https://exchange.prx.org/p/545400
This week's show, like life itself, begins and ends with the blues. In between we take a (feline) lunch break and then mellow out for a bit before spacing out with Billy Preston.
Artist: Santana
Title: Waiting
Source: CD: Santana
Writer: Santana
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1969
Possibly the most successful (in the long term) of the musicians to emerge from late 60s San Francisco was Carlos Santana, a Mexican-born guitarist who still plays to sellout crowds worldwide. Santana's band originally got lukewarm reviews from the rock press, but after their legendary performance at Woodstock found themselves among rock's royalty. Waiting, the opening track from the group's 1969 debut LP, is an instrumental that was also released as the B side of the band's first single, Evil Ways.
Artist: Love Sculpture
Title: Blues Helping
Source: British import CD: Blues Helping
Writer(s): Williams/Edmunds/Jones
Label: EMI (original label: Parlophone)
Year: 1968
When the name Dave Edmunds comes up, it is usually in association with an early 70s remake of the classic Fats Domino tune I Hear You Knockin'. What many people are not aware of, however, is that the Cardiff, Wales native was a major force on the late 60s British blues scene with his band Love Sculpture. The title track of that band's debut LP, Blues Helping, showcases Edmunds's prowess as a guitarist (as does the rest of the album).
Artist: It's A Beautiful Day
Title: Wasted Union Blues
Source: CD: It's A Beautiful Day
Writer(s): David LaFlamme
Label: San Francisco Sound (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
It's A Beautiful Day was founded in the mid-60s by classical violinist David LaFlamme. The group had a hard time lining up gigs at first and eventually hooked up with local impressario Matthew Katz, who had similar deals with Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape. What the members of IABD did not know at the time was that those other bands were desperately trying to sever all ties with Katz due to his heavy-handed management style. LaFlamme and company would soon find out just how bad a deal they had gotten into when Katz shipped them off to Seattle to be the resident band at his own "San Francisco Sound" club from late 1967 through most of 1968. The group was put up in the attic of a house that Katz owned and given a small allowance that barely put food on the table. To make matters worse, attendance at the club was dismal. Still, the adversity did inspire some of LaFlamme's most powerful songwriting, such as Wasted Union Blues from the group's debut LP, released in 1969.
Artist: King Crimson
Title: Cat Food
Source: LP: In The Wake Of Poseidon
Writer(s): Fripp/McDonald/Sinfield
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1970
Following the release of the 1969 album In The Court Of The Crimson King all the members of King Crimson except for guitarist Robert Fripp and lyricist Peter Sinfield left the band for various reasons. Most of them, however, including keyboardist Ian McDonald, drummer Michael Giles and lead vocalist Greg Lake, ended up contributing to the second Crimson LP, In The Wake Of Poseidon in the role of session musicians, along with Giles's brother Peter, who provided bass parts on the album. The most popular song on the album was Cat Food, which was released as a single in 1970 (and was the featured song on the band's only TV appearance until 1981).
Artist: America
Title: Rainy Day
Source: CD: America
Writer(s): Dan Peek
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1971
In the late 1960s nearly two million Americans were in the Armed Forces. Of these, a significant percentage were career military men raising families of their own. Most members of the military received overseas assignments from time to time, with tours of duty ranging from one year (Viet Nam) to three years (Japan, Europe and the UK). Those serving longer assignments often brought their families with them, with entire communities of "dependents" springing up all over the world. One of these communities was the United States Air Force base at RAF South Ruislip near London. Like many overseas bases, it included its own commissary, base exchange, housing area and schools (among other things). Three of the dependents (aka Air Force Brats) attending London Central High School were Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek and Gerry Beckley. Like many high school kids in the US, the three played in local bands and had dreams of someday becoming rock stars. In their case, those dreams came true not long after they graduated. In 1970, inspired by the success of Crosby, Stills & Nash, the three formed an acoustic, harmony-oriented band, choosing the name America in part to make sure the locals knew that they were in fact Americans. They soon came to the attention of producers Ian Samwell and Jeff Dexter, who got them a contract with the UK branch of Warner Brothers Records. They released their self-titled debut LP in late 1971. Originally the album had 11 songs, including Peek's Rainy Day, but was expanded in 1972 to include the hit single A Horse With No Name. The original trio's run came to its end with the departure of Peek in 1977, although Beckley and Bunnell continue to perform as America with various backup musicians.
Artist: Doobie Brothers
Title: Toulouse Street
Source: CD: Toulouse Street
Writer(s): Patrick Simmons
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1972
Athough it was the songs of Tom Johnston (in the early 70s) and Michael McDonald (in the late 1970s) that defined the sound of the Doobie Brothers, it is guitarist/vocalist Patrick Simmons that provides continuity for the group he helped found in 1970. One of his many songs the band has performed is Toulouse Street, the title track of the Doobie Brothers' second LP.
Artist: Paul McCartney And Wings
Title: Bluebird
Source: European import LP: Band On The Run
Writer(s): Paul & Linda McCartney
Label: MPL (original label: Apple)
Year: 1973
You would think that, after years of sharing writing credit with John Lennon on virtually everything musical either of them created, Paul McCartney might be inclined to take sole writing credit for his later material. Not so. Most of his 70s work co-credits his wife Linda, including Bluebird, from the 1973 album Band On The Run.
Artist: David Bowie
Title: Soul Love
Source: CD: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
Writer(s): David Bowie
Label: Ryko (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1972
The second song on the album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Soul Love is an often overlooked gem from the David Bowie catalog. This partial obscurity may be due in part to the fact that Bowie seldom performed the song live. In fact, he only performed it twice on his Ziggy Stardust tour, and then not again until years later.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Bugler
Source: LP: The Music People (originally released on LP: Farther Along)
Writer(s): Larry Murray
Label: Columbia
Year: 1971
The members of the Byrds were not happy with the overdubbing that Terry Melcher added to their 10th album, Byrdmaniax, without the band's knowledge or permission. In fact, their dissatisfaction with the final sound of the album led Melcher to resign, both as manager and producer of the band. But that wasn't the end of it. The band quickly went into a London studio to record a whole new album in five days that they produced themselves. Unfortunately, the album, Farther Along, sounds like it was made in five days, with somewhat muddy production values and relatively weak material. According to most critics (and apparently someone at Columbia Records as well, who included it on a compilation album called The Music People), the strongest song on the album was Bugler, written by former Hearts And Flowers member Larry Murray and sung by Clarence White. Although not as strong a tearjerker as Elvis Presley's Old Shep, the song addresses a similar subject. Ironically, Clarence White would suffer a similar demise as Bugler when he was killed by a drunk driver two years later.
Artist: Billy Preston
Title: Outa-Space
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Preston/Greene
Label: A&M
Year: 1972
As soon as he was finished recording his instrumental piece he called Outa-Space, keyboardist Billy Preston knew he had a hit single on his hands. His label, however, thought differently, and issued the song as the B side of I Wrote A Simple Song in early 1972. It wasn't long before DJs began flipping the record over and playing Outa-Space instead. As a result, Outa-Space became a huge hit, going all the way to the #2 spot on the US charts, while I Wrote A Simple Song only made it to the #77 spot, once again proving that local disc jockeys often know more about audience tastes than record company executives. Too bad there aren't any local disc jockeys in commercial radio anymore, their duties having been taken over by computer algorithms and professional consulting firms.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Fried Hockey Boogie
Source: LP: Boogie With Canned Heat
Writer(s): Samuel L. Taylor
Label: Liberty
Year: 1968
The climax of every Canned Heat performance was the "boogie", a loose jam based on a repeating three-note riff that gave each band member a chance to strut their stuff as a soloist. The first of these to be released on a record was actually a studio recording. Fried Hockey Boogie was the final track on the band's second LP, appropriately titled Boogie With Canned Heat. The song was officially credited to bassist Larry Taylor, which is somehow appropriate for the 70s reissue of the album on United Artists, on which Fried Hockey Boogie fades out early during Taylor's solo. Fortunately, I was able to find an original Liberty copy with the entire track intact.
Artist: Taj Majal
Title: Checkin' Up On My Baby
Source: CD: Taj Mahal
Writer(s): Sonny Boy Williamson
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1968
Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr. was born in Harlem and raised in Springfield, Mass. His father was an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger and piano player whom Ella Fitzgerald called "the Genius". At around the age of 13 or 14 he learned to play guitar from a neighbor who was a nephew of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, and began using the stage name Taj Mahal when he started taking classes at the University of Massachusetts. In 1964 he moved to Santa Monica, California, and formed a band called the Rising Sons with Jessie Lee Kincaid (who had been a bandmate in Massachusetts) and Ryland Cooder. The band quickly became popular on the L.A. club scene and signed with Columbia Records, but the label couldn't quite get a handle on how to market such a group of diverse individuals. Columbia did, however, realize that Taj Mahal was a major up-and-coming artist and released his self-titled debut LP in 1968. The album features high-energy adaptations of blues classic such as Sonny Boy Williamson's Checkin' Up On My Baby using rock instrumentation, with Mahal himself supported by such talents as Jesse Ed Davis, Ry Cooder and others. Taj Mahal has gone on to become an important figure on the World Music scene.
Artist: Steely Dan
Title: Chain Lightning
Source: CD: Katy Lied
Writer(s): Becker/Fagen
Label: MCA (original label: ABC)
Year: 1975
Although Steely Dan are known mainly for incorporating jazz influences into popular rock in the 1970s, they did take an occasional foray into the blues on songs like Chain Lightning from the 1975 albu Katy Lied. The track features guest guitarist Rick Derringer, former vocalist/guitarist with the McCoys and Johnny Winter and more recently known for his solo version of Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo.
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