31 posts tagged “60s”
Tonight the kids and I watched the Star Trek episode "The Way To Eden" -- the one with the cult of space hippies who commandeer the Enterprise to take them to the legendary planet of Eden. Apparently the Star Trek writers thought that any group of hippies must include a troubadour who would recount the group's story as it happened, so here we have Adam, the space-guitar-slinging space-hippie who has a song for every occasion and looks uncannily like Will Forte (which makes it even funnier than it is already):
Don't worry, that space-hippie-chick's bicycle wheel but turns out to be yet another variety of space-guitar, and she jams out with Spock on it:
It occurred to me today that "I'm So Glad" by Cream and "I'm Unsatisfied" by the Godfathers sum up the entirety of rock and roll; everything else is just mixtures and variations of those two themes.
Hearing Bryan Ferry's "You Go To My Head" always makes me want to hear "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart"; they both have a sinuous dreaminess that makes them go together well. I first heard SGHOMH on Marc Almond's The Stars We Are in 1988:
And that's the only version I knew until last week, when I started looking into the song's origins. Here is its concise history per Wikipedia:
Originally recorded by David and Jonathan, and then Gene Pitney in 1967, the song reached #5 on the UK singles chart but failed to chart in the USA. The song was subsequently covered by a number of other acts including Cilla Black, Terry Reid and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on their 1986 album of covers Kicking Against the Pricks.
I'd never listened to Gene Pitney before, but YouTube has a vintage TV performance of SGHOMH, and wow, what a voice! He sounds like a cross between Roy Orbison Davy Jones (that's what I meant to write!) and Robin Gibb:
Pitney had a long and successful career (yet another musical avenue for me to explore), and was on a UK tour when he died of heart failure in 2006. But getting back to the 80s, here's where it gets interesting: for Almond's single release of SGHOMH, it was turned into a duet with Gene Pitney; fueled by another TV performance, it went to Number One!
"Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart" was actually written, and originally recorded by, British folk duo David and Jonathan, a.k.a. Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway. You may be familiar with some of the other songs they penned: "I'd Like to Teach the World To Sing"; the Hollies' "Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)" (which I thought was by Creedence for the longest time); "Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again"; and "My Baby Loves Lovin'", to name a few. In fact, in just twelve days they are being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (along with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; and I'll just stop there.) The completist in my wants to post David and Jonathan's original version, but the best I can do is the 30-second sample from the online music stores:
Of the other covers of SGHOMH, the only one worth featuring here is Nick Cave's (of course):
I almost always have the last.fm app running so I can keep track of what I've listened to, and then tag the songs I love for easy reference. My three top loves of today are available for streaming on Grooveshark, and lo and behold, I can put them all into a single widget. So here are my top loved tracks of today, by Ocote Soul Sounds (a.k.a. Antibalas bandleader Martin Perna) with Adrian Quesada, Fred Wesley and the J.B. Horns, and Sexteto Electronico Moderno (with a swinging cover of "In the Year 2525"!):
Now I just have to figure out how to get the widget not to change colors on me at the last step.
Herbie Mann opened his 1966 album Our Mann Flute with a cover of The Jazz Crusaders' "Scratch;" the second track is the equally invigorating "Philly Dog"--
Like "Scratch," "Philly Dog" was arranged by Jimmy Wisner, who had had some success as a piano-based instrumental act called Kokomo (whose recordings are still eluding me, dammit!). "Philly Dog" was also a cover: Rufus Thomas had a string of raunchy dog-themed R&B hits on Stax in the mid 60s, the best known of which is "Walking the Dog."
After abandoning the dog theme for a while, "Philly Dog" was going to be Thomas's comeback dog hit, but he couldn't come up with any lyrics. Stax labelmates The Mar-Keys recorded it as an instrumental:
But wait, there's more! Imeem reveals a Herbie Mann album I didn't know about, Live at the Whisky A Go Go from 1968, with the same lineup (Sonny Sharrock, Steve Marcus, Miroslav Vitous, Bruno Carr?) as the "5tet" video I featured earlier, plus Roy Ayers on vibes. The album includes a 14-minute version of "Philly Dog," with Sharrock shredding a solo in his singular style at 10:20--
Much as I dig that, fourteen minutes can seem like a long time; this was probably a lot more fun live. I think I'll stick with the short and sweet studio version.
And finally, I'm going to assume that the Cramps' "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?" is an homage to Rufus Thomas.
I think that wraps up my little Herbie Mann jag. Next up: another unlikely cover.
The third of the three Herbie Mann albums I bought on Saturday is New Mann at Newport, subtitled Herbie Mann Returns to the Newport Jazz Festival & Plays She's a Carioca/All Blues/Project S/Scratch/Summertime. Specifically, it's the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival, and Mann is returning because he wowed them in 1965. This album is the last recording of Herbie Mann's "brass period," the sound I fell in love with as a toddler on Our Mann Flute. That album opened with a two-and-a-half-minute take of "Scratch" (which I featured back in July 2007); "Scratch" is fleshed out to ten minutes here with some exteeeeeeennnnnded improv by Mann, trumpeter Jimmy Owens, and trombonists Joe Orange and Jack Hitchcock:
The rest of the band consists of bassist Reggie Workman, percussionist Carlos "Patato" Valdes, and drummer Bruno Carr. The liner notes also mention that "Scratch" was written by saxophonist Wayne Henderson of the Jazz Crusaders; so that's where it came from! I tracked down the Jazz Crusaders' original recording:
Did you make it all the way through that? I didn't. I don't like that new beat as much, and the whole thing just falls flat for me. It's still far from the worst music in the world, though.
I went to a CD and Record Fair yesterday; "Fair" was a misnomer, as it seemed more like a funeral. Now that music has been liberated from its traditional physical media, these gatherings are even less about loving music and more about collecting artifacts. Leaving empty-handed after 15 minutes, I strolled over to the Commons and ended up in the subterranean record room of Autumn Leaves Books, which made for a much more pleasant browsing experience. Autumn Leaves is always good for another Herbie Mann record or two, and yesterday I scored three. Hold On, I'm Comin' is a collection of live recordings from 1972, four from the New York Jazz Festival and one from Montreux. So here is yet another version of "Hold On, I'm Comin'" (from the NY date). The only personnel holdover from previous posted versions is Sonny Sharrock on guitar, but he doesn't get a solo this time; the only band member other than Mann to take a solo is David "Fathead" Newman on tenor sax. (Newman played with Mann for ten years; he just died this past January.) The other band members are Pat Rebillot on electric piano, Andy Muson on bass, and Reggie Ferguson on drums. The enthusiastic crowd response adds another level of excitement:
The packaging of this LP is unusual: there is a central cover with a gatefold on each side, attached at the spine, and the opening for the record is in the spine. The photo of Mann in concert is on the inner cover, viewable from the front through the die-cut Atlantic Records "A." That couldn't have been cheap, and it's confusing to have the record come out of the wrong end, but it certainly is novel.
Having posted three versions of "Hold On, I'm Comin'" by Herbie Mann and one by Bryan Ferry, I suppose I should post the original version by Sam and Dave as well:
Here's a quick-and-dirty tumblr-style post just to work through my backlog of songs I've been wanting to share but couldn't think of much to write about.
1. The Illusion - "Did You See Her Eyes" - Platters That Matter Records turned me on to this, a hit single by a late-60s Long Island band. If I had known there was garage rock this beat-heavy I would have explored the genre more long ago.
2. The Edgar Broughton Band - "Out Demons Out" - First heard of this late-60s/70s British anarchist band in the new Hipgnosis book*, which includes the design team's slaughterhouse cover art for the band's self-titled album. The call-and-response structure and repeated chanting of "Out Demons Out" are infectious; it could be an anti-government protest song in any time or place, but it will always remind me of the 2008 U.S. elections.
3. Pat Metheny - Zero Tolerance for Silence Part 4 - Super-smooth guitarist Pat Metheny made a noise album? Yes, 1994's Zero Tolerance for Silence, five slabs of overdubbed, overdriven guitar riffs. 1994 was a busy year for me: new marriage, first child, and the start of a new job after the preceding two years of temp work and selling records. So I missed a lot of music that year; if Brian Kaye didn't bring it over, I didn't hear it. I like Part 4 the best: it sounds almost like King Crimson's "Discipline" near the end. Thanks to Desination Out for posting about it!
There, I'm glad I got all that off my chest.
In researching my previous post I learned that the version of "Hold On, I'm Comin'" on Memphis Underground was actually Herbie Mann's second recording of that song, the first appearing the previous year (1968) on Glory Of Love. Produced by Creed Taylor for his proto-smooth-jazz CTI label, this earlier version sounds downright subdued next to the fiery Memphis Underground take. Roy Ayers and Sonny Sharrock play on this one too (along with a host of others, supposedly), but Sharrock doesn't get a solo:
I'm glad Herbie Mann decided to go back and do it again. Oddly enough, my own introduction to "Hold On, I'm Comin'"-- written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter for Sam and Dave in 1966-- was through Bryan Ferry's version on his 1978 solo album The Bride Stipped Bare, which Jeff L. loaned me in high school:
Eh... The Bride Stripped Bare is half covers and half original songs; the covers are so-so, but the originals are great. "Can't Let Go" became a staple of Ferry's live shows (as well as Roxy Music's, appearing on the live mini-LP The High Road), while it is the mysterious "This Island Earth" that sticks with me the most:
Although Herbie Mann died in 2003, he is never far from my mind. One reason of late is the slew of favorite music questionnaires bouncing around Facebook, and as I have mentioned here before, my earliest musical memory is of Herbie Mann (and my dad). His album Our Mann Flute taught me all about finding joy in music; he made music seem like a playground. In addition to his exuberant soloing, Herbie Mann was also known for assembling excellent backing bands, often composed of up-and-coming young musicians. He had Duane Allman on Push Push (featuring one of the most infamous album covers of all time), and on Memphis Underground he had the dual guitar lineup of Larry Coryell and Sonny Sharrock. I didn't become familiar with Sonny Sharrock until the 80s and his association with the Bill Laswell crowd; his noisy, freeform guitar playing was the epitome of skronk, but he could also tone it down for more reflective tunes as he did on his tribute to John Coltrane, Ask the Ages. So after coming to know Sharrock musically, it was a real surprise to go back to Memphis Underground and hear him in that context, playing the same skronk on a major-label release in 1969! He gets a solo on "Hold On, I'm Coming" after the other players have taken theirs: Mann goes first (playing over an awesome breakbeat at the end of his run), then Coryell sears one, then Roy Ayers solos on vibes, and finally Sharrock busts in like a monster truck at 5:36 and gets to freak out for two whole minutes:
Smokin'! If you add a Herbie Mann station to your Pandora account, you can hear that every day! The wonderfulness of YouTube comes through with a live performance of Memphis Underground's title track (followed by "Upa, Neguinho") by a reduced lineup: Mann, Sharrock, Steve Marcus on soprano sax, Miroslav Vitous on double bass, and who is that on drums? Sharrock looks nonplussed at his sideman role, but comes alive for his solo at 1:45:
Sharrock died in 1994 (I did get to see him once, at Blues Alley), Mann in 2003, and Marcus in 2005. Time takes its toll.
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