Now that you've had a couple days to look over the playlist for the year's end show it's time to get back on schedule with the latest playlist:
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Dark Star (Excerpt)
Source: LP: Zabriskie Point soundtrack
Writer(s): McGannahan Skjellyfetti
Label: 4 Men With Beards (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1969
Zabriskie Point is generally considered by critics to be among the worst films ever made. At the same time the soundtrack album for the film is a cult classic, with an eclectic mix of music from such diverse artists as Pink Floyd, Patti Page, John Fahey and Jerry Garcia, both with and without the rest of the Grateful Dead. Although Garcia's solo tracks were written specifically for the film, it is likely that the short (less than three minutes) excerpt from Dark Star was lifted from the 1969 LP Live Dead, although documentation to prove it is pretty much nonexistent. Still, it sounds like the Live Dead version...
Artist: Syd Barrett
Title: No Good Trying
Source: CD: Insane Times (originally released on LP: The Madcap Laughs)
Writer(s): Syd Barrett
Label: Zonophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1970
After parting company with Pink Floyd in 1968, Syd Barrett made an aborted attempt at recording a solo album. After spending several months in psychiatric care, Barrett resumed work on the project in April of 1969, recording the basic tracks for songs such as It's No Good Trying with producer Malcolm Jones. In May of 1969 Barrett brought in three members of the Soft Machine to record overdubs for several songs, including No Good Trying (the "It's" having mysteriously disappeared from the song title). Barrett then added some backwards guitar, and the final track appeared on his 1970 LP The Madcap Laughs.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: Mercedes Benz
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Pearl)
Writer(s): Janis Joplin
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1971
To put it bluntly, Janis recorded this song, then went home and ODed on herion. End of story (and of Janis).
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Like A Rolling Stone
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Bob Dylan incurred the wrath of folk purists when he decided to use electric instruments for his 1965 LP Highway 61 Revisited. The opening track on the album is the six-minute Like A Rolling Stone, a song that was also selected to be the first single released from the new album. After the single was pressed, the shirts at Columbia Records decided to cancel the release due to its length. An acetate copy of the record, however, made it to a local New York club, where, by audience request, the record was played over and over until it was worn out (acetate copies not being as durable as their vinyl counterparts). When Columbia started getting calls from local radio stations demanding copies of the song the next morning they decided to release the single after all. Like A Rolling Stone ended up going all the way to the number two spot on the US charts, doing quite well in several other countries as well.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Taxman
Source: CD: Revolver
Writer(s): George Harrison
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
The Beatles' 1966 LP Revolver was a major step forward, particularly for guitarist George Harrison, who for the first time had three of his own compositions on an album. Making it even sweeter was the fact that one of these, Taxman, was chosen to lead off the album itself. Although Harrison is usually considered the band's lead guitarist, the solo in Taxman is actually performed by John Lennon, whose own style had a harder edge than Harrison's.
Artist: Turtles
Title: The Owl
Source: Stereo 12" 45 RPM EP picture disc: The Turtles-1968
Writer(s): The Turtles
Label: Rhino
Year: Recorded 1968, released
In 1968 the Turtles decided to make their first attempt at producing themselves. White Whale Records rejected all but one of the four tracks they recorded (the exception being Surfer Dan, which was included on the concept album Battle Of The Bands). Ten years later Rhino rectified that error in judgment by putting all four tunes on a 12" 45 RPM picture disc called The Turtles-1968. Unfortunately, picture discs are only slightly better in quality than acetates (see the Bob Dylan notes above), and my copy is fast approaching mandatory retirement, so this week's airing of The Owl could well be the last time I play anything from it. I am currently working on getting a copy of the 1993 British CD reissue of the band's last album, Turtle Soup, which includes everything from the EP except Surfer Dan as bonus tracks, but it may be a month or two before I actually have the thing.
Artist: Traffic
Title: (Roamin' Thro' The Gloamin' With) 40,000 Headmen
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM B side and on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s): Capaldi/Winwood
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
The second Traffic album saw the band taking in a broader set of influences, including traditional English folk music. (Roamin' Through The Gloamin' With) 40,000 Headmen, originally released as the B side to the Dave Mason tune No Face, No Name, No Number, combines those influences with the Steve Winwood brand of British R&B to create a timeless classic.
Artist: Grass Roots
Title: Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man)
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1965
In late 1965 songwriters/producers P.F. Sloan (Eve of Destruction) and Steve Barri decided to create a series of records by a band called the Grass Roots. The problem was that there was no band called the Grass Roots (at least not that they knew of), so Sloan and Barri decided to recruit an existing band and talk them into changing their name. The band they found was the Bedouins, one of the early San Francisco bands. As the rush to sign SF bands was still months away, the Bedouins were more than happy to record the songs Sloan and Barri picked out for them. The first single by the newly-named Grass Roots was a cover of Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man). The band soon got to work promoting the single to Southern California radio stations, but with both the Byrds and the Turtles already on the charts with Dylan covers it soon became obvious that the market was pretty much saturated. After a period of months the band, who wanted more freedom to write and record their own material, had a falling out with Sloan and Barri and it wasn't long before they moved back to San Francisco, leaving drummer Joel Larson in L.A. The group, with another drummer, continued to perform as the Grass Roots until Dunhill Records ordered them to stop. Eventually Dunhill would hire a local L.A. band called the 13th Floor (not to be confused with Austin, Texas's 13th Floor Elevators) to be the final incarnation of the Grass Roots who would crank out a series of top 40 hits in the early 70s. Meanwhile the original lineup changed their name but never had the opportunity to make records again.
Artist: Rising Sons
Title: Take A Giant Step
Source: CD: The Rising Sons featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: Recorded 1968, released 1992
Popular Los Angeles club band The Rising Sons were blessed with the talents of not one, but three musicians that would go on to become highly respected in the music business: vocalist Taj Mahal, guitarist Ry Cooder, and singer/songwriter Jesse Lee Kincaid. At the time, however, Columbia Records had no clue how to market an interracial country-blues/rock band. After an early single bombed the band attempted a more commercial sounding tune, the Gerry Goffin/ Carole King penned Take A Giant Step, but Columbia sat on it, as well as over an album's worth of other material. The song itself became well known when the Monkees released it as the B side of their debut single, Last Train To Clarksville. Taj Mahal, who liked the lyrics but not the fast tempo of the original version, re-recorded the song at a slower pace for his 1969 album Giant Step, making it one of his signature songs in the process.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Why
Source: Mono LP: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
One of the earliest collaborations between Byrds songwriters David Crosby and Roger McGuinn was the up-tempo raga rocker Why. The song was first recorded at RCA studios in Los Angeles in late 1965 as an intended B side for Eight Miles High, but due to the fact that the band's label, Columbia, refused to release recordings made at their main rival's studios, the band ended up having to re-record both songs at Columbia's own studios in early 1966. Although the band members felt the newer versions were inferior to the 1965 recordings, they were released as a single in March of 1966. Later that year, for reasons that are still unclear, Crosby insisted the band record a new version of Why, and that version was used for the band's next LP, Younger Than Yesterday. As was the case with many albums of the time, there are significant differences between the stereo and mono mixes of Younger Than Yesterday. This is especially noticable on the mono mix of Why, which shifts the balance of Crosby's and McGuinn's vocals significantly.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Overdrive
Source: LP: Sailor
Writer(s): Boz Scaggs
Label: Capitol
Year: 1968
The Steve Miller Band in its early years served as a sort of American analog to John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, serving as a launching pad for the careers of Ben Sidran and Boz Scaggs, among others. This early Scaggs tune shows a harder-edged side to the Boz than most of his later solo hits.
Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Title: Full Measure
Source: LP: The Best Of The Lovin' Spoonful, Vol. II (originally released on LP: Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful)
Writer(s): Sebastian/Boone
Label: Kama Sutra
Year: 1966
The album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful was a deliberate attempt by the band to play in a variety of styles. It contained two of the band's best-known songs, Nashville Cats and Summer In The City, as well as several lesser-known songs featuring other band members on lead vocals. One of those tracks is Full Measure featuring bassist Steve Boone. Released as a single in late 1966, the song stalled out in the #86 spot. Nonetheless, Full Measure was chosen for inclusion on the group's second greatest hits compilation in 1968.
Artist: Seeds
Title: No Escape
Source: LP: The Seeds
Writer(s): Saxon/Savage/Lawrence
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
Following up on their 1965 Los Angeles area hit Can't Seem To Make You Mine, the Seeds released their self-titled debut LP the following year. The album contained what would be the band's biggest (and only national) hit, Pushin' Too Hard, as well as several other tracks such as No Escape that can be considered either as stylistic consistent or blatantly imitative of the big hit record. As Pushin' Too Hard was not yet a well-known song when the album was released, I tend to lean more toward the first interpretation.
Artist: Love
Title: You I'll Be Following
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
When the Byrds decided to tour heavily to support their early hits Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!, Arthur Lee's band Love was more than happy to fill the void left on the L.A. club scene. The group quickly established itself as the top band on the strip and caught the attention of Elektra Records, an album-oriented label that had previously specialized in blues and folk music but was looking to move into rock. Love was soon signed to a contract with Elektra and released their self-titled debut LP in 1966. That album featured songs that were primarily in a folk-rock vein, such as You I'll Be Following, although even then there were signs that bandleader Arthur Lee was capable of writing quality tunes that defied easy classification. Love would remain the top band on the strip for the next year and a half, releasing two more albums before the original group dissolved. To maintain their status as local heroes, Love chose to stay close to home. The lack of time spent promoting their records ultimately led to them being supplanted as the star group for Elektra by the Doors, a band that had been recommended to the label by Lee himself.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: The Nazz Are Blue
Source: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM B side)
Writer(s): Dreja/McCarty/Beck/Relf/Samwell-Smith
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
Unlike most of their fellow British Invasion bands, the Yardbirds did not release many albums, choosing to concentrate on single releases. In fact, over a period of five years the band only released one full studio LP in their native UK. Although the official name of that album was Yardbirds, it has since come to be known as Roger The Engineer, due to the distinctive cover drawing of the record's audio engineer, Roger Cameron, by band member Chris Dreja. The US version of the album had a different cover and a different name, Over, Under, Sideways, Down. As was common in 1966, the UK version of the album had two more songs than its US counterpart. One of the two songs left off the US version was The Nazz Are Blue, a song written by the entire band and sung by guitarist Jeff Beck. The song was released in the US later the same year as the B side to Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, the last Yardbirds single with Beck.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Title: Drifter's Escape
Source: CD: South Saturn Delta
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: MCA
Year: Recorded 1970, released 1997
Throughout his career Jimi Hendrix performed and/or recorded a handful of Bob Dylan covers, including Like A Rolling Stone and All Along The Watchtower. Probably the most obscure of those covers was Drifter's Escape, recorded in 1970 with Billy Cox on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. A posthumous mix by John Jansen of the song was included on the Loose Ends compilation in 1974, but the original mix by Hendrix and engineer Eddie Kramer sat on the shelf until the 1997 release of the South Saturn Delta CD by the Hendrix family.
Artist: Standells
Title: Riot On Sunset Strip
Source: CD: The Best Of The Standells (originally released on LP: Riot On Sunset Strip soundtrack)
Writer(s): Valentino/Fleck
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Anyone who doubts just how much influence bands like the Standells had on the punk-rock movement of the late 1970s need only listen to this 1967 track from the movie Riot On Sunset Strip. The track sounds like it could have been an early Ramones recording. The song itself (and the movie) were based on a real life event. Local L.A. business owners had been complaining about the unruliness and rampant drug usage among the teens hanging out in front of the various underage clubs that had been springing up on Sunset Strip in the wake of the success of the Whisky-A-Go-Go, and in late 1966 the Los Angeles Police Department was called in to do something about the problem. What followed was a full-blown riot which ultimately led to local laws being passed that put many of the clubs out of business and severely curtailed the ability of the rest to make a profit. By 1968 the entire scene was a thing of the past, with the few remaining clubs converting to a more traditional over-21 approach.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Two Trains Running
Source: LP: Special Disc Jockey Record (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer(s): McKinley Morganfield
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Possibly the most influential (yet least known outside of musicians' circles) band of the Psychedelic Era was the Blues Project. Formed in 1965 in Greenwich Village, the band worked its way from coast to coast playing mostly college campuses, in the process blazing a path that continues to be followed by underground/progressive/alternative artists. As if founding the whole college circuit wasn't enough, they were arguably the very first jam band, as their version of the Muddy Waters classic Two Trains Running demonstrates. Among those drawing their inspiration from the Blues Project were the Warlocks, a group of young musicians who were traveling with Ken Kesey on the Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test tour bus. The Warlocks would soon change their name to the Grateful Dead and take the jam band concept to a whole new level.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Bass Strings
Source: LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
A lot of songs released in 1966 and 1967 got labeled as drug songs by influential people in the music industry. In many cases, those labels were inaccurate, at least according to the artists who recorded those songs. On the other hand, you have songs like Bass Strings by Country Joe and the Fish that really can't be about anything else.
Artist: Monkees
Title: For Pete's Sake
Source: CD: Headquarters
Writer(s): Tork/Richards
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1967
It didn't come as a surprise to anyone who knew him that first member of the Monkees to depart the band was Peter Tork. Of all the members of the "pre-fab four" Tork was the most serious about making the group into a real band, and was the most frustrated when things didn't work out that way. A talented multi-instrumentalist, Tork had been a part of the Greenwich Village scene since the early 60s, where he became close friends with Stephen Stills. Both Tork and Stills had relocated to the west coast when Stills auditioned for the Monkees and was asked if he had a "better looking" musician friend that might be interested in the part. Although Tork was, by all accounts, the best guitarist in the Monkees, he found himself cast as the "lovable dummy" bass player on the TV show and had a difficult time being taken seriously as a musician because of that. During the brief period in 1967 when the members of the band did play their own instruments on their recordings, Tork could be heard on guitar, bass, banjo, harpsichord and other keyboard instruments. He also co-wrote For Pete's Sake, a song on the Headquarters album that became the closing theme for the TV show during its second and final season. Since leaving the band Tork has been involved with a variety of projects, including an occasional Monkees reunion.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Porpoise Song
Source: CD: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Peter Gunn's Gun
Source: CD: Headquarters (bonus track)
Writer(s): Henry Mancini
Label: Rhino
Year: 1967
Sometimes you just gotta cut loose and do something silly. Sometimes you even do something silly in a situation where someone can see or hear you. And if you happen to be in a recording studio, sometimes you do something silly with the tape rolling. Such is the case with the Monkees goofing on Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme. I can remember doing the same kind of thing with my first band, except three of us had to share an amplifier and the drummer was using a set of toy drums. And we didn't tape it.
Artist: Lollipop Shoppe (aka The Weeds)
Title: You Must Be A Witch
Source: Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Fred Cole
Label: BFD (original label: Uni)
Year: 1968
The Weeds were formed in Las Vegas in 1965 by vocalist Fred Cole, who at age 16 was already a recording studio veteran. They showed up at the Fillmore to open for the Yardbirds in 1966 only to find out that their manager had lied to them about being on the playbill (in fact Bill Graham had never even heard of them). Disenchanted with their management and fearing the Draft, the entire band decided to head for Canada, but ran out of gas in Portland, Oregon. They soon landed a regular gig at a club called the Folk Singer (where Cole met his future wife Toody) and after relocating to Southern California in 1968 attracted the attention of Seeds' manager Lord Tim, who got them a contract with MCA Records (now Universal). They recorded one album for MCA's Uni label (discovering after the fact that Lord Tim had changed their name to the Lollipop Shoppe) which included the single You Must Be A Witch. Fred Cole has since become an icon of indy rock, co-leading the band Dead Moon (with wife Toody) from 1987-2006. Fred and Toody currently co-lead the band Pierced Arrows.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Lather
Source: LP: Crown Of Creation
Writer(s): Grace Slick
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1968
One of Grace Slick's most memorable tunes was Lather from the Jefferson Airplane's fourth LP, Crown Of Creation. Featuring an eerie instrumental bridge played on a tissue-paper covered comb (at least that's what I think it was), the song was reportedly about drummer Spencer Dryden, the band's oldest member, who had turned 30 while the album was being recorded. A popular phrase of the time was "don't trust anyone over 30", making it an unfortunate time to have that particular birthday.
Artist: Who
Title: Dogs
Source: CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: Polydor (original label: Track)
Year: 1968
Possibly the most obscure (to US audiences) Who song of the psychedelic era was Dogs, a single released only in the UK in 1968. The song was inspired by guitarist Pete Townshend's friend Chris Morphet, who was a fan of greyhound racing. Dogs was the first Who track to be recorded using then state-of-the-art eight-track recording equipment, and Townshend would later refer to it as one of the songs recorded during a period when the group went "slightly mad." The song remained unreleased in the US until the 1987 compilation album Two's Missing.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Shine On Brightly
Source: CD: Shine On Brightly
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: A&M
Year: 1968
Although it was never released as a single, the title track of Procol Harum's second album, Shine On Brightly, is probably their most commercially viable song on the album. Opening with power chords from organist Matthew Fischer and augmented by guitarist Robin Trower, the song quickly moves into psychedelic territory with some of Keith Reid's trippiest lyrics ever, including the refrain "my befuddled brain shines on brightly, quite insane." One of their best tracks ever.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Hoochie Coochie Man
Source: CD: Steppenwolf
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
A major driving force behind the renewed interest in the blues in the 1960s was the updating and re-recording of classic blues tunes by contempory rock musicians. This trend started in England, with bands like the Yardbirds and the Animals in the early part of the decade. By the end of the 60s a growing number of US bands were playing songs such as Hoochie Coochie Man, a song originally recorded by Muddy Waters in 1954. Like Cream's Spoonful and Led Zeppelin's You Shook Me, Hoochie Coochie Man was written by Willie Dixon. The 1968 Steppenwolf version of the song slows the tempo down a touch from the original version and features exquisite sustained guitar work by Michael Monarch.
Artist: Ventures
Title: Walk-Don't Run, 1964
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Johnny Smith
Label: Silver Spotlight
Year: 1964
The first two Ventures songs to hit the top 10 were actually two different versions of the same song. The original 1960 version of Walk-Don't Run was the band's first charted hit, which was followed by a succession of moderately successful surf instrumentals. It wasn't until late 1964, however, that the band returned to the top 10 with this updated version of the same song made for the soundtrack of the Walk-Don't Run movie. The Ventures would return to the top 10 five years later with the Hawaii Five-Oh theme. Despite only having three top 10 singles, the Ventures are universally acknowledged to be the most prolific instrumental rock band in history, with over 200 albums to their credit.
Artist: P.F. Sloan
Title: Halloween Mary
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: P.F. Sloan
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1965
If there is any one songwriter associated specifically with folk-rock (as opposed to folk music), it would be the Los Angeles based P.F. Sloan, writer of Barry McGuire's signature song, Eve Of Destruction. Sloan also penned hits for the Turtles in their early days as one of the harder-edged folk-rock bands, including their second hit, Let Me Be. In fact, Sloan had almost 400 songs to his credit by the time he and Steve Barri teamed up to write and produce a series of major hits released by various bands under the name Grass Roots. Sloan himself, however, only released two singles as a singer, although (as can be heard on the second of them, the slightly off-kilter Halloween Mary) he had a voice as powerful as many of the recording stars of the time.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Monday, December 31, 2012
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1252 (looking back at 2012)
Now that you've had the chance to hear the special year-end edition of Stuck in the Psychedelic Era, with its countdown of the year's most played artists (and many of the year's most played songs as well), I'm revealing the playlist after the fact, along with some extra information. Nice of me, eh?
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Combination Of The Two
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Sam Andrew
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
The 20th most played artists of the year were San Francisco's Big Brother and the Holding Company. One of the more notable releases of the year was the direct off the board recording of the band's 1968 performance at the Carousel Ballroom (soon to be renamed the Fillmore West), recorded just a few weeks before Janis Joplin's departure from the band that she made (and that made her) famous. 1968 was by all accounts the apex of Big Brother's career, with one of the most anticipated LPs of the year, Cheap Thrills, shooting straight to the top of the charts. The opening track of that album, guitarist Sam Andrews's Combination Of The Two, was also the band's concert opener, and the live version heard on Cheap Thrills has long been considered the definitive version of the song.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Watch Yourself
Source: LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Robert Yeazel
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
At #19 we have the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, a group that in many ways typifies the tumultous nature of the psychedelic era. The band, formed in 1966 by Danny and Shaun Harris, was soon taken over by 30-year-old hipster Bob Markley, who in return for much-needed financial support got to indulge his penchant for chasing teenage girls and writing weird lyrics. Oddly enough, the band did turn out some fine tracks on their three LPs for Reprise, including Watch Yourself, written by Robert Yeazel, a friend of guitarist Ron Morgan, whose own history with the band was anything but smooth.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: No Time Like The Right Time
Source: Mono CD: Anthology (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Al Kooper
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1967
Although our 18th most played band of 2012, the Blues Project, was arguably the first Jam Band, their most successful song was the tightly arranged Al Kooper classic No Time Like The Right Time, released as a single in early 1967 and included on Lenny Kaye's original Nuggets collection in 1972. The Greenwich Village based Blues Project is often cited as a major inspiration for such bands as the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, whose members were among the crowds that turned out to see the Project when they toured the West Coast in 1966.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Dear Mr. Fantasy
Source: CD: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Writer(s): Capaldi/Wood/Winwood
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
At this point I should mention the 19th most-played song of 2012, I'm A Man by the Spencer Davis Group, if for no other reason than the fact that it was the group's last record to feature Steve Winwood on lead vocals and keyboards. Winwood would soon prove that he was just as talented a guitarist as he was an organist with his new band Traffic, our 17th most played band of 2012. Dear Mr. Fantasy was a showcase for Winwood, both as a guitarist and vocalist, and has gone on to become one of his signature songs.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Bert's Blues
Source: Mono CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sony (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
It should come as no surprise that of the 20 most played artists on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012 (or any other year, for that matter), only one is a solo artist. After all, the entire psychedelic era itself is rooted in the idea of self-contained bands rebelling against a corporate pop machine that used anonymous studio musicians backing carefully-groomed teen idol vocalists to crank out cookie-cutter hits in the early part of the decade. Still, much of that rebellion came out of the folk movement that included such stars as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and a young Scottish singer/songwriter, Donovan Leitch, who, unlike many of his contemporaries, moved beyond straight folk music to become one of the architects of the psychedelic era. His Sunshine Superman is sometimes considered the first psychedelic hit, and tracks like Bert's Blues, from the Sunshine Superman album, show that our 16th most-played artist of 2012 was one of the most innovative songwriters of his time.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Gloria
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released on LP: Gloria)
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Although they did not make the top 20 artists list this year (barely missing the cut at #21), Chicago's Shadows Of Knight did score the 18th most-played song with perennial favorite Gloria, one of the true classics of the psychedelic era. There will always be some controversy over the fact that the Shadows were able to take Gloria into the top 10 by changing just a few of Van Morrison's lyrics to avoid censorship, but one fact that can't be denied is that the band itself is one of, if not the greatest, American garage bands of its time.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Pushin' Too Hard
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: The Seeds)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Priority (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1966
In the #15 spot we have one of the strangest bands to ever hit the Los Angeles club scene. The Seeds were made up entirely of guys that had moved to California from other states; some claimed they had come from another planet entirely. Led by vocalist Sky Saxon, who played bass on stage but never on their recordings, the Seeds took L.A. by storm in late 1965 with a series of regional hits that culminated with Pushin' Too Hard in the summer of 1966. The following year the song (which is our own fourth most-played song of 2012), went national, becoming their only top 40 hit outside the L.A. area.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michalski
Label: Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year: 1966
It wouldn't be the psychedelic era without one-hit wonders, and one of the best of these was San Jose, California's Count Five, whose Psychotic Reaction was our 14th most-played song of the year.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Source: CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Berkeley, California, was home to our 14th most-played band of 2012, Country Joe And The Fish. One of the earliest rock groups to have overt political overtones, the band's name came from "Country Joe" Stalin combined with a quote from Mao Tse Tung concerning the revolutionary's role in society as a fish in the stream (or something along those lines). Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine, from the band's debut LP, also made the top 10 list of most-played songs on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year, coming in at #8.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Mystic Mourning
Source: CD: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Ulaky/Weisberg/Rhodes
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
By 1968 a number of bands were incorporating melodic and rhythmic modes from Indian classical music to create something known as raga rock. Among these was the best of the so-called "Boss-Town Sound" bands, the Beacon Street Union. Mystic Mourning, from the band's 1968 debut LP, was our 12th most-played track of 2012.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Hideaway
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Underground)
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Electric Prunes were cursed with the bad luck to be saddled with a producer who was more interested in making a name for himself than in allowing the band to reach their full potential. It's appropriate, then, that the Prunes end up as our 13th most-played artists this year (although as you will see later, they did much better on the song list). Hideaway, from their second LP, Underground, gives us a glimpse of what the band could have been if given a bit more artistic freedom.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
I have, in the past, been taken to task for playing a lot of Simon And Garfunkel songs on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. Indeed, they were the 12th most-played artists of the year. Still, nobody can deny that the duo was an essential part of the psychedelic era, transcending their early folk style with electrified tracks like The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine, from their 1966 LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
To wrap up the first half of this week's show we have the most successful folk-rock band of 1965, the Byrds, our 11th most-played artists of 2012. Although not much on their two 1965 LPs can be called psychedelic, that all changed with the 1966 release of Fifth Dimension, featuring the single Eight Miles High, a song which itself comes in as the 13th most-played of the year.
At this point I should mention some songs that made the most-played list this year, but are not featured on this week's show. These include the Music Machine's The Eagle Never Hunts The Fly (#17) and Double Yellow Line (#10), Jefferson Airplane's Comin' Back To Me (#15), and the Vanilla Fudge version of You Keep Me Hangin' On (#11). With the exception of the Vanilla Fudge track (which was cut at the last minute due to time considerations), these are all songs by artists that show up in the second hour.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pons/Rinehart
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1965
We start off the second hour of the show with another band that didn't make the top 20 (they came in at #31), but that did have the 9th most-played song of the year on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. Although the Leaves are (rightly) most famous for popularizing the fast version of Billy Roberts's Hey Joe several months before the slowed-down Jimi Hendrix Experience version was recorded, Too Many People is probably a better example of this L.A. club band's actual style. The song manages to tread the line between the folk-rock that was popular in 1965 and the up and coming garage-rock that would take hold in 1966.
Artist: Who
Title: Pictures Of Lily
Source: Mono CD: Meaty, Beaty, Big And Bouncy (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1967
In one sense, the psychedelic era represents a balance between British and American popular music. Many of the British Invasion bands that had totally dominated the charts on both sides of the Atlantic in 1964 were still going strong for the remainder of the decade. At the same time, as early as 1965 US artists were starting to reappear at the top of the charts, thanks in no small part to the electrification of US folk music in the wake of Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone. By the 1970s American artists would once again have the majority of hits in the US, but during the psychedelic era itself the mix was just about even between the two countries. It is appropriate then, that of our top 10 most played artists on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year, exactly half are British and the other half came from the US (although in one case the band members came from both countries). At #10 we have the Who, who were just starting to get recognition in the US in early 1967, despite having several top 10 UK hits the previous year. The Who was still a couple of years from truly breaking things wide open in the US, however, and songs like Pictures Of Lily, which was yet another top UK hit, went mostly unnoticed in the US.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Waterloo Sunset
Source: CD: 25 Years-The Ultimate Collection (originally released on LP: Something Else By The Kinks)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Polygram (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Our 9th most played band of 2012, the Kinks, were one of the original British Invasion bands to have big hits in the US. You Really Got Me is often cited as the first hard rock song. Due to being banned from performing in the US for a couple of years, the group found itself unable to promote its songs outside their native England and by 1967 their songs went mostly unheard on US radio. It's a bit of a shame, since Waterloo Sunset is undeniably one of the nicest-sounding songs the band ever recorded.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: Time Has Come Today
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released on LP: The Time Has Come)
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
Leaving our artist countdown temporarily we have a pair of songs that to many people define the entire psychedelic era. Certainly the Chambers Brothers' Time Has Come Today, which was originally released on their 1967 LP, The Time Has Come, was one of the most heard songs on "underground" FM stations throughout the late 60s, often in its unedited 10-minute plus form. Although the edited version heard here (our 7th most-played song of the year) is only half the length of the original, it does manage to convey a sense of the album version's wild experimental nature.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: Mono CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Uni)
Year: 1967
If the Chambers Brothers' Time Has Come Today is typical of what was heard on FM in 1967, it's AM counterpart would have to be the Strawberry Alarm Clock's Incense And Peppermints, coming in as the 6th most played song on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year.
Artist: Doors
Title: I Can't See Your Face In My Mind
Source: CD: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Returning to our artists' countdown we also return to the US for the most successful band to emerge from the Los Angeles club scene of 1965-68. There is really very little I can say about the Doors that hasn't already been said, so instead I'll just point out that even if the group had disbanded after their second LP, Strange Days, they would have left behind a body of work that marks them as one of the greatest bands of all time.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone: (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
Speaking of the greatest bands of all time we have the 7th most-played group on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year. The Beatles are unique in that they both defined (especially in their native England) and transcended the psychedelic era itself. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what the musical landscape of the late 60s would have looked like without the Beatles to lead the British Invasion and inspire so many young Americans to pick up a guitar and form a band.
Artist: Love
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: Mono CD: Love Story (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
In the #6 spot we have a band that, in a sense, functioned as a reverse-Beatles. Although each of Love's albums did successively worse on the US charts than the previous one, the exact opposite was true in the UK, despite the fact that the band, led by the enigmatic Arthur Lee, never strayed far from their home base of Los Angeles, California. Their Forever Changes LP, released in 1967, is often cited as a major influence by modern UK bands, and is now regarded as one of the truly classic albums of its time, managing to capture the spirit of the summer of love and presage the coming downfall of the hippie culture all at the same time. Love's most successful single was 7&7 Is, which was also the 16th most-played song on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year (it was #1 in 2011).
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Let's Spend The Night Together
Source: CD: Flowers
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
Whether or not the Rolling Stones are the greatest rock and roll band of all time is still open to debate. What is certain is that they were the 5th most-played band on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year, thanks in large part to my acquiring original vinyl copies of almost the entire 60s Stones catalog in 2011. How could I not play them? For the most part we stuck to the Brian Jones incarnation of the band, including classics like Let's Spend The Night Together, a song so strong it appeared on two successive LPs (Between The Buttons and Flowers) in 1967.
Artist: Standells
Title: Dirty Water
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
Another group that missed being in the top 20 this year (they came in at #25) was the Standells, whose Dirty Water (our 5th most-played song of the year) is played at nearly every sporting event in the city of Boston to this day, despite the band never having played there (they were from Los Angeles).
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
Sometimes you make a decision that seems like a sure winner, only to have it blow up in your face. You hire a competent manager who nonetheless makes one bonehead decision that derails your entire career. You make sure you record at the best studio in town, only to have the record label that owns the studio screw up your debut album by including tracks you never intended to release. Such is the story of Sean Bonniwell and his band, the Music Machine. Formed in 1965, the Machine was quite simply the best at what they did. They had tight sets with a minimum of wasted time between songs. They had a striking visual image, with all the members completely dressed in black (including dyed hair) and wearing one glove (when Michael Jackson was still in grade school). And, most importantly, they had quality material written by Bonniwell himself. Nonetheless, due to circumstances beyond the control of the musicians themselves, the Music Machine found themselves consigned to the list of one-hit wonders, with this year's third most played song, Talk Talk, hitting the charts in late 1966. Bonniwell himself passed away in December of 2011, and since then Stuck in the Psychedelic Era has made an effort to keep the spotlight on the Music Machine, making them our 4th more played artists of 2012.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released on LP: The First Edition)
Writer(s): Mickey Newbury
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
The second most-played song on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year is the one song that Kenny Rogers is trying to forget ever happened, despite the fact that it was his first hit record as a lead vocalist. Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In), from the debut album of the First Edition, is a prime piece of psychedelia, from it's backwards-masked guitar intro (played by Glen Campbell) to it's esoteric lyrics (from the pen of Mickey Newbury). Not at all in keeping with Rogers's image as an urbane cowboy.
Artist: Cream
Title: Strange Brew
Source: CD: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Clapton/Collins/Pappalardi
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
It was 1967. The Beatles were on top of their game. The Rolling Stones were chugging along being, well, the Rolling Stones. Nonetheless, among knowledgeable aspiring musicians there was a new band at the top of the heap of British rock bands: the first blues-rock supergroup and the third most played band on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012, Cream. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, after a 1966 debut LP firmly rooted in the blues with just a hint of what was to come, bloomed suddenly into the world's premier acid rock jam band with the release of their second LP, Disraeli Gears. Although the band saved their extended jams for their live performances (several of which made up the two live sides of their 1968 double LP Wheels Of Fire), Cream, with the help of their unofficial fourth member, producer Felix Pappalardi, recorded an album full of gems like Tales Of Brave Ulysses, Sunshine Of Your Love, We're Going Wrong, and the album's opening track, Strange Brew, itself a reworking of an old blues tune with new lyrics and melody provided by Pappalardi and his wife Gail Collins and sung by Clapton.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Are You Experienced?
Source: CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
It's almost impossible to overstate the influence and sheer power of the debut album of our second most-played artist of 2012, Jimi Hendrix. Virtually every guitarist that has hit the scene since 1967 cites Are You Experienced as a primary influence on his or her own career. From it's opening track (Purple Haze on the US version, Foxy Lady on the UK original) to the final notes of the title track, Are You Experienced is full of innovative sounds, made even more amazing when you consider that Hendrix, along with bassist Noel Redding, drummer Mitch Mitchell, producer Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer, were working with relatively primitive four-track recording equipment and had to create their own studio effects as they went along.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah
Year: 1967
It's no fluke that Lenny Kaye, when he first set about compiling the collection of psychedelic tracks that became the original Nuggets album, chose the Electric Prunes' 1967 hit I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) to open side one of the double LP set. From its opening feedback-drenched guitar chord to its hypnotic bass line and spooky vocals that lead up to a chorus that is difficult not to sing along with (even if some of us sing the wrong words), I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) is perhaps the perfect psychedelic record, and it was the most-played song on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Somebody To Love
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Darby Slick
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
For many, the defining event of the entire psychedelic era was the Summer of Love. Centered in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and fueled by a massive influx of young people from around the country (and even the world), the summer of 1967 was the culmination of the hippie movement that had been building in the city since the late 1950s, when the city became the West Coast center of the Beatnick sub-culture. Much of what made the Summer of Love so remarkable was the amount of publicity given to the scene by the mass media. Much of that publicity was spurred by the blossoming of the city's local music scene into a national phenomena in the early part of the year, and the band at the forefront of that blossoming was our most-played band on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012, Jefferson Airplane. The Airplane, led by vocalist and local club manager Marty Balin, included lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady (both of whom would eventually go on to form Hot Tuna), drummer Spencer Dryden (who had joined in late 1966, replacing Skip Spence who had left to form his own band, Moby Grape), guitarist/vocalist Paul Kantner, who would eventually become the band's main songwriter, and of course the charismatic former model, vocalist Grace Slick, who, like Dryden, joined the band after the group's first LP was released. Slick brought with her Somebody To Love, a song that had been written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick for the Great! Society, a local group they had both been members of in 1966. The Airplane reworked the song into what became the group's first and only top 5 single, putting the band, and the entire San Francisco music scene, on the national music map in the process.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Combination Of The Two
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Sam Andrew
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
The 20th most played artists of the year were San Francisco's Big Brother and the Holding Company. One of the more notable releases of the year was the direct off the board recording of the band's 1968 performance at the Carousel Ballroom (soon to be renamed the Fillmore West), recorded just a few weeks before Janis Joplin's departure from the band that she made (and that made her) famous. 1968 was by all accounts the apex of Big Brother's career, with one of the most anticipated LPs of the year, Cheap Thrills, shooting straight to the top of the charts. The opening track of that album, guitarist Sam Andrews's Combination Of The Two, was also the band's concert opener, and the live version heard on Cheap Thrills has long been considered the definitive version of the song.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Watch Yourself
Source: LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Robert Yeazel
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
At #19 we have the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, a group that in many ways typifies the tumultous nature of the psychedelic era. The band, formed in 1966 by Danny and Shaun Harris, was soon taken over by 30-year-old hipster Bob Markley, who in return for much-needed financial support got to indulge his penchant for chasing teenage girls and writing weird lyrics. Oddly enough, the band did turn out some fine tracks on their three LPs for Reprise, including Watch Yourself, written by Robert Yeazel, a friend of guitarist Ron Morgan, whose own history with the band was anything but smooth.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: No Time Like The Right Time
Source: Mono CD: Anthology (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Al Kooper
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1967
Although our 18th most played band of 2012, the Blues Project, was arguably the first Jam Band, their most successful song was the tightly arranged Al Kooper classic No Time Like The Right Time, released as a single in early 1967 and included on Lenny Kaye's original Nuggets collection in 1972. The Greenwich Village based Blues Project is often cited as a major inspiration for such bands as the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, whose members were among the crowds that turned out to see the Project when they toured the West Coast in 1966.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Dear Mr. Fantasy
Source: CD: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Writer(s): Capaldi/Wood/Winwood
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
At this point I should mention the 19th most-played song of 2012, I'm A Man by the Spencer Davis Group, if for no other reason than the fact that it was the group's last record to feature Steve Winwood on lead vocals and keyboards. Winwood would soon prove that he was just as talented a guitarist as he was an organist with his new band Traffic, our 17th most played band of 2012. Dear Mr. Fantasy was a showcase for Winwood, both as a guitarist and vocalist, and has gone on to become one of his signature songs.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Bert's Blues
Source: Mono CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sony (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
It should come as no surprise that of the 20 most played artists on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012 (or any other year, for that matter), only one is a solo artist. After all, the entire psychedelic era itself is rooted in the idea of self-contained bands rebelling against a corporate pop machine that used anonymous studio musicians backing carefully-groomed teen idol vocalists to crank out cookie-cutter hits in the early part of the decade. Still, much of that rebellion came out of the folk movement that included such stars as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and a young Scottish singer/songwriter, Donovan Leitch, who, unlike many of his contemporaries, moved beyond straight folk music to become one of the architects of the psychedelic era. His Sunshine Superman is sometimes considered the first psychedelic hit, and tracks like Bert's Blues, from the Sunshine Superman album, show that our 16th most-played artist of 2012 was one of the most innovative songwriters of his time.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Gloria
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released on LP: Gloria)
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Although they did not make the top 20 artists list this year (barely missing the cut at #21), Chicago's Shadows Of Knight did score the 18th most-played song with perennial favorite Gloria, one of the true classics of the psychedelic era. There will always be some controversy over the fact that the Shadows were able to take Gloria into the top 10 by changing just a few of Van Morrison's lyrics to avoid censorship, but one fact that can't be denied is that the band itself is one of, if not the greatest, American garage bands of its time.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Pushin' Too Hard
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: The Seeds)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Priority (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1966
In the #15 spot we have one of the strangest bands to ever hit the Los Angeles club scene. The Seeds were made up entirely of guys that had moved to California from other states; some claimed they had come from another planet entirely. Led by vocalist Sky Saxon, who played bass on stage but never on their recordings, the Seeds took L.A. by storm in late 1965 with a series of regional hits that culminated with Pushin' Too Hard in the summer of 1966. The following year the song (which is our own fourth most-played song of 2012), went national, becoming their only top 40 hit outside the L.A. area.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michalski
Label: Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year: 1966
It wouldn't be the psychedelic era without one-hit wonders, and one of the best of these was San Jose, California's Count Five, whose Psychotic Reaction was our 14th most-played song of the year.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Source: CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Berkeley, California, was home to our 14th most-played band of 2012, Country Joe And The Fish. One of the earliest rock groups to have overt political overtones, the band's name came from "Country Joe" Stalin combined with a quote from Mao Tse Tung concerning the revolutionary's role in society as a fish in the stream (or something along those lines). Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine, from the band's debut LP, also made the top 10 list of most-played songs on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year, coming in at #8.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Mystic Mourning
Source: CD: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Ulaky/Weisberg/Rhodes
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
By 1968 a number of bands were incorporating melodic and rhythmic modes from Indian classical music to create something known as raga rock. Among these was the best of the so-called "Boss-Town Sound" bands, the Beacon Street Union. Mystic Mourning, from the band's 1968 debut LP, was our 12th most-played track of 2012.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Hideaway
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Underground)
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Electric Prunes were cursed with the bad luck to be saddled with a producer who was more interested in making a name for himself than in allowing the band to reach their full potential. It's appropriate, then, that the Prunes end up as our 13th most-played artists this year (although as you will see later, they did much better on the song list). Hideaway, from their second LP, Underground, gives us a glimpse of what the band could have been if given a bit more artistic freedom.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
I have, in the past, been taken to task for playing a lot of Simon And Garfunkel songs on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. Indeed, they were the 12th most-played artists of the year. Still, nobody can deny that the duo was an essential part of the psychedelic era, transcending their early folk style with electrified tracks like The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine, from their 1966 LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
To wrap up the first half of this week's show we have the most successful folk-rock band of 1965, the Byrds, our 11th most-played artists of 2012. Although not much on their two 1965 LPs can be called psychedelic, that all changed with the 1966 release of Fifth Dimension, featuring the single Eight Miles High, a song which itself comes in as the 13th most-played of the year.
At this point I should mention some songs that made the most-played list this year, but are not featured on this week's show. These include the Music Machine's The Eagle Never Hunts The Fly (#17) and Double Yellow Line (#10), Jefferson Airplane's Comin' Back To Me (#15), and the Vanilla Fudge version of You Keep Me Hangin' On (#11). With the exception of the Vanilla Fudge track (which was cut at the last minute due to time considerations), these are all songs by artists that show up in the second hour.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pons/Rinehart
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1965
We start off the second hour of the show with another band that didn't make the top 20 (they came in at #31), but that did have the 9th most-played song of the year on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. Although the Leaves are (rightly) most famous for popularizing the fast version of Billy Roberts's Hey Joe several months before the slowed-down Jimi Hendrix Experience version was recorded, Too Many People is probably a better example of this L.A. club band's actual style. The song manages to tread the line between the folk-rock that was popular in 1965 and the up and coming garage-rock that would take hold in 1966.
Artist: Who
Title: Pictures Of Lily
Source: Mono CD: Meaty, Beaty, Big And Bouncy (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1967
In one sense, the psychedelic era represents a balance between British and American popular music. Many of the British Invasion bands that had totally dominated the charts on both sides of the Atlantic in 1964 were still going strong for the remainder of the decade. At the same time, as early as 1965 US artists were starting to reappear at the top of the charts, thanks in no small part to the electrification of US folk music in the wake of Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone. By the 1970s American artists would once again have the majority of hits in the US, but during the psychedelic era itself the mix was just about even between the two countries. It is appropriate then, that of our top 10 most played artists on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year, exactly half are British and the other half came from the US (although in one case the band members came from both countries). At #10 we have the Who, who were just starting to get recognition in the US in early 1967, despite having several top 10 UK hits the previous year. The Who was still a couple of years from truly breaking things wide open in the US, however, and songs like Pictures Of Lily, which was yet another top UK hit, went mostly unnoticed in the US.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Waterloo Sunset
Source: CD: 25 Years-The Ultimate Collection (originally released on LP: Something Else By The Kinks)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Polygram (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Our 9th most played band of 2012, the Kinks, were one of the original British Invasion bands to have big hits in the US. You Really Got Me is often cited as the first hard rock song. Due to being banned from performing in the US for a couple of years, the group found itself unable to promote its songs outside their native England and by 1967 their songs went mostly unheard on US radio. It's a bit of a shame, since Waterloo Sunset is undeniably one of the nicest-sounding songs the band ever recorded.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: Time Has Come Today
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released on LP: The Time Has Come)
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
Leaving our artist countdown temporarily we have a pair of songs that to many people define the entire psychedelic era. Certainly the Chambers Brothers' Time Has Come Today, which was originally released on their 1967 LP, The Time Has Come, was one of the most heard songs on "underground" FM stations throughout the late 60s, often in its unedited 10-minute plus form. Although the edited version heard here (our 7th most-played song of the year) is only half the length of the original, it does manage to convey a sense of the album version's wild experimental nature.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: Mono CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Uni)
Year: 1967
If the Chambers Brothers' Time Has Come Today is typical of what was heard on FM in 1967, it's AM counterpart would have to be the Strawberry Alarm Clock's Incense And Peppermints, coming in as the 6th most played song on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year.
Artist: Doors
Title: I Can't See Your Face In My Mind
Source: CD: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Returning to our artists' countdown we also return to the US for the most successful band to emerge from the Los Angeles club scene of 1965-68. There is really very little I can say about the Doors that hasn't already been said, so instead I'll just point out that even if the group had disbanded after their second LP, Strange Days, they would have left behind a body of work that marks them as one of the greatest bands of all time.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone: (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
Speaking of the greatest bands of all time we have the 7th most-played group on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year. The Beatles are unique in that they both defined (especially in their native England) and transcended the psychedelic era itself. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what the musical landscape of the late 60s would have looked like without the Beatles to lead the British Invasion and inspire so many young Americans to pick up a guitar and form a band.
Artist: Love
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: Mono CD: Love Story (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
In the #6 spot we have a band that, in a sense, functioned as a reverse-Beatles. Although each of Love's albums did successively worse on the US charts than the previous one, the exact opposite was true in the UK, despite the fact that the band, led by the enigmatic Arthur Lee, never strayed far from their home base of Los Angeles, California. Their Forever Changes LP, released in 1967, is often cited as a major influence by modern UK bands, and is now regarded as one of the truly classic albums of its time, managing to capture the spirit of the summer of love and presage the coming downfall of the hippie culture all at the same time. Love's most successful single was 7&7 Is, which was also the 16th most-played song on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year (it was #1 in 2011).
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Let's Spend The Night Together
Source: CD: Flowers
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
Whether or not the Rolling Stones are the greatest rock and roll band of all time is still open to debate. What is certain is that they were the 5th most-played band on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year, thanks in large part to my acquiring original vinyl copies of almost the entire 60s Stones catalog in 2011. How could I not play them? For the most part we stuck to the Brian Jones incarnation of the band, including classics like Let's Spend The Night Together, a song so strong it appeared on two successive LPs (Between The Buttons and Flowers) in 1967.
Artist: Standells
Title: Dirty Water
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
Another group that missed being in the top 20 this year (they came in at #25) was the Standells, whose Dirty Water (our 5th most-played song of the year) is played at nearly every sporting event in the city of Boston to this day, despite the band never having played there (they were from Los Angeles).
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
Sometimes you make a decision that seems like a sure winner, only to have it blow up in your face. You hire a competent manager who nonetheless makes one bonehead decision that derails your entire career. You make sure you record at the best studio in town, only to have the record label that owns the studio screw up your debut album by including tracks you never intended to release. Such is the story of Sean Bonniwell and his band, the Music Machine. Formed in 1965, the Machine was quite simply the best at what they did. They had tight sets with a minimum of wasted time between songs. They had a striking visual image, with all the members completely dressed in black (including dyed hair) and wearing one glove (when Michael Jackson was still in grade school). And, most importantly, they had quality material written by Bonniwell himself. Nonetheless, due to circumstances beyond the control of the musicians themselves, the Music Machine found themselves consigned to the list of one-hit wonders, with this year's third most played song, Talk Talk, hitting the charts in late 1966. Bonniwell himself passed away in December of 2011, and since then Stuck in the Psychedelic Era has made an effort to keep the spotlight on the Music Machine, making them our 4th more played artists of 2012.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released on LP: The First Edition)
Writer(s): Mickey Newbury
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
The second most-played song on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year is the one song that Kenny Rogers is trying to forget ever happened, despite the fact that it was his first hit record as a lead vocalist. Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In), from the debut album of the First Edition, is a prime piece of psychedelia, from it's backwards-masked guitar intro (played by Glen Campbell) to it's esoteric lyrics (from the pen of Mickey Newbury). Not at all in keeping with Rogers's image as an urbane cowboy.
Artist: Cream
Title: Strange Brew
Source: CD: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Clapton/Collins/Pappalardi
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
It was 1967. The Beatles were on top of their game. The Rolling Stones were chugging along being, well, the Rolling Stones. Nonetheless, among knowledgeable aspiring musicians there was a new band at the top of the heap of British rock bands: the first blues-rock supergroup and the third most played band on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012, Cream. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, after a 1966 debut LP firmly rooted in the blues with just a hint of what was to come, bloomed suddenly into the world's premier acid rock jam band with the release of their second LP, Disraeli Gears. Although the band saved their extended jams for their live performances (several of which made up the two live sides of their 1968 double LP Wheels Of Fire), Cream, with the help of their unofficial fourth member, producer Felix Pappalardi, recorded an album full of gems like Tales Of Brave Ulysses, Sunshine Of Your Love, We're Going Wrong, and the album's opening track, Strange Brew, itself a reworking of an old blues tune with new lyrics and melody provided by Pappalardi and his wife Gail Collins and sung by Clapton.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Are You Experienced?
Source: CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
It's almost impossible to overstate the influence and sheer power of the debut album of our second most-played artist of 2012, Jimi Hendrix. Virtually every guitarist that has hit the scene since 1967 cites Are You Experienced as a primary influence on his or her own career. From it's opening track (Purple Haze on the US version, Foxy Lady on the UK original) to the final notes of the title track, Are You Experienced is full of innovative sounds, made even more amazing when you consider that Hendrix, along with bassist Noel Redding, drummer Mitch Mitchell, producer Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer, were working with relatively primitive four-track recording equipment and had to create their own studio effects as they went along.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah
Year: 1967
It's no fluke that Lenny Kaye, when he first set about compiling the collection of psychedelic tracks that became the original Nuggets album, chose the Electric Prunes' 1967 hit I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) to open side one of the double LP set. From its opening feedback-drenched guitar chord to its hypnotic bass line and spooky vocals that lead up to a chorus that is difficult not to sing along with (even if some of us sing the wrong words), I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) is perhaps the perfect psychedelic record, and it was the most-played song on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Somebody To Love
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Darby Slick
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
For many, the defining event of the entire psychedelic era was the Summer of Love. Centered in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and fueled by a massive influx of young people from around the country (and even the world), the summer of 1967 was the culmination of the hippie movement that had been building in the city since the late 1950s, when the city became the West Coast center of the Beatnick sub-culture. Much of what made the Summer of Love so remarkable was the amount of publicity given to the scene by the mass media. Much of that publicity was spurred by the blossoming of the city's local music scene into a national phenomena in the early part of the year, and the band at the forefront of that blossoming was our most-played band on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012, Jefferson Airplane. The Airplane, led by vocalist and local club manager Marty Balin, included lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady (both of whom would eventually go on to form Hot Tuna), drummer Spencer Dryden (who had joined in late 1966, replacing Skip Spence who had left to form his own band, Moby Grape), guitarist/vocalist Paul Kantner, who would eventually become the band's main songwriter, and of course the charismatic former model, vocalist Grace Slick, who, like Dryden, joined the band after the group's first LP was released. Slick brought with her Somebody To Love, a song that had been written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick for the Great! Society, a local group they had both been members of in 1966. The Airplane reworked the song into what became the group's first and only top 5 single, putting the band, and the entire San Francisco music scene, on the national music map in the process.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
No playlist yet-for a reason
Not putting up a playlist for the next show just yet. The reason, of course, is that it's a year-end countdown of the most-played artists (and songs) on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2012...and a playlist would pretty much kill the suspense. So, after the show has run (probably next Monday or Tuesday) I'll post the entire list, along with the usual commentary. Until then, keep guessing!
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Stuck With the Hermit at Yuletide (starts 12/20/12)
Just about every weekly radio show does a Christmas special this time of year, and for several years now Stuck In the Psychedelic Era has been no exception. There is a problem, though, and that is the unavoidable fact that for the most part the artists featured on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era never had the opportunity (or inclination, for that matter) to record Christmas songs. There are exceptions, of course, and this week you'll hear some of those by Jethro Tull, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, and others. But, unless I wanted to spend over half the show on Beach Boys Christmas songs (and there are nearly enough of those for an entire show), I knew I would have to take an entirely different approach to selecting the songs. After a couple of years of experimenting around with various approaches I finally decided to just pick out the coolest holiday tracks I could find, regardless of genre or year they were recorded, and have been doing it that way ever since. As a result, on this year's show we'll be hearing tunes that span from 1948 through 1983. One unintended consequence of doing it this way is that nearly every track used on the show tonight is from a CD.
So prepare to be Stuck with the Hermit at Yuletide without any scratchy records this year.
Artist: Mannheim Steamroller
Song Title: Hark! The Herald Trumpets Sing
Source: CD: A Fresh Aire Christmas
Release Year: 1988
I was looking for something that was both pompous and cool at the same time to start the show. Mannheim Steamroller seemed to fit the bill. Besides, Chip Davis wrote it to be an introduction, so I figured why not?
Artist: George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Song Title: Rock and Roll Christmas
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1983
George Thorogood has always said that his group was at heart a bar band. As a bar band is just a step away from being a garage band, this seemed like as good a place as any to get into the actual meat of the show.
Artist: Beatles
Song Title: Christmas Time (Is Here Again)
Source: CD single: Free As a Bird
Release Year: 1967/1997
Every year the Beatles would record a special Christmas message to go out to members of their fan club, and mail it out on what was then known as a floppy disc. This was not the same as a computer floppy disc, however. In fact, the medium the Beatles used eventually came to be known as a flexi-disc, just to keep things from getting any more confusing. Regardless of what you called it, the things tended to wear out after just a few plays and I doubt there are many playable copies of these discs left in the universe. Luckily for us, George Martin had the foresight to hang on to everything the Beatles ever recorded, including this tune, which was chopped up and used for the 1967 Christmas Greeting. When the Beatles Anthology was released in 1997, the piece was included on the Free As a Bird CD single, and we got to hear the song in its uninterrupted entirety for the first time.
Artist: John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Song Title: Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Source: CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1971
Originally intended as an anti-Vietnam War song, John and Yoko's Happy Xmas (War Is Over) has long since acquired classic status and is now one of the most familiar songs of the season. It was first released in the US in December of 1971, but due to a problem with the publisher did not appear in the rest of the world until November of 1972.
Artist: Beach Boys
Song Title: Morning Christmas
Source: CD: Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas
Release Year: 1977
Dennis Wilson was not hanging around with the rest of the clan in 1977, but did want to make a contribution to their new Christmas album that year, so he sent in this recording. The album ended up not being released, but the track finally did see the light of day on the Ultimate Christmas collection issued four or five years ago.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Song Title: Silent Night/7 O'Clock News
Source: CD: Complete Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Release Year: 1966
Simon and Garfunkel's Silent Night/7 O'Clock News is unique for several reasons. The most obvious is that it uses two unrelated recordings to make an ironically chilling point. The first is a rendition of Franz Gruber's Silent Night, with vocals in the center channel and piano only coming from one speaker. As the song progresses a newscast in the other channel slowly gets louder. Eventually the song ends and there is only the news. What's also unusual is that this well-known Christmas carol is not featured on a Christmas album at all; instead it appears as the final track of the duo's 1966 LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Song Title: A Hazy Shade of Winter
Source: CD: Complete Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Release Year: 1966
I wish I could take credit for putting Simon And Garfunkel's Silent Night/7 O'Clock News and A Hazy Shade of Winter back to back. The truth is I don't know who came up with the idea; my best guess is someone from Westwood One radio, as I first heard it done on one of their syndicated programs. Still, it's not a bad idea, and I happened to have a copy of the Westwood One version of the paired tracks, so there it is.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Song Title: Ring Out Solstice Bells
Source: LP: Songs From the Wood
Release Year: 1976
Until the late 1940s the predominate form of recorded music was the 78 RPM (revolutions per minute) record, which was either 10 or 12 inches in diameter and made of a brittle material called shellac. The 10 inch version was the standard for popular music, with a running time of about 3 to 4 minutes. RCA Victor developed a direct replacement for the 78 that was 7 inches in diameter and ran at 45 RPM. Meanwhile, RCA's top rival, Columbia Records, developed a slower long-playing record that used something called microgroove technology that allowed up to half an hour's worth of recorded material per side. Somewhere along the way somebody decided to try the microgroove approach to the 45 and the Extended Play (EP) record was born. In the US, EPs were somewhat popular in the 1950s, but pretty much died out by the time of the Beatles, except for specialized formats such as children's records and low-budget cover labels that would hire anonymous studio musicians to re-create popular hits. In the UK, on the other hand, the format remained viable up through the mid-70s. Jethro Tull took advantage of the EP format to release a Christmas record in December of 1976. Ring Out Solstice Bells was the featured song on the EP, and would not be released in the US until the following spring, when it was included on the album Songs From the Wood.
Artist: Ed "Cookie" Byrnes
Song Title: Yulesville
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1959
The ABC TV network was a perennial also-ran that was just starting to find a winning formula in the late 50s with shows targeted toward a younger audience. The most popular of these was 77 Sunset Strip, starring Ed "Cookie" Byrnes. He and co-star Connie Stevens, staying in character, cut a hit novelty record called "Cookie, Cookie," which played on Cookie's propensity for combing his hair. Byrnes, again in character, followed it up with this hip retelling of the classic poem Twas the Night Before Christmas.
Artist: Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Song Title: Monster's Holiday
Source: CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1962
Bobby Picket scored big with his Halloween hit Monster Mash in 1962, and quickly followed it up with this sequel set around the Christmas holidays. Legendary producer Gary Paxton was responsible for both recordings making it onto vinyl and on the air.
Artist: Johnny Preston
Song Title: (I Want a) Rock and Roll Guitar
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1960
Johnny Preston recorded his signature song in 1960, the classic Running Bear, penned by J.P. Richardson, the Big Bopper. The pair teamed up again to create a brand new Christmas song, (I Want a) Rock and Roll Guitar, later the same year. Interesting enough, by the middle of the decade a guitar was exactly what many kids were indeed asking for. I should know; I got my first guitar (and amp) as a Christmas present after badgering my parents mercilessly for months. I think between the two they might have run about $100, which made it the most expensive Christmas I ever had.
Artist: Foghat
Song Title: All I Want For Christmas Is You
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1981
Foghat was formed when all the members of Savoy Brown except leader Kim Simmonds decided to form their own band in the early 70s. After a moderately successful run, founding member "Lonesome" Dave Peverett was all set to call it quits in 1981, but not until after he wrote and recorded All I Want For Christmas Is You.
Artist: Kinks
Song Title: Father Christmas
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1977
There are not many socially-conscious Christmas songs, especially slightly twisted ones like the Kinks' classic Father Christmas from 1977. I guess by then getting a guitar was kind of passe anyway.
Artist: Charles Brown
Song Title: Please Come Home For Christmas
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits (1955-Present)
Release Year: 1961
By now just about everyone is familiar with the Eagles version of Please Come Home For Christmas. Not everyone, however, knows the song was written by blues great Charles Brown. Even fewer have actually heard Brown's 1961 original, which is a shame, as it blows the Eagles version clean out of the water.
Artist: James Brown
Song Title: Santa Claus, Santa Claus
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1968
Few people would ever accuse James Brown of being a blues artist, but this recording of Santa Claus, Santa Claus (sometimes called just Santa Claus) from 1968 shows what it would have sounded like if he was.
Artist: Clarence Carter
Song Title: Back Door Santa
Source: CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1969
Clarence Carter is an icon of the beach music (for you non-Carolinians, beach music has nothing to do with surf music) crowd. For everyone else, he is a moderately successful soul artist known mostly for his mid-70s hit Slip Away. Regardless of where you might know him from, his Back Door Santa will surprise you with its down and funky energy.
Artist: Jimmy McCracklin
Song Title: Christmas Time
Source: CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1961 (?)
Jimmy McCracklin recorded one of the catchiest, yet underplayed, tunes of the 50s when he did The Walk. Christmas Time, from a few years later, actually sounds like beach music. Go figure.
Artist: Chuck Berry
Song Title: Run Rudolph Run
Source: CD: Chuck Berry Chess Box
Release Year: 1958
Chuck Berry established a reputation in the 60s for reworking his old songs from the 50s, giving them new lyrics and sometimes new guitar rifts. Probably the best-known example of this was No Particular Place To Go, which is a reworked version of School Day. His first reworking of a previously-recorded song was 1958's Run Rudoph Run, which was virtually identical to Little Queenie, released earlier the same year. To me it sounds like he actually used the Little Queenie instrumental tracks rather than to re-record the song. This kind of cost-cutting measure would be consistent with his later practice of using pick-up bands rather than incurring the travel expenses of having his own band on the road.
Artist: Jack Scott
Song Title: There's Trouble Brewin'
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1963
Canadian born Jack Scott was one of the great rockabilly performers of the late 50s, scoring several top 10 hits, including My True Love and Burning Bridges. This 1963 recording of There's Trouble Brewin' shows him at the peak of his vocal powers.
Artist: Cheech and Chong
Song Title: Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1971
I heard Cheech And Chong's Santa Claus and His Old Lady on the radio the year it was released and managed to find a copy of the 45 only to have it disappear on me a few years later. Luckily, the folks at Rhino somehow knew of my dilemma and included it on their Rock and Roll Christmas CD (sure they did). Incidentally, the B side of that old 45 was Dave's Not Here from Cheech and Chong's first album.
Artist: Ray Stevens
Song Title: Santa Claus Is Watching You
Source: CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1962
I've mentioned something called the Grab Bag before. Basically, it was a sealed paper bag (sometimes with a clear plastic front) containing four 45 RPM records, generally "cut-outs" that were no longer in print. The one my family bought for Christmas of 1964 had a Sing Along With Mitch Christmas EP in the front. By far the oddest record in the bag was Santa Claus Is Watching You by Ray Stevens, although I seem to remember that version being slightly different than the one heard here. One thing that both versions had in common was the presence of Clyde the Camel from Stevens's first hit Ahab the Arab.
Artist: Spike Jones and His City Slickers
Song Title: All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954
Release Year: 1948
Spike Jones and His City Slickers were a highly talented bunch who made music out of sound effects, toy instruments, and whatever else it occurred to them to use. Their forte was the novelty record, and no one did it better. All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) was written by Middleton, NY schoolteacher Donald Yetter Gardner, who was inspired to write the song when he asked his second grade class what they wanted for Christmas and was struck by how many of them were lisping due to missing front teeth.
Artist: Chipmunks
Song Title: The Chipmunk Song
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1955-Present
Release Year: 1958
In 1958 pop-jazz composer/bandleader Ross Bagdasarian decided to play around with a variable-speed tape recorder and came up with the novelty hit Witch Doctor. He followed it up by using multiple tape machines to create a trio of sped up voices that he called the Chipmunks, and released this smash hit in time for the Christmas season. The success of The Chipmunk Song led to a Saturday morning cartoon series and a series of albums for the Liberty label. His son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. has revived the concept in recent years, although not with the same level of success.
Artist: Beach Boys
Song Title: Little Saint Nick (stereo single version)
Source: CD: Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas
Release Year: 1963
When the Beach Boys first recorded Little Saint Nick they were the hottest surf music band in the country. A year later Beatlemania had set in, and a new version of Little Saint Nick was recorded for the Beach Boys Christmas Album. The new version put a greater emphasis on the vocals, and much of the original instrumentation was deleted from the arrangement. That is the version that usually gets heard on commercial radio every year. In the mid-70s, Carl Wilson, who by then had stepped into the leader's role formerly held by older brother Brian, pulled out the original 1963 tapes and created a new stereo mix of the song. The instruments have greater prominence in this version and include the distinctive sound of sleighbells that were completely exorcised from the 1964 version.
Artist: Ventures
Song Title: Sleigh Ride
Source: CD: The Ventures Christmas Album
Release Year: 1965
The Ventures are by far the most successful instrumental rock group in history, with over 100 albums released over several decades. One of the most successful of these was their 1965 Christmas album, which featured this surfinated version of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride, a piece usually associated with the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Artist: Sonics
Song Title: Santa Claus
Source: CD: Cool Yule (originally released on LP:
Release Year: 1966
The Pacific Northwest was home to several bands that can only be described as proto-punk (think Louie Louie). One of the top bands on the scene up there was the Sonics, who recorded raw hard-driving songs with titles like Psycho, the Witch and Strychnine. Santa Claus is very much in the same vein, making it the punkiest Christmas song of the sixties, if not all time.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Song Title: Christmas Song
Source: CD: This Was (bonus track originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1968
I wanted to play one set made up entirely of songs from the psychedelic era performed by artists that I feature on the show on a fairly regular basis. One of these artists is the band Jethro Tull, led by flautist/acoustic guitarist/vocalist Ian Anderson. His somewhat cynical Christmas Song, originally released in the UK in 1968, did not appear in the US until the 1973 anthology album Living In the Past.
Artist: Canned Heat
Song Title: Christmas Blues
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1968
Although Steve Miller originally hailed from Chicago, it was Canned Head that emerged as the San Francisco Bay area's electric blues band of choice. With Robert "Big Bear" Hite fronting the band on blues harp and vocals, they recorded their Christmas Blues in time for the 1968 Yule season.
Artist: Chuck Berry
Song Title: Merry Christmas, Baby
Source: CD: Chuck Berry Chess Box
Release Year: 1958
Chuck Berry did not record too many cover tunes, as he was a prolific songwriter himself. However, for the B side to Run Rudolph Run, he cut this tasty version of Charles Brown's "other" Christmas song, Merry Christmas, Baby.
Artist: Solomon Burke
Song Title: Presents For Christmas
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1966
Solomon Burke was a staple artist for the Atlantic label at a time when Atlantic itself was being overshadowed by the Stax/Volt labels that it distributed. Nonetheless, Burke had several R&B hits throughout the sixties and was highly respected by his fellow artists. Presents For Christmas captures Burke at his peak in 1966.
Artist: Eartha Kitt
Song Title: Santa Baby
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954
Release Year: 1953
Eartha Kitt has one of the most unique voices in the history of jazz, and put it to good use on the original 1953 version of Santa Baby, a tune that has unfortunately in recent years become associated with Madonna. Kitt continued to perform with nearly as much energy as she had in the 50s right up to her death on Christmas Day, 2008.
Artist: Rufus Thomas
Song Title: I'll Be Your Santa Baby
Source: CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: unknown
Rufus Thomas had a long and storied career, first with his "dog" hits in the early 60s (Walking the Dog being the most famous) and then later as a member of the Stax/Volt stable of artists. I'll Be Your Santa Baby, recorded for Stax, was released sometimes in the late 60s around the same time that his daughter Carla was making a name for herself with hits like B-A-B-Y and (with Otis Redding) Tramp.
Artist: Cadillacs
Song Title: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Source: CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1956
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has been recorded by a lot of different artists over the years, but this version by the Cadillacs stands out for its pure sense of fun. Doo-wop was at the peak of its popularity in 1956 and the Cadillacs, led by Earl "Speedoo" Carroll, were among the best of the bunch.
Artist: Drifters
Song Title: White Christmas
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits (1955-Present)
Release Year: 1955
The Drifters were a kind of early R&B doowop supergroup made up of ex-members of other R&B groups such as Billy Ward's Dominoes. The most distinctive voice of the original Drifters was high tenor Clyde McPhatter (for whom Ray Stevens's famous camel was named), which is heard prominently on their version of Irving Berlin's White Christmas. Over the years the group's lineup changed many times and led to several former members forming competing groups, all using the Drifters name. Over time, members of these offshoots would in turn form their own Drifters, despite having virtually no connection to the original group. This is why it sometimes seems that half the doowop singers in the world claim to be former members of the Drifters.
Artist: Marquees
Song Title: Christmas In the Congo
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1958
You have to hear this one to believe it. 'Nuff said.
Artist: King Curtis
Song Title: The Christmas Song
Source: 45 RPM vinyl
Release Year: 1966
King Curtis was one of the most in-demand saxophone players of the first wave of rock and roll. His best known work was on the song Yakety Yak by the Coasters in 1958. In the sixties he became the music director for the Atlantic Records group, appearing on a variety of recordings by artists such as Solomon Burke and occassionally released material on the Atco label under his own name. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was the victim of a stabbing when he attempted to stop junkies from shooting up on his front steps in New York.
So there it is: the Hermit's own take on Yuletime. I hope you enjoy the show. Next week we take a look back at the songs and artists that got the most airtime on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year.
So prepare to be Stuck with the Hermit at Yuletide without any scratchy records this year.
Artist: Mannheim Steamroller
Song Title: Hark! The Herald Trumpets Sing
Source: CD: A Fresh Aire Christmas
Release Year: 1988
I was looking for something that was both pompous and cool at the same time to start the show. Mannheim Steamroller seemed to fit the bill. Besides, Chip Davis wrote it to be an introduction, so I figured why not?
Artist: George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Song Title: Rock and Roll Christmas
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1983
George Thorogood has always said that his group was at heart a bar band. As a bar band is just a step away from being a garage band, this seemed like as good a place as any to get into the actual meat of the show.
Artist: Beatles
Song Title: Christmas Time (Is Here Again)
Source: CD single: Free As a Bird
Release Year: 1967/1997
Every year the Beatles would record a special Christmas message to go out to members of their fan club, and mail it out on what was then known as a floppy disc. This was not the same as a computer floppy disc, however. In fact, the medium the Beatles used eventually came to be known as a flexi-disc, just to keep things from getting any more confusing. Regardless of what you called it, the things tended to wear out after just a few plays and I doubt there are many playable copies of these discs left in the universe. Luckily for us, George Martin had the foresight to hang on to everything the Beatles ever recorded, including this tune, which was chopped up and used for the 1967 Christmas Greeting. When the Beatles Anthology was released in 1997, the piece was included on the Free As a Bird CD single, and we got to hear the song in its uninterrupted entirety for the first time.
Artist: John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Song Title: Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Source: CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1971
Originally intended as an anti-Vietnam War song, John and Yoko's Happy Xmas (War Is Over) has long since acquired classic status and is now one of the most familiar songs of the season. It was first released in the US in December of 1971, but due to a problem with the publisher did not appear in the rest of the world until November of 1972.
Artist: Beach Boys
Song Title: Morning Christmas
Source: CD: Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas
Release Year: 1977
Dennis Wilson was not hanging around with the rest of the clan in 1977, but did want to make a contribution to their new Christmas album that year, so he sent in this recording. The album ended up not being released, but the track finally did see the light of day on the Ultimate Christmas collection issued four or five years ago.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Song Title: Silent Night/7 O'Clock News
Source: CD: Complete Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Release Year: 1966
Simon and Garfunkel's Silent Night/7 O'Clock News is unique for several reasons. The most obvious is that it uses two unrelated recordings to make an ironically chilling point. The first is a rendition of Franz Gruber's Silent Night, with vocals in the center channel and piano only coming from one speaker. As the song progresses a newscast in the other channel slowly gets louder. Eventually the song ends and there is only the news. What's also unusual is that this well-known Christmas carol is not featured on a Christmas album at all; instead it appears as the final track of the duo's 1966 LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Song Title: A Hazy Shade of Winter
Source: CD: Complete Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Release Year: 1966
I wish I could take credit for putting Simon And Garfunkel's Silent Night/7 O'Clock News and A Hazy Shade of Winter back to back. The truth is I don't know who came up with the idea; my best guess is someone from Westwood One radio, as I first heard it done on one of their syndicated programs. Still, it's not a bad idea, and I happened to have a copy of the Westwood One version of the paired tracks, so there it is.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Song Title: Ring Out Solstice Bells
Source: LP: Songs From the Wood
Release Year: 1976
Until the late 1940s the predominate form of recorded music was the 78 RPM (revolutions per minute) record, which was either 10 or 12 inches in diameter and made of a brittle material called shellac. The 10 inch version was the standard for popular music, with a running time of about 3 to 4 minutes. RCA Victor developed a direct replacement for the 78 that was 7 inches in diameter and ran at 45 RPM. Meanwhile, RCA's top rival, Columbia Records, developed a slower long-playing record that used something called microgroove technology that allowed up to half an hour's worth of recorded material per side. Somewhere along the way somebody decided to try the microgroove approach to the 45 and the Extended Play (EP) record was born. In the US, EPs were somewhat popular in the 1950s, but pretty much died out by the time of the Beatles, except for specialized formats such as children's records and low-budget cover labels that would hire anonymous studio musicians to re-create popular hits. In the UK, on the other hand, the format remained viable up through the mid-70s. Jethro Tull took advantage of the EP format to release a Christmas record in December of 1976. Ring Out Solstice Bells was the featured song on the EP, and would not be released in the US until the following spring, when it was included on the album Songs From the Wood.
Artist: Ed "Cookie" Byrnes
Song Title: Yulesville
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1959
The ABC TV network was a perennial also-ran that was just starting to find a winning formula in the late 50s with shows targeted toward a younger audience. The most popular of these was 77 Sunset Strip, starring Ed "Cookie" Byrnes. He and co-star Connie Stevens, staying in character, cut a hit novelty record called "Cookie, Cookie," which played on Cookie's propensity for combing his hair. Byrnes, again in character, followed it up with this hip retelling of the classic poem Twas the Night Before Christmas.
Artist: Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Song Title: Monster's Holiday
Source: CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1962
Bobby Picket scored big with his Halloween hit Monster Mash in 1962, and quickly followed it up with this sequel set around the Christmas holidays. Legendary producer Gary Paxton was responsible for both recordings making it onto vinyl and on the air.
Artist: Johnny Preston
Song Title: (I Want a) Rock and Roll Guitar
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1960
Johnny Preston recorded his signature song in 1960, the classic Running Bear, penned by J.P. Richardson, the Big Bopper. The pair teamed up again to create a brand new Christmas song, (I Want a) Rock and Roll Guitar, later the same year. Interesting enough, by the middle of the decade a guitar was exactly what many kids were indeed asking for. I should know; I got my first guitar (and amp) as a Christmas present after badgering my parents mercilessly for months. I think between the two they might have run about $100, which made it the most expensive Christmas I ever had.
Artist: Foghat
Song Title: All I Want For Christmas Is You
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1981
Foghat was formed when all the members of Savoy Brown except leader Kim Simmonds decided to form their own band in the early 70s. After a moderately successful run, founding member "Lonesome" Dave Peverett was all set to call it quits in 1981, but not until after he wrote and recorded All I Want For Christmas Is You.
Artist: Kinks
Song Title: Father Christmas
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1977
There are not many socially-conscious Christmas songs, especially slightly twisted ones like the Kinks' classic Father Christmas from 1977. I guess by then getting a guitar was kind of passe anyway.
Artist: Charles Brown
Song Title: Please Come Home For Christmas
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits (1955-Present)
Release Year: 1961
By now just about everyone is familiar with the Eagles version of Please Come Home For Christmas. Not everyone, however, knows the song was written by blues great Charles Brown. Even fewer have actually heard Brown's 1961 original, which is a shame, as it blows the Eagles version clean out of the water.
Artist: James Brown
Song Title: Santa Claus, Santa Claus
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1968
Few people would ever accuse James Brown of being a blues artist, but this recording of Santa Claus, Santa Claus (sometimes called just Santa Claus) from 1968 shows what it would have sounded like if he was.
Artist: Clarence Carter
Song Title: Back Door Santa
Source: CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1969
Clarence Carter is an icon of the beach music (for you non-Carolinians, beach music has nothing to do with surf music) crowd. For everyone else, he is a moderately successful soul artist known mostly for his mid-70s hit Slip Away. Regardless of where you might know him from, his Back Door Santa will surprise you with its down and funky energy.
Artist: Jimmy McCracklin
Song Title: Christmas Time
Source: CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1961 (?)
Jimmy McCracklin recorded one of the catchiest, yet underplayed, tunes of the 50s when he did The Walk. Christmas Time, from a few years later, actually sounds like beach music. Go figure.
Artist: Chuck Berry
Song Title: Run Rudolph Run
Source: CD: Chuck Berry Chess Box
Release Year: 1958
Chuck Berry established a reputation in the 60s for reworking his old songs from the 50s, giving them new lyrics and sometimes new guitar rifts. Probably the best-known example of this was No Particular Place To Go, which is a reworked version of School Day. His first reworking of a previously-recorded song was 1958's Run Rudoph Run, which was virtually identical to Little Queenie, released earlier the same year. To me it sounds like he actually used the Little Queenie instrumental tracks rather than to re-record the song. This kind of cost-cutting measure would be consistent with his later practice of using pick-up bands rather than incurring the travel expenses of having his own band on the road.
Artist: Jack Scott
Song Title: There's Trouble Brewin'
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1963
Canadian born Jack Scott was one of the great rockabilly performers of the late 50s, scoring several top 10 hits, including My True Love and Burning Bridges. This 1963 recording of There's Trouble Brewin' shows him at the peak of his vocal powers.
Artist: Cheech and Chong
Song Title: Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1971
I heard Cheech And Chong's Santa Claus and His Old Lady on the radio the year it was released and managed to find a copy of the 45 only to have it disappear on me a few years later. Luckily, the folks at Rhino somehow knew of my dilemma and included it on their Rock and Roll Christmas CD (sure they did). Incidentally, the B side of that old 45 was Dave's Not Here from Cheech and Chong's first album.
Artist: Ray Stevens
Song Title: Santa Claus Is Watching You
Source: CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1962
I've mentioned something called the Grab Bag before. Basically, it was a sealed paper bag (sometimes with a clear plastic front) containing four 45 RPM records, generally "cut-outs" that were no longer in print. The one my family bought for Christmas of 1964 had a Sing Along With Mitch Christmas EP in the front. By far the oddest record in the bag was Santa Claus Is Watching You by Ray Stevens, although I seem to remember that version being slightly different than the one heard here. One thing that both versions had in common was the presence of Clyde the Camel from Stevens's first hit Ahab the Arab.
Artist: Spike Jones and His City Slickers
Song Title: All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954
Release Year: 1948
Spike Jones and His City Slickers were a highly talented bunch who made music out of sound effects, toy instruments, and whatever else it occurred to them to use. Their forte was the novelty record, and no one did it better. All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) was written by Middleton, NY schoolteacher Donald Yetter Gardner, who was inspired to write the song when he asked his second grade class what they wanted for Christmas and was struck by how many of them were lisping due to missing front teeth.
Artist: Chipmunks
Song Title: The Chipmunk Song
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1955-Present
Release Year: 1958
In 1958 pop-jazz composer/bandleader Ross Bagdasarian decided to play around with a variable-speed tape recorder and came up with the novelty hit Witch Doctor. He followed it up by using multiple tape machines to create a trio of sped up voices that he called the Chipmunks, and released this smash hit in time for the Christmas season. The success of The Chipmunk Song led to a Saturday morning cartoon series and a series of albums for the Liberty label. His son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. has revived the concept in recent years, although not with the same level of success.
Artist: Beach Boys
Song Title: Little Saint Nick (stereo single version)
Source: CD: Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas
Release Year: 1963
When the Beach Boys first recorded Little Saint Nick they were the hottest surf music band in the country. A year later Beatlemania had set in, and a new version of Little Saint Nick was recorded for the Beach Boys Christmas Album. The new version put a greater emphasis on the vocals, and much of the original instrumentation was deleted from the arrangement. That is the version that usually gets heard on commercial radio every year. In the mid-70s, Carl Wilson, who by then had stepped into the leader's role formerly held by older brother Brian, pulled out the original 1963 tapes and created a new stereo mix of the song. The instruments have greater prominence in this version and include the distinctive sound of sleighbells that were completely exorcised from the 1964 version.
Artist: Ventures
Song Title: Sleigh Ride
Source: CD: The Ventures Christmas Album
Release Year: 1965
The Ventures are by far the most successful instrumental rock group in history, with over 100 albums released over several decades. One of the most successful of these was their 1965 Christmas album, which featured this surfinated version of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride, a piece usually associated with the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Artist: Sonics
Song Title: Santa Claus
Source: CD: Cool Yule (originally released on LP:
Release Year: 1966
The Pacific Northwest was home to several bands that can only be described as proto-punk (think Louie Louie). One of the top bands on the scene up there was the Sonics, who recorded raw hard-driving songs with titles like Psycho, the Witch and Strychnine. Santa Claus is very much in the same vein, making it the punkiest Christmas song of the sixties, if not all time.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Song Title: Christmas Song
Source: CD: This Was (bonus track originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1968
I wanted to play one set made up entirely of songs from the psychedelic era performed by artists that I feature on the show on a fairly regular basis. One of these artists is the band Jethro Tull, led by flautist/acoustic guitarist/vocalist Ian Anderson. His somewhat cynical Christmas Song, originally released in the UK in 1968, did not appear in the US until the 1973 anthology album Living In the Past.
Artist: Canned Heat
Song Title: Christmas Blues
Source: CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1968
Although Steve Miller originally hailed from Chicago, it was Canned Head that emerged as the San Francisco Bay area's electric blues band of choice. With Robert "Big Bear" Hite fronting the band on blues harp and vocals, they recorded their Christmas Blues in time for the 1968 Yule season.
Artist: Chuck Berry
Song Title: Merry Christmas, Baby
Source: CD: Chuck Berry Chess Box
Release Year: 1958
Chuck Berry did not record too many cover tunes, as he was a prolific songwriter himself. However, for the B side to Run Rudolph Run, he cut this tasty version of Charles Brown's "other" Christmas song, Merry Christmas, Baby.
Artist: Solomon Burke
Song Title: Presents For Christmas
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1966
Solomon Burke was a staple artist for the Atlantic label at a time when Atlantic itself was being overshadowed by the Stax/Volt labels that it distributed. Nonetheless, Burke had several R&B hits throughout the sixties and was highly respected by his fellow artists. Presents For Christmas captures Burke at his peak in 1966.
Artist: Eartha Kitt
Song Title: Santa Baby
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954
Release Year: 1953
Eartha Kitt has one of the most unique voices in the history of jazz, and put it to good use on the original 1953 version of Santa Baby, a tune that has unfortunately in recent years become associated with Madonna. Kitt continued to perform with nearly as much energy as she had in the 50s right up to her death on Christmas Day, 2008.
Artist: Rufus Thomas
Song Title: I'll Be Your Santa Baby
Source: CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: unknown
Rufus Thomas had a long and storied career, first with his "dog" hits in the early 60s (Walking the Dog being the most famous) and then later as a member of the Stax/Volt stable of artists. I'll Be Your Santa Baby, recorded for Stax, was released sometimes in the late 60s around the same time that his daughter Carla was making a name for herself with hits like B-A-B-Y and (with Otis Redding) Tramp.
Artist: Cadillacs
Song Title: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Source: CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1956
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has been recorded by a lot of different artists over the years, but this version by the Cadillacs stands out for its pure sense of fun. Doo-wop was at the peak of its popularity in 1956 and the Cadillacs, led by Earl "Speedoo" Carroll, were among the best of the bunch.
Artist: Drifters
Song Title: White Christmas
Source: CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits (1955-Present)
Release Year: 1955
The Drifters were a kind of early R&B doowop supergroup made up of ex-members of other R&B groups such as Billy Ward's Dominoes. The most distinctive voice of the original Drifters was high tenor Clyde McPhatter (for whom Ray Stevens's famous camel was named), which is heard prominently on their version of Irving Berlin's White Christmas. Over the years the group's lineup changed many times and led to several former members forming competing groups, all using the Drifters name. Over time, members of these offshoots would in turn form their own Drifters, despite having virtually no connection to the original group. This is why it sometimes seems that half the doowop singers in the world claim to be former members of the Drifters.
Artist: Marquees
Song Title: Christmas In the Congo
Source: CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1958
You have to hear this one to believe it. 'Nuff said.
Artist: King Curtis
Song Title: The Christmas Song
Source: 45 RPM vinyl
Release Year: 1966
King Curtis was one of the most in-demand saxophone players of the first wave of rock and roll. His best known work was on the song Yakety Yak by the Coasters in 1958. In the sixties he became the music director for the Atlantic Records group, appearing on a variety of recordings by artists such as Solomon Burke and occassionally released material on the Atco label under his own name. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was the victim of a stabbing when he attempted to stop junkies from shooting up on his front steps in New York.
So there it is: the Hermit's own take on Yuletime. I hope you enjoy the show. Next week we take a look back at the songs and artists that got the most airtime on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1250 (starts 12/13/12)
This week we have the second of two backup shows recorded in June of 2011 and I thought I'd let you in on the secret story of how these backup shows came to be. We had just been informed that WEOS-FM, where Stuck in the Psychedelic Era is produced, would be moving at the end of the summer to a location not yet known. Now as you and most people (but not certain decision-makers, apparently) can imagine, it takes a bit of doing to set up a radio station. Equipment has to be installed, wires have to be hooked up (and we are talking about hand-wiring literally thousands of connections), even mundane things like phone lines and desks and chairs and tables have to...well, you get the idea. The prospect of successfully pulling off such a move in less than two months, especially not even knowing where we were going, seemed unlikely in the least. Thus, I felt it would be prudent to have some extra shows in the can in the event that I suddenly found myself with a nationally syndicated weekly radio show and no home station to produce it at. As it turns out the move didn't happen (yet), and so I've had these shows just sitting here waiting for an opportunity to be heard. Due to events described on last week's blog, we are airing one of those shows this week. I think it's a pretty good one, too.
Artist: Love
Title: Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hillsdale
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
I've always had more of an ear for musical structure and tone than I do for language (in fact I learned to read music before I learned to read and write English), so perhaps I'll be forgiven when I say it was not until I had heard Love's Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hillsdale a dozen (or more) times that I noticed the clever lyrical trick Arthur Lee built into the song from the Forever Changes album. Lee sings all but the last word of each line during the verses of the song, starting the next line with the word that would have finished the previous one. This creates an effect of stop/start anticipation that is only accented by the music on this song about life on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, particularly at the Whisky a Go Go, which is located between Clark and Hillsdale on the famous boulevard.
Artist: Love
Title: Orange Skies
Source: CD: Da Capo
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Love, the most popular band on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, was also among the most eclectic. Nowhere is this more evident than on their second LP, Da Capo. After starting off with the punkish Stephanie Knows Who, the tone abruptly shifts with Orange Skies, a soft, almost lounge lizard-like tune written by Bryan MacLean (who later claimed it was the first song he ever wrote), but sung by Arthur Lee in a style that was at the time compared to Johnny Mathis.
Artist: Love
Title: The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
There is avant garde and there is avant garde. Whereas most of the groups that have the label applied to them (Velvet Underground, United States of America, Fifty Foot Hose) often were about as pleasant to listen to a nails on a blackboard, Love's Arthur Lee took an entirely different approach. Even though tracks like The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This (from Forever Changes) are full of time, key and phrasing surprises throughout, he manages to make it all sound pretty on perhaps his most avant garde recording ever.
Artist: Love
Title: The Castle
Source: CD: Da Capo
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Considering that both of their first two LPs had cover photos taken against the backdrop of Bela Lugosi's former residence in the Hollywood Hills (known as Dracula's Castle), it is perhaps inevitable that Love would have a track called The Castle on one of these albums. Sure enough, one can be found near the end of the first side of 1967's Da Capo, an album that was all but buried by the attention being given to the debut LP of Love's new labelmates, the Doors, which came out around the same time. The song itself is an indication of the direction that band was moving in, away from the straight folk/garage-rock of their first LP toward the more sophiscated sound of Forever Changes, which would be released later the same year.
Artist: Them
Title: The Moth
Source: LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s): Lane/Pulley
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
After Van Morrison left Them to pursue a career as a solo artist, his old band decided to head back to Ireland and recruit Kenny McDowell for lead vocals. Them then moved out to California and hooked up with Tower Records, which was already getting known for signing garage bands such as the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband, as well as for issuing soundtrack albums for cheapie teen exploitation flicks such as Riot on Sunset Strip and Wild in the Streets. The 1968 LP Time Out! Time In! For Them was the second of two psychedelic albums the group cut for Tower before moving into harder rock and another label.
Artist: Randy Newman
Title: Last Night I Had A Dream
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Randy Newman
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Randy Newman has, over the course of the past forty-plus years, established himself as a Great American Writer of Songs. His work includes dozens of hit singles (over half of which were performed by other artists), nearly two dozen movie scores and eleven albums as a solo artist. Newman has won five Grammys, as well as two Oscars and Three Emmys. To my knowledge, Last Night I Had A Dream could quite possibly be his first recorded work as a solo artist, as it came out the same year as his first album, which does not include the song.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: …And The Gods Made Love/Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Although listed as seperate tracks on the album cover, the first two songs on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's third album, Electric Ladyland (...And The Gods Made Love and Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)), actually ran together without a break on the album itself. In fact, the entire first and third sides of Electric Ladyland were pressed without the traditional spaces between songs on the vinyl.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Toujours L'Amour
Source: LP: Grand Hotel
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Chrysalis
Year: 1973
By the time the sixth Procol Harum album, Grand Hotel, was released, only the songwriting team of pianist/vocalist Gary Brooker and his longtime lyricist (and non-performing member) Keith Reid remained of the lineup that had created A Whiter Shade Of Pale six years earlier (although drummer B.J. Wilson had joined before the band recorded their first LP and is thus usually considered a member of the "original" group). Guitarist Robin Trower, who had often clashed with Brooker over the group's musical direction and his replacement, Mick Grabham, had barely joined the band in time to record tracks such as Toujours L'Amour (in fact he actually joined too late to participate in the photo shoot for the album cover and had to be airbrushed in).
Artist: Butterfield Blues Band
Title: Mary Mary
Source: CD: East-West
Writer(s): Michael Nesmith
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
Mary Mary, from the 1966 Butterfield Blues Band album East-West, would at first seem to a cover of a Monkees song, but technically the song is not a cover tune at all, since it was actually the first version to get recorded. Still, since composer Michael Nesmith was the acknowledged leader of the Monkees, whose version came out in early 1967, the Butterfield version has to be considered a cover of sorts. Adding to the irony is the fact that when the Monkees' version of Mary Mary first came out many Butterfield fans accused the Monkees of being the ones doing the ripping off.
Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: Sometimes I Think About
Source: CD: Anthology (originally released on LP: Psychedelic Lollipop)
Writer(s): Gilbert/Scala/Theilhelm/Esposito
Label: Mercury
Year: 1966
Although it sounds like it could have been a remake of an old blues tune, Sometimes I Think About is actually a Blues Magoos original. The song, from their debut Psychedelic Lollipop album, is slow and moody, yet actually rocks out pretty hard, a pattern that would become somewhat of a hard rock cliche in the 1970s (think Grand Funk Railroad's Heartbreaker).
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Out Of Time
Source: CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released in UK on LP: Aftermath and in US on LP: Flowers)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1966 (UK), 1967 (US)
The history of the Rolling Stones' Out Of Time is actually somewhat convoluted. Originally released only in the UK on the Aftermath LP (the US version of the album having a different track lineup), the song was soon covered by British singer Chris Farlowe, whose Mick Jagger-produced single went to the top of the UK charts in July of 1966. A shorter alternative mix of the Stones version was then released in the US as part of the record company-compiled Flowers album. Finally, in 1975 the original Rolling Stones version of Out Of Time was released internationally as a single, enjoying moderate success in the US, UK and other countries.
Artist: Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title: Diddy Wah Diddy
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): McDaniel/Dixon
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: 1966
Don Van Vliet and Frank Zappa knew each other in high school in the Antelope Valley area of Los Angeles, but did not stay in close contact after graduation. While Zappa was developing an interest in early 20th century avant-garde classical music, Van Vliet established a reputation as one of the best white blues singers around. When the opportunity came to record a few tracks for A&M records in 1965, Van Vliet, who by then was calling himself Captain Beefheart, chose this Bo Diddly tune to showcase his vocal talents. With the exception of Diddy Wah Diddy, which actually became a minor regional hit in southern California, A&M chose not to release the tracks, and Beefheart would finally make his album debut in 1967, recording for the new Buddah label. Later he would again hook up with his old cohort Zappa and develop into one of rock's premier avant-garde composers.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Flying
Source: CD: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starr
Label: Apple/Parlophone
Year: 1967
1967 was an odd year for the Beatles. They started it with one of their most successful double-sided singles, Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane, and followed it up with the iconic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. From there, they embarked on a new film project. Unlike their previous movies, the Magical Mystery Tour was not made to be shown in theaters. Rather, the film was aired as a television special shown exclusively in the UK. The airing of the film coincided with the release (again only in the UK) of a two-disc extended play 45 RPM set featuring the six songs from the special. It was not until later in the year that the songs were released in the US, on an album that combined the songs from the film on one side and all the non-LP single sides they had released that year on the other. Among the songs from the film is Flying, a rare instrumental track that was credited to the entire band.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Jazz Thing
Source: LP: Behold And See
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
Although the second Ultimate Spinach album, Behold And See, is generally considered inferior to the group's debut effort, there are a few high points that are among the best tracks the band ever recorded. Perhaps the best track on the album is Jazz Thing, which almost sounds like a Bob Bruno Circus Maximus track.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: In The Crowds
Source: LP: Ball
Writer(s): Ingle/Dorman
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Following the massive success of Iron Butterfly's second LP, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, it was probably inevitable that the next album would be a bit of a dissappointment. Indeed, there are no tracks on Ball that can compare to the cultural phenomena that was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Nonetheless, Ball is overall a much better album, with an array of songs (mostly written by vocalist/organist Doug Ingle) that rank among the band's best work. A fairly representative track from Ball is In The Crowds, which features a sophisticated chord structure, a rather catchy melody (especially on the chorus) and an outstanding bass line from Lee Dorman, who co-wrote the tune with Ingle.
Artist: Mojo Men
Title: She's My Baby
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stewart/Alaimo/Curcio
Label: Rhino (original label: Autumn)
Year: 1966
Although generally considered to be one of the early San Francisco bands, the Mojo Men actually originated in Rochester, NY. After spending most of the early 60s in Florida playing to fraternities, the band moved out the West Coast in 1965, soon falling in with Autumn Records producer Slyvester Stewart (Sly Stone), for a time becoming his backup band. Stewart produced several singles for the Mojo Men, including She's My Baby, a song that had originally been recorded in 1962 as a song to do the mashed potato (an early 60s dance) to by Steve Alaimo, brother of Mojo Men bassist/lead vocalist Jim Alaimo and co-host (with Paul Revere and the Raiders) of the nationally distributed dance show Where The Action Is. The Mojo Men version of She's My Baby has more of a blues/garage-rock sound than the Steve Alaimo original, prompting its inclusion on several compilation albums over the past twenty years.
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Fugue U/Parchman Farm/Wrath Of Daisey
Source: LP: Open
Writer: Allison/Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1970
Despite drawing crowds in south Florida and getting rave reviews from the rock press, Blues Image was never able to sell a lot of albums. This is a shame, as almost all of their material was as good or better than anything else being recorded in 1969-70. A classic example is the medley of Fugue U (emulating J.S. Bach), a jazz-rock arrangement of Mose Allison's Parchman Farm and the latin-rock instrumental Wrath Of Daisey. Guitarist Mike Pinera went on to replace Eric Brann in Iron Butterfly the following year.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Empty Pages
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1970
Traffic was formed in 1967 by Steve Winwood, after ending his association with the Spencer Davis Group. The original group, also featuring Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood, put out two and a half albums before disbanding in early 1969. A successful live album, Welcome to the Canteen, prompted the band to reform (without Mason), releasing the album John Barleycorn Must Die in 1970. Although Empty Pages was released as a single (with a mono mix heard here), it got most of its airplay on progressive FM stations, and as those stations were replaced by (or became) album rock stations, the song continued to get extensive airplay for many years.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Scarborough Fair/Canticle
Source: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
After the reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel following the surprise success of an electrified remix of The Sound Of Silence, the two quickly recorded an album to support the hit single. Sounds Of Silence was, for the most part, a reworking of material that Simon had recorded for 1965 UK LP the Paul Simon Songbook. The pressure for a new album thus (temporarily) relieved, the duo got to work on their first album of truly new material since their unsuccessful 1964 effort Wednesday Morning 3AM (which had in fact been re-released and was now doing well on the charts). In October the new album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, hit the stands. The title track was a new arrangement of an old English folk ballad, Scarborough Fair, combined with a reworking of a 1963 Simon tune (The Side Of A Hill) with all-new lyrics. The two melodies and sets of lyrics are set in counterpoint to each other, creating one of the most sophisticated folk song arrangements ever recorded. After being featured in the film The Graduate, Scarborough Fair/Canticle was released as a single in early 1968, going on to become one of the duo's most instantly recognizable songs.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: The Black Plague
Source: CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Repertoire (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title logo accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Porpoise Song
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic. Porpoise Song, a Gerry Goffin/Carole King composition used as the theme for Head, was also a departure in style for the Monkees, yet managed to retain a decidedly Monkees sound due to the distinctive lead vocals of Mickey Dolenz.
Artist: Fenwyck
Title: Mindrocker
Source: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era
Writer(s): Keith and Linda Colley
Label: Rhino
Year: 1967
Fenwyck was a southern California rock band that found itself in the unenviable position of being forever associated with a vocalist that they actually only worked with for a short amount of time. Formed in 1963 by guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Pat Robinson, in Arcadia, San Gabriel Valley, CA, the group was moderately successful playing various clubs in the L.A. suburbs before signing with 4-Star Productions in early 1967, where they were paired with Jerry Raye, a second-tier Conway Twitty wannabe trying to maintain an early 60s teen idol style. The result was an album called The Many Faces Of Jerry Raye with the words "featuring Fenwyck" in smaller text halfway down the right side of the cover. The LP itself was essentially two mini-LPs, with each side having little or nothing to do with the other. Raye's side consisted of a set of nondescript songs from professional songwriters. The first side of the album, however, was all Fenwyck, with all but one of the tracks written by Robinson. The sole exception was Mindrocker, written by the husband and wife team of Keith and Linda Colley, which was released as a single on the Challenge label even before the rest of the album had been recorded. After the album was released on the brand-new Deville label, several singles appeared on Deville credited to Jerry Raye and Fenwyck, including a re-release of Mindrocker with Raye's vocals overdubbed over Robinson's original track. Raye soon moved on to greater obscurity, while Fenwyck itself evolved into Back Pocket, recording a handful of LPs for the Allied label in 1968-69.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Have You Seen Her Face
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Chris Hillman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Perhaps the greatest surprise on the fourth Byrds album, Younger Than Yesterday, was the emergence of bassist Chris Hillman as a quality songwriter, already on a par with David Crosby and the recently-departed Gene Clark, and even exceeding Roger McGuinn as a solo writer (most of McGuinn's songs being collaborations). One of the many strong Hillman tracks on Younger Than Yesterday was Have You Seen Her Face, which eventually became the third single from the album.
Artist: Standells
Title: Riot On Sunset Strip
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Riot On Sunset Strip soundtrack)
Writer(s): Fleck/Valentino
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Anyone who doubts just how much influence bands like the Standells had on the punk-rock movement of the late 1970s need only listen to this 1967 track from the movie Riot On Sunset Strip. The song, written by bandmembers Tony Valentino and John Fleck, sounds like it could have been an early Ramones recording. The song itself (and the movie) were based on a real life event. Local L.A. business owners had been complaining about the unruliness and rampant drug usage among the teens hanging out in front of the various underage clubs that had been springing up on Sunset Strip in the wake of the success of the Whisky a Go Go, and in late 1966 the Los Angeles Police Department was called in to do something about the problem. What followed was a full-blown riot which ultimately led to local laws being passed that put many of the clubs out of business and severely curtailed the ability of the rest to make a profit. By 1968 the entire scene was a thing of the past, with the few remaining clubs converting to a more traditional over-21 approach. The unruliness and rampant drug usage, meanwhile, seems to have migrated up the coast to San Francisco, where it managed to undo everything positive that had been previously accomplished in the Haight-Ashbury district.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Summertime
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Gershwin/Heyward
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Janis Joplin, on the 1968 Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, sounds like she was born to sing Gershwin's Summertime. Maybe she was.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Love Story
Source: CD: This Was (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968 (UK), 1969 (US)
Love Story was the last studio recording by the original Jethro Tull lineup of Ian Anderson, Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker and Glenn Cornish. The song was released as a single following the band's debut LP, This Was. Shortly after it's release Abrahams left the group, citing differences with Anderson over the band's musical direction. The song spent eight weeks on the UK singles chart, reaching the #29 spot. In the U.S., Love Story was released in March 1969, with A Song for Jeffrey (an album track from This Was) on the B-side, but did not chart. Like most songs released as singles in the UK, Love Story did not appear on an album until several years later; in this case on the 1973 anthology album Living In The Past. It has most recently been included as a bonus track on the expanded CD version of This Was.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Hush
Source: LP: Purple Passages (originally released on LP: Shades Of Deep Purple)
Writer(s): Joe South
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year: 1968
British rockers Deep Purple scored a huge US hit in 1968 with their rocked out cover of Hush, a tune written by Joe South that had been an international hit for Billy Joe Royal the previous year. Oddly enough, the song was virtually ignored in their native England. The track was included on the album Tales Of Deep Purple, the first of three LPs to be released in the US on Tetragrammaton Records, a label partially owned by actor/comedian Bill Cosby. When Tetragrammaton folded shortly after the release of the third Deep Purple album the band was left without a US label, and went through some personnel changes, including adding new lead vocalist Ian Gillan (who had sung the part of Jesus on the original Jesus Christ Superstar LP) before signing to Warner Brothers and becoming a major force in 70s rock. Meanwhile, original vocalist Rod Evans hooked up with drummer Bobby Caldwell and two former members of Iron Butterfly to form Captain Beyond, releasing two fine LPs before fading from the public view.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: I'm Gonna Make You Mine
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Carr/Derrico/Sager
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Possibly the loudest rockin' recordings of 1966 came from the Shadows of Knight. A product of the Chicago suburbs, the Shadows (as they were originally known) quickly established a reputation as the region's resident bad boy rockers (lead vocalist Jim Sohns was reportedly banned from more than one high school campus for his attempts at increasing the local teen pregnancy rate). After signing a record deal with the local Dunwich label, the band learned that there was already a band called the Shadows and added the Knight part (after their own high school sports teams' name). Their first single was a cover of Van Morrison's Gloria that changed one line ("around here" in place of "up to my room") and thus avoided the mass radio bannings that had derailed the original Them version. I'm Gonna Make You Mine was the follow up to Gloria, but its lack of commercial success consigned the Shadows to one-hit wonder status until years after the band's breakup, when they finally got the recognition they deserved as one of the founding bands of garage/punk, and perhaps its greatest practicioner.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: I Wish You Would
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Great Hits
Writer(s): B.B. Arnold
Label: Epic
Year: 1964
The first Yardbirds record ever released was, predictably, a cover of an old blues song. I Wish You Would had originally been written and recorded by Billy Boy Arnold. Arnold's original version, released in 1955 on the Vee Jay label, featured a Bo-Diddley style beat; indeed, the song had originally been intended for Diddley himself and would have been his second single if not for the fact that Arnold got it into his head that Leonard Chess, whose Chess label Diddley recorded for, did not like him, so he ended up taking the song to Vee Jay and recording it himself. The Yardbirds version of the song, released in 1964, is missing the Bo Diddley beat, and is reportedly a much shorter version than the band performed live at the time.
Artist: Love
Title: Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hillsdale
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
I've always had more of an ear for musical structure and tone than I do for language (in fact I learned to read music before I learned to read and write English), so perhaps I'll be forgiven when I say it was not until I had heard Love's Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hillsdale a dozen (or more) times that I noticed the clever lyrical trick Arthur Lee built into the song from the Forever Changes album. Lee sings all but the last word of each line during the verses of the song, starting the next line with the word that would have finished the previous one. This creates an effect of stop/start anticipation that is only accented by the music on this song about life on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, particularly at the Whisky a Go Go, which is located between Clark and Hillsdale on the famous boulevard.
Artist: Love
Title: Orange Skies
Source: CD: Da Capo
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Love, the most popular band on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, was also among the most eclectic. Nowhere is this more evident than on their second LP, Da Capo. After starting off with the punkish Stephanie Knows Who, the tone abruptly shifts with Orange Skies, a soft, almost lounge lizard-like tune written by Bryan MacLean (who later claimed it was the first song he ever wrote), but sung by Arthur Lee in a style that was at the time compared to Johnny Mathis.
Artist: Love
Title: The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
There is avant garde and there is avant garde. Whereas most of the groups that have the label applied to them (Velvet Underground, United States of America, Fifty Foot Hose) often were about as pleasant to listen to a nails on a blackboard, Love's Arthur Lee took an entirely different approach. Even though tracks like The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This (from Forever Changes) are full of time, key and phrasing surprises throughout, he manages to make it all sound pretty on perhaps his most avant garde recording ever.
Artist: Love
Title: The Castle
Source: CD: Da Capo
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Considering that both of their first two LPs had cover photos taken against the backdrop of Bela Lugosi's former residence in the Hollywood Hills (known as Dracula's Castle), it is perhaps inevitable that Love would have a track called The Castle on one of these albums. Sure enough, one can be found near the end of the first side of 1967's Da Capo, an album that was all but buried by the attention being given to the debut LP of Love's new labelmates, the Doors, which came out around the same time. The song itself is an indication of the direction that band was moving in, away from the straight folk/garage-rock of their first LP toward the more sophiscated sound of Forever Changes, which would be released later the same year.
Artist: Them
Title: The Moth
Source: LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s): Lane/Pulley
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
After Van Morrison left Them to pursue a career as a solo artist, his old band decided to head back to Ireland and recruit Kenny McDowell for lead vocals. Them then moved out to California and hooked up with Tower Records, which was already getting known for signing garage bands such as the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband, as well as for issuing soundtrack albums for cheapie teen exploitation flicks such as Riot on Sunset Strip and Wild in the Streets. The 1968 LP Time Out! Time In! For Them was the second of two psychedelic albums the group cut for Tower before moving into harder rock and another label.
Artist: Randy Newman
Title: Last Night I Had A Dream
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Randy Newman
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Randy Newman has, over the course of the past forty-plus years, established himself as a Great American Writer of Songs. His work includes dozens of hit singles (over half of which were performed by other artists), nearly two dozen movie scores and eleven albums as a solo artist. Newman has won five Grammys, as well as two Oscars and Three Emmys. To my knowledge, Last Night I Had A Dream could quite possibly be his first recorded work as a solo artist, as it came out the same year as his first album, which does not include the song.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: …And The Gods Made Love/Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Although listed as seperate tracks on the album cover, the first two songs on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's third album, Electric Ladyland (...And The Gods Made Love and Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)), actually ran together without a break on the album itself. In fact, the entire first and third sides of Electric Ladyland were pressed without the traditional spaces between songs on the vinyl.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Toujours L'Amour
Source: LP: Grand Hotel
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Chrysalis
Year: 1973
By the time the sixth Procol Harum album, Grand Hotel, was released, only the songwriting team of pianist/vocalist Gary Brooker and his longtime lyricist (and non-performing member) Keith Reid remained of the lineup that had created A Whiter Shade Of Pale six years earlier (although drummer B.J. Wilson had joined before the band recorded their first LP and is thus usually considered a member of the "original" group). Guitarist Robin Trower, who had often clashed with Brooker over the group's musical direction and his replacement, Mick Grabham, had barely joined the band in time to record tracks such as Toujours L'Amour (in fact he actually joined too late to participate in the photo shoot for the album cover and had to be airbrushed in).
Artist: Butterfield Blues Band
Title: Mary Mary
Source: CD: East-West
Writer(s): Michael Nesmith
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
Mary Mary, from the 1966 Butterfield Blues Band album East-West, would at first seem to a cover of a Monkees song, but technically the song is not a cover tune at all, since it was actually the first version to get recorded. Still, since composer Michael Nesmith was the acknowledged leader of the Monkees, whose version came out in early 1967, the Butterfield version has to be considered a cover of sorts. Adding to the irony is the fact that when the Monkees' version of Mary Mary first came out many Butterfield fans accused the Monkees of being the ones doing the ripping off.
Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: Sometimes I Think About
Source: CD: Anthology (originally released on LP: Psychedelic Lollipop)
Writer(s): Gilbert/Scala/Theilhelm/Esposito
Label: Mercury
Year: 1966
Although it sounds like it could have been a remake of an old blues tune, Sometimes I Think About is actually a Blues Magoos original. The song, from their debut Psychedelic Lollipop album, is slow and moody, yet actually rocks out pretty hard, a pattern that would become somewhat of a hard rock cliche in the 1970s (think Grand Funk Railroad's Heartbreaker).
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Out Of Time
Source: CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released in UK on LP: Aftermath and in US on LP: Flowers)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1966 (UK), 1967 (US)
The history of the Rolling Stones' Out Of Time is actually somewhat convoluted. Originally released only in the UK on the Aftermath LP (the US version of the album having a different track lineup), the song was soon covered by British singer Chris Farlowe, whose Mick Jagger-produced single went to the top of the UK charts in July of 1966. A shorter alternative mix of the Stones version was then released in the US as part of the record company-compiled Flowers album. Finally, in 1975 the original Rolling Stones version of Out Of Time was released internationally as a single, enjoying moderate success in the US, UK and other countries.
Artist: Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title: Diddy Wah Diddy
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): McDaniel/Dixon
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: 1966
Don Van Vliet and Frank Zappa knew each other in high school in the Antelope Valley area of Los Angeles, but did not stay in close contact after graduation. While Zappa was developing an interest in early 20th century avant-garde classical music, Van Vliet established a reputation as one of the best white blues singers around. When the opportunity came to record a few tracks for A&M records in 1965, Van Vliet, who by then was calling himself Captain Beefheart, chose this Bo Diddly tune to showcase his vocal talents. With the exception of Diddy Wah Diddy, which actually became a minor regional hit in southern California, A&M chose not to release the tracks, and Beefheart would finally make his album debut in 1967, recording for the new Buddah label. Later he would again hook up with his old cohort Zappa and develop into one of rock's premier avant-garde composers.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Flying
Source: CD: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starr
Label: Apple/Parlophone
Year: 1967
1967 was an odd year for the Beatles. They started it with one of their most successful double-sided singles, Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane, and followed it up with the iconic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. From there, they embarked on a new film project. Unlike their previous movies, the Magical Mystery Tour was not made to be shown in theaters. Rather, the film was aired as a television special shown exclusively in the UK. The airing of the film coincided with the release (again only in the UK) of a two-disc extended play 45 RPM set featuring the six songs from the special. It was not until later in the year that the songs were released in the US, on an album that combined the songs from the film on one side and all the non-LP single sides they had released that year on the other. Among the songs from the film is Flying, a rare instrumental track that was credited to the entire band.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Jazz Thing
Source: LP: Behold And See
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
Although the second Ultimate Spinach album, Behold And See, is generally considered inferior to the group's debut effort, there are a few high points that are among the best tracks the band ever recorded. Perhaps the best track on the album is Jazz Thing, which almost sounds like a Bob Bruno Circus Maximus track.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: In The Crowds
Source: LP: Ball
Writer(s): Ingle/Dorman
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Following the massive success of Iron Butterfly's second LP, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, it was probably inevitable that the next album would be a bit of a dissappointment. Indeed, there are no tracks on Ball that can compare to the cultural phenomena that was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Nonetheless, Ball is overall a much better album, with an array of songs (mostly written by vocalist/organist Doug Ingle) that rank among the band's best work. A fairly representative track from Ball is In The Crowds, which features a sophisticated chord structure, a rather catchy melody (especially on the chorus) and an outstanding bass line from Lee Dorman, who co-wrote the tune with Ingle.
Artist: Mojo Men
Title: She's My Baby
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stewart/Alaimo/Curcio
Label: Rhino (original label: Autumn)
Year: 1966
Although generally considered to be one of the early San Francisco bands, the Mojo Men actually originated in Rochester, NY. After spending most of the early 60s in Florida playing to fraternities, the band moved out the West Coast in 1965, soon falling in with Autumn Records producer Slyvester Stewart (Sly Stone), for a time becoming his backup band. Stewart produced several singles for the Mojo Men, including She's My Baby, a song that had originally been recorded in 1962 as a song to do the mashed potato (an early 60s dance) to by Steve Alaimo, brother of Mojo Men bassist/lead vocalist Jim Alaimo and co-host (with Paul Revere and the Raiders) of the nationally distributed dance show Where The Action Is. The Mojo Men version of She's My Baby has more of a blues/garage-rock sound than the Steve Alaimo original, prompting its inclusion on several compilation albums over the past twenty years.
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Fugue U/Parchman Farm/Wrath Of Daisey
Source: LP: Open
Writer: Allison/Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1970
Despite drawing crowds in south Florida and getting rave reviews from the rock press, Blues Image was never able to sell a lot of albums. This is a shame, as almost all of their material was as good or better than anything else being recorded in 1969-70. A classic example is the medley of Fugue U (emulating J.S. Bach), a jazz-rock arrangement of Mose Allison's Parchman Farm and the latin-rock instrumental Wrath Of Daisey. Guitarist Mike Pinera went on to replace Eric Brann in Iron Butterfly the following year.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Empty Pages
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1970
Traffic was formed in 1967 by Steve Winwood, after ending his association with the Spencer Davis Group. The original group, also featuring Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood, put out two and a half albums before disbanding in early 1969. A successful live album, Welcome to the Canteen, prompted the band to reform (without Mason), releasing the album John Barleycorn Must Die in 1970. Although Empty Pages was released as a single (with a mono mix heard here), it got most of its airplay on progressive FM stations, and as those stations were replaced by (or became) album rock stations, the song continued to get extensive airplay for many years.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Scarborough Fair/Canticle
Source: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
After the reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel following the surprise success of an electrified remix of The Sound Of Silence, the two quickly recorded an album to support the hit single. Sounds Of Silence was, for the most part, a reworking of material that Simon had recorded for 1965 UK LP the Paul Simon Songbook. The pressure for a new album thus (temporarily) relieved, the duo got to work on their first album of truly new material since their unsuccessful 1964 effort Wednesday Morning 3AM (which had in fact been re-released and was now doing well on the charts). In October the new album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, hit the stands. The title track was a new arrangement of an old English folk ballad, Scarborough Fair, combined with a reworking of a 1963 Simon tune (The Side Of A Hill) with all-new lyrics. The two melodies and sets of lyrics are set in counterpoint to each other, creating one of the most sophisticated folk song arrangements ever recorded. After being featured in the film The Graduate, Scarborough Fair/Canticle was released as a single in early 1968, going on to become one of the duo's most instantly recognizable songs.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: The Black Plague
Source: CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Repertoire (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title logo accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Porpoise Song
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic. Porpoise Song, a Gerry Goffin/Carole King composition used as the theme for Head, was also a departure in style for the Monkees, yet managed to retain a decidedly Monkees sound due to the distinctive lead vocals of Mickey Dolenz.
Artist: Fenwyck
Title: Mindrocker
Source: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era
Writer(s): Keith and Linda Colley
Label: Rhino
Year: 1967
Fenwyck was a southern California rock band that found itself in the unenviable position of being forever associated with a vocalist that they actually only worked with for a short amount of time. Formed in 1963 by guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Pat Robinson, in Arcadia, San Gabriel Valley, CA, the group was moderately successful playing various clubs in the L.A. suburbs before signing with 4-Star Productions in early 1967, where they were paired with Jerry Raye, a second-tier Conway Twitty wannabe trying to maintain an early 60s teen idol style. The result was an album called The Many Faces Of Jerry Raye with the words "featuring Fenwyck" in smaller text halfway down the right side of the cover. The LP itself was essentially two mini-LPs, with each side having little or nothing to do with the other. Raye's side consisted of a set of nondescript songs from professional songwriters. The first side of the album, however, was all Fenwyck, with all but one of the tracks written by Robinson. The sole exception was Mindrocker, written by the husband and wife team of Keith and Linda Colley, which was released as a single on the Challenge label even before the rest of the album had been recorded. After the album was released on the brand-new Deville label, several singles appeared on Deville credited to Jerry Raye and Fenwyck, including a re-release of Mindrocker with Raye's vocals overdubbed over Robinson's original track. Raye soon moved on to greater obscurity, while Fenwyck itself evolved into Back Pocket, recording a handful of LPs for the Allied label in 1968-69.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Have You Seen Her Face
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Chris Hillman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Perhaps the greatest surprise on the fourth Byrds album, Younger Than Yesterday, was the emergence of bassist Chris Hillman as a quality songwriter, already on a par with David Crosby and the recently-departed Gene Clark, and even exceeding Roger McGuinn as a solo writer (most of McGuinn's songs being collaborations). One of the many strong Hillman tracks on Younger Than Yesterday was Have You Seen Her Face, which eventually became the third single from the album.
Artist: Standells
Title: Riot On Sunset Strip
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Riot On Sunset Strip soundtrack)
Writer(s): Fleck/Valentino
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Anyone who doubts just how much influence bands like the Standells had on the punk-rock movement of the late 1970s need only listen to this 1967 track from the movie Riot On Sunset Strip. The song, written by bandmembers Tony Valentino and John Fleck, sounds like it could have been an early Ramones recording. The song itself (and the movie) were based on a real life event. Local L.A. business owners had been complaining about the unruliness and rampant drug usage among the teens hanging out in front of the various underage clubs that had been springing up on Sunset Strip in the wake of the success of the Whisky a Go Go, and in late 1966 the Los Angeles Police Department was called in to do something about the problem. What followed was a full-blown riot which ultimately led to local laws being passed that put many of the clubs out of business and severely curtailed the ability of the rest to make a profit. By 1968 the entire scene was a thing of the past, with the few remaining clubs converting to a more traditional over-21 approach. The unruliness and rampant drug usage, meanwhile, seems to have migrated up the coast to San Francisco, where it managed to undo everything positive that had been previously accomplished in the Haight-Ashbury district.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Summertime
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Gershwin/Heyward
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Janis Joplin, on the 1968 Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, sounds like she was born to sing Gershwin's Summertime. Maybe she was.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Love Story
Source: CD: This Was (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968 (UK), 1969 (US)
Love Story was the last studio recording by the original Jethro Tull lineup of Ian Anderson, Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker and Glenn Cornish. The song was released as a single following the band's debut LP, This Was. Shortly after it's release Abrahams left the group, citing differences with Anderson over the band's musical direction. The song spent eight weeks on the UK singles chart, reaching the #29 spot. In the U.S., Love Story was released in March 1969, with A Song for Jeffrey (an album track from This Was) on the B-side, but did not chart. Like most songs released as singles in the UK, Love Story did not appear on an album until several years later; in this case on the 1973 anthology album Living In The Past. It has most recently been included as a bonus track on the expanded CD version of This Was.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Hush
Source: LP: Purple Passages (originally released on LP: Shades Of Deep Purple)
Writer(s): Joe South
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year: 1968
British rockers Deep Purple scored a huge US hit in 1968 with their rocked out cover of Hush, a tune written by Joe South that had been an international hit for Billy Joe Royal the previous year. Oddly enough, the song was virtually ignored in their native England. The track was included on the album Tales Of Deep Purple, the first of three LPs to be released in the US on Tetragrammaton Records, a label partially owned by actor/comedian Bill Cosby. When Tetragrammaton folded shortly after the release of the third Deep Purple album the band was left without a US label, and went through some personnel changes, including adding new lead vocalist Ian Gillan (who had sung the part of Jesus on the original Jesus Christ Superstar LP) before signing to Warner Brothers and becoming a major force in 70s rock. Meanwhile, original vocalist Rod Evans hooked up with drummer Bobby Caldwell and two former members of Iron Butterfly to form Captain Beyond, releasing two fine LPs before fading from the public view.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: I'm Gonna Make You Mine
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Carr/Derrico/Sager
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Possibly the loudest rockin' recordings of 1966 came from the Shadows of Knight. A product of the Chicago suburbs, the Shadows (as they were originally known) quickly established a reputation as the region's resident bad boy rockers (lead vocalist Jim Sohns was reportedly banned from more than one high school campus for his attempts at increasing the local teen pregnancy rate). After signing a record deal with the local Dunwich label, the band learned that there was already a band called the Shadows and added the Knight part (after their own high school sports teams' name). Their first single was a cover of Van Morrison's Gloria that changed one line ("around here" in place of "up to my room") and thus avoided the mass radio bannings that had derailed the original Them version. I'm Gonna Make You Mine was the follow up to Gloria, but its lack of commercial success consigned the Shadows to one-hit wonder status until years after the band's breakup, when they finally got the recognition they deserved as one of the founding bands of garage/punk, and perhaps its greatest practicioner.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: I Wish You Would
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Great Hits
Writer(s): B.B. Arnold
Label: Epic
Year: 1964
The first Yardbirds record ever released was, predictably, a cover of an old blues song. I Wish You Would had originally been written and recorded by Billy Boy Arnold. Arnold's original version, released in 1955 on the Vee Jay label, featured a Bo-Diddley style beat; indeed, the song had originally been intended for Diddley himself and would have been his second single if not for the fact that Arnold got it into his head that Leonard Chess, whose Chess label Diddley recorded for, did not like him, so he ended up taking the song to Vee Jay and recording it himself. The Yardbirds version of the song, released in 1964, is missing the Bo Diddley beat, and is reportedly a much shorter version than the band performed live at the time.
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