zumpoems

Fifty Year Friday: Jeff Beck, Truth; The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo

1968 continued to provide a greater and greater diversity of music for the LP consumer with all musical influences, past and present, east, west, north and south, being available on relatively easily accessible recorded medium for composers, musicians, producers, arrangers to listen to and often be significantly influenced by such music.

Blues — and rhythm and blues — along with popular music whether from English music halls, Hollywood or elsewhere provided the starting point for Rock & Roll which evolved into Rock as it incorporated additional musical influences and compositional techniques. However, as rock & roll became rock, many groups continued to reach back into blues history — whether for inspiration or for a simple harmonic pattern that provided a flexible, forgiving framework for jamming and relatively simple improvisation.

Jeff Beck’s Truth, recorded in May, followed by a successful tour in the U.S., and released sometime in August 1968, is primarily a blues-based album with a mix of Willie Dixon and J.B. Lenoir and Jeff Beck & Rod Stewart compositions.  Some of the exceptions include an acceptable but not an earth-shattering version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Ol’ Man River”, Beck’s mostly acoustic version of “Greensleeves”, a successful reconstruction of the Yardbird’s classic “Shape of Things”, and the highlight of the album, Jimmy Page’s composition, “Beck’s Bolero.”

Of particular note is Nicki Hopkins on piano, providing his usual upbeat, finely detailed keyboard work.  Jeff Beck is joined by Jimmy Page on “Beck’s Bolero” and John Paul Jones provides organ or bass on a few tracks.  The album is rounded out with Ron Wood on bass, and Rod Stewart.  Stewart, out of work after having left Steampacket in March 1966 and then Shotgun Express later that same year, was selected by Beck in February 1967 for this post-Yardbirds group.  Stewart is still developing as an expressive singer at this point,  but as an avid fan of Sam Cooke, he does quite well on this album, providing effective vocals.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

Personnel

• Jeff Beck – electric guitars, acoustic guitar on “Greensleeves”; pedal steel guitar on “Shapes of Things”; bass guitar on “Ol’ Man River”; lead vocals on “Tallyman” and “Hi Ho Silver Lining”, backing vocals on “Let Me Love You”
• Rod Stewart – lead vocals, possible backing vocal on “Tallyman”^{[citation needed]}
• Ronnie Wood – bass guitar
• Micky Waller – drums

Additional credited personnel

• John Paul Jones – bass guitar on “Hi Ho Silver Lining” and “Beck’s Bolero”; Hammond organ on “Ol’ Man River” and “You Shook Me”; arrangements on “Hi Ho Silver Lining”
• Nicky Hopkins – piano on “Morning Dew”, “You Shook Me”, “Beck’s Bolero” and “Blues Deluxe”
• “You Know Who” – drums on “Beck’s Bolero”; timpani on “Ol’ Man River”

Additional uncredited personnel

• Madeline Bell – backing vocals on “I’ve Been Drinking”
• John Carter and Ken Lewis – backing vocals on “Tallyman”
• Clem Cattini – drums on “Hi Ho Silver Lining”
• Aynsley Dunbar – drums on “Tallyman” and “Rock My Plimsoul (single version)”
• Jimmy Page – 12-string electric guitar on “Beck’s Bolero”
• Unknown Scottish bagpipe player – bagpipes on “Morning Dew”
• Unknown studio orchestra – orchestra on “Love Is Blue”

Previously incorporating, folk, bluegrass and country music influences in their work, with the addition of Gram Parsons, the Byrds go out whole hog, so to speak, in making their next album, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo”,  a true bluegrass, folk and country music album.  Parson’s talked the band in recording in Nashville and adding pedal steel guitar and jukejoint piano.  The result is an excellent album that, though, has little to do with rock and roll or rock music, contributed, along with the Band’s Big Pink and other contemporaneous albums like Credence Clearwater Revival’s first album, to the new and ultimately highly commercial endeavor of melding country and rock elements into a new style of music that would simply be called country rock.  Soon, “country rock”, would provide a walloping, additional revenue stream for the major labels.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

Personnel