Month: February 2024

Johnny Cash, The Legend, Sun, recorded 1955-58, compiled and released 1970

Cash had a weekly television show for about two years starting in 1969. It was a big step for him on his path to The Man in Black. He’d had at least three brushes with the law, as they say, in the mid ‘60s. News magazines said he had problems with diet pills. It was time for him to straighten up. Bob Dylan was a guest on his first show. Dylan needed to buff his image as well. He hadn’t released a record in a while; the news magazines speculated he’d rehabbed a heroin habit. They sat down and did Girl from the North Country. It was exciting to see them together; they certainly hadn’t rehearsed too much. This record of Cash’s old material was released to take advantage of the popularity of his TV show.

The songs are in blues format, but Cash doesn’t seem to feel them. The lyrics to I Walk the Line are soul-felt, but Cash’s delivery seems matter of fact. (Ring of Fire isn’t on this record for comparison.) Folsom Prison Blues is stiff compared to the live version he released later.

Vinyl LPs have so much more than CDs and streaming. Some of it is big, such as album covers. What caught my attention about this double record it that the first disc has Side 1 and Side 3; disc 2 has sides 2 and 4. I puzzled about that for a bit—it’s for the all-in-one record players. Put Side 1 and Side 2 facing up on the tall spindle, move the arm over, and hit play. When the second record is done, turn them over and repeat. You’ve played them both in order with no fuss. Me, I had to either put the first disc away to play Side 2 or play the sides out of order. I saw a Spirit album cover today that featured a phone booth prominently. Times and technology change.

Sea Train, Sea Train, A&M, 1969

I saw Sea Train in Cleveland in 1968—they did everything very well but nothing made me want to get up and dance. They had an odd origin story. The Blues Project wanted to break up, but they owed Verve Forecast another record. Those folks who were there at the end recorded Planned Obsolescence (funny, I think), then made this record as Sea Train. Their second album was named Seatrain (one word). That’s just confusing. Their music checked every box. Blues—heck, they were the Blues Project, doing Two Trains Running and Louisiana and mojos. Jazz—they were playing fusion before it was cool. Prog rock–they opened for Traffic on one tour. Let The Duchess No sounds like Bob Wills—Richard Greene was an excellent fiddler. I have thought I heard their stuff in the ‘70s as intro for local news shows and as a soundtrack for low-budget documentaries.

Funky Fifties!, various artists, Harlem Hitparade, compilation

I like doo wop or old-school rhythm and blues, whatever you call it, so there will be more. Rockin’ Robin has lyrics that simulate birds’ chirping—tweedle-lee-dee-dee-dee, twiddle-dee dee dee. I remember the song from my childhood, but I could never get those lyrics right. That pretty little raven at the bird bandstand taught him how to do the bop—I didn’t understand that line. For  years I wondered why the robin had to compete with the buzzard and the oriole; today I decided that they didn’t symbolize anything, it was just to fit the meter. Love Potion No. 9, sorry to say, was done better by the Searchers than the Clovers. Muddy Waters had songs about love charms—this one is an innocent tale. The YouTube version refers to going back for No. 10. Hey Little School Girl is a frequent theme in r and b. ‘Pretty little girl walking down the street/you look so fine, look so neat/Hey little girl will you be mine/I wanna love you all the time’—when the Paragons sing it, it isn’t the least bit salacious. Something I didn’t know—the song is on Herb Alpert’s album with the cover featuring a young woman wearing nothing apparent except whipped cream.

Red Octopus, Jefferson Starship, Grunt, 1975

I wanted to get to this for Valentine’s Day. Miracles is a wonderful love song—I don’t have any doubts despite the ‘if only’ construction for getting by. It means that’s all we need: believe in ourselves and each other. That’s easy enough. It is about the same in Tumblin’—Don’t be blue/I’ll stand by you/and we’ll get that feeling. Ai Garimasu (more or less There is Love in Japanese) says because you gave me your love, I know exactly who to call. Sweeter Than Honey contains ‘warm as a piece of the sun, softer than starlight’ as well as ‘you’re the best thing I’ve ever had.’ There Will Be Love is a bold declaration: Even when I close my eyes, all I see is you. (I am an old softie, and even I think that is sappy.) Play on Love asks the listener to put the books down and live love; I think Grace Slick took that from Catullus, a great source. It’s up to you and up to me/Come down yelling ‘Timber!’ through the burning trees—that is as high energy and as chaotic as rock and roll.

There’s a good saxophone break in Miracles and two decent instrumental songs, one of which is named for an archangel who has his feet on the ground and his head in heaven (thanks, Wikipedia).

Chuck (Berry) and Friends, Brookville Records, 1974

The album cover says Brookville; the record labels say Aristocrat. It’s a three-record set. Record 1 has 13 of Berry’s hits, including his only #1 song in the U.S., My Ding-a-Ling, as well as the first Chuck Berry tune I ever heard, Roll Over Beethoven. (Even Wikipedia omits the comma before the name of a person being addressed. My mother would be sad.) A Cleveland radio station had a battle of the bands in late 1963 (as I recall). One of the songs they played by the Beatles was Roll Over Beethoven. The Beatles lost. They were not a good Chuck Berry cover band.

Chuck Berry deeply understood teenage anxiety and driving with no particular place to go. Carol, Maybelline, and Little Queenie, to name a few, are immortal. How could it be that Berry’s biggest hit was a novelty song about masturbation? My modest conspiracy theory is based on Watergate. June 17, 1972, was the night of the bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee office. The story didn’t go away. And so the cover-up crew in the White House got involved. They wanted to distract the media with an outrageous story that would create controversy. The song was released in July and it made #1 in October. That didn’t seem to help Nixon any, but the news coverage—people wanted it banned!—must have helped sales.

Dick Clark, 20 Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll (compilation), Buddah Records, 1973

This was a chance for Buddah to get some more mileage from their backlist and for Clark to put another cog in his humongous media machine. He started producing the Rockin’ New Year’s Eve and kicked off the $10,000 Pyramid at about the same time.

The songs on this record from 1964 to 1972

Shangri-Las                                                                  Leader of the Pack

Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs                              Wooly Bully

Righteous Brothers                                                   You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling

McCoys                                                                          Hang On Sloopy

Lovin’ Spoonful                                                           Do You Believe in Magic

Young Rascals                                                             Good Lovin’

Van Morrison                                                              Brown-Eyed Girl

Otis Redding                                                                Dock of the Bay

Tommy James                                                              Crimson & Clover

Edwin Hawkins                                                             Oh Happy Day

Melanie                                                                        Candles in the Rain

Curtis Mayfield                                                           Super Fly

Al Green                                                                        So You’re Leaving

It was a great time to be a teenager.

Melanie, Mary Weiss (of the Shangri-Las) died

Melanie Safka [I bet she went by her first name because she got tired of hearing ‘that rhymes with Kafka’] played at Woodstock. Her song about that, Lay Down (Candles in the Rain), was a FM radio hit in 1970, a great time to do a song about Woodstock. Her biggest hit was sort of a novelty song, Brand New Key. Her version of Ruby Tuesday was on FM radio as well. Her Wiki page said she left Buddah over artistic control and founded her own record label, putting out records on her own schedule. She played at the memorial concert for Phil Ochs in 1976.

I never knew that the four members of the Shangri-Las were Weiss, her sister, plus twin friends. They had memorable hits—among them Remember (Walking in the Sand), Give Him a Great Big Kiss, I Can Never Go Home Again, and Leader of the Pack. They had a lot of teen despair (well beyond angst). My mother, the English teacher, hated the spoken intro to Give Him a Great Big Kiss-‘you best believe I’m in love L-U-V’—as if high school kids would forget how to spell from Top 40 radio. There is a great finger snap followed by a hand clap in Remember, plus the sea gulls calling. There was a motorcycle revving followed by a crash in Leader of the Pack.

Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Reprise Records, 1969

I’ve enjoyed Neil Young’s music since his Buffalo Springfield days (Mr. Soul, for example), but I was shocked to see that this record was platinum and on various lists of best LPs. I wonder if folks confused it with After the Gold Rush, which is really good. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is insipid. A Chicago DJ mocked Cinnamon Girl with ‘I want to live with a Kennedy girl.’ It’s a bad sign when I remember a parody I heard once nearly 50 years ago as clearly as a song I played a hundred times.

Down by the River (nine minutes of forgettable guitar work) includes some regrettable shooting-one’s-baby imagery from Hey Joe and Four in the Morning. Wikipedia quotes Young saying we shouldn’t be so literal. ‘It’s a desperation cry.’ I guess. The song Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere offered me some relief as a college student with too much to do racing the other rats with its description of life where it is cool and breezy. Turns out it was about how show business—being a rock star!—is mostly day-to-day running around. Cowgirl in the Sand uses ‘change your name’ to mean get married, a phrase that seemed dated to me then.

Wayne Kramer died

I’m disappointed it isn’t being covered more. He was co-lead guitar player for the MC5. If you were a fan of fast loud guitars in the Midwest in 1969, he was a giant. The band was founded on the principles of revolutionary politics and drug use; it broke up (the write-ups frequently say ‘shattered’) in 1972. Kramer became, in his words, a small-time Detroit criminal. He went to prison in 1975, and I lost track of him.

Turns out his is an inspiring story of redemption. In prison Red Rodney, who played with Charlie Parker, took Kramer aside, teaching him about music and how to straighten up. When Kramer was released, he worked with dozens of punk bands live and in the studio. His obituary said he played with Was (Not Was)—I’d never heard that. I’ll get to that when I play their four records from my collection. He played a concert at Sing Sing. He was involved in antiwar protests. He founded and led Jail Guitar Doors, a charity bringing instruments and instruction to help rehabilitate prisoners. Rest in peace, Wayne.

Here’s my favorite, Ramblin’ Rose. It ain’t Nat King Cole.

Happy Groundhog Day

It’s Sonny Boy Williamson I singing Ground Hog Blues. He was born John Lee Curtis in 1914 and died in 1948. Wikipedia says he is known as the father of modern blues harp, best known for Good Morning, School Girl, and Stop Breaking Down. He and Muddy Waters played together. He was shot and killed in a robbery. I have one of his records I’ll get to later.

Doc Watson gathers the family around to sing about hunting a groundhog. The lyrics call it a whistle pig. The Dictionary of American Regional English confirms that the usage was widespread in Appalachia. My Random House unabridged dictionary tells me groundhogs are marmots, derived from the Old French for murmur, referring to the whistling noises such animals make. I never knew. In German to sleep like a marmot is to sleep long and hard, with no mention of whistling. I hope you enjoy this break from a steady stream of Punxsutawney Phil and the movie Groundhog Day.