THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
If you think Bo Diddley’s song is a fantasy about dissing one’s girlfriend, you don’t know Bo! It is actually a plea to her mother to stop trying to interfere and tear apart the happy couple — her daughter can make up her own mind! Here is Bo’s immortal original, along with a sizzling R&B version by the Pretty Things and a hypnotic garage raver by Australia’s Missing Links.
1,326) Bo Diddley * — “Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut”
Richie Unterberger extolls Bo Diddley:
He only had a few hits in the 1950s and early ’60s, but . . . . Diddley produced greater and more influential music than all but a handful of the best early rockers. The Bo Diddley beat — bomp, ba-bomp-bomp, bomp-bomp — is one of rock & roll’s bedrock rhythms . . . . His trademark otherworldly vibrating, fuzzy guitar style did much to expand the instrument’s power and range. But even more important, Bo’s bounce was fun and irresistibly rocking, with a wisecracking, jiving tone that epitomized rock & roll at its most humorously outlandish and freewheeling. . . . . In the early ’50s, he began playing with his longtime partner, maraca player Jerome Green, to get what Bo’s called “that freight train sound.” . . . [He] got a deal with Chess in the mid-’50s . . . . His very first single, “Bo Diddley”/”I’m a Man” (1955), was a double-sided monster. The A-side was soaked with futuristic waves of tremolo guitar, set to an ageless nursery rhyme; the flip was a bump-and-grind, harmonica-driven shuffle, based around a devastating blues riff. But the result was not exactly blues, or even straight R&B, but a new kind of guitar-based rock & roll, soaked in the blues and R&B, but owing allegiance to neither. Diddley was never a top seller on the order of his Chess rival Chuck Berry but over the next half-dozen or so years, he produced a catalog of classics that rival Berry’s in quality. . . . stone-cold standards of early, riff-driven rock & roll at its funkiest. . . . As a live performer, Diddley was galvanizing, using his trademark square guitars and distorted amplification to produce new sounds that anticipated the innovations of ’60s guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. In Great Britain, he was revered as a giant . . . . [t]he Rolling Stones in particular borrow[ing] a lot from Bo’s rhythms and attitude in their early days . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bo-diddley-mn0000055128#biography
* Maarten Zwiers:
[Otha Ellas] Bates probably started to use the name Bo Diddley around 1940, though its origins are uncertain: it might have been a nickname acquired during his brief boxing career, or it might refer to a harmonica player he saw in Mississippi or to a southern folk instrument known as the diddley bow. Not even Diddley knew the origins of his stage name, recalling only that “the kids gave me that name when I was in grammar school in Chicago.”
1,327) The Pretty Things — Mama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut”
The Pretty Things (see #82, 94, 153, 251, 572, 731, 892, 1,001) do Diddley proud. Their version comes from their debut LP, which, as Bruce Eder says:
[It] made the early work of the Rolling Stones . . . sound more like the work of the Beatles . . . . The Pretty Things is recorded with practically every song and instrument pushing the needle into the red (i.e., overload). Normally, that would be a problem, except for the fact that a third of the repertory was written by Bo Diddley and most of the other two-thirds was inspired by him . . . . The Pretty Things did reach number ten on the U.K. charts, bewildering all of the more “professional” hands at Fontana Records by grabbing the ears of that harder, more intense part of the Stones’ larger audience and throwing them the sonic equivalent of raw meat to chew on.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-pretty-things-uk–mw0000038754
Stephen Thomas Erlewine:
Musically, the Pretty Things were one of the toughest and most celebrated artists to rise from the Beat/British Invasion era, and among the very best British R&B bands of the ’60s. Commercially, they were often seen as also-rans, more talked about than listened to, especially outside Great Britain, since many of their most important albums were never released elsewhere until decades after the fact. Their cult was drawn to either their vicious early records, where they sometimes seemed like a meaner version of the Rolling Stones or or to their 1968 psychedelic touchstone S.F. Sorrow. . . . Taking their name from a Bo Diddley song, the Pretty Things were intentionally ugly: their sound was brutish, their hair longer than any of their contemporaries, their look unkempt. Their first two singles, “Rosalyn” and “Don’t Bring Me Down,” charted in 1964, and their eponymous debut LP made the U.K. Top Ten a year later, but that turned out to be the peak of their commercial success. The Pretty Things may not have shown up on the charts, but their cult proved to be influential: it’s been said S.F. Sorrow inspired Pete Townshend to write Tommy . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-pretty-things-mn0000489676/biography
Live at the BBC:
Live again:
1,328) The Missing Links — Mama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut”
The Links’ version is “tremendous ’60s punk, with blistering, feedback-ridden guitar and cord-shredding vocals” (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-missing-links-mw0000884876) — years ahead of its time.
Peter Markmann:
In 1965 when they were billed as “Australia’s wildest group” it wasn’t just the usual “industry” hyperbole or rhetoric – it was a statement of fact. . . . In early 1964 nothing unbelievably wild, frenzied or manic had happened in the Australian music scene. It was just about to.”
Richie Unterberger:
One of the best Australian bands of the ’60s, though they weren’t even stars in their home country, the[y] started as a very raw, Kinks-like combo, gaining a number two hit in New Zealand with “We 2 Should Live”/”Untrue.” The first lineup folded in 1965, and a second, with entirely different personnel, took the name. This aggregation cut the rawest Australian garage/punk of the era, and indeed some of the best from anywhere, sounding at their best like a fusion of the Troggs and the early Who, letting loose at times with wild feedback that was quite ahead of its time. They didn’t find commercial success, and split after several singles, an EP, and an album. Various members turned up in other Australian groups like Running Jumping Standing Still and Python Lee Jackson; the most notable of these was guitarist Doug Ford, who joined Running Jumping Standing Still and then graduated to the Master’s Apprentices . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-missing-links-mn0000498637#biography
The definitive Milesago: Australasian Music & Popular Culture 1964-1975:
Although their fame never spread far beyond Sydney . . . and their career lasted barely more than two years, they’ve achieved a mythical status in the history of Australian rock. . . . Glenn A Baker . . . : [“They were] the first to play guitars like The Rolling Stones used . . . the first guys to sport very long unruly hair . . . the first group to implement destruction into a stage act . . . the first with a lot of things, bless their pioneering souls.” The Missing Links’ are widely acknowledged as the first Aussie band to deliberately use feedback as part of their music, and they were almost certainly the first local band to use reverse tape effects on record. They were one of the first Australian bands to tap into the tough new blues/R&B style being pioneered by the Stones, The Pretty Things and The Yardbirds. They were writing and playing their own extraordinary original material, plus a selection of highly idiosyncratic covers of acts as diverse as Bo Diddley, James Brown and Bob Dylan . . . .
[There were] two distinct line-ups . . . . The first lasted from early 1964 until March 1965 and after a flurry of lineup changes and a brief dissolution, the second line-up settled into place around July 1965, lasting until April 1966. Links Mk I was founded by guitarist Peter Anson. . . . [F]inding a venue was facilitated by . . . Anson’s older brother Cliff [being] road manager for Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs, fast becoming the most popular ‘beat’ group in Australia. Cliff’s connections gave the Links an entree to the Harrigan Agency . . . and they were soon gigging regularly . . . . [I]n Sydney, the Links’ reputation was growing fast . . . . Their debut Parlophone single, “We 2 Should Live”/”Untrue” was released in March 1965. . . . [I]t enjoyed considerable “street popularity” in Sydney and it actually got to number 2 in New Zealand . . . . “We 2 Should Live” is a jumping acoustic blues, and “Untrue” is pure prowling proto-punk . . . . [I]t was at this point that the original line-up began to fall apart. . . . The Links’ line-up . . . changed repeatedly . . . . [resulting in] an even wilder outfit than the original. . . . [T]he new Links were signed to the Philips label, and . . . [then] began recording tracks for an album. . . . produc[ing] some of the seminal artefacts of 60s Australian rock. . . . [T]he first single . . . .”You’re Driving Me Insane” [is] a wild, pile-driving original . . . totally unique in Aussie rock in 1965, and still grabs you by the ears today. . . . The songs are firmly rooted in blues and R&B, yet the album also predates whole slabs of Sixties rock which were yet to come. The buzzing guitar feedback and echo-laden Farfisa organ anticipates Pink Floyd by a good two years; Doug Ford’s slashing guitar work is pure heavy metal, and there’s a strong psychedelic feel to the whole affair. . . . The new Links built up a small but rabid following with their over-the-top shows . . . . [c]ommon stage exploits includ[ing] . . . swinging from the rafters . . . . They . . . frequently appeared in fancy dress outfits, dressed as gorillas, pirates, gangsters or mummies. . . . “Wild About You” . . . [the second A-side is] as Peter Markmann succinctly puts it, an “unadulterated slice of 60s punk mayhem … almost too crazed for words.” . . . The third single . . . was perhaps the most outrageous of all. “H’Tuom Tuhs” . . . is in fact the band’s 5’40” version of Bo Diddley’s “Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut” — except that the entire track is played backwards! The idea originated . . . when the boys heard the tape of “Big Mouth” being rewound by the engineer and liked the sound of it! It is surely one of the earliest uses of reverse tape in rock history . . . . [I]t naturally enough sank like a lead balloon . . . . In mid-December [came] the classic The Missing Links LP . . . . one of the primal Australian Albums of the 60s . . . . [T]he Links splintered due to the increasing personality conflicts.
Here’s “H’Tuom Tuhs”:
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