This is the song that was prefaced by Arlo Guthrie’s historic observation, “Lotta freaks,” when he took the stage at Woodstock and found himself facing a crowd of “half a million strong.” It was one of the best-loved songs of that “helicopter day,” or, at least, from the movie that documented it, concerning a spaced-out dope smuggler flying into LAX during the golden era of air and psychedelic travel. He’s too high to really care if his bags are searched at customs or not. It’s just one concern swirling amid a welter of other impressions. He’s just as interested in observing his fellow passengers: a businessman ogling a hippie chick, “Thinking that he’s already made her” (whatever that means), and a Mexican Lone Ranger. Teeming with giddy logic, this song captures the excitement of travel, hallucinogenic or otherwise.
Around the time Merle Haggard was flaying war protesters and nonconformists in “Okie From Muskogee,” Bakersfield’s other country king was confounding fans and copping hip moves from pop with this adventurous track. Buck probably never inhaled, but the deliberate use of the g-word—and the song’s unconventional folk-rock flavor, fuzz guitar, and quirky waltz-time arrangement—seemed more than a passing nod to a world that was rapidly changing in 1969. In the ’70s, Hee Haw made him the premier ambassador of corn, but cuts like this prove that Owens was always more imaginative than many of his contemporaries and cooler than most.
On the closing track to his 1969 LP, My Way, the Chairman Of The Board openly shows his disdain for rock & roll by taking this Simon & Garfunkel classic and literally chewing it up and spitting it out. Don Costa provides an impeccably swinging arrangement, and Sinatra certainly delivers the song his way, virtually ignoring the lyric sheet after the first verse. Lines such as “you’ll get yours Mrs. Robinson, fooling with that young stuff like you do” and “how’s your bird, Mrs. Robinson” reportedly left Paul Simon none too pleased with Sinatra’s artistic license, but they shine as delivered with his classic snap. For reason’s possibly unknown to anyone other than the singer himself, he vamps on the outro, instructing to the listener to “keep those cards and letters coming.” Classic Sinatra!
To cover a song well, you’ve GOT to bring some heat to the table. Wilson Pickett was a master of that game. While he was a master songwriter in his own right, the wicked Pickett could make any song his own. Case in point: Johnnie Taylor recorded Isaac Hayes and David Porter’s “Toe Hold” in 1966, but Pickett put his own spin on it for 1969’s Hey Jude album. Maybe it was fuel from his heated relationship with Stax, but Wilson burns this track up. His classic delivery sails and pleads and cuts straight to the core. And, who’s playing that smokin’ guitar? None other than a cat named Duane Allman. On what would have been his 69th birthday, give it up for Mr. Wilson Pickett!
Love Land Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band
Label: Warner Bros.
Released: 1969
In the early 1950’s, Charles Wright started out his musical carrer playing guitar and singing in a number of Los Angeles Doo-Wop bands. A few years later, after a brief stint as an A&R for Del-Fi Records, he ditched the Doo Wop and the day job to form Charles Wright and the Wright Sounds (eventually becoming Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band). At first, Charles and his gang stuck to R&B covers, but by the late ’60s the band found their creative groove and created a number of funktastic originals like “Express Yourself” and today’s feel good tune “Love Land”.
He oversaw THE most successful recording of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller–even though Epic Records initially rejected him as Michael’s producer.His musical resumé is unmatched, spanning seven (!)decades now while producing and arranging everyone from Ray to Duke to Count to Sinatra to Michael to both “We Are The World” sessions.You could say his life resumé is peerless, too:composer, media mogul, best-selling author, philanthropist, social activist, father, mentor. “Q” is simply synonymous with quality–case in point, this 1969 piece featuring–among others–Freddie Hubbard, Roland Kirk, Hubert Laws, Eric Gale, Bob James and Valerie Simpson.Quincy Jones is truly a renaissance man’s renaissance man.
Many regard Dusty In Memphis as one of the greatest albums of all time. With a record that’s loaded with sultry grooves like the acclaimed “Son of A Preacher Man” it’s hard to disagree. But despite it’s mass notoriety, there are few tracks that may have been overlooked such as the heavyhearted “I Don’t Want To Hear It Anymore”. This track sums up all that is great about the album: Dusty’s emotionally charged voice accentuated by a first rate production courtesy of Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin, and Tom Dowd. Heartbreak never sounded so good.
“Get Ourselves Together” is cut one, side one from the debut Delaney and Bonnie album, Accept No Substitute.George Harrison brought back a stack of this album back to England after discovering it while hanging with Dylan in Woodstock, giving one to his close friend Eric Clapton.Soon after, Clapton invited the band to open for the first and only Blind Faith US tour.As the tour went on, Clapton spent more and more time on stage with D&B during their opening set and eventually left Blind Faith to tour with them.He later picked up the backing band, which became the Dominoes.Rock ’N’ Roll just wouldn’t have been the same if this platter hadn’t made it across the pond.
Last year I made a mix CD for a friend that included Lorraine Ellison’s 1966 gem “Stay With Me.”His reaction:“That song made me hurl myself out my apartment window.”Luckily he lives on the ground floor.He felt Ellison’s pain.She was always there for this other person, taking care of them, and now this schmo is leaving her.She manages to keep herself together while singing the beginning of each verse, but as they progress she gets more anxious.By the time we arrive at the chorus, she’s practically hysterical, begging her soon to be ex to not leave.When she sings the chorus for the third time, she sounds like she’s having a breakdown.You may recognize this song from Bette Midler’s performance of it in The Rose, but check out Ellison’s original.Just be sure you don’t do so near any open windows.
Today is the 40th anniversary of Yes’ first album, Yes. The band had a seemingly disparate array of influences from classical, jazz, church choral vocals, The Who, The Everly Brothers to the Beatles. “The Beatles were the reason for everything in those far days YES..1969..everyone wanted to be a Beatle.” reflected vocalist Jon Anderson on this first album. All these strands wove together a vibrant and colorful fabric that would set the stage for one of the biggest and influential progressive rock bands of the era. On todays song choice, Anderson remembered “I wrote “Sweetness” just before we went into the studio to record our first album. I had just had a daughter, Deborah, and was totally in love with the idea of ‘love’.
When I heard Buckaroo for the first time, I was living in the bay area (Berkeley, CA) and I damn near had a wreck. I was on the Nimitz freeway headed for San Jose for a job that night, and the local radio show just played it. It was so cool sounding, the Telecaster work by Buck or Don Rich, (I still don’t know who played lead on the original track) but it had all the snap and mystery of that west coast sound. Tom Brumley played the steel guitar part, and I just went nuts. I spoke to Garcia the next week or so about how great that sound was and we both just grinned and had a good laugh at Nashville’s expense.
For Clarence White to tackle this tune was a perfect
transition from the original version to the Byrds (who loved country music thanks to Chris Hillman) version which had Clarence playing his newly invented string or “B” bender to give it some new sass not overlooking a tip of the hat to the first version.
Starting with the simple strums of Barry and Maurice’s acoustic guitars, “Melody Fair” blossomed into one of the Bee Gees’ most beautiful productions. It was issued as a single in the wake of the 1970 film Melody (in which it was prominently featured) and is topped off by a stunning Bill Shepherd orchestral score.
One of three new songs The Stooges cranked out in a single night when Elektra refused to release their now-classic debut on the grounds that there weren’t enough songs, “Not Right” is quintessential Iggy Pop. Dig the pause he sticks between a sneering “She . . .” and “uh, not right” and the attitude with which he shrugs his way through every subsequent complaint. Like nearly every second of The Stooges’ finest hour, “Not Right” is a fuzz-driven proto-punk classic, blurring the lines between garage and psychedelic rock. It sounds like Ron Asheton is playing on strings made of rubber while chain-chugging bottles of maximum-strength Robitussin. The Stooges didn’t sell well or get many good reviews, but like the Velvet Underground’s debut, there’d be no punk and very little alternative music worth a damn without it.
The first eponymous album by Crosby, Stills & Nash is an iconic effort, a virtual greatest hits collection marked by stellar harmonies, a great studio band, and some of the best tunes the trio has ever written. “Pre-Road Downs” isn’t a weak track by any means, but one that often gets short shrift when people rhapsodize over the album. Graham Nash pays subtle tribute to The Beatles with the backing harmonies here, and the organ and processed guitar solo give the tune a bright pop sheen. It’s a song that pledges fidelity for the girl that’s being left behind and includes the casual drug reference—“Be sure and hide the roaches”—that was de rigueur in 1969.
Originally recorded for Diamond’s second Universal album, 1969’s Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show, “And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind” is a soft-on-the-ears paean to young love in the great outdoors. Elvis cut it the same year at Memphis’ American Studios, and in 1970 Mark Lindsay, formerly of Paul Revere & The Raiders, took the song to #44 on the Billboard charts. While Diamond is hugely popular, it’s taken until fairly recently for subsequent generations of musicians to openly admit their love for his music, releasing it from their guilty-pleasure zones. In fact, Richard Patrick, of industrial metal band Filter, recommends today’s track. He came to Neil Diamond’s music in much the same way many artist’s of his age did: his parents’ record collection:
“My father played Neil Diamond records when I was growing up, and that is a huge reason why I make music today.”
Singling out a moment from the start-to-finish experience that is Kick Out The Jams is harder than college. Really. The last thing I feel like doing after listening to any track off the record is write about, well . . . anything! How can you even throw words at an album that sounds like it was recorded in an atom smasher? Okay, for the sake of the Damn Fine Day format, I’ll pick something. Let’s go with “I Want You Right Now” (even though part of me is already thinkin’ “Starship”!). This is energy. This is focus. This is a group of dudes (and their spiritual advisers) who are on a mission. No live album has ever sounded more immediate (even 40 years later!), and I’d be the happiest listener on Earth if my generation records anything that tops it.
Scaggs’ lone Atlantic LP from 1969 was cut in Muscle Shoals at the famed 3614 Jackson Highway Studio. For an album with so much Southern muscle, it contains more deep soul than pop, but what else would you expect from the Eddie Hinton-era Swampers, including session legend Duane Allman, some of Memphis’s best horn players, and a young, pre-Grateful Dead Donna Jean (Thatcher) Godchaux? Driven by Barry Beckett’s haunting keyboard fills and Hinton’s Shoals-defining guitar licks, this bit of slow-burning Southern soul could ease the pain of any broken heart, and like other songs of the genre, offers glimpses of affirmation and hope. If Scaggs doesn’t make “your life shine,” the sounds forged in the quad cities of northwestern Alabama will.
If imitation is the sincerest flattery form, count this pre-sampling style-heist—easily one of the most audacious faux-Dylan recordings ever—as an homage of Everest proportions. In 1969 Brit glam-rockers Mott The Hoople take an unassuming Sir Douglas Quintet ballad, replace Doug Sahm’s East Texas drawl with Ian Hunter’s cod-Zimmerman vocal, and dress the set in Blonde On Blonde furniture (cathedral organ, slow-crawl piano). They don’t stop there but add slinky steel-guitar fills, funky Steve Cropper lead riffs, and pummeling drums until the whole thing boils over into a thick noise stew that transcends its own origins as affectionate mimicry. In fact, this cut creates the sonic template from which Mott The Hoople built the entirely distinctive style it flashes on the David Bowie-produced All The Young Dudes and subsequent albums of its ’70s heyday.
Skulking around the back streets late at night in hot pursuit of illicit affairs has been a prime ingredient in many of Clarence Carter’s best songs for as long as he’s been making hits. Recording in Muscle Shoals for Atlantic, the sightless soul man with the devilish chuckle cut “Slip Away,” the easy-grooving pleader stereotyping him forever as a unrepentant back door man (we won’t even get into his more recent underground sensation, “Strokin’”). Poor Clarence sits on the other side of the cheating fence in 1969’s “I Smell A Rat.” This time someone else is tiptoeing around his house when he’s gone, and he isn’t happy at all about this particular rodent’s presence. Listen closely and you can hear a shadowy female whispering the words in Carter’s ear an instant before he delivers them as the session aces at Rick Hall’s Fame Studios supply a rolling, bluesy groove.
The ten tunes on John Phillips’ 1969 LP, John, The Wolfking Of L.A., hang heavy with a decade coming to a close and taking its hippie idealism with it. Polished production and A+ session work by Wrecking Crew members provide the casual listener with an enjoyable experience, but deeper listens reveal masterfully crafted lyrics brimming with themes of desperation, sarcasm, empty glamour, and drug burn, all of which manifested later into the creeping reality known as 1970s Los Angeles. Like most greatness, the album tanked upon release, but after a few reissues (most notably Varese Sarabande’s 2006 version with killer bonus cuts) and much cheerleading, this gem is finally sitting upon record shelves and desert-island lists as the stone classic it is. “Malibu People” is a nice introductory track, but the album should really be experienced as a whole. Long live the Wolfking.
Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child Jimmy Scott
Label: Atlantic
Released: 1969
Jazz standards have never been my thing, but hearing Little Jimmy Scott belt through this self-arranged, Joel Dorn-produced 1969 version of “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” nearly brings me to tears. Scott was born with Kallmann syndrome, a condition that delays puberty, and his boy soprano has been preserved to this day. Viewed as childlike and effeminate, Scott was taken advantage of throughout his career. His mother died in a car wreck when he was 13, so she never shared in his success or was able to nurture him through these hardships. One could imagine Scott aching through every humble word over the sophisticated, uptown sounds of Junior Mance, Ron Carter, and Bruno Carr.
Given the political climate of the last eight years, I was expecting a new batch of counterculture protest songs like Wasted Youth’s “Reagan’s In” or John Prine’s “Sam Stone,” but it seems we’re stuck with the classics that are disturbingly relevant today. One such gem is Dr. John’s “The Patriotic Flag Waver,” from the misunderstood second album, Babylon, released in 1969 during his drug-addled, psychedelic voodoo-shaman era. Opening with children singing the familiar “My Country ’Tis Of Thee,” a military reveille drum-driven, laid-back New Orleans funk shuffle ushers in the Night Tripper growling through lines of American hypocrisy, the horrors of blind nationalism, the need to consume, and the reality that these are our freedoms as Americans. Swap out lines about the Black Panthers, Communism, and Vietnam for NSA, freedom fries, and Iraq and we haven’t strayed too far.
