is a young man who had not only been raised singing in the church; he had become the star of the show with his intensity of spirit in the outstanding Gospel group, The Soul Stirrers. By secularizing (some said betraying) that talent, Sam Cooke moved into the ionosphere with the transcendent “You Send Me.” Never all that far from the showbiz brigands, he continued to record standards such as “Summertime” (done as well as could be, except for Billy Stewart’s superior version), and the topical, though questionable tribute to the Cha Cha. His passion, phrasing, range and specific sound influenced Rod Stewart, Graham Parker, Van Morrison and John Lennon, among others. “Bring It On Hone to Me” is his best song, particularly due to the call and response “yeahs” he does with Lou Rawls.

Arthur Alexander.





"Anna (Go to Him)." Dot. 1962.
"Soldiers of Love." Dot. 1962.
   Most Beatles fans are aware that the Fab Four covered Alexander’s remarkably fine “Anna.” Fewer may know that they also recorded (but while still a legally recording entity did not release)his other soul single, “Soldiers of Love,” a fact made significant because of the way they point up the R&B roots of The Beatles early recordings. In the original versions by Arthur Alexander, both songs croak with a portliness, yet moan with frailty the way few others could, a feat made all the more remarkable considering that he recorded these for a label best known for its soulless cover versions. Johnny Rivers, among lesser talents, learned country-soul phrasing here. “June,” as friends called Arthur, was the first artist to record at Rick Hall’s Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The money Hall earned from those early recordings enabled him to improve the technical quality of his operations, which in turn gave him the opportunity to record dozens of first-time artists, including a then-young and timid Aretha Franklin.

Solomon Burke. "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love." Atlantic. 1964.





   Anyone holding Barry White in esteem as a good singer will turn stiff as a rocket and passionate as a puma after hearing just the first few seconds of this song. Burke was, however, as shameless as Barry White.
   Burke’s considerable girth was used neither as humor nor as salacious entrée. It simply provided his voice with a powerful resonance. He didn’t sing words; he sang syllables: “Ev er ee bod dee (bu-bum bu-bum) needs sum bod dee.” He didn’t pander. He convinced us we were every bit as lonely and desperate as he claimed to be. Without saying it, the attitude of his voice declared that he had been to the mountaintop, that he had looked over at all his yearning throngs of children, and that they had cried out, begging for the answer. “You people want to know if it’s gonna be alright? Reverend Solomon is here to tell you people it’s gonna be all-right.”

 Ben E. King. Ben E. King’s Greatest Hits. Atco. 1964.





   As a member of one incarnation of The Drifters, King sang lead on what many people consider to be the first soul song, “There Goes My Baby.” He achieved even hotter success on his own with priceless times like "I Who Have Nothing," "Don't Play That Song" (also well done by Aretha Franklin), "Spanish Harlem" (ditto), and the beatific "Stand By Me." The latter song, with its cricket punctuation and open road at midnight ambience, brings up from a deepness beyond the singer’s testicles a bargain on a parallel with the kind we might make with God when we are so desperate that nothing else can protect us. In the first verse, King surrenders with something beyond humility to powers greater than himself (be it the force of friendship, the draw of romance, or deal-making with a Deity). Then in the final verse, he makes it clear that the gate to this relationship swings both ways. “If the sky that we look upon should crumble and fall/Or the mountains should tumble to the sea/I won’t be afraid/No I won’t shed a tear/Not as long. . . ” He comes back in the chorus with the clincher: “Whenever you’re in trouble you can stand by me!” Trouble or not, who could refuse such an offer?

 Al Green.



"Tired of Being Alone."
"Call Me."
"I'm Still in Love with You."
"Love and Happiness."
"Let's Stay Together."
"I Can't Get Next to You."
"Look What You Done for Me."
All released on Hi Records.
    The Reverend Al Green is a modern anomaly: an R&B wonder who made it big in the secular world, took his earnings and went back to the church. Like a soaring and raspy-voiced Sam Cooke, Green seduced in every vocal and musical nuance, bleeding proudly in “Tired of Being Alone,” pleading loudly in “Let’s Stay Together,” and even outdoing the Temptations with his version of “I Can’t Get Next to You,” as secularly celebratory a song as ever hit the charts. His other hits rely a bit more on the singer than the song, but one could substitute the Lord for the Girl and the tunes would still be revelatory. In “Let’s Stay Together,” Green sings of his commitment to a woman with the same emotional tenor many Christians use to describe the sensation of being saved. “Call Me” even has the studio equivalent of an Amen Choir humming in full support, devotedly waiting for their time to respond to the Reverend’s call. If anyone ever learned his trade from the angels, it was this man.


Chapter Three Girls Can Do What the Boys Do: Female Soul Singers Go It Alone
    
    With sweat beading up from the roots to the tips of their hair, their eyes focused on a single spot beyond the recording studio, tight neck muscles cascading along their throats, and with nothing to lose except their will to live, these women dragged Gospel music licking and screaming into the secular world. From lives rife with hard times in Newark, Memphis, Tidewater, Chicago and other blurs in between, where the church provided the only legitimate solace, to the smoky jazz rooms where even the best Charlie Parker sound-alike couldn’t compete with the laughter of drunks at the bar, the earliest and best female soul singers awakened within themselves the original pain that their spirituality had so successfully anesthetized. It was scandalous, it was temptation personified, and the best of it was very, very good.

Faye Adams. "Shake a Hand." Herald. 1953.




    There may be more than one reason why this song isn’t supposed to be here. For one thing, it’s early. For another, a lot of knowledgeable folks have argued that it isn’t rock ‘n’ roll. It is, however, beyond any doubt, either Gospel, R&B, pop, or a strong candidate for the first soul song. The Gospel claim is the most tenuous.Adams packed rawness beneath her pristine delivery, a serrated edge that gleamed as it froze listeners to their own thoughts. The R&B tag is nearly as hard to justify because, while the rhythms are right, the production mutes the punch and dulls the impact, letting the singer’s pitch suggest its own beat. Such an approach allows the listener to connect with Adams more directly. Unfortunately for the singer’s financial considerations, her sultriness and the phrasing that elevated it from the music’s mediocrity conveyed a decided blackness that queered the song with pop radio. And while “Shake a Hand” clearly does hold fragments of each of these genres, it is the way Adams shrugs off her flirtations with timidity that edges the song over into the soul domain, a world that did not properly exist until this song defined it.

Ruth Brown.



"Mama He treats Your Daughter Mean." Atlantic. 1956.
Blues on Broadway. Fantasy. 1989.
    Blanche Calloway, sister of Cab, introduced Ruth Brown to Herb Abramson and Ahmet Ertegun. Hot off the success of Stick McGhee’s “Drinkin’ Wine Spoo-Dee-O-Dee,” the Atlantic Records team was eager to record Brown. Like jazz vocal stylist Dinah Washington before her, Ruth Brown started singing when she was old enough to vocalize, first in churches and later in nightclubs. Encouraged by a job offer with Lucky Millinder’s band, an abrupt firing by that temperamental bandleader left the singer to the tender mercies of Blanche, who brought her to Atlantic.
    At this time rock ‘n’ roll was largely unknown and rhythm and blues was music considered by the white establishment to be for blacks only, not unlike certain restrooms and drinking fountains. But Abramson and Ertegun did not intend for things to remain that way.
    Ahmet Ertegun had contacted Herb Abramson back in 1947, suggesting that a good way to stay out of the army and avoid work would be to form their own independent record company. Atlantic’s first hit, as mentioned, was “Drinkin’ Wine.” While the two executives sat around wondering what would happen next, Blanche came in the door with Ruth Brown. Since the two executives were jazz fanatics, they gave her a great pick up band. Her first recording, “So Long,” featured Eddie Condon and Sid Catlett. The song itself wasn’t a risk, though it did contain elements of both blues and pop. “Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean” was a much better recording—perky, possessed and driven. Brown doesn’t display a great vocal range but she sure makes the most of what she has. “Mama,” she sings, and her voice tightens just the way a frustrated nineteen-year-old’s would in that situation. “He treats your daughter mean”: drums and piano pound together in a perfect twelve bar blues at twice the normal pace. “He’s the meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-nest man I’ve ever seen!” The top of the vocal is so shrill it’s tempting to check windows for cracks, but the bottom growls out a sense of security, of confidence—it’s the part of her voice she inherited from her maternal parent.
    The Broadway recording, from late in her career, is occasionally campy but mostly bops and swings. By the time she reaches the song about not being able to break dance, it’s obvious that such theatrics are unnecessary for someone who’s grinded with such vocal gusto for so long.

 LaVern Baker and the Glides. "Jim Dandy." Atlantic. 1957.





    LaVern Baker possessed so much sex appeal, she could simply look with small interest at a man and the night would be over before it began. Musically, she tended more toward the sing-songy novelty numbers of which “Jim Dandy” remains among the more memorable. Nevertheless, she could not quite shake that ability to stir up the loins of her audience. Even as she squeaks about Jim Dandy swimming the seas, rescuing mermaid queens, and essentially showing himself to be Superman’s better, an indefinable husk envelops her pitch and—however breathless she should be after reciting the litany of feats—she doesn’t even need to inhale to start all over again. Now that’s intimidating.

Barbara Lynn. "You'll Lose a Good Thing." Jamie. 1962.





    It’s a dark room. A bored crowd buzzes listless and tired. Without fanfare a golden ring of light slaps the face of the curtain—it hardly interrupts the crawl of half-words and coughs nattering throughout the room. From offstage the singer glides across the platform to that golden ring, snaps her fingers once, softly, and the insect sounds fussing through the audience are crushed by the tender swat of the horn puffing behind her. She stares through the darkness beneath weighty eyelashes. The smoky saxophone and barely audible rattling percussion taps out her cue and she moves down into the crowd, just like the featured entertainer in a John Ford western. The audience is at sudden attention, but they remain unconvinced—until she sings. Port Arthur’s finest vocalist hangs the notes out across their tables, begging one and all to raise their hands and seize them. As they do indeed reach for the full effect, she bends those same notes just beyond their reach, reminding the onlookers that nothing they have ever experienced has prepared them for this exquisite torture. The truth of the title engulfs the patrons, one and all, and as the song fades, her image dims to translucence and is gone. No one can even think to demand an encore.

Barbara Mason. "Yes I'm Ready." Arctic. 1965.



    This hard-breathing Philadelphia songstress consciously expressed her sex appeal on any number of soul singles from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s. However, this initial abandonment of innocence finds her young voice with more dimensions of expression than any of her other presumably more sophisticated releases. Listening to Mason today, it is easy to write her off as a pleasant anachronism because in this, her only substantial hit, she seemed totally committed to serving her man. But upon closer listening to the sultry confidence in her delivery, it’s impossible to dispute the idea that while she was admittedly “ready—to learn,” she was more than capable of teaching the object of her affections to please her as well.

Shirley Ellis. "The Name Game." Congress. 1965.




   This song’s popularity came from singer Ellis’ clever ability to put any listener’s name in a song and make it rhyme with the banana-nana-bo fee fi fo lyrical gyrations. So even if your name was Kzlytcietz, Ellis could whip you up into a frenzy of nonsense syllables sure to delight anyone self-assured enough to create their own brand of hip. Anyone stuck in a car for three hours listening to their kids finagle this song across the back seat will be forgiven for changing stations.

Barbara Lewis. "Make Me Your Baby." Atlantic. 1965. Baby, I’m Yours. Atlantic. 1966.





    Fantastically smooth R&B songstress from Detroit who ran ballads across her tongue the way a child does a Red Hot candy. “Hello Stranger,” “Baby, I’m Yours” and “Make Me Your Baby” were her biggest hits, and deservedly so. One of the key elements of soul music lies in the ability of its practitioners to emote vulnerability with voices that imply a sudden sense off all-encompassing rapture has seized them. If they don’t get it right, this time, this one and only time, they may never get another chance. This overriding hunger consumes Lewis. She is so certain of the power that her hunger possesses, she relays it with a passionate somnambulism.[i]


Koko Taylor. "Wang Dang Doodle." Checker. 1966.


Koko’s version of the Willie Dixon song is a good contender for one of the most dangerous recordings ever sung by a woman. The cast of characters she invites to the bash suggests it might be a good idea to pack protection: Automatic Slim, Razor-Totin’ Jim, Butcher Knife Cuttin’ Annie, Fast Talkin’ Fannie—and that’s just in the first verse! What does Taylor have in mind? Amidst the ominous piano trills and Willie Dixon’s chants, she announces they’re gonna romp and stomp til midnight and fuss and fight til daylight. It’s really just a song about pitching yet another wild party, but Taylor shouts it with such conviction you’d swear they all plan on burning down the factory because the bosses rescinded the union contract. Either way, there won’t be much left of the building once that party’s over, at least not if the sax player has anything to say about it.

Barbara Acklin. "Love makes a Woman." Brunswick. 1968.





Chicago native Acklin was an R&B singer as far back as 1964, and she even recorded some fine duets with Gene “Duke of Earl” Chandler. Her biggest accomplishment, however, was as the singer of “Love Makes a Woman,” which she co-wrote with Chi-Lites lead singer Eugene Record. Here she sounds like exactly what she way: a background singer who expended herself on this one opportunity to shine.

[i] Barbara Lewis, a soothing yet invigorating singer, was one of Atlantic Records least valued yet unfathomably amazing talents. So was producer (and sometimes composer) Bert Berns, who had enough sense to make “Make Me Your Baby” everything it could be. But that was nothing new to Berns. He produced “Under the Boardwalk” for The Drifters, “Brown Eyed Girl” for Van Morrison and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” for Solomon Burke. If that is not enough pop and soul credibility, he also wrote “Twist and Shout” for the Isley Brothers and composed and produced “Here Comes the Night” for Them, a band featuring a young Van Morrison. Of course, one listen to Lewis’ “Make Me Your Baby” and the falsity of the title is apparent. No one who sounds this alive would ever have to plead. But she does. She pleads with only the scarcest of restraint. She wants to give herself over and be remade in the process. The bass line contrapunctual pattern against her vocal confuses the issue, because it adds a richness that—once again—makes the argument that she needs anyone seem absurd.




Chapter Four
Rama Linga Wop Bop and Doo-Wop

    Doo-wop is street corner harmony. Friends from church, the neighborhood or school would gather on a mutually convenient city street corner and sing. The groups usually had four or ideally five guys, comprised of two tenors, one guy who could swing from a baritone to a bass, and, if they were lucky, someone who could fake a strong falsetto. Add some snapping fingers, clapping hands and slapping thighs, stir in the melodrama of Gospel arrangements with the secular focus of young love, and you had the sound of 15,000 young blacks and Italians on a march for local stardom. The term “doo-wop” itself comes from the prominent background rhythms the majority voiced to push to soloist’s singing into the forefront. “Rama Lama Ding Dong,” “Bomp She Bop,” “Oop She Boop,” “Bom Bama Bom” and other glorious nonsense syllables propelled a small percentage of these young folks into the status of potential hit-makers. Once the record companies began gobbling these kids up on their way into the studio, some minimal soul-inspired instrumentation was added for balance, but tinkling pianos, softly groaning saxophones, and meandering guitars always blurred behind the sharp focus of these, the greatest of all doo-wop songs.

The Chords. "Sh-Boom." Cat. 1954.



    “Life could be a dream/Sweetheart/Sh-boom/Hello again/Sh-boom/If I could carry you/To the paradise up above. . . .” If there were ever another song so innocent that it came in for the public bashing this one suffered, you can bet it’d be every bit as good. Television commentators decried the song’s artlessness, hack musicians ridiculed its lack of sense, imaginative idiots claimed its subject matter was the end of the world (the title replicating, one presumes, the ultimate explosion), and white groups copied it (poorly), having their own hit versions while this Bronx sextet struggled just to get by. Fifty years later, no one much remembers the commentators, the hacks have gone to hack hell, and no one except the totally obsessed knows the names of the copycats. But The Chords will live forever for concocting this rollicking frenzy that was indeed deliriously guilty of being everything its detractors claimed—except possibly the apocalyptic soundtrack. Still, if the world has to end. . . .


The Elegants. Little Star: The Best of The Elegants. Collectables. 1991.





    My first thought when I saw this album was “They called it Best of because they couldn’t very well called it Greatest Hit.” In fact, I always thought of this Long Island doo-wop group as a poor man’s Dion and the Belmonts, simply because, as far as I knew, they never followed up their sole chart success, an ignorance on my part, to be sure, but one due to a lack of exposure outside the R&B charts. Then I played the album. "Little Star" was as transcendent as ever. Indeed, when singers Vito Picone and Artie Venosa wrote and recorded this inverted Mozart lullaby, they created a song as ominous as it was innocent and serene. Everything else here has that same great studio-on-a-street-corner texture, Italian lovesick hoodlums trying to save themselves by wooing the right young lady into the distractions of love and romance.

The Penguins. "Earth Angel." Doo Tone. 1954.





    Tin Pan Alley meets doo-wop ala Fremont High School. Dead kids walking the planet searching for that true love transcendence was all the rage, thanks to this ode to secular halo-wearers.

 Clarence “Frogman” Henry. "Ain't Got No Home." Argo. 1956.
   “But I Do” was a bigger hit,” but “Ain’t Got No Home” was a better and certainly stranger song, what with the Frogman’s declaration that he not only sings like a girl (true), but that he also sings like a frog (right again). Despite the use of this song by the reactionary Rush Limbaugh and in nearly every movie that purports to be about the 1950s (the royalties from which having kept Henry alive), “Ain’t Got No Home” retains its power with thrilling Professor Longhair-style New Orleans piano and, of course, the Frogman’s unique vocal croakings.

 The Cadets. "Stranded in the Jungle." Modern. 1956.
    The Cadets were an inspired gang of lunatics whose moment in the sun was this 1950s side wherein the singer ends up in a pot about to be cooked into a festive dish by the local witch doctor. What’s most distinctive about “Stranded” is the fact that it’s actually two songs chopped up and mixed together. In the first song, our unnamed hero is surrounded by juju music appropriate to the cannibal feast of which he is the main course. The second song interrupts at every potential denouement with unabashed revelry, and just as that party reaches crescendo, we slam back into that boiling pot with about as much transition as scalding water. In addition to being one of the earliest cases of producer “sampling,” the Cadets’ version is also notable for inspiring a distinctly different version (though the arrangement was identical) by a group called The Jayhawks. That group’s version bombed, but The Jayhawks mutated into The Marathons and later The Olympics, under both names releasing some raucous novelty tunes. Meanwhile, back in the States…

Del-Vikings. "Come Go with Me." Dot. 1957.
One of the many things wrong with the world is the way real teamwork has gone out of fashion. I’m talking about the kind of teamwork where each person involved recognizes his own contribution as well as the contributions of every other person on the team—to the point where everyone involved understands the beauty of their interdependency. You used to find this kind of thing in professional sports, occasionally in the workplace, and even in popular music. I’m talking about the level of performance of any type where each person involved internalizes the mechanical and organizational concepts so tightly that he thinks of himself as a member of that particular team. It would be nice if the duration of these situations was longer—better, that is, for the rest of us. In the case of The Del-Vikings, the military, producers and record executives got in the way and the group that made this recording was only together for a few months.

The Coasters. Their Greatest Recordings: The Early Years. Atco. 1971.


   You could say this was a collection of writers/producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s best moments and you wouldn’t be far off. Certainly the beginnings of pop situation comedy are here. It would be wise, however, to remember Lee Allen’s saxophone, since that’s the road map everyone on this trip was following. And even though "Charlie Brown" has not aged all that well, "Shopping for Clothes" still has lines that are as pertinent in these hip hop days as forty-plus years ago: “Stand over there, look in the mirror and dig yourself” is pertinent indeed. "Yakety-Yak's" understated belligerence, "Young Blood"'s fear of Father, and "Down in Mexico's" infinite party appeal all make these contemporary and never quaint. “That is Rock and Roll” ranks with The Showmen’s “It Will Stand” as an ultimate testament to the form. And “Riot in Cell Block #9,” actually recorded by The Robins, which were only half of what would become The Coasters, has such an ominous feel, it’s no wonder its refrain (“There’s a riot goin’ on) went on to become the title of Sly and the Family Stone’s greatest album.[i]

The Capris. "There's a Moon Out Tonight." Planet. 1958.
The original line-up of The Capris were from Ozone Park, New York, a burg that could then be summed up (as Springsteen later would) “When you hit a red light, you don’t stop.” The five young Italian Americans led by the multi-ranged Nick Santo constructed a stroll-dance harmony around the simplest of lyrics: “There’s a moo-oon out too ni-eye-ite/Whu-oh-oh o-oh/There’s a song in my hear-ar-art/Whu-oh o-oh.” First released on the planet label in 1958, it suffered the ignoble indifference of most doo-wop numbers by white vocal groups. Old Town Records discovered the tune three years later, at precisely the moment when searing group harmony by people of any color had at least some chance of stirring up national interest. Between the effect of Santo’s acrobatic note-bending and the rhythms of a drummer with a metronomic sense of timing, “There’s a Moon Out Tonight” reintroduced the early 1960s doo-wop craze. When people become too hip to love this ode to romance by these maniacs, then love itself must be dead. Maybe that’s why it’s a graveyard classic.

The Danleers. "One Summer Night." Mercury. 1958.
    Jimmy Weston led his friends through a blissful doo-wop bop that either takes you back to 1958 and the Summer of Your Life, or forward into a reality only understood in dreams. “One Summer Night” doesn’t require experience. It simply asks that we listen softly and taste the air it breathes with enthusiasm.

The Silhouettes. "Get a Job." Ember. 1958.
The Gospel group The Golden Tornados mutated into a hard-driving pop vocal band when they found out the power of “yipyip yipyip yip” and “shad da da da da.” Get a Job” was their hit, an early example of social protest.

 Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns. "Don't You Just Know It." Ace. 1958.
    Of all the nonsense lyrics to gabba-garble their way up the charts in the 1950s, “Don’t You Just Know It” takes the honor of being the wildest. Backed by a band of professional transvestite musicians, Smith’s New Orleans piano sounded like he was artfully dancing upon the instrument rather than using his hands. But it’s the gloriously psychotic call and response between the uncredited female singer and the rest of the Clowns that really heats up the infectious contagion. “Gooba gooba gooba GOO-BAH!” she screams at one point, as if imparting the secret to life. The Clowns respond like any good flock and repeat in kind.

The Students. "I'm So Young." Note. 1958.
    Not much is known of this 1958 doo-wop group except that the leader’s name was Prez Tyus and that they were from Steubenville, Ohio. The repressed hysterics of this lament are far less incidental than such trivia.

The Impalas. "Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)." Cub. 1959.
    While not everything on Rhino Records’ Doo-Wop Box is actually doo-wop, there is so much good on their 101-song treasury that a person might come to believe that the only genuine way to bribe one’s way into heaven is with that package. The great bird groups are there (Ravens, Crows, Willows, Orioles, Flamingos, Penguins, Wrens, and if Spaniels are bird dogs, they’re here too), as are the car groups (El Dorados, Cadillacs, Capris, Edsels, and of course the Inpalas). Tony Carlucci, Lenny Renda and Richard Wagner teamed with Joe Frazier on this great 1959 genuine doo-wop moment, one of those all too rare records that threatens to explode at any second and then is over, begging to be played again.

Marcels. "Blue Moon." Colpix. 1961.
   Named after their lead singer’s hairstyle, Pittsburgh’s own Marcels took a good show tune from the 1930s and added bahm ba-ba bahm and dang da dang dongto “Blue Moon,” lined it with doo-wop harmony and sped it up considerably, making this the most commercially successful doo-wop song of all time. Give or take the tune’s escalating and descending melody, it is Cornelius Harp’s frustrated effort to communicate in the nonsense language only understood by teenagers and rock critics that keeps people coming back.

Randy and the Rainbows. "Denise." Rust. 1963.
At a time when it seemed like every female mentioned in a hit record was named Mary, Sue, or Donna, the verisimilitude of “Denise” in a pop song truly hit hoe, or at least next door. And while no one in this group had the chops of Dion and/or The Belmonts, this neo-doo-wop quintet blended some two-four drumming (the only discernible instrument) with raving “Scooby-doo” fill-in nonsense lyrics, all of which pushed singer Dominick Safuto’s desperate falsetto to the forefront. If any of them could have rhymed “Dawn-esse” with anything, this tune would perhaps have the clout of its cousins.

The “5” Royales.
"Think."
"Dedicated to the One I Love."
“Tell Me You Care.”
"Baby, Don't Do It."
"Slummer the Slum."
"Help Me Somebody."
"Crazy Crazy Crazy."
"Monkey Hips and Rice."
"Too much Lovin'."
"Laundromat Blues."
All released on King Records.
“Dedicated to the One I Love” bounds from an exploding nova with the infinitely wise jump blues authority of lead singer Johnny Tanner. Group commandant Lowman Pauling co-wrote the song and his back alley Chicago swamp knife fight guitar injects much-needed antagonism. Meanwhile, “Think” takes us by surprise like a prison shiv. As with all the Royales’ best songs, this one features the dual raw leads of Johnny and Eugene Tanner, linked by the reverb single-string guitar sandblasting of Mr. Pauling. And to emphasize the breadth of their skill, “Baby, Don’t Do It” sheds the usual Gospel vocal arrangement and reworks the sound into a Charlie Parker jazz attack.
    One of the best and most sophisticated, i.e., modern sounding, R&B groups of all time, Lowman Pauling, Charlie Ferguson, Obediah Carter, and Johnny and Eugene Tanner burned down the farm repeatedly between the mid-1940s and the 1960s. “Dedicated to the One I Love” has never been done better and neither has their version of “Think.” “Baby, Don’t Do It” and “Slummer the Slum” tore up the race charts but failed to go pop, which was everyone’s loss.
    It should be noted that the song “Dedicated” suffers in cover versions by The Shirelles and Mamas and Papas, both of whom robbed the essential power of Johnny Tanner’s dramatic lead introduction. When Tanner begins with “This is dedicated—to the one I love!” he jumps out with the sonic equivalent of a slap to the face. Together, these songs will take you out of the church and into the heart of a black Cincinnati night.[ii]

Devotions. "Rip Van Winkle." 1964.
Still a working unit as of 2003, the Devotions are a vocal harmony group from Queens and the Bronx. Their covers of songs by more prominent doo-wop groups of the early 1960s gave no clue that they would ever release this, one of the wildest takes on the Washington Irving story ever imagined. Possessed helium giggles, bowling alley sound effects, crazed falsetto singing, and a bumpy midnight ride after a twenty-year snooze: it helps if you’ve never heard of the title character.

[i] Jerry and Mike’s Greatest Hits: A partial list of Leiber and Stoller’s Finest Writing and Production Credits.
"Along Came Jones" The Coasters
“(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” Elvis Presley; Joni Mitchell
"Bulldog" The Shangri-Las
"Down Home Girl" The Rolling Stones
“Down in Mexico” The Coasters
"Drip Drop" The Drifters
"Flesh, Blood and Bones" Little Esther
“Gypsy” Ben E. King
“Heavenly Blues” King Curtis
“Hound Dog” Big Mama Thorton; Elvis Presley
“I Remember” Peggy Lee
"Jailhouse Rock" Elvis Presley
"Kansas City" Wilbert Harrison
"King Creole" Elvis Presley
“Love Potion #9” The Clovers; The Coasters
"On Broadway" The Drifters
"Past, Present and Future" The Shangri-Las
"Poison Ivy" The Coasters
"Searchin'" The Coasters
“Stand By Me” Ben E. King
“There Goes My Baby” The Drifters
“Young Blood” The Coasters

[ii] Perhaps the best story of The “5” Royales appears in a book called Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, edited by Greil Marcus. The story in question is called “Dedicated to You” and is written by Ed Ward.



Chapter Five
Just Let Me Hear Some of That! The Early Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll



Rock ‘n’ roll would exist even if Alan Freed had gone into plumbing instead of radio broadcasting. Rock ‘n’ roll would not, however, reflect as genuine a sense ofAmerica the way the best of it has and always will, because the story of Mr. Freed is at the core of both the brightest lights and darkest crevices of the American experience.
Out of the Army and hungry for the future, Freed used his Master’s Degree in engineering to earn a job in radio as a Youngstown, Ohio sportscaster. Sensing the power of the microphone, by the time he snagged a job at Cleveland’s WJW, he made himself an on-air-personality: a Disc Jockey. His self-written job description was to pull in the kids to crave his “Moondog Rock ‘n’ Roll Party.” Wild, fresh, and fanatic, Freed talked, drank, sang and howled, usually right through the records, making him America’s first rock critic. If a song stank on ice, he’s smash it. If a number made him want to dance, kiss, drive or cavort, he emphasized the effect.New York City picked up on the R&B hysteria when WINS hired him away fromCleveland in 1954. Once in the heart of the land of the free, he added promotions to his repertoire, getting white and black kids together to see and hear both white and black groups. Met with resistance, he used the racism of the audience’s parents to propel his own enthusiasm. By the time he hopped over to WABC, he was the most popular jock in the nation.
But power needs a pariah. Blacks were serving that function nicely and along came this “Jew Boy” to complicate things. He was an agitator—an outside agitator, one of the first. So they had to stop him.
The pop music power structure went after him for the widely accepted practice of taking bribes for playing certain records, a practice nowadays institutionalized. That same power structure destroyed Freed wile exonerating DJs and TV personalities who stuck to an all-white format. Soon he couldn’t get a job selling shoes. Alcohol began drinking out of him and at the age of forty-two, he was dead.
Somebody else might have played race records to the Patty Duke look-alikes of early Fifties America (the kind that Dick Clark Productions pretends existed with the excretable TV show “American Dreams”). Somebody else might have had the good taste to play the best and laugh at the worst. But who besides Freed would have had the audacity to request a copyright for the term “rock ‘n’ roll”? Who else would have had the faith in himself to dance all over racism and double the occupancy of rock houses, blowing with the band on his own trombone? Unfortunately for Alan Freed, he had the bad luck of being a genuine threat. The power structure that benefited from the segregation of the races viewed musical integration as the preamble to miscegenation, a state of affairs no campaign shouting southern diplomat could tolerate. Fortunately for us, that fact is what made Freed a great American. The songs that follow, many of which would never have been heard on pop radio were it not for Alan, are the best of the early days of rock ‘n’ roll.


Jerry Lee Lewis. 18 Sun’s Greatest Hits. Rhino. 1984.





    Jerry Lee Lewis rocked harder, if not necessarily better, than any 1950s pop star, including Elvis Presley. He never achieved Presley’s level of celebrity, an intentional industry snubbing, in large part due to his blatant and entirely conscious meshing of Southern Gospel energy with sexual rhythms and especially his welding of Christian imagery onto a wholly pagan philosophy committed to dangerous fun. (It’s amusing that the late 1950s are considered by some to have been such an innocent time. Who even today would have the audacity to transmogrify one of the holiest all of fundamentalist images into such gloriously blasphemous adulation of sexuality? Unless of course “Great Balls of Fire” was just an off the cuff expression, a ridiculous nation in light of the now-famous conversation between Jerry Lee and Sam Phillips that immediately preceded the recording.)"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" (essentially an expanded and pumped up version of Champion Jack Dupree’s "Shake Baby Shake," which itself existed in other forms before Dupree himself stole it), "Great Balls of Fire," "Breathless" and "High School Confidential" were his only rock singles to gain massive exposure, yet nearly everything he recorded between 1956 and 1970 is worth hearing repeatedly. These four songs and the other “lesser” wonders bring the gutter path Lewis typically crawled in directly to the altar. Hard core Louisiana blues rhythms, jumpy piano trills, and a vocalist (no, make thatstylist) who admits with every nuance that he fears the consequences of being an unredeemed sinner while having the absolute time of his life.
As is well known, the other major reason The Killer never achieved Elvis Presley’s level of mass adulation is because word got out that he had married his third cousin and had apparently forgotten to divorce his former wife. This transgression did not affect Lewis’ sales on the country charts, a fact that says a lot about the so-called enlightened rock audience, the so-called barbaric C&W fans, and it even says something about the nature of human beings unable to separate the art from the artist. [i]

Chuck Berry. The Great Twenty-Eight. Chess. 1982.





"Maybellene."
"You Can't Catch Me."
"Roll Over Beethoven."
"Memphis."
"Nadine."
"Johnny B. Goode."
"Bye Bye Johnny."
"School Days."
"Let It Rock."
"Run Run Rudolph."
"No Money Down."
"Promised Land."
"You Never Can Tell."
    Emerging after Elvis Presley cut his first tracks for Sun Records and at the same time that the doo-wop and bird groups were laying down impenetrably rich harmonies, Chuck Berry married teenage parlance to a musical attitude he first envisioned and then created, making him the premier innovator in rock ‘n’ roll.
Chuck was in his thirties when he started drooling on record about sweet sixteen-year-olds, a fact that worked against him when defending himself against charges of immoral conduct. Social acceptability notwithstanding, the truth remains that most of what we call rock would be unimaginable without the Berry guitar licks, most notably the one opening “Johnny B. Goode.” More than anyone else in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chuck Berry evoked the sound, language, rhythm, aspirations and experience of the teenage existence. Whether it was the “coolerator” substituting for the less hip refrigerator, or the idea of rain water actually doing his car’s motor good, Chuck brought home the essence of youth at a time in life when many people had all but forgotten such things.

Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.



"Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"
"I'm Not a Juvenile Delinquent."
"I Promise to Remember."
"The ABC's of Love."
All on Gee Records; all released in 1956.
    Thirteen-year-old Frankie overcame the inbred limitations of mediocre songs and something less than stellar arrangements for his flying tenor like a bird navigating on nothing but thrill and instinct. Such freedom of will and youth shouldn’t suggest any semblance of innocence. By the time “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” was released, Lymon was already established as a well-to-do Harlem pimp, knowledge of which makes the follow-up, “I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent,” moderately hilarious. The group’s third single, “I Promise to Remember,” didn’t quite make it halfway up the Hot 100, a fact no doubt attributable to limited airplay, itself a condition likely related to programmer aversion to images of someone or something named Hooly bopping a cow. For their final round of glory, the boys went back to school to explore the rapture in “The ABCs of Love,” the most titillating recitation the English alphabet has yet received.
With the money from these hits, Lymon took up heroin. One result of this addiction was a voice change. The other was a loss of sparkle. In any case, by age twenty-five, he had died of an overdose.

Fats Domino



"Ain't That a Shame." 1955.
"Blue Monday."1956.
"I'm Walkin'." 1957.
"Whole Lotta Lovin'." 1958.
"I Want to Walk You Home." 1959.
All of these were on Imperial Records.
    With loose-fitting production from Dave Bartholomew, Creole pianist and smiling crooner Fats Domino marveled at himself as he rollicked through these singles. More than sixty Top Forty hits between 1955 and 1964 would drain anyone’s creativity, and a lot of Fats’ material did share a similarity of melody and delivery. But these, among his earliest releases, defy such conventional (if accurate) wisdom, by oscillating overlapping trills with languorous blues numbers.

Link Wray and His Ray Men. "Rumble." Cadence. 1958.





    The very fact of this song’s release is further proof that not all important decisions occur in executive board rooms. Patterning this instrumental classic after The Dells’ “The Stroll,” master guitarist Link Wray sent an acetate to Archie Bleyer of Cadence Records. Bleyer didn’t like the song one bit and offered to throw it out a window and kill an innocent passerby just for the fun of it. Bleyer’s teenage daughter took one listen and screamed, “Wait! Daddy, that’s a hit record!” Since it reminded the Bleyer family of a quickie soundtrack to a musical gang fight, Archie named the song “Rumble.” Everyone from George Harrison to Eddie Van Halen heard a sound that affected their future music.

Elvis Presley. For LP Fans Only. RCA. 1959.



    The only release prior to the mid-1970s to combine some of the best of Elvis’ work with Sam Phillips along with his early recordings for RCA. This album, of course, is a total factory job, meaning the artist had nothing to do with its assembly. But so what? If General Motors was still assembling things this well, they’d have a harder time justifying employee lay-offs.

Wilbert Harrison. Kansas City: The Best of Wilbert Harrison. Aim. 2000.
    If I were leading a four-piece band whose cover songs worked because their simplicity accentuated their enthusiasm, at least half the songs on this album would end up on our band’s play list. And proudly so. “Kansas City,” which started out as something called “K.C. Loving,” becomes a hog hoot happening here, frenetic fast fun passing in the right hand lane. More than a decade after releasing this, this wannabe calypso singer trudged back and slapped out a jug of "Let's Stay Together," a song that’s been covered by everybody from Canned Heat to Bryan Ferry, making me wonder if the test of great songwriting is the inability of others to ruin it with their own renditions. The rest of these songs are covers (and good ones, such as "Stagger Lee,"” “C.C. Rider,” and “Blue Monday”), plus a slew of originals that may not be quite up to the standards of Harrison’s two hits, but are still a thrill a second.

Little Richard. Grooviest Seventeen Original Hits. Specialty. 1959.



    Richard Penniman is one of those fathers of rock ‘n’ roll (like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry) who justified the early charges that “the Negro sound and the Negro feel” of what had suddenly become a new music was sex to a sweaty beat. In "Lucille," he asked why his honey didn’t do her sister’s will. In "Good Golly Miss Molly," he charged that the object of his affections sure like to ball. In "Tutti Fruiti," he uttered a sound that came as close as any to replicating the power of orgasm: a wop bop a lu bop a wop bam boom! In "Rip It Up," he bragged about being a fool who never even tries to save any money. In "Slippin' and Slidin'," he came on like a teenage peeping tom. Meanwhile, this pompadour-sporting black man pounded his piano deeper and deeper and Lee Allen’s sax bleated and groaned. Listening to the commotion either made you want to dance or romance and sometimes that was the same thing.
   Of course, Penniman couldn’t maintain that energy forever, so he became a preacher and claimed he’d been a homosexual. For a while he stopped playing rock ‘n’ roll, but thankfully he came back, though not as well as before. After a few decades on the oldies circuit, he acted in the film Pickle. This does not prove (or even demonstrate) that rock is a young person’s game. It does suggest that the best of it often comes charging out of the gate so fast that no one can keep up such a manic pace forever. And that’s exactly why this album is so essential.

Carl Perkins. Original Sun Greatest Hits. Rhino. 1986.
    Elvis Presley was a hillbilly. Carl Perkins was a hick. All hicks are hillbillies, but the opposite is not always true. A hick is a hillbilly who gently rubs your nose in the obvious fact that his true culture is proudly different from ours and—sad to say—chances are we wouldn’t fit in. That’s why in "Honey Don't," when Carl sings “You got that sand all over your feet,” we wonder about the source of the sand. If we were true hicks ourselves, we would understand that the important thing is that it got there, not where it came from. Perkins was such a hick that when he wrote the lyrics to one of his more popular songs, he scribbled them on an empty potato bag and spelled the middle word S-W-A-E-D. In America, the song became a novelty without becoming a novelty song. The novel nature was in the difference. The stilted pauses between the opening count-off were unique. The use of the word “cat” (in the sense of “bop cat”) was downright rowdy. And the notion of a man vainly obsessing about his toe togs was kind of funny. It was so funny that it became one of the most widely covered tunes of the 1950s. Pee Wee King, Boyd Bennett, Bob Roubian, Lawrence Welk (!), Roy Hall, Sam Taylor and Jim Lowe all cut versions, as did RCA’s biggest star. Elvis performed the song on three different televised appearances. Carl was injured in a car wreck on his way to play Perry Como’s TV show. Without national visual exposure, Perkins failed to catch on.
    Clearly, the very arrogance of the man’s overt hickness should have permanently endeared him to the in-group mentality of 1950s youth. Denied that visual medium, Carl had to bow to Presley. Still, Sam Phillips did release seven singles bearing the Perkins name. Although none of the others charted as significantly as "Blue Suede Shoes," some people were listening. I only wish The Beatles would have covered "Dixie Fried." The song stomps all over hell about a bar that stays open all night and features guys swinging razors and women high on dark beer. If John Lennon had sung this, The Beatles would have been banned everywhere and people would have thought the Rolling Stones were sissies.

The Isley Brothers. "Shout." RCA. 1959.
    Ronnie Isley and family were one of the wildest early rock ‘n’ roll groups ever to record. “Shout” sounds fairly mild compared to other’s versions of the song, but it took the Isleys to imagine the crazed call and response intensity of the groove. And who but the Isley Brothers would have thought to break the whole thing apart by commanding, “Now way ay ate uh minute! Hold it!” followed by some of the kinkiest dance demands ever on disc?

Gary “U.S.” Bonds. U.S. Bonds Greatest Hits. Legrand. 1963.
"Seven Day Week-End." Legrand.
    “Buy U.S. Bonds” proclaimed the fliers. And for nearly three years the public obeyed. Knowledgeable people disagree about whether Gary Bonds was a major talent, but the way his producer, Frank Guida, multi-tracked the singer’s vocals and flooded the mix with interplanetary instrumental whoops and grunts, the music was indisputably major—major fun! Post-pubescent party time on the path to perpetual twenty-dom, even exploitive bubble busters such as “Twist, Twist Senora” (which was never close to being a hit, greatest or otherwise) possess a certain good-natured charm. Bonds did not menace. He cajoled. While the album contains many essential selections ("New Orleans," "Quarter to Three," “School is Out, School is In,” and “Take Me Back to New Orleans,” among others), it lacks “Seven Day Week-End,” a song that had not been recorded at the time of the LP’s release. Happily it does contain the finest southern-style party record of the 1950s, just a few notches above Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” with which “New Orleans” shares some small resemblance.

Chuck Willis. I Remember Chuck Willis. Atlantic. 1963.
Chuck Willis was yet another underutilized talent that it took the genius of the Atlantic Records organization to fully develop. From his first hit for the label, "It's Too Late," to his last, “Keep a-Drivin’,” Willis forged his sound with upbeat ballads that blended country music with soul. In fact, it was his attitude that was the real rock ‘n’ roll here. And during his Atlantic recording career (1956-1958), it was not macho demonstrative burliness that connected. It was the courage to exalt in his own frailties. Of course, it helped that his voice had the protein of sirloin.

Bo Diddley. Beach Party. Checker. 1963.
    His shave and a haircut beat, rough guitar licks, deranged vocals and by turns lecherous and hilarious lyrics bubble out against a self-generated thump which collectively grind out the stuff of teenage legends.
    Diddley’s real name was either Ellas Bates, Ellis McDaniel, Ellas McDaniel, or possibly Elias McDaniel. He was born in Mississippi to a family of sharecroppers who moved stakes to Chicago. There Elias hooked up with label mogul Leonard Chess and recorded hundreds of albums. Beach Party was his best: a live recording on the beach in South Carolina. That a state as inherently reactionary as SoCar would host such inherently liberating music jars the senses nearly as much as the bulldog grunt vocals, shake-and-bake maracas (courtesy of Jerome Green) and bike chain guitar slashes that lacerate even the thickest bigotry. His rectangular guitar always erring on the side of slight distortion, his vocals ringing like cleaned-up Muddy Waters, the presence, style and sound strongly influenced British Invasion bands, notably The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and particularly The Animals, whose minor hit, “The Story of Bo Diddley,” is a fascinating and mostly accurate history of rock ‘n’ roll.
    It may interest some to know that according to other album titles, Bo was a lover, a twister, a lumberjack, a gunslinger and a surfer. Here he was on fire.

[i] The author owns a tape of a Jerry Lee Lewis performance on the 1960s English pop music TV show, “Ready Steady Go.” The program was recorded around the time the Beatles hit it big and so everyone in England knew Jerry Lee’s hard luck story by then. He came out on the stage banging the opening bars to “Shakin’” and the crowd froze. The sound was so loud the crowd cannot be heard and the music is horribly distorted. But that was not why the audience was so wide-eyed and paralyzed. Jerry Lee tired of sitting at the piano, so he kicked the stool aside with a swipe of his leg, leaned into the keyboards, his long blond hair hanging down his face in sweaty streams, his Adam’s apple stroking up and down. He snapped his head back and let them have it: “Whose barn? What barn? My barn, baby!” The sound is pure snarl. He isn’t happy singing this old hit to a bunch of juvenile Brits. He climbs up and shakes his ass in the air. Leaping off the top, he screams and his fingers yank at the keys and he comes back for another round. The crowd is overcome by the heat. Bam! The show is over. Lewis sneers at the camera.

THE PLAYLIST 6: GOSPEL



Chapter Six: Gospel
    Gospel music is different from Contemporary Christian music. The former cares nothing for anything remotely contemporary. Gospel’s intent is not to convert anyone. It strives (and generates its enormous power through its ability) to unite those already committed. The music is imagistic. The singers relate through the decidedly New Testament use of parables. And the star of each group is Jesus Christ rather than, say, Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Curtis Mayfield, or Roger McGuinn. The singers make it clear through the constricted mania of their performance that they are merely a river through which a Greater One’s message flows. Perhaps the greatest distinction between Gospel and Contemporary Christian music is that the latter could never have evolved into soul.
   I should add that no one is going to consider all of these selections to be real Gospel music. I'm going more here for tone and feeling than literal sensation. Call it symbolic, if that makes it easier.

The Byrds. Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Columbia. 1968.





    Sweetheart of the Rodeo explores and comforts our own darkest recesses through spirituality. The relatively meager sales this recording garnered following its initial release were thought to be due to its country flavor. Nonsense. Both country and rock audiences avoided this album because its texture, rhythms and pacing echoed the essence of a harmonious relationship between God and man. Gospel enthusiasms wander purposefully throughout each song. At one end of this harmony, the version of William Bell’s soul classic "You Don't Miss Your Water" is stripped of any scent of humanism so effectively that soul music’s girth increases just by the first inhalation after the song closes. At the other end, Woody Guthrie’s "Pretty Boy Floyd" becomes a hymn without being reworked at all.

The Dixie Hummingbirds. The Best of the Dixie Hummingbirds. Peacock.





"Christian Automobile."
"Standing by the Bedside of a Neighbor."
"Loves Me Like a Rock."

The Golden Gate Quartet. Thirty-Five Historic Recordings. RCA. 1977.





"Mockingbird."
"Swing Down Low."
"Hush."
"The General Jumped at Dawn."

Mahalia Jackson. The Best of Mahalia Jackson. Kenwood.
1911-1972. Kenwood. 1972.





"Trouble of the World."
"Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho."
"Summertime/Motherless Child."
"Didn't It Rain?"
"You'll Never Walk Alone."


Elvis Presley. His Hand in Mine. RCA. 1961.
How Great Thou Art. RCA. 1967.
He Touched Me. RCA. 1972.


Stanley Brothers. Sixteen Greatest Gospel Hits. Gusto. 1978.





"Rank Strangers."
"It Takes a Worried Man."
"Man of Constant Sorrow."
"Over in the Glory Land."
"Jacob's Vision."
"If I Lose."

The Supreme Angels. Supreme. Nashboro. 1972.
"The Last Days."
"Over Yonder."



Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The Best of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Savoy. 1979.
"Up Above My Head."
"Down by the Riverside."
"Strange Things Happening Every Day."




The Ward Singers. The Best of the Famous Ward Singers of Philadelphia,Pennsylvania. Savoy. 1978.
"Surely God is Able."
"This Little Light of Mine."
"Oh Lord What a Time."




The Impressions. Impressions Sixteen Greatest Hits. ABC. 1971.



   This is the group that put both Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler on the map.Butler left just as The Impressions were finding their sound, as his solo recording of "For Your Precious Love" amply demonstrates. And yet his departure served its purpose. With Mayfield at the controls, The Impressions turned out some of the most gently searing soul performances of the 1960s. "We're a Winner," "Amen,""This is My Country" and "People Get Ready" all have a social activist ring and yet work on both the political and emotional level. Fred Cash and Sam Gooden blended essential back-up, but Mayfield suspected his own talent might range beyond the instamatic hit single and so joined the ranks of the insinuating paranoiacs, a luscious time in pop that saw black music at its most powerful and intimidating. His soundtrack for the black exploitation film (as such things were libeled in the early 1970s) Superfly, rings righteously.

Coven. "One Tin Soldier." Warner Bros. 1971.



    It is moderately amusing that this theme from the motion picture Billy Jack was by a band that never again sounded anything like this and certainly never again sounded this good. “One Tin Soldier” is all about innocence and discovering the spiritual value of existence in the face of imminent destruction. Coven, lead by singer Jinx Dawson, was more at home playing heavy metal odes to Lucifer. This was a real life bunch of Satanists (although they called themselves wicken) whose first album was called Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Saves Souls, which offered up such tasty morsels as “White Witch of Rose Hall,” “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge,” “Pact with Lucifer,” and a thirteen minute opus called “Satanic Mass.” None of them liked the Billy Jack song at all. But at a time when a lot of hippie-dippy peace&love music sounded cynical, “One Tin Soldier” struck true. In between verses that tell a rather quaint yet ironic story about an all too common slaughter of innocents, Dawson defies the mighty valley dwellers to hate their neighbors and cheat their friends since their hypocrisy isn’t likely to be met with much tolerance come Judgment Day. The perfect mood piece for the film it introduced, it is also a scathing argument against warmongers, past and future.

Ocean. "Put Your Hand in the Hand." Kama Sutra. 1971.



    The very early 1970s were the peak time of Jesus Rock, an aberration which in retrospect did The Kid very little justice. The Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar, the Godspell soundtrack, Norman Greenbaum’s single "Spirit in the Sky," and (even though it was much more Krishna-conscious than Jesus-inspired) George Harrison’s "My Sweet Lord": all these and others happily unrecalled were intended to either introduce concepts such as free love into Christianity or to disenfranchise the more radical elements of pop culture. In other words, there was not a lot of sincerity going around and there certainly was not a preponderance of great music. “Put Your Hand in the Hand” may not be great, but its Beatles-inflected drum pattern and Melanie-sound-alike vocal was at least inoffensive. Besides, the lyric about the time Jesus cleared the temple—and why—was a strong assault on all levels of cynicism.

Sweathog. "Hallelujah." CBS. 1971.



    Back in 1971, almost any white group with religious pretensions could capitalize on the already highly commercialized Jesus Movement. Sweathog was no exception, except that they played with more conviction than any of the other so-called converts, a fact in no way diminished by the knowledge that Sweathog aspired toward being the ultimate loud-ass party band. The group’s complete lack of cosmic ambitions and their jubilant, infectious enthusiasm makes this song a lot less self-righteous and a bit more humane than others whose aims were presumed to be more honorable. “Hallelujah” also rocked to the sky and back.

Sam Cooke. Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers. Specialty. 1991.
The Gospel Soul of Sam Cooke. Specialty. 1976.



    Sam Cooke influenced more second and third generation rockers than any other singer—period. Otis Redding, Arthur Conley, Rod Stewart, John Lennon and Graham Parker are only a few of his most ardent supporters and insightful disciples. With the Soul Stirrers, Cooke was the most moving male Gospel singer ever recorded and more penetrating because he was still a teenager. The thrill of those eager young girls in the audience shifting and bouncing in their seats as he sang"Were You There When They Crucified the Lord?" was more than the singer could bear and so he hooked up with RCA’s Hugo and Luigi, a pair of white A&R guys who doubtlessly cared about him but who frequently exercised bad judgment in material selection. Cooke himself was often the best judge of what would have lasting appeal. And while it is a good idea to stay away from anything he sang with the words “Cha Cha” in the title, his Gospel work on Specialty was among his most effective work. None of this is dispelled by the fact that while in a hotel with some cute young thing he was shot dead by the proprietor who claimed the singer went nuts while wearing nothing but a towel.

THE PLAYLIST 7: One Plane Down, One plane Arriving

Chapter SevenOne Plane Down, One Plane Arriving: Between Buddy and the Beatles
Within a span of eighteen horrible months, Buddy Holly, J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper) and Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash, Chuck Berry was locked away, Jerry Lee Lewis found himself banished from the rock ‘n’ roll airwaves, and Elvis Presley had gone off to serve his country in Germany. The strongest presences in rock were out of commission. Retrospectively, a lot of otherwise intelligent writers claimed that pop music suffered the worst of all artistic declines between 1959and 1964, the latter year being when the Beatles cam over from England to save the day. The reality is quite different. First of all, several posthumous Buddy Holly songs saw release following his death. Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, put the King in the studio the day after receiving the draft notice, thereby insuring a fair quantity of hit singles while the boy was overseas. Admittedly, the absence of the physical presence of these top performers did allow room for unctuous dreck from Pat Boone, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Vee and their ilk. But that absence also made room for new and genuine talents such as the ones whose work follows below.
So what was really going on in the years when misguided media-ists claim rock was dead? Doo-wop came back stronger than ever, Sid Nathan’s Cincinnati-based King Records brought out the first great James Brown hits, early Sun Records acts such as Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Roy Orbison pressed massive smashes, strong yet sensitive songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant put glorious tunes in the mouths of the Everly Brothers, Motown shot out its first pop hits, Phil Spector’s Philles label crafted “little symphonies for kids,” girl groups came out of heaven (except the Shangri-Las, who came from darker quarters), New Orleans artists influenced by Professor Longhair and Meade Lux Meaux blended barrelhouse with boogie, and thousands of one-hit miracle acts made their mark and faded—all this at a time when rock ‘n’ roll presumably flat lined. Th irony of such an assertion is not merely the preponderance of evidence to the contrary. These massive “exceptions” to the Rock Died Theory were the very songs and styles that inspired a then-struggling Liverpool combo that would one day become The Beatles.

Elvis Presley. Elvis’ Golden Records, Volume 3. RCA. 1963.
    Harlan Ellison is perhaps best known for his short stories, essays, and screenplays. But in the early 1960s he wrote a novel called Spider Kiss, a tale about a young rural singer and guitarist who transformed into Stag Preston. While the novel makes no attempt to mirror Elvis Presley’s career (and Ellison has even stated that the main character comes closer to Jerry Lee Lewis), the writer lets the reader feel the complexities in Stag and in the other characters who converge to make and destroy the performer. Those details and the storyline itself make that novel one of the very few excellent literary treatments of the rock ‘n’ roll experience. This album, Elvis’ Golden Records, Volume 3, reveals many of those same personal nuances. As the third of five Best Ofs RCA released in Elvis’ lifetime, this volume charms with its magnitude of sophistication. While "It's Now or Never"presages the big band gloss of Las Vegas days yet to come, "Stuck on You" gyrates like a dreidel jammed with jumping beans. "Marie's the Name His Latest Flame" flip kicks the beat the way a good movie song should (and all too rarely did) and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" stops every motion in the room as it just stands there, alone, dying. Perhaps in an unconscious effort to avoid the fate that awaited the fictional Stag Preston, Elvis had, by the time of the album’s release, cloistered himself away in Hollywood, making embarrassingly bad movies that people went to see anyway because they wanted to believe that this time he would give something other than lame tunes punctuated by moderately competent acting. That did not come about. But this album nearly excused the celluloid atrocities. Hubba, swagger, plea, moan, yearn, seduce, envy, coerce, tenderize, melt, fathom and inflame: this is an album of psychological and physical verbs that lets us feel the complex experience of Elvis Presley in action.


Duane Eddy. "Rebel Rouser." Jamie. 1958.
This competent guitarist used to record inside an empty water tank to give his songs that famous twang. “Rebel Rouser,” his first major hit, deserved to be as big as it was because hearing it—especially late at night—could provoke chills. Eddy moved to Hollywood soon after. There he became to instrumentals what Elvis became to motion pictures.


Everly Brothers. The Everly Brothers’ Best. Cadence. 1959.
    By today’s standards, the songs of Phil and Don Everly were brief. Not one of the songs on this album runs longer than 2:45. And that fact is a core facet of their success. Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, who wrote most of these treasures, constructed them exactly that way: short, sweet and simple, which, in the proper hands, becomes endless, rich and multi-dimensional. Accompanied by little more than guitar, bass and shuffling drums, the Everly Brothers sang with a country sensibility, meaning that concepts such as staying out too late, devotion and dejection were expressed as an understood, nearly a priori, state of the normal human condition. Losing love was about far more than the loss of the object of desire. It was a loss of a piece of the loser himself. It is, ultimately, narcissism, a fact proved by the one Bryant hit that’s missing here, “Love Hurts.”"Love Hurts." None of that may matter, since in keeping with those country sensibilities, these songs retain their remarkable power in getting others to sing along. The next time you find yourself doing so, you may want to consider whether it is the loss or the losing of which the Everly Brothers sing.


Bobby Darin. "Dream Lover." Atco. 1959.
    It is funny how when many people think of Bobby Darin they think of "Mack the Knife," one of the most overrated songs of all time, a charge supported by the fact that I’ll bet half the people who claim to love that song can’t recall any other line than “Well th shark bites with his teeth, dear.” “Dream Lover” was Darin’s real classic and yet it was because he stuck with such low tempo tunes that his career throughout the 1960s never quite lived up to the success he had with this gem.


Lloyd Price. "Stagger Lee." ABC-Paramount. 1959.
“The night was claire/And the moon was yellow/And the leaves came tumbling down.” So begins Lloyd Price’s version of the tale of Stagger Lee and Billy, two gamblers who have been the subjects of demonic folklore from as far back as 1896. Anyone nervous about violence in black music today could trace one supreme source right back to Price’s rendition. The incongruity between the arrangement (baritone saxophone and jumpy, merry New Orleans pumping piano) and the details of the slaughter Stagger Lee commits against Billy is simultaneously glorious and obscene. Billy, who may or may not have cheated at the crap game, begs for his life: “Stagger Lee, cried Billy/Oh, please don’t take my life/I got three little children/And a very sickly wife.” Switching roles as effortlessly as a killer switches weapons, Price shows us Stagger shooting right through the other gambler as the band swaggers on and stomps as if the story was about catching the A-Train down toMagnolia Street. This consciously cavalier approach could draw you in and have you singing along so hard you wouldn’t care what the song was about, further solidifying its connection with the more melodic samples of gangster rap. [i] [ii]


Chan Romero. "Hippy Hippy Shake." Del Fi. 1959.
    Chan Romero, the best of the post-Ritchie Valens Chicano rockers, owes his legend to this crazed chant dance hit. The song climbs through an undefined series of minor build-ups with Romero waiting at the top to dive off with his head shaking like a charged up Pentecostal in a room full of rattlesnakes. Back when there were fiveBeatles, “Hippy Hippy Shake” rocked the walls at The Cavern Club. Brought toEngland from America by adventurous ship captains, most Liverpool groups (or at least Mersey groups) covered this song. One could lay this tune down alongside the Beatles’ first album and instantly recognize the influence.


Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. "Stay." Herald. 1960.
"May I?" Deesu. 1962.
    Two pleas for what the singer wants, pleas from a man whose desperation is only matched by the trembling excitement in the voice (and other regions, one suspects) of Maurice Williams. “Come-on come-on come-on Stay! Whoop la-dee-dah!” and the girl is convinced.


Billy Bland. "Let the Little Girl Dance." Old Town. 1960.
It is hard to say which is better: the wide-open vocals that sound so much like Jackie Wilson or the intricate and clever guitar work of Mickey Baker. The only thing that might be even better would be to get a glimpse of the “little girl” Bland is so obsessed with freeing from the cordoned off sections of the dance floor.


The Halos. "Nag." 7 Arts. 1961.
   Arthur Crier led this Bronx foursome through the ideal song for couples in the throes of antagonism. Against a backdrop of harmonic commentary and gruesome female sound effects, Crier compares how nice things were in the beginning and how rotten they are now. “When I met you, you were oh so sweet/Now you give me the bread and take all the meat.” This is just a couple notches above Ernie K-Doe on the anti-domestic bliss meter, although, as Joan Jett proved in her own version of “Nag,” even disharmony can be a great occasion for a party if you have a song this fine to accompany it.


Curtis Lee. "Pretty Little Angel Eyes." LeDunes. 1961.
Lee was a Yuma, Arizona native who hooked up with producer Phil Spector to record this ode to vocal hysterics, with backing lunacy courtesy of the aforementioned Halos.


Rosie and the Originals. "Angel Eyes." Highland. 1961.
   Recording in a barn on the outskirts of San Diego, Rosie Hamlin and her nearly anonymous bassist, drummer and piano player made beautiful distinctions between purity and innocence. The musicians competently waltz through the song in a style that’s anything but “original.” Rosie’s voice is the real instrument: it’s so thin, you’re sure that by the time she reaches those unutterably high “oo-uh-oohs” it’ll shatter in the wind. Of course, it doesn’t. Instead, as it dips down ever so slightly, the angel of her affections draws near and the singer’s heart isn’t the only one to skip a beat.


Rick Nelson. Rick is 21. Imperial. 1961.
    Most people—even most recording stars—don’t get to celebrate their twenty-first birthdays with an album. Rick Nelson managed an exception no doubt because he was by this point in his career trying desperately to shed the schoolboy image cultivated on his parents’ TV show, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” Problem solved. While his voice had never cracked and popped like that of many adolescents, by his twenty-first year he effortlessly slipped into a rich (but never crooning) baritone that belied the occasional teeny bopping tunes that paid the bills. For twelve highly commercial pop songs, these bespeak a man on the verge of crossing over either as a young Frank Sinatra or a wizened (and living) Buddy Holly. His tragedy is that the fans never kept up with his attempted evolution, a fact that explains the impetus of his later recording, "Garden Party."


Barbara George. "I Know." AFO. 1961.
The New Orleans-style piano intro sounds over-rehearsed and the drummer surely hadn’t been playing his instrument for more than a few days. But right smack in the middle, Melvin Lastie smoothes over the rough edges with a lilting cornet solo, accentuating the middle-aged wisdom of the nineteen-year-old who sang “I Know” as if she actually did. He record company (All For One) was a co-op intended to help the musicians get paid what they were worth. It’s too bad no one there motivated George to recapture this song’s nervous certainty on any follow-up singles. Then again, if she really did receive her due, those royalty checks would still be coming in.


Bruce Channel. "Hey! Baby." Smash. 1962.
From Delbert McClinton’s country-beatnik harmonica stroll to the two-step shuffle rhythms and right on through an attempt at stifling a charming Texas drawl, this song is among the best living arguments against the foolish idea that rock ever died.


Dion. Runaround Sue. Laurie. 1962.
    Dion DiMucci may not hold a position beside the Kings and Queens of rock ‘n’ roll, but he sure does belong in the court. With the Belmonts he recorded some fine Italian doo-wop ("I Wonder Why," "Teenager in Love"), but on his own he developed a personal R&B sound: charming, boastful, and righteous. He was smooth as gritty shoe polish. "Runaround Sue" and "The Wanderer" were the hits from this LP, but everything here works well, from the cover of Bobby Darin’s"Dream Lover" (which sounds as if it was written for Dion) and Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City” to the smoother blues of “In the Still of the Night” and "Little Star." It was more common than not for performers to fill out their albums with cover versions, most of which were typically lame, hastily recorded, and expectant of some small capitalizing on the perceived similarity. I don’t know if the A&R folks were on holiday or if the producer suddenly gave a damn, or if Dion simply decided he had the clout to pull it off. Whatever the cause, the result was excellence only marred by trying to sound like Bobby Vinton on “Take Good Care of My Baby.”



Dion. Lovers Who Wander. Laurie. 1962.
Dion wrote or co-wrote five of these twelve songs, four of which appeared as singles over the span of 1962. "Lovers Who Wander," “Little Diane,” “Sandy” and most especially “Born to Cry” were all twice as soulful and infinitely more pained and expressive than his macho hits, clearly deserving to be played in every home inAmerica. Alas, record promoters had less confidence in these songs than you or I. But for God’s sake, any album that has Dion’s version of the "Stagger Lee" tale has to be worth pushing! The only real blemish on an otherwise excellent recording is his version of “King without a Queen.”


The Volumes. "I Love You." Chex. 1962.
    That crazed DEE-troit groove and not a chair in sight. While a trashier sounding song never hit the charts, singers Teenie Davis and Eddie Union collide their very souls against the railing the backing singers devised, filling the sky with whipsaw boomerangs in the hardest fought competition for the role of lead singer ever recorded.


The Rivingtons. "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow." Liberty. 1962.
"The Bird's the Word." Liberty. 1963.
Al Frazier, Carl White, Turner Wilson and John Harris were originally The Sharps (that’s them on Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser,” for instance). While you’re still strying to place the name, change your mind and remember them as history would have it. “Funniest sound I ever heard/And I can’t understand a single word” begins the crazy classic “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow.” Both these songs were combined and swiped by the Trashmen and re-done as “Surfin’ Bird.” While the Trashmen were deranged and indecipherable (their ultimate glory), The Rivingtons finessed their way through divine insanity.



Little Eva. "The Loco-Motion" & "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby." Dimension. 1962.
Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s children’s babysitter had a way with a Goffin/King song, as anyone who has ever heard one of these can attest. I maintain that the opening drone of “Loco-Motion” qualifies as the first heavy metal song, years before anyone ever thought about calling a band Led Zeppelin. That opening drone was really just a signifying hook to introduce one of the all-time catchiest dance tunes: you just put your hands on the hips of the person in front of you, wiggle your ass and make a train. “There’s never been a dance that’s so easy to do/It’ll even make you happy when you’re feeling blue.” Truer words were never spoken.
   Eva Narcissus Boyd auditioned for a singing role with The Cookies, a backing group used by producer Don Kirshner. Carole and Gerry were looking for a singing babysitter. Eva passed the audition when the two songwriters caught Eva doing a strange engineer conductor-type dance around the house. They wrote a song about it and even asked the young girl to sing on the demo. Kirshner liked it so much he decided that Dee Dee Sharp, for whom the song had been written, could chomp the big one and released Boyd’s version. King and Goffin followed this success with another. “Keep Your Hands Off My Baby” was twice as soulful and every bit as good as its predecessor. Although Goffin and King continued to write good songs for their houseguest ("Where Do I Go," "Old Smokey Locomotion," “What I Gotta Do” and the masochistic “Please Hurt Me”), her second best phase of material actually came from her duets with Big Dee Irwin, the prime example of which was a cover of the standard "Swinging on a Star."
By 1988, Eva was working as a cook in a soul-food restaurant in North Carolina. Her total take from recorded outputs had been only $30,000.


Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford. "I Need Your Loving." Fire. 1962.
   Don Gardner’s yearning moans introducing and punctuating this duo’s only hit sound like the ultimate in anticipated ecstasy. Dee Dee Ford’s singing supplies the perfect justification for such desire. The song is really nothing much more thanGardner groaning “Whoa-whoa-a-whoa whoa-a-whoa-ah” and Ford’s guttural response, “I need your loving every day.” But the way each interrupts the other, as if the slightest distraction would ruin the moment, says far more than a grand soliloquy ever could.

The Four Seasons. Anthology. Rhino. 1988.
   Bob Crewe produced and wrote for this Frankie Valli-led quartet and you can feel the ambition he brought to tracks such as “Sherry” (their first hit) and to “Working My Way Back to You” (not their last, but their last great one). Beginning their career in 1956 as The Four Lovers, these guys worked together through the mid-1970s and, until the Beatles came along to America in 1964, Valli, Bob Gaudio, Joe Long and Tommy DeVito were among the few consistent hit-makers of the early 1960s. "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," "Silence is Golden" and"Dawn" were all grand Italian street corner hand clapping finer snapping whistle-alongs which only a case of terminal cool could fail to embrace. Driven by Valli’s unique crooning falsetto, pumped along by the snappiest drumming this side of Hal Blaine, and with harmony by the gritty-slick Seasons, this quartet excelled through their inimitable blend of leather tough musical ambience and boy next door sweetness. Anthology contains their best work. It also holds some worthwhile trivia, such as a Bob Dylan number they recorded under the name The Wonder Who’s. Valli’s solo single “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” is also here, for better or worse. The man’s piercing high notes admittedly don’t cozy up next to everyone. And on numbers such as “Walk Like a Man,” they’re mildly amusing. But what makes or saves most of these tunes is how well the unit worked with Crewe and he with them. The harmonies are always crisp, the drums accentuate but never dominate, and the songwriting is never shallow.
    Crewe would go on to work with the fabulous Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, where he shined, and then off on his own with the Bob Crewe Generation, where he was beyond dull.


Chris Kenner. “Land of 1,000 Dances” and "I Like It Like that." Instant. 1963.
One of the first singles I ever owned was Chris Kenner’s “I Like it Like That, Parts 1 and 2,” on the tiny Instant label. Side one is the song you hear nowadays on some beer commercial geared toward people who grooved when they were kids. Side two was the second part and in its own way was a completely different song. Allen Toussaint’s piano is far more prominent and the lead vocal is missing, pushing the background singers up around your ears, which may make the B-side one of the first dub versions of a popular song. Although “Land of 1,000 Dances” sold more copies, it remains one of those songs that continues to inspire. Wilson Pickett, Cannibal and the Headhunters, the J. Geils Band and Patti Smith have all recorded splendid versions of Kenner’s original.


The Kingsmen. "Louie, Louie." Wand. 1963.
In those rare situations where I find myself in a nightclub surrounded by adventurous young folk and music from the 21st century, I typically slip the DJ a couple bucks to play something I like, if for no other reason than to convert or irritate—it doesn’t matter which. If he can find it, “Louie, Louie” is invariably the song I request. If that DJ played almost anything else from 1963, the outré hip tastes of the throngs would spark apathetic rebellion: people would yawn and no one would dance. But slip “Louie” in amidst the drivel and even the most committed Anthrax freak stops fantasizing about new tattoos long enough to jam out. Why? Probably because it’s a garbled lyric delivered in a deranged manner accompanied by a rhythm section that sounds like a bazooka with a stuttering case of permanent flatulence. The guitar solo captivates so well that even the singer loses his place and comes in for the final verse to early (“me see Jamaica moon,” he begins, then catches himself—there is no “take two”). [iii]


Roy Orbison. All-Time Greatest Hits. Monument. 1972.
   Like any number of strange white southern teenagers in the mid-1950s, Roy Orbison got his professional start at Sun Records. Sam Phillips produced some enjoyable tracks for the youngster: “Rock House,” "Ooby Dooby," “Domino” and “Devil Doll” were the best. But when Orbison’s career failed to go the way of the big time, Roy packed his legendary Ray-Bans off to Monument, where he recorded some of the most intensely paranoid sides ever heard. Loneliness, dreams and terror collide and cannibalize one another in the best Roy Orbison’s music. Some may numb it and others may damn it, but between the thick lines and sotto voce dum-dee-doo-wahs of "Only the Lonely," the singer admits the paralyzing pain that shatters each of us. Accordingly, some take the kick in the chest more often than others. For them, such songs may provide the ultimate solace. The recovery is short-lived, however. Within a year, Orbison returned with "Crying," a one-man opera with the Orb playing the role like a man aging in fast forward. The orchestra pit is just as busy as the singer, with marimba, guitar, tympani, and strings howling like trumpets while the possessed chorus dips and swells.
   Orbison permitted no pause in the psychological pugilistics. In "Blue Bayou," his spurning of the weight of pain is a simultaneous prayer to the gods of inevitability. Having once known, or more likely, having once imagined, a time when he could perceive his lover’s tenderness and bask in the warmth of friendship, Roy is on both knees begging the future to let him back in. Before a decision is rendered, “In Dreams,” intentionally or not, leads one to consider not only the pleasure the singer experiences having the love of his life perfectly situated for every occasion, but also to wonder whether this might constitute servitude for the object of his desire.
    No such quandary pervades the final big hit, "Oh, Pretty Woman," a song filled with stairstep bass and marching snare which together out-value the stylistic degenerations of either Mr. Gere’s or Ms. Roberts’ semi-theatrics in the horrid movie that borrowed two-thirds of this song’s title. Once Orbison’s operatic growl enters the picture, the only image worth retaining is that of one’s own temporarily idealized wonder approaching with determination.
The beauty of the songs in this collection lies in the perfect interplay of bass and drums, and even more so in the decidedly peculiar attitude Orbison touts. He struggles to control the situation in nearly every scenario he relates and yet laughs at himself or at anyone foolish enough to take him up on his offer of eternal love. That must be why the idea of Roy Orbison’s death continues to shatter. A rock ‘n’ roller on the surface, vulnerable just beneath, and below it all strong enough to stare hard realities in the eye, at least until you actually say all that, and then the layers realign themselves. If it is true that the thicker the armor the more fragile the man wearing it, then it must require some deeper strength to carry all that armor. With the lights out, the world pushed away, and just the glow of neon stars flashing through the windows, the truth of the singer’s voice takes hold. The tension is electric. Breath is held. Sparks erupt. And we fall—together—back and forward through the darkest and richest dreams ever shared.


Del Shannon. "Runaway." Big Top. 1961.
"Keep Searchin'." Amy. 1964.
"Stranger in Town." Amy. 1965.
“I drink the poison and I feel the pain” (rather than the more socially accepted and correct “tears are falling and I feel the pain”) was for years the way I heard the bridge line in Shannon’s “Runaway,” and while I have since discovered my error, I still prefer my interpretation. My version confirms Shannon as rock’s ultimate paranoiac. In each of these songs (and in most of his nonhits, as well) ol’ Del’s the prototype of the outsider, someone driven away against his will and against his desire to have that specific woman denied him by others. The woman never rejects him—it’s society that imposes itself between the female and himself. To have the woman out-and-out reject him might open the ultimate paranoiac to charges of homosexuality, a state of affairs as potentially helpful to Shannon’s career as intermarriage was to that of Jerry Lee Lewis. Meanwhile, “Keep Searchin’” and “Stranger in Town” both imbue a pop innocence to the more adult notion of chasing frustrated dreams well into the afterlife. Perhaps dread is its own reward.
It is entirely possible, as some have argued, that I am reading far too much into what are, after all, pop songs, and further, that my evident fascination with the psychology of the singer is (a) secondhand, at best, and (b) irrelevant because the songs continue to appeal to people who have not given the personality of people such as Del Shannon any thought in decades, if ever. That is a good argument. Maybe all these side trips are just trivia and I should leave psychoanalysis to Karen Horney. All I can say in my defense—and this does come up from time to time—is that certain performers (and especially certain male performers in the pre-Beatles U.S.) were so eloquent in their on-disc autobiography (authentic or fictitious, as if it mattered), that they deliberately blurred the distinctions between singer and song. One might as well try to separate the fact of Frank Sinatra being a quick-tempered saloon brawler from the indelible emotional imprints he leaves on listeners—part of what makes one aspect of his personality so pronounced is what also factors into his ample humanitas, from which we thirstily drink. And so when I claim paranoia for the likes of Roy Orbison or Del Shannon, I don’t care at all whether that statement is specifically accurate. All I know is that their music makes the statement true in the context of their art. Further, deponent sayeth not.


The Trashmen. "Surfin' Bird." Garrett. 1963.
The Trashmen were a few Minnesota wild boys who loved the sound of The Rivingtons’ “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” and “The Bird’s the Word,” indeed, two fine examples of nonsensical delight. The Trashmen rammed the two songs together, acquired some semblance of instruments, applied practically no skill at all and throat-banged the two songs into one called “Surfin’ Bird,” one of the greatest reasons ever heard for not committing suicide. It was, attorneys believed, a very good reason for a lawsuit against copyright infringement, however.


Lesley Gore. “It’s My Party.” Mercury. 1963.
“You Don’t Own Me.” Mercury. 1964.
What with all the emphasis on the role of the producer as auteur over the works of presumably anonymous female singers, it may come as a surprise to learn that the esteemed Quincy Jones (who produced among the best tracks for Michael Jackson, Anita Baker, Peggy Lee, New Order and, of course, Lesley Gore) contributed very little to what is great about these recordings. The gift of all Gore’s recorded output—of which these two are the most diametrically opposed, and the best—is bestowed by the singer’s remarkable manner of conveying the solemnity of each occasion. For instance, in “It’s My Party,” her boyfriend disappears behind the clubhouse to play hide the snake with another aspiring debutante, and when they return, their faces aglow from the self-satisfaction of mutual conquest, Gore states with the most flat-out exhausted sense of awareness ever conceived: “Oh what a birthday surprise/Judy’s wearing his ring.” She delivers the first of those lines with all the stupefied emotion a kid would bring to a recitation of the multiplication tables. It is only when she comes to the subject of Judy, her lifelong nemesis, does the life return to her vocal.
But “It’s My Party” was only the first in a four-part series of the trials and tribulations of sweet Lesley. To Johnny’s credit, it didn’t take him long to recognize his error in transgressing with the town’s highest class tramp, so he came back to Les and now it was “Judy’s Turn to Cry.” On the rebound, Judy finds another guy the same night, but Lesley vows this new romance will fade because that Judy, “She’s a Fool.” All this awareness led to a raised consciousness for young Ms. Gore who, though she took Johnny back after his allocution, warns him, “You Don’t Own Me,” the earliest case of proto-feminism in rock music and a musical attitude which made the relatively innocent tough-guy posturing of Joan Jett all the more believable. When, toward the song’s end, Lesley shouts, “I’m young and I love to be young/I’m free and I love to be free,” she declares a liberation that no armed conflict could ever approximate.


Lonnie Mack. “Memphis.” Fraternity. 1963.
Cincinnati’s Lonnie McIntosh had a pair of fine instrumental hits in 1963, first with this rollicking version of the Chuck Berry classic. He followed this with the less impressive “Wham!” The Gibson V guitarist also played bass on The Doors’ version of “Roadhouse Blues.”

Rockin’ Rebels. "Wild Weekend." Swan. 1963.
Two Buffalo, New York, disc jockeys wrote a theme song (words included) for their local radio show. While appearing at a local station promotion, a high school band known to no one as The Rebels asked if they could play an instrumental version of the tune. The DJs didn’t care. Four years and some small name changes later, the band took the song to become a massive hit for the Rockin’ Rebels. And no wonder! The stairstep guitar trades off with powder puff sax blasts, and both are accentuated with the cackiest drums ever recorded. The overall effect has warranted some brilliant plagiarism over the years, most noticeably on John Fogerty’s “Rock and Roll Girls” and The Ramones’ “Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?” “Plagiarism” may not even be the right word. After all, amateurs plagiarize. Artists steal.

Surfaris. "Wipe Out." Dot. 1963.
The greatest interplay between drums and guitar on any instrumental rock recording ever made, “Wipe Out” begins with a twisted helium laugh that announces the song title, then backs off fast to let the surfers jet through and cones and crests, shooting their boards out from under their feet with so much enthusiasm you’d swear that was the point of the ride. That a group of anonymous musicians could conjure such images through their aforementioned interplay alone is justification enough for playing “Wipe Out.”


[i] For the most thorough and fascinating study of the Stagger Lee legend and its continuing effects, check out Greil Marcus’ outstanding Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, Obelisk, 1990, pp 65-95, or my own article, “The Bartender’s Glass.”

[ii] As a DJ at WBOK, one of Lloyd Price’s jobs was to write station-break jingles for the New Orleans radio. One of these eventually became “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy.” After a tour of duty in the armed forces, Lloyd moved to Washington D.C. and looked up old friend Harold Logan, with whom he went on to create the Kent Record Company. KRC leased its masters at ABC-Paramount and the singer’s career took off. His pop success ran from 1957 up until the British Invasion. His worst song was “Personality.” His biggest and best came in early 1959. “Stagger Lee” was no more written by Price and Logan than it was by either Tommy Roe or The Isley Brothers (both of whom had minor hits with their own versions). However, the KRC arrangement was heavily cloaked in the rowdy side of the New Orleans sound, an often unremorseful celebration of all aspects of life, including the violent ones. The fact that the song described the impulsive yet calculating murder of one gambler by another earned the song a banning from many radio stations. Price cleaned up the tale a bit and the inferior remake shot to Number One for four weeks.

[iii] Since the story of The Kingsmen and “Louie, Louie” has been mythologized nearly beyond recognition, let us turn to the remainder of this Seattle quintet’s recorded output. There isn’t much. But even a little can be a blast. Following the success of “Louie, Louie,” the boys copped another cover, this one Barrett Strong’s “Money.” The Kingsmen were not able to maintain the level of vile bile the lyric required (“The best things if life are free/But you can give ’em to the birds and bees”) so the single only mid-charted. Better was a wild song co-authored by lead singer Lynn Easton. “The Jolly Green Giant,” the beast from the TV commercials, was described as big, green and without a woman, which, of course, was what “made him so mean.” In the background we hear the other Kingsmen chanting “green beans, spinach, broccoli” and learn about the Giant’s escapades as he finally finds a woman he can get behind: an Amazon. Although that was the last big hit for the group, they did release a pre-psychedelic gem called “I Must Have Been Dreaming,” which had a hard beat and clear sound despite an incredible fog of fuzz. Appropriately, the group disbanded shortly after, having stuck together for little more than two years.

THE PLAYLIST 8: Beehives, Sequins, and a Dead Boy Named Johnny--The Girl Groups



Chapter Eight Beehives, Sequins, and a Dead Boy Named Johnny: The Girl Groups
The unfortunate tendency is to view the girl groups of the late 1950s and early 1960s as total fabrications of the recording studio, as nothing more or less than inventions of clever and occasionally brilliant producers, as outlines of real singers who earned their only slightly substantial success through ambience, glitz and innuendo rather than on the merits of their performances. In response to such utterances, I can only quote the esteemed Edgar Allan Poe and reply, “It is to laugh.”
Yes, it is true that for many of these girl groups, the producers performed a role that controlled the directions of their songs, their images, and even their careers. Phil Spector, George “Shadow” Morton, and Leiber and Stoller (to name but the most obvious) certainly knew what they wanted and found groups who could deliver. But this fact does nothing to set the girl groups apart from any other pop music sector. George Martin, who produced most of The Beatles’ albums, admits he wanted a hit-making machine from the get-go. Sam Phillips has told infinite biographers that only a few months before stumbling across Elvis Presley, he recognized the importance of finding a “white boy with the Negro sound and the Negro feel.” Aretha Franklin floundered at Columbia Records until she was rediscovered by producer Jerry Wexler and engineer Tom Dowd who took to Atlantic where she became a star. So the significance of the producer in unlocking or even streamlining talent is hardly an anomaly.
    But what about the stereotypes suggested by this chapter’s title? The fashion component is probably more interesting with girl groups than it is with most other genres because the wearers of long sequin gowns and the sporters of bouffant hairdos are typically girls. What is required to be taken seriously depends on what you are doing, of course, but how that is amplified is often just as important. So while the Supremes wore bright sparkling gowns and sang in strictly choreographed arrays, the Shangri-Las slouched mockingly in blouses, vests and tight black jeans. The image matched the message, usually without overwhelming it. The sound, after all, was the real issue, the raison d’etre behind every record purchased. And that sound was nowhere near as innocent as lookers-back often delude themselves. For instance, the Bobbettes quickly evolved from yearning for their high school teacher to severely punishing him for his lack of interest. The Chantels preceded both Carole King and Stevie Nicks in their contemplation of womanhood. And Ronnie Spector’s lead in "Be My Baby" may suggest that her ambitions were naïve, but her methods of persuasion suffered no lack of experience. If anything, many of the girl group songs came on harder than similar attempts by male groups of the time. Mark Dinning, to cite a blatant example of male melodrama, cried about the "Teen Angel"roaming the earth for his one true love, but it wasn’t until Warren Zevon’s "Excitable Boy" that anyone out-ghouled the Shangri-Las’ "Dressed in Black," where the dead boy keeps lurking outside the singer’s window waiting for her to join him. But even focusing on the frequent melodrama risks ignoring the best reason to celebrate the singers in this section. By feminizing (through traditional, showbiz, or butch versions of that word) popular music, they—the singers and musicians in this section—more than any other segment between Buddy and the Beatles—resuscitated, revived and redefined the energy and passion in rock ‘n’ roll.


The Bobbettes. "Mr. Lee." Atlantic. 1957.
Not all early 1950s female vocalizing addressed itself to simple times and getting the boy. Occasionally the songs’ subjects pertained to complex moments and getting the man. One such songs was “Mr. Lee” by these five New York teenagers who sang a doo-wop ode to a hip teacher. The song was to become a model of girl group rock. “Mr. Lee” captured the essence of almost everything that could be thought of as rapturous. There was a deceptive simplicity to the lyrics (“One two three HEY! Look at Mistuh Lee”) which was perfect accompaniment to music that was itself a rocking, romping leap from the staccato boredom of white radio, bringing those forbidden urbanized jungle rhythms from the swelling heart of the inner city right cross smack into the lily white faces behind the drawn and trembling curtains of Cedar Rapids, setting the stage for all that was to follow.[i]



The Chantels. "Maybe." End. 1958.
One of the great girl group numbers from a period of six years there when the more power women had to vocalize, the more liberated their bi-gendered audiences became. It is no wonder. The way lead singer Arlene Smith ululates, “And may-hey-be if I cried every night/You-hoo-hoo’d come back to-woo-hoo me!” The mix of Smith’s vocal, the studio’s ethereal acoustics, and manager Richard Barrett’s piano insists the song was recorded in a cathedral. If “Maybe” had been sung by white debutantes, they would have called it “Perhaps.”



The Shirelles. 16 Greatest Hits. Deluxe. 1988.
"Dedicated to the One I Love."
"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"
"Mama Said."
"Soldier Boy."
"Don't Say Goodnight and Mean Goodbye."
"Boys."
"Baby It's You."
    At the same time that Phil Spector and Berry Gordy were readying their respective stables of female recording artists, all around the USA girl groups matriculated and materialized. One of the most enduring of these was The Shirelles.
In a Broadway building housing the talents that comprised Aldon Music, Gerry Goffin and Carole King blossomed up a song they felt confident was ripe for deflowering. Aldon chief Don Kirshner recognized that the song addressed a heady subject, but he shared his songwriters’ enthusiasm for the work. Thinking the tune could become a vehicle for ersatz crooner Johnny Mathis, Kirshner took a demo to the Artists and Repertoire division of Mathis’ label. But when Columbia Records A&R man Mitch Miller heard the lyrics, his latent anti-rock aneurysm threatened to burst. The host of TV’s “Sing Along with Mitch” vowed his label would never record such trash.
    Meanwhile, four young girlfriends from Passaic, New Jersey, expressed an interest. Led by Shirley Owens, The Shirelles had had minor successes with "I Met Him on a Sunday" and "Tonight's the Night" (both included on 16 Greatest Hits), both on Florence Greenberg’s Tiara label. Greenberg heard the Goffin-King demo and loved it. After a hastily arranged session, The Shirelles recorded “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” A song rejected as trash soared to Number One and stayed on the charts for over four months.
    Anyone with the presence of mind to ask the questions posed by this song doubtlessly already suspects the answers (and is too far gone to resist, in any event). But carried along by Shirley Owens’ voice, the mature naiveté moved with such profound insight that the song threatened to evolve into a women’s liberation anthem. Certainly no one, not even The Chantels, had ever addressed a sexual situation with such candid eloquence. “Tonight with words unspoken/You say that I’m the only one/But will my heart be broken/When the night meets the morning sun?”
    Songs as powerful as that do not land on a manager’s desk everyday, but The Shirelles’ buoyant yet ominous harmonies nevertheless carried a long string of hits on Sceptor Records, a label founded by a classmate’s mother. Rather than merely approximating the raw edges of The “5” Royales’ original, The Shirelles sweetened the mood of “Dedicated to the One I Love,” opening it up to the more accessible (i.e., white) venue of pop radio. “Baby It’s You” perked along a wee bit too fast to be soul music, but the pre-release tension built up between “don’t want nobody” and “baby, it’s you” remains one of the most intense in all popular music.


    The women continued their chart action over the next year-and-a-half with "Big John," “Soldier Boy,” "Welcome Home, Baby" (the latter two about Elvis Presley going to and coming from the Army), "Stop the Music," "Everybody Loves a Lover," "Foolish Little Girl" and “Don’t Say Goodnight.” While there are many such greatest hits packages with The Shirelles’ name on them, the Deluxe set is notable for its lack of sufficient liner notes and the strength of its selection quality.

The Chiffons.
"One Fine Day."
"He's So Fine."
"A Love So Fine."
"Nobody Knows What's Going on in my Mind But Me."
All from 1963; all on Laurie Records.
    Judy Craig, Patricia Bennett, Barbara Lee and Sylvia Peterson were four young girls from the Bronx who wanted success badly enough to sing for it. “He’s So Fine” was so good with its “doo lang doo langs,” who could blame George Harrison for stealing its structure? Of course, the girls got their revenge both in court and by releasing their own version of "My Sweet Lord." Among early 1960s girl groups notproduced by Phil Spector, only The Shangri-Las and Shirelles approximated the majesty of The Chiffons.



The Cookies.
"Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby" and "Chains."
Both on Dimension; both released in 1963.
The Cookies may have lacked the sultry punch of more enduring talent such as The Shirelles (for whom Goffin-King also wrote hits), but Earl-Jean McCrea, Dorothy Jones and Margaret Ross have rarely been eclipsed as backing vocalists who always sound as if they are right up front.



The Jaynetts. "Sally Go Round the Roses." Tuff Records. 1963.
    So little has been written about The Jaynetts that it was all I could do to find out the names of the women in this trio, quartet, or quintet, depending upon whom you ask and when you ask them. My copy of Rhino Records’ The Best of the Girl Groups shows three young women and claims they were from the Bronx. Another source lists four names, being Mary Sue Wells (definitely not that Mary Wells), Ethel Davis, Ada Ray and Yvonne Bushnel. And yet another source adds Johnnie Louise Richardson to the roster of members. All I know for certain is that they formed in 1956 and had to wait seven years for their big hit, one of the spookiest songs ever set to wax. Rolling Stone claims that Buddy Miles handled drums on this song and yet Dave Marsh maintains that Artie Butler played everything except guitar. Aside from the compelling and eerie feel of this instant smash, the other fun is in deciphering what the song might be about. How will the roses tell the girl’s secret? What is the secret? Could it be that not only will she see her baby with another girl, but that he will find out that she’s been down with Other People’s Property herself?




Dixie Cups. "Chapel of Love." Red Bird. 1964.
Because people growing up in the 1980s and 1990s suffered the persecution of enduring every female pubescent gathering from the Girl Scouts to the All-Estrogen Glee Club massacring this simple song, my self-preservation instincts encouraged me to omit it. Happily, it dawned on me that such logic would require the elimination of other outstanding music. Should I strike, for instance, the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” simply because more people recognize the embarrassing rendition by Tom Cruise in the Air Force recruiting film Top Gun? Decidedly not. As far as “Chapel of Love” is concerned, the song’s massive over-exposure and doctrinaire mentality, at the mercy of youth organizers, necessitated its inclusion here. Further, deponeth sayeth not. Onward!
    Songwriters/producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller believed they could circumnavigate the artistic and commercial frustrations endemic to working for other people by forming their own record company. Beginning in 1964, their Red Bird label—and its subsidiary, Blue Cat—caged some of the top girl groups of the era: The Shangri-Las, The Jelly Beans, and The Trade Winds (who were as much a surf as a girl group), and, of course, The Dixie Cups. Leiber and Stoller discovered Barbara Ann and Rosa Lee Hawkins and their friend Joan Marie Johnson shortly after the three New Orleans natives moved to New York City. The only songwriters working in NYC who had the stature of Leiber and Stoller was the team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Producer Phil Spector was considering using a catchy Barry-Greenwich song called “Chapel of Love” as a potential hit single for one of his favorite acts, The Ronettes. Even though Spector’s group did release the song, the version by The Dixie Cups quite properly became the hit. How good was it? In the thick of Beatlemania and the omnipresent British Invasion of 1964, “Chapel of Love” seized the Number One position on all the pop charts—the first song by an American group to do so in 1964. Apparently, the freedom of entrepreneurship failed to outweigh the frustrations. Red Bird folded in 1967.



The Shangri-Las. Myrmidons of Melodrama. RPM. 2002.
"Remember (Walking in the Sand)."
"Leader of the Pack."
"Give Him a great Big Kiss."
"Out in the Streets."
"Give Us Your Blessings."
"I Can Never Go Hone Anymore."
"Sophisticated Boom Boom."
"Bull Dog."
"Past, Present and Future."
    Along with George “Shadow” Morton, the writing team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich built upon the success of Red Bird Records had with The Dixie Cups and made not only the label but also the sound of women on the radio a true force in popular music. Morton gave Red Bird a much-needed shot of muscle with “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” a song he produced for The Shangri-Las. A month later the Queens quartet of sisters Mary Ann and Marge Ganser and sisters Betty and Mary Weiss had a chart topper with the all-time winner of motorcycle melodrama, “Leader of the Pack.” “I met him at the candy store/He turned around and smiled at me/You get the picture?/Yes, we see.” Imbued as the song is with the loud engine roars and terrifying tire screeches, the vocals are what stays in the memory. But that’s only a small part of what this group did. “Past, Present and Future” is narrated by a girl who—according to me—was raped by her boyfriend. She ends the song for the listener wondering if she’ll ever feel the way she did before the betrayal. “I Can Never Go Home Anymore” solidifies the trend for several songs where the parents disapprove of the girl’s relationship, although this is about as sad as a drive-by shooting. “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” is a perky watusi that introduced the word “swak” (as in sealed with a kiss) into the ten lexicon. “Sophisticated Boom Boom” is an amusing evening out on the town with the hip kids dropping in on the older trendsetters. “Bull Dog” sounds like Bob Dylan if he’d been a girl group and a little less hateful. I could go on. But aside from the touching tension of the music (hate the name of the album), the songs glue associations to the memory due to their contribution to and dissemination of the then-growing awareness among young that the consequences of a widening split between generations is a loss of innocence in both camps.



The Three Degrees. "Maybe." Roulette. 1970.
The first time most people saw this group was as the lounge act in the film The French Connection. The first time a few people heard them was on a poorly done earlier cover of a Chantels song. The first time most people heard them was on this single, a tune just as intoxicating as the young ladies looked. While this is the same song The Chantels recorded a decade earlier, the song’s arrangement couldn’t be more different. While the earlier group made it clear that the issue in question was the continued virginity of the singer, The Three Degrees’ song is all about a possible reconciliation with a guy where sex—to understate the matter—is a given. The spoken-word introduction by lead singer Helen Scott is—depending on one’s point of view—either the most hilarious satire of girl-talk ever recorded, or a slightly theatrical outpouring of self-loathing. “You know girls, it’s hard to find a guy thatreally blows your mind. And you just dig everything about him. And when you mess up your good thing you feel like you wanna die.” If The Three Degrees had been nothing more than a sexed-up version of The Supremes, their inclusion here would be a mistake. As it turns out, this capable female trio covered The Chantels’ “Maybe” with some real panache, which is interesting because their producer, Richard Barrett, was also the producer on the original version, as well as on the earlier Chantels’ cover. The first edition of this song’s a bit more convincing because The Chantels sound as if what they “may be” giving up is something a bit more pure, but this is still delicious.



[i] I should point out that The Bobbettes later released a follow-up single called “I Shot Mr. Lee,” which may elucidate what can happen when some young schoolgirls do not get their way. So watch it.




THE PLAYLIST 9: Phil Spector and the Sound of Walls

The Mad Director:
Phil Spector and the Sound of Walls



Had Phil Spector accomplished nothing more than recording The Ronettes singing “Be My Baby,” he would deserve at least one Get Out of Jail Free Card. More than any other producer working in rock, Spector redesigned the sound of contemporary music. By combining the R&B gusto of race records, massively overdubbing orchestrations inspired by classic pop, and reinvigorating (through whatever coercive means he deemed necessary) the talent in front of and behind the microphones, Phil Spector went far beyond the legendary “Wall of Sound” for which he typically receives credit. He described it best when he stated his label Philles released “little symphonies for kids.” There was nothing patronizing in this assessment. No one brings in twenty to thirty of the world’s most accomplished session players to work two days without sleep recording a three minute symphony unless the Mad Director is completely serious about the project.



The Crystals.
"There's No Other Like My Baby." 1961.
"He's Sure the Boy I Love." 1962.
"He's a Rebel." 1962.
"Uptown." 1962.
"Then he Kissed Me." 1963.
"Da Doo Ron Ron." 1963.
All on Philles Records.

By 1960, Phil Spector was hanging around Leiber and Stoller and the other Brill Building writers, producing a few sets and keeping his ears open. Back in 1958, Spector had written, produced and sung on The Teddy Bears’ “To Know Him is to Love Him,” a hit that snagged the Number One spot on the charts. At the age of nineteen he was allowed to produce a few sessions for Atlantic Records. With the money he made there, he created his own record company, Philles. His first group was The Crystals, three seventeen-year-olds and two girls aged sixteen. The first Crystals’ record was “There’s No Other Like My Baby,” written by Spector and a mysterious Leroy Bates, backed with “Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby,” also written by Spector. Barbara Alston sang lead on both sides. The record reached number twenty on Billboard’s charts. The group would make the Top Forty five more times between then and 1963.
One of their songs that did not soar to the top was the Phil Spector-Gerry Goffin-Carole King collaboration, “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss).” Though the music trades were quick to praise its unique lyrics and ballad beat, the disc jockeys and radio station owners were outraged and the record was withdrawn from release. Shortly, Phil bought out his two partners and decided to go it alone.
Singer and songwriter Gene Pitney wrote “He’s a Rebel,” yielding one of the greatest recordings of all time, clearly setting the tone for the anti-macho attitudes of the decade. What had heretofore been seen as weaknesses were now revered as strengths. Beyond the sheer word power was the sound of the record. With Leon Russell on keyboards, Larry Knechtel on bass, Barney Kessel and Glen Campbell on guitars, Sonny Bono on percussion, Steve Douglas on horns, Lou Blackburn on trombone, Hal Blaine on drums, Roy Rogers on Trigger, and stirring it all together was arranger Jack Nitzsche. The product was a great and busy Crystals record—except that none of The Crystals sang lead. That task was awarded to Darlene Love who, Spector reckoned, was more of a professional than Alston, Lala Brooks, Pat Wright or Dee Dee Kennibrew. Whether correct in that assessment—after all, professionalism is tertiary to passion and excitement, and that’s where Darlene Love really shined—the song did become the label’s first Number One.
For that matter, “Uptown” was actually sung by The Blossoms, the Hollywood group Darlene led. She made quite the rounds in those days, singing as The Blossoms, The Crystals, and with Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, as well as with the regular backing singers on TV’s “Shindig.” On “Uptown,” Love and The Blossoms are reliving Spector’s teenage memories better than he might have done so himself, making his work from this to John Lennon’s more militant songs a very short leap.



Darlene Love.
"Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." Philles. 1963.
"A Fine Fine Boy." Philles. 1963.
"Today I Met the Boy I'm Going to Marry." Philles. 1963.
As the frequently uncredited lead vocalist for both The Crystals and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, Darlene Love led a fine solo career, charting with these classics as well as with “Wait ’Til My Bobby Gets Home.” Her very best recorded effort appeared on Phil Spector’s Christmas Album. It was also on the soundtrack for the movie Gremlins, but that should not be held against it.



Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans.
"Zip a Dee Doo Dah" and "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others Hearts." Philles. 1963.
Spector wanted a male singer who sounded like Clyde McPhatter (formerly of the Dominoes and the Drifters). Robert Sheen, aka Bob B. Soxx, came closer than anyone in the producer’s stable. Too bad he only got to do backing dum-dee-dums on these songs. Well, it’s too bad for him, at any rate. Darlene Love made these songs as much as did the producer, singing lead on these, the Blue Jeans’ only two hits. Anyone who can take a stale Disney tune and make it salacious, much less cover a Frankie Lymon number and nearly obliterate memories of the original deserves to be more than the lead singer in a group named for a guy.



The Ronettes. Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica. Philles. 1964.
This album proves that innocence is not a requirement for purity. Nedra Talley, Estelle Bennett and Veronica Spector (nee Bennett) sounded more in love with being in love than any other girl group. Simple lines such as “For every kiss you give me, I’ll give you three” say more about the absolute need of the savage teenage experience than any lyrics ever voiced. The sound effects for"Walking in the Rain," the opening number, set the ambiance quite simply because it is always starting to rain whenever Ronnie sings. "Be My Baby," with Hal Blaine’s divinely inspired drumming (especially the fade-out), is the fullest plea for reciprocity beckoned by mortals. One of the most fun is "The Best Part of Breaking Up," which, swear to God, sounds like the Beach Boys if they had been girls."Baby I Love You" and "Do I Love You" were also both especially fine. The album closer, "Chapel of Love," is so substantially different from the hit version by The Dixie Cups that it becomes a different song altogether. And everything else in between is gorgeosity made flesh. Ronnie’s husband, Phil Spector, may or may not have been projecting his ideas of the perfect relationship here. But he certainly found and refined the perfect sound.



Various Artists. A Christmas Gift to You. Philles. 1963.
With this powerful set on renditions—"White Christmas" (Darlene Love), "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (The Crystals), "Sleigh Ride" (The Ronettes), "Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer"(Crystals), "Winter Wonderland" (Love), and especially "Christmas Baby Please Come Home"(Love)—the only way the title of this album could be more accurate is if it were free.



The Righteous Brothers. Unchained Melody: The Best of the Righteous Brothers. Moonglow. 1965.
This duo’s name sounded like a cross between an African American choir and a street gang and yet their vocals and arrangements made distinctions of race nonexistent. To that extent, the power of their early productions could make you forget your own color. Even though audiences have known that Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield were white as chalk, you sure can’t tell by listening to any of these songs. Their first hit was "Little Latin Lupe Lu." Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, another racially ambiguous group, picked up on th sound and released their own version, the last time anyone would out-righteous these brothers.
Turning themselves over to a teenage millionaire, Medley and Hatfield began a healthy streak of softer, more powerful ballads with Spector’s perfect production. Among the most familiar lyrics on this planet begin “You never close your eyes. . .—an endlessly mature image from a company whose stated goal was to make little symphonies for kids. Indeed, there were symphonic qualities to the local arrangements in "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"(especially when, toward the denouement, Hatfield and Medley trade cries of “baby” across an ever-tightening battlefield), as well as in "Just Once in My Life," "Unchained Melody" (despite its appearance in the bathetic film Ghost) and "Ebb Tide."
By 1966, Bill and Bobby convinced themselves that they were the true geniuses of the operation and left Philles for Verve. There they made one fine “Lovin’ Feelin’” rip off that worked well: "You're My Soul and Inspiration." Soon enough, the millions stopped coming in and the pair split up. Various solo projects had all the appeal of Sonny Bono in drag. Eight years later they reunited and it felt so good that "Rock and Roll Heaven" resulted. Although they charted a couple more times on the Haven label, the magic had abandoned this mortal coil.



Sonny Charles and the Checkmates Ltd. "Black Pearl." A&M. 1969.
Aside from being a first class pop symphony that uses the passion of its sentiment and the force of its assault to motivate listeners to sway with abandon, this song is also notable for being one of Phil Spector’s last great productions of black music for a bi-racial community. Sonny Charles sings to the servant girl who used to take care of the white folks’ kids. Today he’s going to take her away from all that and treat her the way she had always deserved. His pledge is not economic. He offers her no guarantees that life will be easy. But if he cares as much as the orchestra makes it sound like he does, one way or another, she will be set for life.



The Beatles. Let It Be. Apple. 1970.
It is painfully apparent that The Beatles sensed impending sorrow—as if each member feared this album would be their last gig together. "Two of Us"certainly comes off as if John and Paul are standing on a lane, glancing behind themselves at how far they have come, then peering at the road “that stretches out ahead.” When McCartney repeats the tag, “We’re on our way home,” the personal separation rips the mental photograph into shreds.
"I've Got a Feeling" is a fine return to the musical form of the group’s earliest recordings. Lennon and McCartney’s plan to “get back” to a sound where the virtues of the Beatles’ ability to play great rock ‘n’ roll supercedes production values clashed with guest producer Spector, not a man known for a light touch in the studio.
The real wonder of this album is that the unfathomable talent of both band and producer didn’t undercut the music’s beauty any more than it did. The album version of "Get Back" and the ghastly lushness of "The Long and Winding Road"are the worst of it. On the latter song, violins and a female chorus emasculate rather than accentuate an already pallid attempt at revelry. But that’s small injustice compared to the abbreviated version of"Get Back," where instead of reemerging from the fake ending (as they do on the single), the band simply trails off, saying thanks to Ringo’s wife and adding the ironic remark about passing the audition, all of which is—for a Beatles’ album—somehow insubstantial.
As for the good, in addition to “The Two of Us” and “I’ve Got a Feeling,” the pair of Harrison songs—"I Me Mine" and "For You Blue"—giggle in amazement under Spector’s Bunsen Burner, "One After 909" toots along harmlessly, and the title track not only blends cathedral solemnity with ethereal fuzz guitar, but even allows McCartney’s richest vocal to diagram the end of rock’s grandest four-way partnership. Still, for the less sentimental among us, Lennon’s talking blues and glib ad libs on the throwaway filler "Dig It" cannot be beat: “Like a rolling stone/Like the FBI/And the CIA/And the BBC/B.B. King and Doris Day!”


John & Yoko. "Happy Xmas (War is Over)."Apple. 1971.
This is one of the best Christmas songs for several reasons. First, it was one of the last great Phil Spector productions. Second, it was the one great collaboration between the two principals. Third, it had a swirling chorus that spiritually and musically unified the verses. Fourth, it used the implicitly understood love of John and Yoko as an example to the world of how happy it too could be. Fifth, the song urged the listener to use his mind as an instrument of power to end human suffering. And sixth, it was released on seasonally cheery green vinyl. If that all sounds a bit new age myopic, all I can say is there are still times when even the near-sighted may find it a relief to just listen.


John Lennon. Sometime in New York City. Apple. 1972.
Many years ago, here is what I wrote about this album: “This is among the most muddleheaded albums ever recorded by a major artist. John has seemingly forgotten the lessons of “Help” and POB—that you can say more by saying less. Wordy, preachy, untuneful and separatist, you know John is in trouble when the album’s best song is sung by his wife.”
Times change. It turns out that while everything I wrote back then about the album holds true, I now see that as good. Besides, The Elephant’s Memory Band—especially saxophonist Stan Bronstein—actually gave the songs tremendous punch without sacrificing subtlety.
The last six songs were originally released on a separate disc with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and while not as tight as Elephant’s Memory, they still knock down the walls. The topicality of the main disc is really not a problem for listeners because history books certainly do not offer any of this, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be as mind-shattering. How many history lessons actually talk about British troops shooting down Irish civilians or the ten-year prison sentence of a smart agent provocateur caught with two joints or the murder of forty-three people at a New York state prison? This album—musically, lyrically, politically and even ecologically—assaulted the senses of friend and foe alike. But no one of his stature ever considered equating the plight of the oppressed women with the plight of oppressed African Americans, especially not in a pop song that the singer genuinely believed would receive massive radio play despite the title “Woman is the Nigger of the World”! Once the album is reduced to its core, we are left with nothing but guts and an album that sounds exactly like courage confronting the unfriendly end of a buzz saw.

THE PLAYLIST 10: The Ringing of Revolution

Chapter Ten
The Ringing of Revolution





Elvis Presley tentatively entered the Memphis studio to record a song for his mother’s birthday. He hoped to sound like Dean Martin, whom he considered a great stylist. John Lennon aimed to make just enough money to stay out of art school and support himself and his wife. A young Bobby Dylan dreamed of being successful enough so he wouldn’t have to shower every day. Buddy Holly, John Fogerty and Phil Ochs intended from the start to be major stars. Van Morrison needed to ease his own internal pressure. James Brown, the eternal extrovert, craving as no one ever craved, knew he must get others to dance so he could do the same. And Woody Guthrie only wanted to change the world.
Desire may keep the revolutionary motivated, but what he desires has nothing to do with mass revolution. This is not a discourse on upheaval or on the elements of leadership. That is the work of historical conflict theorists and sociologists or of me on the days when I’m not writing about music. But separating the music that follows from the instants of their impact disservices performers and readers alike. Ultimately, these recordings penetrated the limits of public imagination, kicked, bit and shotgunned the borders of our understanding and changed for the better the way we interpret the world. Perhaps just as importantly, these albums and songs also spoke to one another across the weeks, months and years, just as they continue to communicate with contemporary audiences today, either directly or through the tele-highways upon which others continue to travel. To some, that makes these tunes the enemy. It makes them such a central part of modern consciousness that newer artists feel compelled to either reject these sounds in favor of their own inventions (the punk rebellion, MTV, death metal) or to co-opt or outright steal them (Kid Rock). There’s certainly no singular way to revolutionize. But what these performers did was to build on what came before them, process, redefine and refine those influences and become their own catalysts for the ideal act of tearing down imaginary walls between themselves and the audience. When older folks used to say, “I guess anyone can make a hit record these days,” that may not have been technically accurate but it was nonetheless correct. When the rest of us are so free as to be able to expose our differences as a consequence of experiencing someone’s music, that is revolution.


Elvis Presley. The Sun Sessions. RCA. 1976.



“Outside of society,” Patti Smith sang, “They’re waiting for me!” I can think of no better way to describe the feeling and importance of this album. Maybe I could use a bit of fake-spontaneous dialog from Elvis himself. “Hold it, fellas. Hold it. That don’t move me. Let’s get real, real gone for a change.” It might be just as good to shut up, get out of the way and bow to these, the first songs Elvis officially cut for Sam Phillips’ Sun Records:
"That's Alright, Mama."
"Blue Moon of Kentucky."
"I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine."
"Good Rockin' Tonight."
"Milk Cow Blues."
"You're a Heartbreaker."
"I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone."
"Baby, Let's Play House."
"Mystery Train."
"I Forgot to Remember to Forget."
"I'll Never Let You Go."
"Trying to Get to You."
"I Love You Because."
"Blue Moon."
With Bill Black and Scotty Moore having the times of their lives, knowing in their bones that something weird and wonderful was happening, but not exactly what, they unearthed the tightest confusion ever recorded. Elvis, though, controlled his own state of oblivion. Art, therefore, is superior to science. That’s the lesson these songs teach. Science is when Madame Curie says, “Hey, wonder what this shit is,” as she discovers radium. Elvis didn’t discover anything outside of himself. What he discovered was himself and you can hear that discovery right here.


Buddy Holly. The Complete Buddy Holly. MCA. 1979.



Until the mid-1990s, it was impossible to find a more comprehensive set of Buddy Holly’s recorded works. And although the seven CD boxed set The Buddy Holly Showcase captures at least ninety percent of the singer’s recorded material (a considerable amount of which is posthumously remixed), the one hundred twenty-two selections on The Complete Buddy Holly remains the essential collection. Indeed, it is only one of two collections to successfully violate the “less is more” ethos. One can hear the steady progression from the earliest recordings where Buddy and friend Wes Montgomery are tightening up their brand of Western Bop. The first twenty-odd songs in this set are from that period.
After signing as a solo artist with the Nashville branch of Decca Records, Holly met with not unexpected resistance from a label far more accustomed to churning out bland country tunes. But his time was far from wasted. The earliest version of "That'll be the Day"came from these sessions and Buddy got his first glimpse at how the recording studios of the 1950s actually worked. That initial exposure would never fail him.
Hearing some encouraging words about a Clovis, New Mexicorecord producer named Norman Petty, Holly stopped by one afternoon with some demos from the aborted Nashville sessions. Petty liked what he heard enough to provide the singer with some high-priced female backing singers. The immediate result was "That'll be the Day," a song reluctantly released by Brunswick Records (a Decca subsidiary). After four months of lying around the desks and shelves of disinterested disc jockeys, the record finally caught on, gaining steady exposure across the country. By the end of the summer of 1957, it hit Number One. With Jerry Allison on stand up bass, Joe Mauldin on drums and Buddy Holly himself on electric guitar, the basis for the Crickets’ ensemble was in place. But Holly’s ambitions were every bit as high as his band mates’ were low. Allison and Mauldin were looking for thrills, whereas Holly knew in his heart he would be a star. One consequence of this divergence is that the Crickets continued to record for Brunswick, while Buddy’s solo work came out on Coral. It was at Coral Records that Buddy met Maria Elena Santiaga, his future wife and the woman who would inspire some of his best songs.
Holly’s recorded output to this point was already enormous. As the middle part of this collection shows, his love of rock ‘n’ roll standards in no way dwarfed his own artistic creativity. "Maybe Baby," with total perfection, linked the romantic ballad streak with the idiomatic nervous determination that became Holly’s trademark. The pre-Dylan imagistic wordplay of "I'm Lookin' for Someone to Love"rode a rhythm track that punched and jabbed like a serious middleweight contender. The hyper-charged drum rolls of "Peggy Sue" roared like a dune buggy while Buddy introduced yet another set of deliberate and controlled vocal tics. And "Not Fade Away" proved that all those cover versions had taught him much. The seminal Bo Diddley beat drives the song while Buddy’s insistence (“I’m a-gonna tell ya how it’s gonna be!”) sends the record into overdrive.
Money troubles, which Holly believed traced directly to Norman Petty’s management style, led the singer to appreciate the need for promotional touring. With his strongest and most polished repertoire in the bag (and without the Crickets), he joined the Winter Dance Party where he joined forces with a young Waylon Jennings, drummer Carl Bunch, and second guitarist Tommy Allsup. This new version of Buddy Holly and the Crickets toured the Midwest with an ever-changing assortment of up-and-coming rockers, most of whom resented the haphazard approach of lunging from one potential market across four states to the next, then back two states, then up three more. But, hell, the money was good.
Until the late 1970s, Buddy Holly’s legend lived on almost exclusively in the United Kingdom. If a motion picture can be said to have reawakened U.S. interest in a performer, then The Buddy Holly Story was just such a movie. It isn’t actor Gary Busey’s fault that the film was so error-filled as to reflect someone else’s life. Quite the contrary, Busey’s performance was great enough to wake up Americato Buddy Holly’s hiccupping vocals and the basic musical elements of electric guitar, bass and drums. On nearly every song here we find a crazed enthusiasm that should have scared parents more than it actually did. From Clovis to New York City, no one from the Fifties rocked as steady and certainly no one ever put as much conscious sophistication into what he did to have it turn out so well.
"Rave On," “Maybe Baby,” "Oh Boy," “That’ll Be the Day”: the more simple the concept, the more challenging the execution. This six-record set provides nearly everything Buddy and the Crickets ever tracked while still alive (excepting some recently discovered “apartment tapes” recorded in the last year of Holly’s life), plus a very chilling interview with Alan Freed. There are smaller sets that hint at the feel. But a hint is insubstantial when in the presence of this man. Buddy Holly was far more than just one of three late Fifties rock stars who died in the same plane wreck in Iowa. The fact of Buddy Holly confirmed that the music firmly emerging as rock ‘n’ roll was every bit as legitimate as it was fun, enervating, and—in its own willfully disguised way—art. The three-piece line-up blended a traditional sensibility with the imagination of someone who had discovered some incredible power within himself, a power that comes from letting the song rip across the landscape. The most unique guitar intros since Chuck Berry opened the door to barely-restrained vocal liberations about subjects no more significant than loving your baby. But what a way to say it! Lifting a line from the John Ford film, The Searchers, as a refrain for his biggest hit—Who can forget that rapidly waddling guitar clear the street as Buddy stepped up and demanded satisfaction? “That’ll be the day when you say goodbye/Yes, that’ll be the day when you make me cry.” “Oh Boy,” despite some weakly overpowering backing vocals from The Picks, not only captures the essence of a guy about to lose his virginity, it takes us right up to the girl’s doorstep and holds our hands as we knock. “Peggy Sue” is a duel in the sun between drummer and guitarist, while the sheriff—played by Mr. Holly himself—steals the girl out from under our noses. And certainly the surreal images of “I’m Looking for Someone to Love” predate drug-inspired imagery by a good seven years. Truth to tell, all the songs on this colossal set open quandaries just as compelling.


The Beatles. Please Please Me. Parlophone. 1963.



Four young men from Liverpool, England, who became the greatest rock band of all time. It is tempting to leave the description at that because so much has already been said by so many, most of whom were far off the mark when it comes to describing The Beatles’ impact, sound and essence. John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney: four boys who wanted success badly enough, hoping for a few quid to see them through the night while they played smelly German bar rooms, hopping around with insolence, screeching like lunatics as the frenzy of the crowd made everyone involved wonder if it was possible to withstand the intensity of so much pleasure. Girls screamed and boys shouted and on the group played and sang, covering their favorite American songs and writing the others themselves, just as their hero Buddy Holly had done. This album, their first, sounds exactly like what it was: fourteen songs by a band who knows it is about to become the greatest show on Earth.


The Beatles. With The Beatles. Parlophone. 1963.



Released on the same day that John Kennedy was assassinated, this album exploded with enough power to take LBJ out of the game as well. From the opening call and response charges of the first number to the sinister piano and crazed heat moans of the album closer, With The Beatles was the very width, breadth and soul of that to which pop music would aspire. John Lennon claimed, foolishly, that the band’s best music was never recorded, by which he meant the live sound of the Hamburg days of 1961-62 were not caught on tape (it turned out they were). But this, the group’s second album, clearly captures that sound within the purity of a recording studio, a feat none of their followers out of the UK could manage.
Likety-split the songs shoot out the gate:
Hair-shaking “Yeahs” answer John Lennon’s declaration in"It Won't Be Long" that yes indeed dammit his girl is coming home to him.
Still holding the lead vocal on "All I've Got to Do," John’s world-weary splintered crooning gets a lift from the insistent backing harmonies, but it’s Ringo Starr’s tempered high-hat, snare and floor tom interplay that controls the song.
"Don't Bother Me" lurks behind an excellent George Harrison guitar solo and his best brooding vocal, showing a broader range than any other song he’d recorded to this time.
Drum crack. Paul and George cry “Wait!” Three-legged horse drum intro. Lennon screams, “Oh yes wait a minute!” Suddenly we recognize "Please Mr. Postman," but before we can even name that tune, Paul and George sing the verse, punctuated by John’s urgent calls. Lennon takes the lead, engulfed by harmony lines he’s too distraught to sing for himself until he approaches the fade-out in this thoroughly reinvented cover of the Marvelettes’ masterpiece. He sings with fractured desperation: “Deliver the letter, the sooner the bet—You gotta—Wait!”
Before we can exhale, George refries Chuck Berry’s "Roll Over Beethoven" as McCartney dances up his own stairstep bass pattern and Star throws his drums at every stick of wood in the room.
As soon as producer George Martin haunts his piano intro to the cover of The Miracles’ "You Really Got a Hold On Me,"what was originally the most urgent close dance song abruptly mutates into the most bitter soul song of the ages. “I don’t like you,” Lennon announces, self-contempt piggybacking on his need for this woman. “But I love you.” The drums and maracas are too insistent to ever let him leave.
On "I Wanna Be Your Man," a song Lennon-McCartney wrote for the Rolling Stones, Ringo chalks out his lead vocal above electric piano, cacophonies of guitar wattage, about a million whoops and hollers, and a drum pattern that sounds like hyper-speed calypso.
And for those who thought “Twist and Shout” was as manic as the band could get, "Money (That's What I Want)" the third Motown cover, flares a free fall fire ball as Lennon pilots his dive bomber over suburban rooftops, shredding his voice, demanding “Just give me money! I wanna be free!” while George and Paul cheer him on from the flight tower: “That’s”—deadly pause—“What I want!” What we get is a song that can be best appreciated when played at three times any stereo’s maximum volume.


Woody Guthrie. Dust Bowl Ballads. Folkways. 1964.



Woody Guthrie is one of the most significant recording artists of the twentieth century. He emulated no one because he was an original, the embodiment of the common man because he was a common man with an uncommon talent: the ability to write and sing concisely about situations of enormous importance (“Great Dust Storm,” "I Ain't Got No Home," "Vigilante Man," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Dust Bowl Refugee," among others here). For one album to represent his work is unlikely (I can also recommend This Land is Your Land, A Legendary Performer, and Library of Congress Recordings), but this, his songs about the catastrophic dust bowl devastation, comes as close as anything could. Migration, lynch mobs, outlaws and the feel of air too thick to breathe knocking on the door—the sense of depression-era life in all its horror and glory is captured here with nothing more than a voice, a guitar, and an occasional harmonica. If all you know is "This Land is Your Land," you know a lot. But after this, you’ll know a lot more.


Bob Dylan. Bringing It All Back Home. Columbia. 1965.

Rants, fables, slapstick humor, bitter rage: Dylan drew all this an more. He was too morbid to be pissed off and too stoic to smile at the absurdities. Given proper amplification, any band can explode. But once the needle rode the patient groove to the first churning crank case wail of "Subterranean Homesick Blues," the players drove with an intensity folk purists found more enraging than the actual electricity itself. Even the occasional deliberate lyrical absurdities from Buddy Holly failed to prepare the world for: “Phone’s tapped anyway Maggie says that many say must bus in early May orders from the D.A.” This was rock attitude spilling out all over the freshly woven carpet and it was heaven. The same holds true for "Maggie's Farm,"“Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” "On the Road Again," “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” and especially "Mr. Tambourine Man."
Proving that the previous folk albums were not accidentally brilliant, D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary, Don’t Look Back, captured many of these songs, and certainly gave them context. Nothing here is less than inspiring, but my own favorite moment is when, on “Dream,” the band misses its cue and Dylan doesn’t notice.


The Beatles. Rubber Soul. Parlophone. 1965.



This recording led many people to suspect that there might be something messianic about The Beatles. Not only was there an immense change in the depth of instrumentation, but the structure of the songs themselves became far more complex while maintaining a youthful appeal that stretched beyond middle-age. Even a song such as "Run for Your Life," which its author, John Lennon, claimed to dislike, packed a sophistication only hinted at on earlier releases. It is hard to pick one song that truly stands out, but the closest I can come is "Wait," which was one of those rare collaborations between Lennon and McCartney where each one clearly made a useful contribution to the other’s song, a contribution that comes out in the lead vocal. Self-awareness and authority seized The Beatles as never before, furthering notions of uber mensch. Such an interpretation may seem amusing these days, but at the time, even the song titles "You Won't See Me" and "I'm Looking Through You," in the context of such good-natured and relaxed self-confidence, implied other-than-normal abilities. It’s doubtful this was entirely accidental. The words to "The Word," for example, are more like a pronouncement than a pop lyric. This created a context in which the less dance-oriented instrumentation gelled with the lyric power in ways that no one—certainly not Bob Dylan—imagined possible. People studied this music, certain that nothing would ever surpass its magnificence. Nothing ever did, until their next album.


Bob Dylan. Highway 61 Revisited. Columbia. 1965.



Robert Zimmerman is one of the five or six biggest jerks ever to rise to stardom and piss all over his fans in the name of pursuing his own artistic vision (as is made evident by the fact that damned few of his original recordings are available on YouTube, although most people blame Sony). He is also one of the three greatest acts of the 1960s. His first albums were just Bobby singing with that railroad voice and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, scratching out a rough form of folk blues. But by late 1964, the times had changed. Dylan was rocking out with not only his three best albums, but three of the best albums ever made. This recording, Bringing It All Back Home, and Blonde On Blonde are the three Dylan recordings to own. The images on these collections were bizarre, largely comedic exercises in word play, and they were positively Fourth Streetbrilliant.
"Like a Rolling Stone" kicks off like a shotgun blast and never lets up, never halters or falters in its undisguised hostility with which no one, least of all the victim of the tirade, can possibly argue against. “Tombstone Blues,” which is easy to dismiss as just silly (despite the most inventive absurdist rhymes ever recorded, such as “Is there a hole for me to get sick in. . . The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken”), actually is a madcap battering against all manner of foolishness, essentially the same melody repeated many, many times, but with different musical emphasis accentuating each repetition. It was also one of the first Dylan songs to say something deep without saying anything of consequence. Stephen King, in his first published novel,Carrie, would allow his title character to read much into the last verse of this song. "Ballad of a Thin Man" was a return to the top with vituperative assault against hung-up Mister Jones (“There ought to be a law against you coming around” is one of the milder attacks), the title track was a cartoon of intensity set along the road that African-Americans once traveled from Chicago to New Orleans, beginning with God and Abraham arguing about infanticide and ending with Osama bin Laden trying to find a place to market the end of the world, and "Desolation Row" brought the entire carnival together for a morbid laugh. Even if it all was nothing more than clever wordplay unleashed by chemical abuse, the result was complete and total bewildering excitement.


The Beatles. Revolver. Parlophone. 1966.



If people studied Rubber Soul, they bestowed Revolver with the power to mesmerize. From the introductory coughs of the recording engineer to the final fades of the swirling drum beats, Revolverremains as much an event as a pop album. Did the title refer to the movement of the vinyl album spinning on the turntable? Was it a sneaky reference to a handgun? Or was it implying that the music was as big, as significant, as a planet in motion around the sun? Whose eyes were those staring out through the Klaus Voorman cover art? These questions seemed so imperative, particularly since the album’s release coincided with the band’s decision to end their touring.
But enough trivia! What about the music? Certainly the musical and production sophistication surpassed anything The Beatles (and therefore any other rock band) had ever done before. Even more than with Rubber Soul, the lyrics invited scrutiny, even dissection. The Beatles lambaste Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and Edmund Heath ("Taxman"); they quote Peter Fonda on an acid trip ("She Said She Said"); they emerge with the rollercoaster sound wash of the closing track that also happens to quote liberally from the Tibetan Book of the Dead ("Tomorrow Never Knows"). So fascinating was all this that the public did not care that Ringo clearly says “slubmarine” in the last verse of "Yellow Submarine," or that none of The Beatles play on"Eleanor Rigby." This album had trumpets, this album had string arrangements, it had Indian music, it had guitars overdubbed deliberately out of sync—it had more varied components working in harmony than most classical music albums. Finally, as a result of all this, it did one thing that no other pop or rock album had ever done before: it elevated the cultural sophistication of anyone who listened to it for pure pleasure.


Bob Dylan. Blonde on Blonde. Columbia. 1966.



As the second ever two-record set rock recording, Blonde on Blonde seemed a risky move at the time. In retrospect, it is clear that this album divulged just how much talent and ambition one man could have. Whether the joyful stupidity of "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35" or the manifest splendor of "Visions of Johanna" (possibly the most beautiful song Dylan ever recorded), the myopic misogyny of “Just Like a Woman” or the throw-images-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks attitude of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," the hit-making potential of "I Want You" or the confusion of "Obviously 5 Believers," Blonde on Blonde was either a massive undertaking and achievement or the beginning of the end, depending on your point of view. Some have argued that had Dylan not been out of commission due to the famous motorcycle accident, he would have continued churning out such magnums, citing The Basement Tapes, an assuredly overrated testament, as proof. Others point to his book, Tarantula, as proof that his talent was spent. Either position is a bit too blind or fawning to be accurate. But it is true that this was the last time the quality of the sound would emerge as something more than just popular music. It was, simply, the end of the glow. That this music is still capable of using that glow to tan new listeners says as much about its ultimate power as anything ever written.


Jimi Hendrix. Are You Experienced? Reprise. 1967.



Blues artists used to dabble with electronic feedback to give their inventions a live texture. And as early as 1964, The Beatles tookdeliberate feedback to new levels on the introduction to “I Feel Fine.” But, give or take The Yardbirds, until 1967 no one had ever harnessed the power of distortion in a way that made subtle cavernous hums roar out against simultaneous or overlapping screeches of raw and controlled electrified urban blues. So, yes, Hendrix is still the most innovative guitarist of all time. Sonic feedback, licks, howls, moans, speed changes: all that just during the tuning up. Once the songs actually erupted, multi-colored sounds of muscle lava music poured down over an audience already nearly too stoned to breathe. The hoary old blues song "Hey Joe" (already a hit single for The Leaves) wakes up in a room full of murderous strangers and shoots its way out of town. The album’s softest touch,"The Wind Cries Mary," digs an unpaved turnpike through the burning center of the earth and whispers at the iron door of Hell to see if anyone will answer. "Love or Confusion" carves out funk with a jackhammer that not even Sly and the Family Stone had the strength to handle. It hardly matters that every longhair with a guitar can recycle "Purple Haze" (which must be true, because if Kip Winger can do it, so can you—even a terrible group called Elvis Hitler did the music to the words from the theme of TV’s “Green Acres,” his version called "Green Haze."). What matters is that Jimi Hendrix thought up those chords and was able to convey them into wide white eyes and yet not completely alienate his black fans, bringing everyone together, including Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, under the biggest thunder made by mortals, then and now.


Van Morrison. Astral Weeks. Warner Bros. 1968.



Van Morrison leapt from the barroom snarl of "Gloria" and the adult bubblegum snap-crackle of "Brown-Eyed Girl" to the water-eyed jubilance of Astral Weeks in a mere two years. That represents the equivalence of going from lines about making love in the green grass to lines like “If I ventured in the slip-stream between the viaducts of your dreams where mobius steel rims crack. . . Would you lay me down in silence easy?” In magnitude, that is like evolving from being a collector of old Native American relics to harnessing the power of Uranium-235. There is a “childlike vision coming into view” about this recording that comes over on the plucking, strums, rhythms, words and vocals. These elements spin together as a bi-product of a child’s curiosity about the mysteries of life. And Morrison is thoroughly intoxicated with every breath of life he draws. The stunning shadows behind smiles, the smell of a drag queen, the glint of light from a police officer’s badge, the razor edge wit of a young girl who doesn’t know he’s watching—Astral Weeks is a stoned-out fascination with the interaction of people and their intimacies with the elements.


Phil Ochs. Rehearsals for Retirement. A&M. 1968.



The term “American Dream” is horribly overused. And yet I will draw it out one more time because it is essential in the context of any discussion of Phil Ochs. A former journalism student, Ochs never completely lost his love of reportage. America, a land of beauty and a snarl of contradictions, was fertile in the early 1960s, fertile for anyone who wanted to explore the limits of radical patriotism while becoming a pop star. The answer was to become a mix of Che Guevara and Elvis Presley. On Rehearsals for Retirement, Phil focused on a unified and contemporary sound to match the new sophistication of his lyrics. Here we meet clever rationalizations for everything from running down hippies to assassinating presidents (“Pretty Smart on My Part”). We encounter policemen whose existence is earned by utilitarian cruelty (“I Kill Therefore I Am”). We drown with a Soviet nuclear submarine ("The Scorpion Departs but Never Returns"), clog up the hills of L.A. (“The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles”), interrupt a suicide ("Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore") fall victim to an overthrown election ("Another Age"), and rest restlessly from the experiences, prefatory to our own demise (the title track). The base of this album’s musicality is rhythm-oriented folk guitar. But just as the traditional protest song gave way to a broader sense of poetry, the music too stretched out as never before on an Ochs album. While maintaining the snappy six string licks, Ochs brought in piano, drums and bass, yielding a sound more appropriate to the cosmic concerns of exploring one’s place in a world simultaneously adored and abhorred. [i]


Creedence Clearwater Revival. Green River. Fantasy. 1969.



One needn’t possess a fragment of a clue as to the “meaning” of these songs to find them exhilarating. Pop the disc in the slot, roll down the windows, give it the gas, and your hair is blowing just as free (and your mouth smiling just as wide) as the expanse of the true naturalists of rock ‘n’ roll. With nothing but two guitars, a bass and drum, plus the talent to play them as the tightest ensemble of all time, these Oakland boys churned up the best bayou stew ever to come from the bad side of the San Francisco trolleys. If lead singer, composer and arranger John Fogerty faked the idyllic imagery, the dread it protected him from was real. The safe-haven force field protection extended to CCR’s base of fans. It felt good having someone who sounded old and wise as Moses tell us that Nixon’s ascendancy might lead us to be “prepared to die” or that the early evening shadow was cast by a tombstone and the name it bore stood recognizable. The prospects for world annihilation were at least as real then as now, and they certainly were felt just as intensely. That’s why the jagging guitars, rollicking syncopated bass, unfathomably fill-driven yet urgently reigned-in drums, and especially the mood they set has lasted and even sounds more immediate now than then. The real and metaphoric gleaming green river of which Fogerty sings reflects not only the glorious nostalgia for which we all occasionally yearn. It was then and remains today the only conceivable sanctuary in a smoldering world.


Elvis Presley. From Elvis in Memphis. RCA. 1969.



Perfection.
The big story was supposed to be that the King had returned to take the true believers back to heaven with him, which would have been just fine. But the even bigger story is that you do not have to know one thing about Presley to find this recording irresisitible. From the very titles of the songs right through to the album photography—oh yeah, the arrangements, music and vocals are good, too—this is a personal testament of spiritual impact. So throw away all your holy books and stop killing total strangers in the name of your ignorant delusions. If you need to believe in something bigger than yourself and your fellow man, believe in this. When an interpretive singer can come up through his song and be reborn in that experience, he makes that song more his own than it ever was for the person who actually wrote it. Hank Snow, for instance, may have written "Movin' On."Elvis created it. Which is the more important accomplishment?


Creedence Clearwater Revival. Willy and the Poor Boys. Fantasy. 1969.



Think of this album as instructions in how everything can be the opposite of what it is. The drums on "Fortunate Son" hum bum-bop bum-bum-bop as the guitar sings a repeated two-note declension. Such sprite! How catchy! But stand back, buddy, because this man Fogerty’s got a loaded axe and he’s ready-set to chop down everything you hate. While "Down on the Corner" scratches out a harmless jug band shuffle, it invites listeners and musicians alike to enjoy the experience as a distraction from their own abject poverty."Cotton Fields'" merriment cloaks a reworked slave song. And the most overtly joyous song on the album, "The Midnight Special," is about a prisoner getting the electric chair. It can be no coincidence that Fogerty lifted both these last two songs from hearing them in the movie Cool Hand Luke. Suffice it to say, the title character of that film didn’t live to appear in a sequel. The only song that instantly and forthrightly reveals itself is "It Came Out of the Sky," a very funny tale about a farmer discovering a meteor. By the time "Effigy" blows the ashes from the face of terror, a chuckle is quite a welcome sound.


John Lennon. Plastic Ono Band. Apple. 1970.



This was the hardest hitting, most powerful debut album ever recorded. As stark as The Beatles were ornate, this is often known as John’s primal scream album. That would have been an apt title. From open to close, this record was so intense, honest and depressing that a lot of Beatle fans were put off, opting for Paul’s more charming, homespun melodiousness. In "Mother," Lennon told his dead parents that they had neither needed nor wanted him and warned his fans not to follow his own misguided path. "Working Class Hero" was nothing less than autobiography and a realistic one at that. And "God" was a litany against some people’s idols and a few of John’s own heroes, all of whom had promised much and delivered less, at least as far as he was concerned. He concluded by kissing off The Beatles, announcing the dream over. To that end he was too correct.


Creedence Clearwater Revival. Cosmo’s Factory. Fantasy. 1970.



Excepting only greatest hits collections, multi-artist anthologies and a few James Brown records, the best albums always sound as if the group playing any one song was also playing all the others. Further, they sound as if the songs were all recorded at approximately the same time. That the reality is often different has no bearing. As a case in point, six of this album’s songs were released as singles before the album came out, and of the remaining five numbers, four were cover versions. And so somebody “assembled” this LP, although all the songs were performed by Creedence. Knowing all that, to this day the record sounds as if four of the best rock musicians in the world got together in your garage and put on a concert for the most accessible people on the block. "Run through the Jungle" may well be the best thing CCR ever recorded—it certainly conjures the tortures of Vietnam-style combat rumbling like convulsive belly fear right up until all hearts choke as Satan cries “Take aim!” "Lookin' Out my Back Door," one of the band’s better C&W knock-offs, relieves the weighty pressure, as does the Roy Orbison homage. But the one song that keeps everyone coming back again to this album is "I Heard it Through the Grapevine." More than anything Creedence recorded, “Grapevine” compacts the freedom of the extended jam with the required strictures of a hard-driving rock single. A California radio station a few years back played this song (and nothing but this song) for more than one hundred hours. No matter which instrument your ears isolate, that’s the one that sounds as if it’s the lead. The electric guitar that scorches like a blazing dune buggy across an endless stretch of winding desert, the bubbling bass that engulfs the arrangement in an aquarium of compressed tension, or the drums that bring together the sand and water only to pulverize both—there’s no way to take the entirety of this song in one or one hundred listenings. And just as respiration returns to normal with the song’s fade-out, Fogerty caps off our evening with a hymn of impending return, a moment unblurred by that candle in the window.


James Brown. Get on the Good Foot. Polydor. 1972.



According to conventional authorities, the 1963 Live at the Apollodouble album was James Brown’s testament to the ages. The reason those unquestioning intellects respond to that album is because it captures the sound and feel of the experience of being in the vicinity of James when he goes publicly berserk. In the less conventional universe I envision, Get on the Good Foot is even better for those very purposes, in no small part because it gives two completely different bands, each trying to cut the other to pieces. Comparing the few remakes is useless—might as well compare Picasso’s blue period with his cubism. Both periods are rife with works so astonishing, you breathe deep and let them overwhelm you. Good Foot is more cube than blue: repetitious to the point of monotony, mindless “whoo’s” clicking out clichés Brown himself popularized years before, and simultaneously the most exciting stuff in early 1970s black pop, meaning any pop at all. There’s also an unpleasant, numbed tingling across the landscape of the vocals that conjures images of internal bleeding. This is reinforced by the strange "Recitation by Hank Ballard," wherein the former singer for the Midnighters comments on the album we are playing—in process. Then from out of nowhere, he raps on about how he himself had been playing in the graveyard of losers until he was saved by what he calls “The James Brown World of Music.” Eventually, it is easy to wonder whether Brown is suffering from that internal bleeding or just getting ready to administer some to his enemies.


Bruce Springsteen. Born to Run. Columbia. 1975.



Greil Marcus called Born to Run “a ’57 Chevy running on melted down Crystals Records.” That synthesis of this album is nearly as powerful as the recording it describes. I remember the week that bothNewsweek and Time ran cover stories on Bruce Springsteen. Like most of my high school class, I knew the rumors that Bruce would be the next big thing, and like my class, I expressed doubts. The national news coverage confirmed my worst suspicions—nothing heralded by both prime propaganda outlets could possibly be worth a damn.
It just goes to show that in their unending efforts to stupefy through bourgeois fulfillment, even those two magazines occasionally got something right. Born to Run tell stories of futile lives unaware of their own futility, of people so destroyed by sorrow, frustration and even by their own limitations that their lack of self-awareness must be the only thing that keeps them going. To cite one example, in"Meeting Across the River," the narrator explains to his buddy that they’re going to do a favor for some guys, some pretty scary guys (“These guys don’t dance,” is how he puts it). But if they make it back, his girlfriend will be sorry for every name she called him earlier because “Three grand is practically sittin’ right there in my pocket.” The dialect, the drama, and the music of the E Street Band: a conflagration of noise even on the quiet numbers. This did not turn out to be, as critic-manager Jon Landau put it, rock ‘n’ roll future. It did turn out to be the first of many harrowing rides Springsteen would allow us to share. Even as mere passengers, we connect with the journey because our driver has a lock on poetic verisimilitude. That is, the reality of the images passing by us is irrelevant—their connection to a richer existence makes even the most mundane mental visual scream with life.


[i] It is the saddest of all lessons that those who strived most to change history’s outcome were either discredited or destroyed. Sometimes the discrediting came from within, as with Bob Dylan or Jerry Rubin. Usually, however, it came from an external co-optation, as when heavy establishment groups like The Rolling Stones used the Hell’s Angels for body guards or when Richard Nixon began saying “Tell it like it is.” But the destruction also came from without. For some it was the deaths of Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King. For others it was Salvador Allende, Bishop Tutu and, as Phil Ochs correctly coined it, “Thousands more whose names we’ll never know.” All of them were doomed from the moment their glory shined into the eyes of those their power offended. After all, we live in evil times. But the fascism that pervades society does not take the form of storm troopers goose-stepping through the streets beneath the moonlight. What we have instead embraced is a socio-political system that substitutes consumerism for religion, the free market for morality, actors for leaders, mercenaries for soldiers, propagandists for journalists, facilitators for teachers, and stucco and chicken wire for community activism. And that, at long last, brings us to the subject of Phil Ochs. His first three albums were acoustic guitar work, reportage, metaphor, humor, and a voice that fought against its own limitations. Here was a young man who defined patriotism as loving one’s country enough to put cock to the block by vilifying the government at a time when it was unsafe to do so. Dozens of his songs laced scathing attacks against those who would pervert the natural glory of this land and its people. Those first three albums sold less than 250,000 copies. The message was getting out, but not much beyond New York City. By 1967, Ochs had hooked with artistic-bombast producer Van Dyke Parks and together they made a recording of the singer’s most poetic songs set to some of the world’s worst music. Pleasures of the Harbor’s centerpiece was “Crucifixion,” a song-cycle that metaphorically traced the history of assassination from Jesus Christ to John Kennedy. But it was surrounded by swirls of orchestration that sucked the vocals into a maelstrom and rendered it unlistenable. Much better was “The Party,” a song about political and sexual pomp and circumstance set to a cocktail-style piano, and “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends,” a raggy tune about social responsibility in the age of Kitty Genovese. Tape From California contained only two great songs, but they were great indeed. The title track was a grand departure into fiery country rock, and “When in Rome” was a self-serving history of the United States. This album also signified the exact moment of Ochs’ personal destruction. Sadly, this came at the first moment when the public was most willing to consider a contrary view.
Phil believed in himself just enough at this point to suspect that if he were to disappear, at least a few people would care. Rehearsals for Retirement was the result and the greatest recording of his life. Tragic and funny to the point of tears, this is an autobiographical look at the artist and his world. It also contains the most savage parody of Bob Dylan ever made.
The cover of Greatest Hits featured an uncomfortable singer wearing an Elvis-style lame suit with a guitar at his waist. The record contained no previously recorded songs and even boasted the legend: 50 Phil Ochs fans can’t be wrong! For Phil, the revolution was over.
The pain, however, was not. He went to South Africa and was choked by a mugger, an attack that permanently damaged his vocal chords. He continued to perform after a while, but public interest in folk songs had been replaced with an obsession for hard rock and singer/songwriters. In April 1976, Phil Ochs hanged himself. Evil breathed a sigh of relief.



Chapter Eleven

The British Invasion: I Want to Hold Your Moneymaker


     As The Beatles themselves would readily admit, the music they played (at least initially) was based on American rhythm and blues. What modesty forbade them from adding was that they unlocked from within their collective musical selves—their Spiritus Mundi—a highly developed and disciplined freedom so large that it insisted everyone experience the immediate intangible benefits of that infectious freedom. Their covers of Motown, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins may have been technically letter perfect, but the unremitting force of the freedom inherent in the very essence of these songs, mixed with originals that vitiated even the most stubborn resistance, demanded with clear and absolute certainty that any limits on pleasure were just an illusion of our own making.
The Beatles released singles and albums in Great Britain as early as 1962. Despite three different record companies issuing a total of four singles in the U.S. prior to the band’s physical arrival in January 1964, with no promotion and limited distribution, the singles made no market penetration. British groups hadn’t made much of an impression on U.S. record buyers since—well, since forever. So Capitol Records—owned by the same corporation that owned Parlophone, who released Beatles music in England—felt fine ignoring the group’s demands to issue their work in the States. But after The Beatles’ first two albums topped the U.K. charts and showed no sign of dropping, Capitol could no longer resist and finally issued “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” backed with “I Saw Her Standing There” on January 13, 1964. The album, Meet The Beatles, hit the stores six days later. The effect of The Beatles music on radio, television and of course on any stores that sold popular music, accompanied by their frequent appearances that year on Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan’s TV programs—the effect of their total and complete presence damn near everywhere one looked or listened that first year alone can be measured by their domination of Cash Box Magazines record charts. For twenty-one weeks, The Beatles held the Number One position. Within the first few weeks of that year, the idea that anything British was as good as the four mop tops took hold, cursing the States with such unmitigated pig slop as Herman’s Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Peter and Gordon, Freddie and The Dreamers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, and the Dave Clark Five.
But it wasn’t all bad. And the best of it did not go away for quite a while.
One Newcastle quintet specialized in applying the tension of John Lee Hooker’s blues to the ballads rediscovered by Bob Dylan. A London fivesome of obsessed R&B devotees expressed an unloving sexuality through a vocal stare and tangible insolence. A lonesome cover band from Muswell Hill inverted the “Louie Louie” rhythm pattern at a time when most of the members were still learning to play their instruments. And from London, four young rockers often mistaken for mods billing themselves as R&B artists stuttered out a separatist anthem of eternal youth. It was all brash, loud, urgent and constant. You couldn’t escape it if you’d tried and there was no reason to do so. The Animals, Rolling Stones, Kinks and Who pounced and drop-kicked, shook the tone arm, smiled and screamed. Whether intellectual, musical, sexual or any combination of the three, the oldsters recognized a threat and properly retreated, making room for groups who redigested American music most of us originally ignored and happily beat us over the head with it. The assault was bliss.


The Beatles. A Hard Day’s Night. Parlophone. 1964.





I could easily live the rest of my life without ever hearing the schmaltz of “And I Love Her” or “If I Fell” again. Same goes for the big-toe-in-the-sand feel of “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You.” The only function those three songs serve is to make the world want to hurry up and get on with the rest of this album, which is otherwise outstanding. The title tune is frequently heralded as a guitar anthem, but to my ears it is the drumming that propels the tune along, although, to be fair, it is probably the unified whole that makes it really work so well, which has psychological as well as musical punch going for it. "Can't Buy Me Love" proved that Paul McCartney had not completely lost his love for a great rocker. But the best thing here comes almost last: "You Can't Do That" is even better than the usual cover version that typically closed out the albums. Manic piano pounding reinforced with Paul’s bass and amplified with Lennon’s deranged scolding: ecstasy. George Harrison holds the fort to the ground just as Ringo Starr’s restrained performance punctuates without overriding.
The U.S. version of this album, released on the Capitol label, presented a somewhat different song line-up, but either issue coincided with the release of the same-named film, a cinematic experience that went far beyond Marx Brothers comedic virtuosity, Elvis Presley drop-in musicality, and even Kubrick-like intensity. One effect of the film was that thousands of U.S. bands formed overnight, hoping to be the next Beatles. One effect of this album, the Beatles third in the U.S., was that everyone stopped asking the group members what they would do for a living when their musical bubble finally burst.


Carefrees. "We Love You Beatles (Oh Yes We Do)." London International. 1964.



Everyone from John Lennon’s father Freddy to Bonnie Jo Mason (who may be more familiar today as Cher) capitalized on the total consumption the American public displayed in 1964 for anything Beatles-related. Musically, every effort was putrid in the extreme, with this sole exception. Nothing more than a throng of unnamed fans chanting the title about a thousand times in less than two minutes, it actually captured the exact feel of Beatlemania without any of the hucksterism that term implies.


The Animals. Best of the Animals. Abkco. 1973.



The original Animals were a growling rhythm and blues quintet from Newcastle, a town that did not suffer musical impurities lightly. Neither, it turned out, did The Animals. Making their initial appearance in the United States at the time of the release of The Beatles motion picture, A Hard Day’s Night, The Animals were the first confirmation that the British Invasion of 1964 was legitimate. Led by the sullen vocal swagger of Eric Burdon and driven by Alan Price’s haunted mansion organ work, their rendition—their reinvention—of "The House of the Rising Sun" sounded like exactly what it was: the white working class made delirious by acculturation of rural American intensity strained through a European seaport sensibility. In other words, this was a prime example of Englishmen borrowing a Delta blues song, rocking it up and returning it with more authenticity and hooks than it had when they borrowed it. Never far from the Bo Diddley beat or the John Lee Hooker rhythm, these guys pumped barking reinventions of demented blues like "Mad Again,""Roadrunner," "I'm Crying" and "Please Don't Let Me be Misunderstood." The bad news is that Burdon went to San Francisco, bathed himself in psychedelia, dumped the band and picked up some slackers who nevertheless cranked out one scarifying number, "When I was Young," the only serious omission in this collection of singles. Burdon later joined up with War, releasing one good album before somebody realized he was not an African-American. Price appeared in a Bob Dylan movie called Don’t Look Back and bassist Chas Chandler managed the Jimi Hendrix Experience.


The Beatles. Beatles for Sale. Parlophone. 1964.



While it may be true that the mood of this U.K-only album was more subdued than any of its predecessors, that is hardly the point. In addition to the two great Carl Perkins’ numbers (one by Ringo, on by George), this album features one of Paul McCartney’s best vocals,"What You're Doing," which also happens to be one of the group’s ultimate treasures. Even before that, Paul virtually explodes with the combo covers of Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City” and Little Richard’s “Hey Hey Hey!” And to those who sneered that the first three songs on the album prove that John Lennon was miserable amidst all the peppiness, I would simply suggest listening again to his cover of "Rock 'n' Roll Music." The pain may have been real, but it is clear John understood what held the cure.


The Rolling Stones.
"Tell Me." London. 1964.
"It's All Over Now." London. 1964.
"The Last Time." London. 1965.




More than any other singles the band released in its working years (1963-1972), these three emphasized R&B over hard pop in the merger of the two. Whether ripping off Pops Staples or Bobby Womack, the characteristic working class toughness (an affectation) filters through their unassailable skill in legitimizing black rhythm and blues. “Tell Me” sounds like all lead vocal until closer listening reveals a stacked pyramid of backing harmony and high range percussion atop Bill Wyman’s understated but steady bass line. “It’s All Over Now” nudges up against appropriated reggae, but slurs too much like a Louisiana obscene phone caller to be holy music. And “The Last Time” is sped-up romanticized Gospel so definitive of English seaport sensibility that the original pressings are still damp, all these year later. In all of these early singles, you can feel the cocksure swagger, the slightly stoned sensibility, and a caged appetite that salivates as the key to its confinement creeps warily near.


The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones, Now! London. 1965.



The catalog of this group’s music remains in such excellent condition because the quality of nearly all their recordings (up until the real Mick Jagger’s timely death in 1972) was so high. Mick’s singing got better with each album, Keith Richard’s guitar could sound like anything from a saxophone to a banjo, Brian Jones became more simple-minded and bizarre with every instrument he added to the band’s line-up, and bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts understood one another’s musical signals well enough to be the loosely-tightest rhythm section on record. The group’s version of R&B was informed by recent past masters. It was also completely original in its hardness, its intensity, and its fun.
So, too, were the Rolling Stones. Most fans are aware that they pissed on a garage attendant, but how many people realize this was done from a 727 flying at 35,000 feet? Ah, but such digressions threaten to distract from the music. And that would be far more criminal than any actions of the Stones because Now! is the toughest R&B album of the 1960s. Had any known band working in the States in 1965 covered Solomon Burke, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Otis Redding and Howling Wolf—on one album—well, the very suggestion is too nauseating to consider. But the Rolling Stones did far more that mimic the catchy parts. They inhaled these songs as food, metabolized the life-force in every beat, quaver and syllable, and became these songs. And so this album sneers without condescension, yearns without falsity, taunts without remorse, and rocks without surcease.


The Yardbirds. "I'm a Man." Epic. 1965.
If the guitar is the only instrument you ever hear when listening to music, then you might consider the fact of this sole Yardbirds entry to be abominably sparse. If on the other hand you simply like good, catchy Bo Diddley songs rechanneled and fired from a gattling gun while Jeff Beck plays his guitar as if it were a drum—meaning for the percussive effects rather than for the erotic appeal of strings bleeding into fingertips—then surely you have already recognized this hit single as the blast house head bang sonic thrasher that it is, the sole essential work in a hodgepodge career.


The Beatles. Help! Parlophone. 1965.



In 1965 the Beatles could have released an album of crows being shot with elephant tranquilizer and one half of the world would have bought it while the other half would have analyzed its social import. In a way, that state of affairs may have taken off just enough commercial pressure for the boys to release an album that was just as good and different enough to be exceptional. The title track was brilliant in its harmony (the response coming before the call was new to pop records) and fairly revealing of its author’s state of mind."Ticket to Ride" had one of the most complex yet catchy rhythms played by anyone before or since. And the album closer, "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," an onslaught of a minor hit for Larry Williams, maintained the tradition of wrapping up with a furious Lennon rocker. Everything else here is fine. There’s no escaping it. But those three songs are the ones you will keep coming back to every time you think of the experience of this album. And with any luck, none of the songs will remind you of the film of the same name.


John Mayall (with Eric Clapton). Bluesbreakers. London. 1965.



Here’s some trivia. The most famous folks to play in bands with John Mayall are Jack Bruce (Cream), Eric Clapton (Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith), Aynsley Dunbar (Mothers of Invention), Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac), Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac), Keef Hartley (Yardbirds), John McVie (Fleetwood Mac), and Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones). What is not trivial is this album. This recording captures Clapton’s brief time with the band and gives Mayall the legend he deserves. To own Bluesbreakers is to own one of the most exciting guitar-oriented albums ever recorded. Anyone who suspects that the British acculturation of Delta and Chicago blues is overstated should sip from this album. After all, the well is deep and the mud won’t hurt much. Watching this music—and it is visual—one can see life crawling from a broken wine bottle in a forbidden nightclub near the Mississippi River. The music sinews, spurts, spits, erupts and cascades, all due to Clapton’s convincing ability to syncretize modern technology with the rural passions of Delta blues. There’s not much to be said for the limitations of Mayall’s singing (he hasn’t much range and sounds as if he is reaching for levels beyond his abilities). But don’t let that scare you away. He sure could put together a fright of a band.


The Who. The Who Sing My Generation. Decca. 1965.



The early Who billed themselves as “Maximum R&B,” a misnomer, to be sure. Nevertheless, when they weren’t imitating Motown or pretending to be a teen dance band—in other words, when they forced themselves to be original—they announced themselves with more fiery pluck and imagination than any other middle class London band. Keith Moon was the first rock drummer to deliberately overlap his rhythms into the first few seconds of the next bar, in the process propelling guitarist Pete Townshend’s dense yet brittle fuzz clatterings. Those shards of guitar distortion appropriately fractured the femur-thick bass lines of John Entwistle, which in turn arched the entire sound just slightly behind singer Roger Daltrey. Though Townshend wrote "My Generation," Daltrey virtually makes it his own with a forced stuttering dementia co-opted from amphetamine-eating mods. "The Kids Are Alright" shivers with that same nervousness. But "A Legal Matter" is pure macho bravado, a frown of contempt for anyone gullible enough to believe in the promise of just such machismo. The two James Brown covers are endearing and "Instant Party" is downright weird. But the future of this band’s power is readily apparent throughout this debut disc.


The Rolling Stones. Aftermath. London. 1966.



Nothing lasts forever except death and so the Stones entered their baroque period. While Mick and Keith debated about what to call their new album (Keith preferred Afterspelling, but gave in, thinking that Phys Ed teachers probably did know more about art than he ever would), Aftermath became the perfect embodiment of what nineteenth century British boys would have been bluesing about if they had had the awareness of twentieth century American black men. Somehow or other, the group took on a Satanic ambiance, directly traceable to this recording.


The Kinks. Greatest Hits. Reprise. 1966.
Something Else. Reprise. 1968.




Ray Davies, Dave Davies, Peter Quaife and Mick Avory—the original Kinks—were among the most enjoyable performers to emerge in the shadow of The Beatles invasion of America. Because Ray could write very good, tight songs that the others could play, most of their best work ("You really Got Me," "Tired of Waiting," "Set Me Free," "Dedicated Follower of Fashion," "Well Respected Man," "All Day and All of the Night") happened by the time of their first greatest hits package—that is, before the group became more interested in grand statements about pastoral pleasures. Something Else is aptly titled. While flirting with the “concept LP” concept, it never quite lets go of the qualities that made the Kinks so endearing: Britain is a fascinating place, our musical skills are quite superb, and the subject matter of our songs will inspire and intrigue folks for generations."Death of a Clown," "Two Sisters," "Harry Rag" and "Waterloo Sunset" are the best of the best here. Once you acquire the Lola LP, these two albums are great to return to because, while there is no rock opera silliness here, there is a lot of counter-conventional fun.


Dusty Springfield. "I Only Want to be with You." Philips. 1964.
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me." Philips. 1966.



This is Dusty after her stint on the British pop TV show, “Ready Steady Go!” and before she recorded the soul masterpiece in Memphis, meaning that she emphasizes the vast operatic aspects of her voice on these two songs, songs which would be something less than trivia in anyone else’s throat. While not the heart-ripping soul of her later work, these two songs anticipate that evolution.


The Beatles. Magical Mystery Tour. Apple. 1967.



While this is not The Beatles’ best album, it is one of their more interesting recordings. The opener has a trippy, even depressed sound that contradicts the invitation we’re expected to accept. "Flying" is a rare instrumental with Ringo humming along. "I Am the Walrus" stirs lysergic acid into a mix of scatology and Lewis Carroll. "Baby You're a Rich Man" is splendid as a song to the group’s manager, done with a new calliope, and a tag at the end (“baby you’re a rich fag Jew”) that I’ll bet they regretted. “All You Need is Love” hasn’t aged particularly well and I’ve never thought “Strawberry Fields” worked all that well as a song. So they give us a wild selection here—which is exactly what it sounds like. Still, it would be a shame to be without most of these hits.


The Hollies. "King Midas in Reverse" and "Pay You Back with Interest." Epic. 1967.

 One of the most neglected acts of all time, The Hollies created a mellow harmony that always steered toward slop without completely crossing over into a big pile of the stuff. These two lesser-known pearls are so brilliantly ambiguous, it’s a wonder any label exec of the day would release them. Maybe the decision turned on the fact that the vocals are nearly indistinguishable from the instrumentation. That is not to say the words are indecipherable. Their meaning could not be more clear. Loss, redemption, deeper loss, depression, possible redemption—but with such grandeur we can forgive every cliché. With harmonies this good, we can even embrace them.


The Who. The Who Sell Out. Decca. 1967.



This is pirate radio. Well, it’s close. Townshend wanted to replicate the sound, feel, etc., of the ships off the coast of Britain that illegally and sometimes magnificently played great local and international hits to the youth of the United Kingdom. In between genuine rock songs like "Armenia," "Mary Hand with the Shaky Hand" and especially "I Can See for Miles," the brains behind The Who placed commercials and radio jingles that bleed into the beginning and endings of the real songs. Interestingly, those commercials and jingles sounded so convincing, it was hard to tell the tripe from the ripe. The concept broke down a bit toward the end, but Pete Townshend tacked on "Rael," a mini-opera which directly prefigured the album Tommy.


Spencer Davis Group. "Gimme Some Lovin'" and "I'm a Man."United Artists. 1967.



Spencer Davis was actually the guitarist, not the vocalist, of this fine British Invasion R&B combo. The singing was done by Steve Winwood, the organist, who went on to play with Traffic, which was reasonable since more members of what would become Traffic played on “Gimme Some Lovin’” than did members of Davis’ real group. And yet the group, as a whole, was quite wonderful, covering recently old blues and R&B tunes with masterful ease and creating the occasional winning original. After Traffic, Winwood joined Blind Faith, a doomed project, as well as Ginger Baker’s Air Force. He no doubt achieved more commercial success on his own during the 1980s. But his artistic peak was clearly as a kid, singing these two glorious, possessed raunchy ‘n’ roll classics.


The Rolling Stones. Beggar’s Banquet. London. 1968.



From an actual conversation:
“Oh, I see you have Jean-Luc Godard’s film Sympathy for the Devilon video.”
“Yeah.”
“It was originally called One Plus One, wasn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s it about?”
“I dunno. I’ve only watched it three times.”
That’s very much the way I feel about Beggar’s Banquet. While I’ve listened to it many times over the years, I’m left with no real sense as to what it is about. That lack of comprehension is, of course, entirely appropriate, just as it is with Godard’s film. The movie juts back and forth between the band evolving "Sympathy for the Devil"into the final version we hear on this album and (presumably) staged scenes of Black Panther lectures, a pompous Stalinist spouting hilarious non sequitors, and an unending stream of girlie magazine covers. We are not intended to “follow” the film. We are to experience its plots as expanded microcosms which may make us feel something. And opening us up so that we can feel is precisely whatBeggar’s Banquet accomplishes. By the time of this album’s 1968 release, the very act of retaining the feel of an experience was likely to be rejected as too dangerous. Utopia got murdered everywhere it went, from the parks of Chicago to the bustle of a Los Angeles victory party, and from the balcony of a Memphis hotel to unmarked mud graves in Mississippi. The Rolling Stones steered clear of utopia, but they intended to make the most of dystopia. "Street Fighting Man," the centerpiece of the recording, stoically accepts the fate of fighting in the street for no other reason than because it won’t do any god. Nothing really links this song with anything else on the album, just as no one track especially connects with any other number. That willingness to feel comes about only by giving in to the carnivorously bleak atmosphere the band creates while raining down waves of guitar fire-jelly, offering a groupie a pointless ménage a trios, and showing the Queen of England leading a military assault on 50,000 protesting grandmothers.


Manfred Mann. "The Mighty Quinn." Mercury. 1968.



This is one of those long-running 1960s groups that went through several phases, no one of which is particularly superior to any other. In the early days, Paul Jones was the lead singer (Mann played keybs) and hits such as "Pretty Flamingo" and "Do Wah Diddy" were all the teen rage. Even better was Mike D’Abo, who sang lead on “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn),” a version that prompted Bob Dylan to suggest Manfred Mann as the best interpreters of his songs. Chris Hamlet-Thompson came along years later, just in time to cover Bruce Springsteen’s "Blinded by the Light." What’s great about “Quinn the Eskimo” is the laconic yet mercurial delivery. “Everybody’s out there,” D’Abo sings. “Chasing pigeons out on the limb. But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, all the pigeons gonna run to him.” The intonation is so laid back snide, the reference to the song’s composer could not be more clear.


The Beatles. The Beatles 1962-1966. Apple. 1973.



This album should seem neither redundant nor incomplete. The Beatles organization did not always release the hit singles on the albums that came out at about the same time. Particular nowadays, when the U.K. versions have all but displaced the U.S. editions, few if any singles made it to the LPs. And even though there have been some Past Masters released in the late 1980s, they were nowhere as good as either this or its companion volume below. These albums were lovingly annotated and were packed with photos—plus they were not limited to singles. What they captured—and captured better than any anthologies before or since—was a sense of the total wallop that John, Paul, George and Ringo happily provided. "She Loves You" rings loud and true, "I Feel Fine" rumbles out with its eerie intro feedback, and there are substantial references to non-single releases such as "Michelle," "In My Life" and "Norwegian Wood."Incidentally, the cover photo is from the sleeve issued on their first UK album.


The Beatles. The Beatles 1967-1970. Apple. 1973.



An excellent reason, if you need one, to get out of bed in the morning is to put this on and play it all day. This recording is for the more economy-minded, those who realize that by purchasing this, they don’t need the Sgt. Pepper album at all, because this album features the only four songs from Pepper that anybody ever plays. And while the song selections from the White Album are a bit curious, this was, at the time, the only album appearance of the single version of "Get Back." As with the companion set above, one gets the immediate cognition and feeling of just how good, how life-enhancing, how imperative was the work of The Beatles. The really only significant omission in either set is "I'm Down," which was the flip side of “Help,” for more than twenty-five years available in no other format. And in 1973, if the claim could be made that there was a great Beatles song most people had never heard, Apple would have sold five million more copies and that many people would have had the rush of jubilation. Incidentally, the photo on the cover of this set is from the aborted Get Back sessions.


Chapter Twelve
Soul Stew


Phil Mershon


From 1965 through most of 1973, pop radio housed the greatest integration of musical forms ever imagined. Right alongside Anglo harmonies and psychedelic excursions into diabolic dreamland strutted and shouted the best concentration of soul music ever recorded.


Booker T. and the MGs. "Green Onions." Atlantic. 1962.



Their greatest hits can be found on the recordings of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. Their instrumental group recordings may have lacked the cohesion and accelerated tire-squall of their best works, but on “Green Onions,” with organ drive by Mr. Booker T. Jones, restrained groove drumming by Al Jackson, smooth move guitars ala Steve “Play it, Steve” Cropper, and sidewalk sweeping bass by Donald “Duck” Dunn, these guys were as steady and inarguable as a steamroller and even more fun to hear.


The Radiants. "Voice Your Choice." Chess. 1964.



Imagine crossing the early Temptations with Curtis Mayfield-era Impressions and the lead-switching harmonies of The Radiants is what you will get. Yet such a comparison is ultimately unfair to all involved, because—at least for the duration of this song—the interlay between brass and drums sounds nothing like the music that was coming from either Detroit or Chicago. Ultimately, this plea to select the one man who is different from all the others is as distinct as the singers are insisting they themselves are throughout this lovely triple-threat serenade.


Otis Redding. Live in Europe. Atco. 1966.



For anyone interested in the life of Otis Redding, Peter Guralnick’s fine Sweet Soul Music says a great deal, as do Rob Bowman’s excellent liner notes to the boxed set The Otis Redding Story. Of course, nothing tells the story as well as Otis himself as he battles the huffing Memphis Horns on "Can't Turn You Loose"(possibly the most identifiable horn pattern in rock or soul) or the frenetic death roll of "These Arms of Mine." While it may be nice to know that most of his early youth was spent in Macon, Georgia, where he pumped gas, dug wells, and played drums, the story of his music is why we came. With the possible exception of early stuff he recorded in Macon, all of that music is essential. None of it is dross. Otis recorded hundreds of songs, all of which are still begging people to hear them, almost as if our very perception endows them with more depth and strength. I will go so far as to say that the more people who hear Otis Redding, the better he objectively becomes. So to lull the uninitiated into discovering what they may not yet know, a fine start is with this, the best live recording ever made.


Otis Redding. Blue. Atlantic. 1966.



On Otis Redding’s first chart record, "These Arms of Mine," he sounded simultaneously scared to death and determined as hell to get as much out of his two-and-a-half minutes as possible. By the time he released Blue, his third album, he soared, plummeted and propelled for the duration. The horns hit you first on "Respect," but after Otis’s singing, it’s Al Jackson’s slap back at-cha drums that really push the song. After some well-earned stomping and leaping from the stone success of “Respect” and "Ole Man Trouble," Redding takes the buffalos stampeding on the rollercoaster through heavy waters with a version of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” wherein Mr. Pitiful calls on every blessed earthly power (including Booker T.’s anguished keyboards) to rescue him from a despair deeper than any terrestrial love. After completely reinventing “Down in the Valley” as a subterranean dance party, he wraps up with William Bell’s gorgeous"You Don't Miss Your Water," a rendition that even Bell himself couldn’t resist. Rather than emphasizing his good taste in song selection, Redding voraciously reconstructed these songs as his own. Even throughout a number strictly identified with The Temptations, he spread each syllable of “My Girl’s” idolatry out over the darkest rye bread ever ingested.


Johnny Rivers. "Secret Agent Man." Imperial. 1966.



Rock guitar as cheesy dynamics: lesson eight. It is not so much the purposefully flat singing (lifted well from Arthur Alexander) about gambling for life on the Riviera that makes this a minor classic. Instead, it’s the signature circular guitar pattern that sets the tone for a career choice that’s “fraught with danger,” thereby proving that music, too, can be onomatopoeic.


Bob Seger. The Singles: 1966-1967.



This is a bootleg compilation that some people have said was released in 1967. I doubt they have the correct year, particularly since I know for a fact that at least one of the selections here wasn’t recorded until 1971. Regardless of such details, this is a splendid hard rock album that appears in the Soul Stew section because Seger made these songs in the days before he went all big band smoothie hot time and was still doing the churn and grind, even better than he did on “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man.” “Ballad of the Yellow Beret” is a response to Sergeant Barry Sadler’s pro-death anthem. “Sock it to Me, Santa” is a jolly ho in your blue suede Christmas stocking, and"Looking Back" is the best thing Seger ever recorded, a freaked out fuck-all that defiantly decries the oppressions of what would come to be known as the Silent Majority. But then again, everything here is solid electric soul-based badinage and none of it sounds anything at all like “Night Moves.” This is also the only even semi-legitimate place to get “Looking Back,” except for a good in concert version on Live Bullet.


King Curtis and the Kingpins. "Memphis Soul Stew." Atco. 1967.



Tenor sax aficionado King Curtis was the leader of the Kingpins, Aretha Franklin’s backing band. In addition to supporting Lady Soul, the Coasters, and others with a Memphis flavor, he led the Kingpins through this recipe for rapture. What’s the recipe? Half a teacup of bass, a pound of fatback drums, four tablespoons of boiling Memphis guitars, a little pinch of organ, and half a pint o horns. Place on a burner and bring to a boil. Beat well.


Arthur Conley. "Sweet Soul Music." Atco. 1967.



Conley was an Otis Redding protégé who paid tribute to Lou Rawls, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Otis himself, and James Brown, all in less than three mighty minutes.


Otis Clay. "That's How it Is." One-derful! 1967.



When I was nine-years-old, my best friend was a girl named Tootie. Her father disc jockeyed for some local pop station. After the records he played served their usefulness, he would bring them home to Tootie. After she tired of them (which often took a painfully long time), she would give them to me. One that I received from her about three days after it first came out was “That’s How It Is.” For several months I could not stand to play it. All but one of the musicians is hopelessly lost and even though the pianist tries to provide some focus, as a song it did not work then and it does not work today.
However, over the years Otis Clay’s deep soul confession keeps bringing me back. Ignoring the band’s lack of direction, he simply pours out his total and complete confusion about the tumultuous relationship he is in with such determined force and Gospel pulpit punch that the musicians’ background noise finally fades just as he makes it clear that what his sermon is about is his own chance for either life or death. And yet there’s no question this man will survive. Anyone who can jump up and bleed in front of this band can overcome anything.


Spyder Turner. "Stand By Me." MGM. 1967.



This West Virginia native grew up in Detroit, where people appreciate the soul music of Chuck Jackson, Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson, David Ruffin and Billy Stewart so much that when Turner recorded his version of the classic Ben E. King song, he deliberately imitated each of these soul icons at different times throughout the number. There’s nothing original here—by definition. But Turner did not mock. He just imagined what it would sound like to have each of these heroes sing the song and then he made it happen.


Bobbie Gentry. "Ode to Billie Joe." Capitol. 1967.
"Fancy." Capitol. 1970.



Not everything that the wonderful Bobbie Gentry wrote and recorded was autobiographical, but these, her two best hits, certainly were. “Ode to Billy Joe” is narrated as the family sits around the dinner table discussing current events, including the apparent suicide of a neighbor boy—discussing it with all the emotional involvement of learning that some farmer’s cow had triplets. Gentry herself casts no particular judgment. After all, this song is about details. It is the listener who creates the big picture. But one needn’t be too perceptive to suspect that darker secrets surround the narrator.
“Fancy” wasn’t quite as good—mostly because it tried too hard—but after a couple years with Glen Campbell, it took some effort to get her talent back. Regardless, we were once again back in thatMississippi home, aiming on being a star because that’s what Mama would have wanted.
Both of these songs resonate with slightly polished rural ambiance, sort of like the equivalent of an un-muted strum that lingers.


Wilson Pickett. Wilson Pickett’s Greatest Hits. Atlantic. 1973.



Along with Otis Redding and James Brown, Wilson Pickett passes the blood test as one of the three heirs to supreme macho soul. Even as lead singer with The Falcons, Pickett made his songs shake from an inner intensity. "It's Too Late" and "If You Need Me" were a pair of explosive early Sixties R&B nuggets. But Pickett made the dynamite sweat once he connected with Atlantic Records. One of his best moments that no one ever mentions is "Don't Knock My Love,"one song that captures everything that Pickett did well. In addition to the raspiest “Hey!” ever recorded, the song grinds down on the singer’s vulnerable arrogance, pounds out as if the drummer were using the butt of his sticks rather than the heads, and without studio trickery fires off a mesmerizing ricochet bass that defies the word “pattern.” Even his intro to "Land of 1000 Dances" is excitement personified (“One-two-three,” he squeaks before repeating himself as the band flies loose). And on the subject of great bands, who but Pickett could get slide guitarist extraordinaire Duane Allman to play on a soul version of "Hey Jude" and make it work?
In 1973 Atlantic released this two-disc retrospective that included twenty-three such slaughtering selections. Even better would have been a release that simply offered up his sixteen Top Forty hits between 1965 and 1972. From his first, "In the Midnight Hour," to his last, "Fire and Water," with everything from covers of "Sugar, Sugar"to “Mama Told Me not to Come” in between, the Wicked One was a shaking, determined wonder of a man who blanked today’s boastful white rappers with lines such as “Shakespeare wrote about me before I was born!”


The Soul Clan. "That's How It Feels." Atlantic. 1968.



With Solomon Burke, Arthur Conley, Don Covay, Ben E. King and Joe Tex all on one recording, you would think this would be a contender for the greatest soul single ever made. The only problem is that so much talent—however cooperative—competed for the spotlight on a three minute track, resulting in a sound that’s busier than the seat covers of a 1968 Volkswagen. The real hero of the day turns out to be the song’s so-writer, Bobby Womack, who not only brought the music into marvelous focus (the Memphis Horns never sounded better), but played guitar with uniform restraint and just enough emotional soothing that the song still faintly glimmers with the genius of the original idea.


The Rascals. Time Peace. Atlantic. 1968.



If all you’ve ever heard of these guys is the dodge ball ecstasy of"Good Lovin'" and the drugged-out hippie wistfulness of “Groovin’,” you might have the wrong idea. Actually, they did not always drop the final “g.” Furthermore, being on Atlantic, their music was much heavier R&B than either of those two big hits or their other hippie anthem “People Got to be Free” would imply. Their covers of Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally” and “In the Midnight Hour” were hard-edged Little Italy R&B and their other hits were pure blue-eyed soul that never abandoned either the Gospel or blues roots. “Easy Rollin’” (Wait, maybe they did always drop that “g”) “It’s Wonderful,” "Ain't Gonna Eat My Heart Out Anymore" and "You Better Run" never get old. Why? Because harmonies intertwine amidst implied growls and genuine peppered bass patterns right out of a Philly haystack tornado.


Blood, Sweat and Tears. Child is Father to the Man. Columbia. 1968.



When David Clayton-Thomas replaced original singer and band founder Al Kooper in the first big band version of BS&T, the group lost far more than a competent vocalist. On this debut LP, everyone took a turn at writing and soloing and the overall ensemble worked precisely because each member’s best skills integrated with seeming effortlessness right into contemporary blues that was the base of even the most untamed music. The very idea of merging modern jazz with the wild impulses of rock was met with a mixture of curiosity, anticipation and dread. This album fulfilled the best expectations, primarily because the wildness lay beneath the surface. It was there. You just had to dig a little. In any case, the interplay between the always adventurous Kooper and the more structured guitarist Steve Katz far exceeded whatever glories may be gleaned from merging two largely incompatible forms of music.
Regardless of the band’s original intentions, all experiments were thoroughly abandoned and the dread quickly realized once Kooper left and Clayton-Thomas took control. Blood, Sweat and Tears forsook subtlety and opted for big brassy arrangements intended to shock rather than subvert. Their very irascible sound made the cream-flavored tapioca of the utterly talentless Chicago acceptable on a mass scale, a crime against society greater than which I cannot conceive.


Otis Redding. The Otis Redding Story. Atlantic. 1989.



This sixty-song box has about half of his official output, plus some interesting rarities, which may make it the best Otis you can get. Here are some highlights: “Mary Had a Little Lamb”: as the flip side to the inferior "That's What My Heart Needs," it was easy to suspect that Mary was just a throwaway. But discard this version’s credibility at your own risk. You’ll be missing out on the passion of defying all those fool authorities. Cover songs: These are all fascinating, but the best are his renditions of "Satisfaction," “Day Tripper,” “A Change is Gonna Come” and "White Christmas." With the exception of Cooke’s masterpiece, Otis expresses a level of soul that even the originals did not. “I Can’t Turn You Loose”: frustration built up, crowding the sounds in the mouth as the heart screams to explode. "Tramp": His funny, half-impromptu duet with Carla Thomas wherein she ridicules him for his appearance, to which he answers that being country is good. He’s got more cars than he can count, and besides, he’s a lover. Papa was. Grandpapa too. "Love Man": Stuttering proof of the title’s claim in a quivering jar.


Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Best of. Roulette. 1969.



The problem with many current reissued packages is that they simply have too many songs relative to the artist in question. For instance, I am eternally grateful that Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs recorded “Wooly Bully,” but I do not need to hear their seventy-five greatest hits. For one thing, the logic is fallacious since they had less than five hits. Second, by subjecting fans to so much super flaccid junk, the joy of the genuine treasures is contaminated.
With those thoughts in mind, imagine if you dare a fifty-song hits package for Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Such a thing exists, but there is no cause for it. Billy Levise (Ryder) was one of the hardest pumping bandleaders and singers of the 1960s and such box sets do more to ruin the experience of reliving the hits than does thissimple yet complete twelve-hit wonder. After the Shorty Long/Little Richard raver ("Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly") we get hard with "Little Latin Lupe Lu" and go psychotic with "Sock It to Me Baby," ricocheting off the headstones like a Super Ball fired from a cannon in a cemetery. This is the album to use to convince others of Ryder’s greatness. Avoid all others for fear they will remember only the weak, when it’s the strong that must survive. When you play this album, you will sweat before you even have a dance to move.


Sam and Dave. The Best of Sam and Dave. Atlantic. 1969.



In the history of male pop duos, only the Righteous Brothers and the Everly Brothers approximated the glory of Sam Moore and Dave Prater. Sam and Dave brought to the audial experience the passion and intensity of two friends fighting over the same girl, despite the fact that the reality was that the two men did not care much for one another. "Soul Man," "Hold On! I'm Coming," "Wrap It Up," “I Thank You,” “Soothe Me” and “When Something is Wrong with my Baby” are six testaments to soul staying power. Of course, neither the Righteous nor Everly Brothers had the benefit of guitarist/composer Steve Cropper, or bassist “Duck” Dunn, much less the potency of the Memphis Horns. Sam and Dave also received the production and songwriting largesse of Isaac Hayes and David Porter, both of whom knew how to get these two mortal enemies to work together.


Dusty Springfield. Dusty in Memphis. Atlantic. 1969.



Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd deserve their status as among the top producers of the 1960s for unlocking and unleashing the power of Aretha Franklin. Their second greatest achievement is this album. This English songstress made more than a few golden licks before her artistic centerpiece was released. “I Only Want to Be with You,” “Wishin’ and Hopin’,” and Especially “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” did more than hint at what was to come. They presaged it. Each of these songs conveys a richness and sensitivity that in those days was called soul. But the ideal marriage between the pop and top was Dusty in Memphis. The horns, guitars and backing singers Wexler and Dowd placed around Springfield were like powdered sugar on a plate of crème brullet. The real impact is the taste of a voice that expresses an intuition, an indefinable embodiment of flavors never felt before. "Son of a Preacher Man" was the hit, oddly doing better on the C&W charts than on the pop. But with songs by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and even one by Randy Newman, Dusty Springfield sounded closer than a hug. She was inside the listener, peering out.


Clarence Carter. "Patches." Atlantic. 1970.



Blind preacher of tangible thrills and purveyor of sonic ones such as this, as well as “Sixty Minute Man,” “Slip Away” and “Making Love.” “Patches” is the most understated song of carter’s career. Its beauty lies in the way he pushes the mournful arrangement aside and just tells the story (which was actually closer to that of the song’s composer, General Johnson) about the final words of his sharecropper father, words that commanded a responsibility beyond the abilities of any mortal. Carter lets us understand the magnitude of his horror with that duty even before we find out what they entailed.


Van Morrison. Moondance. Warner Bros. 1970.



For a man who claimed on his previous album that he was nothing but a stranger in this world, Van Morrison sure sounds to have a messianic connection. "And It Stoned Me" could be about getting country ripped on moonshine or just intoxicated from the head rush of taking in what human beings did not specifically make. The title track, once you get past the clever cocktail lounge piano work, is a stroll, or maybe a waltz, outside your favorite restaurant on your birthday with your favorite no one. I while I have no idea why Van deduces that because the vans are painted red and white that that necessarily means everybody is staying over night, "Caravan" nevertheless is one of the world’s great testimonies to the mating power of radio, which (I recalled suddenly) is what the mystic of this tome is supposed to be about anyway. By the time we get to the sunrise of "Brand New Day," we have traveled some immeasurable distance and experienced things that only poetry can evince. When Morrison announces “Here it comes” three times as if even he himself cannot believe it, the sun in your heart will reflect into your own eyes, guaranteed or double your journey back.


The Moments. "Love on a Two-Way Street." Stang. 1970.



Someone could have moved this song from the singles racks onto a Stylistics’ album and I’d bet most people could not distinguish Al Goodman’s beautifully wavering falsetto from that of Russell Thompkins. The song itself (written and produced by Sylvia Robinson, who would go on to her own commercial success as a singer and as the producer of some of the first rap records) isn’t much more than a lazy ride up and down some very angular countryside—at least once Goodman begins singing. But the intro uses piano, violin and guitar for strictly percussive effect, creating a strong rhythm that continues only in the listener’s mind.


Van Morrison. His Band and Street Choir. Warner Bros. 1970.



This album seems to be a bit more concerned with the earthly delights of Van Morrison’s extremely significant other, Janet Planet, as songs like "Crazy Face," “Give Me a Kiss” and “Sweet Jannie” amply display. But there’s more than a few returns to the cosmos with an opening tribute to his own infatuation with the New Orleans master Fats Domino ("Domino"), a slice of humor that some maintain was about making porno movies ("Blue Money"), and of course there’s the return to sender serenade, "Call Me Up in Dreamland," yet another explication on the joys of that AM/FM radio dial.


Jean Knight. "Mr. Big Stuff." Stax. 1971.



New Orleans-born Knight made the southern rounds for years before hitting one time with this, a puff-she-puff of R&B wonder. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that was the Jackson 5 doing those background sounds.


Van Morrison. "Wild Night." Warner Bros. 1971.



Rather than tell a story, the lyrics are a commentary of what the music is doing, rushing us along as Van takes us from Upper New York State’s backwoods all the way to the cavernous alleys of Belfast, spinning us on heaven’s dance floor, clacking with spunk, shaking off ambivalence, and every breath an invitation to experience life just a little bit fuller.


The Staple Singers. Be Altitude: Respect Yourself. Stax. 1972.



Perhaps because of the demise of The Beatles, Top Forty radio opened up to black artists in the early 1970s as never before. Great hits emerged from The Temptations, The O’Jays, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, The Undisputed Truth, Ike and Tina Turner, The Chairmen of the Board, The Chi-Lites, and War (all of whom will be dealt with in a future chapter, I assure you). But no such list would be complete without the Staple Singers. Pop Roebuck Staples and children Cleo, Mavis and Yvonne had eight great hits, of which the very best were "Heavy Makes You Happy," "Respect Yourself" and"I'll Take You There." The latter bears special attention for its tightly stumbling drum work, as well as Mavis’ reading of the line “Ain’t no smiling faces lying to the races.” These were funny, funky, semi-Gospel and wildly imaginative groove burners that made dancing mandatory and singing along compulsive.


Joe Tex. "I Gotcha." Dial. 1972.



This is funk turned inside out and ripped open with teeth. Even without the menace of the trumpets and the scatter-slap drums, Joe Tex would still sound like he was spinning on one foot right in your living room as he fires out the most demented vocal of his career.


Mel and Tim. "Staring All Over Again." Stax. 1972.



On this song drummer Roger Hawkins turns in his best groove style of serving the song rather than stealing the show. Everything is restrained except the passion and even that threatens to emerge from the guts and blow off the roof any second. The spoken word intro is hokey, but y the time the poor man’s Sam and Dave get to the bridge, even an emotional agnostic would be convinced the relationship could only succeed. Mel Hardin and Tim McPherson’s other noteworthy hit was “Backfield in Motion,” a fine recording, though not up to the excellent standards set by this one.


Van Morrison. Saint Dominic’s Preview. Warner Bros. 1972.



We start out quite light and airy here with a tie-in to another hero, Jackie Wilson, a man who could indeed knock you off your feet. And naturally there’s a song with the word “Gypsy” in the title. But that’s the end of the secular festivities. From there on out, we are looking ever deeper into the soul of Van Morrison as he explores for our listening pleasure the sounds of his own personal inner lion coming to terms with the burgeoning prospects of maturity. “All the way from Denmark” is one of those lines Morrison repeats enough that you know it must mean something important to him, even if, as he has claimed, he sometimes does not know the meaning himself. By the time we reach "Almost Independence Day," it is easy to suspect that “meaning” in the traditional sense of cognition is quite irrelevant. The point is not intellectual. It is a faith in our relationship with the universe and the strength we derive from that relationship that matters.
So this is not your standard pop album of party tunes and wet and happy moments. What it also is, though, is some of Van’s greatest extended compositions, excellent guitar work from Ronnie Montrose (?!?), and the intricate drumming of Lee Charleton.


Van Morrison. Bang Masters. Epic. 1991.



Recorded for Bert Berns’ Bang Records over a three-day period in 1967 by a twenty-one-year-old Belfast youth, these eighteen songs have mostly seen the light of day a few times before, appearing onBlowin’ Your Mind, The Best of Van Morrison and T.B. Sheets. But this is the best place to find all of these. In fact, it is the only place to find them all. What do we have here? We have two versions of the pop masterpiece “Brown-Eyed Girl.” We have the traditional execution song “Midnight Special” run through the early Morrison machine. We have two songs that would end up in slightly different form on the epitome of excellence, Astral Weeks. And we have a few songs that no one would care about at all if they hadn’t been recorded by Van Morrison. But best of all we have the original nine-plus-minute version of “T.B. Sheets,” a song that shows how Morrison responded to a girlfriend having tuberculosis. Or how some guy responded to his girlfriend’s illness. Or how horrible it can be to watch someone you love die and still be repelled by aspects of the situation, not because of concern that it will happen to you one day, but because there are sometimes some very ugly aspects of it. And the guilt that comes from this response can seize and shake you. So here we are once again, finding ideas such as these in a pop record, right alongside “Brown-Eyed Girl.”


War. "They Can't Take Away Our Music." MGM. 1971.
"Slippin' Into Darkness." United Artists. 1973.
"The World is a Ghetto." United Artists. 1973.
“Cisco Kid.” United Artists. 1973.
"Why Can't We Be Friends?" United Artists. 1973.



Far better than they even seemed at the time, War had perhaps the most provocative name in all of music. In the context of one of our most unpopular genocides, the group name was tantamount to naming themselves Public Execution and playing only for the Amish. But with or without Eric Burdon, they played a bad ass game of jive dive, meaning they were as funky as a Saturday night on your best girl’s sofa and they actually wrote and played songs that sounded exactly like what Compton was: a ghetto where the occasional spark of transcendence did emerge. “Slippin’” sounds exactly like its title’s promise. “The World is a Ghetto” delivers a painfully stoned need for escape while admitting that the real tragedy is that no such relief will ever come. And they also had the audacity and good sense to sing: “Sometimes I don’t speak right, yet I know what I’m talking about.”


Betty Wright. "Clean Up Woman." Atlantic. 1972.



You know how sometimes someone will compliment a singer by saying, “She sure does have a way with a song”? Well, Betty Wright had a way with a song and this was it.


The Soul Children. "Hearsay." Stax. 1972.



For anyone who ever wondered what Carla Thomas and Wilson Pickett might have sounded like had they teamed up, this is as close to that imagined sound as ever existed. Producers David Porter and Isaac Hayes used the same musicians who added life to the great Sam and Dave singles and worked out a scathing dialog between Norman West and Shelbra Bennett, punctuated by Steve Cropper’s unmistakable glassy guitar twangs. Norman West begins the argument by declaring, “When I come home from work I can hardly close my eyes, you keep bugging me and nagging me about some hearsay jive.” But Shelbra doesn’t let him get far before she fires back, “Well I’m the one who’s tired of that hearsay jive, honey. Every time I walk out my door my friend Shirley is telling me about some woman you were with the night before.” All the while the other two singers chant “He said she said to me” until the two leads explode at each other, interrupting every tirade with another accusation more ridiculous than the one before, until they finally descend beneath the steady saxophone that’s only been marking time until the end.


New York City. "I'm Doin' Fine Now." Chelsea. 1973.



Talk about your soul super sessions! This one featured one singer from the Five Satins and another from the Moonglows, Philly Soul writer-producer aficionado Thom Bell, and instrumentation by the two guys who would later become the musical half of Chic. The sound is the perfect combination of the lesser qualities of The Spinners mixed with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. With Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers churning up a pre-funk groove, lead singer Tim McQueen does the best he can to keep up with all the talent surrounding him. “I’m Doin’ Fine Now” was a one-shot and a worthy one at that.



Chapter Thirteen
No Mechanics in the Garage, Please! Early
Punk and Grunge

    Punk and grunge of the mid-1960s spirited deliberate and often inadvertent distortion on the wings of derivative yet inspired guitar patterns up way beyond the gates of intoxicated wild abandon. The arrangements defined spontaneous, the vocals weren’t so much tuneful as thrillingly menacing, and the playing gave every indication of the finest results of three weeks of high school band practice. All that is a little misleading because the truth was and remains that damned few people were actually any good at this stuff. For every “Hang on Sloopy,” there were one thousand versions of “Dip My Stick, Annie,” a song title just this instant invented but one which illustrates the point all the same. What made the best of this early punk music so wonderful was—once again—the ability on the part of the performers to funnel a lifetime’s enthusiasm into a three-minute hit single.

The McCoys. "Hang on Sloopy." Bang. 1965.



    Any list of positive characteristics for a great record company to possess would include a leadership obsessed with the development of its talent, an organization that either has the resources to cover a wide range of musical tastes or one that can spread out the interior variations within a seemingly narrow genre, producers who can make the best use of the singers and musicians without stifling them, and quite simply people who cannot live without creating the best music in the world. To my mind, the record companies that consistently have done all these things and more are Philles, Motown, Sun, Stax, Atlantic, Stiff, Asylum, Elektra, and Bang. The last of these was named for its owners being Bert Berns, Ahmet Ertegun, Neshui Ertegun, and Gerald Wexler. Bang released a wild and wide number of performers’ products, notably Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, the Strangeloves, and the McCoys. For their first major release, Bang assigned the production team of Feldman-Goldstein-Gottehrer, who had just recently germinated a massive hit masquerading as the Strangeloves. Lead singer an guitarist Rick Derringer expresses hearty yet freewheeling vocals, deranged riffs and funhouse sounds of madness, all of which might be added to that list of characteristics of a great record company. In fact, from beginning to end, “Hang on Sloopy” sounds like a musical pep rally without input from the jocks or school administration. Producer Richard Gottehrer went on to some commercial success producing Blondie.

The Strangeloves. "I Want Candy." Bang. 1965.


    This wild New York City trio must have thought England owned Australia and nevertheless cranked out a frat rock classic before blurting into NeverLand. Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer were musicians, producers and songwriters from the girl group days of the early 1960s. Prior to this hit, their biggest accomplishment (or claim to infamy) was in writing “My Boyfriend’s Back” for The Angels. But even that mind-numbing abomination could be forgiven with their self-contained beer blast bonanza. This is the finest controlled anarchy in garage rock history.

Them. "Gloria." Parrot. 1965.
    Them was Van Morrison’s first consequential group. They only had three hits, but that’s a lot like saying there’s only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet. “Gloria,” “Here Comes the Night” and “Mystic Eyes” were among the best blue-eyed R&B songs ever recorded. Van was a little Ray Charles, a little Leadbelly, and a little drunken nineteen-year-old Irish punk with a black eye and a cross the bear. No less a personage than Steve Van Zandt has opined that if he was trying to explain prime garage rock to a stranger, Them is the example he would use.
The Barbarians. The Barbarians. Rhino. 1979.



Not only are All Music Guide’s editorial opinions often at odds with the intellect, the self-styled Bible of Pop Music Consumerism should employ a fact checker. Consider the case of The Barbarians. Not only does AMG slam the one album officially released by the band when that LP’s audacity alone warrants unmitigated praise, the writer who covered the Barbarians’ work in The Guide incorrectly states that none of the group members wrote songs for their own album. A check of the songwriting credits dispels this fallacy quickly. But AMG’s argument—shared by more than a few critics—that the album disappoints, is simply beyond my ken to fathom. The eight cover versions sound like exactly what they are: four guys banging out their best in a garage inBoston. As for originals, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl" has the appropriate sound of mild inebriation fueled by teenaged hostility and hormones galore, while "Moulty" celebrates the life of their hook-handed drummer. There’s not a song on here, except maybe “Linguica,” that doesn’t belong in your very own home.


The Bobby Fuller Four. "I Fought the Law" and "Let Her Dance.” Mustang. 1966.



Those who know his music herald Bobby Fuller and his band as Tex-Mex icons right up there with Doug Sahm, perhaps even as the nearest legacy of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Accurate as that may be, the best reason to still play these two hits is because the sound is full, the enthusiasm is heated, and the spirit is desperate. On both songs, the drums cascade like a permanent avalanche while the guitar conjures the image of skiers attempting to maintain their balance as they ride that avalanche to perdition. "I Fought the Law," incidentally, has been covered by everybody from The Clash to Mary’s Danish, a wide swath indeed.


? and the Mysterians. "96 Tears." Cameo. 1966.



Rudy Martinez, which certainly may not even be his real name, was the singer known as Question Mark and it was he who invented the scathing, exhilarating, painfully joyous concept of punk rock way back in 1966 with pissed off vocals, what has come to be identified as cheesy Farfisa organ, a competent drummer and lyrics that were not merely suggestive, they were rude. After all, he did not arrive at the number 96 by accident. Every song in this “chapter” to this point laid the foundation, but Question Mark’s ungloved assault on the delicacy of glamour did more than chum the waters. It dropped intoxicated debutantes into the pool and let loose the sharks.


The Standells. "Dirty Water." Tower. 1966.



Having listened to The Standells’ Greatest Hitsand even Rarities, I feel confident that this producer-penned Boston College Saturday Night is the best thing they ever did. Simple, drawling guitar licks, overly urgent singing, a steady backbeat and a record company that didn’t care. That’s a great formula for nervous punk lust time heaven.


Troggs. "Wild Thing." Fontana. 1966.



There were at least five longhaired teenaged bands on my block when I was a kid and I had the pleasure of playing drums in one of them. We called ourselves the Firebats. The singer had kind of a croaky voice that you wanted to throttle, the guitarist could do a lot with his limited repertoire, the bass player’s inspiration must have been Danny Partridge, and I had, shall we say, not quite mastered my instrument. In other words, we weren’t much, but we were just good enough to be asked to play school dances from time to time. One of the things common to all local garage bands of the early 1970s was that there were certain songs we all were expected to play because (a) they were sufficiently simple, and (b) people never seemed to tire of them. These songs were “Alright Now,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Louie, Louie,” “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” “I’m a Man” and “Wild Thing.” The Troggs’ classic was always my personal favorite because, as a rhythm man, I enjoyed the way the song deliberately breaks down in several places, degenerating into a drunken kaw-wang! Then a deadly still pause: “Wild thing Ah think you move me.” Kaw-wang kaw-wang! “But Ah wanna kno-whoa fo sho.” Pause, beat. Pleased with ourselves as we were, we never came close to the potency of the Troggs. Reg Presley, lead singer and chief songwriter, captured the sound of oblivious malcontent on a mission for love better than any bandleader on our particular block, or any other block within ear shot. To this day, no matter what song precedes or follows it, “Wild Thing” hushes the memory for more than the song’s own duration.


The Swingin’ Medallions. "Double Shot (of My baby's Love)." Smash. 1966.



Making love has been compared to a lot of things but this is the first time anyone suggested it had the effect of a double gin ‘n’ tonic. The song packs the same spirit as the pre-football game warm-ups of “I Want Candy” and “Hang on Sloopy,” and like those songs, the rally threatens to lead to scoring in ways that do not necessarily involve tight ends and wide receivers, unless you mean. . .


Count Five. "Psychotic Reaction." Double Shot. 1966.



As a greater fan of music than of musicians, I do not care that these San Jose humps essentially stole the guitar hook from The Yardbirds. In fact, I’m glad they did it. It was only fair, what with them Brits stealing our hard-working Mississippi blues and making it better. Some songs are so brilliant in their simplicity that they never grow up. This is one. The guitar hovers like a missile paused in mid air, trying to decide which target to blow.


Leaves. "Hey, Joe." Mirer. 1966.



“Hey, Joe” was one of those mid-Sixties murder tune every garage band in America had to play at the bowling alley while guys in ugly jackets drank beer by the pitcher and heaved strikes all night. Although Jimi Hendrix’ version was undoubtedly better, it was the Leaves—led by singer John Beck and featuring guitarist Bobby Arlin and bassist Jim Pons—who had the bigger hit. It was their only one.


Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. The Best of. MGM. 1967.



The sound is permanent. “Uno! Dos! One two three quarto!” Abruptly the cheesiest Farfisa organ music ever recorded fills up with sloppy drums and crunchy guitars while a bearded singer in a goofy turban cautions us about not being L7 (square). Suddenly some beast with two big horns and a wooly jaw came in and did the mashed potato with a boomerang. "Wooly Bully" is one of the great homemade-sounding hits and was certainly the best this band ever made, although "Lil Red Riding Hood," which is here, and “Oh That’s Good, No That’s Bad” which isn’t, were both worthy follow ups. Domingo Samudio (as Sam was known at home) even had the good sense to record both Junior Parker’s "Mystery Train" and Billy the Kid Emerson’s "Red Hot," the latter featuring the lyrics, “My gal is red hot! Your gal ain’t doodly squat!”


Paul Revere and the Raiders. Greatest Hits.Columbia. 1967.



This great Northwest band finally received the recognition that had long been their due the day this album was released. With Paul Revere playing piano and Mark Lindsay sax and vocals, they created some mostly heavy blues-based rock and roll from as far back as 1963 right on through the rest of that decade. And while there are albums that have more complete overviews, this one remains the sole platter that captures the group at their best with a minimum of fluff. The first of the two "Louie, Louie" songs was a wonderful spin, using the saxophone in place of the guitar. The second “Louie” number was a grand instrumental that rocked just as hard as its namesake. "Steppin' Out"was the group’s first national hit and by this time the rest of the core band members—Charlie Coe, Mike Smith and Phil Volk—would be in place. While that line-up would change over the years, those are the guys you see on this album’s cover. "Just Like Me,""Hungry" and "Good Thing" continued the stream of extremely hard-edged and dangerous rockers, while"Kicks" was a good anti-drug tune. On paper, the songs clearly harkened back to the mid-1950s, when saxophone-driven rock raged. But the arrangements and deliveries purified Chicago blues by cutting it with clear-eyed mania. The rest of this album is just so-so, with a few too many weepy ballads. But seven great tracks out of eleven is still fine, especially on a greatest hits package.


The Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground and Nico. Verve. 1967.



This album cannot be tamed. It’s not just the subject matter (hookers, junkies, hustlers, street personalities and actors) or the Andy Warhol peel-off banana cover. In fact, the songs could be about going to church on Sunday and the cover could have been painted by Norman Rockwell and still this album would be unnerving because the art is not in the topics or the pretty pictures. It’s in the music. The music is discord personified. Flat where we anticipate melody, atonal where we expect scales, ferocious where we need sorrow, and noisy as Hell on a Saturday night: this is the sound of a much traveled street running right through a plastic recording studio. Starting with Dylan-like lyricism circa Blonde on Blonde, wunderkind Lou Reed merged every imagined decadence into a sound where your only chance to get out alive comes through abandoning all hope of any such escape. The night is horribly dark, your headlights do not work, the windows won’t roll up, and all you can get on the radio is a screeching viola and some guy thanking God that He just doesn’t care. It is, in other words, a unique kind of bliss.


The Hombres. "Let It All Hang Out." Verve. 1967.



A Bronx cheer. So begins what is surely the most tripped-out litany of disconnected and surreal concepts ever squeezed into a pop song, slapped out like a fly swatter on a cheese sandwich, unified or compressed by the spoken admonition to let it all hang out, the meaning of which remaining as imprecise today as it was forty-odd years ago. Combine that vagueness with a vocal that defines straight-faced confusion and a band that makes as much as possible from all two of their chords and you have some great sauce to smother your steak.


Owen B. “Goin’ Home” and "Mississippi Mama."Janus. 1970.



“Left the old folks yesterday rocking in their chairs,” begins singer Jim Krause. “Didn’t have the heart to stay, they thought I didn’t care.” We never quite find out where exactly the singer has to go—to war, to prison, to a life of communal sacrifice. But he’s clearly determined to go and just as determined to miss the home life and family he’s leaving behind, a sure bit of humanistas at a time when it was far more fashionable to not give a damn. In 1970, when most Midwestern rockers screamed the imperative of loud music, heavy drugs and fucking in the streets—a not entirely inappropriate idea—Owen B actually expressed remorse for the people left behind who lacked the luxury that allowed for such experiences. Both of these songs were strong regional hits in the Michigan and Ohio area, only grazing the bottom of the Hot 100 nationally.


The Velvet Underground. Loaded. Cotillion. 1970.



This was not quite the same band that had released the minimalist and seductive drone three years earlier. Gone was Nico the chanteuse, John Cale the competing visionary, and much of Maureen Tucker’s drumming. Present, however, was the pairing of a pouting lyricism with a newfound melodiousness. There were still plenty of drugs and weird sex. But this was about as liberated as Lou Reed ever sounded.
Ah, but methinks I assume too much. Lou Reed was a dissenting New York college student who put together a band consisting of the aforementioned two, plus Sterling Morrison on rhythm guitar. They came together around Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a concept which made up in excitement whatever it lacked in clarity. The band played to crowds in the dozens, starting more rumors than trends. And then all of a damned sudden out comes an album with a banana cover which allowed the purchaser to peel the fruit. The sound inside was flat and coarse and scary and mesmerizing. They even had a dumb blonde to sing a few songs as if she had Hitler’s mustache up her snatch and found the experience boring. Lou handled the other leads. They were quite hard to take, which was at least half the fun. And they broke up after Loaded, their most accessible recording.


The Fugs. Golden Filth. Reprise. 1970.



If you are presently in a band that has yet to be professionally recorded, or if you have any taste at all, you may find it horrifying that The Fugs were even allowed to make albums. Tuli Kupferberg and Ed Sanders, the two constants in The Fugs, probably would agree with you. Their music isn’t merely abrasive. It is downright annoying. Their lyrics are less poetic than obscene. Sanders isn’t half as funny on his between-song patter as it sounds like he wants to be, and the vocals are not so much sung as they are snorted. But everybody here, including the audience, sure is having a good time and you can’t give all the credit to the drugs. At least five percent of this album’s success is due to the symbiosis of group and crowd, neither half of which is stupid enough to be cowed by the other. If you ever need to play something to represent the concept of “underground,” then this is the album to use.


The Buoys. "Timothy." Sceptor. 1971.



The buoyancy of the rhythm and the histrionics of the singer offset the tremendous bad taste of this song about an incident of apparent cannibalism. The funny thing was that Rupert Holmes wrote this hit and even wrote a good third of the album from which it came.


Brownsville Station. “Let Your Yeah Be Yeah,”"Smokin' in the Boys Room" and "Kings of the Party." Big Tree. 1973.



For a few glorious minutes in 1973, Michael Lutz, Cub Coda, T.J. Cronley and Tony Driggins were most definitely the kings of the party. TheseMichigan rock-aholics amped up and trashed up Bo and Chuck, trying to intimidate no one and having the times of their lives. This was the sound of large light drums, careening bass, gritty gut guitar and mostly Cub cackling out disobedience to teachers and cops, amazed that the group’s fans got off as much as the band themselves. 

Chapter 14
Taint Nobody’s Business if I Dance:
Pre-Disco Dance Rock

    Rather than weighing beat at the expense of melody, the music in this chapter creates hooks by converging rhythm with tight song structure. From the vocal percussion of “Land of 1000 Dances” to the pre-swirl synthetic pulses of “More More More,” the emphasis is on the merging of two key elements of rock and soul: danceability and musical attitude. The bulk of this bubbled and popped in the early 1970s, seemingly long before disco mechanized song structure and lopped off attitude while inserting posturing in its place. But even the best of Philly Soul or neo-Memphis Shake shared a heritage in the original discotheques of the early-to-mid-1960s when specifically dance-oriented tracks like the Starlighters’ "Peppermint Twist" and Major Lance’s "The Monkey Time" bounced off suspended cages while go-go boots and mini skirts stomped and sway. While most of that period’s music lacked a certain intellectual sophistication, the best of it made up for that inadequacy by throbbing like muscles attached to electrodes. And the very best stressed the unifying effect of inexactitude, celebrated an absence of precision, cheered the “anyone can do this” ethos—all of which binds pre-disco dance rock to the early punk and garage grunge typically playing right next door.

Thee Midnighters. "Land of 1000 Dances." Chat. 1965.


    This song was originally written and recorded by New Orleans’ own Chris Kenner. In that original version, Kenner doesn’t quite rattle off 1,000 dances, but he comes close. A few years later, a gang of kids from East L.A. called Cannibal and the Headhunters were doing the song live when the lead singer forgot the words. He improvised. “Naw na-na na-naw became the chorus. Before they could get to the studio to do their own version, Little Willie and Thee Midnighters, having heard the Headhunters’ version, rushed to churn out the same tune, replete with the new nonsense syllables. It went nowhere fast. The Headhunters version did slightly better and certainly introduced grunge way back in 1966. But it was Thee Midnighters who came closest to capturing the feel—if not the exactness—of Kenner’s original.

The Human Beinz. "Nobody But Me." Capitol. 1967.


    The Isley Brothers were the only terrific black rock group to have two of their best songs re-done by white groups who left the originals sucking dust. The Beatles decimated “Twist and Shout” and the Human Beinz did the same to “Nobody But Me.” The Beinz were just another excellent bar band from northern Ohio on just another Saturday night. They changed the dance names around and added a fuzz guitar intro and the next thing they knew, they were history. They were also the one pop group to have a guitarist whose first name was Ting. Beginning with a strident, inviting, extended fuzz guitar chord, the song lifts off as the singer strikes up a supremely negative and repetitive rhythm of the word “no,” then brags for two minutes about how nobody can shingaling, skate, boogaloo or shake like he does, a statement thoroughly validated by the manic propulsion of the bass and drums.

Sly and the Family Stone. Stand! Epic. 1969.


    No group of this magnitude came and went so fast. While the band itself was together from 1967 through 1975, the peak years, 1968-72, showed such strength and popular appeal, with whole styles of music seemingly invented on the spot, that Sylvester Stewart’s virtual disappearance is one of the great tragedies of popular music. But with horn blower Cynthia Robinson, bassist Larry Graham, and a collection of others playing and singing what felt free and tight, Stand! was born from and offered to ignite an integrated optimism that—well, I was going to say it could have been the soundtrack for the Civil Rights movement, but it feels more appropriate to imagine these songs as an integral part of that movement. From the drum roll command of the title track, through the extended politico-funk-out of"Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey," right on to the promise of spiritual mass orgasm at the root of "I Want to Take You Higher," Stand! stands as tall as it claims. All the while there’s no escaping the latent edginess, the societal pressure to act—nonviolently or otherwise—burbling and boiling beneath the beat. Just as the pressure threatens to spit gasoline onto the encircling combustion, Sly lowers the heat—if not the intensity—with "Everyday People," one of the most curious songs of the decade. Childlike in its structure and delivery, Stewart turned the counterculture view of prejudice and alienation upside down and smirked at the hypocrisies: “There is a longhair who doesn’t like the short hair for being such a rich one who will not help the poor one.” He concludes that such a stance is acceptable because we got to live together. Such a view is called utopian for a reason. But even this—the most commitedly utopian group of the 1960s—could not maintain their faith for long. Within two years, they would be just as much dedicated to despair.

The Delfonics. "La La Means I Love You." Philly Groove. 1968. "Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?" Philly Groove. 1970.


    This fantastic Philadelphia trio had a short string of late 1960s three-minute Thom Bell-produced marvels, leading off with “La La Means I Love You,” copping a line from Major Lance with “You Got Yours and I’ll Get Mine,” and surrendering to bliss with “Didn’t I?” Wilbert Hart, William Hart and Randy Cain utilized producer Bell’s lustrous brass and string arrangements to personify their label’s pronouncement that a town as crazy as Philadelphia (brutal psycho Police Chief Frank Rizzo was mayor at the time) held enough room for cosmic soul confections. In “La La,” Hart sings to convince the object of his charms that, while he is a modest gent who isn’t even certain of his own ability to sing (false modesty, rest assured), the paralyzed state of being his love has left him in only allows him to stutter the most baby-like of utterances. “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time,” while even more lush than its predecessor, is the true spark of dance-oriented urban black paranoia, albeit, its source being bedroom politics. After suffering his girlfriend’s ten or more indiscretions, Hart vows “Get this through your head: There’ll be no more.” All of which kind of leads one to wonder if the expression “blow your mind” refers to surprise or to something more ominous.

Isaac Hayes. "Theme From Shaft." Stax. 1971.


    The image is indelible. It’s the 1972 Grammy Awards. Isaac Hayes is about to receive his award for something to do with either this song or its album soundtrack from the movie. And there he is: The Black Moses, flanked by long dark honeys, draped in flowing robes, sporting badass shades and about one million in jewelry just dripping off him, the high hat drum-bass thump of “Shaft” guiding his glide to the podium. If Hayes hadn’t looked so seriously dangerous, the image would have been borderline hysterical. People called this kind of entertainment “blaxploitation,” because a marketing niche had been discovered whereby B-films for African-Americans could be made featuring not altogether legitimate black action heroes. Well, the music was sure good. The fact is, it was amazing, especially coming from one-half of the songwriting and production team that just a few years earlier had assembled Sam and Dave’s greatest recordings. “Shaft” begins with a strutting drum pattern, picks up a dancing hinge guitar lick, an organ pulse, and a swath of synthesizer drone, all of which comes out across the night sky for most of the first half of the song. Hayes enters with a bevy of scolding female backing singers with whom he trades Q&A. “You say that cat Shaft is a bad mother—”
“Shut your mouth!”
“But I’m talkin’ ‘bout Shaft!”
“We can dig it.”
     Also fine were cuts from similar soundtracks: Bobby Womack's Across 110th Street, Curtis Mayfield's Superfly, Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man, the Staple Singers' Let’s Do It Again, and most wildly, the Hues Corporation's Blacula. But nobody conjured such ominous musical ambiance with the hilarious intensity of Isaac Hayes.

Beginning of the End. "Funky Nassau." Atco. 1971.


    The aptly named Beginning of the End (the Munning brothers and Fred Hensfield) grew up in the Bahamas listening to a quirky style of music called junkanoo. That music—primitive, aggressive lyrics, percussive horns, and a soul groove for infinite danceability—is exactly what “Funky Nassau” hits us with. The song itself was nothing less than a tribute to the hipper aspects of their hometown. After writing off New York City and London, they celebrate the mini-skirts, maxi-skirts, Afro hair-doos and sunshine of their island nest. The lyrics are incredibly dated, but the swinging guitar line ends far too soon.

Main Ingredient. "Everybody Plays the Fool."RCA. 1972.

    Cuba Gooding replaced the deceased Don McPherson just in time to have a Number Three hit with this soulful tune, which was followed by another pair of chartbusters that were not of the same recipe.
    The most secondarily interesting thing about the group: they released an album entitled Afrodisiac.
     “Everybody plays the Fool” intros like a low-key sermon against a riff right out of the Honey Cone’s catalogue: “Okay, so your heart’s broken. You sit around mopin,’ Cryin’, cryin’. You say you even thinkin’ ‘bout dyin’? Well, before you do anything rash, dig this.” Gooding spins out about a million clichés that only make sense after the pain is gone, but it’s easy to forgive the pedestrian advice once his tenor winds its way through the anonymous horn arrangements and right into the urgency of the moment.

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. "If You Don't Know Me by Now." Philadelphia. 1972.


    With production from Gamble and Huff and songwriting from McFadden and Whitehead, not to mention Teddy Pendergrass’ Philly Soul vocals, there was no way these guys could miss. The Blue Notes lift up like the choir they were, announcing the presence of the preaching skills Harold Melvin possessed. “We’ve all got,” he assures us, “our own funny rules. I’ve got mine. Woman, you’ve got yours, too.” Then he pulls the hardest punch from the track and delivers it cold: “What good is our love affair if we can’t see eye to eye?” After this smash hit, all their singles were identified as “Part 1,” which was cool in a James Brown kind of way. One must wonder how Melvin took the sudden success, what with his group struggling since 1956. Two short years after Pendergrass joined up, the group seemed unstoppable. After Teddy split in 1976, the hits stopped right on coming.

The O’Jays. "Back Stabbers" and "Love Train."Philadelphia International. 1972.


    The downs and ups in black soul Seventies. “Back Stabbers” clearly follows in the mood-mold of “Smiling Faces Sometimes,” particularly with introductory piano trills that suggest an impending shoot-out in a Western barroom, although the glory of Walter Williams, Eddie Revert and William Powell singing “What they do” will amuse me far longer than The Undisputed Truth ever could. “Love Train” stands such a dystopia on its head by urging everyone to forget the bad and come on board. However convincing the vocals and sentiment may be, it is only fair to acknowledge that the production of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, here and with the Stylistics and Harold Melvin, birthed what those high strings and understated rhythms would come to be called: Philly Soul.

Billy Paul. "Me and Mrs. Jones" and "Thanks for Saving my Life." Philadelphia International. 1972 and 1974.


    The first of these is possibly the smoothest ode to adultery ever recorded, and certainly the one most sympathetic to the co-infidelator. It is especially nice when Paul makes his voice sound like a trumpet. There were no such vocal histrionics on the long-anticipated follow-up, a much perkier and upbeat number when Billy pays tribute to the woman who kept him from going under when it all looked bleak. I always considered that the person to whom the latter song was addressed might well have been the wife upon whom the earlier transgression had fallen.

Joe Simon. "Drowning in the Sea of Love" and"Power of Love." Southbound. 1972.



    Producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff engulfed country Joe Simon in the orchestral wash of MFSB, the instrumental group whose name stood for “Mother Father Sister Brother,” but in the backlash against just such music was often disparaged as Mother Fucking Sons of Bitches. And while my own taste would lead me to favor the latter appellation, there is no getting away from the fact that Simon not only overcomes the constraints of Philly Soul at its most oppressive; he actually elevates it by sounding so country (in the sense that Otis Redding was country). These two songs are his best work, although it’s tempting to include “Misty Blue” just for balance.

The Spinners. "I'll Be Around" Atlantic. 1972.
"Could it be I'm Falling in Love?" Atlantic. 1973.


    Although they formed in Detroit, it was the Philly sound of producer Thom Bell working with New York label Atlantic that provided The Spinners with the best sounds of their long careers. Lead singer Phillip Wynne spins his vocals around, in and out and right through the middle of these streamlined confections, presaging the kind of dance music that disco might have become had it not been for the greed and overt whiteness to which that thankfully short-lived genre succumbed.

Tower of Power. "You're Still a Young Man" and"Down to the Night Club." Warner Bros. 1972. "So very Hard to Go." Warner Bros. 1973.



    This very fine multi-piece horn band plus sometime vocalist Lenny Williams first came to notice in the early 1970s, a time when it was still possible to hear real Showtime R&B on the radio. All three of these songs were big hits and the group almost scored again with “Don’t Change Horses in the Middle of a Stream,” one of the best examples of mixed metaphors in all of pop music. The beauty of these numbers lies in the way Williams’ lead unites the horns with the rest of the band across significant time changes which in turn amplify the naked spikes the drummer keeps hammering into the tracks. The band’s next success was as support for Elton John’s album Caribou. Legal complications side-tracked the group soon after.

Bette Midler. "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."Atlantic. 1973.



    After her initial single, “Do You Wanna Dance,” failed to crack the Top Ten, Bette Midler released “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” a remake of an Andrews Sisters hit from the 1940s. Midler knew the song would be a hit. The year was 1973 and kids were being manipulated into grooving to a mix of nostalgia and dance music. With the vocals triple-tracked, it did sound as if Midler was singing all three parts, which, of course, she was.

Average White Band. AWB. Atlantic. 1974.



If you can stop being in awe of the R&B harmonics, the pumping funk rhythms and the friendly feel of this album, it might be interesting to note that this was one of the few big bands that actually worked well in the rock world. While the Ides of March, Chicago and Blood Sweat and Tears had each in its way tried to fuse rock with jazz while yielding neither, Average White Band just focused on playing the kind of music they enjoyed playing together. Chuck meat steady gator wrastlin’ guitar, untamed double trumpets, drumming straight out of Miles Davis-era Bitches Brew, and bass that could swank up the stuffiest sorority on campus. "Pick Up the Pieces" was the hit, perfectly encapsulating a virtuosity with the attitude of party-time rockers. Now that’s my idea of fusion.

Shirley and Company. "Shame Shame Shame." Vibration. 1975.


    Funny, funky soul duets this strong do not happen anymore and in fact never did happen all that often. This song is funny because half the black pop clichés in existence at the time are here, and it works mainly because the uncredited Jesus Alvarez does a back-over flip trying to keep up with a woman who apparently has everything going for her except a willingness to dance, a deal-breaker, to be sure. This is funky because the drums never lose their crispness and the bass stays on the bottom, rather than swallowing the song whole. “Shame” may have been disco, but it did not suffer from the synthetic mindless drone that appellation suggests. The pace never falters on the off beat, everyone sounds happily crazed, and the give-and-take between singers insures that you’ll hope hysteria is contagious.

The Stylistics. Best of. H&L. 1975.

    Thom Bell and Linda Creed wrote and produced ten powerful teen tunes from 1971 through 1974. The Stylistics front lad was Russell Thompkins, a kid who knew more about falsetto soul phrasing than any or all of the brothers Gibb. "Betcha By Golly Wow" would have been a joke in the mouth of anyone else alive at the time. But that isn’t the half of it. It’s one-tenth. The other classic performances are here, the best of which are "I'm Stone in Love with You," "You Make Me Feel Brand New," "You are Everything" and "Break up to Make Up." By the mid-1970s, the group got “too big” for Bell and Creed who label hopped without commercial or artistic success.

Thelma Houston. "Don't Leave Me This Way."Tamla. 1976.


    A little contrived as a song, this works and clearly belongs here because it was the one time when Houston was directed and matched with material that suited her vocal abilities. With the Funk Brothers bashing out in the face of the apocalypse, the nonstop sensibility of extended twelve inch hedonism was thoroughly convincing—for this one song.

Andrea True Connection. "More More More."1976.

    Former porn star Andrea True had the decided decency to inquire, “How do you like it?” the only discernible lyric outside the song’s oft-repeated title. Amidst a thousand inferior disco platters popular at the time, “More” was a welcome relief. Today, the unmuddied production and simplicity of repetition stands the song far out on the congested highway of nostalgia. Play this song between any two blues albums and it will more than double the intensity of either simply because Ms. True gets to the point.




matter in far less time than any heav

Chapter Fifteen
The Taking of Detroit: Hitsville, USA

    Before taking over as musical mayor, Berry Gordy Jr. explored the turbulent world of pugilism, record store running, and pop songwriting. From boxing he developed a confident self-awareness and a dogged determination to keep his back off the mat. His years at the retail management level, where he foisted jazz upon a public that wanted nothing to do with such things, taught him the techniques involved in getting people to open up to sounds they didn’t know they were missing. And songwriting (Jackie Wilson’s “Reet Petite” was all Berry) whipped up in the man a keenness matched by no one in recognizing a hit when he heard one. Gordy intended that every song recorded by Motown artists would be a hit. Every hit would go Top Ten. And every Top Ten would eventually reach Number One. When this occasionally failed to materialize, the artists paid the penalty: the next potential successful song went to another group. The label founder could afford to be domineering. He had the greatest songwriters in all of black pop with both Smokey Robinson and the axis of Holland-Dozier-Holland. Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and the Four Tops sang better than anyone recording in America in the 1960s. The craft of his producers were comparable to anyone anywhere: Norman Whitfield, Robinson, H-D-H, plus the more adventurous elements of Stevie Wonder once he dropped the “Little” tag. And not least of all the anonymous musicians at Motown’s disposal compared to no one then or now, especially bassist James Jamerson and drummer Benny Benjamin, two guys paid so poorly that they had to freelance at local nightclubs at make ends meet at the same time that songs on which they played were at the tops of the charts.



Barrett Strong. "Money." Anna. 1960.


    As The Rolling Stones said—by way of W. B. Yeats—“It’s the singer, not the song.” Barrett Strong’s “Money” is living proof. This rejection of all romantic ideals has been done far better by everyone from The Beatles and The Nazz to the Flying Lizards. The essential liberating meanness of the lyric is never hinted in Strong’s rendition. The reason the song warrants even minor inclusion is due to the overriding murkiness of the production, a condition Motown would quickly abandon as too bluesy for a pop market. That murkiness—a brooding, understated bitterness—deserves permanent enshrinement somewhere outside co-writer Berry Gordy’s personal archives.

The Contours. "Do You Love Me?" and "Shake Sherry." Gordy. 1962.

Billy Gordon’s Detroit quintet must have felt like sandpaper against the mahogany walls of Motown. They also hit with "First I Look at the Purse" and"Can You Jerk Like Me." But “Do You Love Me,” with its fake ending intact, was the true great Contours’ tune. Its appearance in the putrid filmDirty Dancing is the only blot on its pristine status.
Mary Wells. "You Beat Me to the Punch."Motown. 1962.
"The One Who Really Loves You." Motown. 1962.
"Two Lovers." Motown. 1963.
"Mary Wells." Motown. 1964.

 Mary Wells was the first female focal point in the evolution of Motown. That she would quickly be eclipsed by the commercial success of The Supremes, The Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas and even by Brenda Holloway takes nothing away from either the delicious flavor of her voice or the subtlety of Holland-Dozier-Holland’s arrangements. Wells’ vocals are unremittingly sultry, even as her phrasing reduces them to a more adolescent level of communication. Each of these four songs lacked the Pentecostal jump of the best Motown songs, and yet the dignity Wells brings to her eternal heartache overcomes that limitation.

Brenda Holloway. "Every Little Bit Hurts." Tamla. 1964.

“Every Little Bit Hurts” comes as close to jazz as Motown ever did. The piano establishes the melody, then veers off, leaving no one but bassist James Jamerson to hold the song steady. Even Benny Benjamin’s drumming teeters on the edge of a free form rhythm that serves to do nothing less than punch up Brenda Holloway’s purposefully loose hold on the structure of the tune. This is not only what the song needed (and it needed something); it is precisely what the singer seems born to do: making soft swaths at explicating a heartache that will only worsen over time. After all, she begins by moaning about the man’s lack of consideration and hints at some real abuse, then once he tires of her complaints, she immediately flops over and reassures him. “Come back to me. Darling you’ll see I can give you all the things that you wanted before.” That may be sick, but I’ll bet everyone knows at least one other person who behaves the same way.

The Elgins. "Heaven Must Have Sent You." VIP. 1966.

This is the song that Bonnie Pointer chose to play around with in 1979. Well, gotta admire her taste, if not her execution. The real version of this Holland-Dozier-Holland bliss fest is the one here, sung by this fine and frequently unrecognized vocal group (the male foursome brought in Saundra Edwards to sing lead). Producing a vocal sound that evoked a cross between Ella Fitzgerald and Tina Marie, HDH imbued the song with the same foot-stomping thump that introduced The Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go.” But Edwards leaps along musical and emotional escalators with such delirious exuberance, you’ll want to touch her hand simply for the sensation of feeling someone so divinely inspired.

Edwin Starr. "Agent Double-O Soul." Ric-Tic. 1965. "Stop her on Sight." Ric-Tic. 1966. "War."Gordy. 1970.

 Mister Agent Double-O Soul himself was once a terrifically talented shouter in the tradition of Wilson Pickett. He got down tight and hard with “Agent,” "25 Miles," and especially “War,” which was such a radically demonstrative attack on the forces of destruction that somebody at Motown should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just for releasing it. But since the early 1970s, Starr simply hasn’t connected and his voice’s great strength drained.

Henson Cargill. "Skip a Rope." Motown. 1968.

 A Motown Country and Western hit? Stranger things have happened. After all, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated that year, riots raged in every major city, the country of America was growing up very fast, and from nowhere came this medium tempo parable with lines about people who “hate their neighbor for the shade of his skin.” The constant return to the monotonies of childhood accentuated the more specific ugliness of adult freedom to behave stupidly. Burn books, close doors, watch TV, skip a rope: the scariest analysis of pop society to come from a country singer who never had another hit.

Stevie Wonder. Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Motown. 1970.

 Aside from being the first Stevie Wonder album to have the singer also working (part-time) as producer, this is in many ways superior to the more conceptualized works that would soon emerge and make Wonder a serious artist. This, all the same, is a real rock album. It features three hit singles that seemed to have slipped the mind of the singer when he was putting together his own “best of” packages. The title track, for instance, still has that wild-ass harmonica we remember from the Little days of “Fingertips,” plus a groove that propels from slide to lurch. "Heaven Help Us All." is one of the three or four best protest songs ever recorded (sample lyric: “Heaven help the boy who won’t turn twenty-one; Heaven help the man who gave that boy a gun”), raising in intensity as its message deepens in seriousness. Just as beautiful (and in its own way just as much of a protest song) was his version of"We Can Work it Out," wherein the real power of the lyric is unearthed and comes out the other side sounding better than The Beatles.

R. Dean Taylor. "Indiana Wants Me." Rare Earth. 1970.

 Not so many years ago the perceived line between law and justice was wide. An immoral war, state sanctioned racial segregation and restrictions on reproductive rights led millions to defy the law in pursuit of what was morally correct. Quite predictably, a lot of people willfully misinterpreted all of this as a way of justifying their own dumbass impulsive behavior, all in the name of the nobility of disobedience, turning, as The Clash would later describe it, “rebellion into money.”
Motown Records’ subsidiary Rare Earth was no exception. Beginning with police sirens and ending with a shoot-out, their release of “Indiana Wants Me” describes the fate of a man in a last-chance struggle with The Laws pursuing him because he shot a guy who verbally offended the singer’s girlfriend. Presumably we are to admire Taylor’s devotion, even as he clouds distinctions between a real badass mofo and The Shangri-Las’ ideal of the boy who is “good bad but not evil.”
Did I mention that R. Dean Taylor is white?
Not even Motown would have dared put out a record dealing with this subject matte had the singer even the faintest sepia tones. That would have been tantamount to advocating armed insurrection, thereby risking the alienation of whites, unless of course the singer’s victim was also black, in which case African-Americans might have been put off, an unthinkable prospect at Hitsville, USA.
None of this would bear discussion if the sirens, gun play and lulling melody weren’t so compelling. Taylor hums the intro, then sketches how seeing what he’s become while on the lam is far sadder than the death of the loser who dissed his woman. The effect is arrogant, puerile, and too catchy to resist.

The Jackson 5. Greatest Hits. Motown. 1971.

 Not all children’s music belongs on the bubblegum counter and this is the proof. "I Want You Back," "The Love You Save," "I'll Be There"and in particular "Goin' Back to Indiana" share an implied (and sporadically overt) intensity that catches in the throat like a sourball. With hyper-paced yet soulful songwriting and production by The Corporation (Berry Gordy’s underpaid replacements for H-D-H) and Motown’s best-ever rhythm section (bassist James Jamerson and drummer Benny Benjamin) cut-a-rugging with all their might, there’s nothing left for the listener to do but jump up and shout along as Michael commands, “Sit down girl, I think I love you. No, Stand up, girl, let’s see what you can do!”

Gladys Knight and the Pips. "Daddy Could Swear (I Declare)." Motown. 1973.

 Gladys Knight began her singing career at the age of four. If you guessed this happened in a Baptist church, you move to the head of the choir. Her mother recognized the talent her offspring possessed and got her an appearance on the “Ted Mack Amateur Hour,” a very big deal in those days. Gladys won two thousand dollars and a great deal of confidence. By 1952 she, her brother Merald, and their two cousins, William and Elenor Guest formed a group called the Pips, a name derived from their then-biggest fan, another cousin named James “Pip” Woods. By the time Gladys was twelve she and the Pips were touring the South with the likes of Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson. Elenor decided he had better things to do and was replaced by another cousin, Edward Patten. These four would remain the nucleus of the group for the next twenty-five years.
After "Every Beat of my Heart" landed squarely at Number Six, the group signed with Bobby Robinson’s Fury label, producing the less interesting"Letter Full of Tears." After performing "Giving Up"on yet another label (Maxx), the gang finally settled in with Soul (a Motown subsidiary). And here they made their best music. "I Heard it through the Grapevine" was a near chart topper for them before either Marvin Gaye or Creedence ever heard of it. “If I were Your Woman” and “Neither One of Us” likewise were major tracks. Better than any of these was one Gladys wrote with Jimmy Bristol and Merald, called “Daddy Could Swear,” which came out in time to capitalize on the foot heels of black awareness in pop music. The group left Motown in 1973 and treated Buddah to four back to back Top Ten hits: "Midnight Train to Georgia," “I’ve Got to Use my Imagination,” “Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me” and “On and On.” Since then, Gladys has gone solo, appearing in a movie about the Alaskan pipeline and occasionally recording with Dionne Warwick and friends.

Marvin Gaye. Let’s Get it On. Motown. 1973.

 People who burst with creativity and who also open themselves up to the complexities of feeling and communicating about the world’s ills have a more penetrating appreciation for things of an intimate and even carnal nature. Having looked at the world in What’s Going On and at himself inTrouble Man, Gaye decided to let the energy that had fanned those other flames out to do its thing, too. The title track was, to my knowledge, the first Number One song to encourage a woman to stop masturbating and go after the real thing without pandering to anything more lascivious than his own all-encompassing obsession to satisfy her. The rest of the album shows that intro up for the fantastic foreplay that it is.

The Four Tops. Anthology. Motown. 1974.

 This is Motown’s greatest male singing group. Levi Stubbs, Duke Fakir, Lawrence Payton and Renaldo “Obie” Benson got together in 1954, which likely makes their presence on the charts in 1981 the longest stretch for any group in history, and if not then it is certainly the stretch most deserved. Unlike the Temptations, the Four Tops did not lose members to the cause of artistic differences or to the ego-drive of solo careers. Between 1964 and 1967, the Four Tops were consistently all over the radio. And why not? "Reach Out I'll Be There" speaks to the power of commitment with such intensity that it has to be on any sane person’s list of greatest songs of all time. Not far behind that is "I Can't help Myself," which most people call “Sugar Pie Homey Bunch.” On that song and others where Stubbs (who was often referred to as the black Dylan—funny that no one ever called Dylan the black Levi Stubbs) takes the lead or shares it with the Supremes, there is a Pentecostal obsessive drama, a managed mania that Stubbs steals from the writing, the majority of which came from Motown’s Holland-Dozier-Holland. The delivery and arrangements alike were coarse and thick with emotive power. "Bernadette"is such a firestorm it is almost a relief when it’s over, despite the fact that the next impulse is to play it again. Ditto "Standing in the Shadows of Love."With the rising expectations accompanying the creative surge and artistic freedom of the late 1960s, there was a nearly omnipresent mood in popular music that one must either constantly mutate or else face extermination. One result of this mood was that Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland left Motown to carve out their own less polished version of pop. This left the Tops scrambling for good material. Sometimes they got it, as with Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, or with Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield. Other times the songs just seemed a bit odd coming from this group: Tim Hardin’s "If I Were a Carpenter," Fred Neil’s "Everybody's Talkin'," and especially Todd Rundgren’s "We Gotta get You a Woman." These and others are mostly enjoyable because they’re so curious. The group did record a few good songs for other labels (notably “Ain’t No Woman”), but their box of hits days were over, despite the fact that they still continue to tour—in their sixth decade.

Marvin Gaye. Anthology. Motown. 1974.

 Marvin Gaye was Motown’s greatest singer. His voice transcends even the high level of songwriting available at Hitsville, USA. From "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" through “Sexual Healing,” from his first to his last, Marvin never strayed far from either the emotion of the finest Gospel or the hungry need for freedom in those aboard the first slave ships. "Can I Get a Witness" is a grand secularization of this spirit and an obvious one. Better still is his version of "I heard it through the Grapevine." He admitted that his grandmother told him the key to his success was in the grapevine and she was surely correct. Between the reptile tambourines and the pleading moans lies the guts and bellies of the black American experience, perfectly conveyed in less than four minutes. As a solo artist, Gaye’s best songs, in addition to those above, were "Hitch Hike," "One More Heartache," "That's the Way Love Is," "What's Going On" and "Mercy, Mercy Me." But he was also half of three of the best duets ever to record. Forget Diana Ross and groove at the way Tammi Terrell, Mary Wells and Kim Weston floated all over Heaven in his arms and certainly must enjoy being reunited with the man.

Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. Anthology. Motown. 1974.

 Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson are the five most revolutionary singers in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, all for completely different reasons. Of these, Robinson is the most immediately tenuous, if only because his voice is the most vulnerable. And yet that is what his fans may find most appealing. Contrapositing that brave fragility is a history of some of the greatest rock lyrics ever written. And yet these words, these thoughts, lose much of their power on the printed page, which makes sense since rock lyrics are never poetry, regardless of what the fans of Joni Mitchell or Kid Rock may think. When we repeat the words to "You Really Got a Hold on Me," "I Second that Emotion" or especially "Tracks of my Tears," they sound merely clever without Smokey there to pinch the heart valves. It was Smokey, after all, who wrote “My Girl,” “Since I Lost My Baby,” “Don’t Look Back,” “One More Heartache,” “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “The Way You do the Things You Do,” “It’s Growing,” “I’ll Be Doggone” and “I Want a Love I Can See,” making the careers for Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, plus Mary Wells and the Marvelettes. To that end, as good as all forty-five of these songs are, you could make a case that he was just as proficient as a writer and producer for the Temptations. Singers Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin sang Smokey with more inspiration than sunrise, despite the fine later work of producer Norman Whitfield. Robinson’s efforts were designed for group harmony and no one else at Motown ever had a better handle on street corner voices than Smokey.

Martha and the Vandellas. Anthology. Motown. 1974.

 The violent stench hung over the street lights like the brown choking smog of late August. The sounds of babies crying and married couples yelling at each other were replaced with the sounds of windows shattering, cars burning, feet slapping on the pavement, and the echo of automatic rifle fire. Into this emotional arena, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas offered temporary salvation by dancing to a brand new beat. Mercy, how the various Vandella line-ups rocked with more enthusiasm and compassion than the police, politicians or protestors."Love is Like a Heat Wave" is one of the hottest songs of all time. But hidden among the hits was a song called "Quicksand," a “Heat Wave” copy wherein the backing Vandellas urge their lover “deeper, deeper.” This kind of thing was quite outrageous for the mid-1960s, but perhaps the FCC was too busy deciphering “Louie, Louie” to have noticed.
The original Vandellas consisted of Martha Reeves, Annette Sterling and Rosalind Ashford. They began as the Del-Phis in high school and even recorded a song on Checkmate. Reeves got a job as a secretary in Motown’s A&R department. Label president Berry Gordy needed to fill out the sound on a pair of Marvin Gaye singles. You can hear the Vandellas on “Stubborn Kind of Fellow” and “Hitch Hike.” They were offered a mediocre song, "Come and get These Memories," which they recorded and took Top Thirty. Holland-Dozier-Holland gave them “Heat Wave” and “Quicksand” and they became stars. Annette Sterling left at this point and was quickly replaced by Betty Kelly. Still a dynamite trio, they knocked out "Dancing in the Street,""Wild One," "Nowhere to Run," "Jimmy Mack" and five other Top Forty hits through 1967.[i]

The Temptations. Anthology. Motown. 1974.

 The original group with Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin were the second best male vocal group of the 1960s, the best being the Four Tops. They could sing Smokey Robinson almost better than Smokey himself. Eddie’s tenor and David’s baritone soared across space on songs like the guiltily gorgeous "The Way You Do the Things You Do,"“My Girl,” “Since I Lost my Baby” and “It’s Growing.” The group got down and dirty with "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," a song that still rocks ’em back against the wall in every bar on a hot Saturday night."Beauty is Only Skin Deep" and "I Know I'm Losing You" relied more on chording than had earlier hits, but both were monsters. Ruffin left in 1968 and the group carried on with an occasionally harder and certainly more social sound with "Ball of Confusion" and "Psychedelic Shack," both of which relied on the presence of producer Norman Whitfield at the helms. Of course, "Just My Imagination" proved the group had not forgotten that it was sweet harmonies that had made them what they had become. Eddie Kendricks left after this number for a solo career, just in time for the Tempts to black out the moon with "Papa was a Rolling Stone," a perfect notch in the black landscape of early 1970s music. But the group was never really the same after the departure of Kendricks, so that turned out to be their final hit of substance. Kendricks died in 1993.
There’s probably nothing you would want that is missing from this collection, other than the amazing"I Can't Get Next to You," an omission that is hard to fathom. There may be a wee bit more offered than you truly desire. “Ol’ Man River” and “The Impossible Dream” simply aren’t great songs, no matter who sings them. Still, given the annotation and selections, this is the best value for an inclusive collection.

The Supremes. Can’t Buy the Sell-Out. Notown. 1974.
The great thing about this nonexistent album aside from its oxymoronic title is that it has all the great Supremes hits without all the interminable fluff and filler so prevalent among Motown albums. There’s an approximate chronology to the selections, many of which were Number Ones. The vast majority of these hits came from the writing team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, and even when Diana Ross takes fat too much of the lead, the snazzy Vegas-lounge sound never sounded more appetizing. I can think of no Supremes album issued during the group’s heyday that didn’t suffer from having lackluster tunes right alongside the one or two hits, with the noteworthy exception of the recording they did with the Temptations, from which"I'm Gonna Make You Love Me." is drawn.

Junior Walker and the All Stars. Anthology. Motown. 1974.

 Motown saxophonist and occasional vocalist Junior Walker played a poppier version of the King Curtis stew, proving that lightweight doesn’t necessarily mean insubstantial. The same thing is true about being a cover artist. "Shotgun" was an original blast of pudding in your face on the dance floor, but most of the others were top notch renditions of other good Motown works.

Marvelettes. Anthology. Motown. 1975.

 The original Marvelettes was a quintet led by Georgeanna Dobbins and Gladys Horton who formed the group when they were fifteen. Passing an audition for a Motown talent scout, they were encouraged to record original material. They happily complied and presented Berry Gordy with "Please Mr. Postman," a debut hit that stayed on the charts for months and finally hopped to Number One. Shortly after, Dobbins and co-lead singer Juanita Cowart left the group due to health problems. But Motown’s first girl group continued as a trio, beating up the charts nine more times through 1968. It was that first song, though, with its admonition, its plea, so loud and strong and desperate, that best encapsulated the moment: “WAIT! Puh-lease! Wait a minute Mister Po-Woast Man!” As was the tendency of Motown in those days, the Marvelettes followed up their initial chart success with a song intended to recall the previous hit. Typically, the similarities would be musical. This time they were lyrical. "Twistin' Postman" wasn’t a half-bad rip off, incorporating as it did an answer song and capitalizing on a once popular dance. "Playboy" was better received, cracking the Top Ten. Their fourth hit, "Beechwood 4-5789," was infinitely finer and more in keeping with the idea that the singers needed a good man or boy. “Too Many Fish in the Sea” was the next big release, copping a definitely funkier rhythm off Smokey’s “Shop Around” ideas. And hidden on the album was a song called "Daddy Knows Best," penned and produced by Berry Gordy, advising the Marvelettes to find the right guy, a guy as sweet and ambitious as themselves.
And the hits kept right on coming, all sounding Motown-esque in that the bass line was inescapable and the horns filled up the background the way the focus was clearly on the vocals up front. Yet what set the Marvelettes apart from other girl groups at The Corp’s disposal was the way these ladies rocked. “Don’t Mess with Bill” was a thousand times more threatening than the Angels’ “My Boyfriend’s Back,” mostly because of the killer sax and tumbling drums that bookended the throaty singers.
The group was offered a HDH song called “Baby Love.” Thinking it too sweet, they passed it onto the Supremes, who took it to the top. And that was just where Gordy wanted his acts. Stacked against the internal competition in the organization, the Marvelettes were left to their own devices. And so the experimental twangs of “My Baby Must be a Magician” were introduced. The last gasp was"Destination: Anywhere," the most soulful song Gladys Horton ever recorded. The group disbanded at the beginning of the 1970s, but others of less talent appropriated the name and amounted to nothing. Georgeanna Dobbins died in 1980 of sickle cell anemia.

Stevie Wonder. Original Musiquarium I. Tamla. 1982.

 This is one of the most curious “best of” packages ever. That curiosity makes it perfectly appropriate as a representation of the singer/musician’s Seventies and Eighties work. Here was a guy who could replicate the magnum visions of rock-heavy funk with "Superstition," bite the dog and sling it hard with "You Haven't Done Nothin',"and steal your heart with the overdone but effective"Living for the City." Right next to that was the superfluous crap of “Superwoman” and “Isn’t She Lovely.” In between, he had the talent and gall to record songs that would have sounded reasonable on Sinatra albums. He even had the presence of mind to record the decidedly non-reggae “Boogie on Reggae Woman.” And so, even though there are far too many omissions here for this to be in any sense comprehensive, even for the period covered, it is a remarkable indicator of Wonder’s career and judgment.

[i] The fact that The Vandellas never fully enjoyed the long-lived fame of some of their white counterparts has much to do with the over-saturation of other Motown female singers, as well as with the abundance of young, male, longhaired British fops singing black American electrified blues. Well, there was no Robert Plant or David Bowie in the Vandellas, that’s a fact. All they had was the best rhythm section in American music at the time and some of the finest singers. But in spite of these obstacles, the biggest problem with the Motown groups can be detected by looking at a copy of the first Vandellas LP, Heat Wave. The title track is the only original hit. The rest of the songs read like a Who’s Who of over-covered cover songs: “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Just One Look,” “Mockingbird,” “Wait Til My Bobby Gets Home,” “Then He Kissed Me,” and—wait for it—“If I Had a Hammer.” Like an ant farm, it was mildly interesting, but as album, it was not that durable. The Vandellas were handed the biggest pile of trash the A&R department could find and that’s a shame considering the indisputable fact that Martha Reeves could out-sing Diana Ross with her hand tied around her mouth and her leg choking her tonsils.Chapter Sixteen
Lower Pacific: California Rock

    Not everybody does have an ocean and not everybody necessarily wants one. But for the better part of two decades, popular music reeled from the slap of a Malibu wave.

The Beach Boys. All Summer Long. Capitol. 1964.



    More than any other American vocal group of the 1960s, the Beach Boys concerned themselves with sound. That is why the albums that Brian Wilson dominated—forcing a community harmonics on the other members—remain the ones that retain their initial sense of exhilaration. All Summer Longcommunicates the sensibility of youth—admittedly privileged youth—so effectively that it is possible to believe that you do have an ocean across the USA, even if you live in Arkansas. "I Get Around" was the hit, "All Summer Long" set the mood,"Hushabye" was glorious tribute, "Wendy" was love in a bottle, and the rest were fun times threatened by complications that may have unnerved even tough guy girl groups like the Shangri-Las.

The Beach Boys. California Girls. Capitol. 1964.



    The two most interesting types of Beach Boy fans are those who think that Pet Sounds and Smile were the pinnacles of production and that technical virtuosity and engineering testosterone are what make life worth living, as opposed to those who think that passion, talent and drive are the best indications of artistic merit. This author is of the latter camp. That is why despite the fact that I will never jones for "Salt Lake City," I nevertheless love this album enough to prefer it over most people I’ve known. Reissued and reinvented as Summer Days (and Summer Nights), this album did actually display the first signs of Brian Wilson as the producer who most wanted to be Phil Spector’s brilliant protégé. This is evidenced by the loving version of "Then I Kissed Her" (an answer song to the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me”), not to mention the first and last twenty seconds of "California Girls," where the instrumentation is sufficiently distinct as to sound as if it was played by a classically trained quartet. The latter tune and "Help Me, Rhonda" were the hits. But everything here evokes the tension between the security of having what you want and the paranoia of knowing you’ll have it taken away at any moment. That tension comes not from the safety of wall-to-wall production effects. Rather, it comes from the exposed neuroses inherent in so much talent, passion and drive.

We Five. "You Were on my Mind." A&M. 1965.


    Beverly Bivens, the lead singer for the otherwise male We Five, had an ethereal quality to her voice that was just this side of radiant. “You Were on my Mind,” a song about a lonesome junkie who eases the pain of isolation by shooting up, actually came close to being a Top Ten hit back in 1965, mostly because its message was coded and because Bivens’ mournful voice was the perfect unifying device for the jangling, Byrds-style folk guitar accompaniment. Overall, the effect was pleasant, distracting and not at all inconsequential.

The Byrds. Mr. Tambourine Man. Columbia. 1965.



    It’s a shame that the Byrds are so often associated with interpreting the songs of Bob Dylan. It would be better to identify them as guys who could recognize great material. The three Dylan tunes here show that fact, as does ending the LP with the closing theme from Dr. Strangelove ("We'll Meet Again"), right where the planet is explosively depopulated. Still, even that takes away from the excellent guitar sound of both Jim McGuinn and Gene Clark, both of whom wrote or co-wrote some of the album’s better songs. If historians can forget tags such as “folk-rock,” they might recognize this as a new sound, one that pretty perfectly replicates the technological and emotional tenor of the times.

The Byrds. Turn! Turn! Turn! Columbia. 1966.


     Maybe this album is one of the reasons why the Byrds have been associated as such important interpreters of Bob Dylan songs. "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" and "The Times They are a-Changin',"were not much in the throat of the old bleating calf, but here they become quite musical. Elsewhere, the title track suffers from being one of those ideas that relies on its exact second in history for its effectiveness. Not so with the album’s other two gems, "He was a Friend of Mine," a bit of a tribute to John Kennedy, and the inexplicably hilarious"Oh! Susanna." Meanwhile, we see the band members beginning to learn how to play their instruments and find that the presence of so many guitars isn’t all that distracting. I have never been clear on what David Crosby’s contribution was or, for that matter, what producer Terry Melcher produced. Clearly Chris Hillman’s playing was coming along well, Gene Clark was developing a healthy bitter edge, and McGuinn had by this point become better at the 12-string Rickenbacker than any other recording artist of the time.

The Byrds. Younger Than Yesterday. Columbia. 1967.


     With the departure of Gene Clark, a young guitar player named Clarence White came on board. White may have compensated for Clark’s playing, but the absence was not filled when it came to songwriting. In many ways, this was a good thing. Roger (nee Jim) McGuinn had always been clear about the direction he intended the band to take and withoutClark’s equally determined ideas, he was free to do what he wanted. What he wanted was for The Byrds to make great music, so David Crosby had to do some songwriting of his own. His "Everybody's Been Burned" is one of the two best things on the album, the other being the Opener, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star," a song full of wisdom and bile, but also tinged with some accidental irony since the Byrds were no more stars than was Barry McGuire.

The Doors. "People are Strange" and "Love Me Two Times." Elektra. 1967.


     This remarkably overrated band should have stuck with their singles, where at least some degree of restraint was required. On albums, from whence sprang their fans’ devotions, the group was longwinded, unfocused and largely pointless beyond an eighth grade adherence. And yet the fascination continues. Jim Morrison was mean to women who loved him, was way too skinny (and later too fat) to be sexy and still inspired restless female dreams, intentionally corrupted certain young admirers and had a ridiculously indulgent movie made about him years after he had not only died but had even ceased to have any importance to the world at large. For those searching for irony, these two songs, teetering between haunting and ludicrous, describe Morrison and his cult a little too perfectly.

The Jefferson Airplane. "Somebody to Love."RCA. 1967.


     One of two songs Grace Slick brought with her from The Great Society when she replaced Signe Andersen in Jefferson Airplane, “Somebody to Love” remains the best example of the group as a rock outfit rather than as purveyors of pseudo-decadent militant hedonism. Beginning with guitars that jangled like chains falling from angels’ feet, the song lumbered and rolled with a seriousness specific to the Haight district of San Francisco, a seriousness not lightened by the thick ice of Slick’s voice. “When the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies” sounded like anything but flower-power. Anyone planning to share a trip with the group that played this song had better be ready for a rough ride.

Mamas and Papas. "Creeque Alley." Dunhill. 1967.


     John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Mama Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty sang chirpy little tunes that attempted to evoke the sense of California freedom for folks fortunate enough to not need to work. The group’s harmonies and rare sense of humor came together in artistic success only here, with this autobiographical and occasionally hilarious song about the beginnings of their distinctive sound.

Moby Grape. Moby Grape. Columbia. 1967.

    The San Francisco Bay area in the second half of the 1960s was home to a hybrid of music that is often referred to as psychedelic, an appellation emerging more from the light shows at many of the music shows than from any specific element of the sound. The roots-oriented if elemental playing of the Grateful Dead was psychedelic, as was the more technically adventurous noodling of Jefferson Airplane. What these bands had in common with the other big name of the period, Quicksilver Messenger Service, were (a) the conscious attempt to force the intake of usually illegal chemicals to shape the form and content of the music, (b) a penchant for long, usually unfocused group jams and solos, and (c) a deliberate pandering to the middle class adulation of consumerism clothed in revolutionary trappings. All that Moby Grape shared with any of this was that their fan-base was in San Francisco and that Skip Spence had once been a member of the Airplane. That very limited connection works to the advantage of Moby Grape. While a few of this album’s tunes suggest that the band was not necessarily opposed to the more idyllic aspects of drug usage, the virtuosity of the playing and the brevity of the songs belied any serious worship of pharmaceuticals. The music ranged from rock to jazz and even to country with sufficient lack of pretension to last for decades. The album jacket even sparked a minor controversy, showing as it did the drummer with his middle finger singularly extended across a washboard. Columbiareissued the LP with the musician’s digit hacked off.

Creedence Clearwater Revival. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Fantasy. 1968.


     The four members of CCR entered the pop consciousness sounding as if they had burbled up from the imaginary swamps of San Francisco. Indeed the expectations at the time were that another blues-oriented version of head music might be in the works, perhaps more musically accomplished than Jefferson Airplane, though not necessarily better. Of course, Paul Kantner and Marty Balin didn’t write songs about real people, as John Fogerty did in "the Working Man" and"Porterville," and nobody in Quicksilver would have been able to churn out convincing covers of songs by either Dale or Screamin’ Jay, much less Wilson Pickett. This would not be their best album, but it nevertheless has an ambition that bespeaks where they would soon travel.

Creedence Clearwater Revival. Bayou Country. Fantasy. 1969.


     There are two good things about this album: First,"Proud Mary" is one of the group’s best songs because not only does it show John Fogerty’s brilliant imagination and way with a New Orleans patois, but he came up with a rhythmic progression and tune that was so strong that everyone from Sonny Charles to Ike and Tina covered the song; and second, the album cover is a perfect visual description of what the sound within should sound like. The image is evocative rather than explicit, and what it has always made me think of is brash guitar sounds coming from the core of a unified set of four spirits.

Jefferson Airplane. Volunteers. RCA. 1969.


     Question for the twenty-first century: Do you want to be the personification of something else or to be an artist?
    While there is no denying the intensity of Jefferson Airplane’s only two Top Forty hits, “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” the fact remains that these folks have to stand next to the Doors as the most overrated group of the 1960s. That fact does not diminish the notion that the Airplane was a fascinating cooperative. After original token female Signe Andersen left to give birth, Marty Balin and Paul Kantner brought in ex-Great Society misogynist Grace Slick to be the token mama. She had a voice that still rings true and was clearly the most talented of the group’s three singers. And yet it was guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Casady, and drummer Spencer Dryden who were the true axis of the band. The group’s best album, Volunteers, is unimaginable without them, as is any semblance of rock ‘n’ roll credibility. The themes were simple. Take pills, expand your mind, live together, and love the Jefferson Airplane. Depending on your priorities, this might seem attractive, at least until you become conscious of the fact that this stream of consumerism was frequently as unctuous as Grand Funk Railroad and not necessarily smarter. When Grace and Paul sang “Everything they say we are—we are,” they weren’t kidding. They were pandering, however. And that is why a song as inherently stupid as Free’s “All Right Now” is infinitely more revolutionary than anything the Airplane ever imagined. In fact, Dryden is the only real radical here. His "A Song for all Seasons" is one of the few humorous songs the band ever made and certainly the only one to poke at its pretensions.

Creedence Clearwater Revival. Pendulum. Fantasy. 1970.


     The 45 rpm taken from this album was one of those famous two-sided hits. This one featured "Have You ever Seen the Rain" as the A-side and “Hey Tonight” as the B. That still seems the right choice, lo these many years. Heaven knows there was nothing else on this disc that could have charted, except as an extension of the value of the band’s reputation. But to be fair, the other eight songs are okay, excellent even, when compared to most of the other stuff around at the times. But when compared to the body of work that CCR had already amassed, this album just seems like the pendulum may have been swinging in the wrong direction.

Little Feat. Sailin’ Shoes. Warner Bros. 1972.


     This is Little Feat’s best album by such a wide margin that the others sound as if they were recorded by a different group—almost. Bill Payne, who played keyboards and sang a few leads and wrote a few songs, is typically given top billing. That’s a charitable move. Lowell George was a better songwriter and singer and he played guitar better than Payne played piano. Sailin’ begins with"Easy to Slip," one of George’s greatest songs. All about love gone bad, the melody is simple blues and the words hardly exist, yet they are tremendous. With Roy Howard slapping his bass and Richard Hayward shuffling his drums, there is a definite childlike feeling to the affair, even on songs such as "Willin'," all about a guy who drives a truck while keeping it up for Dallas Alice. In terms of capturing a feeling produced by forces nearly impossible to describe, Sailin’ Shoes is one of the best. It runs on sheer instinct.

Creedence Clearwater Revival. Mardi Gras. Fantasy. 1972.


    I have a clear memory of the first time I heard what would turn out to be CCR’s final A-side single. I was sitting in the car waiting for my mother to come back from her grocery shopping. It was early afternoon and I was doing what I always did when Mom went into the grocery. I was listening to WCOL-AM, at that time Columbus, Ohio’s greatest Top Forty Station. And the instant I heard the electric guitar simulating the sound of a car roaring by the open road, I knew the song had to be by Creedence. And once the vocal began, there was absolutely no question. Great as it was, there was something missing. It seemed like only seven-eighths of the band were present, meaning that half a member might not have been plugged in. As it turned out, lead singer, guitarist and chief songwriter John Fogerty had had a falling out with brother Tom and the latter had split. Bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford used this opportunity to muscle their way into getting a little spotlight of their own. I for one am glad they did. Good as John’s main sings here are, it is also good to hear Doug take country lead of his two tunes, and while Stu plays bass better than he sings, this was the band’s seventh album, fer cryin’ out loud, and so far the show had been all about John. I doubt any case can be made for this recording’s immortality. And it does seem a bit of a shame for the group to have disbanded with this as their final LP. However, the sound was still identifiable, occasionally lilting, mostly hard-driving and still better than anything else I heard that afternoon on the radio.y act.



 (PART 17):
California Scheming

Little Feat. Dixie Chicken. Warner Bros. 1973.

    Maybe it was this kind of self-exploration that helped send Lowell George to his grave. After the very good and very Allen Toussaint-influenced Dixie Chicken, and the not nearly as good Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, George’s participation in the recordings slipped easily and Bill Payne took long-wanted control of the band. Nothing they recorded after that was half as good as the first four albums.Hoy Hoy was a fine swan song album and contained many rare recordings.
    However messed over George may have been on Sailin’ Shoes, he seemed just as committed to surviving on Dixie Chicken. That change gives these two albums the combined punch of a great novel. When revealing the punch line in the title track, for instance, he doesn’t bemoan the heartache and money he’s wasted on his beloved. On the contrary, he admits that everyone is justified in laughing at him and joins them in doing just that. On "Roll 'em Easy" he celebrates the feeling of helplessness his passions fill him with. Even during "On Your Way Down," the closest thing to bitterness this album offers, the singer is quick to show that he himself is standing at the bottom of that ladder, looking up, albeit, smiling. If F. Scott Fitzgerald had recorded an album, it would have sounded just like Dixie Chicken.

Gram Parsons. Live 1973. Rhino. 1997.

    If any one person ever crammed more successful work into so few years, I’d sure like to hear about it. His first recorded work was in 1967 with The International Submarine Band. That album, Safe at Home, blended populist country music with primitive upbeat blues and was termed by some smart aleck as “country rock.” The next year Parsons accepted an invite to join Roger McGuinn’s group, saving the Byrds from extinction and creating their best album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Restless spirit that he was, Parsons quickly left and helped form the Flying Burrito Brothers, making that band’s brilliant The Gilded Palace of Sin. To support a pair of his own modest solo efforts, he,Emmylou Harris, N.D. Smart II and some crack guitarists formed the Fallen Angels. Live 1973, which features that band, is great not so much because it offers live versions of Parsons’ studio tracks. Rather, these reinvented versions collectively make you wish you could have been in attendance. The harmonizing between Parsons and Harris is a spiritual unburdening. The occasional pedal steel guitar wraps the songs in traditional country music while the rhythm section sets forth perpetual motion uphill. The between-song banter is occasionally hilarious, especially when the drummer fills in for the DJ. And the band’s interplay is so tight it sounds as if they had all taken lessons in the same garage. There’s not one weak number here and most of them could have stood on their own as legitimate country & western hits, were it not for the fact that the album did not see a release in this form until twenty-six years after Parsons’ death.

The Beach Boys. Endless Summer. Capitol. 1974.

    1974 was just about the last moment anyone would have expected a Beach Boys’ greatest hits package to be released. Rock was in one of its frequent transitional periods. The only thing that the various styles on the radio had in common was a relative slickness. Production—or the rejection of the idea—was the temporary godhead.
Bam! Outdoor concerts, girls in halters, boys with beards and the smell of perpetual July Fourth weekends came out of the sky, landing at a venue near you. This album’s initial appeal was a bit reactionary, coming at a time when the stability of the union was in considerable question. Still, there is no denying the beauty of these arrangements, Brian Wilson’s depraved falsetto and the more cosmic concerns in tunes such as "Don't Worry, Baby,"“Wendy” and "In My Room." Escapism may have been the last thing a self-deluded populace needed. Still, it is hard to argue with the bourgeois bullshit of “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” or any of the other hits here.

Ry Cooder. Paradise and Lunch. Reprise. 1974.

    Cooder is a wild eclectic who used to tour with The Rolling Stones, years later played with Little Village, and still reinvents American music by jazzing it up, giving it life, and building upon songs hardly anybody knows at all. These songs—all but one a cover version—have a remarkable looseness that suggests they could go on forever and yet there is no wasted time here. The playing is extraordinary, Cooder mainly doing slide guitar, an every deep moment is offset by a lilt, a wink, or an amused sneer.

Jackson Browne. Late for the Sky. Asylum. 1974.

    In its day this album was not the mania totem is has since become. In fact, as the third album in a series of four that made up the first phase of the singer’s career, this was the one people at the time seemed to like the least. There were few upbeat melodies, almost no attempts at rocking out, and the lyrics no longer reflected the idea that the performer had that Crazy Til I Die tortured life of the self-obsessed James Taylors of our time. As it turned out, this album did rock, but on a much deeper level than most of the audience could fathom. Truth be told, this is my own personal favorite album by anyone or anything. While happily lacking the pretensions of a “concept” LP, these eight songs are all of a piece, of a part, telling stories of a man who may be in this world but who is certainly not committed to being of it. This was not some romanticized version of the outlaw as misogynist (Eagles) or as self-destructive humorist (Zevon). This was the outlaw as Walt Whitman. "For a Dancer," incidentally, may be the best song Browne ever recorded.

The Eagles. One of These Nights. Asylum. 1975.

   It is funny that The Eagles came to embody the concept of 1970s Southern California rock. After all, neither Don Henley nor Glenn Frey were fromCalifornia and the band’s first three albums were recorded in Great Britain. But you don’t get much more like California than Cleveland, Ohio’s own Joe Walsh and it was his producer who encouraged the boys to give into their more Detroit-like impulses. Even a piece of misogynist swill like “After the Thrill is Gone” at least has a bluesy sound. And while “Lyin’ Eyes” may be Frey at his mostHollywood despicable, “One of These Nights” still maintains its modern sound without sacrificing any of its theatrical ambiances. And "Take it to the Limit" is sheer challenge, an opening, a crack in the door through which the listener may bravely go where only rock stars have gone before. The whole affair is patty-cake precious as hell, but it’s certainly preferable to the moronic Hotel California.

Jefferson Starship. Red Octopus. Grunt. 1975.

   The big deal about this album was supposed to be that Marty Balin had rejoined Paul Kantner and Grace Slick with a new group of musicians and that the Airplane sound would be updated or even pushed into the future. Well, to whomever it was who coined the phrase “Change is good,” I would respond that change is neutral; results are either good or bad. And while Grace Slick probably would have liked a harsher and less commercial sound, Balin won out most of the time and this album became a commercial success surpassing the combined efforts of Jefferson Airplane. Sometimes that was to the artistic good, as with the opening slasher and even “Miracles.” But anyone who thinks that Papa John Creach could play violin better than Jorma Kaukonen could play guitar is simply making an error in judgment.

Linda Ronstadt. Prisoner in Disguise. Asylum. 1975.

   This was the first Ronstadt album to combine the manifest range of the singer’s reach with full instrumentation, united with Peter Asher’s production, best described as punching up the better qualities of Lou Adler and Richard Perry. Drums and guitar are out front on rockers, backing off only when Linda sings. The bass and punched-in guitars simply roll the tunes along, flowing the singer, rather than the other way around. This style allowed Linda Ronstadt to use her voice to dent each song with her own unique imprint. In other words, she went far beyond covering tunes by Neil Young, James Taylor, Lowell George, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson and Jimmy Cliff. While adding nothing to the melody, she rearranged the phrasing to suit some indecipherable design, and while that tactic was not always successful—and often backfired—here it was a grand success. "I Will Always Love You" is the best vocal performance of her career.

Linda Ronstadt. Hasten Down the Wind. Asylum. 1976.

    While her voice was rich, full and as beautiful an instrument as anyone has had at their disposal, the singer’s covers of well-known hits such as “That’ll be the Day” and “Rivers of Babylon” seemed to be robbed of their original emotional enthusiasm, mostly because of Linda’s phrasing, which was always better suited to crossover country ballads and hard country numbers. But Ronstadt also exposed her public to the songs of lesser-known composers such as Karla Bonoff, Ry Cooder, Warren Zevon, and Anna McGarrigle. It is immeasurable the boost her versions did for those young talents. And yet she did have a tendency to rock out in the wrong places and misplace emotion. At times she did not know what she was singing about, as in the case of her later versions of Warren Zevon songs. But this album deserves its stature because of the three Bonoff numbers, especially the riveting album closer, "Someone to Lay Down Beside Me."

Warren Zevon. Warren Zevon. Asylum. 1976.

    My father used to refer to various things as being colder and blacker than a well digger’s butt. That such an expression could belie a compliment may seem unlikely, at least until listening to this splendidly cold and dark album. That it packs a wicked attitude and rolls in the bleak cesspools of everyday life hardly takes away from its strength. It is also accompanied by a savage wit, a hopelessly compelling sense of melody, and an ability for metaphor that have never been bettered by his contemporaries. Add to that the production of Jackson Browne and the participation of a Fleetwood Mac, an Eagle, one Beach Boy and half of the Everly Brothers, and you have the best sounding album ever to come from the Southern California Hiatus Launch Pad.

Karla Bonoff. Karla Bonoff. Columbia. 1977.

    Bonoff’s songwriting fir in perfectly with the new hedonism of the Southern California smarminess of Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles, as well as with the studio musicians who were always turning up on what was then a new emotional slickness. That does not mean these songs are not good. Most of them are excellent. It’s just interesting that misogynists such as Glenn Frey and Linda Ronstadt saw paeans to anonymous sexual encounters as an opportunity to avoid the complications of commitment, whereas when Bonoff sings these songs, it is obvious she is actually singing about the painful emptiness that desperately needs filled with something human, even if it’s not as real as the love she still hopes to find.

Jackson Browne. Running on Empty. Asylum. 1978.

    In the early 1970s Jackson Browne was the most significant sperm donor of the mutation that came to be named California Rock. Two other acts whose names often arise in such paternity discussions are Little Feat and Ry Cooder. Granted, either of these might have been more technically proficient while devoutly wed to the in-group exclusivity inherent in the cult ideology from which all myths are born. But Little Feat’s vision, for all its ambition, was focused on blurring out the pain their very exclusivity generated. Cooder was more inclined to redevelop other musical forms than to transform himself from purveyor into myth-maker. It took the Heidelberg-born Browne to see through the American maze of unfinished dreams of kids too young to recall the Beach Boys, or of those too smart to think that Brian Wilson knew his 409 from the hole in his surfboard. From that maze, Browne created an Outlaw Myth so successfully refined by lesser talents. Now I am not suggesting that Browne is a founding father in the way of Chuck Berry or Brian Wilson. However, he has managed to release thoughtfully intense and introspectively outreaching music over a span of more than four decades, while such California sunshiners as Wilson, Fleetwood Mac, Boz Scaggs and Steve Miller reached their artistic peaks before Browne’s first album was released. Running on Empty remains one of the most live recordings released by a major star. At the zenith of his commercial career, Browne taped himself and his crack band (usually led by multi-instrumentalist David Lindley) everywhere from the concert stage to the tour bus, from back stage to a broom closet. In anyone else’s hands, such a technical decision would have been nothing but a gimmick. But Browne connected each recording venue with the meaning of the song. "Rosie," a song about satisfying oneself, is appropriately performed solo, just as “Shaky Town,” a song about touring, is recorded while wheeling from one location to the next. Best of all, the album closer makes the best segue into an automatic encore ever imagined, while going far beyond mere homage to Maurice Williams’ “Stay.”

Ry Cooder. Bop Til You Drop. Warner Bros. 1979.

    Cooder may have learned to hate this album, but that doesn’t stop it from having some incredible moments. Now, I wouldn’t have done the bashing bullshit on “Hollywood,” either. But everything else here, especially “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing,” is as good as anything he has ever recorded. The only negative is that this album does have the infamy of being the first digital vinyl ever released.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Damn the Torpedoes. Backstreet. 1979.

No matter how many levels of audial putrification regurgitate from the record companies, there is always some schmuck determined to put things right. Sometimes that means making new sounds. Sometimes it means digging up some old gripe. In Petty’s case, it’s a bit of both. Depending on his inspiration, he may be as derivative as people claim, but who great is not? It isn’t the fact of stealing influences that counts. It is the quality of the influences stolen and what you do with them that matters. Every song here is tight as the head of a snare drum and twice as jangly.

Warren Zevon. Stand in the Fire. Asylum. 1980.

   This is the great live album. Warren Zevon introduced two new originals here that were so strong they made you wonder what the studio versions might sound like, a cover of Bo Diddley songs that completely raised the tent, and ever-so-slight revisions of some of his best earlier work. Of these latter, especially good are "Werewolves" and"Mohammed'a Radio." But even the least of these ten songs are hilarious, frightening, loud and pounding. Guitarist David Landau and a group of unknowns play as if failure meant death. This and the eleven songs on Zevon’s debut LP are the true greatest hits by this performer.

Warren Zevon. “A Certain Girl.” Asylum. 1980.
   Warren Zevon wrote, sang and performed some of the most exciting music of the second-half of the 1970s. His music dug up the oozy flipside of the Beach Boys idealism in grand metaphors and in straight-on contemporary skin-blazers. His creative insight, intelligence and intensity were soothed by the juices of alcohol, resulting in songs that perfectly conveyed the dank side of Hollywood dreams. By the early 1980s, the damage inherent in such self-abuse threatened to overrun its own conduit, and so albums such as Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, from which this song was the non-hit single, lacked any unifying quality, including humor, anger or even artistic ambition. The sole exception on that album was this cover version of the Neville Brothers non-classic recording. Zevon enlivens this simple song with frustration, coyness, hysterics, and even a self-absorption that shadows everything else of the album.

Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty. "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around." Modern. 1981.

   These two singers share only two things. First, in their respective bands they have both employed a musical device which I call the “hum.” The hum is a sound created by an organ or synthesizer. It lies steady in the background, usually rising and falling with chord progression. Its purpose and effect is to make the music sound full by eradicating all background silence. It is a common gimmick that’s occasionally effective. The second thing Nicks and Petty share is that they sound great together because Petty’s world-weary gravel tones mute Nicks’ soft and silly post-hippie mysticism. In other words, Nicks sounds as if she’s been experiencing the pain suggested by the song’s title. And Petty sounds like a very compelling cure for that pain.

Don Henley. I Can’t Stand Still. Asylum. 1982.

   This Eagles’ drummer had a great start on a solo career until he decided he was VH1’s answer to Elvis. His early singles shattered stained glass social pomposity. “Dirty Laundry” was every bit as mean-spirited as the topic required and “Johnny Can’t Read” avoids cribbing the easy answers. Over all, the album remains refreshing, sounding as if it was made on one soft summer evening while the city burned.

THE PLAYLIST (PART 18): JESUS OF COOL

Nick Lowe: Jesus of Cool

Some things do not require commentary.




"I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass."

"Cruel to be Kind."

"What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding?"

"So It Goes."




"I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock 'n' Roll"

"Half a Boy and Half a Man"

"Rollers Show"

"Marie Provost"

"Cracking Up"




"Twelve Step Program"

"Born Fighter"

"Heart of the City"

THE PLAYLIST 19: GOING MOBILE

Here's a true story that happened seven years ago. I think you will like it.

     There’s been no gray and only the slightest signs of a waistline spread, but the sensibilities of middle age mutate sufficiently these days, enough so that the time came to make a substantial adjustment. I bought a sports car: an Audi TT Roadster. Moro blue with vanilla interior, convertible, turbo engine, two seater, automatic with a secret “S” gear for aggressive driving purposes, and a remarkable stereo system with a volume that goes up to thirty, ignoring the fact that my ears bleed somewhere around twenty-two. The only unanswered questions remaining: (1) Where do I go; (2) What music do I take?


    Born and raised in Ohio, I had not ventured from Arizona to the Buckeye state in twenty-one years, despite near constant longing for my artificial boyhood paradise. I already missed this year’s World Famous Annual Circleville Pumpkin Show, but there remained plenty to see and do in Central Ohioan bohemia, so I mapped out a rough outline of a route, threw three sweat shirts and a pair of jeans in an old suitcase and psyched myself up for the journey, mostly focusing on question number two: what would be the perfect sounds for this mid-life road experience? I immediately abandoned obvious selections, such as The Ramones’ Road to Ruin, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, and Dion’s The Wanderer, classics all, but a tad too predictable for my forthcoming nervous collapse. No, I needed music for both the general between-city-tedium, and locale-specific sonics, music and noise that would propel my traveling companion dog Molly and me through the stratosphere of interstate highway ecstasy. This was gonna be fun.



    Remember that jive by Elton John about “Get back/Honky cat/Better get back to the woods”? Well, from my personal point of view, that notion stinks and EJ too. The high point of my trip, as it turned out, was when having hooked up with my friend Ruth Ann, she and I motored stately into my old neighborhood--Jefferson Addition--for the narrow and specific purpose of taking a few pictures of my old house. The place looked pretty much the same, despite the thin and fractured roadways which had seemed so much wider before, and we pulled over alongside my former abode, the morning rain yielding to a brisk pre-winter cloud sulk, and I hopped out with my camera. There I stood, in awe of my former home, located at 367 Ludwig Drive, in case anyone wants to visit. Just as I was lining up the exposure, this craggily retiree came bounding out from my old living room and threw open the door. “Hey!” he hollered, for that is what one does to get attention in Circleville. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”



    Looking over my shoulder, I noticed Ruth Ann slouching low in the passenger seat. Ah, the things friends must endure. “I used to live here and I’m taking some pictures of the house. Could you step out of the frame please?” The old guy was having none of this, but to my surprise, he did move out of the way so I could snap my photos.
    “I don’t like people taking pictures of my house. Who are you?”
    I explained that this had been my house long before he owned it and that I was indeed going to take pictures and thank you very much. He displayed a lot of flag decals on the garage, so he probably thought we were terrorists, staking out the structure of the house, all the better to position our surface-to-air rocket launchers. By the time I’d shot the third exposure, his glazed eyes were steaming, so I said “I suppose a tour of the place is out of the question” and hopped back in, spraying mud while Ruth Ann laughed herself silly. She is a good egg, that girl.


    My trip from Phoenix began well enough. Having mapped out my destination and estimating my overnight cities, I popped the CD’s burned especially for the occasion into the compact storage case and plunged ahead down I-10 toward Tucson en route to the first night’s stop in El Paso, a mere 650 miles away.
    The proper musical accompaniment not only provides a much needed surcease in the audial road burn; perhaps more importantly, it imposes upon the driver a vivid soundtrack with which to recall the trip, possibly many years later. And so I divided the CD’s into the general category--for those long stretches of interstate where nothing much more than tumbleweeds and rusted-out cricket pumps decorate the landscape--and the specific category--songs which made some implied or overt reference to the city or region through which I was passing. Sometimes those references boasted the glories of the area and sometimes they made their point with a bit less reverence. In either case, volume was key and the top was definitely down.
    Just out from the biospheres of Tucson, as the road straightens and clocks its hours of monotony, I plugged in the ideal tune to launch the trip: "Highway Star" by Deep Purple. As the dust devils swirled up and above the copper-coated dirt fields, threatening to transplant dog, car and self into Oz the hard way, Ian Gillan’s counter-twister scream wail strangled up with Ritchie Blackmore’s controlled adrenaline guitar boxing match and propelled the Audi’s contents forward with such velocity that “airborne” fails to capture the sensation. My hair straightened, the hat I was wearing is now attached to some motorist’s CB antennae, my cheeks went taut and the feeling is just now beginning to return to my gums. There was nothing much to see along the southern border of Arizona anyway, except a few rattlesnake pits and the bursting tires of eighteen wheelers. Just as my heart palpitations yielded to police-induced paranoia, the irony of the next song’s title took hold: The Byrds’ version of Dylan’s "You Ain't Goin Nowhere." There remains something about the line, “Strap yourself to a tree with roots,” that perfectly encapsulates the cartoon futility of the trip ahead.



The Sweetheart of the Rodeo album from which the aforementioned number came provided the ideal transition into the Flying Burrito Bros’ take on Dave Dudley’s "Six Days on the Road," the most often repeated tune here. From this, it was a cold water crash directly into the instrumental abutment of The Ramones’ "Durango 95," the song that crashed down just as twilight warned that it was time to get specific.
The southern leg of New Mexico hasn’t lent itself to an overabundance of name-place musicality, primarily because nothing much between Deming and Las Cruces jumps up and demands attention, other than the occasional patch of fallen cattle, apparently either the victims of underground nuclear testing or a simple lack of imagination. Las Cruces itself was clearly a bi-pass town, although I did come up with a Geronimo’s Cadillac song called “Crack Up in Las Cruces” to get me over the hump.


    About seventy miles beyond Las Cruces is the Southwest Texas town of El Paso, which presented more problems of an overnight nature than of musical. I flipped in the CD marked EP and charged up the intro mariachi slash flamenco chords of Marty Robbins’ classic, a tune local town folk were quick to point out they are so tired of hearing, a stay in the local jail is the proscribed punishment for blaring it past eight pm. Heeding this timely advice, I skipped forward to "El Paso" by the Gourds, from their Bolsa de Agua LP. This choice meeting with some favorable nods, I inquired where might be a nice place to stay the night. The look of alarm on the kids hanging outside the Dairy Queen spoke volumes. “You’re not gonna park that car outside a motel, are you?” one of them asked.
“Oh, no!” I assured him. “This thing disassembles in just a few minutes. Hey, you guys ever heard of Kinky Friedman?” Having not, I played them the classic "Asshole From El Paso,"which cheered them up so much that one young honey with a waistline tattoo offered directions to the local Holiday Inn.



    I had not much more than checked in, watered, fed and walked the cocker spaniel, when the look on that one kid’s face started giving me the jitters. My room leaned on the first floor, the car rested right outside the window, and the alarm system screeched loud enough to unhinge arms from their sockets. But darned if I could sleep for fear of getting stuck for God knows how long in a Holiday Inn this far from home. Insurance is fine, but how long would it take for them to wire me the funds, get the check cashed, and hop a plane the hell out of here? Nope, better to take a quick shower and shave, grab a burger and get on down the road a ways.
    This jittered-out paranoia settled into a warm place in my mind, becoming a defining element of the rest of the journey.


    Just outside of Van Horn, I jotted up to I-20, climbing steadily on the overnight drive to Dallas, a little more than 600 miles in the distance. On past Pecos, Odessa, Midland and Big Spring I drove, a confused cocker trying to get comfortable on her small leather seat, constantly insisting on inspecting the exterior of every semi we passed. Between Big Spring and Abilene, I entertained my passenger with a variety of general Texas tunes, like the bassist Randy McDonald’s “Texas Flower,” Elton’s Merle Haggard parody "Texas Love Song," Louis Armstrong and King Oliver’s “Texas Moaner Blues,” and Lester Young’s “Texas Shuffle.” It was the situationally appropriate "Texas to Ohio" by Damien Jurado that actually introduced me to trouble. I’d cranked those ghost guitars and gravel road vocals so high that my gaze wired itself to the highway and I didn’t detect the friendly Texas State Trooper until long after he’d seen me.


    Imagine if you will: you’re a cop and you see a dark blue sports car speeding through the night at somewhere between 85 and 90 mph, temporary tags and out of state ones at that, plus the driver doesn’t even slow down when he passes you. The red white blue bubble lights did compel my attention, however, and I pulled over, lecturing Molly to be on her best behavior.
     “Is your dog gonna bite me?” the friendly trooper inquired with what appeared to be genuine concern for his own safety.

     “Not if you don’t bite her first,” I responded, all bleary-eyed with good humor.
    He turned out to be a very nice guy, letting me off with a warning, all of which made what happened less than an hour later moderately embarrassing. Having stopped briefly at a McDonald’s drive-thru for a freshening cup of coffee, I revved the midnight beast up just past 115, the hazel stars sparkling in admiration at my inability to learn a simple lesson about local law enforcement. Somewhere between a replay of The Ramones’ instrumental “Durango 95” (the title lifted from a late-night drive in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange) and the Collins Kids’ "Hot Rod," the unhappy contra flash erupted over the oncoming crest, a flash I passed as fast as it approached from the other side of the median. A quick glance in the tiny rearview assured me of my toast status: the trooper-mobile spun across that divider and sprayed angry gravel in the air as it yearned for sufficient traction to end my careless ways. I eased off the gas, found a strip of shoulder, and reined the Audi in for a graceful stop.
    It felt like a scene out of Les Miserables as the same trooper sauntered up, flipping the pages in his ticket book.


    He explained that at the speed we’d been traveling, he had every right known to God and Man to throw my skinny ass in the pokey, but since that might not bode well for Molly the wonder dog, he would record the pace at 98, just low enough to keep the Spaniel from having to seek out food and shelter on her own. I admitted that I found his actions quite generous and wondered aloud if he’d be interested in taking the Roadster for a spin. I figured he wanted to, and the pause between my question and his answer confirmed my suspicions. He politely declined despite my offer to keep an eye on his short. As a result of this fine officer’s manners, I did indeed learn my lesson and that was my final speed infraction in the state of Texas.
     After an upright two hour nap at a breezy roadside rest, Molly and I greeted the dawn with the multi-level hyper speed ping pong attack of The Who’s "Going Mobile." The beyond perfect production from Glyn Johns--the most incredible separation in all of rock--in harmony with grand musical ambitions and acid-accurate lyrics that shot out like Kerouac, reminded me of something my friend Paul Hormick had told me years and years earlier: “The more you listen to Who’s Next, the better it gets. Forever.” Better advice I have never received.
     As we roared on in search of our next major stop in Dallas, we punched up Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s teenaged eight-track classic "Roll on Down the Highway." The song’s mechanical rhythm section, indecipherable vocals and moderately inspired lead guitar encouraged the dog and I to shoulder dance even as BTO faded and the Rolling Stones dirged into all eleven plus minutes of "Going Home."



   Neither Molly nor I had Mick Jagger’s baby waiting for us back home, but despite this social inadequacy, we were both dying to get back there, even though Molly had never heard of the place and the only thing I knew for certain was that I believed I had been happy living there. I did in fact have some splendid specific recollections, most of which centered around various bicycles I had owned and the places they had taken me. One of those places was The Blue Drummer Steak House. I was a frightened yet brash sixteen year old anticipating college with about as much clarity as I was old age pensions and my parents insisted I take the job not only to defray up and coming educational expenses but mostly as a way of guiding myself along the path toward some infantile form of maturity. And so for nearly two years I rode my ten-speed racer the two miles from our garage to the Bicentennial-appropriate steak emporium.


    My friendships there weren’t lifelong, but they were deep. As The Beatles’ "Get Back" bled into Elvis Presley’s version of Hank Snow’s "Moving On," some of those memory images came rolling back. Most stark was a kid about my own age at the time, just an average friendly kid named Jamie Welliver. One night Jamie and I were toking up in his Duster, listening to the soundtrack from the new Tommy movie, and he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. It was cold as a shit storm out, and I was already in enough trouble for one night, so I passed. The next morning, a Sunday, if memory serves, I came back to work at eleven, just a few minutes before the lunch crowds emerged from the various church services. I walked in, bebopping a whistle to some self-composed tune, when the look another co-worker delivered stopped me cold. “Jamie Welliver’s dead. He wrapped his car around a telephone pole.” Before I even had a chance to register the horror of this, our manager, Pat Bevan, charged in through the big metallic doors and ordered us to get ready for the lunch rush. Ms. Bevan knew what had happened. She knew that we knew. But she had an insignificant job to perform and nothing was going to get in the way of that.
    The most peculiar aspect of the entire experience was that when I had first begun working there, my number one concern, fear, obsession, was that by earning an insubstantial living there I might lose the young kid in me that I so cherished. Every man in the world frets about this constantly. Lose that internal boy and prepare to crawl inside a box and pile on the dirt. I never did completely lose him, of course, but that Sunday morning, a little part of him died for the first time.



    On the outskirts of Dallas, the pre-encore take of Gram Parson’s live version of "Six Days on the Road" filled the air for miles and my heart muscles tightened for the first time since the trip had begun. An ominous cloud clings over Dallas and always will. A lot of that, naturally, stems from the Kennedy assassination, and a lot of it sprouts from social conditions that could allow something like that assassination to take place. There was a lot I wanted to see in Dallas, but there was only one song I wanted to hear: "Willin'" by Little Feat. Sadly, the story of Alice--Dallas Alice--was nowhere in my collection. So sitting in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, I rolled up the windows and sang the damn thing myself. Molly wept.



    By the time we checked into our room, we had been on the road exactly twenty-four hours. We had driven thirteen hundred miles. Giddy with exhaustion, I plopped Molly back in the shotgun seat and we set out to discover Dallas.
     About a mile and a half from the hotel we found ourselves so hopelessly lost it took the better part of three hours just to stream our way back. We never unearthed Dealey Plaza. We did learn, however, that Dallas sports a lot of road construction that only slows down the out of towners. Prior to motoring along freeways reduced to one lane with unyielding SUV psychos and crypto-tank drivers both fore and aft, I would have sworn that Phoenix drivers are the most hateful pack of self-absorbed sons of bitches who ever lived. After three hours sweltering and choking in the blood pools of Dallas congestion, I can honestly report that Phoenicians are among the most polite motorists in the world. If I ever return to Dallas, it will not be unarmed.


    One of the primary reasons for my purchase of the Audi TT was that it is the ultimate anti-SUV. Despite the fact that every one of my current friends drives one, I do not like SUV’s. Perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this story, many people who drive the rough-riding death traps do not like the occasional little sports cars that punctuate the road like dots at the end of exclamation points. In particular, they do not like Audi’s, probably because SUV drivers recognize that there are only three or four non-Audi’s that can outrun the Roadster and none that can are the modern day urban tanks that in reality have nothing to do with either sports or utility. They are, in fact, only marginally vehicular. They do, however, serve as excellent tools for committing interstate homicide. Just ask the guy in the onyx black Denali a few miles south of Little Rock who tried to stampede his moon-roofed marauder up and across my roll-over bars, or the tailgating Esplanade, both of whom endeavored to careen their armored kill machines up and over my back just because I had the audacity to mouth the words “stupid twat” in their directions as I passed them merging back onto the freeway. Like a breath of fresh air irony, George Harrison’s "All Things Must Pass" filled the Audi and I switched lanes just as the mini-convoy barreled boldly by.
     Arkansas is the most beautiful state, blessed as it is with miles of aisles of cotton, soybeans, wheat, corn and stacks of flax. The unsettled purr of idling semis spills a churn of its own kind of symphony. Strangely, a lot of great music comes from Arkansas but there’s not tons of tomes about it. That may be because in the early autumn, the scenery is so splendid, nearly nothing could approximate the grandeur. The fading foliage from the Ozarks announce themselves modestly and the timber trembles in awe of its own multihued gorgeosity. If there were ever a region in which it is manifestly appropriate to put the top down on the car, this is most definitely that place. The dying allergens kissing tightly to forsaken cotton balls, the colliding spruce and pine perfumes, the lust grip of cones and cinders: the sights and smells alone make a majestic visual-olfactory orgy that mere music cannot replicate. So I settled--if one can call it that--for a smorgasbord of CCR’s "Cottonfields," “Arkansas Hop” by Boz and the Highrollers, "Joan of Arkansas" by Dorothy Shay, Big Medicine’s “My Ozark Mountain Home,” Black Oak Arkansas’ "Jim Dandy," "Sweet Little Rock and Roller" by Chuck Berry, the American Gypsies’ “Bottle of Hope” (get it?), and--may God have mercy on my weary soul--Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell’s duet of "A Little Girl From Little Rock." Hell, I’m no snob. I played the latter ditty three times as I wound my way around and through LR (as the local signs refer to it) on my way northeast to Memphis.
     No city on our trip boasted a greater selection and variety of place-specific songs than did Memphis, Tennessee. About twenty miles out from this remarkably friendly border town, I snapped in the first four versions of Chuck Berry’s classic: the first was by Chuck, of course; then came the slightly hokey rendition by Flatt & Scruggs (recorded, no doubt, because of its title), followed by the rave up instrumental take by Lonnie Mack and the sloppy but transcendent cover by Sandy Denny. “Long distance information,” I sang as loud as my frayed vocal cords would permit. “Give me Memphis, Tennessee!”
Flipping from manual back into automatic as I stretched my neck to find a place to eat that wasn’t part of the burger axis of indigestion, Dan Bern’s “Graceland” whupped me upside the head:
Well look at me, Lord
I’m at Graceland
On a Saturday afternoon
I threw up last night
At a rest stop
From eating cheese grits
At the Waffle House
    The Memphis horns hit me like a Gospel brick house as the late Dusty Springfield cued herself up on "Laura and Laura Mae Jones," another place and another time belting out as real and immediate as front porch lemonade. Memphis Minnie sashayed in shout-singing the “Killer Diller Blues,” the guitar sounding just like a banjo. King Curtis spooned up today’s special of "Memphis Soul Stew," and when those fat back drums strolled in, I swear the trees along the roadway actually bowed. The obvious Mott the Hoople number bleated like a dying calf, but that memory quickly faded with the authentically ridiculous "Memphis Train" by soul papa Rufus Thomas. “Whoo! Aw, shucks now!” And before I knew it, I was leaving Memphis behind, the tires twirling and oblivious as the steady country rhythm of Rosanne Cash’s version of daddy John’s "Tennessee Flat Top Box" battered down on Molly and I like rain on the roof of a caboose.
    Along I-40 East and slightly north toward the former country music capital, as the winds whipped and the sun brayed in harmony, the first genuine scenic rhythms of recognition gripped me like a corpse. Tennessee houses a thousand tiny towns, most of which are thoroughly ignored by the grand interstates that double-X their arms across the expanse. Jackson--one of the biggest names in all the South--retains a bear’s share of promotion, but real people also live and die in Brunswick, Rosemark, Gallaway, Braden, Keeling, Stanton, Shepp, Leighton (I been everywhere, man, I been everywhere): God, so many towns and people Molly and I will never meet, many of whom may well someday be doomed to course their ways on wheeled rafts between the banks of paved pathways, fishing for legal fireworks and dreading the oncoming hug of familiarity. That familiarity spooked me like a slime monster peeking from a hollow log as we neared Nashville, the world’s most down home town. As we strained our eyes for yet another Holiday Inn, we got caught up in the porcine okey-doke of "Nashville Cats" by the Lovin’ Spoonful, melted into the leather buckets with "Nashville Radio" courtesy of Jon Langford, self-paralyzed with nostalgia during a dose of Waylon Jennings’ "Nashville Bum," damn near cried from the pain of Ringo’s "Nashville Jam,"received scads of curious looks throughout the playing of Godhead’s “Nashville Bust,” and felt like genuine cowboy punks as we blared Hank Williams Jr.’s “Nashville Scene.” I awoke a little after three the next morning, sweating like a fever blister, completely unaware of where I was. Molly jumped away from the wet foot she’d been aimlessly licking and stared at me as if I’d suddenly become real. “Nashville!” one of us said to the other, or maybe the word came from the radio alarm clock that some fool before me had set. Over that tinny radio transmission, Mississippi Fred McDowell, who surely don’t play no rock ‘n’ roll, reminded us we had to move, so after a quick run through the shower we did just that, with all the haste of unrepentant sinners fleeing the wrath of a jealous God. I dropped Molly a packet of dog glop and chugged my own magic milkshake as Chris Knight serenaded us with his eerily appropriate "Devil Behind the Wheel," that Mellencamp impression never sounding better. We’d be in Circleville sometime within the next twenty-four hours and despite the dark thumb tapping its warning against my heart, I hastened us on, my own internal cruise control as unyielding as time itself.


     Running on I-65 North en route to Louisville, the next major stop, we passed a sign that said “White House 18 Miles Next Exit.” We also passed a Tennessee State Trooper who was himself somewhat exceeding the speed limit, and both Molly and I realized that another citation lay in our progress.
    This guy stayed parked behind us for at least five minutes--no doubt staring us down from the rear to see if we’d run--during which time I searched vainly for Springsteen’s "Mr. State Trooper." The best I could come up with was Randy Newman’s"Rednecks," but by the time the cop swaggered up to our car, that song had come and gone. I smiled and killed the engine.


    “You come up here from Air-ee-zonaw,” he began. “So I know you seen the sign at the state crossing that admonishes you to obey Tennessee speed limits, right? Zat your dog?”
    “Yes sir, Arizona. On our way to Ohio. Haven’t been there in over twenty--”
    “Ohio?” he queried, although when he said it, the state name sounded like “Ah-hi-ya.”
    “Yes sir, Ohio. That’s where I’m from. Looking forward to--”
    “I don’t have all day to hear about that. Sign this and answer my question. Zat your dog?”
    I signed the receipt of citation without even looking at it. “Right, my dog. Molly.”
    “She obstruct your view in that little thing you’re driving?”
    I desperately needed a drink or a drug or something to blur out the shades of simmering paranoia.
    “No. She sits still. Rides low. Rarely moves. No trouble.”
    “This here ticket’s going on your driving record, boy. You’re almost out of Tennessee. You make sure you pay this when you get to Ohio or wherever you’re going. You make sure that dog of yours don’t obstruct your view. And you better make sure you don’t get no more tickets in this state. You follow me?”
    “Assured clear distance,” I replied as I hummed up the engine and rolled on toward Louisville.


    My ears popped and clogged steadily as we climbed the road altitude that glides one almost unconsciously into northern Kentucky. Late in October, the trees coughed out crackling colors like daytime fireworks, each leaf a silent harbinger and leaden weight. Law enforcement warnings and penalties to the contrary, I shot us up to ninety just after we crossed the Kentucky line and the music took over for the next hundred miles. The deranged banjo stomp of Danny Barnes’ "Life in the Country," The Byrds’ "Goin Back" (with its self-referential and irreverent line: “a little courage is all we lack”), the unsolemn roll of BTO’s "Freeways," Joe South’s high strung "Don't It Make You Want to Go Home," the heavy-light xylophone of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s "Reunion Blues," the harmelodic majesty of Ornette Coleman’s "Skies of America," the power and the glory of Phil Ochs’ “Power and the Glory,” the pop up grind and slash of Tom Petty’s "Runnin Down a Dream": aw, it was somnambulant, it was invigorating, it was a bunch of purple mountain majesty, it was pure and fleshy, and my terror finally backed off. We truly were, as Funkadelic promised, "One Nation Under a Groove." A zombied-out nation in our protective shells sealed for our own sanity, but one nation nevertheless. “Here’s my chance/to dance my way/out of my constriction.” Rat own.

When we come to the place where the road and the sky collide
Run me over the edge and let my spirit glide
They told me I was gonna have to work for a livin’ but all I wanna do is ride
I don’t care where we’re goin’ from here, honey, you decide.
Jackson Browne, “The Road and the Sky”

    Somehow wedged in between Deep Purple’s heavy lunged version of Neil Diamond’s "Kentucky Woman" and Elvis Presley’s maudlin as hell “Kentucky Rain,” the song excerpted above trumpeted itself, one of a handful or two of which it is quite fair, balanced and accurate to say: “That there song, well, it just came along at a time in the boy’s life when something was bound to change him forever. In this case, it happened to be a song about a car thief who prophesizes--correctly--the apocalypse. There ya go.”
    Not to give a false impression, I should clarify: I do not steal cars; I’m not prone to prolonged lethargy; and while some may say the world will end in fire, some in ice, and with all due respect to Robert Frost, I’ve always assumed it would terminate in a more abstract way, probably as a result of a lack of imagination. In other words, Browne’s centerpiece from Late for the Skyinfluenced me more in terms of sensibility than in terms of prophesy. And that sensibility occasionally leans toward a studiously pronounced gloved sweat of dread. So there I was, riding along with Molly the wonder dog, the top down on the Audi, the northern Kentucky hill winds straightening back my lengthy blond hair, an absurd set of aviator goggles swatting away stray flying insects, lamb skin leather jacket insulating my torso, and matching black Kenneth Cole boots against the pedal, pretentious as hell, when along comes Jackson Browne, declaring, “Hold on steady/Try to keep ready/Everybody’s gonna get wet/Don’t think it won’t happen/Just because it hasn’t happened yet.”




    A reasonable person might, at this point (if not sooner), wonder aloud at what it was exactly that I was so dreading about the approaching denouement to a trip that I had, in all fairness and accuracy, undertaken freely and without apparent coercion. The answer to that requires the most difficult degree of self-discovery it has ever been my misfortune to explore. And I only bring it up because I believe (or perhaps, need to believe) that my personal revelation will resonate with others. God, I hope it does.
     My high school graduation was the Class of 1976. For the benefit of those of you who weren’t around at the time, 1976 was a year of much ballyhoo in the United States. After decades of involvement in Vietnam and what seemed like decades of Watergate-related embarrassments, America poised itself to celebrate 200 years of Independence. Special coins were minted, CBS launched sixty-second spots featuring various luminaries recounting historic tales of bravery and the overcoming of adversity, banners and plaques and monuments sprang up out of our blood-drenched soil heralding the good life we had created. “We must be doing something right,” Henry Gibson sang in Robert Altman’s Nashville, “to last two hundred years.” And in that year of justifiable (if enforced) patriotism, my graduating class, like doubtless hundreds of others throughout the country, came to believe that, perhaps by association, perhaps by divine decree, we were something special.
    No. That’s not right. We did not just believe it. We knew it.
    My graduating class at Logan Elm High School boasted a whopping eighty-three students. Just like many classes before and after, there and elsewhere, we had our share of jocks, leaders, hoods, followers, brains, dopes, beauty queens, sluts, and a hefty percentage of kids too bland for classification. But regardless of whatever in-group or out-group to which each of us belonged, the one immutable fact to which we clung was that as a reigning member of the graduating class of 1976, we were somehow imbued with the ability and even responsibility to make something big of ourselves. This state of affairs existed, as I’ve said, in large part because of our chronological connection to the Bicentennial. Part of it emerged as a consequence of being subjected to well-intended propaganda from the staff and teachers. And some of it developed simply as a result of what then sure seemed like reasonable expectations.
     Of course, I knew all of this before ever launching my adventure. I knew all this just as I knew that I’d been willfully repressing memories of the genuinely horrible experiences that befall most high school kids, elevating in my forebrain only those half dozen or so good times at the expense of the thousand or more rotten things that had been banished from my recollections. That’s why it’s no mere coincidence that the majority of the songs I culled for the Mid-Life Nervous Breakdown came from approximately the time that I graduated. May the roar help me ignore what a bore I am to explore!
     It is likewise no coincidence that I chose to drive to Ohio, rather than to avail myself of this nation’s vast air transportation network. You see, although I am capable of being a very fine driver, proving that statement requires a great deal of concentration on my part. So there I was, still mastering the various idiosyncrasies of a new car, operating on damned little sleep, trying to keep a newly acquired dog entertained, and playing my self-burned CD’s so loud that I am certain to have violated several local noise ordinances. Simply put, anything I could do to distract myself from the abject horror of recognition that awaited me--well, I was ready, Freddie. I was ready, that is, until that fucking Jackson Browne song came on, a song I myself had sequenced for selective self-sabotage.
    An hour later I crossed a bridge and suddenly gazed down the descent into Cincinnati. Jesus, I was in Ohio. Long time, no think.
    “I’m living on the air in Cincinnati,” I sang to the dog. “Cincinnati WKRP!” Molly thought that was hilarious.



    Riverfront Stadium, sometimes recalled as Cinergy Field, met with a purposeful and violent demolition on December 29, 2002, an act of domestic terrorism committed by people with every legal right to do so, an act transgressed without moral twinge or beleaguered conscience. Teamed up, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden could not have done a better job of crucifying testaments to those things that make America great. The aptly named Riverfront had been the home to both the Reds (Redlegs, originally) and the Bengals. The stadium accommodated a capacity of 60,400. The website “Stadiums of the NFL” calls the former landmark “boring,” but a packed house on a Saturday afternoon, smelling the cold hotdogs and warm beer with The Big Red Machine of Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo and other local luminaries activating something unconstrained inside those of us in attendance--bliss personified, I assure you. What became “boring” to the Bengals, and maybe even to the latter-day Reds, I suspect, was the consistency with which it became impossible to fill a stadium so large. It would have taken time and money and effort to rid society of its virus of CheapFastEasy, so they destroyed the medicine rather than the disease. “I went back to Ohio,” sang Chrissie Hynde. “But my city was gone.” My father took me to games at Riverfront. The stadium and my father may be gone, but the mindless wheels of professional progress cannot topple the memories, one-sided as they may be.
Molly and I tattooed our minds to the amplified pop blues of Delaney and Bonnie’s "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad" and "Comin Home."
     The Ohio River demarcates the state named by the Iroquois from both Kentucky and West Virginia. Route 52 stays just barely on the Ohio side of the River, ushering a gateway, as it were, to such small Buckeye towns as New Richmond, Ripley, Aberdeen, Rome, and Portsmouth, the latter being a smartly named burg that also happens to be the city of my birth, although, again, I grew up in Circleville. Once in Cincinnati, I considered following the River toward my birthplace, recalling how, as a child raised on Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac, I’d often fantasized about modern day explorers traversing the wide and winding River in search of nothing more economic than adventure. But there were people living in Portsmouth who claimed me as a relative (although not quite family) and I thought it best to get my strength back before meeting up with that particular tribe. And so we selected Interstate 75 Northeast, a direct path right into the capitol city of Columbus.
     Twenty-one years. The lifetime of a young adult. That much trivia had urinated into the streams of my soul since I’d last laid eyes on this route, its preexisting landscape increasingly familiar with every accelerated rpm. About fifty miles out from Cinci, the state levels off and the farms flourish. October held court now, so the main remnants of agronomical decline were weather-beaten signs proclaiming that delicious hybrids of silver queen sweet corn could indeed be picked by hungry customers for two dollars a dozen: from our fields to your pot in only minutes! Most of the remaining forestry lay off deeper into the heart of the state, but mountainous wrecking yards and a panoply of country kitchens hyphenated the compelling monotony of our final miles. Gillian Welch squeaked out "Look at Miss Ohio" and Lucinda Williams soul-crooned “American Dream.” As we approached the exit for Grove City, Roger Miller sang-spoke “Trailer for sale or rent/Rooms to let fifty cents,” and I knew we had to park immediately. Another night in a low side of corporate Holiday Inn and the vet might have had to autopsy Molly. Jackpot Road brought us quickly to the Cross Country Inn, a fitting temporary reprieve for we two road weary wanderers.
    We weren’t quite home. But, damn, we were close.
    With less than six hours of legitimate sack time under my belt in the last three calendar days, I needed sleep. And inviting as the huge queen-size bed appeared, I knew that such an idea was a goofy distraction. I dove into a suitcase for my personal address book and flipped to the page marked Greg Howard. Living now in the Worthington section of Columbus, he worked in the party store his wife had inherited, and that was where I reached him. Greg and I had talked on the phone a few times about the possibility of my visiting, and since it had never happened, I figured he’d pretty much written off the notion as one of wistful fantasy on my part. When he answered and I told him where I was, he cried “Grove City! What are you doing there? Let me give you directions! Whoo-ee!” That was exactly the kind of welcoming I’d always hoped for myself.
     Yankee Trader, the party store in question, occupies five stories in downtown Columbus, a city where people still walk around to do their shopping, not for any absence of alternative shopping malls, but rather because of the concentrated and gregarious nature of life in a Midwest capital town. Parking is plentiful, if a little awkwardly contrived. And despite a decidedly “old world” ambience to the downtown architecture, local government takes a dim view of crimes against property, insuring that parking, walking, strolling, window shopping and harmless carousing can all occur with a modicum of safety. I parked less than half a block away, proudly jaywalked across the street, and climbed up the loading platform just as the gate opened. A guy with a moustache who looked to be in his mid-forties stood on the other side of the passageway, bearing a wide-open smile I could have picked out of a stranger’s dream.
    Greg was the kind of kid you’re delighted to know, and as my best friend, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world.
     Greg Howard transferred to our township when we were both in sixth grade. It had been, then as now, October, so the school season was a month old when he joined us, and since it was a small school in the central Ohio suburbs, my friend Roger and I didn’t know any better than to approach the short new kid during recess, as a way of making him feel welcome. He asked us what we did for fun during recess and of course we said we didn’t know, being a little embarrassed about our surroundings, what with him coming from Florida and all. This was during the time of the Apollo moon missions, and all I knew about Florida was that Cape Kennedy was there, so I asked him if his father was an astronaut. Greg said he didn’t think so and pulled himself up onto the chin-up bar we had on the playground. He sat up on it as Roger and I struggled between the desire to look away and at the same time just surreptitiously gawk. Greg shifted and crawled on that bar until he managed to hook it between the bend of his knees. “Can you guys do a dew drop?” he asked as he swung back and forth upside down, gaining momentum with his hands clasped in front of him in a praying grip. We shook our heads. “It’s easy,” he said, and propelled his body forward as his knees straightened and his legs arched around, landing him perfectly flat on his feet.
By the time Greg had performed this miracle three more times, he’d attracted a considerable audience away from the twenty-minute football game that typically held top billing. One bystander claimed the dew drop wasn’t all that hard to do, and Greg agreed as he swung through yet another one perfectly. But nobody climbed up on that bar with him. Most of us just stared and whispered among ourselves. When the first bell rang, Greg added a twist by drawing up enough momentum to spin all the way over the top, unfold his knees, leap out and land. Several lips mouthed the word “wow.”
“You got a bike?” Greg asked me as we ran back to class.

I did have a bike. I had a terrific bike. I had the coolest bike in the world, even though it was a Huffy. The model was called a Spider. It was bright yellow with black racing stripes, and it had a banana seat, a sissy bar, monkey handle bars, caliper brakes and a three-speed gear box right along the universal join. The front wheel was a low sixteen inches and the rear was twenty. I’d also installed an odometer on the front wheel and a speedometer sat right below the handlebars. I had a rearview mirror aligned along the right side of the front wheel. I’d been clocked at 44 miles per hour downhill and the Spider had neither shook nor shimmied. Plus I could rare back on that sissy bar and do wheelies all afternoon.

Greg rode his bike over to my house after school that day. He had a much more traditional bike, but it was still pretty sharp: black with lots of chrome. Besides, his had a transistor radio affixed to the handlebars. He asked if I wanted to ride over to the garbage dump. I didn’t even know there was a garbage dump. Once again he showed not the slightest sign of dismay at my evident inadequacies. As for me, I suppose the thought of seeing something different drew more appeal than any wonderment about how limited our chances for fun could be at such a place. So I said sure.

We rode up my street and out of that subdivision, across the highway and into his subdivision. The street his house was on was called Chippewa, and it had a swerving descent that allowed us to tilt our bikes down low as we crossed Sioux Drive and Tonopah Circle while WCOL-AM crackled out the Top Ten hits of the week. At the end of the street lay acres of thick, loose, recently upended clogs of dirt from the perpetual residential development. We struck the dirt doing just under forty at a slight lean and rolled about thirty feet out before we realized the earlier October snow had moistened the dirt, made it soft, and as a result our wheels transformed into mud pies. We had to push our bikes a mile to the dump and on the way more snow fell, which was nice except that as the temperature dropped, the mud froze into our wheels so they wouldn’t turn. A song called “Candida” came on the radio and before I could even beg, Great snapped it off.



We climbed up on top of the mountain of new suburbanites’ discards, and in addition to bottles, cans, paper, undigested food stuffs and other visual noises, we discovered unopened boxes of packs of baseball cards, mangled metal, bent wood, large rubber tires, and busted eight track tapes. And even in Ohio, even in October, even in the snow, we found furry little rats. They darted and tore and squealed, but they left us alone.

Mr. Mays was much larger than the rats and he did not leave us alone. His first name was Clarence, but all the kids called him Willie, which made him angry since he hated black people, and so we continued to call him Willie. Apparently it had fallen to Mr. Mays--who as far as I knew was a farmer whose farm was miles away--to prevent eleven-year-old boys from frightening the rats away from whose ever garbage dump this was. He had pulled up in his old black farmer’s pick-up truck with commercial plates before we’d realized he was there. Greg and I were trying to see if any of those eight-tracks could be salvaged when the first rock plunked behind Greg’s feet.

Once we realized that Willie’s aim was to conk us on the heads with his hurling rocks, Greg yelled, “Let’s split!” (which was pretty cool talk, I thought, for a kid his age) and used his frozen-wheeled bike to slide down the far side of the dump. I reached down to pick up something to throw back and came up with only an eight track, but this one didn’t appear to be busted, so I jammed Stormy Weather (how perfect is that?) into my jacket pocket and followed Greg down the far side of garbage mountain. Willie climbed up onto the icy bank of trash, but by that time we had pushed our sleigh-bikes back around front and were smacking glop out from between our spokes so we could escape. We heard him yell something about “heathens,” and through nothing but sheer boyhood strength we stood up on our pedals and forced those wheels to turn, leaving twin thin trails of trash mud behind us.

Greg and I parted at his driveway as he hurried to hide his bike in the garage and I sped on like Clyde Barrow running from a Texas Ranger, oblivious to the fact that we’d done nothing wrong. The feeling of being a big time criminal was exhilarating and I filled my lungs with cold October air.
About halfway down my street, Ron Kitchen--who years later would tell me that Jamie Welliver got killed in a car crash--and his younger sister Missy--who everybody called Messy--waved me down. “Have you seen your mother?” Messy asked, eyes tall with barely restrained panic. The cold in my lungs lifted to my brain. I said no. Ron told me my mom was out looking for me, driving around in our family car, hyperventilating as she asked any kids she could find if they’d seen me. I checked my watch. It was about six-thirty and darkness was about to control the sky.

After a lengthy, well-intentioned and bitter lecture about me being a sickly child who had to remember that his mother wasn’t in very good health either and certainly shouldn’t have to be driving up and down the snowy roads searching for a young boy no one had seen, I was sent to my room, which was just fine with me. I had been feeling so great there for a while, I should have realized the great cosmic equalizer would come along and pound my high spirits back into their basement. In my foolishness I had forgotten all about being sick with whatever horror this week’s favorite was and instead had gone crazy with happiness at being out with Greg and actually doing something.

So I stood there on that platform more than thirty years later, seeing the boy within the man who now had responsibilities. He and his wife Lynette had a young teenaged daughter, they had this remarkably large store with twelve employees, and as I endeavored to take in the physical changes that threatened to engulf the child within my friend, I realized that in a few hours it would be All Hallows’ Eve, a night when the sycophants of Satan don their masks and scare hell out of one another. It was, as it turned out, the Yankee Trader’s busiest day of the year.

Greg didn’t care. He couldn’t have been more gracious--to me. His wife, Lynette, was clearly getting pissed. The store needed his help. I let him off the hook by telling him I needed to get some sleep, which was true enough. I’ll call you in a few hours, I said, which was a lie. I never talked to him again.
That evening I went over to Ruth Ann’s house.

Ruth Ann and I were great friends in college despite my not infrequent efforts to take her to bed, a highly unlikely situation given her disposition toward--oh, how to say it? She’s gay. She’s also brilliant, beautiful, strong, deep, hilarious. She was then and she remains the same. She’s also a great hostess, allowing a silly road-weary bumpkin to join her for pizza on Halloween Eve, when what she obviously wanted was to serve treats to the stream of decked out children beggars. We sat on her porch steps smoking M Lights, filling in for each other the missing connections in the past twenty-odd years. I often make it difficult for people to like me. Nothing in the last two decades has meant more to me than the fact that Ruth Ann still did.

As I mentioned, a couple days later she and I drove by my old house. Undiscouraged by being chased away by the present tenant we motored off down Tarlton Road to Logan Elm High School. Being a Saturday, no one stood sentry to scare us off. Dave Dudley sang, “My home town’s a-coming in sight/If you think I’m happy, you’re right!” How many times had I ridden my ten speed up and down these waves of narrow two-lane spirals, some goofy-ass tune in my head, sublimating God knows what into super-human strength I’d never feel again? Ruth Ann and I road those waves and bellied those curves at ridiculously high speeds, nervous as kittens but safe as angels. Anna McGarrigle declared in the voice of Linda Ronstadt: “Some say the heart is just like a wheel/When you bend it you can’t mend it.” For that four mile drive to my old school, our wheels never so much as threatened to bend.
Except for a refreshment center near the rear exit, the school hadn’t changed a bit. Hysteria bubbled up in my neck. I’m amazed still to have survived that sight.

I’ve been swimming in a sea of anarchy
I’ve been living on coffee and nicotine
I’ve been wondering if all the things I’ve seen
Were ever real--were ever really happening.
--Sheryl Crow, Brian MacLeod

I spent fifteen minutes with my Aunt Jean, then hopped back in the Roadster for the final exploration. The two hours of wandering around Marshall University in search of something familiar--something besides architecture--served its useless purpose. The time had come to go home.

Home! For the first time in twenty-one years, I actually thought of Phoenix as home. It took coming back to Ohio to awaken me to the fact that home is where the driveway is. Or something. And with all due respect to the saintly Johnny Cash, the green, green grass of home can turn brown and burn, for all I care these days.
The music took on an amusing, ironic tinge. The Shangri-Las admonished "You Can Never Go Home Anymore." And that’s called glad.
Clarence “Frogman” Henry, who indeed sang like a frog and like a girl, gutter-chirped "Ain't Got No Home."
Randy Newman croaked his version of his very own "I'll Be Home," followed close and tight by Harry Nilsson’s take on the same tune. A bit more Harry? Thank you, no problem. “Driving along at 57,000 miles an hour/Look at those people standing on the pedals of the flower.” Do I know what those lines mean? Nope. Do I care? Even less.

A-huh huh/ Oh yeah. So glad to be back in the USA. Now if only those patrols would leave us alone.
The car’s owner’s manual makes a subtle point about the tires being guaranteed for speeds up to 130 mph. Then in tiny italics it states: This is not the maximum speed of your vehicle. And that is quite true. Barreling through Big Bone Lick Kentucky bluegrass like a B-52 above a napalmed field of rice paddies, I shot the Audi up the 150, click clock, then 155, no problem, no shake, no shimmy, what’s next? Lord, it’ll never stop, let’s hit the mark. 160 proud and bold and free on winding roads built to accommodate slow moving horse trailers. It was every amphetamine dream without a trace of sediment in the bloodstream. Each fraction of doubt in my steering could roll us sideways to Tennessee and yet that vile spark in my eyes shining back from the rearview mirror kept the road hug just as tight as the lid on Aunt Mabel’s jam. “Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday…” chanted The Clash’s "Police on my Back," and like an aerial target ignited for my inconvenience, three Kentucky State Police vehicles damned near skyjacked us over to the side of the road, and “angry” does not do their collective mood any justice.
“Put your right hand on the wheel and open the door with your left! Do not step out of the car! Put your left foot on the pavement! Move!”
My advice: if you’re ever in a similar situation and have access to an adorable if somewhat simple-minded cocker spaniel, utilize your affection for that dog to the utmost bounds of bad taste. No matter how big and hostile the nature of the police officer, he or she does not much fancy developing a mental image of an other than normal affection between a boy and his dog. And it doesn’t play well at the station house. “Yeah, Sarge, we caught this guy doing 160 down the Interstate--”
“160! Jesus Joseph and Mary! Throw the bastard in the cage and mess him up for fun!”
“Yeah, but Sarge, he’s got this dog and there seems to be some hanky-panky goin’ on here.”
“You mean…?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Get his goddamn perverted ass the hell out of here. Follow him to the border. Let Tennessee handle him. Ain’t gonna have no goddamn dog-sniffers in my station house.”

On the subject of social interactions, except for my all too brief visit with Ruth Ann, I hadn’t spent much time with any women on this visit, and I felt my social skills beginning to slip. Back in Phoenix, I spend as much time as possible in either of the two major strip clubs, and I had a clear sensation that the withdrawal I now felt did not bode well for my continued sanity. Conclusion firmly in place, when I got back to Memphis, I made a point of finding a madhouse called the Platinum Rose.

Taking a slightly alternate trip back home, specifically one that avoided my earlier nightmare in Dallas, I departed Memphis and motored through central Arkansas, and onward through the long stretch of Oklahoma. I only had four Oklahoma-specific songs with me: The first two were actually the same song, “Okie From Muskogee,” one by Merle Haggard and the other by Phil Ochs, diametrical opposites if such things ever existed. I even forgot I had these two with me until I came upon a road sign that declared: SOME CALL IT ABORTION. GOD CALLS IT MURDER. I actually had to circle back and take that one in again. Snapped a picture just so the folks back home would believe it. “We don’t take our trips on LSD,” crooned Merle, and I realized he was right. All you had to do was read the signs on the road and your genetic make-up would never be the same again. “Living on Tulsa time” indeed.

The only other Okie song I could come up with was The Raiders’ “Indian Reservation.” Oklahoma means “Indian Territory,” according to the history books, and the song seemed appropriate to the trinket factories and refurbished fallout shelters that housed much of the indigenous population. My mind was clearly no longer the boss.

Early November in northern New Mexico is cold. Stark, beatific, radiating splendor and holly jolly, but windy and exceedingly cold. Cold, in a religious sense. I yearned for a full-service filling station and nevertheless had to pump my own. No one owns a coat warm enough to stave off the fruit-juice thick winds of northern NM. No one. That kind of cold seeps through the emptiness in a man and magnifies the hollow passages. Had I become the kind of man whose idea of engaging entertainment was to receive a world class grind from professional lap dancers? Had my perceptions deteriorated so sufficiently that my faith in a dream that hadn’t been more than bullshit twenty years ago would be all that sustains me? Was it possible that this nice little sports car represented a motorized phallus, a wheeled libido, its turbo engine so roaring and fragile that even the soft breath of something real would shatter it, scatter it to the winds, and damned cold winds at that? Were my quick wits and sparkling humor a way of disguising me from myself? Chances are.
Five hours out of Albuquerque I recognized the familiar, the formerly despised, the ridiculously comfortable. I’d been out of songs for the last couple hours. For entertainment, I watched Molly drool on the inside glass each time we passed a semi. “Bet there’s a lot of dog food in that truck,” she must have been thinking.

I’ve been back home for a few months now. Nothing here is either better or worse. I am both better and worse. Worse for confronting self-delusions that most of us get to ignore, blissfully. And better for knowing that about myself.
Gotta go now. There’s some new CD’s that just arrived in the mail…





PLAYLIST 20--THE LIBERATION OF DETROIT: After Motown Moved West



    When Berry Gordy Jr. moved the Motown empire to Los Angeles in 1971, his plan was for the world's premier record company to go into the movie business. If you have a hard time thinking of any Motown-produced pictures other thanMahogany and Lady Sings the Blues, perhaps that fact best sums up the wisdom of Gordy's decision. In a 1994 interview with Detroit Free Press writer Gary Graff, the one-time mogul admitted his lapse in judgment. "We would have been better off with the record thing," Gordy acknowledged, "if we had stayed in Detroit."
     There's no telling what pop music would be like today had Motown stayed where it belonged. But there can be no denying that once "The Sound of Young America" (as Motown was often known) headed west, some outstanding new sounds popped up, almost in direct reaction to Motown's departure. Indeed, Motown's stellar writing-production team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland had a few years earlier left the stable and formed their own label: Hot Wax/Invictus. But until Gordy took his troops to Hollywood, nothing HDH created prospered at all. Exit Motown and--wham! Freda Payne, The Chairmen of the Board, Flaming Ember, Laura Lee, Honey Cone, 100 Proof. The vast majority of the entries here instantly hit the charts in waves! A middle-aged Detroit music fan named Armen Boladian launched Westbound (pun definitely intended) Records at the same time Invictus began taking to the hit parade, and in the process gave much needed career breaks to the Ohio Players, Funkadelic, and the Detroit Emeralds. Even the staid and stubborn Stax and Paramount labels branched northward with, respectively, The Dramatics and Detroit. So for two to three years, nobody really much noticed that Motown was gone. The hard-edged and gritty tracks that followed weren't the Motown forte anyway, and by the time these acts petered out, Motown itself was in such artistic disarray that only the inestimable power of its 1960's artists allows it to retain credibilty.
By 1970, the false consciousness trappings linking the economic ideologies of capitalism and communism ceased to exist. In their place stood the finger-pointing polar opposites and sworn enemies of Conflict Theory and Realpolitiks. The first of these was so weighed down in academic armor that no self-respecting urban guerrilla could relate to it, and the latter dressed itself so thoroughly in ethnocentrism that its very devisiveness made its stone cold logic infinitely illogical. These inherent flaws did not stop ideologues from carrying out very real oppression against millions of people, a state of existence with us to this day. The artists whose songs appear below may not have known or specifically cared about theories of economic hegemony or creeping decimalism, but their music clearly responded to the leaden conditions around them. Revisionists claim the 1960s as a time of substantial musical protest, but the reality is that the oft-ridiculed 1970s embraced far more rebellion against the status quo than anytime in the Twentieth Century.
    The centerpiece of this period--musically, if not chronologically--is Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On. Thirty-plus years later, absolutley nothing even approaches this album in its ability to convey the feel of being clubbed senseless by the unwashed hatred of imbecilic leaders and dog-lapping followers alike. To further convey a sense of manifestly dangerous outrage in such a numbed out condition elevates this album above all but a handful ever recorded.
    At the same time we had Marvin Gaye asking--more politely perhaps; I mean, he was asking--how and why things had come to be so screwed up. His demeanor, like that of Sly Stone, was heavily drugged, somewhere between being punch drunk and totally narcotized, yet still warring with an inner frustration and churning, bubbling hostility. No sooner had the shock waves subsided than Curtis Mayfield, the lovely and sensitive man who a few months years had bored us to near-death with "Gypsy Woman," shot up from under the manhole cover and connected the drug-disease with the inherent corruption in our power systems, and still made us want to dance to it! This all-too-brief period of Black Power Renaissance still occasionally echoes in the early songs of Run-DMC, Dr. Dre, and Tupac.

The Glass House. "Crumbs Off the Table." Invictus. 1969.


    Holland-Dozier-Holland's first single on their own label kicks loose with a wailing blues harmonica and curly-cew guitar figure, announcing something big was barreling down the pike. Sherrie Payne's hungry housewife blues chick-a-booms as she berates her man (who works twelve hours a day, by her own admission) for being too tired to love her when he gets home. The nagging might be one reason for his lack of attention, but her voice (funkier, if not richer, than sister Freda's) should fire him up no matter how hard his day.

Five Stairsteps. "O-o-h Child." Buddah. 1970.


    The Burke children had over a dozen soul and R&B hits on Curtis Mayfield's various labels before signing with Buddah and releasing their sole pop hit. Along with the early singles of the Jackson Five, the Five Stairsteps were responsible for a resurged interest in black group pop. The striking and absolute paranoia in the falsetto-to-tenor lead as he assures his love that "things are gonna get easier" is among the most unsettling in all pop music. There's no doubt he doesn't believe a word he's saying; he simply has to say something, and chooses these words as carefully as possible. Anyone who only knows the remakes of this by Lenny Williams or Valerie Carter should discover the real thing. And the simultaneously restrained and unleashed drumming on the Stairsteps' version dispels any suggestion that this was soft rock.

100 Proof Aged in Soul. "Somebody's Been Sleeping." Hot Wax. 1970.



 Back when one of radio's prime contributions was to introduce listeners to music before they heard it on TV, in nightclubs or record stores--in other words, back when radio was the essential source of new music--"Somebody's Been Sleeping" sounded almost nothing like the other songs emanating from the new H-D-H headquarters. The flavor of the arrangement, the laconic urgency of the vocals, and the take on the subject matter all shouted Memphis, or possibly even Macon, Georgia. But by the second or third time through, those telegraph guitars hinted that something a bit more Motown-oriented was going on. That can only be because of the producers' earlier connection to that same exact style on the Supremes songs they'd invented years before. It couldn't have hurt that backing singer Joe Stubbs was blood brother to the Four Tops' Levi Stubbs. Whatever the source of the connection, this remains one of Hot Wax's idealized blends of Stax-era soul with the producers' legitimate roots.

Freda Payne Greatest Hits Invictus/Fantasy. 1991

    As the 1970s began to roll, one of the changes happening was that Motown lost Holland-Dozier-Holland. Eddie, Lamont and Brian formed their own label, Invictus Records. One of their first singers was Freda Payne, a Detroit girl who had sung in the chorus of The Pearl Bailey Show, served as an understudy for Leslie Uggams, sung for Quincy Jones, and most especially had sung lead for Duke Ellington's band. Eddie Holland persuaded Payne to join the label and shortly the four of them released three mighty fine post-Motown marvels. "Band of Gold" had everything a Supremes record ever had, except it had a gutsier singer than Diana Ross and none of the infuriating slickness of a Motown record. The particular mix of singer, songs and arrangements was still glitzy show-biz, but abrasive show-biz, superficially the kind of apparent dreck the Wayne Newton's of the world would love, then on second glance, the very kind of emotionally raw unveiling that his ilk detests. Even the trendy "The Unhooked Generation" was pop, no question, but it was also soul. And it was dance music. It had swing and a lot of rhythm. The autumnal "Deeper and Deeper" didn't do as well, but "Bring the Boys Home" was the first anti-war hit song by a black woman, sort of the flip side to Edwin Starr's "War." Though Payne continued to record throughout the decade, her other releases only made the R&B charts. "Cherish What is Dear to You" and "You Brought the Joy" are particularly fine.

MC5. "Kick Out the Jams." Elektra. 1970.

 The first generation of legitimate rock critics united loosely at Detroit's famed Creem magazine. The self-described "only rock ‘n' roll magazine" featured the seminal writings of Dave Marsh, Jaan Uhelzski, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith and others who accomplished nothing less than defining (rather than reciting) the actual language of the music. The very fact of the magazine contained a slight subordination of political challange to that of cultural upheaval. Politics, in fact, were seen as one of the evils that the culture being created would inevitably destroy. The music of the MC5--and of this song in particular--was precisely the sound of that upheaval. And while there was a tenuous connection between Creem and the band (the leader of the White Panther Party, John Sinclair, the band's manager, had connections at the magazine), the more significant relationship between the two was in the passion that each entity brought to their respective tasks. Both also made an awful lot of noise, a term once used in derision, ever after one of affection.
    A couple years before this album's release, Sinclair developed the ten-point program for the MC5 and any other guerrilla bands interested in joining the fold.

Full endorsement and support of Black Panther Party's 10-Point Program
Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock n' roll, dope and fucking in the streets.
Free exchange of energy and materials -we demand the end of money!
Free food, clothes, housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care - everything free for everybody!
Free access to information media -free the technology from the greed creeps!
Free time and space for all humans -dissolve all unnatural boundaries.
Free all schools and all structures from corporate rule - turn the buildings over to the people at once!
Free all prisoners everywhere - they are our brothers.
Free all soldiers at once - no more conscripted armies.
Free the people from their "leaders" - leaders suck - all power to all the people freedom means free everyone !We print this "program" here because--better than anything any critics could ever hope to write--because it precisely conveys the sound and impact of the MC5. If it seems moronic or dated, well, that's the point, isn't it? The most musically significant item is number 6. Although we're not quite certain how one goes about freeing time and space, the idea of eradicating boundaries between performers and fans remains a central issue in popular music. 

Flaming Ember. "Westbound #9." Hot Wax. 1970.

 With the consolidation of the recording industry and studios in Los Angeles and New York, it may seem peculiar to many readers that not so long ago a lot of cities between the coasts hosted music as good or better than that being cut in LA or NYC. Muscle Shoals, Nashville and Memphis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and of course Detroit: these and other music meccas throughout the country generated far more than style-specific sounds; they indulged the wildest impulses of their creative genuises and in the process produced some genuine crap, along with gutsy gems like "Westbound #9," one of Detroit's hardest-rocking white-r&b treats. Listening to the singer rail about the hypocrisy of Deacon Jones in a voice that sounds like Alex Chilton (of the Box Tops) after somebody woke him up with a nose full of coke, nearly outclassed by the ravaging rhythm section, the easy assumption is that this group was a hard-ass band of Chairmen of the Board wanna-be's. A closer listening to the words tips the scales nearer the Temptations though, especially when singer/drummer Jerry Plunk explains that his mind "hitches a ride on the westbound number nine" every time he thinks about the magnitude of the local spiritual leader selling out. This number may not have been quite as transcendent as most of the Hot Wax/Invictus singles, but the hyper-drive of its basement grit groove sure makes the temporal plane attractive.

The Chairmen of the Board. Everything's Tuesday. Invictus. 2000.
     Carolina Beach Music is hard-edge rhythm and blues with a bass line that by turns raises and dips. As the lead singer and composer for a Tidewater gang called The Showmen, "General" Norman Johnson discovered that his group's R&B sound fit the bill when they played their first North Carolina Beach gig. Prior to that success, his most laudable achievement was an homage to rock 'n' roll called "It Will Stand." While the demand for Beach Music continued strong as ever, by the late 1960's the crack songwriting team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland were fed up with the Motown hegemony (and hedging money) in Detroit and decided to impose with their own label. One of their two biggest stars was the Chairmen of the Board (Johnson, Harrison Kennedy, Danny Woods and Eddie Curtis). Unlike the slick sheen of Motown, this music was porous. It didn't sound fractured; it sounded as if it could fracture. Even though the Chairmen found their biggest commercial success while working out of Detroit, their sound was precisely what the North Carolina crowds had been waiting for. Johnson sang as if he had just dislodged a wad of latex from his throat and was freely toying with all the wonders his voice could suddenly convey. Plus it was danceable soul music. The Chairmen even had the nerve to release a great hit single named after themselves! At the time, panoramic paranoia was all the rage in soul music. Yet here these four were, just wanting to get everybody down on the floor--er, beach. Oh, it was glorious: stuttering, swaggering, chewing on the words and giving them the sweet roll out, like Italian rock of the 1950's in reverse and twice as fast. If this doesn't fit your idea of Beach Music, maybe you haven't been to the Atlantic Ocean lately.

The Detroit Emeralds. "You Want It, You Got It." Westbound. 1971); "Feel the Need." Westbound. 1972.

 Early Seventies soul outfit led by Abrim and Ivory Tilman. Moving up north from Little Rock, the Detroit Emeralds arrived just in time for Motown to relocate to Los Angeles, thereby allowing the brothers to briefly fill an enormous soul gap in the Motor City. "You Want It, You Got It" was the hit. "Feel the Need" was the vision. It's more than a tad ironic that A&R man, producer and entrepreneur label executive Armen Boladian named his organization Westbound, because while Motown moved west, Boladian brought a southern musical accent to the great Midwest. Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, the Five Stairsteps all recorded for Westbound. But this small Little Rock funky soul outfit stirred up more of a traditional southern stew than any of their label-mates.

Laura Lee. "Women's Love Rights."Hot Wax. 1971.
At the exact moment when the women's liberation movement first threatened to descend into the banalities of middle class enlightenment (as it eventually did), Detroit-born Chicago-bred Laura Lee erupted on the R&B charts with this hard-boiled, exploitive, round-house punch. The arrangement is strictly Honey Cone pop-rock. What gives this song its edge is the gutsy yelp she picked up from Aretha Franklin when both were working at Rick Hall's Hall of Fame in Muscle Shoals. "Love who you wanna," she cries. "Cause a man's sure gonna." After suggesting a litany of demands (including weekly dinners at fine restaurants, a set of her own car keys, and regular shopping sprees--all at the man's expense, mind you), Lee cracks the arrangement down the middle as she barks out her justification for such an attitude: the man's probably got three other girls he's supporting across town, so why shouldn't you get as much as you can? None of this may bode accurately for male-female relationships then or now (personally, we'll take Loretta Lynn's more durable and action-oriented hostility any day), but just for the guts required to raise such a rucuss, this song is worth coveting.

Marvin Gaye. What's Going On? Motown. 1971.


Maybe because he had been everywhere and done everything; maybe because the instinct of middle age was fast approaching; maybe because he intuited that black music was about to experience an opportunity to do things the brain-damaged leftovers from late 1960's psychedelic misanthropy never could--for whatever reason, Marvin Gaye ran the ultimate risk of alienating himself from brother-in-law and tyrannical boss, Berry Gordy Jr. Then again, if the hit-obsessed Gordy considered gambling on anything, this album of pained, funky-town slow down slap back had to be the most convincing long shot of either man's career. It is nothing less than the ideal, if unintentional, answer record to John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band. There may be some autobiography in a few places ("I can't pay my taxes," for instance), but mostly this is Marvin drawing a sound scape of world misery and confusion that all the parties and exhortations of "brother, brother" won't rectify, while only referencing himself as a frustrated observer to an apocalypse he'd like to avoid if only he had the energy.

The Dramatics. "Whatcha See is Whatcha Get."Stax. 1972.
    Stax Records carried on into the 1970s with this Ron Banks quintet who, no matter what they earned for the title track, it wasn't nearly enough. In the midst of a wall-banging festival where points are earned for chewing up words and fracturing them joyously as they leave the mouth, Banks interplays with the other singers in a way that would be comedic if it weren't so damned convincing: "Some people/are made of lies (ooh-ooh ah-ah)/They'll bring you down/and shame your name/(ooh-ooh ah-ah)." Writer/producer Tony Hester knew he had a great danceable funk-ready vocally acrobatic fivesome on his hands and did not let their talent waste. Who but the Dramatics could pull off a parody of a fashion trend and a Sly Stone single all in the same song, much less expose dancing for the sexual prelude it had always been?

The Undisputed Truth. "Smiling Faces Sometimes." Gordy. 1972.


 In the words of Blue Oyster Cult, this ain't the Summer of Love. Producer Norman Whitfield linked up singers Joe Harris, Billie Rae Calvin and Brenda Jorce Evans, forming this loosely tight single that went Top Five at a time when people were suspecting that all those hippie aphorisms were just some corporate lackey's idea of soup in rubber pockets on a food line. The Undisputed Truth said that people who smile in your face just might be looking out for Number One. And as Frank Zappa would soon point out, "You ain't even Number Two."

Detroit. "Rock 'n' Roll." Paramount. 1972.

For all those who felt that Lou Reed's original version of this song sounded like it was sung and played by a band of sedated toads (not that that was a bad thing), this is what you were waiting for: Mitch Ryder reunited with bad ass drummer John (Johnny Bee) Badanjek, and with some rave up guitarists they formed this one-album wonder combo that sounded like the life the radio had saved was worth the bother. This wasn't the Detroit Wheels, but it was the last great leap of a local legend.

Honey Cone. "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show" and "Want Ads." Invictus. 1972.
When the crack songwriting and production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown to form their own record company, they wanted a harder sound that retained the pop whistle of their former label. That may be why both of these songs sound very much like the Jackson 5. Lead singer Edna Wright proves talent's in the genes (Darlene Love is her sister), and so is enthusiasm. We absolutely guarantee that Katrina and the Waves learned everything they'd ever know from "Monkey," including between-line vocal trills. The absolute golden age of black pop music was never better than in the 1971-73 period, when a none-too-friendly competition existed between Invictus, Stax, and Motown, all aiming to be the sound of young America.

PLAYLIST 21--DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH: HARD ASS ROCK AND ROLL

DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH:
HARD ASS ROCK AND ROLL

    Since the high wattage days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the distinction between hard rock music and heavy metal thankfully blurred. The only remaining aesthetic elements separating the two is that, first, metal tended to employ vocalists who sounded as if they had inhaled helium while suffering the throes of strychnine poisoning, and second, hard rock rarely if ever ventured into pseudo-satanic concepts, whereas heavy metal recognized the commercial value of suggesting a connection to the Underworld. Nevertheless, sometimes hard rock groups such as Deep Purple did capitalize on vocal theatrics reminiscent of emasculation in process, just as certain HM bands--Cinderella comes to mind--shunned flirtation with demonic possession. This lack of clarity may leave the reader unclear as to what exactly hard rock is. I hope the list that follows makes the connection less murky, although it probably won't.

Jimi Hendrix. Axis: Bold as Love. Reprise. 1967.

    Funny, isn't it, how supposedly enlightened radio programmers who always talk a good game about what a monumental influence Hendrix was never quite feel comfortable playing anything from this album? I can't help but wonder if that might be because this album, more than any other in the Hendrix archives, sounds precisely and uncompromisingly black. Far be it from me to suggest that the programmers at classic rock stations are racist. I'm just intimating that they apparently think their audience is. And what a pity. Because everyone misses out on the first recorded evidence that Hendrix and the Experience had discovered high technology. Click here please.

Jimi Hendrix. Electric Ladyland. Reprise. 1968.

    The idea of using the studio to create specific textures and sounds was in its relative infancy in 1968. A lot of people had been doing it, but none for more than a few years. Electric Ladyland appeared and completely changed the way guitar, bass and drums would ever be understood again. Always big, always booming, this time out Hendrix laid in a deliberate stoned sentience intended to transform the accepted levels of and limits to the musical imagination. "Crosstown Traffic," to site an obvious example, is jazz-like in its ability to replicate the sound and feel of its subject matter. There was still plenty of hokey-pokey mysticism on the album, but this time it was at least interesting, especially in the "Slight Return" version of "Voodoo Child" and the implied funk of "Long Hot Summer Night." The CD reissue of this recording loses the original cover and gloms it all onto one disc. Still, this is worth owning for waking up Bob Dylan with the version of "All Along the Watchtower."

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. We're Only in it for the Money. Verve. 1968.

    People who listened to early Zappa albums tend to respond in one of two generalized ways. They find his band musically interesting, sophisticated and dense and yet are put off by his occasional vulgarity, or they declare the montage approach to his layered albums to be the greatest technique in existence for conceptualizing the varied and disconnected themes that run through his occasionally sophomoric satires of contemporary society. What both extreme points share is that Zappa's humor may be lame, but his band-leading skills, his guitar virtuosity, and his technical studio innovations compensate for it. That union of overlapping ideas lands squarely where I would assess the greater part of his 1960s output. The sole exception is We're Only in it for the Money. The only reason this album is so vastly superior to his earlier work is because here he was seriously pissed off and that state of affairs worked to his artistic advantage. Zappa's message appears far more pertinent today than any hippie interpretations of the Beatles so-called masterpiece. Zappa ripped open every limb of presumed hipness being shoved down our throats and exposed the insidious commercial bacteria driving the whole process. His studio technical proficiency and musical artistry made his argument all the more convincing.

Led Zeppelin. "Immigrant Song." Atlantic. 1970.

    Welcome back my friends to the pseudo-mystic bullshit that never ends. Robert Plant announces the journey with a pair of drawn out banshee wails before he tears off singing about Norwegian explorers on their way to conquer new worlds. "We come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow." If that is your idea of deep and meaningful, please pass the belladonna. If, on the other hand, you just like the bass and drum collision reminiscent of a thundering horde ascending from hell, then this should feel just about right.

Three Dog Night. "Eli's Coming." Dunhill. 1970.

    Once this seven-man-band with three lead singers released "Joy to the World," I lost what little respect for them I had ever had. Prior to that, the Dog put out quite a few melodic yet haunting numbers, many of which fit in nicely amidst other turn of the decade drool: "Out in the Country," "One Man Band," "Nobody," "One" and especailly "Eli's Coming." Their version of this Laura Nyro song frantically stomped all over the excellent originaland for the first time actually utilized the power of their three lead vocalists. In, out and around they spin, encircling one another and zapping right through the center of the speakers about the fact that Eli is indeed coming and so you had most certainly better consider hiding your heart, girl.

Blue Cheer. "Summertime Blues." Philips. 1970.

    Named after a highly potent brand of lysergic acid, Blue Cheer is reputed to have been the favorite band of the Oakland Hell's Angels. Personally, I can think of nothing more unpleasant than reeling from acid in an Angels house with Blue Cheer clogging up the air passages. But in the safety of one's own home, in a state of relative clear-headedness, the tear gas bombast of these three lunatics is just this side of fun. The song begins and ends with the loudest (in the sense of striped shirts with plaid pants) version of "Purple Haze" intro ever recorded, and then with bouldering guitars turns Eddie Cochran's original ode to laziness into a total defiance of the complete Protestant work ethic. It takes your breath away, like the propulsion of a cork screw rollercoaster without the inconvenience of waiting in line.

Ides of March. "Superman." Warner Bros. 1970.

    Those who balked at the idea of horns in rock were, for the most part, reactionary porcine fornicators. The saxophone was as integral to the music of Little Richard and Gary Bonds as any instrument on their recordings, so no one needed tointroduce horns to rock and call it a new thing. What these non-Kosher copulaters should have railed against was the notion of fusing the most indulgent aspects of rock and jazz and foisting that upon the public as some grand aesthetic gesture. Jazz and rock certainly do have overlapping musical compatibilities, as genuine talents such as Carla Bley in the one field and Al Kooper in the other have proven. The problem endemic to the fusion movement was that most of the people popularizing it had learned trumpet or sax in high school marching band, probably gobbled up one or two tracks from Miles or Coltrane, came up with an idea they were positive no one ever had before, and puked up groups like Chicago and BS&T, two of the most scarring poxes on the face of either genre.
One horn-heavy band that just barely managed to skirt the fusion travesty was the Ides of March. These guys not only snagged a keen doom-laden literary reference, their original mid-1960s sound was all pseudo-British Invasion by way of Illinois. But by 1970, lead singer, guitarist, chief songwriter and future Survivor leader Jim Peterik tired of people mistaking his group for The Buckinghams and so added horns to the group's line-up, resulting in people mistaking his group for Chase.
"Vehicle," with its inexplicably enthusiastic blasphemies, is the song most people know. Far better was the nearly identical follow-up, "Superman," with its comic book blasphemy, "Great Caesar's Ghost I'll be yer Superman!"

Free. "Alright Now." A&M. 1970.

    That singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kurke went on to form the excruciatingly boring Bad Company is no reason to hate them for the mindlessness of Free's biggest and best hit. Intended as ome kind of sick twisted sexual political anthem ("Let's move before they raise the parking rate"?), "Alright Now" is nothing more or less than Rodgers trying to get what he wants without much effort and being stunned by the rebuke he gets in return. It's a fairly simple sentiment matched by the guitar refrain and even simpler drum pattern. But in its abbreviated radio version, timed to be about three minutes long, it was glorious pop that didn't stick around long enough to be tedious.

Elephant's Memory. "Mongoose" and "Skyscraper Commando." Metromedia. 1970.

    Singers Rick Frank (drums) and Stan Bronstein (sax) put together this great band with the ever-changing line-up. The idea that a band could play unnervingly hard rock that challenged while it shook without being in the heavy metal camp was one that didn't meet with much favor among promo men at the time. That didn't stop these loonies. They knew they were great and played just that way. Initially an experimental jazz band, they tried in vain to make the strip clubs where they performed into exercises in Art. When that failed, they took the energy in their sound and turned the beat around with these, two of the most caterwauling calls to anarchy ever to make the Top Ten (regionally) and that's before you even realize that the former is only a tune about a mongoose in a village trying to protect the people from millions of hatching cobra eggs.

Crabby Appleton. "Go Back." Elektra. 1970.

    Michael Fennelly led this outstanding L.A. band, notable for Fennelly's way with a simple song and Phil Jones' amphetamine teeth grinding wind tunnel way with a drum set. "Go Back" was one big rollercoaster ride in anticipation of the ultimate exhale. Fun for the whole family, if they can withstand the trip.

Santana. "Everybody's Everything." Columbia. 1971.

Since everyone and his Uncle Henry want to rave on about how Carlos Santana and band have been the biggest influence of Latin heritage, style and form, let me present this, far and away their greatest recording and best song. From the unimaginatively titled Santana III album, "Everybody's Everything" is a stampeding busload of well-dressed migrant workers looking for a place to do a hyperactive cha-cha. The words are the least important part of the fray, although when Carlos mumble shouts "Time for you to all get down," you are more than ready to accede. No, the key here is the avalanche of drums, congas and trashcans that come tumbling like boulders on a mission from God.

Lee Michaels. "Do You Know What I Mean." A&M. 1971.

    Lee Michaels was one of the most encouraging acts to emerge in the early 1970s, only to disappear after working hard to attain popular acclaim. With lines such as "Been fourteen days since I don't know when," the song's title was appropriate. The real joy,  however, was less in silly word games than in the sound that felt like an intoxicated basketball descending several flights of stairs. The music itself was Michael's inspired one-finger organ work and the glorious stumbling drums of Bartholomew Smith-Frost, aka Frosty. Following the commercial success of this song and a cover of Marvin Gaye's"Can I Get a Witness," Michaels stopped releasing unpunctuated question songs and teamed with future Doobie Brothers drummer Keith Knudsen. This partner lacked the ability to replicate the sound of drunken athletic equipment. The result was a permanent retirement to Hawaii.

Fanny. "Charity Ball." Reprise. 1971.

    There had been all-female rock bands before, but few that sounded like Fanny. June and Jean Millington, with Alice DeBuhr and Nicky Barclay, didn't put any special effort into denying their sex. They just played and sang with a joyous and sweaty ferocity that had more to do with their love for what they were doing than did their specific femininity.

The James Gang. Rides Again. MCA. 1971.

    Crashing down like a calculated stuttering mudslide, the electric guitar introduction to "Funk 49" begins what at first seems like nothing more or less than the perfect eight-track soundtrack to adolescent madness. Halfway into the instrumental"Asshtonpark," such assumptions fall by the wayside, as technical proficiency joins the most sophisticated musical concepts this side of Pete Townshend, with whom the James Gang's lead guitarist shares substantial affinity.

Redbone. "Witch Queen of New Orleans." Epic. 1972.

    It is hard to believe that Pat and Lolly Vegas, the two main principals in Redbone, made this, the hardest rocking and most complex song of their career, and also made the sweet disco-oriented "Come and get Your Love." That's about it.

Steppenwolf. Sixteen Greatest Hits. Dunhill. 1972.

    Growing up in small town suburban Ohio, most of us had to take our fun where we found it. The tape that most visitors to my lair demanded was this one. The album had all the ingredients to reinforce our collective personality disorders: guitar-oriented hard rock, motorcycle ambiance, a disdain for hard drugs, and an image that none of our parents would have liked at all, had they known Steppenwolf from Roy Rogers.

T. Rex. "Bang a Gong (Get it On.)" Reprise. 1972.

    Of all the different silly trends in rock and roll, few came under as much unwarranted attacks as the glam rock movement. Which would you rather have your barely pubescent kid bopping to: the relatively hilarious longhaired gyrations of diminutive Marc Bolan or equally so Suzi Quatro, or the bastardizations of classic soul songs by Michael Bolton or Mariah Carey? Hey, at least Marc Bolan knew his limitations.

Gary Glitter. "I Didn't Know I Loved You Til I Saw You Rock 'n' Roll." Bell. 1972.
If one were to believe the astoundingly uncritical sycophancy of VH1, one might accept the idea that Glitter was some kind of major star. The reality is that even in the UK he was always a sort of self-parody who, probably through inadvertence, happened to construct a fuzz hook and lumbering drum sound that went well with large consumptions of heavy beer. That his work has been celebrated by his betters in no way elevates his slimy status. This song is interchangeable with any of his other trash glam classics, any one of which are heard to better effect by Joan Jett or Brownsville Station.

Jo Jo Gunne. "Run Run Run." Asylum. 1972.

 This early-1970s spirited power pop band rolled over Beethoven with their Chuck Berry-inspired name and tune. Jangling power chords, drum rolls a-plenty, and faceless vocals galore. Not a great dietary lifestyle, but a darned refreshing snack.

Mott the Hoople. "All the Young Dudes."Columbia. 1972.

 While David Bowie is the most self-important nonentity ever to become a moderate commercial success in any genre, he did one good thing in his all-too-long career and that was to write and produce this brazenly avant-homosexual anthem, a U.K. hit by a band of straights.

Steely Dan. "Do It Again" and "Reelin' in the Years." 1972 and 1973. MCA.

 These two singles are here specifically because they are not as sophisticated as the songs that would transform Steely into a national critics convention. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, for all intents and purposes, were Steely Dan and they were determined to be obscure, a fact made clear by the unlistenable albums that would follow. But these two excellent singles worked in spite of lines like "You been telling me you were a genius since you were seventeen," because the music actually goes somewhere--mostly up.

Focus. "Hocus Pocus." IRS. 1973.

 To my knowledge, this is the only primarily instrumental number to feature yodeling and still crack the U.S. Top Ten. Jan Akkerman's walls of falling guitar lava prevented all of this from descending to the level of novelty.

Sutherland Brothers and Quiver. "You Got Me Anyway." Columbia. 1973.

 Ever notice how a lot of the time so-called one-hit wonders announce that fact about themselves? Sure, either the one hit is so transitory that it bespeaks an abbreviated career for the group or else the song itself is so good that only a fool could fail to realize there will be no more hits coming from this group or person. Well, the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver fooled everyone. Iain and Gavin Sutherland, two experimental folkies, hooked up with Quiver, a real rock band, gelling with an all-out assault, replete with cannon drumming and leer jet guitars, yielding the sound of the invasion of Grenada set to music. Naturally, they never charted again in the U.S.

Fancy. "Wild Thing." Big Tree. 1974.

 Right up there with Sylvia's "Pillow talk," the sound of the female orgasm instants from happening in the pre-Donna Summer world was a thing never much considered outside of this glorious version of the Troggs' hit. Fancy was thoroughly an invention of the studio, but that didn't stop the body-rubbing guitar from accentuating the moans of fake ecstasy from the frequently naked Helen Court.

Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits. Warner Bros. 1974.

 Having always experienced and interpreted rock and roll as an essentially auditory medium, I place less importance on the visual component and therefore judge groups such as Kiss, the Stooges, the New York Dolls and others known for stage silliness almost entirely on their sonic appeal. In fact, the more an act tries to pick my pocket while distracting me in some way other than assaulting my sense of sound, the more I will resist experiencing them in that other way. Breathe fire, strangle chickens, chain saw sheep, light a fart: it's all wasted on me. So when the group known as Alice Cooper emerged at the end of the 1960s as the answer to Sominex, I didn't give much of a damn. As the years tumbled by, I noticed that every album had one or two truly fine songs while the rest pandered to those who responded best to ambiguity.
But the singles were a different story. "Be My Lover" captures the rock star sitting in a bar checking out the debutante scene perfectly,"School's Out" is a raucous anthem to anarchy, "No More Mr. Nice Guy" is quite hilarious, and best of all is "Teenage Lament '74" which not only has the best backing vocals of any Cooper song, it also has the most humane lyrics.

The Who. By Numbers. MCA. 1975.

 This was a great rock album with the misfortune of being released when most people wanted an outstanding one. "Slip Kid" is a funkier and non-synthesized version of the band's "Baba O'Riley.""Squeeze Box" is a genuinely dirty pop single."Success Story" is John Entwistle's hilarious view of life with the band and one of the best songs of the group's career. "How many Friends" is one of the most narcissistic, paranoid, and poignant songs ever recorded. The Who takes us from flattered joy to suspicion to out and out hostility in less than twenty seconds without seeming anything but natural. The whole album is big, bold, stadium bombast that does not suffer from the heavy-handedness such descriptions would later imply.

Led Zeppelin. Presence. Swan. 1976.

 A lot of people bashed this album on its initial release. After many reflective years during which time I never played this recording more than twice, I have at last reconsidered. Whatever that odd monolith on the cover may suggest, the music here is actually among the least idiotic of the group's massive offerings. The trick, perhaps, lies in not worrying about what any of these songs mean. Just thrive on Bonham's mistimed drums and Jones' bass and wonder why Plant is shrieking, especially on"Candy Store Rock."

Blue Oyster Cult. Agents of Fortune. Columbia. 1976.

 Intelligent people do occasionally make good music. Buck Dharma got pesky management rock critics Richard Meltzer and Sandy Pearlman out of the way and let himself and occasional contributor Patti Smith focus on sound texture and meaning. The opening track creates a texture of wet wool and a tone of lead anvils, a tone which the intelligence of the lyrics transcends. This band was a serious attempt to look, sound and act like a metal band in the best ways without any of the lumbering "daisies gone a-melting" of twittery twats like Led Zeppelin.

Kiss. Destroyer. Casablanca. 1976.

I was fired from a radio station for making a disparaging remark about the fans of one of the songs on this album, an opinion I have yet to retract, and so my critical judgment should be evaluated with that built-in bias in mind. I will say that "Detroit Rock City" has interesting sound affects and one of the more challenging rhythms the group ever created. "Shout It Out Loud" is a fine aspiring anthem in the vein of Slade, among others. The rest, sadly, is simple pandering to affection for glam over substance.

Cheap Trick. Live at Budokan. Epic. 1979.

 This group defined the distinctions between standard rock and metal by being the most clever of the late-1970s hard rock bands. One of those distinctions is that it is possible to whistle to hard rock. Cheap Trick also had a non-malicious sense of humor, something their tattooed brothers seldom displayed. Guitarist Rick Neilson and drummer Bun E. Carlos were slaughterhouse musicians who gave geek class. Bassist Tom Peterson stood there looking great and singer Robin Zander had an authentic Peter Frampton throat. Their best song, "Surrender," is caught live and ideally on this album.

Frank Zappa. You Are What You Is. Barking Pumpkin. 1981.

 Here the perpetual misanthrope attacks fans of the Grateful Dead, C&W cheating songs, a perfume called Charlie, the callousness of people cheering a cokehead on what turns out to be a fatal overdose, the L.A. nightclub scene, tele-evangelists, and people who attempt suicide. If that sounds about as uplifting as Nathaniel West, that's only because I haven't told you about the music. While it's a bit more conventional than his early Edgar Varese impressions, it still challenges through the keen approach to editing, through the discomforting and abrupt time changes, through the sheer density of much of the production, and especially through the vitality Zappa brings to these subjects. The singer-composer on this album is not only self-righteous. He calmly accepts his self-righteousness as the tribute due one who is so obviously correct. That knowledge gives every song here a ferocity that would surely terrify any of the meek that Zappa claims will inherit nothing. It is tough to argue with the best album of his career.

PLAYLIST 22--LOUIE, LOUIE MARATHON

    You didn't ask for it, but that's okay. Here it comes! I said to myself, "Let's give it to em, right now!"
So here comes twenty-one (yes!) versions of the great (excellent) song!

Richard Berry
The Kingsmen
Motorhead
Toots and the Maytals
Iggy Pop
The Sonics
The Kinks
Paul Revere and the Raiders
The Beach Boys
Stanley Clarke and George Duke
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
John Belushi
Smashing Pumpkins
The Clash
The MC5
Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers
The Troggs
LMS Jazz Band
The Swamp Rats
The Sandpipers
The Three Amigos
bonus

PLAYLIST 23--POST-BEATLES DISSOLUTION DISILLUSION INVASION

    The emotional and legal termination of The Beatles working relationship struck the music world and the listening public like a cold wet salmon across the face. Our collective dependence upon the group for the best rock music, the most imaginative sounds, and the most significant indications of the sonic future--our near total reliance upon these four young men for rock and roll sustenance positioned us to greedily accept whatever barn swill and monkey pus came our way, be it on one extreme the overblown lumbering sloths who made up Led Zeppelin or on the other timid introspective psychological doodlings of James Taylor. Neither extreme, it turned out, was particularly healthy, and neither, it turned out, benefited the music of future generations, other than as something to rebel against. And so an intellectual, emotional and spiritual degeneration ensued as even the best sounds were a lot less happy, a lot less optimistic, and a lot more stoic in their acceptance of impending doom. Even The Beatles themselves presaged this disappointing trend as far back as their 1968 self-titled release. The Beatles might have been imaginative, or even relevant to future generations, but it sho nuff weren't happy.
    Yet an awful lot of good stuff continued to come from the British Isles, albeit from unexpected places. Despite the utopian and mercantile ambitions of The Beatles' Apple Corp, only one commercially successful band emerged, but it was a great one: Badfinger. Of course, associations needn't always be economic. In the case of Harry Nilsson, his acquaintance with the Fab Four was as much social as artistic. The result was one fine album and a number of decent singles. Then, of course, there was Elton John, the most commercially successful star of the 1970s, a man whose initial cynicism was only matched by his ability to set to music the most ridiculous lyrics in the pantheon of literary pop slop. So while one cannot help but praise this period with more than a trace of damnation, there are nevertheless elements of this peculiar period which still resonate with glory.

The Beatles. The Beatles. Apple. 1968.


    Released on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of JFK, the White Album, as The Beatles became known, showed what the individual members of the group were capable of at a time when they didn't much care for one another and yet could not help but be influenced by one another, even if it were in a reactive way. After all, no matter who you were in The Beatles, there was still nobody outside your group who could touch your band mates. With the recent death of Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, no one remained with enough clout to tell the group "no" about anything, particularly about artistic decisions. And so, less despite than because of the fact that at least half the songs here represent solo projects for the specific members, this album is a work as complex and animated as Picasso's Guernica. Although everyone had tremendous moments, the best of the best belonged to John Lennon, particularly the one song that most people who are not named Charles Manson dislike, that being "Revolution 9." It may have been a mindless lark, but given the title, the context, the times and the way the song sounds, it is hard to imagine a mass upheaval of any society's populace sounding other than precisely like this. The artwork on the cover was also first rate.
    If you listen to this album from beginning to end, you will experience parody, ball room blitz, sound effects, shattering guitar jams, the lamentable absence of Ringo's drumming on the songs where Paul sings lead, a mobius strip of sound device tape manipulation, heavy metal, a brief spelling lesson, open hostility, reggae, warmth and an enormous sense of relief when the whole thing is over, a relief which will last about thirty seconds, after which there will be a compulsion to play the whole thing over again.

The Beatles. Abbey Road. Apple. 1969.

The last Beatles album to be recorded veers close to being too slick for its own good. The magic of their final album lay in producer George Martin's ability to work a compromise between the two principal songwriters and creative forces, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. For their last trip into the studio, McCartney convinced the others that a monument to their career together was required. Reluctantly, the band delivered. Up-to-date Chuck Berry feel goods, odes to classical music, numbing depth of synthesized passion walls, cosmic humor--and that was just Lennon. Once Paul seized the spotlight, there were Little Richard rave ups, cartoon imagery, and blazing guitar work. The band came together after the concept seemed complete to encore one last time. Ringo did an instantly identifiable solo, then the other three pulled out their razors and slashed their guitars to shreds. It was a fair-well to which only The Beatles themselves were worthy.

Fairport Convention. Unhalfbricking. A&M. 1969.

Although this wonderful British folk rock institution has survived multiple incarnations, the only one that matters much is where the members were Sandy Denny and Ian Matthews on vocals, Richard Thompson singing and guitaring along with Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings on bass and Martin Lamble on drums. On the one hand, it may seem that all they did was cover songs from folkies like Bob Dylan, the Everly Brothers, Joni Mitchell and Eric Anderson. On the other, they introduced vocal nuances, meter changes, added intensity and a distinctly Hands Across the Water resistability to"Percy's Song," "I Don't Know Where I Stand,""Gone Gone Gone," especially the severely intense"A Sailor's Life," and actually sounded as if they got the jokes in "Million Dollar Bash." You can listen to any of these songs inside or out, in any city or country, eyes opened or closed, and your mind will pry loose your senses to things you had forgotten by the time your were nine but couldn't have appreciated until at least your mid-thirties.

Plastic Ono Band. "Cold Turkey." Apple. 1970.

This almost never turns up on oldies stations or those that call what they feature "classic rock." No doubt the same narrow mindedness that prevents these stations from playing music by artists whose race was an integral part of their music likewise prevents them from appreciating guitar work and drums far more interesting than anything Pink Floyd ever imagined, and sandpaper vocals far more unsettling and passionate than a thrice-removed outtake bass pattern from ELO. "Cold Turkey" is a sound about what it feels like to go through heroin withdrawal. If you cannot relate to that, maybe the loss of someone who was not good for you might conjure similar sounding agony.

The Who. "The Seeker" and "Summertime Blues."MCA. 1970.

The rock opera Tommy was ambitious as can be. It had a number of fine songs. And it annoyed stuffed shirts at the time less because of its content than by virtue of the fact that hooligans were deigning to conceptualize heathen music. truth to tell, that always bothered me too. I like heathen music; I just don't care for conceptualization. So when these two songs came out a year and a half later, I up and danced til dawn. With one of the most distinctive and gripping guitar intros since Chuck Berry played "Johnny B. Goode," "The Seeker" comes roaring through the room looking for some kind of answer to who knows what question. If the none too subtle put downs of Dylan, Timothy Leary and The Beatles don't hook you, then Roger Daltrey's complete anxiety at not finding whatever he's looking for will surely pull you in. "Summertime Blues" showed what the band could do to other people's songs. When Eddie Cochran sang the song, it was just a lazy kid trying to get away with as much as he could. When The Who played it, with sonic distortion flooding the sky, it was a good-natured act of total oblivious defiance of anything that had come before it.

The Beatles. Hey Jude (The Beatles Again). Apple. 1970.

For those too snotty to ever deign to buy mere singles, the penalty for such highfalutin non-behavior was a deficit in the ownership of certain great Beatles music. So while the existence of this album is simply manager Allen Klein caught in the act of raising capital, the cumulative effect of so many great singles in one place left the public gasping. This was also the last official recording to bear the odd triangulated I AM logo directly on the run-out groove.

Eric Burdon and War. Eric Burdon Declares War. MGM. 1970.

Because he was a proud clown, Eric Burdon was sometimes a great notion. As with the early incarnations of the Animals, with War Eric Burdon went as far as possible toward eradicating the musical distinctions between black and white. Before the musicians un-Burdoned themselves, they released three chrome-dented singles, one of which is here, being "Spill the Wine," a song about nothing in particular, yet conveyed as if it were about the great riddles of life. Eccentric, slim slow low rider slider funky, too energized to show it and tighter than the lid on Aunt Mabel's jam, this band was a refreshing entree to the 1970s.

Hotlegs. "Neanderthal Man." Capitol. 1970.

Hotlegs was comprised of Lol Creme, Eric Stewart and Kevin Godley. This formation create the mantra dirge which, according to me, is a song similar to "Pictures of Matchstick Men," meaning it is catchy only when you're listening to it, sounds vaguely familiar but only aficionados of the bizarre can ever place it, and you immediately forget it once it's over. 10cc without the spoon.

The Kinks. Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. Reprise. 1970.

Ray Davies was always just a little bit nuts. Imagine a band of Victorian-dressed finery-fanatics slamming out the "Louie, Louie" riffs (almost) of"You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night." Of course, that lunacy was carried onto a new plane with such socially aware songs as"Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "A Well Respected Man." However, aside from the success of "Lola," the Kinks have never been all that big in America and that is because they are so blatantly British. God knows they've made some great songs:"Victoria," "Waterloo Sunset," and this album's"Apeman" immediately come to mind. However, Ray and broher Dave do keep on trying. With Mick Avory and Pete Quaife filling out the original line-up, it must be observed that they were fun, if little else.
    Except here. Lola was one angry set of tunes. The fury must've done Ray some good because this holds together well enough to make us ask all these years later: "Where's Part Two"? If you recall the frustration Terry Maloy brilliantly stuttered out at his brother Charlie in the cab scene in On The Waterfront, the similarities with Ray Davies' view of himself are eerie. Terry tells Charlie that if only he, Charlie, had looked out for him and not made him take that dive that night at the Garden, then he would have amounted to something more than what he had become. Davies didn't blame his brother, who was, after all, in the band. But on this album, he takes the opportunity to blame every phony slime wad parasite who ever did him wrong. As with Terry's speech, we realize suddenly that the ability to articulate such strangled feelings is an act itself that dispels the idea that we're listening to a loser. By the time "Powerman" explodes with its vitriolic history lesson, even the dead understand that this album succeeds precisely because of all that pent up frustration initiated by the more mercenary aspects of show business.

Badfinger. No Dice. Apple. 1971.

If The Beatles had the addictive power of heroin, then Badfinger was methadone. No one who loved The Beatles wanted to live without renewed and even more powerful doses of their music. When the recording days of Liverpool's living legends ended, Badfinger made the pains of withdrawal easier to take. Like methadone, Badfinger's music itself had addictive properties. "No Matter What," the big hit single from this album, made a nice transition from a time when The Beatles dominated everything, while"Without You" sounded as good as the version done by Nilsson the following year. Every song here has a warmth that happens as a consequence of the act of confiding an understanding of personal experience. The song structures again drew comparisons to The Beatles, because those songs seemed so effortless while being deceptively complex. Mike Gibbins (drums), Joey Molland (guitar), Pete Ham (guitar and piano), and Tom Evans (bass): they had the same instrumentation as the act the public wanted them to replace. Like The Beatles, they had a slight mystique simply by virtue of being British. They recorded for The Beatles record company. Beatle George harrison named them. They became the first post-Beatle casualty of a disease known as "The New Beatles Syndrome." Ultimately, Evans and Ham committed suicide, acts of intense despair that came from being experienced as successful imitators rather than from being appreciated as the genuine talents they were.

Paul McCartney. Ram. Apple. 1971.

     The song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish," which is not on this album but should have been, wastes every politico-musical diatribe ever written on the subject of Irish independence. Against a traditional, folkie tune, McCartney posits in his most intriguing tone, "Tell me how would you like it if on your way to work you were stopped by Irish soldiers? Would you lie down, do nothing?" A social situation imposed itself on McCartney's world and he responded in the only way an artist can. Whatever his motivation, Paul could not simply do nothing. This album is another case in point. After taking so much vitriol about his previous one man show's amateuristic ambiance, he produced a much more sophisticated version of the same general concepts that a lot of people said sounded more like a Beatles album than had Abbey Road.

Jethro Tull. "Hymn 43." Chrysalis. 1971.

 As the king daddies of stumble-bum heaviness, Jethro Tull were quite a self-important lot. The conceptual album Aqualung was about Christianity, or rather, man's relation to the Christian religion. Those who find it a deep thought that just possibly man has used religion to oppress others, well, then, please become a Tull freak pronto. But if you're just looking for a clever rhythm with indecipherable lyrics, then this is a fine place to get your kicks.

John Lennon. "Power to the People" and"Imagine," 1971. "Stand By Me," 1975. Apple.

 It used to take guts to be this good. With Elephant's Memory Band blowing off the roof, Lennon marches down the street, singing, or chanting, or bawling, his most politically incendiary single, "Power to the People." Natch, the most covered and oft-played Lennon tune is "Imagine," which, regardless of its approximation to poetry, remains a bit too subtle for its own good. "Stand By Me," the cover of Ben E. King's classic, united John with producer Phil Spector, both of whom needed a walk down memory lane. Lennon crawled inside the song, slept with it, and emerged with a voice as strong and desperate as anything he'd recorded since "Twist and Shout."

Paul McCartney. "Oh Woman Oh Why." Apple. 1971.

This song is probably only familiar to those who bought "Another Day." This is a tremendously scabrous rocker that is the exact opposite of the soft and light stuff McCartney would spend most of the rest of his life recording. It's also the only known recording of McCartney being shot to death.

Led Zeppelin. IV. Atlantic. 1971.

 It was either Keith Moon or John Entwistle who quipped that Jimmy Page's new Yardbirds would go over like a lead zeppelin, thereby furnishing at least a great band name, if not an historically accurate prediction. In fact, the bombast that Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham first created was, well, bombastic. The music wasn't merely loud; it evoked shudders. They didn't simply play the blues; the gouged them. Being stoned didn't assist the listening process; it was central to it. Laborious thunder, tedious tsunamis, overpasses demolished by earthquakes and a double bass drum attack that suggested the sky had already fallen: at the time a lot of critics saw all this as less than a good thing. That view did not prevent LZ from becoming the largest selling album act of their day.
Revered by fans for their powerhouse album tracks, Zep's best songs were almost always their singles. "Immigrant Song," "Whole Lotta Love,""Rock and Roll," "Black Dog" and "D'Yer Maker": who cared what they were about? They rocked as hard as anything on the radio and the louder you played them the better they sounded. Nevertheless, there can be no denying that "Stairway to Heaven" was their biggest success, mostly because you can substitute the words to "Gilligan's Island" and the song makes sense.

Harry Nilsson. Nilsson Schmilsson. RCA. 1971.

 I actually had the privilege of speaking with Harry Nilsson once. It was the early 1980s and I stuttered out something about being a fan. As he contemplated a purchase in the clothing store, he seemed pleasantly distracted by the point and softly hummed a few bars from a song he'd once recorded. How odd, I thought, that he should even bother with me, because just a few years earlier Nilsson had been one of the great undeveloped talents of the first half of the 1970s. After releasing a terrific album of Randy Newman covers, he painted this aural fun fest. Schmilsson has it all: Badfinger's"Without You," the merrily idiotic "Coconut," the stilted rocker "Jump into the Fire," a few songs about the pleasures and frustrations of driving early in the morning, and "Moonbeam," an hilarious parody of stupid songs of whimsy. What this album did to earn its stripes was to musically personify fleeting experiences that seem vital when they're happening, even as we suspect their intransigence. Nilsson's songs become those experiences. That act of personification legitimizes every dead brain cell, every sad laugh, and every ruptured irony.

The Rolling Stones. Probably the Best Album We Ever Made, Actually. Santa Fe Records. 1971.

With political disillusionment a worldwide phenomenon, folks with enough energy to do so wondered if the Stones could carry on into the 1970s. The group responded with an album that was only released in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where renegade Navajos still consider it a symbolic totem. Simply titled, it contains the best of what later became both Sticky Fingers and Exile of Main Street. Had businessmen not decided that it was better to have these twelve songs on two-and-a-half albums rather than one LP, young people today would understand what all the fuss was about. Sadly, Jagger was killed while attempting to swallow a bottle of champagne without first uncorking it and, because Mick Taylor had exploded the top of his own head off in an awkward attempt to perform the Heimlich on himself, both Micks had to be replaced. Taylor's fill-in was Ron Woods of the Faces. Jagger's was Mel Brooks, resulting in one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the record-buying public. Ironically, nothing the group released from 1973 on has been worth hearing, except for cheap laughs.

The Who. Who's Next. MCA. 1971.

Daltrey's singing was never less hyperbolic and Townshend's songwriting has never been more grounded and sincere. Add to that John Entwistle's scat bass and Moon's ability to play rolls that overlapped measures without ever precisely losing the beat and you have one of the greatest albums ever disparaged by the term "classic."

Ashton, Gardner & Dyke. "Resurrection Shuffle."Capitol. 1971.

 

 It is one of those shames that used to happen every so often that a great group like this would release a spectacular single, only to have its popularity sidetracked by a more popular yet inferior performer releasing his own version of the song at the same exact time. That's what happened here. Tom Jones, of all people, released his version on the same exact day that these Englishmen released theirs, effectively confusing the public about whose version was the good one. A few more hits like this and there would have been no misunderstanding.

Rod Stewart. "I Know I'm Losing You." Mercury. 1971. "You Wear It Well." Mercury. 1972.

 Rod Stewart is a remarkably talented singer, songwriter and interpreter who has on occasion made some remarkably horrible recordings. He has been the lead singer for some of the most passionately inspired hard rock acts in history and has also strutted amid a myriad of hack session players. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect is that he has displayed an internal conflict between being one of the sharpest, most insightful performers of our time and being a celebrity who loves to wile away the hours with fashion models, no doubt for the conversation. Before he had become so reprehensible that nothing he could do afterwards would ever compensate, he recorded several fine albums for Mercury, the two supreme highlights of which are these sensitive yet willful singles.

Harry Nilsson. "Spaceman." RCA. 1972.

 There were three big deal space program hits in the 1970s: David Bowie' "Space Oddity," Elton John's "Rocket Man," and this, the best of the bunch. The story isn't just sad; it's downright depressing. After quickly and eloquently summing up space exploration as just another extension of Manifest Destiny that the astronaut had bought into, he discovers to his horror that the public no longer cares about such lunacy. Within a controlled swirl of Richard Perry orchestral production, this song conveys the hopeless inevitability of the ideology that leads to such consequence.

Elton John. Honky Chateau. Uni. 1972.

Elton John was far and away the most commercially successful artist of the first half of the 1970s. He came on a whole lot like the way he went out: a bit cocksure, a bit timid, kind of geeky, kind of sleek. Cool, then, in a nerdish way. And that was the initial reason for his success. "Your Song" was his first charter. It was simple, much like the singer, who then emoted the way old people do. "It's a little bit funny," Bernie Taupin wrote and Elton sang, "this feeling inside." The only feeling conveyed was of someone either too shy or too bored to be committal and because it was the 1970s, that was exactly what was needed.
Despite his success as a singles act, EJ was ultimately an album artist. Elton John, the U.S. debut, started a trend of singing the words to songs with a deliberate disregard for the music. One such grand example on Honky Chateau is "I Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself." The song captures Elton bopping along merrily about how what he really needs deep down is to snuff it, while the piano trills and someone else is tap dancing. In the meantime, the hits just kept on coming. This album featured two: "Honky Cat," about about a city boy needing to return to rural heartache, and "Rocket Man," the first great song about the space program. Best of all, this album rocked the way not much else was doing at the time and "Hercules" shimmered. When some people insist that Elton opened up their minds, this album is why.

Ringo Starr. "Back Off Boogaloo." Apple. 1972.

At the time of this single's release, most of my friends tried to convince me that something dirty was happening here. Twas no such thing. What they didn't know then, but what I discovered later, was that this slaughtering song for guitar and drums was actually a coded attack upon Paul McCartney. "Wake up meathead, don't pretend that you are dead" is just one of the clever remarks that Ringo slips in between George Harrison's angry guitar assaults. The irony is that McCartney would contribute to Stop and Smell the Roses' best song, one that featured a medley that included a redone version of this very tune.

Thunderclap Newman. Hollywood Dream. MCA. 1973.

 

   By the time this album hit the States, the band that made it had ceased to exist. Originally recorded between late 1969 and early 1970 by John "Speedy" Keene, Jimmy McCullough and Andy Newman,Hollywood Dream shocked as it coerced. arranged and organized by the who's Pete Townshend, Thunderclap Newman's portrait of the world in transition between flower power and armed insurrection is simultaneously mellow, surreal, conventional and cataclysmic. Released as a single years before the U.S. appearance of the album,"Something in the Air" freshens as it frightens, especially with its melodic call to fetch the arms and ammo. The various Hollywood tunes ambiguously tease the superstar motif these guys never came close to experiencing for themselves. Everything else maintains a pastoral militancy that's more rare than commonly believed about the presumably enlightened 1960s.

Paul McCartney. Band on the Run. Apple. 1973.

After the artistic and commercial success ofRam, McCartney was positioned to create anything he wanted and his credibility was assumed before the first song began. Unfortunately, he gave us trash. But after wading in a kiddie-pool of lame albums, he fired back with Band on the Run, complete with three rocking hit singles, some very pleasant pastoral meanderings, a soft parody of his one-time creative partner, a damned fine drunken ode to Picasso, and an over-all production feel that suggested the act of being freed from The Beatles unleashed opportunities for creativity that someone outside his immediate family might actually enjoy hearing.Band on the Run has come to bethought of as Paul's testament, his sole proof that he could produce something artistically solid without John Lennon.

Ringo Starr. Ringo. Capitol. 1973.

After a few shoddy albums, it appeared that Ringo might be the exception among the ex-Beatles in not releasing a single album that spoke of his triumph. Then he met producer Richard Perry, a man who had already made his bones with both Carly Simon and Harry Nilsson, capitalizing on those artist's best qualities and yielding their most successful albums. So when he and Ringo joined forces, the producer's confidence balanced with the drummer's frustrated ambitions to assemble the album of a lifetime. A big part of this success was due to the accompaniment, which included Messrs. McCartney, Lennon and Harrison. Still, this is Ringo's show, leading off with the realistically boastful chant "I'm the Greatest," and carrying through with sprite pop songs that didn't require long-held notes, allowing the singer to emphasize the percussive aspects of his voice. Apple released three of these ten songs as singles, each of which hit the Top Forty, two of them taking over at Number One, a feat unmatched by his former band mates.

Kiki Dee. "I've Got the Music in Me." Rocket. 1974.

     Talking about Kiki Dee without mentioning Elton John would be like talking about the Ronettes and neglecting to say something about Phil Spector. After all, Rocket was the record company Elton formed to record Kiki, Neil Sedaka, and the Hudson Brothers, among others. And that list is important because aside from whatever degree of talent they may have possessed, their public personas stipulated that show business was as much their lives as their art. This bears mentioning because while "I've Got the Music in Me" was one of Rocket's first cuts and one of its best, it also exudes the spirit of Everything Is Subordinate To This Song I'm Singing Right Now. Or so it seemed at first. But listening again it is possible to hear the lie between the stated facts of having no trouble in her life and the tension in the music and vocals. After all, how can you dismiss dreams as foolish unless you've had some of your own thwarted?

Paul McCartney. Venus and Mars. Capitol. 1975.

While the fans and critics may have agreed about the success of Band on the Run, the time of universal acclaim for McCartney soon ran out. The abundance of romantic music on Venus and Marswas met by such vitriol by the music press that Paul fought back with "Silly Love Songs," a soft-spoken yet direct and powerful response. While his artistic credibility started sliding with Venus, as an album it gives us some of the ex-Beatles' best music. The sound is separated and mixed better than any effort he made before or since, and the songwriting is tremendous. There are the unfortunate attempts to conceptualize the work into some kind of male/female strength/love arena thing that fortunately doesn't take away from the overall feel. Despite the success of the single "Listen to What the Man Said," the best tune is actually "Call Me Back Again," with its sloppy link back into and out of the verses and its Little Richard on amyls vocals and song construction.

Roxy Music. Siren. Atco. 1975.

The original line-up of Roxy Music was nothing more than Art Rock, which is to say avant garde, which in turn is reactionary, the antithesis of good music and good times. But leader Bryan Ferry was too smart and talented to become a bad joke, an easy thing to do when you are the opening act for Jethro Tull. The group's luck changed when Brian Eno left in 1973. when Eno's eccentricities no longer clashed with Ferry's, the group was ready to paint its masterpiece. Instead, they released Country Life, an album notable mainly for the smidgen of pubic hair shown on the cover. Siren was the real gem. Still Art Rock in the sense that it had sounds washing all over like waves against a Malibu ranch house and songs that blended into one another, Siren managed to remain rock. You could dance to it, stomp, bang your fists and even sing along. Ferry let himself go wild here, exploring his own sarcasm, his own internal debates, his life-enhancing self-destruction.

Faces. Snakes and Ladders. Warner Bros. 1976.

     Some people prefer A Nod is as Good as a Wink. But for this incarnation of the band, the click clock punch of the more commercial sound strikes me as highly appropriate. In addition to Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, the Faces featured Ian MacLaglan, Ronnie Lane and Kenny Jones. Together they made some of the best stumbling rock ever recorded."Stay with Me," the group's closest thing to a U.S. hit, was indicative of the good-natured macho swagger style that laughed at itself more than at anyone else. Also outstanding here are "Miss Judy's Farm" and "Had Me a Real Good Time."

The Rutles. All You Need is Cash. Warner Bros. 1978.

 Monty Python meets the Bonzo Dog Band and demystifies the Beatles while making one album that contained everything the Fabs ever did, hilariously.

PLAYLIST 24: 

THE AXIS OF DELANEY AND BONNIE

    Take two parts post-Blonde on Blonde neo-folkie sensibility, stir in one part Aretha Franklin Gospel spirit, sprinkle in a few pinches of an attitude that endorses "love at first sight," beat with highly amplified country blues, and you have the essence of what Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett wraught. But beyond that essence, they and their ever-changing band of musical cohorts inflected and infected pop-rock on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for the first few years of the Me decade. This recipe for artistic success was so readily accepted by both heretofore unknowns and genuine superstars because in the wake of the burgeoning singer/songwriter movement and simultaneous heavy metal hysterics, it was downright refreshing to be lifted up by a distinct style of music that respected its traditions as well as its own innovations. That this music's very reach sowed the seeds of its own destruction--that is, as the demand for this music tore apart the musical and matrimonial partnership of Delaney and Bonnie--in no way detracts from the power and relevance of that axis of bliss.


Bonnie, Delaney, Duane

    Here, then, are the greatest recordings made either directly by, or tangentially connected to, that most glorious of pop duos, Delaney and Bonnie (and Friends).


Joe Cocker. Mad Dogs and Englishmen. A&M. 1970.

    While I would give the movie of which this album is the purported concert soundtrack the worst of all possible ratings, the music itself is quite exciting stuff. Cocker was an interpreter of other’s songs, and his versions definitely go through the processor of Ray Charles on an eight ball, but there’s no arguing with his selections. Represented are the Rolling Stones, Big Joe Turner, Julie Driscoll, Leonard Cohen, Dave Mason, Ray Charles, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, the Box Tops, and even his musical director Leon Russell. While it remains annoying that most of the Friends who were touring with Delaney and Bonnie deserted that couple to hook up with gyrating Joe, the fact is that for such a horribly big band, they were very tight, and so songs like"Feelin' Alright," "The Letter," "Bathroom Window"and especially "Cry Me a River" could certainly be used as arguments in favor of drug abuse in the right minds. All of the 729 million smiling lunatics who appear on this album make some contribution, mostly as a backing chorus. That’s what gives the album punch. The glorious Ray Charles-style call and response is everywhere, but it teeters constantly, creating a double tension because you expect each song to break down at any second--although none of them do. But subsequent recordings were so bad that maybe such rollicking self abuse insures a limited artistic span.

Delaney and Bonnie. "Free the People" and "Only You Know and I Know." Atco 1970.

    Duets aren’t always horrible. Oh, I know you’ve had to endure the great Dolly Parton with the obnoxious Kenny Rogers, the histrionic Cher with the estimable Sonny, and Patti Smith with Leon Russell--naw, I just made that one up--but that doesn’t mean that sometimes the man+woman sound isn’t magnificent. With Delaney and Bonnie, it was heaven. Each had enough understanding and experience in the fundamentals (Bonnie had been a back-up singer for Aretha, among others, while Delaney had developed pop-rock appreciation by playing with the decidedly non-rock Shindogs) to work with the other’s strengths and around his or her weaknesses. These two singles were studio versions of the songs that most are more familiar with in a live context. "Only You Know" is brown-eyed rock’n’roll, while "Free the People" sounds like a drunk falling down the fire escape, but doing so musically. Both of these songs represented a step up for the duo from their Elektra-era love songs (of which "Never Ending Song of Love" was typical), most of which boasted a decided lack of production sophistication and nearly minimalistic song construction. These two tracks, however, asserted social as well as personal commitment through the time-honored process of rocking out.

Dave Mason. "Only You Know and I Know."Atlantic. 1970.

This former Traffic guitarist, solo artist and occasional record producer is perhaps better known for his late-Seventies easy listening hit, "We Just Disagree," a song that would never make any connection to his earlier work. "Only You Know and I Know" is not only a great song; Mason's performance lurks only a notch or two beneath the rendition in the preceeding listing. His guitar work is arguably sharper and certainly more strident than Delaney's. The more limited vocal Mason offers balances the instrumentation smack dab in the supine position.

Delaney and Bonnie On Tour. Atco. 1970.

    Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett met in Los Angeles and seven days later married in a bowling alley. Over the next five years they would release four charming and invigorating albums of updated rock ‘n’ roll wedged between soul music on the left and country on the right. This perfect progression of their musical acculturation bubbled up from unlikely pre-matrimonial experiences. Delaney worked as a Mississippi sideman for Elvis Presley before tuning up on TV’s Shindig (he played guitar in the house band, The Shindogs). Bonnie’s singing career began at age fifteen when she belted back-up for the likes of Count Basie and Dexter Gordon. She also gained recognition as the first white member of Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes. Together the Bramletts found a strength that was greater, yet lighter, than the sum of their parts. Others heard it too. Eric Clapton invited the duo to be the opening act on the tour for Blind Faith. By the time that tour was over, Delaney and Bonnie headlined. The associations made on the tour linked together a sound and style quite popular in the early 1970’s. After dissolving Blind Faith, Clapton formed Derek & the Dominos, which included bassist Carl Radle, who became part of the Friends who would support D&B on On Tour. This association also introduced the pair to Duane Allman and George Harrison--the former played slide guitar on this album’s "Poor Elijah," the latter let Delaney play on "Apple Jam" (from All Things Must Pass). And by the time the tour from which this album came was over, most of the 'Friends' who played, sang and gave the sound such vibrancy, abruptly departed to tour with Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. That was bad news for Mr. and Mrs. Bramlett. The good news for the public was that many popular performers had absorbed the Delaney and Bonnie feel, yielding music which sprinkled down through a bleak winter the warm sensations of intoxicated butterflies, rejuvenated Lazarus, and the St. Vitus Dance shaking with the righteousness of "Soul Train" and the tradition of the "Grand Ole Opry." You can hear all this and more on the Allman’s Live at Fillmore East, Eric Clapton’s first solo album, Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, the aforementioned Cocker LP, and certainly On Tour conjures the same sensations.

Derek and the Dominos. Layla. RSO. 1970.

    Eric Clapton playing electric diving to the center of the earth guitar, Bobby Whitlock stretching elastic keyboards, Jim Gordon pounding cascading lava drums, Carl Radle churning undersea bass, and Duane Allman melting overdubbed electric and slide guitar: producer Tom Dowd layered these individual yet unified performances like shifting levels of total agony. If Eric Clapton had never been with any of his previous groups, if Duane Allman had been an only child, and if the other session players had done nothing before or after recording this LP, their names would still live forever as the temporary purveyors of the greatest of all living rock and suicide blues albums. And while biography is usually superfluous, here it matters. Eric Clapton and George Harrison had been friends for years, a fact that benefited both artistically. A downside attacked these two men when Clapton fell in love with Harrison’s wife, Patti Boyd. This album’s centerpiece and title track begins like a deranged "Batman Theme," pleading for the removal of the five-prong fish hook embedded in the singer’s heart. Just as riveting and arguably as cathartic is their version of Buddy Myles’ (and Freddy King’s) "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" ("even though she belongs to your very best friend"), its ironic links to Clapton’s friend Harrison being lost on no one who had access to the current issue of any pop music magazine of the day. If music really possesses cathartic potential, it must’ve taken an album this powerful to woo the young Ms. Boyd. Friend Harrison took his wife’s departure in stride, saying at least she was with someone he liked and admired. Maybe George simply couldn’t argue with a declaration this manifest.

George Harrison. All Things Must Pass. Apple. 1970.



    Dave Marsh called this recording a monumental album that makes a nice signpost for the Seventies, and he was right. After this one extended moment of glory (which featured incredible playing by Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and Eric Clapton), lonesome George saw his commercial career drop notch by notch, from concerts for starving people, to half-baked politico-religious noodlings, through inspired songs about dead friends. He finally tired of public indifference to his oft-threatened retirement and --sproing!--created his best work in years, Cloud Nine, then turned right around and made his best songs in years with the Traveling Wilburys. As far as this album goes, All Things Must Pass has a calming effect on laboratory mice, although "Wah-Wah" and "Apple Scruffs" retain some of the magic from his days with the Beatles. Far and away the best songs on the recording are on the often condemned third "bonus" disc, which was actually nothing more than five heavily edited jam sessions. There, instead of the overly polished production (courtesy of Phil Spector), we get Raw George, wailing away with his friends and neighbors where everyone is clearly having a great time escaping the rather heavy-handed philosophizing that preceded it.

Eric Clapton. Eric Clapton. Polydor. 1970.

    In the same way that Layla reached transcendence through its weight, Eric Clapton transcended through a spiritual levity. In the same way that the political and social explosions of the Fifties and Sixties resonated real Art through Seventies cinema, the excitement and freedom of the previous decades shook out a tempered discipline--at least in the early 1970's--of which this album is perhaps the most striking example. After The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, et al., and their concomitant excesses, Eric Clapton then as now possesses confidence, as if it were the first time Clapton had relaxed in his entire life. With guitar, songwriting and production assistance from Delaney, the core of the Derek and the Dominos musical line-up, and the first real sense of commaraderie he'd known in years, Clapton popped out the poppiest album of his career, one that even managed a great Top Forty single with a cover of J. J. Cale's "After Midnight."

Leon Russell. Leon Russell. Shelter. 1970.

    As the prime mover behind the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour (and consequently the driving force in relocating the core of the Friends who backed the Bramletts), Leon Russell's career appeared to be ripe for a massive solo excursion. And this solo effort--which was about as solo as any of the other recordings here, since it featured two Beatles, a pair of Rolling Stones, a former Yardbird, most of the Mad Dogs and about two dozen backing singers of varying renown--was powerful enough to permanently enshrine the idea that Russell was a major talent. His prematurely silver hair, Oklahoma inflections, train whistle voice, and tight yet unpredictable arrangements all merged on this recording and wafted down through our depleted lungs like fresh air in a coal mine. While "Prince of Peace" and "Pisces Apple Lady" suffer somewhat from the "cosmic consciousness" that would mar much of the singer's later work, "Give Peace a Chance" (not a cover of the Lennon song), "Delta Lady," and particularly "I Put a Spell on You" (not a cover of the Hawkins song) retain their power to this day.

Delaney & Bonnie. To Bonnie From Delaney. Atco. 1970.

After a pair of nice (as in merely nice) albums for Elektra, this dynamic duo switched to the preeminent soul label, Atlantic, where they'd always belonged in the first place. With at least two eyes searching for pop success, and the disappointing sales of their earlier work (their only hit to this point had been "Never Ending Song of Love," which was, well, uh, nice), D&B mustered the frustration, inspiration and intelligence to blend their R&B and soul roots and evolve their past into the strongest set of pop songs recorded by mortals, at least within a month or two of this album's release. In addition to the aforementioned "Free the People"--a minor hit--To Bonnie From Delaney is a virtual update of the best sounds of the previous fifteen years. From the Gospel glory of "Lay Down My Burden" and the early live wire mania of "Miss Ann" (featuring piano by Little Richard himself), to the strong originals like "Hard Luck and Troubles," "They Call It Rock & Roll Music," and "Living on the Open Road," the album could hardly have missed. 'Course, it didn't hurt that prime soul and blues pros like Duane Allman and King Curtis were also on hand to fill out the sound.

The Allman Brothers Band. Allman Brothers Live At Fillmore East. Capricorn. 1971.

    Many of us who suffer a terminal fascination about such things have claimed that the honor of best in-concert recording rightfully belongs to Live At Fillmore East. One consequence of researching the axis of D&B is that we can now name at least two other contenders for that title. Nevertheless, this is the best live recording by a band whose subsequent work failed to live up to the expectations generated by one specific recording. The improvisational components to this album are a lot like the best post bop jazz sessions of John Coltrane or Miles Davis. Artistic success only exists when such improvisation reveals an inherent respect among the players. While no one crowds anyone during the solos, no one leaves the stage for a smoke break, either. When one musician senses the moment for his contribution arriving, the others recognize the same instant for what it is, and, rather than battle it out, they support the soloist. That’s because a community of blues is at the root of all these songs, and for a bunch of southern longhairs, this album was a wave as deep as it was tall. The only thing that's truly rock ‘n’ roll about Live At Fillmore East is the obvious amplification, a facet that isn’t lost when you play it loud at home. With Gregg Allman on keyboards and vocals, brother Duane on killer slide, drums by both Butch Trucks and Jai Johanson, plus bassist Berry Oakley and Dickey Betts on guitar, southern rock was reinvented by bluesing down the rhythm and inserting what would come to be thought of as boogie (in the hands of lesser talents). With the loss of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley in separate motorcycle fatalities, it became clear that the remainder of the Allmans accepted the role of practitioners rather than continuing to aspire as innovators.

Joe Cocker. "Feelin' Alright." A&M. 1972.



We never had all that much use for this song until years later when we heard it sung by Lulu. Suddenly we were able to make out the words. At that point we got it: even though Dave Mason wrote the song, this was always a Cocker tune, the last big body spasm that predicts the hastening of his performance demise. Who are we to reject such prescience? After all, who could have predicted Cocker's artistic demise better than the man himself as he sang: "Don't you get too lost/In all I say/...I can't get straight/So I guess I'm here to stay/'Til someone comes along/To take my place/With a different name/And a different face."

Leon Russell. "Tightrope." Shelter. 1972.

    What’s good about this song is the combination Bohemia-amusement park melody and the fact that Leon Russell sounds almost exactly like Dr. John the Night Tripper. What's embarrassing lo these many years is the image of Russell on the cover of his album Carney with clown make-up, the ugliest shirt ever made, and a dingy dressing room right behind him. After recording a few good albums with the Shelter People, playing on The Concert for Bangla Desh, and recording the Top Forty single "Watching the River Flow" with Bob Dylan, Russell thought he was invincible. He wasn't. But this song captures the ambience of its title as well as any song ever recorded. It also made for a gentle end to the time when Del and Bon wielded influence on pop radio.

Duane Allman. Anthology. Polydor. 1972.

    While most anthologies suffer from a certain lack of substance, this, the first of two retrospectives to successfully encapsulalize Duane's status as the premier white Southern blues aficiando, locks horns with the essence of pain and never lets up. Beginning with a devastating medley of B. B. King numbers recorded with an early incarnation of the Allman Brothers (back then they were called The Hour Glass, and before that, the Allman Joys), this two disc set reinvents slap back soul with Wilson Pickett's version of "Hey Jude" and Aretha Franklin's interpretation of the indecipherable "The Weight." Of course, the album would be worth owning if it contained nothing but Duane's work with the Allman Brothers. But here we are blessed with his steaming slide work on Boz Scagg's "Loan Me a Dime" (later popularized by Fenton Robinson) and the essential "Layla." It's tempting to wonder how any one man could devlopment, much less convey, such a wide girth of style in less than three years of professional recording. But with talent like this all around him, the real question is: how could he not?

Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. D&B Together. CBS. 1972.

If not quite the end of an era, this album certainly served as the culmination of a musical relationship, but without the eerie pseudo-implications of Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights. Unfairly dismissed as a bad idea gone wrong, D&B Together is a good album that suffers only from not being a great one. The studio version of "Only You Know and I Know" is here, as are two of Bonnie's best signature pieces, the Gospel call out "Wade in the River Jordan" and "Groupie," which most people know better either from the Rita Coolidge and/or Carpenters version called "Superstar."
While neither Delaney nor Bonnie ever quite captured the commercial or critical majesty their wedded bliss produced, both have continued to record and perform right on into the new millenium, and even appeared together in a rare collaboration as recently as March, 2003. Bonnie's most recent album is called I'm Still the Same, and Delaney's is Sweet Inspiration.

PLAYLIST 25: 

Country and Western
    Contemporary rock music denies through its attitude, format and style the influence of Country and Western music. This denial leads directly to a recreation of Contemporary Country, a style far more selective in its musical acculturation than mid-Sixties through mid-Seventies C&W could afford. Travis Tritt, to cite an easy example, may model himself after the more overblown aspects of Elvis Presley, but he absorbs none of the vocal nuances or unintentional humility that Presley himself borrowed from --among others--Bill Monroe. No value judgment is implied in this observation. Just as current hip hop and hard rock aspire to spring from an origin that never existed, so Contemporary Country yearns to display a freshness that owes nothing other than to the image of whichever soul-patch sporting ten-gallon hat-wearing original has sped up Hank Williams songs to make them unrecognizable. The point is that while new country music strives to negate its heritage, C&W made little if any effort to deny its past. This fact does not make one period's music inherently better than the other. It does, however, make an unmistakable distinction between the two styles of country.

Bill Doggett. "Honky Tonk." King. 1956.

 Doggett, along with pals Clifford Scott, Shep Sheppard and Billy Butler, not only made a great instrumental with this, they made the best ever strip joint song of all time. Shuffle, bump, sproing has never sounded so appropriate on a country single. Not that public disrobing was the only effect of this song. Dressed or undressed, "Honky Tonk" awakened more than just the loins. And that's kind of funny because Bill actually believed his Hammond organ to be the source of sacred delights. The idea that being associated with such earthly pleasures could defile such an instrument was anathema, at least, to him.

Ernest Tubb. "I'm Walking the Floor Over You."Decca. 1956.

My father introduced our household to this song. My Dad's obsession with Country and Western was as boundless as my own rock-mania would soon become. This song played a lot in our house, and for good reason. Tubb's voice was a little flat, but he packed an innate charm. You could hear the thoughtful smile enliven tales of heartache and yearned-for revenge. When he sings "I hope and pray that your heart breaks right in two," you know he means it despite the fact that he'd take the woman back in two seconds. Curiously, I had forgotten all about this song until a few years ago when I heard a version by Fairport Convention. Sandy Denny's lead and the almost studious dedication of the band awakened long dormant recollections. I raced home and found what I at first took to be two different versions of the Ernest Tubb original, one dated 1943, the other 1956. Any distinction turned out to be the result of my hopeful imagination. The song was simply released twice. That answered another question that had been troubling me: Where did Bill Doggett learn the honky-tonk style he came to despise?

Dave Dudley. "Six Days on the Road." Golden Wing. 1963.

 Dave Dudley never had another crossover hit, but his cowboy ode to getting back home warrants a shrine to this Wisconsin boy for single-hendedly kicking off the truck driving song. "Six Days on the Road" may not have introduced the sub-genre, but it stripped the rubber from any tires that Red Sovine ever owned. Not only did the baritone Dudley capture the ambiance of what the good man will and won't do while eighteen-wheeling it--white crosses, si; cheating, no--his driving rhythms and command of the vernacular made country music embraceable to the young rockers who would later reinvent themselves as The Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Eagles.

Johnny Cash. Ring of Fire. Columbia. 1963.

 Johnny Cash could sing anything. I was in a music store a few years back and heard him doing a cover of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" followed by "Damn Your Eyes," the most stunning experience I'd had in months. So when Johnny does a somewhat ornate version of Merle Travis' wondrous "Ring of Fire," I just shrug and dig it, thinking how surprised I am that we never had Disco Johnny. Even the album cover here is a blast.

Sandy Posey. "Born a Woman." MGM. 1966.

 Because Posey was a country singer and because the words "I was born to be stepped on, lied to, cheated on and treated like dirt" came out of her mouth on this crossover hit, a lot of people found the tune vaguely insulting. That opinion says a lot about the limited minds of many people who act as if they are liberated but who are just as chained to the past as Newt Gingrich. Posey was singing about a condition that some women accepted for themselves, a condition that goes far beyond mere servitude, a condition of reaping a few moments of psychological satisfaction from one's own misery. So when she cries out "and I'm glad," she's making a statement as bold as James Brown asserting "I'm black and I'm proud." Besides, Sandy Posey had the chops to be a poor woman's Tammy Wynette.

Loretta Lynn. Loretta Lynn's Greatest Hits. MCA. 1968.

To be a traditionalist by vocation and a rebel by temperament is one sure-fire way to reconcile the most despicable aspects of the middle class with the more refined tastes of people who actually work for a living. That sense of reconciliation is more than apparent on this collection as Loretta tells everyone from her whiskey-guzzling paramour "Don't Come Home a-Drinkin'" to the federal government "Dear Uncle Sam" that she's far too tired to put up with anymore foolishness. Had any such shenanigans been proffered from the more pompous pop stars, they would have been properly ridiculed as pseudo-enlightened bourgeois balderdash. Coming as these songs do from someone who has actually known pain and who has developed the ability to sing convincingly about it, Loretta Lynn shares a dignity with that part of our population often dismissed as White Trash.

Johnny Cash. At Folsom Prison. Columbia. 1968.

This album frightens.
By giving hope and happiness to the incarcerated multitudes at Folsom through prison songs rife with images of the American bedrock of lovers, mothers, thieves and friendship, Cash galvanizes faith that those prison walls may ignite, freeing the confined spirits housed in their mortal shells. Even the corn-pone humor of "Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog," or the over-inflated metaphors elevate from the heat, he reawakens the pain that daily survival has numbed, leading captive and captor to recognize the tremendous power the many hold against the few ("I Got Stripes," "Busted," and of course "Folsom Prison Blues.).When the warden makes his appearance, he sounds just as frightened as the prisoners sound confident.
And Cash is clearly loving it.

Ray Stevens. "Mr. Businessman." Monument. 1968.

For a musical novelty record to have any long term impact, it must have three components. It must be funny. It must have a compelling melody or hook. And it must be performed as if the artist comprehends the humor in the recording, even if the joke is on him or her. Ray Stevens typically violated one or more of these three criteria on his early releases. "Ahab the Arab," "Butch Bavarian," "Speedball," and "Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills" were musically indistinguishable and about as funny as dental surgery. Curiously, his serious works hold up far better than the screwball efforts for which he is more well known. Of those serious songs, "Mr. Businessman" remains the best because for once Stevens puts the same passion into a protest song as one normally finds in his alleged novelties. After looking at the world through the eyes of the all-powerful, the singer admonishes the subject to "take care of business" in a tone of genuine sympathy for anyone too self-consumed to appreciate the best things in life this side of a balance sheet.

Charlie Rich. The Fabulous Charlie Rich. Epic. 1969.

Charlie Rich is yet another under-appreciated super talent who passed through the gates of Sun Records in the late 1950s. No Sun's "Best Of" would be what it claimed without Rich's "Lonely Weekends." And though he recorded many great tunes for the country audience throughout the 1960s, Charlie's talents and ambitions went beyond the limits of genre. Able to croon as well as bop, his jazzy piano playing was the perfect match for his greatest instrument, his voice. So it was fortunate that he hooked up with producer Billy Sherrill, who had become quite adept at making the Patsy Cline style of countrypolitan music fit in with the abilities of Tammy Wynette, among others. This was Sherrill's first real collaboration with Rich, and it remains the best. Charlie's wife Margaret-Ann wrote"Life's Little Ups and Downs," a song that isn't precisely about the singer, but it's easy to believe otherwise. He also excels on "Love Waits For Me,"written by Dallas Frazier, who had already written a big hit for Rich called "Mohair Sam." Jimmy Reed's "Bright Lights, Big City" is also a marvelous stand-out. Matter of fact, there's nothing here that's less than excellent.

Anne Murray. "Snowbird." Capitol. 1970.

 

   Anne Murray has a great throaty contralto that sails as it prevails. This was her first hit. She was perfectly positioned at that exact second to join the SoCal nonsense movement. But, bless her high-flying heart, she had principles as well as talent, and recorded what made her happy rather than opting to be a mere star.

Michael Nesmith and the First National Band. "Joanne." RCA. 1970.

 Mike Nesmith had musical and lyric capabilities that went about as far as they were allowed in The Monkees. But on his solo albums and sporadic singles, especially here, he brought an intelligence and insight to the high lonesome sound of traditional bluegrass and pop-country music.

Joe South. Greatest Hits. Capitol. 1970.

 "Oh the games people play now every night and every day now," begins the caustic singer, accompanying himself with light touches of solemn acoustic guitar. "Never meaning what they say now and never saying what they mean." Joe is in fact from the South and worked as a session guitarist in Tennessee and Alabama before recording his own work. "Games People Play" is a slight bit more lush than most of the C&W that crossed the Mason-Dixon and its attacks on self-delusions and hypocrisy have seldom been bettered.
   Most of the other material here was already or soon became hits for others. Deep Purple already charted with a scary rendition of "Hush," and Lynn Anderson sweetened up "Rose Garden," both of which are at a minimum fascinatingly portrayed by South. The only thing missing--and it's easy to understand why--is "Yo-Yo," a song recorded by the Osmond Brothers.

Johnny Cash. "What is Truth?" Columbia. 1970.

This tender and angry song about sorting out the lies from the rest of perception never made it to an official album, although it was a regional hit in 1970. Cash sings from the witness stand about skin color, hair length, and other means of misunderstanding. Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts did a fine version in the mid-1990s, but it's Cash's wise-as-Solomon reading that lasts.

Ray Charles. "Don't Change On Me." ABC-Paramount. 1971.

 Recorded during one of Ray Charles' C&W fixations, "Don't Change On Me," as much as any of his forays into the forbidden world of predominantly white working class domains, eclipses the emotional connection such songs usually aspire to make with their market slot. This song was not commercial, it did not score on any charts, and was only floating around in record stores for about five days. Charles is totally relaxed and self-assured. His piano plays him as much as the other way around. And his mood is so focused it's easy to suspect he's wrapped this tight out of fear of breaking down and weeping at any moment.

Sammi Smith. "Help Me Make it Through the Night." Capitol. 1971.

 Maybe having four kids before you turn twenty-one will make a woman a bit prone to stoicism. But the way Sammi Smith voices her sense of need for someone even halfway nice to just be there--no expectations other than being gone by the butt crack of dawn--is more definitive of country soul than Mutt Lange's pet poodle Shania Twain ever dreamed.

B.J. Thomas. "No Love At All." Sceptor. 1972.

 For far too many years, the only song AM radio would play under Thomas' name was "Raindrops." Well, that song was okay, but come on! The man sang other songs, some of which were first or second rate pop numbers. This, his finest song, accompanies a dramatic melody with its tales of lives that are truly tragic, however commonplace they may be.

Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen."Hot Rod Lincoln." MCA. 1972.

 San Francisco bar band by way of Ann Arbor. Alone and with the Airmen, Commander Cody frequently captured the sound and feel of a jump blues Saturday night. Here, on their only hit single, the live feel is true and the subject is a wild ass car chase to inspire future hot rodders for decades.


Donna Fargo. "Funny Face." MCA. 1972.

 The nature of any period of time that is stored by whatever means is that those who inhabit that time piece are not impervious to death and destruction. And so it is with the glorious Donna Fargo. hen listening to this or even 2008's "We Can Do Better in America," it was easy to get a sense of some religious commitment, a small trace of innocence and a mighty strong hankering for success. Her voice is just as beautiful today and here's hoping she puts out even more great hits.


Bill Monroe. Bean Blossom. MCA. 1973.

 Bluegrass is pre-Country and Western music, typically played by natives of Appalachia. It places primary musical emphasis on banjo, fiddle and mandolin. Often more praised for its influence than for its existence, it has suffered unconscionable abuse while remaining one of the most spiritually inspiring first cousins of country music. The true Big Daddy in this Appalachian enclave is Bill Monroe and if only a few songs could be used to exemplify the form, this album has a bunch: "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Uncle Pen," and "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" among them. By the time this recording hit the shelves, Big Bill began receiving the mass popular acclaim that had long been his due. His band is tight and wholesome and his singing will make you yearn for a jug of your favorite illegal elixir.


Loudon Wainwright III. "Dead Skunk." Columbia. 1973.


Loudon Three Sticks had a fine way with a simple tune, his voice suggesting an educated drunk looking to charm his way into yon fair maiden's trousers post haste. The suddenly there was this song: freed up, wild abandon, and the word "olfactory" all in a pop banjo song about the satisfyingly unpleasant sensations one can expect when inadvertently smashing a rodent with a station wagon.


Dolly Parton. The Best of Dolly Parton. RCA. 1975.

 This is Dolly Parton before she met Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers or Jane Fonda. This is Dolly before disco and the Bee Gees, and immediately before her crossover from the country charts. This is the Dolly who grew up on "The Porter Wagoner Show," the Dolly often teased for her mammoth mammaries, the Dolly who could write songs so well and so good that neither Linda Ronstadt nor Whitney Houston could outdo her (check out "I Will Always Love You" and "Jolene" for proof). The vocals twang, but there's operaic power here, along with storytelling that may be sentimental but never sappy.


Tanya Tucker. Tanya Tucker's Greatest Hits. Columbia. 1975.

 Boy, I used to get so angry when early-to-mid 1970s country stars ripped off what I considered legitimate pop songs. Whether it was Buck Owens twanging down a Rolling Stones classic or Conway Twitty vibrating hell out of the Pointer Sisters, it used to just kill me, the effrontery of those hicks thinking they could validate for C&W what real musicians had already made uniquely their own. All of which just goes to show how incredibly wrong a person can be. The truth of the matter is that thirteen-year-old Tanya Tucker grabbed the pop song "Delta Dawn" and made it her own. With almost too slick production from Billy Sherrill, she stripped the song of all its niceties and laid it in the middle of the sidewalk where people had to step over it, inconveniently. "Would You Lay with Me" is every bit as in-your-face bold, with the singer's developing confidences a string of fascinating nuances that even her later, more mature work could not touch. After the pleasures of some youthful soul-country, this album also reminds the listener that rock borrowed at least as much from country as the latter did from the former.


George Jones. The Battle. Epic. 1976.

 It has been claimed by some more knowledgeable about country music than me that this album documents the break-up of Jones' marriage to Tammy Wynette. All I know about that part of things is that if it is true, this is not the C&W version of Marvin Gaye's Hear, My Dear. What it is, however, is some gloriously bitter reflections on love destroyed, all of them sung by a man who never wanted much more out of life than simple things like a nice home, a job picking guitar, a couple dogs sniffing each other on the back porch, a few lines of cocaine, and a fine woman, pretty much in that order. There's some countrypolitan frills here, but on the title track and "Billy Ray Wrote a Song", in particular, you just want to fall back and groove on that gorgeous voice bleeding all over the juke box.


The Kendalls. "Heaven's Just a Sin Away."Ovation. 1977.

 Royce and Jeannie Kendall were and remain the great father-daughter team in country. This song makes some people (including my mother) a tad uneasy, with Jeannie's slightly lilting bend on the high notes. But I'd say it was one of the highlights of that period when country music was losing its Western swing as it progressed (or degenerated) from the farmhouse into the office. The Kendalls inflected with Ozark drawls an awareness of temptations more commonly found near big city smokestacks.


Emmylou Harris. Profile. Reprise. 1978.

 It's staggering to think how restrained is the work of Emmylou Harris. There are extended moments--like on her duets with Gram Parsons and on her pork rib charred version of "You Never Can Tell"--where the sweet soprano seems to ski on air over and under unimagined obstacles without a blink. You hear it again on "Two More Bottles of Wine." So it's obvious she can be a powerhouse when she wants. But the discipline that she brings to the bulk of the rest of her recorded work is what stuns. Mixing anything here with the other pop world spurs on visions of rapture. Some people sing country because that's all they can. Others, like Harris, sing it because it's what they love.


Flatt and Scruggs. Don't Get Above Your Raisin'. Rounder. 1978.

 Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs were first rate guitar and banjo players ever since being discovered in the mid-1940s by no less than Bill Monroe. As the Foggy Mountain Boys they often played the "Grand Ol' Opry" and "The Porter Wagoner Show." But it was together that the humor, talent and seriousness of their sound best merged and this album has all the thrills of a live performance even though it was a studio production. This is very traditional, very pure, and good as can be.


Lone Justice. Lone Justice. Geffen. 1985.

 Lone Justice rips open the speakers with indignant and twangy electric country-rock. The driving background beat overpowers and herds the tinny music forward. The lyrical importance of each song twists around the title phrase. "Don't Toss Us Away," for instance, balances the album by completing the feeling of a cowpoke bar out of town where all the lonely hearts individually gather. Early bar hours, hanging onto life with the beer in hand and the sound of this group melting into the nonexistence of time during the night: the piano loosely in the background is the saving grace of the melodic song structures as the under-dubbed guitars hammer the sense of loneliness.
Maria McKee and her musical boyfriends appeared in the mid-1980s in a worthy attempt to fill a perceived void in the cowpunk industry. Mike Campbell wrote their best song, "Ways to be Wicked," a great song even if it does make some people imagine what Tom Petty would sound like if he were a woman.

PLAYLIST 26: 

LOVE STINKS BUT I LIKE THE BLUES

   The opportunity for sub-genre overlap is huge. That is one of the things that's so screwed up about modern radio. While its programming can and should frequently overlap, it seldom does. Even in this section of The Playlist, I purposefully omit numerous and obvious selections such as Live at Fillmore East and Layla not because they aren't blues--which they are--but because they fit better in some other section. The selections in this chapter appear here because their very essence is nothing else so much as it is the blues. That is the case because outside technical parameters, the blues hasn't changed much over the last fifty or more years. Die hard fans of Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jeff Healey may react violently to such an assertion, but go to a show at the nearest blues club in your town, or listen to National Public Radio some Sunday evening (while you still can) and then play any ofthese albums. The essence maintains continuity. Oh yeah. And you can dance your brains out if you like.

Big Joe Turner. The Best of Big Joe Turner. Atlantic. 1963.

Kansas City's Joe Turner used his considerable physical and vocal presence to yalp out a forcefully good-natured uptempo jump blues conversion into a saxophone-dominated style of early disciplined rock and roll. In at least half of these songs, the words sound as if they are running away from the singer out of a sense of self-preservation. In the other half, the words sound too stunned to flee. "Shake, Rattle and Roll" is rife with classic bizarre images, such as a one-eyed cat peekin' in a seafood store and the sun shining through a woman's dress. "Flip, Flop and Fly" cartwheels--but wait. Let's not turn this into one of those predictable song-by-song analyses. Turner desrves better. He certainly deserves better than being referred to as a big fat fuck. Turner pumped, pulled, kicked and cracked up all over the place--no restraint, nothing held in reserve. Just gusto deluxe leaping off the pyramid with keyboards strapped to his waist and a shout of jubilation rolling behind his eyes.

Holwin' Wolf. The Real Folk Blues. Chess. 1966.

 Listen to "Killing Floor," please. Chester Burnett ws forty-one when Sun Records impresario Sam Phillips first heard him on Memphis' KWEM reading farm reports and commercials in between his blues numbers. Middle-age suited Wolf just fine, as The Original Sun Recordings amply prove. Fourteen years later he had already established himself with Chicago's Chess label. In no sense a "best of," this collection of very specific numbers ("Tail Dragger," "Built for Comfort," "The Natchez Burning") recorded between 1956 and 1964 reinvents blues songs that were never precisely folk at all. The real folk referenced in the title means real people, not any particular variant of music. And real people, this music demands, suffer from the vagaries and vicissitudes of love and lust. Hubert Sumlin's electric guitar, Willie Dixon's piano and Wolf's harp and howl lay down testimonial allocutions clear, clean, honest and scathing as radiator heat.

Holwin' Wolf. More Real Folk Blues. Chess. 1967.

Listen to "Devil Got My Woman, please. While this collection hit the stands a year after its predecessor, the songs were recorded three years earlier, which may explain why theu sound so different. Just a shade more acoustic and a fraction more superficially subdued, their intensity vibrates like a radioactive statue brought to life ("No Place to Go," "Rockin' Daddy"). What they share with the previous album is the thrust involved in grasping to the pain of loss even in the best of times because the scars never fade.

Skip James. Devil Got My Woman. Vanguard. 1968.

 After everything I had heard about Skip James, I expected his albums to vibrate and moan down the house. But this, his greatest work, shares a common thread in imploding rather than blowing up. While there are some purposefully absurd structures here, the real blow comes from the inner tension, the fragile singing, and the strain James creates between what has happened and what will. The song titles ("Devil Got My Woman," "Worried Blues," "Sickbed Blues") are the first clue that this will not be a happy experience. Once the songs begin, you know for sure. By the time it's over, you won't know whether to kill yourself or play the album over again, just to make sure. James pops in from just around the corner, self-absorbed like an autistic, brandishing nothing but the ability to transform every fear you've ever known into a child's joke. It is also the greatest blues album ever made.

John Lee Hooker. The Very Best of John Lee Hooker. Buddah. 1969.

 It would seem that John lee Hooker cared less for the traditions of the blues than he did for the way his abbreviated form of music described the way he felt while composing these songs. For proof, check out "Dimples," "Crawlin' Kingsnake," "Boom Boom". Hooker had shorter, choppier lines and highly accentuated rhythms that were in many ways far more complicated than his predecessors and contemporaries in the twelve bar tradition. In fact, his songs were truer to the rhythms of everyday Detroit speech than Chicago bluesmen's were of windy city patois. All this made him a great source for every young wannabe from Big Bear Hite to Eric Burdon. But even before you get to seeking out who he influenced, it is important to recognize that these songs are good in and of themselves, though not for the faint of heart.

Captain Beefheart. Trout Mask Replica. Reprise. 1970.

 If there were ever an album about which it was eternally reasonable to say, "This is not for everyone," then this is most certainly that album. Indeed, it may seem odd to even find this listing here in the blues section, if at all. But if time and space truly are, as I believe, infinite continuums, then it is possible to place Beefheart's album anywhere, and no matter where it is placed, it does not quite fit. Time changes had not yet been established because consistency did not yet exist. And so it isn't important that the rhythms of songs like "China Pig" are impossible to tap out with your pencil on your desk. It isn't important that the singing on "Orange Claw Hammer" sounds more like a wild animal than that of a human being. It isn't even exactly important that the lyrics of "The Blimp" are a cross between dada poetry and the pain scrawling of imprisoned Neanderthals. What is important is that after a few admittedly challenging attempts at understanding this music, the listener may be able to pretend to have never heard pop songs before and imagine numbers like "Hair Pie: Bake 1" not so much as a rejection of conventional sound as an immersion in a lyrical and musical language of its own. In other words, if you can forget anything you've heard before and think of this as the first music, then and only then are you ready to savor and carefully digest the Captain's creation. That creation is the assaulting rage of a child who looks back, knowing he was right, despite being wronged. It is a world of its own, a world that others have felt, and a world that posits happiness next to sour psychology.

Etta James. Peaches. Chess. 1971.

 Etta James has performed songs made famous by Bo Diddley ("W-O-M-A-N"), Randy Newman ("God's Song"), Otis Redding, The Eagles, and even Alice Cooper. For any one--much less a black, blode-haired woman--to be able to do this without seeming funny is a major event. To capture the blues essence of such songs, making and remaking them as good or better than the originals, is tantamount to glory. And while most of her recordings have at least two excellent versions to recommend them, this is the only one in the last thirty-odd years that can boast every song a winner.

B. B. King. Live at the Cook County Jail. ABC. 1971.

 This album answers the question: "How Blue Can You Get?" This is the hard ass blues equivalent of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison LP. Frightening, compelling, revelatory, riot inspiring, and potentially deadly.

Janis Joplin. "Me and Bobby McGee." Columbia. 1971.

Of all the great singers of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was most mismatched to the musicians at her disposal. She left Port Arthur to join Big Brother and the Holding Company in time to play the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and to record Cheap Thrillswith a band legendary for their concert work and horrendous on their recordings. Realizing that they were in the recording business, Elektra's Paul Rothchild tried to lure Janis sans band to his label. Typical of the singer's judgment, she declined and the next album was released without producer John Simon's name on it. Going from bad to worse, Joplin joined the Kosmic Blues Band in late 1968 and though the public was by now hooked on her feelings, j\Janis herself was high on believing in nasty habits like drinking too much and dabbling with heroin the way a more innocent generation had dabbled with mutilating Barbie dolls. Her last group, The Full Tilt Boogie band, finally had what it took to shake it up baby, which is why her posthumously-released Pearl is her best work despite the fact that be then her own talents had been worn away by substance abuse. By October 1970, she was dead from an overdose.

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. San Antonio Ballbuster. Red Lightnin'. 1975.

 As the lovely and brilliant Elizabeth Fritze reminded me, it was Shakespeare who wrote, in The Merchant of Venice, "The quality of Mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. Upon the place beneath it is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." That moving sentiment reminds me of Clarence Brown. The multi-instrumentalist and blues stylist known affectionately as Gatemouth has been blessed and blesses in return with one significant album. Here you will hear a squawking guitar that sounds as if somebody crumpled up a saxophone and stuffed it in the hole to make the instrument sound like a newspaper. These songs ("Okie Dokie Stomp," "Win with me Baby," "Boogie Uproar") have a loud and grittiness that adds at least one other dimension. "Just Before Dawn" is almost rock, but all of this has a kick and punch that is far more than just a standard blues moan.


Elmore James. One Way Out. Charly. 1980.

 Of all the Mississippi kids who came up the famous Highway 61 to Chicago, looking to exhale what they'd breathed in from Robert Johnson and others of the Delta, Elmore James was the greatest slide guitarist. It wasn't merely the distortion he let loose or the possessed vocals. Elmore James had so much emotional passion when he played that most other singers and guitarists looked like poseurs by comparison. Even on such apparently light dance numbers as "Shake Your Moneymaker," James played as tough as he did on the presumably more serious "The Sky is Crying." Robert Johnson may have been the King of the Delta Blues singers, but Elmore was the King of the Chicago Blues guitarists. The best of the songs he recorded between 1952 and his death in 1963 are offered here.

PLAYLIST 27: 

BUBBLEGUM, 

THE SOFT PINK AND CHEWY MUSIC

    Bubblegum music may be the ultimate in manufactured swill, but if you sweeten up the chunks and sanitize the singing beyond all recognition, about one time out of a hundred something infuriatingly infectious and horrendously hook-laden will embed itself in the consciousness of a nation, or at least a neighborhood. And so bubblegum was a bastion of innocence, a temporary hideaway for pre-teen boppers scared off by the heaviness of Steppenwolf. The best of it did in fact cause cavities in lab mice, but still made a period of time when intense youth was mandated a whole lot more tolerable.

The Monkees. More of the Monkees. Colgems. 1967.

A&R man and musical director Don Kirshner craved something very pop with enough frayed edges to appeal to a wide variety of musical tastes. He realized that ideal with this album. Dance club guitar jump sounds fall hard from the sky with the opening ka-bang of "She," a little schmaltz from Davy, a Michael Nesmith modernized dowboy pogo, a little schmaltz from Davy, a noisy and infuriating goof by Peter, "Steppin' Stone" (a song so good it was covered by the Sex Pistols), a little schmaltz from Davy, cowboy hard rock, a horrible piece of tripe by Davy, on and on, ending with another sure-fire hit called "I'm a Believer." While their TV show was a blatant and successful rip off ofA Hard Day's Night, quite a few of their songs were first rate. With supporting songwriting from Nesmith, Carole King, Neil Diamond, and Boyce and Hart, they managed to record some of the most memorable songs of that artificial phase of pop.

Boyce & Hart. "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight." A&M. 1967.

 Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote some of The Monkees' more meorable hits, the best of which was "Last Train to Clarksville," an anti-war song of sorts. Together, they released three singles, this one being the pinnacle, a song that sounded exactly like the Monkees. Six years later they teamed up with Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones to form the forgettable Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart. Pete Tork had the best line: "I guess they didn't want any musicians in this group."

Ohio Express. "Yummy Yummy Yummy." Buddah. 1968.

In the words of the singer for the Double Bubble Trading Card Company of Philadelphia PA 19401, "The Grateful Dead just leaves me cold and Herbie Alpert makes me feel too old." That song provided a great rationale for enjoying this one, with which it shared more than a genre affiliation. At a time when so many people created extremely serious music, "Yummy" offered a pleasant reprieve. Besides, the choppy power strokes of the guitar and singer Joey Levine's nasal spits captured an attitude and feel you didn't have to be a teenybopper to enjoy.

Tommy James and the Shondells. "Mony Mony." Roulette. 1968.

 Of all the bubblegum rockers to dent and damage the charts, Tommy James was the one who best captured the spirit of hopping on the floor, flinging arms from side to side and snapping whatever you happening to be chewing with manic intensity. And what diversity! He also hit with "Hanky Panky," "I Think We're Alone Now," the speed addict confessions of the vastly overrated "Crystal Blue Persuasion," the psychedelic meandering heat of "Crimson and Clover," and the goofy glory of "Mony." If someone came along today covering this wide a girth he would be banished to the Catskills for failing to be a genre artist.

Neil Diamond. "Holly Holy." UNI. 1970. "Cherry Cherry." UNI. 1973.

 I'll admit that Diamond turned into such a smarmy type that it would have been quite impossible to stand to even be around him. But the brilliant pop hooks he developed working for Aldon Music and Bang Records had not yet deserted him. The merger of white Gospel solemnity in the vocal delivery with kindergarten party-time music hooks was never better than on these two Diamond gems.



Robin McNamara. "Lay a Little Lovin' on Me." Steed. 1970.

 This member of the original cast of Hair had a full red mane of the stuff, which did not assist his career of singing on Jeff Barry's Steed label. This was his only real hit. The other day I played this song for my friend Marcy. After listening politely, she observed that she had never heard of that woman before. I pointed out that Robin was a guy. Her confusion may indicate something about the quality of the vocal. But none of that should detract from the perky pleasures of this bubblegum delight. After pledging varying degrees of clearly insincere dedications to his undying and desperate needs for the girl's attentions, he suddenly erupts with a surprised "Hey" and gets down to the point he'd been working toward: "Honey doggone it I'm depending upon it so lay a little loving on me."

Bobby Sherman. "Julie, Do Ya Love Me?"Metromedia. 1970.

 Just how bubblegum was this guy? You used to be able to cut his singles off the back of boxes of Honey Comb cereal.

Tommy James. "Draggin' the Line." Roulette. 1970.

 While I have absolutely no idea what this song means, I do know a catchy unison choir type sound when I hear it, especially one backing the greatest of all cartoon vocals. This song pre-dates the slander ecology enthusiasts would endure by about twenty years.

The Osmonds. "Yo-Yo." MGM. 1971.
This five-brother band epitomized the most unctuous and bleached-out characterists of the Jackson 5, which just goes to prove it's not that far from Ogden to Gary. Young brother Donny's voice was in the midst of changing, yielding a sound that a certain depraved kind of person finds strangely endearing. The fact is that, aside from some sadistic novelty appeal, 99% of their collective recorded output is ignobled b y the word "putrid." Their version of the song is moderately spectacular, harnessing all the positive aspects of the Jacksons and with a real band kicking out a thoroughly life-like performance.

The Sweet. "Little Willy." Bell. 1972.

 Originally heralded as an early 1970s bubblegum band, singer Brian Connolly and the boys were pink and chewy and you could blow bubbles with them. They were also a Super Ball: a dangerous toy. "Barroom Blitz" was a ferocious scream and more inspiring than anything Kiss ever dreamed."Fox on the Run" ever showed the boys had a sensitive, edgy side. The group then faded before coming back one time with "Love is Like One of the Elements on the Periodic Table," or something of that sort.

Reunion. "Life is a Rock." RCA. 1974.

 Don't take a breath because the chorus kicks in before you can and that's where Joey Levine, who sang lead on any number of classic bubblegum hits drops the litany and tells the truth: "Gotta turn it up louder, so my DJ told me."

THE PLAYLIST 28:
REGGAE! THE NEW BREED THING

    Rock and reggae share a birth in rhythm and blues. Reggae's origins combine ska (which I pronounce SKAY, but which everyone else pronounces SKAW)--itself a transistor-oriented blend of electric guitar and horns shifted through a stack of Professor Longhair records--with a somewhat slower, guitar-fixated and definitely bluesier sonic ambience. Since the mid-1960s, when Desmond Dekker broke through with "Israelites," approximately twenty-nine million subgenres of reggae have surfaced: dub, dread, Gospel reggae, roots, rocksteady, mento, bluebeat, turntablism, and--one could easily argue--very early rap music. As a commercial entity in the United States, the heyday was 1973-1976, when crappy singles by Johnny Nash were actual hits. Regarded as too sophisticated for pop radio, the music's adherents invariably sought albums by Bob Marley and the Wailers as well as Peter Tosh. Little did most of us know then that some of the most powerful and exciting music of our lives had long been released by a Jamaican hipster and occasional jailbird named Toots Hibbert who, amazingly, had a fondness for both the Kingsmen and John Denver! But reggae's political razor continued to sharpen on or off the charts, as artists like Black Uhuru, Burning Spear, and especially Linton Kwesi Johnson would prove throughout the 1980s. Is reggae dead? Not as long as it remains available in your local music shop or in your memory.

Desmond Dekker. Sweet 16 Hits. Trojan. 1978.

Rude boys or "rudies" were politicized street gangs, angry bulldozers whose crimes were against society and rarely indiscriminate, as opposed to some U.S. street gangs who--as everyone has been programmed to understand them--are just a bunch of baby-killing armored-up parasites looking to do as much damage and make as much loot as possible before they die at age twenty-five. Jamaican and British rudies were tough guys with the proverbial hearts of gold. To judge based on the album covers, you'd think Desmond Dekker had been the king of the rude boys. Well, the gang kids may have indeed loved the music of the Beverly All Stars, Dekker and the Aces, but that didn't mean Dekker was one of their own. Naw, he was just a lonely kid who finally found the right producer in Leslie Kong, and together the two wrote and produced the first ska hits to make it big in both Britain and the States. All sixteen of these are bursting with pop and mento and reflect the occasional New Orleans sound of the late 1950s with what was by the late 1960s a more contemporary sound. "Israelites" was, in fact, the first reggae song to chart in the U.S.

Toots and the Maytals. Funky Kingston. Island. 1972.

Toots Hibbert is certainly one of the great reggae vocalists. His singing is the most distinctive and instantly recognizable in the genre. The melodious baritone wobbles and weaves while maintaining its power throughout some of the most bizarre selections and originals any Jamaican ever sang. His cover of "Louie, Louie" is a funky goof with an inverted vowel emphasis and he straps TNT to John Denver's chest, dancing ever-tightening circles around the plunger on "Country Roads," a song Toots makes far more convincing because of the passion evoked for his West Jamaican roots. Except for a few Otis Redding covers, most of Hibbert's work is unknown in the United States, a dirty shame because "54 26 Was My Number", "Pressure Drop" and "Time Tough" are better reggae than Bob Marley ever imagined.

Jimmy Cliff. "The Harder They Come." Mango. 1972.

The political fact of reggae is a given. Perhaps that's why, as a Muslim rather than Rastafarian, Jimmy Cliff could compel and amplify lines like "I'd rather be a free man in my grave than living as a puppet or a slave" with such apparent ease. After all, the song itself is not especially sophisticated. Beginning with the standard double flam drum intro and rollicked along with carousel organ, the melody is just as perky and cheery as the standard Johnny Nash tripe popular stateside. The joy of "The Harder They Come" comes from the straight-on yet gentle passion the singer delivers. And when he forgives the officers in the New Testament manner, no one could doubt the sincerity of his heart.

J. Geils Band. "Give It To Me." Atlantic. 1973.

It's truly amazing just how uniformly bad their albums were. They could play, write and even sing. The problem was that for every great single, they released two that weren't half as energized and exciting. "Give it to Me" has a depraved neo-reggae rhythm that accentuates the friendly leer of wild man Peter Wolf and remains their best song.

Bob Marley and the Wailers. Live! Island. 1975.

The attentive reader may have gleaned that your humble narrator considers rock lyrics to be secondary in importance to the sound and consequent feel of the recording. So much do I subordinate the notion that rock lyrics are typically anything more than gibberish that I attempt with varying degrees of success to imbue the sensibilities of these commentaries with a sound and feel that is often more important than the specific literal meaning of the words I use. The judgment of my success lies with you. The artistic success of Live! is exemplary in conveying just such an idea. The words, whether spoken or appearing on a sheet, unlock a certain revolutionary zeal. But their actual power to get someone to do more than listen emerges only as they merge with the urgent frustration of the vocals and the tumbling boulder assault of the rhythm section. What might have been mere sloganeering in the hands of lesser talents becomes a bright and shining danger against the government in Trenchtown.

Augustus Pablo. "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown." Clocktower. 1975.

This may not only be the greatest reggae single of all time, it is likely the very best example of dub. This semi-instrumental version of Jacob Miller's "Baby I Love You So" features a young Pablo playing his trademark melodica, the hardest drumming on a set that couldn't have cost more than fifty dollars, and some otherworldly sound washes from King Tubby himself--plus the most forlorn and haunting chants Pablo (or anyone) ever recorded. Other artists may have taken dub farther. No one took it deeper.

Burning Spear. "Marcus Garvey." Island. 1975.

For all intents and purposes, Winston Rodney is Burning Spear. Marcus Garvey, whom this single celebrates, was the 1920s leader of the Back-To-Africa movement, one that came to be embraced by Malcolm X, among others. Rodney chant-moans lines like "Can't get no food to eat, can't get no money to spend" as if he's humming a mantra guaranteed to unite all of Kingston on its journey back to Ethiopia. Even more effective is the fact that producer Jack Ruby brought in the twelve-piece instrumental combine Black Disciples to bass and toot the mood along with such willful abandon or lackadaisical determination that an endless loop of this song might provide the entry ticket to Paradise.

Bob Marley and the Wailers. Rastaman Vibration. Island. 1976.

Brother Bob was never much of a guitarist, but he sure did have a way with a song. "Roots, Rock, Reggae," "Crazy Bald Heads," "Rat Race," not to mention lines like "Your enemy could be your best friend and your best friend your worst enemy" are among his most powerful performances. Because of the quality of his original group, The Wailers (featuring Marley, Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh), there are folks who claim nothing Marley recorded after 1974 is worth a damn. But as it turns out, bassist Aston Barrett, drummer Carton Barrett and keyboardist Tyrone Downie were a bit looser together than the original group and that often worked to everyone's advantage. Even though Marley died in 1981 of cancer, for the better part of the following decade it was nearly impossible to find a juke box that didn't carry the live version of "No Woman No Cry." But Rastaman maintains that merger of commercial spirit and radical invention that no other set of his captures quite as well. That's because while some performers use the studio to distance themselves from their audience, Marley used it to connect his passion with our own.

Junior Murvin. "Police and Thieves." Mango. 1976.

To those who only know the excellent Clash version of this song, I recommend imagining the grittier falsetto moments of Curtis Mayfield applied to a tricky reggae mix with a hookah and two pounds of sacramental cannabis. The Clash version cuts this to shreds, and even though Murvin never sang anything this strong again, producer and sonic madman Lee "Scratch" Perry fills the box with organic creaks and pops enough to make this a near-essential classic.

Max Romeo. "War Ina Babylon." Mango. 1976.

Babylon is everywhere that is not Jamaica and Ethiopia. So it is a little bit confusing how this story about the 1972 Jamaican election in which the pro-Romeo socialist party came to power is intended to jive with the facts. Oh, well. The best thing about the single is the music. After five years of recording naughty singles that the UK wouldn't play, Max got down with Lee Perry and made this up-dripping background-heavy testament to something non-lascivious that the Brits still wouldn't air because--even though the lyrics were indecipherable--with that title it simply had to be bad news. The good news is they were right!

Linton Kwesi Johnson. Dread Beat An' Blood. Virgin. 1979.

"Dread beat An' Blood."
At the conclusion to the liner notes to this album, writer Vivien Goldman exclaims, "The weak heart shall drop. The righteous heart will buy this record." I can make no claim for the relative morality of consumerism. I can tell you that a more musically militant reggae recording has never been made. This album pumps with the force of its title. The vocal is scrunched up like a closing fist. And this is one of the few albums where the piano is a true percussion instrument, just as God intended.
Johnson pursued a degree in Sociology while writing the bass-based poetry. While involved with the Black Panthers he organized a poetry workshop that developed into a band called Rasta Live.Dread, his first album, is the political and poetic base of all contemporary music, except it's good. Johnson took some very stripped down dub tracks, overlaid them with added bass and beat, tripled the weight, and toasted his own real poetry and politics right up Margaret Thatcher's snatch. The sensibility is of a young man watching Afro Brits getting their heads bashed in by the Oswald Mosley's of the United Kingdom. Aware that as a Jamaican he was in fact an Israelite, the unity with historical oppression is never out of touch here. When the oppressors are liberated of their means of tyranny, this is the album they must hear for the first 100 years. Smooth as broken glass.

Black Uhuru. Red. Mango. 1981.

Check out "Youth of Eglington."
Dub reggae differs from roots in that dub often strips off most of the words for the benefit of audiences who already know them and want to do their own vocals, or for disc jockeys who want to yak over the music without lyrical interruption. Producers up the bass and beats while paying some degree of respect to the melody. That is not quite what Black Uhuru does here, but because of the patois and dialect, the lyrics become more sound than substance unless and until the listener stops jamming along long enough to catch it all. Simply put, this album has more dimensions than the Twilight Zone, a condition that rewards repeated listening. Singers Michael Rose, Puma Jones and Duckie Simpson made one of the most militantly radical reggae albums to come from Jamaica. The music is prominent, as with dub, yet lacks the contrivances of such a subgenre. This album invigorates, it provokes, and I suspect it even goes well with the sacrament. Against the front drop of omnipresent Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakepeare's rhythm section, the backdrop trio suggests that picking up a Remington with more edge than a razor might be an acceptable solution.



PLAYLIST 29
The Seventies Southern Wave

    Certainly by the mid-1970s the musical segregation this blog rails against was successfully entrenching itself all over the radio dial. AM didn't even try to keep up with trends and instead gave into marketing directors who directed program managers toward all-news and/or talk formats still with us today. FM, simultaneously, splintered into first white-oriented versus black-oriented, then subgenre styles such as hard rock, disco, AOR, and the like. Much of this entrenchment began with the Seventies Southern Wave, an unintentional yet decisive swing into occasionally indulgent and invariably boogie-based, specifically Caucasian brand of amplified, elongated and sped-up blues. The best of this music was far more than a response to a perceived marketing niche. It was imaginative, freed-up opportunism in the best sense of that word. But much of it never aimed for more than an image of beer-guzzling bozos with longwinded guitar jams and nothing much to say. There was no way any self-respecting urban dweller raised on Motown and Philly Soul would belly up to that particular bar, so he or she or they went where the sounds were more inviting--about as far from the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section as one could get. Dammit.

The Allman Brothers Band. Eat a Peach. Capricorn. 1971.

Check out "Little Martha."
    This is Fillmore East, Part Two, or at least half of it is. And that half is just as good as its namesake. Most of what remains is a combination of tracks recorded before Duane Allman died. The rest is the band trying very hard to be just as good as it had been. Dickey Betts understood the pop imperative better than the others and lays the groundwork for what would become the band's only hit single, not included here. But this album is perhaps most remarkable for sounding so united in the face of tragedy. Even thirty plus years later, the group cohesion remains astounding.

Edgar Winter. "Keep Playing That Rock n Roll." Epic. 1972.
"Frankenstein." Epic. 1973.





    Here's a comparison/contrast with Johnny Winter that you don't hear much: Edgar was a lot more fun. While Johnny was out there screching up the hills with the loudest roar this side of the Screamin' Demon, Edgar was putting together some fine bands, like White Trash, who did the first of these, and The Edgar Winter Group, who did the second. Both these dead-raisers have maintained the ingenuity that the youthfulness of their creators' fascinating studio concoctions ever brought together for the enjoyment of teenage dope smokers.

Wet Willie. "Keep On Smilin'." Capricorn. 1974.

Ever notice how the Confederacy has yet to reunite with the United States? That's not entirely the fault of the former separatist union. More often than not, when people speak intelligently about groups like The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd or Wet Willie, they refer to them as Southern bands, a distinction rarely voiced about groups north of Mason-Dixon. So with the presumption of northern snobbery still firmly in place, a lot of Southern bands played what they wanted anyway. Usually that was a rock version of the blues. In the case of Wet Willie, they rocked up rhythm and blues that sounded like the locale where it was recorded had a pool room fight a few seconds from imminent. That effect enlivened their sound, shifting that emphasis in favor of rhythm over blues, and self-control over purposeless freewheeling. All this shouts out to magnificent results on "Keep on Smilin'," the best song ever made on the subject of defying your enemies by laughing right in their faces. And that suggests a sensibility that is uniquely southern.

Ozark Mountain Daredevils. "If You Want to Get to Heaven." A&M. 1974.

With a tight, sprawling jew's harp, guitars straight out of The Eagles songbook, and vocals that could only be from Missouri, the Daredevils sprang into action on their first single from their first album and never looked back. "I never read it in a book, I never saw it in a show, but I heard it in the alley on a weird radio." Their long-awaited follow-up, "Jackie Blue," was truer to what OMD favored. And so "Heaven" is a glorious anomaly, a little slice of backwoods lunacy driven more by ambition than brains, just as it should have been.

Elvin Bishop. "Fooled Around and Fell in Love." Capricorn. 1976.

 This one-time member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band moved from Oklahoma to Chicago in the early 1960s, where he learned to blend jazz and blues with highly amplified rock and roll. By the mid-1970s, he was fronting his own band, and his record deal with Capricorn led most critics to label him a southern rocker. But as this gravy-thick and full-of-wit song proves, his true love was for free-tight guitar-oriented Chicago blues. This was one of the biggest non-disco hits of the year.

The Atlanta Rhythm Section. A Rock and Roll Alternative. Polygram. 1977.

 This five man southern electrical band was a combination of one of Roy Orbison's earlier backing groups and the Classics IV. Consequently, the sound was self-consciously less bluesy and certainly a bit less totalitarian than their big deal equatorially-challenged brethren. Their conscious decision to be more widely accessible than most of the harder rocking southern rebels worked against their long-term reputation, but amidst all the choogling, womanizing, and odes to self-destruction, ARS' more modest, homespun and sedate recordings accentuated their unaffected musical maturity. The single from this album, "So Into You," became a rare delight in 1977, as did the non-charting "Sky High." Although they never garnered the status of Allman or Skynyrd, much less that of the perpetually lame Charlie Daniels, they did provide a sensuous swirl of home style slow swing that makes this album essential.

Lynyrd Skynyrd. Gold and Platinum. MCA. 1979.

 Right after the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd was souhern rock's greatest band. Producer Al Kooper kept things nice and murky, which served Ronnie Van Zant's troupe well on hits like "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Workin' For MCA." Tom Dowd replaced Kooper on succeeding sides and naturally the sound tightened, but for the better. This music was loud, murky and troubled, yet captivated a legion of die hard fans who often acted as if dying hard was what life was all about. This was all firmly entrenched in the frequently mindless ethos of endless boogie, a mentality that clearly set the band apart from their followers. A song like "I Know a Little," to cite an unheralded example, exploits its colliding rhythms at the expense of its deeper meanings, typically lost on everyone except wide-eyed rock critics. In October 1977, a plane crash took Ronnie away, along with guitarist Steve Gaines and singer Cassie Gaines. After all these years, their artistic imagination may be more suspect than before but their ability to kick out hard-hitting southern boogie with soul and sympathy remains unmatched.