The Second Disc

Paul McCartney might have taken the bull by the horns for his aggressively homemade solo debut McCartney in 1970, defying practically all expectations, but he literally took the ram by the horns on the cover photo of its 1971 follow-up, Ram.  By the time of Ram’s release, George Harrison had declared that All Things (including Beatles) Must Pass and John Lennon had exorcised many of his demons with the confessional Plastic Ono Band, wife Yoko at his side.  With Linda McCartney co-billed as songwriter and vocalist, Paul eschewed the grand statements of John and George’s solo projects, not to mention the genre excursions of Ringo Starr’s Sentimental Journey (Ringo goes standards) and Beaucoup of Blues (Ringo goes country).  Ram instead felt like a natural progression from the homespun, “lo-fi” McCartney, expanding the production but having much of the same freewheeling, not-too-serious feel.  Now, Ram is the latest title to receive expanded treatment from MPL and Hear Music as part of The Paul McCartney Archive Collection.  Easily the most luxurious reissue series dedicated to any Beatle, the Archive Collection will likely takes its place as one of the grandest programs for any artist of any genre, should it eventually encompass all of McCartney’s albums.  Ram is, justifiably, as lavish as its predecessors, and maybe even a bit more so.

The only album jointly credited to Paul and Linda McCartney, Ram was largely composed by the husband and wife at their farm in Scotland. Recording commenced in New York in the fall of 1970 with a cast of musicians including future Wings drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarists David Spinozza and Hugh McCracken. The album made it all the way to No. 1 in the U.K. and No. 2 in the U.S. upon its May 1971 release, and the single “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” became Paul’s first U.S. No. 1 single as well as a Grammy winner.  Despite its commercial success, there’s always been an air of mystery about Ram, from its title to its frequently oblique lyrics.  Is it a throwaway album from a disgruntled ex-Beatle or the ironic birth of “indie rock” from a superstar?  Or is it something in between? Though its Archive Collection releases go a long way in providing context and explanations, the album itself is still a delicious enigma.  For those keeping score, the release is available in multiple formats: a 4-CD/1-DVD box set edition, a single-CD remaster, a 2-CD deluxe edition, 2-LP vinyl edition, 1-LP mono vinyl edition and digitally.  (You can find track listings for all versions here!)

We’ll explore them all after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

Not every album lives up to its title, but The Knack’s Havin’ a Rave-Up! certainly does!  The group – Doug Fieger on vocals and rhythm guitar, Berton Averre on lead guitar, keyboards and vocals, Prescott Niles on bass, and Bruce Gary on drums – had quite a number of rave-ups on Los Angeles’ famed Sunset Strip in 1978, and made quite a big noise.  The quartet was suddenly being deemed the American answer to The Beatles.  Musicians the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Ray Manzarek were taking turns sitting in with The Knack.  (Manzarek could have been said to be passing the torch, as The Doors made quite a splash at the Whisky a Go-Go themselves!)  The Beatles comparisons continued when the band signed to Capitol Records.  In fact, 1979’s Get the Knack became the fastest-selling debut album since Meet the Beatles.  When “My Sharona” became the biggest-selling single of 1979, the rest of the U.S. caught wind of what denizens of Los Angeles already knew: The Knack had the goods.  Those pre-fame days are vividly captured on Omnivore Recordings’ new Havin’ a Rave-Up!  Live in Los Angeles, 1978 (Zen/Omnivore OVCD-18, 2012).

If you’re looking for pristine sound quality, you might have to look elsewhere.  These performances, culled from the late Doug Fieger’s own archives, aim for “authorized bootleg quality,” according to a booklet note.  Though there aren’t specific recording dates included, all tracks come from The Whisky a Go-Go and Doug Weston’s Troubadour circa 1978 when The Knack was filling the clubs of the Sunset Strip with stardom just around the corner.  Six songs would be introduced to a wide audience when Get the Knack spent five weeks atop the Billboard chart, and are performed here at their highest possible energy levels.  That energy came from punk; the songs, though, were firmly in the pop tradition.  The “New Wave” label has often been hung on The Knack, perhaps to differentiate them from the harder-edged, more outré acts we think of as “post-punk.”  But whatever you call their music, it was insistently catchy, played with a primal urgency and just a hell of a lot of fun.  It was a respite from both punk and disco, and made it clear that there was still a place for pure pop, before that word had a pejorative connotation.

Hit the jump for a trip to the Whisky! Read the rest of this entry »

Among the most recent reissues from Big Break Records is a 1974 album from Electric Flag founder and Jimi Hendrix drummer Buddy Miles entitled All the Faces of Buddy Miles.  But one could easily title any given batch of music from the Cherry Red-affiliated label as All the Faces of BBR, so reliably diverse is each group of the label’s releases.  Today’s capsule reviews look at four of the latest from the Big Break team!

Buddy Miles, All the Faces of Buddy Miles (Columbia KC-33089, 1974 – reissued Big Break CDBBR 0123, 2012)

Producer Johnny Bristol was one of the brightest names at Motown in the late 1960s, responsible for such hits as Diana Ross and the Supremes’ “Someday We’ll Be Together,” David Ruffin’s “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)” and Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”  Following his departure from Motown, Bristol continued producing other artists but embarked on a successful solo career, first at MGM Records and later for labels including Atlantic.  The same year he charted on MGM with the Top 10 “Hang on in There Baby,” Bristol took the controls for All the Faces of Buddy Miles.  He brought along Funk Brothers cohorts including bassist James Jamerson and guitarist Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin, and lent the titular drummer a smooth sound at the crossroads of pop, funk and soul.  Miles ceded the drum chair and concentrated on vocals for the settings provided by Bristol and veteran arranger H.B. Barnum, who had worked with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Aretha Franklin.  Although Miles wasn’t a vocal powerhouse, he brought a great deal of passion to a largely original set that touched on most of the faces of seventies soul music.

Bristol supplied most of the material, with future Warren Zevon collaborator Jorge Calderon contributing a couple of new songs.  Calderon’s “All the Faces” supplied the album with its title, as Miles queried, “How can all the faces be a part of who I am?”  There’s not much of the forceful funk-rock Miles of Electric Flag and Band of Gypsys.  There’s more of the Miles who played with Ruby and the Romantics and The Delfonics.  But Miles and the band cut loose on Calderon’s raucous “Kiss and Run,” Bristol’s tougher “Wants and Needs (The Earth Song)” and the album’s lone instrumental, “Baby Don’t Stop (Sit on the Rock).”  The softer influence of Philly soul is felt on Bristol’s “I’m Just a Kiss Away.”  A revival of Tommy Edwards’ “It’s Only the Good Times” is cabaret gone to church, and Bristol’s “Pain” smolders and simmers with the title emotion until the singer and the song reach boiling point.   A jazzy saxophone lends “Pain” a late-night vibe.  Miles even ventures into Barry White territory with the sensual R&B of “Got to Find Ms. Right.”

Keyboardist Clarence McDonald contributes to the liner notes in this fine package, which also includes the single version of “Pull Yourself Together” as a bonus track.  All the Faces of Buddy Miles is one album that lives up to its title, and will likely be mandatory listening for fans of under-the-radar seventies soul.

Pharoah Sanders, Love Will Find a Way (Arista 4161, 1978 – reissued Big Break CDBBR 0117, 2012)

How to commercialize the sound of one of the leading pioneers of the free jazz movement?  That was the question that producer Norman Connors positioned himself to answer when he signed with Clive Davis’ Arista Records label.  Saxophonist Pharoah Sanders was lauded by Ornette Coleman as “probably the best tenor player in the world,” and had been closely associated with the avant garde jazz of Sun Ra and John Coltrane.  Sanders first joined Coltrane on record for 1965’s Ascension, and Meditations (1966) spectacularly featured the two men on “dueling” tenor saxophones with extensive “free” passages.  After Coltrane’s 1967 death, Sanders played with his wife Alice, and also served as a leader, continuing to push the boundaries of jazz.  But Norman Connors, a songwriter, arranger, and drummer who had scored a hit with 1976’s You Are My Starship, had designs on updating Sanders’ sound without compromising it.  The result was Love Will Find a Way, which walks the line between R&B, fusion and even smooth jazz.

Though Connors smartly didn’t try to disguise the fact that Sanders was, first and foremost, a jazz musician, the surroundings (courtesy Motown stalwarts McKinley Jackson and Paul Riser) were markedly different than the lengthy, frequently dissonant jazz his fans had come to expect.  The title track found Sanders melodically playing over a lush bed of strings, tinkling piano and sweet background singers.  “Pharomba,” arranged by Jackson, allowed Sanders more room to wail over funky support from Connors and Kenny Nash on percussion, Lenny White on drums and Alex Blake on bass.  As producer, though, Connors kept the track melodic and tight.  He also enlisted a not-so-secret weapon in the form of the budding vocal star Phyllis Hyman.  Hyman had made her first big splash when Connors produced her on You Are My Starship’s revival of Thom Bell and Linda Creed’s “Betcha By Golly Wow.”  She lent her remarkable and appropriately jazz-inflected voice to three tracks: “Love is Here,” “As You Are” and “Everything I Have is Good.”   For “Everything I Have,” Connors himself sang a duet with Hyman.  With vocalists out front, Sanders’ playing is much more restrained but no less dexterous.  Sanders takes the soprano sax for a languid instrumental version of the 1953 standard “Answer Me, My Love” and gets the party started with a cover of Marvin Gaye’s then-recent Motown hit “Got to Give It Up.”  But Pharoah’s version isn’t as funky as Gaye’s cool original, and it’s one of the less distinguished tracks here.  (Nor was it a favorite of Connors’, according to the extensive liner notes by Shelley Nicole.)

It’s impossible not to note the irony that a groundbreaker in the free jazz arena came very close to the realm of smooth jazz with Love Will Find a Way.  This transformation of Pharoah Sanders might be anathema to those moved by the extended explorations of his past, and indeed, Sanders soon returned to the style of music that was more personal to him.  But thanks to Norman Connors’ contributions, Love is a singular hybrid of R&B and soul with jazz as well as a true time capsule.  Big Break’s expanded edition adds the single versions of “As You Are” and “Got to Give It Up.”

We’ll meet you after the jump with looks at the latest reissues from The Pointer Sisters and Greg Phillinganes! Read the rest of this entry »

What defines country music?  The answer isn’t an easy one.  Dolly Parton is undoubtedly singing a country-and-western song when she reminisces about “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” but how about when she’s warbling “Here You Come Again” by the Brill Building team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil?  Are Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift country artists as pop stars, or pop stars as country artists?  Billboard recently described none other than Bruce Springsteen as “a symbolic fencepost in modern country.”  Clearly, country music comes in all varieties.  This hasn’t been lost on the fine folks at Real Gone Music, who have recently issued a group of country-themed collections that are about as different as different can be.  The artists are three late troubadours: Cowboy Copas (1913-1963), Eddie Rabbitt (1941-1998) and Mel McDaniel (1942-2011).  Real Gone’s three new compilations prove that these singers were able to carve out their own niches in the overall country-and-western landscape.

The Taylor Swifts of the world might be most indebted to Eddie Rabbitt, whose music practically defines “crossover country.”  Perhaps this was due to his upbringing; Rabbitt was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised across the Hudson in East Orange, New Jersey, a highly unlikely breeding ground for a country music superstar.  Rabbitt’s 13 Original # 1 Hits (Real Gone Music RGM-0047, 2012) is not one of Real Gone’s more comprehensive collections, but despite its brief running time, it nonetheless traces Rabbitt’s ascendancy from rising country star to pop crossover success.

Though Rabbitt made his debut on record in 1964, this collection of his thirteen No. 1s (on various charts) picks up in 1976.  That was six years after Elvis Presley made the world take notice of Rabbitt when he recorded the songwriter’s “Kentucky Rain,” still a perennial favorite of the late King’s fans.    Rabbitt remained a consistent hitmaker until 1986, and Real Gone has gone the extra mile in licensing these tracks from labels including Capitol, Warner Bros. and RCA.  Rabbitt was equally comfortable as a songwriter and interpreter of others’ material, and was quite adaptable in musical styles.

The earliest track here is pure honky-tonk country, musically and lyrically (“Drinkin’ My Baby (Off My Mind),” co-written with Even Stevens) but by the second song, from 1978, the change in Rabbitt’s style is pronounced.  The piano is no longer rollicking but plaintive for the Alan Ray/Jeff Raymond composition “You Don’t Love Me Anymore,” a big, sumptuous pop ballad with not a twangy guitar in sight.  Soon enough, strings and backing vocalists were added to the radio-ready equation (“I Just Want to Love You,” written by Rabbitt, Stevens and David Malloy) in a sound that was more AM pop than countrypolitan.  The change paid off, with both songs hitting pole position on the C&W chart.

Rabbitt continued his climb atop the charts, bringing a light country flavor to pop tunes (the movie theme “Every Which Way But Loose”) or abandoning the Nashville overtones altogether (the slick, blue-eyed soul song “Suspicions”).  His crossover gambits worked beautifully, as the endurance of smash hits like jukebox sing-along “I Love a Rainy Night” (No. 1 Pop, C&W and AC in 1980) and Crystal Gayle duet “You and I” (No. 1 C&W, No. 2 AC and No. 7 Pop) proves.   The collection concludes with the romantic “Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)” which found Rabbitt joining Juice Newton in an attempt to recapture some of the magic of his Crystal Gayle duet.  Bill Dahl offers a solid and informative essay to accompany 13 Original # 1 Hits, but unfortunately the booklet contains no discographical information to the original issue number of each single and chart positions.

The next release in Real Gone’s country trio comes from a contemporary of Rabbitt’s, Mel McDaniel.  Hit the jump where you’ll find baby with her blue jeans on! Read the rest of this entry »

Ooh-wah, ooh-wah, cool, cool kitty!  Tell us about the boy from New York City…

And indeed, much of America listened to the Ad Libs tell of that kinda tall, really fine guy in his mohair suit.  The Top 10 hit turned radio’s attention from Swinging London back to New York City for a brief moment, but the group was never able to repeat the song’s success.  It wasn’t for lack of trying, though, as Real Gone Music’s The Complete Blue Cat Recordings (Real Gone RGM-0500, 2012) proves.  Though the Ad Libs’ released output at Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller and George Goldner’s Blue Cat Records consisted of just four singles (eight sides), the Real Goners have added a wealth of unreleased material to create the definitive portrait of the vocal group.

Blue Cat, an imprint of Leiber, Stoller and Goldner’s Red Bird label, boasted its own cool kitty, a blue, horn-playing feline on each of its records.  “The Boy From New York City” was the group’s first A-side for Blue Cat.  And how could the song, written by John Taylor, have gone wrong, with Leiber and Stoller producing, future Philly soul legend Leon Huff on piano, Artie Butler arranging, and Phil Ramone engineering the session at New York’s Mira Sound studio?  In his introduction to the liner notes here, Tim Hauser of The Manhattan Transfer states most accurately and succinctly that the 1964 song was a “’60s Brill Building version of classic street-corner doo-wop,” and that mix, indeed, marks the small but enjoyable crop of music recorded at Blue Cat by the Ad Libs.  The group was born from the remains of Bayonne, New Jersey’s The Arabians and The Creators, and initially signed by Red Bird/Blue Cat as The Cheerios!  Taylor, too, was residing in Bayonne when he wrote “The Boy From New York City.”

Like contemporaries The Essex (“Easier Said Than Done”) and Ruby and the Romantics (“Our Day Will Come”), The Ad Libs were distinguished by the presence of a female vocalist, Mary Ann Thomas.  Spotted in Hoboken, Thomas filled out the quintet also including Hughie Harris, Danny Austin, Dave Watt and Norman Donegan.  John Taylor had been providing them with material since 1962, but George Goldner knew that “The Boy From New York City” was the song with the most hit potential when The Ad Libs offered an a cappella performance of it at an audition.

Hit the jump for more! Read the rest of this entry »

Frederick Long’s nickname “Shorty” was ironic considering his surname, but the diminutive pianist, songwriter and vocalist was indeed a mere 5’1”.  Yet Shorty was Long on talent.  Harvey Fuqua brought Long to Motown with him from Tri-Phi, and Long was eventually selected by Berry Gordy to inaugurate the new Soul label, designed to showcase the funkier side of the Sound of Young America.  That single arrived in 1964, but Gordy didn’t release a Long solo album until 1968, just one year before the artist died at the age of 29 in a boating accident.  Here Comes…Shorty Long: The Complete Motown Stereo Masters, the latest release in Ace Records’ ongoing series of vintage Motown platters, serves up Long’s two solo albums (1968’s Here Comes The Judge and 1969’s The Prime of Shorty Long) plus two bonus tracks on one CD (Kent/Ace CDTOP 369) and offers ample evidence of a singular, if short-lived, talent.  If you like your Motown off the beaten path, you’re in the right place.

The anthology doesn’t include every track recorded at Motown by Shorty, but rather his complete stereo masters as issued on the Soul imprint.  That means you’ll find two full LPs here, plus the stereo debut of a track first unearthed in 2010 in mono, and a new stereo mix of one single side.  Shorty is best known for the percolating “Function at the Junction.”  That irresistible invitation to the dance (co-written with Eddie Holland and produced by Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier) appeared as a single in 1966 before finding a home on the Here Comes the Judge LP.  “Don’t Mess with My Weekend” continues the party-time groove, as does “Night Fo’ Last,” on which the H-D-H team tried to recapture the “Function” magic.  It’s heard here in both instrumental and vocal renditions.

Meet you for that function after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

Where were you 44 years ago today?  If you happened to be passing by 105 Second Avenue in New York City’s East Village, you would likely have seen a fantastic group of names displayed on the marquee at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East.  On Friday and Saturday, April 26 and 27, 1968, Iron Butterfly shared an explosive bill with Traffic and Blue Cheer.  The Fillmore East itself is now just a memory, of course.  Its exterior and entrance now welcomes you to a bank, and the storied auditorium has been demolished.  But the music recorded at the venue lives on.  Artists as diverse as The Allman Brothers Band, Laura Nyro, Miles Davis and The Mothers of Invention have all released live albums from the Fillmore East.  Recently, Rhino Handmade unveiled another live set from the legendary New York spot with Iron Butterfly’s Fillmore East 1968 (RHM2 526745, 2011).

The new release is culled from the band’s four sets on those two April evenings, three of which are presented in full.  (The Friday late show is incomplete due to tapes of two songs being unusable.)  “A gentleman by the name of Jimi Hendrix will be joining us on Friday night” is the first thing you hear from the Fillmore’s announcer before he introduces Iron Butterfly to the eerie strains of an organ.  We’ll hear variations on this pre-show announcement more than once over these two discs; there’s a definite feeling of déjà vu as the band runs through a tight set four times with some variations in each set.

The sets focus mainly on material from Iron Butterfly’s first album Heavy, and predate the official commercial release of the band’s most famous song, the sprawling “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”  In fact, it hadn’t been recorded yet at the time of these concerts, so there’s no recognition applause for the song.  One wonders, what did the audiences make of the epic song, hearing it for the first time?  Two versions of it are on Fillmore East, the band having saved it for the late shows.  One workout runs 17 minutes, similar to the running time of the studio original; the other take is a comparatively brisk 15 minutes!   Still perhaps the the apotheosis of psychedelic hard-rock excess, “In-A-Gadda” is introduced in the late Saturday set with “This is called ‘In Our Gadda Da Vida…which doesn’t mean a damn thing!”   In addition to the title track, two more songs were previewed from the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album (“My Mirage,” “Are You Happy”).  “Her Favorite Style,” played at Saturday’s late show, wouldn’t arrive on vinyl until 1969’s Ball.

Iron Butterfly can boast one of the most frequently altered line-ups in rock history, with over 50 line-ups having played under the band’s name over the years.  Three of the group’s original five members departed after studio debut Heavy, so Fillmore East offers a chance to hear new members Lee Dorman (bass) and Erik Brann (guitar) joining Doug Ingle (organ/lead vocals) and Ron Bushy (drums) on songs from that album.  Though they hadn’t been playing together for very long, these four members were attuned to each other intimately.  This album makes for a stronger overall collection than the somewhat-maligned 1970 Live album from this same quartet (on which “In-A-Gadda” took up the entire second side!) recorded over a year later, in May 1969.

Hit the jump for more! Read the rest of this entry »

Though there’s no one formula for creating a great song, there’s no denying the success of the method that flourished first in New York’s Tin Pan Alley (28^th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, for those wondering) and later a bit uptown in and around the Brill Building (1619 Broadway near 49^th Street).  A couple of blocks away at 1650 Broadway at 51st Street, during the halcyon days of the 1960s, you would have found the home of Aldon Music, and the team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.  “Aldon Music has been described as boot camp for songwriters.  That it was.  And yes, we did write in cubicles,” King confirms in her recent, acclaimed memoir A Natural Woman.  “The proximity of each cubicle to the next added an ‘echo’ factor.  While I was playing the song on which Gerry and I were working, we heard only our song.  As soon as I stopped playing, we could hear the song on which the team in the next cubicle was working.  Not surprisingly, with each of us trying to write the follow-up to an artist’s career hit, everyone’s song sounded similar to everyone else’s…”  But King doesn’t find this a bad thing at all: “[The] competitive atmosphere fostered by Donnie [Kirshner] spurred each team on to greater effort, which resulted in better songs.”

Hot on the heels of the publication of A Natural Woman, two indispensable new releases are revisiting those days of 1650 Broadway and proving just how right Carole King is.  The music you’ll find on The Legendary Demos (Rockingale/Hear Music HRM-33681-02) and Something Good from the Goffin and King Songbook (Ace CDCHD 1327) amounts to one of the most joyful noises in popular music, and each title addresses a crucial part of the 9-to-5 Brill Building/Aldon Music process.  The former makes available, for the very first time, the demos with which Carole King presented her newest songs to artists like The Monkees, The Everly Brothers and Bobby Vee.  The latter includes Goffin and King’s songs in released versions by those very artists and many more.

The Legendary Demos, of course, starts at the very beginning, but it hasn’t arrived without its share of surprises.  King’s publishing demos were well-known up and down Broadway; as producer Lou Adler accurately observes in the liner notes, “Within her piano, you could hear a string part, or another background part, and she did the background parts!”  These seminal recordings, dating from 1961-1970, have long been requested, but until now have eluded commercial release.  The good news is that all thirteen tracks show King at the absolute peak of her form.  The bad news is that there are only thirteen tracks (compare with the twenty-six on Something Good!) and the album’s total running time is just under forty minutes.  These songs – culled from some 118 hits penned by King – are just the tip of the iceberg.

The most eyebrow-raising aspect of the album may be the presence of five demos from 1971’s Tapestry, meaning that listeners are likely already familiar with King’s renditions of the songs.  (A sixth song from Tapestry, “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman,” is heard in a galvanizing demo intended for Aretha Franklin, predating the Tapestry album.)  The biggest thrill of Legendary Demos comes from hearing Carole King sing The Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday” or The Righteous Brothers’ “Just Once in My Life.”  Good as these demos of “It’s Too Late” and “You’ve Got a Friend” are, one has the nagging wish that they had been saved for a Tapestry: The Demo release, allowing King’s versions of songs written for others to take the spotlight here.

King’s gifts as a vocalist truly come to the fore on these intimate demos.  She never imitated a singer for whom she’s “pitching” a song (in fact, some of those singers ended up imitating King’s demo!) but adopted different tones and phrasing for each title that might recall the artist for whom the song is intended.  More likely, it was just intuition of knowing which artist might be most suited to a particular composition and tailoring that demo to his or her strengths.  Though the approach is non-chronological here, it still traces the journey from staff songwriter to singer/songwriter.  Long before “confessional” songwriting was in vogue, honesty and believability was at the core of the Goffin and King songbook.  Goffin had the knack for verbalizing the emotions of kids his own age; Goffin was just 20 and King 17 when they married in 1959.  Although Legendary Demos also contains songs with lyrics by Howard Greenfield (“Crying in the Rain”), Toni Stern (“It’s Too Late”) and King herself (“You’ve Got a Friend,” “Tapestry,” “Way Over Yonder”), the early songs with Goffin are the heart of this collection.

Hit the jump for much more on both new sets! Read the rest of this entry »

Mention “Hold On, I’m Comin’” and chances are you can hear that confident, swaggering horn riff that insistently opens the Sam and Dave classic.  Indeed, all you really need to know is in that riff!  All four albums recorded by Sam and Dave for Stax/Atlantic have been collected by Edsel on two new releases, and these expanded editions (including various single sides) add up to true cornerstones for any R&B or soul music library.  But the label hasn’t stopped there.  A very different kind of R&B is on display on a two-on-one CD bringing back to print two of the three secular albums recorded for Columbia Records by Earth Wind and Fire’s Philip Bailey.  Liner notes for both the Sam and Dave and Bailey titles have been provided by Tony Rounce, and the annotator is able to draw a line between these early soul men and a latter-day great.

Sam Moore & Dave Prater were actually signed by Jerry Wexler to the Atlantic label proper, but almost immediately loaned out to the Stax label, then distributed by Atlantic.  Wexler must have intuitively sensed that the company’s New York uptown soul stylings wouldn’t be quite right for the duo, but that the Stax team could work their magic on the vocal duo.  Eight of the songs on that first album released in April 1966 and entitled Hold On, I’m Comin’ after the hit single were co-written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, arguably as important a duo as the titular one.  They made equally important contributions on all four of the albums collected by Edsel, including five of the songwriting credits on the follow-up Double Dynamite, with which Hold On is paired as Edsel EDSS 1035.

Still one of the Stax label’s calling cards, the Hayes/Porter single was an R&B chart topper, the first such for the label since 1962’s “Green Onions.”  (Odd footnote:  the reissue adds a “g” to “comin’” on the spine and album cover, while Atlantic actually pressed a second printing with “I’m A-Comin’” to avoid any risqué suggestion in the title phrase!)  The album itself doesn’t live up to the high standards of its title track, containing five previously-issued tracks.  It’s a fine listening experience but not a true “album” in the classic sense, as Stax was very much a singles-oriented company at that time.  One does wonder, however, why the duo was riding a turtle on the cover, for they were definitely in the fast lane, from the greasy “Ease Me” (“with your lovin’”) to the churchy ballad “Just Me.”  Steve Cropper and Eddie (“Knock on Wood”) Floyd’s “I Got Everything I Need” is a Memphis soul stew with a sound instantly recognizable to any fan of deep southern soul – impassioned vocals, languid piano contrasting with sly, smoking horns, rock-steady drums, crisp guitars.  Floyd also teamed with Willa Parker to write “Don’t Make It So Hard on Me,” and the album’s twelve tracks make for a pleasing bag of tunes in various tempi but all suited to the same mood and themes of love lost and found.

The driving “You Don’t Know Like I Know” is heard here in mono, while all of the other album tracks are in stereo; the stereo version was missing an overdub so Edsel opted to include the more “complete” mono version.  Three singles have been appended to Hold On, I’m Comin’.

Much had changed in just a few months by winter 1966 when Double Dynamite was released in January 1967.  The Summer of Love was just around the corner.  The groovy, psychedelic cover art may have been a concession to the times, but the music within was still timeless.  It’s not a markedly different album in tone than its predecessor; “You Got Me Hummin’” is the highlight, but this unusual funk workout failed to make a big noise at the time for Sam and Dave.  “Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody” offers a more muscular (modern?) sound but the Hayes/Porter song lacked the hook and memorable riff of “Hold On,” the yardstick by which every subsequent Sam and Dave song would be measured.

For the first time, cover versions were introduced into the mix including Sam Cooke’s “Soothe Me” and Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham’s “I’m Your Puppet” (a hit for another soul duo, James and Bobby Purify).  Though the chorus harmonies of Sam and Dave were uniquely their own, the production lacks the distinctive glockenspiel echoes of the Purifys’ version but otherwise stays true to the blueprint.  But, boy, did the Porter/Hayes team deliver with “When Something’s Wrong with My Baby,” a stone-cold ballad classic.  It barely missed the Top 40 but this song (actually recorded first by Charlie Rich) gave Moore and Prater their best placing in many singles.

Hit the jump for Edsel’s second Sam and Dave release, plus Philip Bailey’s Chinese Wall/Inside Out! Read the rest of this entry »

One dictionary defines “pearl” as an object both “hard” and “lustrous,” synonymous with “gem” or “jewel.”  Couldn’t all of those words also describe Janis Joplin?  Pearl was, of course, the name bestowed upon the singer by her final group, The Kozmic Blues Band, and the title of her final, posthumously released album from 1971.  Pearl has arrived on CD once more from Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings under the title The Pearl Sessions (88697 84224 2), expanding the original 10-track album with a clutch of mono singles, two live tracks, and nearly a disc’s worth of alternate takes and studio banter.  (A vinyl Sessions highlights album and a 180-gram pressing of the original LP will also be available on Record Store Day.)  So is this the last word on Pearl?

The answer would have to be “yes” and “no,” which is altogether appropriate for an artist of many contradictions.  Joplin was both larger-than-life and shy, supremely confident but pained.  She was a songwriter of no small talent but best known for her interpretation of others’ songs.  Pearl captured all of these contradictions, and more, better than any of the artist’s albums before it.  Some of the most forceful repertoire of her all-too-short career can be found on the album, produced by Paul Rothchild, best known for his work with The Doors.  Joplin pleads, wails, shrieks, and otherwise gives herself in to the music with abandon and fervor.  A sense of drama permeates the original album which wasn’t always apparent in her earlier, more free-form recordings; indeed, this is as tight a group of songs as she ever recorded.  Only “Me and Bobby McGee” exceeds the four-minute mark.  Sessions is the second 2-CD set devoted to the album.  The first (2005’s Legacy Edition on Columbia/Legacy C2K 90282) supplemented it with a live performance from 1970’s Festival Express tour.  Sessions drops those tracks and replaces them with a behind-the-scenes look.  Both approaches are valid but neither could be called “definitive.”  However, Sessions confirms there’s still much, much more to explore when it comes to Janis Joplin.

We’ll meet you after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »