Dick Campbell — “Where Were You”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — February 15, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,494) Dick Campbell — “Where Were You”

A great and haunting song from a polarizing LP — Dick Campbell Sings Where It’s At — EITHER “the sole masterpiece of the fake-Dylan field” (Gene Sculatti, https://paul-pearson.blogspot.com/2015/08/song-20150801-dick-campbell.html), “ar­guably the most amaz­ing ‘elec­tric Dylan’ sounda­like ever, while also being ar­guably the most egre­gious . . . ‘elec­tric Dylan’ rip-off ever!” (Neal Umphred, https://www.ratherrarerecords.com/dick-campbell-sings/), OR “one of the most ludicrously imitative Bob Dylan-inspired albums of all time” (Ritchie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dick-campbell-mn0000093975#biography), “really tak[ing] the cake for sheer ill-conceived weirdness. . . . a Dylan satire or a Dylan homage[?]” (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/dick-campbell-sings-where-its-at-mw0000866810#review) Paul Pearson is more equivocal: “You couldn’t get a more by-the-numbers Xerox of Duluth’s finest . . . . It’s like Highway 61 Revisited for the impatient and easily distracted. Which is not to say it’s bad.” (https://paul-pearson.blogspot.com/2015/08/song-20150801-dick-campbell.html) Even Dick Campbell himself commented that the LP “was pretty much a blatant rip off of Bob Dylan”. (https://expectingrain.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?p=142855&sid=f688ea6a48d462bfc8c5830ef77aeda7)

Hey, I love “Where Were You”. It doesn’t even sound like Dylan to me!

Rooksby has some thoughts:

Though much of the [charm of the LP] de­rives from its au­da­cious and in­ces­sant er­satz Dy­lanisms, fur­ther re­deem­ing qual­i­ties seep through in due course . . . Nonethe­less, I’m still un­sure as to whether I should lis­ten to it at face value or not; was it sim­ply a better-than-average cash-in, or is there an el­e­ment of dead­pan par­o­dy at play. . . . The en­tire album is such an en­ter­tain­ing lis­ten that I don’t think it re­al­ly mat­ters as, at half a cen­tu­ry old, it’s ob­vi­ous­ly some­thing more sub­stan­tial than mere kitsch ap­peal that keeps me tun­ing in.

https://www.ratherrarerecords.com/dick-campbell-sings/

Richie Unterberger is not complimentary:

Campbell was the most blatant early-electric-period Dylan imitator this side of David Blue, except he was notably inferior as a singer and songwriter even to Blue. It really is difficult to tell whether this was intended as a Dylan satire or a Dylan homage. . . . It came out when Dylan was at the peak of his mid-’60s fame, just after going electric and getting his first hit singles. Campbell made sure that he sounded a lot like 1965 Bob Dylan by using some of the same musicians that Dylan worked with that year; the entire Paul Butterfield Blues Band contributes, with the exception of Elvin Bishop. . . . Although this LP approximated the instrumental sound of Dylan’s early rock records, complete with picked guitar runs and organ, it was far inferior. The blame lay squarely with Campbell, whose songs — and voice — sounded like an amateurish Dylan copy . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/album/dick-campbell-sings-where-its-at-mw0000866810#review, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dick-campbell-mn0000093975#biography

Neal Umphred tells us the story:

By the end of ’65, record­ing Dylan was al­most a right of pas­sage for many young groups. . . . More fun if not al­ways more artis­tic were the artists and groups who did not record a Dylan song, but in­stead at­tempt­ed to write their own Dylan song and sing in their own Dylan voice. . . . By the time of Dy­lan’s erup­tion on the scene as a pop and rock singer and song­writer, Richard ‘Dick’ Camp­bell had issued a cou­ple of sin­gles and was get­ting known in some small cir­cles as a song­writer. Aside from his solo work . . . he would be known in equal­ly small cir­cles as the com­pos­er and mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of Ken Nordine’s album COL­ORS, sub­ti­tled “A Sen­su­ous Lis­ten­ing Experience.” In 1965, Camp­bell sent a cou­ple of Dylan-like songs to Mer­cury Records, who were look­ing for an artist to com­pete with Dylan. (In 1965, who was­n’t?) Ac­cord­ing to Camp­bell, Mer­cury told him to write more and “Come back in two weeks and make an album.” Mer­cury teamed Camp­bell up with pro­duc­er Lou Reizner, who round­ed up mem­bers of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Sev­er­al of these guys had played live or record­ed with Dylan. Other mu­si­cians on the album were young local guys, many of who had been with groups as­so­ci­at­ed with Pete Cetera (later lead singer for Chica­go). Here is a list of all the mu­si­cians who sup­pos­ed­ly con­tributed to the Dylan-esue sound: Lead gui­tar: Mike Bloomfield, Jimmy Vincent, Rhythm gui­tar: Dick Campbell, Bass: Peter Cetera, Drums: Sam Lay, Billy Her­man, Larry Wrice, Organ: Mark Naftalin, Har­mon­i­ca: Paul Butterfield, Tam­bourine: Artie Sul­li­van, Marty Grebb. A sin­gle was re­leased in late ’65 cou­pling The Blues Ped­dlers with The Peo­ple Plan­ners to al­most no at­ten­tion from anyone. The album DICK CAMP­BELL SINGS WHERE IT’S AT . . . with ten more such record­ings fol­lowed in early ’66 to the very same re­cep­tion. Camp­bel­l’s con­vo­lut­ed, Dy­lanesque lyrics are self-absorbed, many touch­ing on his less than per­fect re­la­tion­ship with his girl­friend. The band is in­ter­est­ing and com­pe­tent through­out but they never reach the in­spired heights that they had with Dylan.

https://www.ratherrarerecords.com/dick-campbell-sings/

Here is Dick Campbell himself telling the story:

In 1965 I played in a band in Massachusetts, Dick Campbell and the Scarlets, as a guitarist, lead singer and writer. We cut a demo album in Boston. A friend of mine had once met Gary Usher at WORC radio when he visited Worcester. Through him I sent a copy of the demo tape to Gary in California and he liked it. He called me to say he thought he could use some of the songs I’d written with other artists and that I should come to L.A. to write and work with him. That summer I started out by car for California, but stopped in Chicago to see what reaction I might get to the album from the labels there. Vee Jay wasn’t interested, and Chess was into black artists, but Mercury liked some of the tunes and wanted to publish them. To make a long story short, Mercury particularly liked a couple of my folk rock type tunes, and moreover, since Columbia had Dylan and they didn’t, couldn’t I write ten more and they’d cut an album of me singing them? Now, in hind sight, I probably should have continued on out to the coast and gone to work for Usher then and there since most of his happening stuff occurred in the ’60s. But instead, I signed a deal with Mercury Records and recorded [the LP] . . . . To be sure, I was backed up by some very good musicians, in fact, artists who have gone on to much bigger things since this project.  There was Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, just fresh from recording with Dylan on the Highway 61 Revisited LP. Marty Grebb of the Buckinghams also played guitar and Paul Butterfield was on harmonica. Mark Naftalin played organ and Sam Lay was on drums. A kid from a local group called the Exceptions played bass and he later had a brilliant career as the lead singer for Chicago — Peter Cetera. To shorten this story even further, by the time I got done spinning my wheels in the Midwest (including a tour with the Guess Who, an appearance at The Bitter End, and marriage plus three children) it was 1969 before I got out to L.A. and went to work for Gary Usher. 

https://expectingrain.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?p=142855&sid=f688ea6a48d462bfc8c5830ef77aeda7

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