https://exchange.prx.org/p/573445
A lot of long tracks this week, including the Super Session version of Donovan's Season Of The Witch and entire second side of Focus's second LP, Moving Waves.
Artist: Al Kooper/Stephen Stills/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title: Season Of The Witch
Source: CD: Super Session
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1968
In 1968 Al Kooper, formerly of the Blues Project, formed a new group he called Blood, Sweat and Tears. Then, after recording one album with the new group, he left the band. He then booked studio time and called in his friend Michael Bloomfield (who had just left his own new band the Electric Flag) for a recorded jam session. Due to his chronic insomnia and inclination to use heroin to deal with said insomnia, Bloomfield was unable to record an entire album's worth of material, and Kooper called in another friend, Stephen Stills (who had recently left the Buffalo Springfield) to complete the project. The result was the Super Session album, which surprisingly (considering that it was the first album of its kind), made the top 10 album chart. One of the most popular tracks on Super Session was an extended version of Donovan's Season of the Witch, featuring Stills using a wah-wah pedal (a relatively new invention at the time). Kooper initially felt that the basic tracks needed some sweetening, so he brought in a horn section to record additional overdubs.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You
Source: German import LP: Led Zeppelin
Writer(s): Bredon/Page/Plant
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1968
It is the nature of folk music that a song often gets credited to one writer when in fact it is the work of another. This is due to the fact that folk singers tend to share their material liberally with other folk singers, who often make significant changes to the work before passing it along to others. Such is the case with Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You, which was originally conceived by UC-Berkeley student Anne Johannsen in the late 1950s and performed live on KPFA radio in 1960. Another performer on the same show, Janet Smith, developed the song further and performed it at Oberlin College, where it was heard by audience member Joan Baez. Baez asked Smith for a tape of her songs and began performing the song herself. Baez used it as the opening track on her album, Joan Baez In Concert, Part One, but it was credited as "traditional", presumably because Baez herself had no knowledge of who had actually written the song. Baez eventually discovered the true origins of the tune, and later pressings gave credit to Anne Bredon, who had divorced her first husband, Lee Johannsen and married Glen Bredon since writing the song. Jimmy Page had an early pressing of the Baez album, so when he reworked the song for inclusion on the first Led Zeppelin album, he went with "traditional, arranged Page" as the writer. Robert Plant, who worked with Page on the arrangement, was not originally given credit for contractual reasons, although current editions of the album credit Page, Plant and Bredon as the songwriters.
Artist: Derek And The Dominos
Title: Bell Bottom Blues
Source: CD: The Best Of Eric Clapton (originally released on LP: Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs)
Writer(s): Clapton/Whitlock
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1970
Bell Bottom Blues, from the Derek And The Dominos album Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, is at once one of the many and one of the few. It is one of the many songs inspired by/written for George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd by Eric Clapton, who was in love with her at the time. At the same time it is one of the few songs on the album that does not include guitarist Duane Allman on it. Clapton wrote the song after Boyd asked him to pick up a pair of bell-bottom jeans on his next trip to the US (apparently they were not available in London at that time). The song was released twice as a single in 1971, but did not chart higher than the #78 spot. In 2015 drummer Bobby Whitlock, who had helped write the third verse, was given official credit as the song's co-writer.
Artist: Focus
Title: Eruption
Source: LP: Moving Waves
Writer(s): van Leer/Barlage/Akkerman/Nobel/van der Linden
Label: Sire
Year: 1971
After the release of the first Focus album, guitarist Jan Akkerman threatened to leave the band unless bandleader Thijs van Leer replaced the original bass player and drummer, whom Akkerman felt were not strong enough musicians to hold their place in the group. Van Leer was reluctant to do so, but finally gave in, replacing Hans Cleuver with Pierre van der Linden, who had been Akkerman's bandmate in a previous group, and bassist Martin Dresden with Cyril Havermans, a veteran of several Dutch bands. This version of Focus recorded the album Focus II in 1971, which was later released as Moving Waves worldwide. In addition to the hit song Hocus Pocus, Moving Waves includes Eruption, a 22 1/2 minute-long suite by van Leer inspired by the opera Eurodice, which in turn was inspired by the ancient tale of Orpheus and Euridice. The suite has several different sections, some of which are repeated more than once, and includes sections written by Akkerman (The Bridge), van der Linden (a drum solo called Endless Road) and Tom Barlage of the Dutch band Fusion, who wrote and named the section called Tommy. In order, the sections are: Orfeus, Answer, Orfeus, Answer, Pupilla, Tommy, Pupilla, Answer, The Bridge, Euridice, Dayglow, Endless Road, Answer, Orfeus, and Euridice.
Artist: Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Title: Trilogy
Source: CD: Trilogy
Writer(s): Emerson/Lake
Label: Atlantic (original label: Cotillion)
Year: 1972
The making of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's third album, Trilogy, was a time-consuming affair that Greg Lake later called "an accurate record" because of the "enormous detail" of the arrangements. For example, the title track used so many overdubs that the group dropped it from their live set after only two performances, and vowed to make their next album one that could be performed on stage in its entirety. That next album was Brain Salad Surgery featuring the massive Karn-Evil 9 that would become the showpiece of their live performances.
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