Cookin’ With Leftovers

I always have a few drafts on file—ignored fragments or one-paragraph ideas that never spawned a second paragraph. Every now and then I go through the file, piece the fragments together, toss them with some scraps of new material, and voila! Instant post.

For example, last winter I was all ready to write about one of the great one-hit wonders, Teegarden and Van Winkle, but whiteray over at Echoes in the Wind posted on them while my draft was still in the can. Several months having passed, which is equivalent to a year or two in Internet time, it’s probably safe to mention them here, so off I go.

David Teegarden (drums and vocals) and Skip Knape (keyboards, bass, and vocals) were a couple of Tulsa guys who migrated to Detroit and made five albums. Around the time of the fourth one, they fell in with Bob Seger. Both played on his 1972 album Smokin’ O.P’s.; Teegarden became a member of the Silver Bullet Band and played on Stranger in Town and Against the Wind. And that’s all I know about them, other than the fact that “God, Love, and Rock and Roll” is one of the more obscure Top 40 hits of all time. I still have the 45 I either got for Christmas or bought around Christmastime in 1970, and it’s on a couple of vinyl anthologies I own, but I’ve never seen it anywhere else. T&VW’s failure to return to the charts might have had something to do with their choice of followup single, which was called “Stoned on the Love for Jesus. ” A trade-magazine ad for the single said it “reveals that getting stoned doesn’t always depend on what you put in your pipe.” Although it was released smack in the middle of the Jesus Movement of the late 60s and early 70s, it also landed at the precise moment the Nixon FCC was cracking down on drug-related lyrics.

I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but the multi-day festival has made a comeback in recent years: Coachella and Bonnaroo have become a very big deal, as has SXSW in Austin. While doing research one day last year, I came upon this astounding newspaper ad for “the 1st annual 3 day Midwest Rock Festival” at State Fair Park in Milwaukee. It starred, among others, Blind Faith, Led Zeppelin, Joe Cocker, Jethro Tull, Delaney and Bonnie, John Mayall, the MC5, the Bob Seger System, Johnny Winter, and Jeff Beck.

Wow.

For what it’s worth, bootlegs of the Zeppelin and Blind Faith portions of the event are fairly easy to find online: the whole Blind Faith show is here on a single, low-fi mp3. There was a second festival in August, billed as Phase II, which had a lineup featuring far fewer Hall of Famers, but including Taj Mahal, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Illinois Speed Press, and Soup (who would, eight years later, play the post-prom party at my high school).

So there are the leftovers. Here are a couple of tasty new links for you to sample over at Popdose: a review of Don Felder’s book, Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles, which is apparently not as scandalous as it started out to be, thanks to the legal settlement that permitted it to be published in the first place, and Jason Hare’s latest Chart Attack, which goes back to this week in 1985. I’ll have more to say about that week next week.

“God, Love, and Rock and Roll”/Teegarden and Van Winkle (out of print)

Top 5: Who Is It?

Any roll call of great American radio stations must include Nashville’s legendary WSM, which is the subject of a new book, Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City, by Craig Havighurst. (I recommend it to anyone interested in the evolution of radio, even to people unfamiliar with WSM.) The station went on the air in 1925, and is best known for pioneering the Grand Ole Opry, which it continues to broadcast today. But the station has been a full-time country outlet for only fractions of its history. During the 1970s, it programmed Top 40 during the day and country at night. Here’s the WSM survey from this week in 1975. Although it has plenty of country-flavored hits—Jessi Colter, Michael Murphey, John Denver, Freddy Fender, Elvis, Pure Prairie League—all of ‘em were legitimate Top 40 hits as the summer of 1975 began to dawn. Let’s dig a few of the obscurities further down the chart.

10. “Funny How Love Can Be”/First Class (up from 20). A British studio creation featuring the mighty Tony Burrows, First Class had scored a gigantic American hit with “Beach Baby” late in 1974. They put two other records into the lower reaches of the Hot 100, including this one, which bandmember John Carter had recorded with his group the Ivy League in 1965. It didn’t do anything for me until the middle eight (”what a thing to happen/left without a friend”), which is pure Top 40 glory.

14. “Bertrand My Son”/Larry Jon Wilson (up from 17). Considered part of the outlaw country movement of the ’70s, Larry Jon Wilson never had the career enjoyed by other outlaws like Waylon and Willie or David Allan Coe. Bertrand was Wilson’s disabled son; Wilson recorded the guitar and vocals in one take, after which the producer noticed that one string on his guitar was out of tune. Wilson refused to record it again, however, which required the string arrangement to be written so that it would accommodate his unusual tuning.

25. “Just Like Romeo and Juliet”/Sha Na Na (down from 16). These 50s revivalists had become stars after performing at Woodstock (right before Jimi Hendrix closed the show on Monday morning), but things were not so good by 1974. About the time this record was released, group member Vince Taylor, who had joined the band post-Woodstock, died of a heroin overdose. Greater success was to come, however. They’d star in a popular syndicated TV show from 1977 to 1981 and would appear in Grease in 1978. A version of the group is still on the road today. (I suspect this version of the song is from the TV show.)

27. “Mary Anne”/Fallen Rock (debut). A pretty country-rock ballad from a Los Angeles-based trio actually called Fallenrock (one word), who recorded a single album on Capricorn called Watch for Fallenrock. One member was Rafe Van Hoy, who wrote or co-wrote a boatload of country hits, including “Golden Ring” for George Jones and Tammy Wynette, “Let’s Keep it That Way,” recorded by Mac Davis, Tanya Tucker, and others, “Sail Away” by the Oak Ridge Boys, and “What’s Forever For” by Michael Murphey. It feels to me like Watch for Fallenrock may have been a bit too pop for country radio in 1975, but how it missed on pop radio, I dunno.

Extra: “Who Is It”/Carlton the Doorman. In the spring of 1975, Rhoda was wrapping up its first season, and was one of the biggest hits on TV. Rhoda’s wedding, broadcast on October 28, 1974, had been one of the most-hyped and highest-rated single episodes of any show in the 70s. Carlton the Doorman was an unseen character on the show, voiced by one of the show’s writers, Lorenzo Music, later the voice of Garfield the Cat. “Who Is It” doesn’t seem to have sniffed the charts anywhere other than Nashville and it’s nothing to get especially excited about, although the piano swings nicely and the line “who’s had a buzz on since ripple began” made me smile.

“Mary Anne”/Fallenrock (out of print)
“Who Is It”/Carlton the Doorman (way, way out of print)

(New this morning at WNEW.com: some rock history bits.)

Rhymes With “Vogue”

On my lunch hour today, I watched a documentary called Moog, about the synthesizer and its inventor, Dr. Robert Moog. It’s not really a biography, either of Moog or the synthesizer itself—it’s more of an exploration of where the synthesizer came from and how it’s been used since its invention.

As a boy, Moog became obsessed with the theremin, probably the earliest electronic instrument, one that is played without being touched. In the early 60s, he began working on his own electronic instrument. At first, he intended to market it to experimental musicians, but it quickly became popular among advertising people, who liked it for the strange sounds it made, and for the fact that those strange sounds could replace live musicians. From there, it made its way into the musical mainstream.

There were several early milestones in the synthesizer’s history, including the 1968 release of Switched-On Bach by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos, the first album of synthesizer music to reach a wide audience, and the 1970 Carnegie Hall concert by the First Moog Quartet. (The group is seen performing in the film.) In 1970, Moog met Keith Emerson. At their first meeting, Emerson gave Moog a test pressing of Emerson Lake and Palmer’s first song to use a synthesizer: “Lucky Man.” Two years later, the First Moog Quartet would make the pop chart, sort of, when a band formed by one member recut a song the quartet had recorded in 1969. “Popcorn” by Hot Butter squeezed into the Top 10 in the late summer of 1972. From that point, the synthesizer became an important instrument in rock and pop, although the film doesn’t explore that history.

The film features a number of musicians famous for their synthesizer use, including Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Bernie Worrell of Parliament/Funkadelic, the group Stereolab, and Edd Kalehoff, who is perhaps the greatest synth whiz you’ve never heard of. Kalehoff has written a great deal of TV theme music over the last 40 years, including themes for ABC News and The Price Is Right. Over at YouTube, you can see him performing in a 70s-fabulous commercial for Schaefer Beer.

Moog notes that although the synthesizer is an electronic instrument, it’s analog, not digital. Instead of converting a string of zeroes and ones to sound waves, the synthesizer modifies an electric wave to produce sound. He also says that when the synthesizer was invented, it didn’t have a keyboard. The choice to attach a device that could easily change the pitch of notes was an arbitrary one. It could just as easily have been a device allowing users to change timbre, vibrato, or tremolo. Moog wonders whether, by attaching a pianolike keyboard, he may have boxed in the creative impulses of users by deciding for them how the instrument should be used.

The film makes clear that Moog was the sort of man who did a lot of meta-thinking. He died in 2005. The film was made the year before to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his company, Moog Music. It isn’t for everybody. You have to really care about the synthesizer to enjoy it, but if you do, you might.

“Sinfonia to Cantata #29″/Wendy Carlos (buy it here)
“Popcorn”/Hot Butter (buy it here along with some other cool 70s instrumentals, or head to Dr. Forrest’s Cheeze Factory for 81 different versions of it)

It’s Happening All Again

Before we get to the drift of today’s gist, here’s a promotional announcement: I’ve had a couple of new posts up at WNEW over the last few days, one about bluesman Robert Johnson and the other about rock stars in beer commercials. I’ve put WNEW’s RSS feed in the left-hand column, but since it’s large and not very attractive, I haven’t decided whether it will be staying. There’s nothing in it that tells you which posts are mine, although I’m regularly contributing posts on the week in rock history and on rock’s founding fathers.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Because I am a history geek who also happens to be an old radio guy, I am especially interested in news coverage of historic events. The fabulous Classic Television Showbiz has posted a couple this week. One features NBC’s coverage of Richard Nixon’s resignation speech on August 8, 1974, and the network’s special report on the resignation itself the next day. If you want to skip the speech itself, start with the third YouTube screen. The tone of the reporting is extraordinary compared to what we commonly see today. There was no attempt to hype what viewers had just seen, or to convince them it was important. Another is the CBS Evening News from April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. Notice the length of the soundbites from LBJ and MLK, as well as the amount of international news in the broadcast—and the complete lack of celebrity gossip and fluffy features. (Also notice the celebrities appearing in the Budweiser commercial.)

Because I’ve been thinking about posting this song for a while, even though I posted some Edgar Winter just yesterday, and mostly just for the hell of it, here’s a record that would reach its chart peak the day after Nixon quit. You’d probably guess that Winter had but two Top 40 hits, “Frankenstein” and “Free Ride”—but there was a third, from Shock Treatment, the album that followed They Only Come Out at Night. Since it’s all about the passage of time and the way things change, it fits.

“River’s Risin’”/Edgar Winter Group (buy it here, in a package that includes both albums)

(Epic 11143, chart peak #33, August 10, 1974)

Free Rides

There’s at least one obsessive geek hiding inside all of us. I think I probably have several, but one that comes out around here every now and then is fascinated with 45rpm remixes and how they compare to album versions. When AM radio ruled, what sounded good coming down off an AM wave into a one-speaker radio in your house or car was different from what would sound good coming straight off the vinyl through your big home speakers. Motown was famous for being especially cognizant of this, and mixed its singles for maximum lo-fi punch, but other labels did it, too. I’ve written about some of my favorite examples here—the singles from Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 album and nearly every Three Dog Night single. The remix rationale was partly artistic, yeah, but also financial—if you could make your record jump off the radio, it was more likely to sell.

Here’s a familiar record. Click it and listen here, or download it below.

Sounds fine, right? Well, yeah, until you hear the version that was released on 45—the one that rose to Number 14 on the Hot 100 that fall. The highs are cranked up generally, which give the guitars more bite throughout. The hi-hat cymbal is cranked up especially. There’s a rhythm guitar audible beginning eight seconds in and continuing throughout that you can’t hear on the album version. The drums are placed a bit farther back in the 45 mix—the biggest difference is at the 15-second mark. On the album version, the snare comes banging in too loud, but on the 45, it sounds just right.

The farther along the record goes, the more drastic the differences become. I am guessing that the guitar solo, which begins at about the 1:37 mark, is not just a remix, but a different performance. But the biggest differences are yet to come. Listen right after the solo, starting at around the 2:00 mark. For the next 20 seconds, the album version emphasizes the bass guitar, but the single emphasizes the electronic whoosh that’s confined to the background on the album version. Then notice when the singers come back in. On the album version, they’re in the same harmony they were when they sang the same lines earlier in the song—on the single, the harmony is different. Plus, the vocal goes on just a bit longer than on the album version.

“Free Ride” is one of the most striking examples I know of the difference remixing could make. The 45 captures the reckless abandon inherent in the idea of a free ride. The album version sounds much less free.

“Free Ride” (album version)/Edgar Winter Group (buy They Only Come Out at Night here)
“Free Ride” (45 version)/Edgar Winter Group (Finding this particular version probably isn’t going to be easy. Mine comes from an out-of-print compilation called Cleveland Rocks: Music from The Drew Carey Show. I don’t know if it was ever released on one of Winter’s own compilations.)

Top 5: Which Way You Goin’?

This week in 1970, campuses were aflame in the wake of the American invasion of Cambodia and the killing of students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University. More would be killed and wounded the next week at Jackson State in Jackson, Mississippi. Before the month was out, student strikes would take place across the country, and 30 ROTC buildings would be burned. On May 8, major cities had been scenes of mass protest. In New York, protesters had marched on City Hall, where they were attacked by construction workers in what became known as the Hard Hat Riot. During the early morning hours of May 9, students keeping vigil at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington were shocked by a 4AM visit from President Nixon. All in all, Time magazine called the week after Kent State “the most searing week of [Nixon's] presidency.” Radio and TV newscasts that week must have seemed almost surreal.

The typical AM Top 40 station must have seemed somewhat surreal too, after the newscasts were over. It was as if radio stations sought to provide refuge from the real world by programming the most inconsequential pop music they could find. (Instead of singing about revolution, even the Beatles were singing “Let it Be,” from their album of the same name that had come out that very week.) Music concerned with heavier subjects was around just the corner, of course: CCR’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” Edwin Starr’s “War,” and most famously, Crosby Stills Nash and Young’s “Ohio.” But in May, that stuff was, as CCR’s then-current hit put it, “up around the bend.” Here are some of the songs on the air at WDRC in Hartford, Connecticut, from the chart dated May 8, 1970.

4. “For the Love of Him”/Bobbi Martin (up from 8). In which Bobbi celebrates the joys of housewifely subservience in a voice that sounds like Connie Francis on quaaludes.

9. “Birds of All Nations”/George McCannon III (up from 10). This is as obscure a record as I’ve ever come across—there aren’t even any copies for sale on eBay. “Birds of All Nations” missed the Hot 100 entirely and appeared in Cash Box for only two weeks, peaking at Number 97. It was on Amos, a Los Angeles label, although McCannon also recorded on Bob Crewe’s Dynovoice label, which we mentioned just the other day. I know little about McCannon, except that he was a native of Connecticut. I know a little more about Amos Records: In 1969, the label released an album by Longbranch Pennywhistle, which featured Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther; in 1971, it put out the first album by Shiloh, which featured Don Henley.

15. “Tennessee Birdwalk”/Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan (up from 19). Almost entirely forgotten today, this was an absolute rage in the spring of 1970. Blanchard and Morgan were husband and wife. She was a piano player, he was a songwriter and comedian, and somebody once called them Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood on acid. “Tennessee Birdwalk” was all over pop radio, eventually reaching Number 23 on the Hot 100. On country stations, it was even more inescapable, reaching Number One, and ending up the Number Three country song for the whole year. Blanchard and Morgan do it live in this clip from a show hosted by legendary Nashville personality Ralph Emery, in which Emery’s jacket and shirt threaten to take over the whole thing.

17. “Which Way You Goin’ Billy”/Poppy Family (up from 27). Another of those 70s records about which I am totally irrational. The organ rush up the scale at the start of the refrain is shiveringly gorgeous, and I can say without fear of contradiction that Susan Jacks was smokin’ hot. And that guy with the afro, strumming the guitar with the poppy stuck in the neck? That’s Susan’s husband, Terry. Terry Jacks. Yup. That guy.

24. “What Is Truth”/Johnny Cash (up from 26). The real world, it seems, would not be escaped completely. “What is Truth” is the most overtly political record of Cash’s career—to my ears, it’s one of the most pointedly political records ever to make the Top 20. It asked some vital questions seeking answers that turbulent spring, and it gains extra points for taking the side of those doing the asking. Here’s Cash performing it (along with some original poetry) on his TV show in 1970.

I Couldn’t Think of a Title for This Post . . .

. . . which is because I couldn’t think of much to write about, either. I did write some stuff earlier in the week that finally got posted at WNEW.com, however: a brief review of Steve Winwood’s new Nine Lives album and a quick bit on a significant date in Rolling Stones history.

Also at WNEW, one of my colleagues got into a secret show Neil Diamond played in New York City last night, and snagged video of “Cherry Cherry.” Diamond is out with a new album, Home Before Dark, his second collaboration with producer Rick Rubin, who steered Johnny Cash through his final albums.

I didn’t write any of the following, but you should read them anyhow: At Popdose, the latest installment of an ongoing series about the lower reaches of the Hot 100 in the 80s features two medleys that charted as part of the 1981-1982 medley craze, “Love Songs Are Back Again” by Band of Gold and “Hooked on Big Bands” by the Frank Barber Orchestra. Listen if you dare. Also at Popdose, you can check out some tracks from the new album by Eli “Paperboy” Reed and the True Loves, Roll With You, and dig the authentic 1970s edition of Josie and the Pussycats.

I promise to do better tomorrow, honestly.

It’s Good to Be the King

I’ve got stuff going on this week and not much time to post, so here’s a quick one.

On this date in 1978, 90,000 tickets for a Bob Dylan show in London were sold in eight hours. Which reminds me of a pretty good line from a lifelong-Dylan-fan friend of mine who finally got to see Dylan live at some point in the early 80s. He observed that it was like seeing God, although God wouldn’t have sold out as fast.

On this date in 1972, the Rolling Stones released Exile on Main Street in the UK. (The official American release came a few days later). The album may have marked the peak of their extraordinary career, and was followed by one of their most fabled tours of the United States. The two-month odyssey attracted celebrity journalists, caused riots, and resulted in two films (Ladies and Gentlemen—the Rolling Stones and the never-released-but-widely-bootlegged Cocksucker Blues). The tour opened June 3 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and wound its way east, ending in New York on July 26. On eleven of the dates, the Stones played two shows in one day.

(Speaking of concerts: I’ve written a new post at WNEW.com—I actually wrote it one day last week, but the editorial wheels grind slowly over there—about classic rock concert cliches.)

It’s Pete Wingfield’s 60th birthday today—Wingfield is primarily known as a session musician with a diverse career, having played with Van Morrison, the Hollies, and Paul McCartney, among others. His songwriting portfolio is also diverse, ranging from “It’s Good to Be the King” for the Mel Brooks movie History of the World Part 1 to “Making a Good Thing Better,” a minor hit for Olivia Newton-John. Around here we dig him for his lone solo hit, “Eighteen With a Bullet,” which I’d post again today if I hadn’t posted it twice already.

Instead, I’m going to post an alternate version of one of my favorite tracks from Exile on Main Street. It was originally written in 1968 at about the time of Let it Bleed, and was rewritten by Mick Jagger as a tribute to Brian Jones after Jones died. It’s from the Stones bootleg Laid in the Shade.

“Shine a Light (Get a Line on You)”/Rolling Stones (bootleg; buy Exile on Main Street, if you’ve somehow managed to live this long without it, here)