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Posts tagged ‘1968’

Fifty Year Friday: Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, and Blood Sweat & Tears

BeggarsBanquetLP

Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet

Though not one of my favorite albums, one has to give credit where credit due and there are a number of reasons to recommend this often blues-based, somewhat historic album.

The first is the earthy and relatively respectful rendition of Robert Wilkins”Prodigal Son.” Is that Mick Jagger on vocals?  Hard to believe…

The second is Nicki Hopkins on piano.

The third is the mournful “No Expectations.”

The fourth is the bluegrass/country-blues “Dear Doctor.”

The fifth is the anthem-like “Salt of the Earth” replete with a chorus.

The sixth is the Keith Richards application of his chance-discovery of the already existing technique of five-string “open G” tuning, basically removing or avoiding the low sixth string, with the five strings tuned G-D-G-B-D (aligning with the overtone series of G-G-D-G-B-D) and in the case of Richards, and others to follow, using a sliding three-fingered guitar technique.

The sixth is the stretching of the then-current record-industry norms with songs with lyrics like “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Parachute Woman”. and “Stray Cat Blues”, the last two, perhaps even more offensive now in the context of political correctness than in 1968.

The seventh is the historical impact of this record, setting the tone, whether we like it or not, for how future bands would approach traditional blues and country music (like the music found on pre-WWII 78s)  and songs about Satan and groupies.

This work veers away from the accelerating trend of greater complexity and sophistication, taking a U-turn towards simplification.  It really is a collection of the basics of music, some as simple and crude as the album cover the Stones had originally intended for the album.  My apologies if I offend anyone by using the original LP cover that I associate with this album instead of the one prevalent on the CD reissues.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

All songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, except “Prodigal Son” by Robert Wilkins.

Side one
No.TitleLength
1.“Sympathy for the Devil“6:18
2.“No Expectations“3:56
3.“Dear Doctor“3:28
4.“Parachute Woman“2:20
5.“Jigsaw Puzzle“6:06
Total length:22:08
Side two
No.TitleLength
6.“Street Fighting Man“3:16
7.“Prodigal Son”2:51
8.“Stray Cat Blues“4:38
9.“Factory Girl“2:09
10.“Salt of the Earth“4:48
Total length:17:42

Personnel

The Rolling Stones

Additional personnel

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Stevie Wonder: For Once in My Life

Recorded in 1967, while Stevie Wonder was still 17, this ninth studio album, released December 8, 1968, after Wonder was eighteen years old, is really the work of a mature adult artist.  Though Wonder only is credited as a co-author for the eight selections that lists his name, one can distinctly hear the composer of the early seventies albums. Besides the developing compositional skills, we have strong vocals and quality harmonica and keyboard work .

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

Side One

  1. “For Once in My Life” (Ron Miller, Orlando Murden) 2:48
  2. “Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day” (Henry Cosby, Sylvia Moy, Stevie Wonder) 2:45
  3. “You Met Your Match” (Lula Mae Hardaway, Don Hunter, Wonder) 2:37
  4. “I Wanna Make Her Love Me” (Henry Cosby, Hardaway, Moy, Wonder) 2:52
  5. “I’m More Than Happy (I’m Satisfied)” (Henry Cosby, Cameron Grant, Moy, Wonder) 2:56
  6. “I Don’t Know Why” (Hardaway, Hunter, Paul Riser, Stevie Wonder) 2:46

Side Two

  1. “Sunny” (Bobby Hebb) 4:00
  2. “I’d Be a Fool Right Now” (Cosby, Moy, Wonder) 2:54
  3. “Ain’t No Lovin'” (Hardaway, Hunter, Riser, Wonder) 2:36
  4. “God Bless the Child” (Arthur Herzog Jr., Billie Holiday) 3:27
  5. “Do I Love Her” (Moy, Wonder) 2:58
  6. “The House on the Hill” (Lawrence Brown, Berry Gordy, Allen Story) 2:36

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James Taylor: James Taylor

There is always something reassuringly soothing in James Taylor’s voice. Like so many baby boomers, my first exposure to Taylor was his second album, Sweet Baby James, which my next door neighbor loaned my in 1970.

This first album, released December 6, 1968, and on the new, but short-lived, Beatles’ Apple label, which signed Taylor after Apple label A&R director Peter Asher (friend of Paul McCartney, brother of Paul’s girlfriend from 1963 to 1968, and member of the British group Peter and Gordon, which had recorded several of McCartney’s songs including their #1 hit, “A World Without Love“) had heard a forty-five minute demo tape Taylor had sent into to the new label. 

Overall this is an amazingly strong debut, and rivals or surpasses the quality of later Taylor albums, with the exception of the second one, which has the wonderfully transcendent “Fire and Rain.  Beatles fans should note that George Harrison and Paul McCartney make guest appearances on “Carolina on My Mind” and jazz fans should note Freddie Redd’s keyboard contributions. 

Besides James Taylor’s simple, home-spun, relaxed vocals, and his quality song-writing, there are some sophisticated instrumental introductions written by arranger Richard Anthony Hewson that are worth mentioning, whether they are an integral part of the track, as with “Sunshine Sunshine” or seem more like they were added after the final take of the song.  Yes, they don’t effectively assist in creating a single artistic identity to the album, or even bring out the best in the inherent nature of these James Taylor compositions, but both the handful of introductions and the arrangements have merit and add interest to the album, bringing an additional dimension to the final work.

If you have not heard this album, its worth the effort to check it out, particularly with the number of strong songs, the fine acoustic guitar work and other instrumentation, the quality of the arrangements and production, and the sterling sound quality (for 1968), partly as a result of the entire album having been recorded at Trident studio in England, at that time a state-of-the-art studio, using some of the session time that was previously booked by the Beatles.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

All songs written by James Taylor unless otherwise noted. Times are from the original Apple LP vinyl label.

Side one
  1. “Don’t Talk Now” – 2:36
  2. “Something’s Wrong” – 3:00
  3. “Knocking ‘Round the Zoo” – 3:26
  4. “Sunshine Sunshine” – 3:30
  5. “Taking It In” – 3:01
  6. “Something in the Way She Moves” – 2:26
Side two
  1. “Carolina in My Mind” – 3:36
  2. “Brighten Your Night With My Day” – 3:05
  3. “Night Owl” – 3:38
  4. “Rainy Day Man” (Taylor, Zach Wiesner) – 3:00
  5. “Circle Round the Sun” (Traditional; arranged by Taylor) – 3:24
  6. “Blues Is Just a Bad Dream” – 3:42
CD bonus tracks (2010 remaster)
  1. “Sunny Skies” (Demo) – 2:12
  2. “Let Me Ride” – 3:57
  3. “Sunshine Sunshine” (Demo) – 2:51
  4. “Carolina in My Mind” (Demo) – 3:06

Personnel

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Blood Sweat & Tears: Blood, Sweat & Tears

Though the first BS&T album, a work of love from Al Kooper, includes jazz instruments, this second album really begins the era of what is commonly called “jazz-rock”, a genre  quite different than jazz fusion or rock-influenced jazz. Later adherents to this style, more or less, included American groups like Chicago and Chase, the Canadian band Lighthouse, and the British group If.

This second album (produced by  James William Guercio at the same time he was producing the Chicago Transit Authority album) left the generally more critically admired, Al Kooper first BS&T album in the dust, commercially,selling millions of copies and by March of 1969 taking the top US album chart spot away from Glen Campbell, twice until the Hair soundtrack displaced both for a bit, with the BS&T album again rising to the #1 spot for four more weeks in late July and August. 

The album provided three top five singles, Laura Nyro’s “When I Die”, Fred Lispius’s arrangement of fellow-BS&T-band member and lead singer David Clayton Thomas’s “Spinning Wheel” and the Al Kooper’s arrangement of Brenda Halloway’s modestly successful single, “You Made Me So Very Happy”.

The album is yet another 1968 that includes music by a classical composer.  In this case, this album starts out with an abridged, but tasteful arrangement of two of the three pieces of Eric Satie’s “Gymnopédies.” For many listeners, including myself, this was one of the highlights of the album, and was my first introduction to Eric Satie.

This is followed by BS&T’s extended version of Traffic’s “Smiling Phases”, with its traditional jazz piano trio middle section and then the evocative Dick Halligan arrangement of Steve Katz tune “Sometime in Winter.”  Next is “More and More”, which, as a thirteen-year old, was my favorite track on the album, with its fierce brass and drums.

Also, leaving an impression on me was the last track of the first side, Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.”  As I had not heard the original version, or any Billie Holiday recordings, I made the mistake of considering this the reference version of the song.  (What kind of society would make it possible for the vast majority of Baby Boomers to have no knowledge of Billie Holiday until the release of the 1972 film “Lady Sings the Blues”?)

Blues — Part II has an interesting, progressive rock opening with Dick Halligan on organ, which is followed by a short brass outburst and then electric bass and drum solos as well as some flugelhorn, sax, electric guitar, and reflective, bluesy vocals. The album ends with a short reprise of Satie’s first “Gymnopédie“, providing a complete, fulfilling and distinct listening for anyone in 1968 and 1969 that had only a smattering exposure to real jazz.  Just as seventh grade Physical Education introduced me to basketball, which led to my watching John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins and then in 1969 West, Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain’s  Los Angeles Lakers, groups like BS&T and Chicago help lead my way towards the many jazz classics recorded prior to 1968.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

Side 1

  1. “Variations on a Theme By Erik Satie” (1st and 2nd Movements) – 2:35
  2. “Smiling Phases” (Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood) – 5:11
    • Recorded October 15, 1968
  3. “Sometimes in Winter” (Steve Katz) – 3:09
    • Recorded October 8, 1968
  4. “More and More” (Vee Pee Smith, Don Juan) – 3:04
    • Recorded October 15, 1968
  5. “And When I Die” (Laura Nyro) – 4:06
    • Recorded October 22, 1968
  6. “God Bless the Child” (Billie Holiday, Arthur Herzog Jr.) – 5:55
    • Recorded October 7, 1968

Side 2

  1. “Spinning Wheel” (David Clayton-Thomas) – 4:08
    • Recorded October 9, 1968
  2. “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy“ (Berry Gordy Jr., Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Frank Wilson) – 4:19
    • Recorded October 16, 1968
  3. “Blues – Part II” (Blood, Sweat & Tears) – 11:44
  4. “Variations on a Theme By Erik Satie” (1st Movement) – 1:49
    • Recorded October 9, 1968

Personnel

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Album review, Fifty Year Friday, Folk Rock, Jazz Rock, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: The Beatles, The Kinks

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Recorded mostly at Abbey Road Studios during May through October 1968, the band took a freer,  less methodical, less collaborative approach to recording this album than with the incomparable Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.  George Martin had less involvement, and in July, audio engineer Geogg Emerick refused to continue to work with the group.  Ringo also got frustrated with his role and treatment, leaving in August,  with the other Beatles replacing him on at least two tracks until he was successfully coaxed back from aboard Peter Seller’s borrowed yacht in Sardinia via telegram.  Yet, this album is a classic, rich with a wide variety of excellent compositions.

It was on one of my nearly-daily visits to my next-door neighbors after Christmas of 1968 that I first heard this album, and that very day they willingly loaned it to me to record on my tape deck.  Needless to say, I was impressed by this being a double album, but I was warned about the presence of a track called “Revolution 9” on side four.

I was totally unprepared for the number of instantly likable tracks, and soon realized I made the right decision to record this on a higher quality tape at a higher speed set on the tape deck.  Impressed by almost each and every track, and feeling correctly warned about “Revolution 9” which I didn’t record, this was a tape I played in the presence of my dad, who I noticed also took a liking to the music — solid confirmation of the exceptional nature of this album.  And how could he not like tracks like “Dear Prudence”, “Blackbird”,  “Julia”,  “I Will”, “Mother Nature’s Son” and “Honey Pie.” And, to my surprise, there was not a word of criticism of songs like “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” and “Helter Skelter”

I still love this album. It’s far from perfect, and I am just as annoyed today at the tapping sound on “Dear Prudence” as I was the first time I heard it (perhaps more annoyed as my audio system exposes it better.)  I do wish that George Martin had been more engaged, but on the other hand, I am also thankful for the inclusion of Nicki Hopkins and Eric Clapton.

Now having listened to the entire set of studio Beatles albums as well as most of the solo albums, and so much other music, I am more knowledgeable about the group today. At the age of 13, I thought of this group and listened to this group  as the collective “Beatles”, today I hear individual contributors, voices and instruments. I can easily pick out the individual band members’ vocals, figure out who wrote which songs (even if I didn’t know about the rule that the lead singer is generally the composer except if Ringo is the lead), and identify Yoko Ono’s voice in the chorus of “Bungalow Bill” as well as speculate on the degree of influence the album had on contemporaneous late sixties bands as well as bands of the 1980s and later.

A few years later after the release of this album, when I was a music composition major in the 1970’s, I often thought about what composers and what bands would still be listened to a hundred years later.  We are now approaching the halfway point of that hundred years, and with each passing year, it become increasingly clearer to me that Beatles will be much more popular at the end of that hundred years than the handful of mid-twentieth century composers that were listed in our 1970’s music history textbooks: textbooks which extolled the inventiveness and importance of composers like George Crumb, Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, Elliot Carter, and Karlheinz Stockhausen but omitted any mention of Paul McCartney, John Lennon or George Harrison.

Link to Track Listing and musicians

The_Kinks_The_Village_Green

The Kinks: The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

Released on November 22, 1968, the same date that the Beatles released the White Album,  The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society is a concept album about preserving those elements and memories of a better world.  Due to the nature of the topic (and possibly, with the Kinks still under a ban to tour the U.S., due to not getting the erosive exposure to American culture that so many of the other top British bands were experiencing) the lyrics cover, very effectively, material directly related to English cultures and values. All compositions are by Ray Davies, and showcase the very best of his musical and lyrical abilities.

Though far from successful upon its release (the album failed to chart in either the US or the UK),  The Village Green Preservation Society has slowly been embraced over time, by both musicians and critics, and appreciated not only for the courage to break away completely from the commercial interests of its time, but for the general quality of each and every track.  Now predominately considered the best Kinks album of all time, this is a must-listen album for anyone interested in the Kinks, The British Invasion or pop-music song craftsmanship — or for anyone just looking to hear a wonderful collection of songs.

Oh, yes, like the Beatles’ White Album, we are treated to Nikki Hopkins on piano for some of the tracks.

Link to Track Listing and musicians

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Fifty Year Friday, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: The Nice

The Nice ALVB.jpeg

The Nice: Ars Longa Vita Brevis

In November of 1968, The Nice release their second album, furthering their advance into progressive rock as initiated in their first album.

With the guitarist, David O’List, no longer part of the group (either dropped from the group or left on his own depending on whose side of the story is being represented), The Nice auditioned replacement guitarists, including Steve Howe.  Evidently this would have worked out, except for Howe having second thoughts a week later.  And so, the band moved on without a replacement guitarist, with a line up more like a traditional piano jazz trio (piano, bass and drums), then a rock group, providing the blueprint for the keyboard-dominated progressive rock group (with occasional augmentation by orchestra as in the case with this second Nice album.)

The first track, “Daddy, Where Did I Come From”,  seems like a throwaway novelty number, but much like the ensuing second and third tracks, has a distinct charm and quirkiness that elevates it above the commonplace. Note the peppy piano intro by Keith Emerson as well as the brief baroque-like organ passage, the ensuing unbridled electric organ accompaniment, and the spoken dialogue as the dad.

The second track, “Little Arabella” includes vocals from Keith Emerson at around the 1:37 mark. The third track, the fanfare-like”Happy Freuds”, has Keith on lead vocals and though mostly a simple upbeat pop number, has both charm and substance.

Keith Emerson’s dominance continues with the keyboard-dominated realization of Sibelius’s Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite.  The main theme works better in its original version, but Emerson’s improvisation and development of the theme — and short detour from the theme — provide the essence of this interpretation.

The title track takes up the length of the second side, including orchestra backup — at least at points.  It is not so much a coherent whole as a stitchwork that includes a dramatic Keith Emerson prelude orchestrated by Robert Stewart, a four minute drum solo, the main “Ars Longa Vita Brevis” theme with Jackson on vocals,  followed by a jazzy instrumental diversion, a third section with an Emerson intro that dives into the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg, pitting Emerson’s more excursive inclinations against the orchestra’s more faithful script,  followed by a restatement of the “Ars Longa Vita Brevis” theme with more jazz-like trio work and the prelude material serving as a coda.

All in all a pretty good album that delivers quality, variety and some impressive trio passages.

Track listing [From Wikipedia]

All songs written by Keith Emerson and Lee Jackson, except where noted.

Side one

  1. “Daddy, Where Did I Come From” – 3:44
  2. “Little Arabella” – 4:18
  3. “Happy Freuds” – 3:25
  4. “Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite” (Sibelius) – 8:57
  5. “Don Edito el Gruva” (Emerson, Jackson, Brian Davison) – 0:13

Side two

  1. “Ars Longa Vita Brevis” – 19:20
  • “Prelude” (Emerson) – 1:49
  • “1st Movement – Awakening” (Davison) – 4:01
  • “2nd Movement – Realisation” (Jackson, David O’List, Emerson) – 4:54
  • “3rd Movement – Acceptance “Brandenburger”” (J.S.Bach, Davison, Emerson, Jackson) – 4:23
  • “4th Movement – Denial” (Davison, Emerson, Jackson) – 3:23
  • “Coda – Extension to the Big Note” (Emerson) – 0:46
The Nice

 

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Fifty Year Friday, Music, Progressive Rock, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: George Harrison, Wonderwall Music

 

WWmusic.jpeg

Released in Great Britain on November 1, 2018, George Harrison’s soundtrack to the mod, psychedelic film about a late middle-aged lab scientist that expands his professional interest in watching the domestic life of microbes under a microscope to watching his neighbors through a hole in the wall. Wonderwall Music is both the first solo Beatles album (if one doesn’t count George Martin/Paul McCartney’s The Family Way soundtrack which is basically various Martin arrangements of a single McCartney tune, “Love in the Open Air’) and the very first Apples-label album.

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Harrison had no experience, of course, composing soundtracks, but with guidance from director Joe Massot and assistance from classical trained pianist and Ravi Shankar composition pupil,  John Barham , Harrison produces an effective soundtrack that works quite well as standalone music encompassing multiple styles from classical Indian music to English Music Hall pseudo-ragtime to contemporary rock.  With limited dialogue and a strong focus on visuals over story, there is plenty of opportunity in the movie for musical passages, so much so, that the album doesn’t contain all the musical material present in the film.

In terms of sales, this soundtrack album was not very successful in the UK, but it did much better in the U.S. peaking at 49 on the Billboard album chart.  Critical review has been mixed during both initial evaluations and re-evaluations of the album, but the music is generally strong with some notable tracks and the general critical trend has been towards greater appreciation as time has gone by.

The music was recorded in sessions in London and Bombay, Harrison having determined from the watching the assigned sections of film, stopwatch in hand, the exact length required for the music and working with the musicians to create appropriate material to match the assigned scenes.  The titles are appropriately named so that it is fairly easy to remember which part of the movie each particular track was for.

The first track, “Microbes” is used at the start of the film as background to the routine activity of microorganisms being observed under microscope and showcases the shenai, a double-reed instrument, similar to the oboe.  The second track, “Red Lady Too” is particular notable for its progressive-rock-like arpeggios, suspensions and chord changes and provides a representative example of how each track in the album is a miniature musical movement in a larger suite. The short length of the compositions require a brevity of expression, so instead of having 35 minute ragas, we get short Indian classical compositions, like the one-minute third track, “Tabla and Pakajav” and the four-minute fourth track, “In the Park.”

“Drilling a Home” shows Harrison’s sense of humor, and is very much like the music used for British pantomime television comedy sketches. This is followed by another dualing-shenai composition, “Guru Vandana”, followed by a particular impressive Mellotron and Harmonium duet, showing off Harrison’s sensitivity for the subtle. Next we have Eric Claption featured on guitar in “Ski-ing”, then “Gat Kirwani” featuring sarod, sitar and tabla, followed by one of the best compositions on the album,  the final track of side one, the thoughtfully crafted ambient/Hindi/instrumental/musique-concrete collage, “Dream Scene”, preceding Lennon’s Revolution and saying so much more in so much less time.

Side Two opens up with the strumming of Harrison’s acoustic guitar on a composition reminiscent of The Beatles’ instrumental, “Flying” on Magical Mystery Tour, followed by a sarod love duet, “Love Scene” and a lamenting shenai on “Crying. “Cowboy Music” was written for the scene of the neighbor’s boyfriend on rocking horse”, and is followed by another composition featuring shenai, “Fantasy Sequins.”  “On the Bed”, like a rock fanfare for the opening credits of a movie or a leading-edge BBC TV show, is followed by the masterfully brief, yet totally complete, “Glass Box” featuring sitar and tabla. The album closes with the reflective, “Wonderwall to Be Here”,  a short instrumental that any prog-band would be proud of, and the mystical “Singing Om” with harmonium and Hindustani bamboo flute.

At this time in the late sixties, there were more and more rock albums out that included lengthened tracks, with repeated verses and choruses that added little except to extend the length of an inherently two or three minute song to five or six minutes. In contrast, what we have here with Wonderwall Music is an album mostly of miniature-length compositions, with even the few longer ones, being skillfully compacted musical poems.  Much better than allmusic.com’s and the Rolling Stones Album Guide ratings of 2 1/2 stars, this is why one should only rely on their own sensibilities in determining the merit of the great music of the late sixties.

All selections written by George Harrison.

Side one

  1. “Microbes” – 3:42
  2. “Red Lady Too” – 1:56
  3. “Tabla and Pakavaj” – 1:05
  4. “In the Park” – 4:08
  5. “Drilling a Home” – 3:08
  6. “Guru Vandana” – 1:05
  7. “Greasy Legs” – 1:28
  8. “Ski-ing” – 1:50
  9. “Gat Kirwani” – 1:15
  10. “Dream Scene” – 5:26

Side two

  1. “Party Seacombe” – 4:34
  2. “Love Scene” – 4:17
  3. “Crying” – 1:15
  4. “Cowboy Music” – 1:29
  5. “Fantasy Sequins” – 1:50
  6. “On the Bed” – 2:22
  7. “Glass Box” – 1:05
  8. “Wonderwall to Be Here” – 1:25
  9. “Singing Om” – 1:54

 

For those interested in the movie, it can currently be viewed on at youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2e3HeBgHKE

 

 

 

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Fifty Year Friday, Progressive Rock, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: Donovan, Todd Rundgren and Nazz

Donovan_-_The_Hurdy_Gurdy_Man

Released in October 1968, with material from late 1967 and April 1968, Hurdy Gurdy Man is the most substantial Donovan album of his many releases,  artfully capturing the spirit of musical adventure and diversity so prevalent at the time.

My sister, up until the release of this album, had mostly purchased singles and albums of musicals, so it was a treat when she bought this in late 1968 and allowed me to play this on our parents’ “Hi-Fi” system.   I had already heard “Jennifer, Juniper” and the more serious and dramatic title track, “Hurdy Gurdy Man” earlier in 1968, so I was curiously anticipating what else the album contained.

Lifting up the heavy wooden cover of the Hi-Fi,  taking out the record from its cover, and setting the music into motion by turning on the electronics and initiating the spinning of the platter and the tone arm’s slow and steady take-off, soon I was hearing a improved version of that first track, “Hurdy Gurdy Man” sounding much better than what I had heard on any car or transistor or even the Hi-Fi AM radio.  The composition’s dark, mysterious mood was now more evident along with a general sense of deep, perhaps profound, mysticism.   And as the album played on past that first track, into “Peregrine” with its even more suspenseful drone-based eastern sound, then into the quietly reflective third track, “The Entertaining of a Shy Girl”, and through the neo-vaudevillian, “As I Recall it”, and then into the creamy saxophone-dominated “Get Thy Bearings”, the variety and quality of the music gained my increasing respect and interest.  I was not musically sophisticated enough to consider that most of the tracks were just a sequence of verses, to appreciate the thoughtfully scored string, flute, oboe, and trumpet lines or the contrapuntal fragments in “Hi, It’s Been a Long Time”, or deconstruct the contributions of melody, harmony and arrangement to the final essence of each song, I just found the album full of character and boldly and creatively different than most of the current AM radio fare; just as Donovan stood apart from the more commercial tunes of the time with songs like “Sunshine Superman”, “Mellow Yellow” and the more recent “Hurdy Gurdy Man”,  so did each track of this album create its very own mood, and even if I couldn’t do credible or meaningful musical analysis at age thirteen of the content, it was clear that significant care had been taken to produce a quality and coherent presentation of the music.

Donovan had originally wanted Jimi Hendrix to play electric guitar on “Hurdy Gurdy Man.”  Hendrix, unfortunately wasn’t available.  There is some contention on who the guitarist on the recording actually is —  with Donovan crediting Jimmy Page and also Allan Holdsworth, but others indicating Jeff Beck or Alan Parker.  Page has indicated it wasn’t him and Holdsworth’s wife has stated that Holdsworth had indicated that the guitarist was Ollie Halsell (guitarist and vibraphone player for the group Timebox, later Platto.)

Years later, listening to this album, I can confirm that my original instincts in liking this music is far from unfounded.  The two songs with the most traditional verse and chorus structures provide an effective start and end to the album, and the contrast between the mood and instrumentation of the songs contained within provide an experience similar to contemporary releases by The Beatles or the Kinks. Donovan has a knack for simple, yet effective melodies and his work is supplemented by David Mills who provides music for three of the tracks. On top of this, the arrangement work is excellent as are the contributions by Harold McNair on flute and his sax soloing on “Get Thy Bearings.”

Tracks [from Wikipedia]

All tracks credited to Donovan Leitch. According to BMI, “A Sunny Day” and “The River Song” were collaborations with David J. Mills, but “Tangier” was written solely by Mills under its original title of “In Tangier Down a Windy Street”.

Side one

  1. “Hurdy Gurdy Man” – 3:13
  2. “Peregrine” – 3:34
  3. “The Entertaining of a Shy Girl” – 1:39
  4. “As I Recall It” – 2:06
  5. “Get Thy Bearings” – 2:47
  6. “Hi It’s Been a Long Time” – 2:32
  7. “West Indian Lady” – 2:15

Side two

  1. “Jennifer Juniper” – 2:40
  2. “The River Song” – 2:14
  3. “Tangier” – 4:10
  4. “A Sunny Day” – 1:52
  5. “The Sun is a Very Magic Fellow” – 3:31
  6. “Teas” – 2:29

Musicians:

Donovan: vocals, acoustic guitar, tambura, harmonium
Alan Parker?: lead electric guitar on “Hurdy Gurdy Man”
John Paul Jones: bass, arrangement and musical direction on “Hurdy Gurdy Man”
Clem Cattini: drums on “Hurdy Gurdy Man”
Danny Thompson: bass
Tony Carr: drums and percussion
John ‘Candy’ Carr: bongos and percussion
Harold McNair: flute and saxophone
David Snell: harp
Deirdre Dodds: oboe
John Cameron: arrangement and piano

 

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Also recorded in April 1968 and released in October 1968, is one of the best commercially unsuccessful albums of 1968.  Nineteen year-old Todd Rundgren combines influences from The Beatles, The Who (“Open My Eyes”), Jimi Hendrix (some of Rundgren’s guitar work and the opening of “She’s Goin’ Down”) , Burt Bacharach (parts of “Hello It’s Me”), Jimmy Webb (the first section of “If That’s the Way You Feel”), and The Beach Boys (“When I Get My Plane”) with his own musical style, clearly identifiable on this first commercial recording of his and the band that he and later Disney legend, bassist Carson Van Osten  formed in Philadelphia.

Very few first albums are as good as this one, and its more accurate to consider this the first Todd Rundgren album (even with bandmate Stewkey on vocals)  as opposed to the first album of a group that Rundgren happened to be a part of.   All compositions are by Rundgren except “Crowded” and the blues-jam group-effort spectacular that ends side one.  Rundgren’s signature ballad, “Hello It’s Me” appears the first time, lacking the more sophisticated arrangement given to it in the classic 1972 Something/Anything?  The other ballad here is “If That’s the Way You Feel”, arranged by jazz-great Shorty Rogers with a beyond beautiful first section and a sequence of overly-enthusiastic modulations in the second section.

Track listing [From Wikipedia]

All songs written by Todd Rundgren, except where noted.

Side one

  1. “Open My Eyes” – 2:48
  2. “Back of Your Mind” – 3:48
  3. “See What You Can Be” – 3:00
  4. “Hello It’s Me” – 3:57
  5. “Wildwood Blues” (Rundgren, Thom Mooney, Robert “Stewkey” Antoni, Carson Van Osten) – 4:39

Side two

  1. “If That’s the Way You Feel” – 4:49
  2. “When I Get My Plane” – 3:08
  3. “Lemming Song” – 4:26
  4. “Crowded” (Mooney, Stewkey) – 2:20
  5. “She’s Goin’ Down” – 4:58

Nazz

  • Robert “Stewkey” Antoni – Keyboards, lead vocals
  • Todd Rundgren – guitar, vocals, string arrangements, mixing
  • Carson Van Osten – bass, vocals
  • Thom Mooney – drums

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Fifty Year Friday, Music, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: Joan Baez, Baptism: A Journey Through Our Time, Randy Newman

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From 1967 continuing into 1968 and forward, popular music continues to become more serious, stimulating, and consequential at the same time that modern concert hall music (commonly called twentieth century classical music, modern classical music or avant-garde classical music) continues to struggle to appeal to sizable audiences, with most classical music concerts programming music from the 19th and 18th centuries with a few early, relatively accessible twentieth century works, like Debussy’s orchestral works or Stravinsky’s Firebird included now and then.

In the late sixties many of the best artists and bands in popular music became just as intent on creating works of artistic value as anyone in the more traditional and established areas of the fine arts.  When such artists or bands were lacking in a given area, they would either extend their own skills or reach out to others to assist them in completing a given objective or vision.  More and more this meant including orchestration in their albums.  At first this may have been more driven by producers and the commercial interests of the record companies, and in many of these cases the orchestration was added as something appended to the original product, as in the case with Stanley Turrentine’s “Look of Love” where strings are overdubbed on top of previously  recorded tracks.  But there were also many cases where the orchestration was part of the fabric of the music — or where electronic keyboards and more sophisticated usage of electric guitars, electric bass guitars and percussion replace the instruments of the traditional orchestra, further empowering the artistic determination of the artist or band.

Before the prevalence of electronic keyboards, either the artist or someone in the band had to be a skilled orchestrator or be able to effectively collaborate with a skilled arranger and orchestrator.  In Joan Baez’s case, she was able to partner with Peter Schickle on three of her albums.  Schickle, the mastermind behind PDQ Bach, with three PDQ Bach albums already to his credit on Vanguard, was also composing for film when he partnered with her for the third time on Joan’s 1968 concept album, Baptism. Though neither a commercial nor critical success, Baptism is a strong political statement against war and the ongoing inhumanity characteristic of “civilized” societies.  No doubt, some who had purchased this album were disappointed at the ratio of spoken word to singing, and I suspect this is not an album many will care to listen to more than once or twice, but as a document of the times, this remains an effective artistic statement with a well-selected mix of readings. some excellent orchestration, and Baez’s beautiful vocals.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

  1. “Old Welsh Song” (Henry Treece)
  2. “I Saw the Vision of Armies” (Walt Whitman)
  3. “Minister of War” (Arthur Waley)
  4. “Song In the Blood” (Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jacques Prévert)
  5. “Casida of the Lament” (J.L. Gili, Federico García Lorca)
  6. “Of the Dark Past” (James Joyce)
  7. “London” (William Blake)
  8. “In Guernica” (Norman Rosten)
  9. “Who Murdered the Minutes” (Henry Treece)
  10. “Oh, Little Child” (Henry Treece)
  11. “No Man Is an Island” (John Donne)
  12. “Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man” (James Joyce)
  13. “All the Pretty Little Horses” (Traditional)
  14. “Childhood III” (Arthur Rimbaud, Louis Varese)
  15. “The Magic Wood” (Henry Treece)
  16. “Poems from the Japanese” (Kenneth Rexroth)
  17. “Colours” (Peter Levi, Robin Milner-Gulland, Yevgeny Yevtushenko)
  18. “All in green went my love riding” (E. E. Cummings)
  19. “Gacela of the Dark Death” (Federico García Lorca, Stephen Spender)
  20. “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” (Wilfred Owen)
  21. “Evil” (N. Cameron, Arthur Rimbaud)
  22. “Epitaph for a Poet” (Countee Cullen)
  23. “Mystic Numbers- 36”
  24. “When The Shy Star Goes Forth In Heaven” (James Joyce)
  25. “The Angel” (William Blake)
  26. “Old Welsh Song” (Henry Treece)

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It’s certainly not a mystery why talented composers would choose to pursue the popular music of their times — music that they listen to, their friends listen to, and reflect the time they live in — as opposed to less popular music of academia, which can only unconvincingly assert its lineage to the great music of  Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.  One should expect that the most engaging, commercially viable, and prevalent music would attract a substantial proportion of able and talented musicians and composers: it was the case during the jazz era, the swing era, the be-bop era, and in the late sixties, during some of the most exciting days of rock music.

Randy Newman’s father and mother were not professional composers, but three of his uncles were:  Alfred Newman, Lionel Newman and Emil Newman  — all noted Hollywood film-score composers, with the most famous, Alfred Newman, conducting, arranging and composing about two-hundred film scores, nine of which won Academy Awards.  Randy already had written a number of songs including a B-side (“They Tell Me It’s Summer”) for a hit single of the Fleetwoods (“Lovers by Night, Strangers by Day”), the song lyrics for Bobby Darin’s “Look at Me” (the title song of the 1964 movie, “The Lively Set”), and songs recorded by Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Jackie DeShannon, and the O’Jays, when he dropped out of UCLA, only one semester short of a music degree. By then, he had taken courses in music theory, music history and probably one or more orchestration classes, though clearly he had already learned the basics before his UCLA studies having written background music for a 1962 episode of TV’s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and then eventually providing music for other TV shows including  Lost in Space, Peyton Place,  Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and one of my favorites as kid, Judd For The Defense.

With several years of experience in songwriting and orchestra scoring, Randy Newman released his first album, Randy Newman, in June of 1968.  The album did not sell well, and Warner Brothers provided any dissatisfied buyers the opportunity to exchange the album for any other album in their catalog.

But this album is a keeper.  From the beginning we see a thoughtful approach to songwriting.  The first song, “Love Song” immediately makes an impact with its dry, wry humor, its shrewdly crafted orchestration, and its structure: Newman’s ending to the song eschews the standard return of the chorus and ends with a bridge section that is followed by a final, modified verse with a simple brief coda, creating not a climax, but an ending that aligns well with the sober, yet tongue-in-cheek message: “When our kids are grown with kids of their own, they’ll send us away to a little home in Florida; we’ll play checkers all day ’til we pass away.”

Newman’s unique delivery, the reflective piano accompaniment, the excellent orchestration, often veering intentionally away from the core song material, make their mark on each and every track.  Repeatedly Newman is taking up the voice of the underdog, the rejected, or the trodden-down, forgotten citizen, even when reflecting on the status of God as in “I Think He’s Hiding.”  Songs like “Bet No One Every Hurt So Bad”, “Living Without You”, and “Linda” not only reflect on the sadness and angst of the persona of the lyrics (the point of view, narrator, speaker) but provide commentary on the character of that persona such that we may feel some sympathy but would sometimes also wish to distance ourselves a little from some of these characters if they came into our vicinity.

On the song “Cowboy”, perhaps the best song on the album, we feel genuine empathy and compassion for the persona. This is a song from the heart without any clever commentary or cloaked irony.  Newman raises this to an art song with his orchestration.  The work starts off with the images of the prairie, the orchestration developing and sculpting the mood, supporting the lyrics and evoking some of the characteristics of the music of Aaron Copland. Following “Cowboy”, “Beehive” is an interesting variant on the well-known “St. James Infirmary Blues”, followed by the classic “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”, recorded by Judy Collins in 1966.  Ending this excellent album is “Davy The Fat Boy” — a track that might be considered politically incorrect today, but it is not a portrait about Davy but about the scoundrel exploiting him.  The orchestration/arrangement is again the star here, and it is every bit of an art song as anything turned out by the Beatles or Beach Boys.

In an act of full disclosure here, I once saw Newman perform “Love Story” on network television a very long time ago — perhaps this was in 1970 on an “In Concert” program — or perhaps on late night TV — and at that time, hearing him accompanied only by his piano, I was not impressed enough to follow-up further by purchasing an album or requesting it as a possible present for the next birthday or Christmas.  It turned out that for me, Randy Newman was an acquired taste, cemented by taking a music history course at my local college during my senior year in high school, in which course, the cellist, and course instructor, Terry King, played part of Newman’s “Sail Away” album. King had played on that album and reminisced about the experience.  Later that same week, Mr. King played, with great pride, a recording of Schubert’s Erlkönig.  At the end, one of the students asked “what was so special about that?  It’s just a song.”  King, unflustered, replied that no, Erlkönig was not an ordinary song, it was truly something extraordinarily special, but didn’t go into any details to support that conclusion.  At that point, I thought, yes, Schubert’s Erlkönig is quite dramatic and special — and even catchy, in an early-nineteenth-century-equivalency-of-hard-rock sort of way — but it is a song — and I thought back to that earlier class in which King had played Randy Newman — someone who also wrote songs, but one hundred and fifty years later. Yes, a song is a song, but there is no particular boundary to how good (or bad) it can be.  It’s up to the listener to make that evaluation, and if enough listeners have a favorable opinion over time, that song may have some longevity.

So possibly, the songs of Randy Newman will be around in the 22nd century.  If so, this album, out of print for fifteen years before being released on CD, and generally ignored by the rock critics of 1968, provides more than just an interesting assortment of early Randy Newman tunes, but a complete, and rewarding, musical experience.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

All songs written and arranged by Randy Newman.

  1. “Love Story (You and Me)” – 3:20
  2. “Bet No One Ever Hurt This Bad” – 2:00
  3. “Living Without You” – 2:25
  4. “So Long Dad” – 2:02
  5. “I Think He’s Hiding” – 3:04
  6. “Linda” – 2:27
  7. “Laughing Boy” – 1:55
  8. “Cowboy” – 2:36
  9. “Beehive State” – 1:50
  10. “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” – 2:55
  11. “Davy the Fat Boy” – 2:50

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1968, Classical Music, Fifty Year Friday, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: Silver Apples and Horace Silver’s Serenade to a Soul Sister

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Silver Apples was what was left of the cover band, The Overland Stage Electric Band, after vocalist, Simeon Coxe III,  incorporated old-fashioned 1940’s technology audio oscillators into their performances at Café Wah in Greenwich Village, annoying, exasperating, and eventually alienating all other members of the band except the drummer, Danny Taylor.  Now, with only two of the five original members still on board, the band was renamed and, with a set of thirteen oscillators connected together, soon recorded an album for the small label, Kapp, which had recently been purchased by MCI after Kapp had repeatedly proved itself, including recording Louis Armstrong’s very successful single, “Hello Dolly”, in 1964 and recording the original cast album of “Man of La Mancha” in 1966.

For those that would propose that all the new music in any decade following the sixties is truly based on something already recorded prior to 1970, this first Silver Apples album, Silver Apples,  makes a good exhibit A for such a case. Here, in this album, we can hear many of the key ingredients of the music of Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, techno-rock, and various pockets of underground dance music and indie rock that followed. To their credit, Beck, the Beastie Boys, Stereolab and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow have all publicly acknowledged the influence of Silver Apples.

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Heralded by John Lennon and Gary Booker of Procol Harum, and joined by Jimi Hendrix for jam sessions, Silver Apples appeared to have a future that looked interesting, if not particularly promising commercially.  Unfortunately, the actual longevity of Silver Apples was brief, even in rock-career years, as a result of the album cover content of their second LP, Contact, which shows the band in a PanAm cockpit with the PanAM logo clearly visible in the upper right on the front, and Simeon and Taylor sitting amidst the wreckage on the back cover perhaps humorously hinting they weren’t up to handling all the sophisticated electronics.  Ironically, the agent of their “crash and burn” was not due to any misuse of electronics, or lack of public recognition, but was solely due to that back album cover itself, which precipitated a lawsuit from Pan Am Airlines; though PanAm had had originally approved the group’s use of the Pan Am logo for the front cover, they were completely taken by surprise with the wreckage portrayed on the back cover.

 

“They sued us, big‑time,” Simeon stated in a 2010 Sound on Sound interview.  “They sued Kapp Records, they sued us as a band, they sued us personally, they sued our management, they got some judge in New York to issue a cease‑and‑desist on us performing. All the records had to be taken off the shelves in all of the record stores. They put some sort of a lien on our equipment and they actually came to a club where we were playing and confiscated Danny’s drums. Fortunately, my stuff wasn’t there. That photograph led to the lawsuit that broke the band up. No record label would touch us from that point on. That was the end of Silver Apples.”

Let’s forget about this tragic demise for now (the band, like so many sixties band, have reunited for concert appearances), and celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this influential and historical significant album.  It is rough in spots, with generally weak vocals, but there is no scarcity of interesting content — such content bookended by the strongest tracks, “Oscillations” and “Misty Mountain.”  Youtube audio doesn’t do this track justice, but still conveys that this music sounds more like a composition from the late seventies than the late sixties:

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

Side A

#

Title

Writer(s)

Length

1.

“Oscillations”

Simeon, Taylor, Warren

2:48

2.

“Seagreen Serenades”

Simeon, Taylor, Warren

2:55

3.

“Lovefingers”

Simeon, Taylor, Warren

4:11

4.

“Program”

Simeon, Taylor, Warren

4:07

5

“Velvet Cave”

Simeon, Taylor, Warren

3:00

Side B

#

Title

Writer(s)

Length

1.

“Whirly-Bird”

Simeon, Taylor, Warren

2:41

2.

“Dust”

Simeon, Taylor, Warren

3:40

3.

“Dancing Gods”

Navajo Indian Ceremonial

5:57

4.

“Misty Mountain”

Simeon, Taylor, Eileen Lewellen

2:47

Silver Apples Personnel

  • Dan Taylor – drums, percussion, vocals
  • Simeon – oscillators, flute, vocals

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With a series of excellent albums on the Blue Note record label since he first signed with Blue Note in 1952, Horace Silver delivered another with Serenade for a Soul Sister released in early June 1968.

This is a high energy album, musically positive, with strong forward momentum; in addition, it conveys that special Blue Note quality captured in so many of the albums engineered by Rudy Van Gelder.  The first three tracks include Stanley Turrentine on tenor sax, sounding better than on his own 1968 album, “The Look of Love”, which is marred by overdubbed strings added into an otherwise surprisingly good performance of mostly contemporary pop tunes.  The very first track, “Psychedelic Sally” swings, bops, and rocks, brimming with a level of energy more commonly associated to electric guitars and electronic keyboards than a small acoustic jazz group.  The second and third tracks are in 3/4,  and the fourth track is in a fast 5/4 with a recurring syncopation between the second and third beats which extends its way with an added beat into a 6/4 bridge-like section that returns to the original theme followed by strong improvisation by Bennie Maupin, Charles Tolliver, and then Silver followed by the return of the ensemble.  The fifth track, “Kindred Spirits”, takes a slower and more casual tempo, and the last track, “Next Time I Fall in Love”, is a calm, relaxed, and somewhat carefree piano solo by Silver that nicely ends this upbeat and generally energetic album.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

All compositions by Horace Silver.

  1. “Psychedelic Sally” – 7:14
  2. “Serenade to a Soul Sister” – 6:19
  3. “Rain Dance” – 6:21
  4. “Jungle Juice” – 6:46
  5. “Kindred Spirits” – 5:55
  6. “Next Time I Fall in Love” – 5:19

Personnel

Musicians

on tracks 1 – 3 (February 23, 1968)

on tracks 4 – 6 (March 29, 1968)

Production

 

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Fifty Year Friday, jazz, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: FM Radio, Steve Miller Band, Children of the Future

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In July 1964, a battle against freedom of speech to promote freedom of speech began when the FCC (US Federal Communications Commission) adopted a prohibition against FM radio stations running 24 hour simulcasts of the content on their AM stations. With an eye towards containing costs, and perhaps ensuring a continuation of the current programming status quo, many owners of AM/FM affiliate stations fought against this new regulation, causing a delay in the ultimate enactment of this restriction until January 1, 1967. It was then, in 1967, that station owners examined their options for alternative programming to what was on the AM airwaves.

And within a relatively short time, FM became a mecca of musical variety!  In the greater Los Angeles area, where I lived, I started to explore FM content around 1968 to discover the wealth of international music being broadcast on Saturday and Sunday by multiple stations with the lowest numbers (the left of the dial) as well as the greater variety of classical music on 92.3 KFAC-FM compared to their AM counterpart, 1330 kHz KFAC.

In May 1968, KSAN-FM in San Francisco lured KPMX program director Tom “Big Daddy” Donahue (also author of the 1967 Rolling Stone article “AM Radio Is Dead and Its Rotting Corpse Is Stinking Up the Airwaves”) and several of the KPMX staff currently on an eight-week strike to work for what would apparently become the very first 24-hour underground rock FM radio station.  At the end of KSAN-FM’s last classical music broadcast, and to start their new format, Donahue appropriately played The Steve Miller Band’s “Children of the Future” which starts off with with a forty-eight second flurry of electric cacophony worthy of the current contemporary classical composers of the time that then nicely dissolves into the very simple and relatively brief anthem of the title track, “Children of the Future”

From this time on, FM stations in the largest cities, particularly San Francisco and Los Angeles, begin playing “underground” music, experimental and psychedelic rock, select tracks of various rock albums, and even complete sides or complete albums.  One could find a number of free-form programs: radio slots where the DJ played just about anything that they cared to play.  Soon Donahue extended his programming reach to Los Angeles taking over KMET and KPPC, making these two of the coolest stations in the greater Los Angeles area.

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In 1967, “The Steve Miller Blues Band” changed their name to “The Steve Miller Band”, not to shorten it but to update it to match their new sound.  Steve Miller had been brought up by jazz-enthusiast parents, good friends of Les Paul and Mary Ford: Steve’s dad was the best man and Steve’s mother was the maid of honor at the December 1949 wedding of Les Paul and Mary Ford. Steve’s dad, a physician and amateur recording engineer, even played Les Paul a wire recording of Steve Miller “playing” guitar at age four, and upon hearing, Les encouraged Steve to continue with his interest in the instrument.

When his dad moved the family to Dallas in 1950, Steve dad’s recording skills and interest in music exposed Steve to visitors like world-class guitarists T-Bone Walker and Tal Farlow, and jazz great Charles Mingus.  Soon Steve would leave for Chicago to earn his living as a blues guitarist, playing rhythm guitar with Buddy Guy as well as participating in jam sessions with other blues greats like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

So it was natural that the Steve’s first band would be a blues band.  But it was also natural that Miller was a musician of his time, and by the time Miller’s band was ready to record an album, it would be a rock album, though with a significant blues footprint including four blues-based tracks on the second side.

Originally planned to be recorded at Capitol Records in the historic Studio B in the famous Hollywood Capitol Tower, Miller and crew drove down from San Francisco for a midnight recording session, and per Joel Selvin’s liner notes of a recent CD reissue of the album, the group started to record but “the Capitol engineers, who had already made their distaste known for hippie rock musicians, walked out of the sessions, leaving the band with no engineers.  Miller picked up the van and the band and went back to San Francisco.”  Later Miller and band would make the trip to Olympic studios in London to record their inaugural album under now-famed producer Glyn Johns.

The first side of this album is basically one interrupted track, knit together from several individual songs in the form of a rock suite, and includes the attention-grabbing opening of the first track and the exploratory soundscape of the final track on that side, “The Beauty of Time Is That It’s Snowing”, both possibly influenced by Steve Miller’s interest in contemporary twentieth century composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. Jim Peterman’s mellotron assists in the overall psychedelic nature and spaciness of this first side.

The second side includes Boz Scaggs’ two relatively unremarkable compositions (the first with Ben Sidrian on harpsichord and the second a blues-based song), one older composition by Steve Miller, and three blues covers with which the band acquit themselves quite well, distinguishing themselves from other California-based contemporary rock bands by the quality of their playing and general understanding and approach to the blues.  Overall, this gives us a second side, which not as interesting as the first side, is still noteworthy.

Track listing (from Wikipedia)

All tracks composed by Steve Miller except where noted:

Side one
#  Title Writer(s) Length
1. “Children of the Future” 2:59
2. “Pushed Me to It” 0:38
3. “You’ve Got the Power” 0:53
4. “In My First Mind” Miller, Jim Peterman 7:35
5. “The Beauty of Time Is That It’s Snowing (Psychedelic B.B.)” 5:17

 

Side two
# Title Writer(s) Length
6. “Baby’s Callin’ Me Home” Boz Scaggs 3:24
7. “Steppin’ Stone” Scaggs 3:02
8. “Roll With It” 2:29
9. “Junior Saw It Happen” Jim Pulte 2:29
10. “Fanny Mae“ Buster Brown 3:04
11. “Key to the Highway“ Big Bill Broonzy, Charlie Segar 6:18
Total length: 38:21

 

The Steve Miller Band

Additional Personnel

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Fifty Year Friday, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: 1968 Jazz-Rock and Fusion

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In the late 1960s, rock music’s commercial value to the record companies far exceeded that of their jazz and classical products.  This led to many dismal outcomes, including two particularly appalling trends.  One was to try to commercialize and update jazz, with the record companies convincing (and in many cases failing to convince) reluctant jazz musicians to include rock tunes in their albums, often resulting in half-hearted attempts that included some token improvisation between the initial statement of one or more verses and the chorus and their return.  The other was to try to elevate rock music, or provide a more palatable version of it to older consumers, by saccharine orchestral or quasi-big band arrangements.  The cultural impact and commercial success of such attempts were thankfully very limited.

At the same time, a diverse range of rock groups were incorporating jazz elements into their music, and, musicians with varying degrees of jazz experience or jazz exposure were being included in some bands. Soon Miles Davis and John McLaughlin would make jazz fusion history and reap wide commercial recognition and compensation.  But prior to that, the talented and innovative vibraphonist Gary Burton, looking to make the move away from straight-ahead jazz and appeal to younger audiences drew upon his own love of popular music and started to blend jazz and rock elements in a series of four notable albums in 1967 and 1968.

Gary Burton worked with Stan Getz from 1964-1966,  during the period of Getz’s continuing ascendancy into fame from his successful merging of samba, bossa nova and jazz — Getz achieving significant recognition and acclaim from the 1963 Getz/Gilbert album that included the incredibly commercially popular “Girl From Ipanema.”  Perhaps Burton learned invaluable lessons of the breadth and flexibility of jazz, and that when it honestly and sincerely embraced and fully incorporated other elements, how it could extend its capabilities and capacity to appeal and captivate to a wide range of listeners.  Or perhaps Burton just followed his instinct of embracing the music he loved and creating music that, most of all, appealed to himself.

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During this period that Gary was working with Stan Getz, the first historically significant jazz-rock group, The Free Spirits, formed in 1965.  Playing in New York as opening acts or at very small venues, their music ranged from rock and roll to psychedelic rock,  similar to other rock bands — with the exception of the jazz background of four of their five members.  For the most part, the jazz element present was similar to the jazz element in contemporaneous rhythm and blues.  The songs on their 1967 Out of Sight and Sound album are appealing and accessible, with solid, often frenetic and dynamic drumming from Bob Moses, soulful, bluesy saxophone from Jim Pepper (no relation to Art Pepper),  and catchy compositions and expressive guitar work from Larry Coryell.  Additional band members were rhythm guitarist Columbus “Chip” Baker and bassist and vocalist Chris Hills.

After the Out of Sight and Sound album, Larry Coryell, and then later,  Bob Moses, joined up with Gary Burton.  Just as Larry Coryell significantly influenced the sound of the Free Spirits towards a contemporary rock sound, Larry Coryell would have a significant impact on the sound of the four Gary Burton albums he was a part of.

The first of these four important Gary Burton quartet albums, Duster, recorded in April 1967, and sometimes referred to as the very first fusion recording, includes guitarist Larry Coryell, talented bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Roy Haynes.  Larry Coryell had further sharpened his skills as can be heard on this indisputable example of early jazz fusion, “One, Two, 1-2-3-4” available on Youtube here.

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The second album, Lofty Fake Anagram, with Bob Moses now on drums,  was recorded in August 1967, and is a little more mellow, with continuing impressive interplay between Burton and Coryell and impressive bass work from Steve Swallow.

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The third album, recorded a month earlier in July 1967 and released in 1968, is the dramatic concept album, Genuine Tong Funeral, written by composer and pianist Carla Bley and subtitled “A Dark Opera without Words.”   Focused on the topic of death and mourning, this mixture of third-stream and avant-garde composition covers a wide range of emotion and even includes passages of irony or dry humor reminiscent of Kurt Weill.  Besides some amazing, prodigious vibraphone work by Gary Burton, using his usual four mallets and to fine effect,  there is some outstanding, pushing-the-envelope soprano sax from Steve Lacy, some nicely-miked acoustic bass work from Steve Swallow, and some welcome tuba passages performed  by Howard Johnson. The album’s last track, with a chaotic free jazz section breaking from the confines of the suite’s structural boundaries, perhaps indicating some level of relief or release from grief is followed by a return of the “Survivors” theme, providing an appropriate and proper closure to the suite.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

All compositions by Carla Bley
  1. “The Opening / Interlude : Shovels / The Survivors / Grave Train” – 6:37
  2. “Death Rolls” – 1:36
  3. “Morning (Part 1)” – 1:43
  4. “Interlude : Lament / Intermission Music” – 4:28
  5. “Silent Spring” – 7:58
  6. “Fanfare / Mother of the Dead Man” – 2:51
  7. “Some Dirge” – 7:47
  8. “Morning (Part 2)” – 1:17
  9. “The New Funeral March” – 2:40
  10. “The New National Anthem / The Survivors” – 6:34
  • Recorded in New York City in July 1967.

Personnel

The fourth of these four Burton/Coryell albums, recorded live at Carnegie Hall on February 23, 1968, is simply titled “Gary Burton Quartet in Concert.”  Of particularly note is the amazing contrapuntal duet between Burton and Coryell in the recording of “Lines” and the overall excellence of the group’s performance of “Walter L.”  The album ends with an avant garde treatment of “One, Two, 1-2-3-4”, notably different than the original performance on Duster.

Track listing

All compositions by Gary Burton except where indicated
  1. “Blue Comedy” (Mike Gibbs) – 9:02
  2. “The Sunset Bell” – 5:17
  3. “Lines” (Larry Coryell) – 3:06
  4. “Walter L.” – 6:36
  5. “Wrong Is Right” (Coryell) – 6:14
  6. “Dreams” – 5:49
  7. “I Want You” (Bob Dylan) – 3:06
  8. “One, Two, 1–2–3–4” (Burton, Coryell) – 10:45

Personnel

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In early 1968,  former Stan Kenton big band saxophonist, Steve Marcus, New Zealand born jazz keyboardist, Mick Nock,  and three former members of The Free Spirits,  guitarist Larry Coryell, bassist Chris Hills, and drummer Bob Moses,  recorded two jazz-rock albums, produced by jazz flutist Herbie Mann under Steve Marcus’s name.

The first album, Tomorrow Never Knows, appropriates five well known rock tunes and either imposes jazz commentary on them (“Mellow Yellow”) or develops and transforms them (“Tomorrow Never Knows”).  Added at the end, as a sixth tune, is Gary Burton’s “Half a Heart.”  This is one of those albums that may sound initially bizarre, with the band still wrestling to establish an overall sound and approach, but becomes more sensible and coherent after repeated listenings.

Track listing

  1. “Eight Miles High” (David Crosby, Harold E. Clark, James McGuinn) – 4:44
  2. “Mellow Yellow” (Donovan Leitch) – 4:50
  3. “Listen People” (Graham Gouldman) – 2:25
  4. “Rain” (John Lennon, Paul Mc Cartney) – 7:02
  5. “Tomorrow Never Knows” (John Lennon, Paul Mc Cartney) – 11:07
  6. “Half A Heart” (Gary Burton) – 5:21

Personnel

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The second album, though, Count’s Rock Band, (“Count” referring to Steve Marcus’s nickname and not that of William James Basie) is more organic, polished, and finely finished. There are only two rock covers here,  “Scarborough Fair” which is a straightforward rendition, based on Simon and Garfunkel’s version, arranged exquisitely with single focus, not straying a single step outside of its intended character, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richard’s Backstreet Girl; this modest tune is placed in an finely-crafted French cabaret-like setting with accordion  accompaniment, followed by an spellbinding jazzy middle section that evolves from straight-ahead, highly accessible jazz to wildly aggressive free jazz, followed by the return of the calm and tender original section.  The album also includes two compositions by bassist Chris Hills, which both work convincingly as final, unified outcomes of blending blues, rock and jazz.

If none of these musicians had ever recorded a note, jazz and rock would inevitably come together, just like twins separated in later years through pursuing different careers and interests, but meeting again in their more mature years.  In the case of rock, though, it’s relation to other music is more complex than simple siblinghood.  The young rock and roll looked very much, and acted very much like a young, somewhat clueless child of blues and jazz (and the baby sibling of the more capable rhythm and blues) but as rock and roll matured into rock, it developed its own identity, eventually accepting not only the best of what it’s parents could offer, but exploring all other available musical influences, examining and absorbing recorded and written music of all accessible areas of the globe and all accessible time periods.

Track listing

  1. “Theresa’s Blues” (Chris Hills) – 12;19
  2. “Scarborough Fair (Traditional,  Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel)” – 2:39
  3. “Drum Solo” – 3:55
  4. “Ooh Baby” ( Chris Hills) – 12:14
  5.  “C’est Ca” ( Chris Swansen) – 0:19
  6. “Back Street Girl” (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards) – 5:46
  7. “Piano Solo”  – 0:51

Personnel

Category:

1968, Fifty Year Friday, jazz, Jazz Rock, Music, Non-Zumwalt, Progressive Rock, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: Sly and the Family Stone, Dance to the Music, Hair

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Pioneers of psychedelic soul and greatly influential to the course of funk and jazz-rock, San Francisco’s Sly and the Family Stone,  led by composer, arranger, and producer Sly Stone releases their second solid album, Dance to the Music, on April 27, 1968. Sly’s original intent was more in the direction of psychedelic soul, but was urged by CBS’s Clive Davis to make the album pop friendly.  Despite any musical  compromises, Sly Stone is unwavering in emphasizing peace, love, and social harmony.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

All songs written by Sylvester Stewart and produced and arranged by Sly Stone for Stone Flower Productions.

Side one

  1. “Dance to the Music” – 3:00
  2. “Higher” – 2:49
  3. “I Ain’t Got Nobody (For Real)” – 4:26
  4. Dance to the Medley – 12:12
    1. “Music Is Alive”
    2. “Dance In”
    3. “Music Lover”

Side two

  1. “Ride the Rhythm” – 2:48
  2. “Color Me True” – 3:10
  3. “Are You Ready” – 2:50
  4. “Don’t Burn Baby” – 3:14
  5. “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” – 3:25

Personnel

Sly and the Family Stone

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Starting as an off-Broadway music in 1967, Hair opened on Broadway on April 29, 1968 at the Biltmore Theatre in the middle of the theater district.  Known for songs like “Aquarius”, “Hair”, “Easy to be Hard”, “Good Morning Starshine”, and “The Flesh Failures” aka “Let the Sun Shine In” as well as it’s nude scene (nudity onstage was legal, but only if the actors were not moving, and this restriction was appropriately incorporated as the actors undressed under a parachute-like fabric and then sang the remainder of the song motionless), this book-less musical (no story) stitches together scenes addressing topics of that day such as hair length, the Vietnam war, race and sexual freedom.

Songs [from Wikipedia]

The score had many more songs than were typical of Broadway shows of the day. Most Broadway shows had about six to ten songs per act; Hair’s total is in the thirties. This list reflects the most common Broadway lineup.

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, Funk, Music, Rock, Soul, Uncategorized

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