https://exchange.prx.org/p/557806
This week the focus is on 1969, with a set of vintage rockers followed by a followup to a classic 1969 comedy creation from the Firesign Theatre.
Artist: Blood, Sweat And Tears
Title: More And More (live version)
Source: CD: Blood, Sweat And Tears (bonus track)
Writer(s): Vee/Juan
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: Recorded 1968, released 2000
Blood, Sweat and Tears founder Al Kooper left the band after their first album, Child Is Father To The Man. Several people at Columbia Records were keen to see the band continue and a new vocalist, David Clayton Thomas, was recruited to front the band. The group then proceeded to record a self-titled second LP that yielded no less than three top 5 singles, as well as some strong album tracks such as More And More. The recording heard here was taken from their summer 1968 live debut at the Cafe Au-Go-Go, ironically the same place Kooper's (and BS&T guitarist Steve Katz's) former band the Blues Project had recorded their debut LP over two years before.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: From Here To There Eventually
Source: LP: Monster
Writer: Kay/McJohn/Edmonton
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1969
The final track of Steppenwolf's fourth LP, Monster, is a perfect example of the band's typical hard-driving beat and John Kay's distinctive vocal style. The album itself is generally considered to be Steppenwolf's most blatantly political.
Artist: Zephyr
Title: Sail On
Source: CD: Zephyr
Writer: Bolin/Givens
Label: One Way (original label: ABC Probe)
Year: 1969
Boulder, Colorado was home to Zephyr, a blues-rock band originally centered around the powerful vocals of Candy Givens. As time went on, however, fellow member Tommy Bolin emerged as one of rock's top guitarists. Bolin would leave Zephyr after a couple albums to join the James Gang (replacing Dominick Troiano) and later take Richie Blackmore's place in Deep Purple as well as recording a pair of well-regarded solo albums. Unfortunately Bolin, like so many other talented young musicians, died in his mid 20s of a drug overdose, just as his career was kicking into high gear.
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title: Proud Mary
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Chronicle (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bayou Country)
Writer(s): John Fogerty
Label: Fantasy
Year: 1968
Fun fact: Creedence Clearwater Revival never had a #1 hit. They did, however, manage to hit the #2 spot...five times. The first of these #2 hits was Proud Mary, written a week after John Fogerty's discharge from the National Guard. The song updates Mark Twain's portrait of life on a riverboat for the 20th century, a portrait that resonated well with a generation that was just reaching the age where the prospect of spending one's life "working for the man every night and day" was begining to look unavoidable. The song was released at the tail end of 1968 (according to some, early 1969), a year that had seen the idyllic hippie lifestyle of the summer of love give way to the radical politics of groups like the SDS and the Black Panthers, who advocated violence as a response to the continued intractability of the Establishment. The fact that hallucinogenics like LSD and mescaline were being replaced by harsher (and cheaper) drugs like speed and various narcotics was not lost on the members of CCR either, who, according to Fogerty, made a promise to themselves on the floor of the Fillmore that they would be a drug-free band, choosing to "get high on the music" instead. It's likely that the single was prepared separately from the album it appeared on, Bayou Country, since the LP itself uses an electronically rechanneled mono version of the song rather than a true stereo mix.
Artist: Firesign Theatre
Title: The Three Faces Of Al
Source: LP: The Three Faces Of Al
Writer(s): Austin/Proctor/Bergman
Label: Rhino
Year: 1984
Undoubtably the Firesign Theatre's best-known and best-loved creation was private detective Nick Danger, Third Eye. The character first appeared in The Further Adventures Of Nick Danger, a parody of 1930s radio dramas that took up the entire second side of the 1969 album How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All. After showing up on a variety of albums, radio shows and even a movie over the next decade and a half, Danger finally got his own full-length album, The Three Faces Of Al, in 1984. David Ossman, who played the 1000-year-old man Catherwood in Further Adventures, had left the Firesign Theatre (temporarily, as it turned out) to be a producer at NPR, and did not participate in the writing or recording of The Three Faces Of Al.
Artist: Dr. John
Title: Such A Night
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Mac Rebennack
Label: Atco
Year: 1973
Mac Rebennack was a fixture on the New Orleans music scene for over 50 years. He first started performing publicly in his teens, lying about his age to able to play in some of the city's more infamous clubs. At age 13 he was expelled from Jesuit school and soon found work as a staff songwriter and guitarist for the legendary Aladdin label. In 1957, at age 16, he joined the musicians' union, officially beginning his professional career. In the early 1960s he got into trouble with the law and spent two years in federal prison. Upon his release he relocated to Los Angeles, due to an ongoing cleanup campaign in New Orleans that had resulted in most of the clubs he had previously played in being permanently shut down. While in L.A., Rebennack developed his Dr. John, the Night Tripper personna, based on a real-life New Orleans voodoo priest with psychedelic elements thrown in (it was 1968 after all). By the early 1970s Dr. John had developed a cult following, but was getting tired of the self-imposed limitations of his Night Tripper image. In 1972 he recorded an album of New Orleans cover songs, following it up with his most successful album, In The Right Place, in 1973. Produced by the legendary Allen Toussaint, In The Right Place provided Dr. John his most successful hit single, Right Place Wrong Time, as well as a followup single, Such A Night, that peaked just outside the top 40. Around this time he returned to New Orleans, but continued to record at some of the top studios in the country, both as a solo artist and as a session player, appearing on literally thousands of recordings over the years. Dr. John continued to perform until shortly before his death on June 6, 2019.
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