This is not an Echoes In The Wind Post. Instead, it’s a post I put together for the blog The Vinyl District after Blogger deleted the first iteration of EITW and I moved on to WordPress. It was written September 8, 2009.
It was kind of like turning on the television news and seeing a three-headed alien behind the desk saying “Good evening! I’m Gnirt Tkalch, and here’s the news tonight on Planet Zamzam.”
I’d clicked the link for my blog, Echoes In The Wind, and I got a page with the familiar orange Blogger logo and a message that said something like: No such blog exists. Of course it exists, I thought to myself; I just put a post up this morning! I clicked the link again and got the same thing.
After a moment of thought – during which I wondered if I’d actually ended up on Planet Zamzam – I went to my dashboard and found a notice from Blogger that said, “We’ve received another complaint on your blog(s), (Echoes In The Wind). Given that we’ve provided you with several warnings of these violations and advised you of our policy towards repeat infringers, we’ve been forced to remove your blog.”
I reviewed in my head: Let’s see, there were three notices last autumn, all in the same week. Then there was one in August. So, four warnings – I guess four is “several” – and now one more complaint that tipped the balance. There were also some posts during the past year – four or five – that disappeared from the blog without any explanation or notification. So call it nine complaints. Over a period of two years and eight months and a total of almost eight hundred posts.
I understand, in a way, the positions of Blogger and its parent company, Google. A complaint requires a response. What I don’t get is the unwillingness of much of the music industry to deal with individual bloggers (as well as the seeming point of view that it’s somehow bad to draw attention to performers and their music). I’d put a notice on the blog asking copyright holders to contact me if they objected; a couple did, and I happily removed those links and deleted the uploads within hours. Others, however, evidently complained. I say “evidently” because of the four emails I received specifying an offending post, three gave no information about the source of the complaint; I’m not sure in those cases whether the complaint came from someone with a genuine stake in the matter or from someone having malicious fun. (There are times I lean strongly toward the latter.) The source of the fourth complaint – the one I got in August – was identified: It was a singer-songwriter who had one Top 40 hit, in 1982, and has released one album since 1988. One would think any attention would be beneficial, but I guess not.
On top of all that, my blog was an odd target, as there are a thousand, maybe ten thousand blogs out there whose operators are sharing music that was released last week, last month, maybe yesterday. A good portion of what I shared is out of print, much of it was obscure, and the vast majority of it was at least thirty years old. As I wrote above, one would think any attention would be beneficial . . .
Well, I’ve moved on, and I’ve moved. You can find my new location in the links here at TVD.
Someone asked me how it felt. As usual, the best way to answer that is with music, and these titles tell the tale:
“Angry Eyes” by Loggins & Messina from Best of Friends [1976] “Lost” by the Church from Starfish [1988] “Sad Eyes” by Maria Muldaur from Sweet Harmony [1976] “Feelin’ Alright” by Lulu from New Routes [1970] “Starting All Over Again” by Johnny Taylor from Taylored in Silk [1973]
So, if there had been a quiet evening listening to the radio forty years ago this week – and there likely was, as the Other Half and I did not watch a lot of television – what would we have heard as we sat and read in our mobile home just outside Monticello?
We’d likely have tuned the radio to the Twin Cities station KSTP-FM, styled KS-95 in its promotions, with its tagline newly revised just a year earlier to celebrate the hits of “the Sixties, the Seventies and today!”
And forty years ago today, on November 3, 1981, the station’s top ten was:
“Hard To Say” by Dan Fogelberg “Arthur’s Theme” by Christopher Cross “The Old Songs” by Barry Manilow “Just Once” by Quincy Jones feat. James Ingram “The Night Owls” by the Little River Band “We’re In This Love Together” by Al Jarreau “The Theme From Hill Street Blues” by Mike Post “Private Eyes” by Hall & Oates “Here I Am” by Air Supply “Waiting For A Girl Like You” by Foreigner
The only one of those for which I really needed a reminder this morning was “The Night Owls.” Ten seconds in, I recalled the record and was still, forty years later, unimpressed.
(There was an odd moment, too, regarding “Just Once.” The survey, as presented at the Airheads Radio Survey Archive, credited the record only to Jones, and I thought to myself, “That’s a James Ingram record, isn’t it?” I grabbed my reference books and realized that I’d forgotten the song was from Jones’ album The Dude; the KS-95 survey as presented online had neglected to credit Ingram.)
Anyway, nine of those ten would have been a familiar and generally pleasant set of music forty years ago. Which of them would I like to hear these days? Let’s see how many of them are among the 2,700-some tracks in the iPod. It turns out to be just two: the Al Jarreau and the Mike Post, which is kind of how I figured it would go. As pleasant as some of the other eight might be, they really don’t matter to me.
And it’s not like the records from No. 11 through No. 20 on that survey from forty years ago offer great riches, either. There is one nugget, though, at No. 15, that I would probably put in my Top Ten from that long-ago year. And it’s a record that’s evidently been mentioned just once in the fourteen-plus years I’ve been throwing stuff at the wall here: “I Could Never Miss You (More Than I Do)” by Lulu.
It was a major comeback record for the Scottish singer who’d first tickled the lower level of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964 with “Shout” and then flew to the top of the chart in 1967 with “To Sir With Love.” By 1981, Lulu had been absent from the charts for eleven years, but “I Could Never Miss You (More Than I Do)” went to No. 18 in an eighteen-week stay on the Hot 100 and spent three weeks at No. 2 on the magazine’s Adult Contemporary chart.
Here’s a clip of Otis Redding performing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” during the 1966 Stax-Volt European Tour. (The individual who posted the clip asked the question: “Did he cover the song from the Rolling Stones or did they cover it from him?” The correct answer, of course, is that the Stones wrote it and recorded it and Otis didn’t just cover it. He took it right away from them. But then, he did that with a lot of songs.)
Here’s one of the better performances of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” that I passed by on Tuesday: Neil Young at the 1992 concert celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Bob Dylan’s first album.
Video deleted.
I was hoping to find something by Gypsy, whose self-titled debut album I reposted this week. What showed up is a video that uses the album’s opening track, “Gypsy Queen, Part 1,” behind a collection of archival film and photos showing the group during 1970 or so. The quality and coherence of some of the visuals is questionable, but it’s still a pretty cool package.
As I’ve mentioned a fair number of times, it was in late 1969 and early 1970 that I began to listen regularly to Top 40 radio. Every once in a while, I wander over to one of the sites that catalog local radio charts from those years. I choose a station and a weekly chart almost at random and let my eyes wander up and down the list, with my internal radio playing snippets of songs first heard long ago.
I did that this morning, casting about for a theme for a Baker’s Dozen. I had at first thought about a list of songs with “Road” in their titles, as I’ve long wanted to share Elvis Presley’s version of “True Love Travels On A Gravel Road.” But I ran part of a random search and then thought to myself, well, maybe another day. So I looked at the charts for March of 1970, thinking I might just present the top thirteen songs of one week. But during that month, one of the top records everywhere I looked was Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that record at all. It’s a truly great record (as is the album from which it came). But I shared it here last August, and – besides that – it’s one of those omnipresent records. I don’t think anyone ever hears it and thinks, “Wow, when was the last time I heard that?” And that reaction is one I hope that at least some of the things I share here will generate.
So I looked at 1969, and I looked at 1971 and 1973 and 1975. And I was dissatisfied by what I saw. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood today, I thought. Then I had the thought that maybe I should go ahead and pretend that the Simon & Garfunkel record wasn’t there, present records Nos. 2 through 14 as a Baker’s Dozen Under No. 1 or something like that. So I went back to the WDGY (Twin Cities) chart for March 6, 1970, and looked at those records. Not a bad batch, but I’d have to go find two of them, Frijid Pink’s version of “House of the Rising Sun” and “Easy Come, Easy Go” by Bobby Sherman. (Now that I have the external hard drive, I can afford to use storage space for frivolities like songs by Bobby Sherman.)
And I got sidetracked. I not only found those two songs, but also found – and saved to the hard drive – Sherman’s “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” and “Seattle.” Being at least a little bit of an archivist, I wanted to find the catalog numbers for those. “Julie” was easy, but it’s a bit harder to track down the genesis of “Seattle,” which was Sherman’s version of the theme song for the 1968 TV show Here Come the Brides. (Sherman was one of the stars of the show.) Wikipedia says that Sherman’s version of the song reached the Cash Box Top 100 in 1969, but twenty minutes combing through the online charts cast doubt on that; I found Perry Como’s version of the song listed, but not Sherman’s. Another search left me looking at a picture of a record cut from the back of a cereal box. I doubt that was the only way “Seattle” was released, but by that time, I’d already spent thirty minutes on a record that’s not in my plans for today. So I’ll get back to it later and go ahead and present my rather odd idea.
A Baker’s Dozen Under No. 1, March 6, 1970
“Ma Belle Amie” by the Tee Set, Colossus single 107
“Who’ll Stop The Rain”/“Travelin’ Band” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fantasy single 637
“Give Me Just A Little More Time” by the Chairmen of the Board, Invictus single 9074
“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by the Hollies, Epic single 10532
“Easy Come, Easy Go” by Bobby Sherman, Metromedia single 177
“Thank You”/“Everybody Is A Star” by Sly & the Family Stone, Epic single 10555
“No Time” by the Guess Who, RCA single 0300
“House of the Rising Sun” by Frijid Pink, Parrot single 341
“Rainy Night In Georgia” by Brook Benton, Cotillion single 44057
“Oh Me, Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby)” by Lulu, Atco single 6722
“The Rapper” by the Jaggerz, Kama Sutra single 502
“Hey There, Lonely Girl” by Eddie Holman, ABC single 11240
“Kentucky Rain” by Elvis Presley, RCA single 9791
A few notes:
One of the quandaries facing me here is one that I think almost any radio lover encounters when trying to assess a cluster of songs from the past. Most of these songs are old friends, and it’s hard to look at them, to listen to them, objectively.
I think the best of this list are the Creedence sides along with “A Rainy Night In Georgia,” “Kentucky Rain.” and “Oh Me, Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby).” (That last should not be a surprise to regular readers.)
Of the rest of them, some have aged well, some haven’t, and some never had a chance.
“Give Me Just A Little More Time” and the two Sly & the Family Stone records still sound pretty good, although “Everybody Is A Star” sounds to me a little bit better than its A side, the full title of which is “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” The Hollies, the Guess Who and Eddie Holman are still good listening, too, though maybe a notch lower.
Frijid Pink’s “House of the Rising Sun” sounded better this morning – hearing it for the first time in years – than I expected it to, but my expectations were, I admit, low. I guess I won’t hit the skip button when it comes up again, though. The same holds true for “Ma Belle Amie,” which I kind of like, as clunky as it may be.
As for “The Rapper” and the Bobby Sherman record, well, if I had to trim these thirteen down to ten, they’d be the first ones cut. After that, well, I suppose the Frijid Pink song would fall, if only because I like to sing along during the French lines in “Ma Belle Amie.”
I’ve presented the B sides of the two double-sided singles because I think they’re less likely to be heard on the radio.
I wrote briefly a while ago about the pile of books waiting on my table to be read. Well, there’s been progress: the books are no longer piled on my table. They’re now all on a shelf on the new bookcases we put together last weekend.
Now I can see the other stuff that’s piled on the table next to the computer: records to rip, magazines to recycle, photodiscs to edit and save, and a whole raft of CD’s to catalog and date. But this is progress – not that long ago, I couldn’t see the photodiscs.
The number of books waiting to be read, however, never seems to diminish. That’s fine with me; along with music, reading is one of the major joys of my life, and – just as with music – my tastes are wide-ranging. (As I write that, I nod to myself that the same is quite evidently true of Casey, the proprietor of the blog titled The College Crowd Digs Me. Readers should stop by.) And the anticipation of reading a good book can be almost as pleasurable as the reading itself.
One of the better ones I’ve read in the past few months had the odd title Justinian’s Flea. It’s the first book written by William Rosen, who was a senior executive at two major publishers for more than twenty-five years, and it’s a great read, for those who love history. The flea of the title is the insect that sparked one of the great epidemics of bubonic and pneumonic plague in the ancient world in about the year 540 of the Common Era (previously tagged A.D.). The epidemic came out of Alexandria in Egypt, crossed the Mediterranean to Constantinople – where Emperor Justinian reigned – and then swept across southern Europe. (Constantinople is now Istanbul, Turkey, and at the time was the capital of the Roman Empire.)
Rosen’s thesis, and it makes sense, is that the disruption caused by the various waves of the epidemic – which devastated the areas that are now Turkey, Greece and Italy along with the modern Middle East and Mediterranean Africa – moved the focus of the ancient world from the eastern Mediterranean west to the areas that became Italy, France and Germany. The various waves of the plague lasted more than a hundred years and were remarkably widespread; reports of the time show outbreaks in Britain in the years 664 and 684. The waves of epidemics devastated the empire; Rosen notes that in the first two years of the epidemics, four million of the twenty-six million subjects of the Roman Empire perished, about sixteen percent. Within just more than forty years, the population of the empire was down to seventeen million. (If a plague were to strike the United States and its three hundred million citizens with the same ferocity and results, forty-eight million people would die in the first two years, with another fifty-seven million perishing in the next forty or so years.)
It’s a fascinating book: Rosen examines in fine detail how Justinian rose to become emperor, how the empire itself was shrinking, having lost Gaul (modern-day France) and Britannia in recent times, how the plague bacterium found (and still finds today) its hosts and how the fleas that host the plague then infect the rats that carry the plague wherever they go, which is almost always where humans go. And he tracks the results of the epidemics of plague, putting forth the theory – a theory supported by the historical record and the inferences that can be made from those records – that modern Europe’s long-ago beginnings sprouted from the devastation of the Roman Empire by the plague.
Today’s music
I do have music to share today, and it has nothing to do with the plague or the Roman Empire or infected rats or the rise of medieval society. I doubt that I can find a smooth transition from those topics to the music, so I won’t even try.
I pulled out today one of the records that’s been sitting in my pile of things to rip to mp3s almost from the time I got my turntable last Christmas. In the early days of the blog, I shared New Routes, the 1969 album the British pop singer Lulu recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with the help of the famed Muscle Shoals rhythm section. When I pulled New Routes out of the stacks, I also grabbed Melody Fair, another album Lulu recorded in the U.S., in 1970 at the Atlantic South-Criteria Studios in Miami. The tag from the used record store on Melody Fair said it was only in fair shape, so I’ve been reluctant to put it on the turntable and see what happened.
But I did so this morning, and I’m fairly pleased. There are a few more clicks and pops than I like, but they’re not so frequent as to make the record unlistenable. And it turns out to be a pretty good album.
Lulu had some help with it, of course. The Dixie Flyers – Jim Dickinson on piano and guitar, Charlie Freeman on guitar, Mike Utley on organ, Tommy McClure on bass and Sammy Creason on drums – provide the bulk of the backing. The full complement of the Memphis Horns came to Miami: Andrew Love and Ed Logan on tenor sax, Floyd Newman on baritone sax, Wayne Jackson on trumpet and Jack Dale on trombone.
Background vocals came from the Sweet Inspirations as well as from Eddie Brigati (of the Rascals), David Brigati, Carol Kirkpatrick and Chuck Kirkpatrick.
And the whole thing was produced by Atlantic stalwarts Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin.
So what did all that come up to?
As I said, it’s a pretty good record, and there are times when it kicks into a nice southern groove, sometimes syrupy slow, sometimes more up-tempo and sometimes with a sweet gospel feel. The best of those are: “Move To My Rhythm,” “To The Other Woman,” “Sweet Memories,” “Saved” and a quirky cover of the Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine.”
One that comes close is “I Don’t Care Anymore,” a disquieting tale of a southern country girl’s descent into prostitution (a pretty tough topic for 1970, as I think about it). The central problem with that track – and it’s a problem that arises in bits and pieces through the album – is that Lulu’s voice doesn’t have the grit to quite pull it off. Doris Duke’s version, on her I’m A Loser, also from 1970, works much better, and I can imagine Dusty Springfield also getting to the heart of the song in a way Lulu could not. (As I did some digging, I learned that the song was written by R&B legend Jerry [Swamp Dog] Williams along with Gary Bonds and Maurice Gimbel. I wonder if Gary Bonds is the same as Gary U.S. Bonds of “Quarter to Three” fame?)
The rest of the tracks – with one exception – are good pop efforts that don’t seem to owe a lot to the pedigrees of the backing musicians or to the locale in which they were recorded. The one track that doesn’t work – to my ears – is “Vine Street,” a more-than-quirky Randy Newman tune.
Overall, Melody Fair is a pretty good album, and – as I noted above – the sound is pretty good, if not perfect.
Tracks:
Good Day Sunshine
After The Feeling Is Gone
I Don’t Care Anymore
(Don’t Go) Please Stay
Melody Fair
Take Good Care Of Yourself
Vine Street
Move To My Rhythm
To The Other Woman
Hum A Song (From Your Heart)
Sweet Memories
Saved
One of the over-used epigrams of the 1960s was the quotation from Plato: “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.” It seemed hip at the time to envision the structure of society crumbling when faced with the works of the Grateful Dead, the Velvet Underground, MC5 and the Rolling Stones (among many, many others). One wonders how the denizens of Woodstock Nation – or Altamont Nation, for those with a darker, more cynical bent – would have fared had the “walls of the city” truly been shaken.
It’s an interesting idea: Had the late 1960s actually been an era of revolution, how would the followers of tie-dyed fashion, the children of the suburbs, have fared in the new society following a true revolution? Probably pretty poorly, I would imagine. The new leaders, those deemed sufficiently pure ideologically, would most likely have found the vast majority of the so-called revolutionaries to be dilettantes at best, bent on changing their personal circumstances rather than the societal structure that gave them generally comfortable lives. I have the mental image of thousands of young people banished to bleak farms in the countryside, undergoing education and orientation to revolutionary ideals as they grow strawberries and potatoes. “This ain’t what I signed up for,” I can hear one or another say. “I just wanted to drop out and find a chick in San Francisco!”
It’s hard to say how close America was to an actual revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One can read the histories and memoirs of the era – Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage comes to mind – and not get a real sense. Despite the forty-year-old regrets on the far left end of the political spectrum and the still-potent rage that resides on the far right, it seems to me that the political upheaval of the times flared out without having much impact. (The civil rights and women’s movements, on the other hand, changed American life immensely, but those are other topics for perhaps other days.)
The real revolution, when it came along, was cultural, and it was in Plato’s “mode of the music.” I’ve seen a number of reviews, analyses and think-pieces in magazines and newspapers over the past couple of years – sorry, but I don’t have specific citations – that indicate that once more an American music form has become the world’s predominant music. Those pieces note that in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, rock ’n’ roll became the world’s music (though rock was recycled for a time through British sensibilities) and the same thing has happened in the last twenty years with hip-hop.
Now, I’m not anything like an expert on hip-hop and its stylistic cousins. I like some of it, have some in the collection, but it’s not my music. I do note its importance, though. And these thoughts about modes changing and the quaking walls of the city came about today because of the last track that came up while I was compiling my random list of thirteen songs from 1981.
“The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five was one of those tracks that changed the music universe and continue to echo into the world at large. In his 1989 book The Heart of Rock and Soul, Dave Marsh puts the track at No. 179 and calls it “the Birth of the Nation” of hip-hop. He also notes, “play this first masterpiece of hip-hop at the crushing volume at which it was intended to be heard and s**t will start shakin’ you never imagined had any wobble in it.”
Marsh goes on to say that “hardly anybody outside the New York City area has ever even heard the damn thing.” That may have been true in 1989, when copyright difficulties – arising from the multitude of clips taken from other performers’ tracks – got in the way of Grandmaster Flash and his colleagues. But if nothing else has, the advent of the ’Net in the [eighteen] years since Marsh wrote has spread “The Adventures . . .” and other, similar, compiled tracks worldwide. So, if one accepts the idea that hip-hop has in the last [twenty-six] years become the soundtrack to the world, the last track on today’s Baker’s Dozen is what the real revolution sounded like when it began.
A Baker’s Dozen from 1981
“Old Photographs” by Jim Capaldi from Let The Thunder Cry
“I Can’t Stand It” by Eric Clapton, RSO single 1060
“Fire On The Bayou” by the Neville Brothers from Fiyo On The Bayou
“The Innocent Age” by Dan Fogelberg from The Innocent Age
“Carry On” by J. J. Cale from Shades
“Edge of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks from Belladonna
“This Little Girl” by Gary U.S. Bonds, EMI America single 8079
“Waiting On A Friend” by the Rolling Stones from Tattoo You
“Queen of Hearts” by Juice Newton, Capitol single 4997
“Upper Mississippi Shakedown” by the Lamont Cranston Band from Shakedown
“I Could Never Miss You (More Than I Do)” by Lulu, Alfa single 7006
“Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind & Fire, ARC single 02536
“The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Sugar Hill single 577
A few comments on some of the other tracks:
Jim Capaldi’s “Old Photographs” is a beautiful song, tinged with regret the way most memoirs should be. But it’s a long way from the sometimes edgy work Capaldi and his mates in Traffic did once upon a time.
Just like Harry Chapin – whose song “Sequel” showed up here the other week – Dan Fogelberg is a polarizing musician: One either finds his work compelling or finds it overblown. In general, I like it, though I did think that his double album The Innocent Age flirted with lyrical pomposity. Even so, it was musically gorgeous.
If the Gary U.S. Bonds track sounds like Bruce Springsteen, well, there’s a reason. Springsteen and Miami Steve Van Zandt produced the track and a good portion of the album it came from, Dedication. Springsteen’s admiration for Bonds, and his love of Bonds’ early 1960s recordings of “Quarter to Three” and “New Orleans,” is no secret, of course.
I was glad to see “Upper Mississippi Shakedown” by the Lamont Cranston Band make the random list. St. Cloud has a baseball team in a regional summer college league, the River Bats, and hearing the Cranston track while sipping a cold beverage and taking in the early evening sights of a small baseball park is a fine experience, indeed!
Every once in a while during the years this blog generally deals with – and I haven’t bothered to sit down and calculate how frequently this actually happened, so that generality will have to do – a song/record came along with an opening that was utterly electric.
I’m sure others had the experience, too: The first time you heard it, you stopped whatever it was you were doing and stared, thinking to yourself, “What in the world is that and how did they do that?” Then, if you’re like me, you went to the turntable and lifted the needle and started the song over again. Or, in at least one case long ago, I rewound the tape and started it again (the awkwardness of which taught me why tape was never going to replace vinyl; it was too painstaking to cue up one specific song). These days, of course, you don’t have to do anything but push the “back” button on the CD or mp3 player.
But no matter how you get back to them, there are songs that announce themselves with such force and vitality that they bring a moment of stunned silence and require a second playing immediately.
That experience came to mind this morning because of the presence on today’s Baker’s Dozen of “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad?” from Derek & the Dominos’ classic album Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs. The first time I heard the Eric Clapton-Bobby Whitlock tune was not, for good or ill, in its original context. I wrote in an earlier post about buying the 1972 compilation Eric Clapton At His Best, a compilation that led me to some of my favorite musicians. “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad?” leads off the last side of that two-record set, and I recall jerking my head up as I heard the churning A-minor to G-major riff, followed by the surge of Whitlock’s organ and the wailing guitar lead.
That certainly wasn’t the first time a song announced itself with such power, but it’s a first listening I recall more clearly than most, and the song and the recording remain a favorite of mine to this day.
There is, of course, another song on Layla that announces itself with anthemic ferocity, but I don’t recall the first time I heard the album’s title song. Most likely it was soon after the album’s release in 1970, when “Layla,” the song, was released as a single but went nowhere. Certainly by the time the single was re-released two years later, it was a familiar piece of music, but familiarity didn’t – and still doesn’t – make the opening any less gripping.
A few others come to mind as well. Not all of them are on the same level as “Layla” or “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad?” but then, very few songs are. But some of the songs with, to me, memorable introductions are:
“One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later),” the Bob Dylan tune that comes from his classic Blonde on Blonde album. For some reason, the European edition of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits included this wonderful cut (I never did bother to figure out what recording from the American edition was left off the European version), and when it rolled around on my tape player one evening in Denmark, I sat straight up at the harmonica announcing itself over a rolling accompaniment.
“Question” by the Moody Blues. I love the madly strummed guitars, punctuated as they are by the thrusts of mellotron (I assume) and horns.*
“She Was Waiting For Her Mother At The Station In Torino And You Know I Love You Baby But It’s Getting Too Heavy To Laugh” by Shawn Phillips. Unlike its title, this song – which opens Phillips’ 1970 album Second Contribution – proves that less is more. Phillips opens the song almost a capella, with only the distant rumble of (I think) tympani providing an accent. The sound of his voice is so distant as he begins to sing that the ear strains to hear and at the same time, the listener – this listener, anyway – marvels at his audacity in opening an album so quietly. (The song is, I imagine, colloquially known as “Woman.”)
“Photograph” by Ringo Starr has an opening figure that would sound like a fanfare – and almost a clichéd one at that – if it were performed by horns of any sort. On piano, it’s an effective and ear-catching entry to a nicely written and produced piece of popcraft (and it has one hell of a saxophone solo, too, performed by Bobby Keys, who at times seems to spell his last name “Keyes”).
I would guess that at least twenty songs by the Rolling Stones belong in this list. “Satisfaction” would likely be the earliest, although it’s never really grabbed me the way other songs listed here do. “Brown Sugar” starts with a bang, as does (appropriately) “Start Me Up.” For my nickel, though, the most gripping introduction to a Stones’ song comes from the chiming guitar that starts “Gimme Shelter.” Sly, spooky and from another world, the slowly layered introduction is perfect for a song about how the world has begun to fall apart around us and we’ve noticed it far too late.
Well, that’s five in addition to the two from Layla, and that’s likely enough for the day. I imagine that as soon as I post this, I’ll think of two or three others I should have listed instead. But that’s one of the joys of writing about music: Two lists on the same topic compiled at separate moments can be utterly different.
And I’d like to know, what are the intros that grab you? Leave a comment, if you would. And enjoy today’s Baker’s Dozen, our second exploration of the year 1970.
“Old Times, Good Times,” by Stephen Stills from Stephen Stills
“Factory Band” by Ides of March from Vehicle
“Poor Boy” by Nick Drake from Bryter Later
“Feelin’ Alright” by Lulu from New Routes
“Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad” by Derek & the Dominos from Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs
“Delta Lady” by Joe Cocker from Mad Dogs & Englishmen
“You and Me” by Aretha Franklin from Spirit In The Dark
“If You Gotta Go, Go Now” by Rick Nelson from Rick Nelson In Concert (The Troubadour 1969)
“Sweet Peace Within” by Mylon Lefvre and Broken Heart from Mylon
“That’s A Touch I Like” by Jesse Winchester from Jesse Winchester
“Gypsy Queen, Part Two” by Gypsy from Gypsy
“Baby, Take Me In Your Arms” by Jefferson, Janus single 106
“Country Road” by Merry Clayton from Gimme Shelter
Some notes on some of the songs:
“Old Times Good Times” might have showed up on an earlier Baker’s Dozen, but it’s too good a song to click past. It’s from Stills’ first – and best – solo album, and Jimi Hendrix provided the guitar part.
According to All But Forgotten Oldies, Jefferson was the pseudonym for British-born pop star Geoff Turton. Prior to going solo, Turton had been the lead singer for the Rocking Berries, a 1960s British pop group. “Baby Take Me In Your Arms” reached No. 23 in the U.S.
Mylon Lefevre, whose “Sweet Peace Within” shows up here, began his musical career with his family’s Southern Gospel group at the age of 12. His work on Mylon with Broken Heart is among the best of his career although one can make an argument that 1973’s On The Road To Freedom – with British rocker Alvin Lee and a supporting cast of stellar sidemen – was better. Nevertheless, “Sweet Peace Within” is a very nice listen from a performer whose work seems to be forgotten these days.
Merry Clayton’s Gimme Shelter album is legendary, as is her scarifying background vocal on the Rolling Stones’ single of the same name. “Country Road,” written by James Taylor, is the album’s opening song and sets the stage for a spectacular solo debut.
*The mellontron/horns are only on the album version of “Question.” The single version, which I almost certainly heard first, has only strummed guitars and a bit of percussion leading to the vocal. Note added April 22, 2011.
The main thing that makes this LP interesting is that Lulu recorded it at the famed Muscle Shoals Sound studios in Alabama, with the renowned rhythm section behind her: Roger Hawkins on drums, David Hood on bass, Barry Beckett on keyboards. In addition, Duane Allman was one of four guitarists who pitched in; Eddie Hinton, Jimmy Johnson and Cornell Dupree were the others.
Still, this is not quite the kick-ass southern soul fest it might have been. Here’s [the] All-Music Guide take on it:
“Lulu in Muscle Shoals, with Duane Allman on guitar? It’s just too bad somebody went a little wild with big-band and orchestra arrangements, for with these songs and a small combo, this could have been really fine material. Blame can go to the producing triumvirate [Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd & Arif Mardin], but also to her husband. During this stage of Lulu’s career she was married to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, who seems to have had a habit of luring artists into recording near-muzak, with the ‘near’ added out of a sense of politeness. For this to be happening in the musically gritty atmosphere of Muscle Shoals, with not only Allman but three other hot guitarists on board, is practically cause for criminal proceedings. Lulu still has that thick, soulful voice, but at times the way it sits on the arrangements may make the listener think of an Anne Murray record. On the positive side, the cover of the Bee Gees’ ‘Marley Purt Drive’ is a rollicking version of one of the Gibbs brothers’ best, and largely forgotten, songs. Miracles are done with the warhorse ‘Mr. Bojangles,’ between the bluesy guitar licks and the intoxicating surprise that Lulu is actually pulling it off. Then again there is ‘Feelin’ Allright,’ which should have been great but instead sounds like a high school stage band warming up.”
I tend to agree, with a couple of reservations: Both “Dirty Old Man” and “Sweep Around Your Own Back Door,” cook, with Allman providing sweet work on the former for certain (it was included on one of his posthumous anthologies in the 1970s) and likely on the latter (based simply on the sound).
The rest is sometimes a little too sweet, but it does contain one of my favorite recordings of all time: “Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby),” which I’ve loved since the first time I heard it coming out of my radio speakers in 1970.
Track list
Marley Purt Drive
In The Morning
People In Love
After All (I Live My Life)
Feelin’ Alright
Dirty Old Man
Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby)
Is That You Love
Mr. Bojangles
Where’s Eddie
Sweep Around Your Own Back Door
Lulu – New Routes [1970]
Once again, this is vinyl, 37 years old this time, so some pops and snaps are to be expected, though I thought the sound was pretty good. Enjoy!
Every once in a while, some of the music bloggers whose work I read – and I read far more than the few that are linked here – talk about the influences on their music listening. And among the chief influences for many of us, it seems, are older siblings. They brought records home and played them, and we younger sibs heard the music on a regular basis. We may not have always liked it, but eventually, that music – and I’ve read this on many a blog – becomes part of the soundtrack of the younger sib’s life and is cherished as such.
The Texas Gal says she can easily trace some of her preferences to her older sisters, who are ten and five years older than she. And I can trace some of mine to my sister, who is three years older than I. It wasn’t that she bought a lot of music. I don’t think listening to records was ever as large a part of my sister’s life as it became in mine. I do recall her on occasion in the early to mid-1960s spending a relative pittance for a grab bag of ten or so 45s; you usually got one or two hits and lot of misses in those bags.
(All the 45s in the house of our youth eventually came to me, and I think those grab bags were the sources of my copies of Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party,” Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock” and a few other well-known songs. On the other hand, one of those grab bags also provided “You’d Better Keep Runnin’” by Frank Gari. Who? Exactly.)
It was my sister’s albums, however, that became part of my soundtrack. Again, she didn’t have a lot of them, but I heard those she did have as she played them and then when I played them during my senior year of high school and my first year of college. That next summer, she got married and took her records away with her. I’ve found most of them over the years since, on vinyl mostly, and now a few on CD: Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, Judy Collins’ Wildflowers, Cat Stevens’ Teaser and the Firecat, a unique record titled Traditional Jewish Memories and more. The one record I’ve missed from her collection and have not been able to find is John Denver’s Whose Garden Was This, but only this week, an on-line friend provided me with the album in mp3 format, so I at least have the music.*
But the two records of my sister’s that I likely played most often were two by Glenn Yarbrough, given to her by a boyfriend. They were The Lonely Things, which is a collection of Rod McKuen songs, and For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her, a 1967 album on which Yarbrough covers current folk and folk-rock tunes. I have a CD of the latter album, and I love it still. But it does remind me of the first time that I recall my life colliding with adult realities.
My sister spent a portion of the summer of 1968 studying in France. About midway through her absence, that boyfriend stopped by and took me out for a Coke. As we sat, he told me that when my sister came home, he would not be in town. He and a buddy had joined the Army, and he asked me to inform my sister of that when she came home from France. I was not quite fifteen, and here was this young man – whom I liked very much – entrusting me with such an important task, such an unhappy message. I don’t recall when I told my sister, or how I told her, but I imagine I did it quite artlessly.
(Within a year, the boyfriend came home from Vietnam badly wounded, and his role as my sister’s boyfriend ended sometime after that. His buddy died in Vietnam, one of fourteen men from St. Cloud to die there. Sometime in this past year, I saw in our local paper that the former boyfriend had passed away. I called my sister and told her; she was glad I did.)
Anyway, today’s Baker’s Dozen is from 1967, and it starts with “Crucifixion,” the closer to one of those Glen Yarbrough records, a song that always makes me think of a message delivered in 1968.
“Crucifixion” by Glenn Yarbrough from For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her
“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by Cannonball Adderly, Capitol single 5798
“Shake ’Em On Down” by Mississippi Fred McDowell from Mama Says I’m Crazy
“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by the Buckinghams, Columbia single 44182
“People Are Strange” by the Doors from Strange Days
“To Sir With Love” by Lulu, Epic single 10187
“Red Balloon” by Tim Hardin from Tim Hardin 2
“Smokestack Lightning” by John Hammond from I Can Tell
“Rollin’ & Tumblin’” by Canned Heat from Canned Heat
“Sit Down I Think I Love You” by Buffalo Springfield from Buffalo Springfield
“Lonely Man” by Spencer Wiggins, Goldwax single 330
“This Wheel’s On Fire” by Bob Dylan & The Band from The Basement Tapes
“Statesboro Blues” by the Youngbloods from The Youngbloods
A few notes on some of the songs:
“Crucifixion” was written by Phil Ochs, one of the leading talents of the protest-song era in the early 1960s. Supposedly a parable of assassination, it’s a frightening tale that asks, of course: Do we ever really learn anything? I fear I know what the answer is. Ochs’ version, on his Pleasures of the Harbor album, is good, but probably because of familiarity, I prefer Yarbrough’s take.
It struck me as funny that both hit versions of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” popped up on the RealPlayer. At least it shows that it truly is a random selection.
Mississippi Fred McDowell – who actually was from Tennessee, and who knows how that happened? – was one of the rarities of the blues boom of the early 1960s: a performer of traditional music who had not been recorded during the 1920s and 1930s. His stuff was new and vibrant when he was discovered working on his farm in the 1960s. He was also a rarity in that he at times played electric guitar, a fact that severely displeased some blues purists.
John Hammond is actually John Hammond, Jr., the son of the legendary talent scout and executive for Columbia Records. Hammond’s album I Can Tell was recorded at Muscle Shoals with the backing of the famed sessions musicians there. Also lending a hand on the record – though not necessarily on “Smokestack Lightning” – were Duane Allman and Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson of The Band.
Spencer Wiggins was a Memphis native who recorded a series of powerful deep soul singles during the 1960s but never got the hit – and the attention – he deserved. Much of his work is available on CD and is well worth seeking out.
As always, bit rates will vary. Enjoy!
*I was in error here. There was a fairly good copy of Whose Garden Was This sitting in the stacks as I wrote, but I either didn’t check the stacks or it was misfiled. In any event, it was nice to get the digital files without having to go through the minor drudgery of ripping the album myself. [Note added April 20, 2011.]
I wonder how likely this story is in today’s music and radio world:
Some local kids decide to form a band, and through hard work, a love of music and a little bit of radio luck, the band records some songs, has one or two of them pressed on a 45 (or burned on a CD these days, I guess) and the music finds its way onto the air and to the top of the local Top 40 stations’ playlists.
It reads like the concept for a B-list movie, one that’s not truly awful but is nevertheless utterly predictable, its script packed to the gills with rough and ready clichés and with clueless lines like the earnest “Our record’s too good not to make it!” or the cynical “Freakin’ radio weasels! They say our freakin’ sound is out of date!”
But during the years I was a radio listener – the late 1960s and early 1970s, in case you haven’t been paying attention – stories like that (although perhaps without the radio weasels) happened frequently, from the largest markets on the coasts to the smaller markets in the Midwest and South. In my exploration of Blogworld, I often come across stories of still-beloved bands that had local hits with 45s and/or albums. My pal Jeff at AM, Then FM wrote just this week about the upsurge of “fierce Wisconsin nostalgia” for an early Seventies band named Clicker, a wave of nostalgia that it seems he had a hand in creating with earlier posts.
In Minnesota, several local bands during the early rock era reached the local charts, delighting their cadres of fans in the Upper Midwest. One of those bands, the Trashmen, hit the national stage and saw their immortal record “Surfin’ Bird” spend two weeks at No. 4 on the Billboard chart as January turned into February in 1964.
Another one of those local records played a part – how large, I’m not sure – in completing my metamorphosis to committed Top 40 listener. I’ve mentioned before that it was during the last half of August 1969 when I really began to listen to Top 40 radio. Finding myself hanging around with St. Cloud Tech’s football team during the two weeks of summer practice, I realized that the radio – likely tuned to KDWB in the Twin Cities – was providing a pretty good soundtrack for my life, at least for that portion of it spent on the sidelines of a football field and in the locker room across the way.
There were a lot of good records on the air. According to the Airheads Radio Survey Archive, the Top Ten on KDWB for this week in 1969 was:
“Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones
“It’s Getting Better” by Mama Cass
“A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash
“Pain” by the Mystics
“Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond
“Hurt So Bad” by the Lettermen
“Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” by Kenny Rogers & the First Edition
“Lay Lady Lay” by Bob Dylan
“Put A Little Love In Your Heart” by Jackie DeShannon
“Polk Salad Annie” by Tony Joe White
Of those ten, and there are some great ones in there, the one that matters here this morning is “Pain,” the No. 4 record from forty-one years ago this week. The Mystics were a Twin Cities group (originally called Michael’s Mystics), and the single was released on the Metromedia label. According to ARSA, “Pain” had been the No. 1 single on KDWB for the preceding week, and the same was true at WDGY, the Twin Cities’ other main Top 40 station of the time.
And when “Pain” came on the air, there was something about it that made it stand out even in the elite company of hits from the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and the rest. The hard-charging horn-laced introduction is what grabbed me, I think. The tale told by the lyric is okay, but I think it was the horns. I don’t know who to thank for the arrangement; the credit on the 45 reads only “A Path Production.” But almost every time “Pain” came on the radio that late summer and early fall, I’d stop what I was doing and just listen. It remained one of my favorite songs long after it fell down the charts and its airplay ended.
Not that I did anything about it. If I’d been thinking at all, I would have headed out to Woolworth’s or Kresge’s or Musicland and gotten myself a copy of the record. I didn’t.
But I was enamored enough of the record to pop for a ticket to a high school dance a couple weeks into the school year. The ticket cost all of fifty cents, I imagine. I had no plans of getting on the dance floor, nor did my pal Mike, who went with me. We’d be content to hang along the gym wall in the old Central School, listening to the tunes and watching the girls on the dance floor. We were there for one reason only: The band for the dance was the Mystics, and we wanted to hear “Pain.” And, of course, about two hours into the three-hour dance, the Mystics obliged. Satisfied, Mike and I made our ways home.
It was, I think, the first time I’d heard a radio hit played live by the original band. And that memory is sweet.
It was years before I ever heard the song again; in fact, after a while, it would be years before I even though about “Pain” again. You know how life goes: Things happen and more things happen, and some of the things you thought you’d never forget end up pushed to the back on the shelves of memory, gathering dust until someday for some reason, something pushes one of those things to the front of the shelf, where it seems shiny and new again.
It was the mid-1990s, so call it twenty-five years since I’d heard the Mystics’ single. One of the guys who played in the band at Jake’s had played, if I recall correctly, in another well-known Twin Cities band, Danny’s Reasons. During a break one night, he was telling tales, and he mentioned the Mystics.
“The Mystics?” I asked. “The guys who released ‘Pain’?” The very ones, Larry said. I hadn’t thought about “Pain” for years. The conversation wandered on as I made a mental note to check the singles bins at Cheapo’s every once in a while. And a couple of weeks later, when I saw a poster for a record show at no more than eight blocks from my home, I made a note to head out on Saturday and see what I could find.
Well, I found a copy of “Pain.” In its original Metromedia sleeve. For something like $100. The fellow obligingly pulled the 45 from the sleeve and put it on the turntable. I listened to the record for the first time in about twenty-five years, looked at the price tag on the plastic sleeve and shook my head. “Not this time,” I told the fellow regretfully.
From then on, I’d check for the record sporadically at the places where I bought my LPs. After I moved further south and east in Minneapolis in 1999, I had new places to check. No luck. And once the Texas Gal and I moved to St. Cloud in 2002, well, there were really no places to check except on-line stores. I took a look this morning.
There is one copy of “Pain” offered for sale through Music Stack.com. It’s priced at $46.92. One copy of the 45 was priced at $75 at the Global E-commerce Mega-Market (GEMM) but was evidently sold this morning. Prices like those have been pretty consistent over the past eight years, when there’s been a copy of the record on the market.
But I don’t need those copies. On a January Saturday in 2003, the Texas Gal and I made one of our occasional trips to the small town of Pierz to stock up on bacon at Thielen Meats. On the way back, we came through the very small town of Royalton, on U.S. Highway 10 about twenty miles north of St. Cloud. An antique shop was doing business in what appeared to be an old bank building, so we pulled over and went in.
I’m not sure what the Texas Gal looked at, but in the second room I entered, I found a tall rotating rack filled with 45s carefully put into paper and then plastic sleeves. I began digging. And about midway down the second side, I did a double-take: “Pain” by the Mystics. Eyebrows raised, I looked for the price, and I did another double-take: two dollars.
Needless to say, the record came home with me. And a few years later, when the Texas Gal gave me a USB turntable for Christmas, “Pain” was the first record I pulled from the shelves to convert to an mp3. It still sounds as good as it did coming out of the speakers on an August day forty-one years ago this week.
(The record shown and used in the video is the original release, according to reader Yah Shure, not a later release, as I originally stated. My copy of the record is Metromedia 130, and the record is credited to simply “The Mystics.” It’s worth noting that the Grass Roots also recorded “Pain,” releasing it as an album track on their 1969 LP Lovin’ Things. They did a good job, but they’re not the Mystics, you know.)
A Six-Pack from the Ultimate Jukebox, No. 31
“Pain” by the Mystics, Metromedia 130 [1969]
“Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You)” by Lulu from New Routes [1970]
“Sky High” by Jigsaw, Chelsea 3022 [1975]
“We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, Cotillion 44251 [1979]
“More Than This” by Roxy Music from Avalon [1982]
“The Boys of Summer” by Don Henley, Geffen 29141 [1984]
Sometime in February 1970, I was home from school for a day, and I had the radio on as I was sitting up in bed sniffling or coughing or whatever I was doing. I stopped dead still, however, when I heard the quiet introduction to Lulu’s “Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You).” I listened, entranced, as she took the song from that quiet start to unexpected places. I knew Lulu from “To Sir With Love,” which went to No. 1 in 1967, but this sounded like a different singer, one dealing with much more than a schoolgirl crush. From crayons to perfume, indeed. Lulu’s warm and intimate performance took the record to No. 22 in that late winter. Add to that performance the fact that I was just beginning to know what it was like to be a fool for someone, and you have all you need to make a song a favorite for life.
Lulu – “Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You)”
There are no emotional connections, no tales of hearing my life in the music, with Jigsaw’s “Sky High.” It’s just one of those records that has always been fun to listen to. The heartbreak content of the lyrics, to tell the truth, doesn’t seem to work, mostly because the guys from Jigsaw – the Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits says the quartet came from England while All-Music Guide says the band was founded in Brisbane, Australia, in 1966 – seem to be having too much fun singing about their love being blown sky high to be grieving too much about it. And it is fun, from the opening twanging – what instrument makes that sound? – through the swirling strings and punchy horns of the introduction onward. “Sky High” spent two weeks at No. 3 in December of 1975.
Speaking of fun, from the instant I hear the drum figure and quick piano runs of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” there’s a smile on my face. The disco proclamation of kinship spent two weeks at No. 2 during June of 1979, brightening the summer and providing that season’s Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team with an anthem. With their athletic skills thus supplemented, the Pirates – led by thirty-nine-year-old Willie (Pops) Stargell – won baseball’s World Series that fall, winning the final three games to defeat the Baltimore Orioles in seven games. And seeing the Orioles lose – just like the effervescent vocals and sly beat of “We Are Family” – is always a reason to smile.
I love album covers. Not to the extent that I have any framed and displayed on the walls of the study, although I do have a large poster of the cover to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the wall. But I’ve enjoyed over the years the art of good album covers, and I’ve also enjoyed over time the utterly inept work put into bad album covers. But only once have I ever bought an album based only on the look of the cover. It was the summer of 1989. I’d returned to Minnesota after my generally unhappy time on the Dakota prairie, and I was celebrating my return by touring Minneapolis-area record shops. In a shop in the suburb of Richfield, I came across a cover illustration so arresting that I bought the album without having the slightest idea what I would hear.
The record was Avalon, the 1982 effort by Roxy Music. All I knew of Roxy Music at the time was that the group was British. I had no awareness of Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera or any of the other members of the group over the years; I didn’t know about Siren, Manifesto, Country Life, or any of the other albums. I was clueless. But the cover to Avalon fascinated me. I took the record home and, luckily, I liked it, especially “More Than This” and the title tune. In later years, I explored the rest of Roxy Music’s catalog, and I found the earlier albums well done but a little brittle and fussy, not nearly as warm and inviting as Avalon. It’s fine when tracks from those earlier albums pop up at random. But I don’t go looking for them. Avalon I do, especially that shimmering title tune and “More Than This,” which was a No. 6 hit in Britain (No. 103 here in the U.S.).
It was almost winter – the second week of December 1984 – when Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” entered the Top 40. Even in the relatively mild winter of mid-Missouri, the wind whistled around the corners of the house, making winter seem harder. To me, that matched the sonic dish that Henley had served, and I had the sense that he was singing about things much more fundamental than the passing of one warm season:
Out on the road today,
I saw a Dead Head sticker on a Cadillac. A voice inside my head said ‘Don’t look back. ‘You can never look back.’
The final verses – I can see you, your brown skin shining in the sun . . . I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong – are more traditional for making a pledge of fealty. But what sticks with me from the record – which went to No. 5 during the second week of February 1985 – is that warning, one I ignore frequently but with greater misgivings as the days race by: ‘Don’t look back. You can never look back.”
(Sequence of Mystics’ name and of record’s release have been corrected since post was first published; thanks for the info, Yah Shure.)
Echoes In The Wind Archives 