THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
565) The Dave Clark Five — “Just a Little Bit Now”
I need more than just a little bit of this smoking’ hot DC5 classic right now! Released as a single in the U.S. (’67) — reaching, appropriately, #67 — but not in the UK, it radically transformed and supercharged an R&B falsetto number from ‘62. The summer of Love and they still had it (see #208, 320, 411, 412)! Bruce Eder says it has “a great beat and chorus”. (https://www.allmusic.com/album/five-by-five-mw0000891115)
The song was was written by Jerry Ragovoy and performed by the Majors. Bryan Thomas explains:
The Majors scored an R&B/pop Top 30 hit in 1962 with “A Wonderful Dream.” They are remembered for their outrageous falsetto lead vocals . . . and for being one of the many acts produced by Jerry Ragovoy, an important behind-the-scenes force behind East Coast Soul music. . . . Ragovoy . . . had already begun producing doo wop acts (often distinguished by a conspicuous gospel feel) in the Philadelphia area in 1953, when he and Herb Slotkin (owner of Tregoobs appliance store) formed Grand Records. . . . Ragovoy produced the group’s lone hit, “A Wonderful Dream,” but they failed to hit with anything further. . . . [H]e went on to become quite a successful songwriter, writing or co-writing several classic New York and Philadelphia Soul records in the 1960s, including Garnet Mimms’ “Cry Baby” (which was co-written with . . . Bert Berns) which landed at number four in 1963. In the mid-’60s, Ragovoy also wrote a song for jazz trombonist Kai Winding, “Time Is on My Side,” covered by Irma Thomas, and a U.S. Top Ten hit for The Rolling Stones . . . . Ragovoy became even more prominent in his role as a mentor for Janis Joplin, who . . . cover[ed] . . . his “Piece of My Heart” and “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder),” . . .
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
564) The Deviants — “Somewhere to Go”
Mick Farren and the Deviants rose out of the London underground to blaze the trail for ’70’s punk rock. Ptooff!, their first album, is hailed as an accidental masterpiece. “Somewhere to Go” is not from that album. Farren described Disposable, their second album (’68), as “truly awful”. “Somewhere” is from that album.
To me, “Somewhere” is one of the Deviants’ greatest songs, a hypnotic call for revolution, but also a call for patience, that revolution will come, or maybe it will come . . . if we can find somewhere to go. “Got to find somewhere to go. Got to find someone who knows. Got to find some place to stay. Got to find some other way. ” “Somewhere” has a definite Doors-y vibe. In fact, it could effortlessly replace “The End” in Apocalypse Now.
Richie Unterberger writes that:
In the late ’60s, the Deviants were something like the British equivalent to the Fugs, with touches of the Mothers of Invention . . . and . . . British R&B-based rock . . . . Their roots were . . . in . . . the psychedelic underground that began to take shape in London in 1966-1967. Not much more than amateurs when they began playing, they squeezed every last ounce of skill and imagination out of their limited instrumental and compositional resources on their debut, Ptooff!, which combined savage social commentary, overheated sexual lust, psychedelic jamming, blues riffs, and pretty acoustic ballads . . . . Their subsequent ’60s albums had plenty of outrage, but not nearly as strong material . . . .
The Deviants were only minimally competent instrumentalists when they made their debut album, Ptooff, in 1967. They had only worked up a bare handful of original tunes. But they had managed to synthesize their wildly diverse influences . . . into an album that transcended the group’s limitations into something of a minor masterpiece. . . . [that] anticipated the pre-punk thrash of the Stooges and MC5. . . . The Deviants may have been aligned with the hippie/underground movement. Yet if this was flower-power and free love, it was delivered with a sneer that had no patience for mindless flight from reality, with an anarchic energy that looked forward a full decade to punk. The Deviants went on to release a couple of more conventional, far less impressive albums . . . .
Plenty of psychedelic groups of the late ’60s embraced a sunny outlook of peace, flowers, and consciousness expansion, but some took a harder line on upending the straight society they sought to replace, and like their spiritual brethren the MC5, the Deviants . . . saw their music as a vehicle for a Total Assault On The Culture. . . . [A]nd while they created a sonic approximation of the rage and defiance behind the Freak Culture on their debut album . . . . their second LP, Disposable, lacks focus or direction and sounds like the work of addled would-be revolutionaries who aren’t sure just what they’re fighting against this morning. Farren has claimed that he and his bandmates were flying on speed during most of the recording of Disposable, but there isn’t much energy (artificial or otherwise) in these performances, and many of the tunes collapse into meandering jams performed by musicians who lack the chops . . . . There are a few exceptions [including] “Somewhere to Go,” the only extended jam . . . that manages to actually find a groove . . . . Disposable is fascinating as a document of the U.K.’s anarchist hippie scene and where it went both right and wrong, but as entertainment, you’re a lot better off listening to Ptooff! Or looting a supermarket [a song on Ptooff!].
Mick Farren was one of the great London personalities, of the ’60’s and beyond. Richard Williams writes that:
Throughout his life as a writer, musician (with his band, the Deviants) and provocateur, Farren did his best to incarnate the qualities he saw as vital ingredients of the rock’n’roll spirit. . . . In the words of his friend, the publisher Felix Dennis, he was a “doorman, editor, journalist, rock star, rabble rouser, critic and commentator, charlatan, jester, impresario, gunslinging cross-dresser, icon, author, songwriter, poet”. With his gigantic white-boy Afro, his studded belt, his leather jacket and his aviator shades, Farren certainly looked like the man who had led the White Panthers UK, a branch of the organisation which had been set up in Chicago . . . as a brothers-in-arms counterpart to the Black Panthers. The only impact made by the UK offshoot, during its brief and ill-defined existence, came as part of the unholy alliance of Hell’s Angels, Young Liberals and student radicals from France, Germany and Holland who tore down the 9ft corrugated iron walls surrounding the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. . . . [H]e joined the staff of the International Times, the [revered London] underground weekly . . . . To the coterie of former beatniks, proto-hippies, literary avant-gardists, anarchists and revolutionaries who formed its staff, he brought something different. “For him, the underground was a logical extension of the original rock’n’roll rebellion,” wrote Barry Miles, one of IT’s founders. “He cared passionately about Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent and all the original rockers . . . . He saw the Hell’s Angels and mods and rockers as part of the same energetic thrust to change society as the Beat generation or Che Guevara.” By that time Farren was also occupied as the lead singer of a band originally called the Social Deviants, the name under which they played at Alexandra Palace in April 1967 as part of the celebrated 14-Hour Technicolour Dream . . . . [They] borrow[ed] much of the scabrous wit of Frank Zappa but little of the finesse . . . .
Richie Unterberger’s 1997 sit-down with Mick Farren is probably the greatest, most hilarious rock interview I have ever read. Let me relay a bit of it as is relevant to today’s song, but you owe it to yourself to read the whole thing:
You know, we were pretty incompetent at the start. We were pretty incompetent at the end. . . . [W]e made a second album which was truly awful, Disposable. The first album, we didn’t really know enough to be daunted by what we were attempting to do. On the second one, we really, we learned a bit more, which was just enough to make it bad . . . . The musicians started wanting to play. Rather than just kind of tinkling, which we had going on the first album. . . . [where] we really didn’t know what we were doing, so we didn’t care. The second [album], we got into the band business, and ceased to be innovative, and just became another f*cking band. . . . The eventual demise of the Deviants was when me and the guitar player . . . really were at odds about musicianship. I kind of thought it sucked. He had really this idea to be Jimmy Page . . . . The only claim to fame the Deviants had is we managed to persevere and actually get some stuff down onto vinyl. ‘Cause there are other bands, like the Brothers Grimm and the Giant Sun Troll and the whole list of them you see on posters. But they never actually got to record. And back in those days, you didn’t tape the shows, because we didn’t have the technology. So a lot of that stuff was lost. Fortunately, we weren’t. That was an incredibly lucky break, or we would have just been a name on a poster. . . . Sometimes it’d be the hippies who’d get freaked out [at our live shows]. ‘Cause they’d be there with their beads and bells, and really not understand why we were snarling at them and setting fire to our arms and things. . . . [T]hey thought that was all a bit aggressive, man. We were a very angry band. We were pissed off, generally, at the state of the world . . . . But it frequently just came down to being pissed off with each other. You have to remember, we took a lot of speed and we drank a lot, and we also had the most incredible hangovers. . . . It doesn’t make for a harmonious traveling band. That’s why we didn’t turn into the Grateful Dead, I guess. Plus, we didn’t know that many guitar riffs.
Oh, and Farren clears up how the band got its name . . . first the Social Deviants and then the Deviants:
It actually comes from the fact that we all had a house in the East End of London. And we picked up the paper one day, and it said that Tower Hamlet, which was one of the new constructed boroughs in East London, had the highest percentage of social deviance in the country. “Right, that’s us.” But saying it became really a drag. “What band are you in?” “The Social Deviants!” “Wot?” “Okay, the Deviants.”
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.”THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
563) The Twilights — “Always”
This ’68 A-side is utter perfection. Paul Culnane nails it calling the song “a sumptuous ballad, a rich mix of acoustic guitars, trilling flute embellishments, and . . . haunting lead vocal.” (http://www.milesago.com/artists/twilights.htm) Australia’s greatest live band of the ’60’s shows its sensitive side!
Richie Unterberger writes that:
One of the better Australian groups of the ’60s, the Twilights were not especially innovative, but played competent, harmony-driven British Invasion-styled rock, strongly recalling both the “beat” and pseudo-psychedelic era Hollies. Relying largely on the original material of guitarist Terry Britten, they recorded over a dozen singles, as well as a couple albums, between 1965 and 1968, chalking up a few large Australian hits.
The Twilights ranked alongside their contemporaries The Masters Apprentices [see #297] and The Easybeats [see #201] and solo singer Normie Rowe as one of the most successful and popular Australian pop acts of the 1960s . . . . The[y] have earned acclaim and respect for their formidable body of recorded work, coupled with their legendary status as arguably the most polished and accomplished Australian live act of the era. Glenn Shorrock [has said that] . . . my first band, The Twilights, is the band I remember most fondly; we were very close then in a very exciting period of pop.” . . . [They] were seduced by the magic of . . . “A Hard Days’ Night” [and d]rawn together by their British origins[,] . . Glenn Shorrock . . . and his friends Mike Sykes and Clem “Paddy” McCartney . . . formed an a-cappella trio . . . eventually gaining regular bookings around the relatively meagre Adelaide folk/coffee-house circuit. Occasionally . . . the[y] teamed with local instrumental outfits, among them . . . The Hurricans. . . . [T]he prospect of blending it all together [with the Hurricans] would prove irresistible. . . . The Twilights began to cause a stir with their dynamic live shows in Adelaide . . . . [Manager Gary] Spry’s strategy was to establish the group in Australia’s pop capital, Melbourne, so The Twilights moved there in late 1965, and rapidly became established as one of the top acts . . . . It was with their classic fifth single “Needle In A Haystack” [originally by Martha & the Vandellas] that The Twilights achieved national success. . . . The next milestone was a new established national pop competition, The Hoadley’s Battle of the Sounds. . . . In July 1966, The Twilights took the stage at Festival Hall, Melbourne, before a full house of screaming . . . fans, to win the competition ahead of over 500 other hopefuls. . . . [winning them] . . . a trip to England. . . . [where t]hey made a bee-line for all the essential landmarks of swingin’ London. . . . The last single [A-side “Cathy Come Home”] from the group in 1967 used the sitar as a lead instrument on both sides. . . . The single was another unqualified airplay and chart success, but it was to be the last major hit that the band enjoyed. . . . Concurrent with the release of the[ir ’68] album [Once Upon a Twilight…] came the group’s eleventh single, “Always”. . . . Great single, crap response – the demise was about to set in. . . . Nevertheless, 1968 was certainly the band’s year as a performing entity. Melbourne was “theirs” as they dominated the city’s thriving dance and disco circuit.
Glenn Shorrock later was lead singer of the Little River Band and, as Paul Culnane says, Terry Britten became “songwriter to the stars . . . plac[ing] strong chart hits for Cliff Richard [and] Tina Turner . . . writing ‘Just Good Friends’ with Graham Lyle . . . for Michael Jackson’s mega-selling Bad album. . . . [and] winning a Grammy for his theme to the movie Mad Max 3 – Tina’s ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ ”
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
562) The Honeybus — “Delighted to See You”
Another glorious track from the glorious Honeybus (see #6, 52, 207, 434). “Delighted to See You” was the band’s first A-side (’67). Bruce Eder says that “[t]heir debut single . . . sounded more like the Beatles than anything heard in British pop/rock since the Searchers had faded from view in early 1966.” (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/honeybus-mn0000259186/biography) LN says it is “as great a single as any they released” — which is a well-deserved compliment (http://lyndslounge.blogspot.com/2008/01/1000-great-albums-honeybus-story-1970.html) What is that at the into, a kazoo?
The song even predates Colin Hare joining the band. As Hare recalls:
Honeybus was formed by Pete Dello and Ray Cane 1967. Their first single ‘Delighted To See You’ was recorded with two session men Russ Ballard and Bobby Henrit. It wasn’t a hit but had several BBC Radio plays. Decca wanted promotional photos so Pete and Ray enlisted Pete Kircher on drums. I happened to be walking along Denmark St after leaving the Honeycombs. I spoke to a friend. Told him I was looking for a band and we were standing outside Regent Sound Studio where Honeybus were rehearsing. My friend Grayham said I should go in and introduce myself to a guy called Pete Dello. So I did!
John Peel played “Delighted” on Radio London. “He noted the ‘unusual sounds‘ of the song and that it was Tony Blackburn’s Climber Of The Week.”(https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Honeybus)
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
561) Little Johnny Taylor — “Sweet Soul Woman”
“And woman, I will try to express my inner feelings and thankfulness for showing me the meaning of success.” NOT
“My sweet soul woman. She’s a good looking woman. My kind of woman. Whoa, a good cooking woman. Oh, a hard loving woman.” How did this ’70 A-side by Little Johnny Taylor fail to chart? OK, its lyrics might have been a bit dated even in ’70 — I remember my mother wearing a t-shirt that year emblazoned with the slogan “F*ck Housework” — but man does this song cook.
Some folks still get them mixed up, so to get it straight from the outset, Little Johnny Taylor was best known for his scorching slow blues smashes “Part Time Love” (. . . in 1963) and 1971’s “Everybody Knows About My Good Thing” . . . . This Johnny Taylor was definitely not the suave Sam Cooke protégé who blitzed the charts with “Who’s Making Love” for Stax in 1968; that’s Johnnie Taylor [see #191, 320], who added to the confusion by covering “Part Time Love” for Stax. Another similarity between the two Taylors: both hailed from strong gospel backgrounds. Little Johnny came to Los Angeles in 1950 and did a stint with the Mighty Clouds of Joy before going secular. . . . [H]is career didn’t soar until he inked a pact with Fantasy’s Galaxy subsidiary in 1963 . . . .
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
560) The Hangmen — “Dream Baby”
The Hangmen “60s’ize” a romantic Roy Orbison classic, mercilessly marching it up the Gallows Pole and down into the garage. OK, OK, I know Orbison released the song as a single in ’62, and that it reached #4 that March. But that was another era! And I know that the Hangmen’s label kept tightening the noose until the boys relented and agreed to record and release it as a single. But, as Chris Bishop says, they give it a “slamming beat and catchy guitar and sitar sounds.” (https://garagehangover.com/hangmen-what-a-girl-cant-do/). I love it!
We’ll, they hadn’t even recorded “What a Girl Can’t Do” — that was the Reekers (yes, that was the band’s name). As Bishop explains:
In early summer of ’65, the Reekers’ managers . . . played “What a Girl Can’t Do” for Fred Foster of Monument Records. . . . Foster signed . . . only Tom [Guernsey] as he was the songwriter and leader of the Reekers. Since [two of the other Reekers] were committed to college, Tom decided, against his own preferences, to work with the Hangmen as his band. Monument then released the Reekers’ recordings of “What a Girl Can’t Do” and “The Girl Who Faded Away” under the Hangmen’s name . . . .
Who, then, were the Hangmen — those Grim Reekers? Guernsey remembers that:
found all the band members just by asking around the campus and finding players—with the exception of the lead singer, Dave Ottley. George called the British embassy in Washington, D.C. and asked if anyone there knew of a British singer looking for a band. A good move, as it was how we hooked up with Dave [who was a hairstylist from Glasgow].
Anyway, after personnel changes including a new singer after Ottley returned to the UK, they went to Nashville to record an album. As Guernsey says:
We recorded our album Bittersweet in Nashville . . . doing our second single ‘Faces’ there. . . . [W]e really wanted to release “I Want To Get To Know You” as our third single, but Monument went with the Roy Orbison tune, ‘Dream Baby’ that they had us cover largely because they had the publishing on the song. I do have to say the album could have been better if we had taken Nashville more seriously at the time. I had produced the single ‘What A Girl Can’t Do,’ and was just 19 at the time and naively thought that I should be producing the album. Also, we all thought of Nashville as a foreign land of country music where people didn’t have a clue what we were trying to do. We didn’t realize until much later that we should have taken the whole project more seriously. I think we spent more time in Nashville bars than the studio. Oh well, it was fun.
I bet it was!
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
559) Solomon Burke — “Home in Your Heart”
“Home in Your Heart” is my favorite Solomon Burke song and one of my favorite soul songs of all-time (thanks, Otis Blackwell!) If it doesn’t stir your soul, baby, you ain’t got one!
[T]here are so many moments . . . that are mindblowing; first off, whoever is behind the drum kit has a direct hotline to MY heart, and his stop time fills are not only impressive but so effective to complement the lyrics. Then there’s the matter of Solomon’s voice; in a world full of musical fakery, this is a man that fully believes what he’s singing here, and throws his entire soul into the performance, sending the microphone, preamps, and/or tape machine into distortion at JUST the right times, as the distortion drives home words that he wants to enunciate with even more color. It’s all capped off with a slightly sinister laugh at the outro…I’ve listened to it a dozen times this morning and I could easily listen a dozen more.
While Solomon Burke never had a Top 20 hit, he was an important pioneer of early soul. On his 1960s singles for Atlantic, he brought a country influence into R&B, with emotional phrasing and intricately constructed, melodic ballads and midtempo songs. At the same time, he was surrounded with sophisticated “uptown” arrangements . . . . This combination of gospel, pop, country, and production polish was basic to the recipe of early soul. . . . [Burke] . . . was an important influence upon The Rolling Stones, who covered Burke’s “Cry to Me” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” on their early albums. . . . He was preaching at his family’s Philadelphia church and hosting his own gospel radio show even before he’d reached his teens. He began recording gospel and R&B sides for Apollo in the mid- to late ’50’s. . . . Burke had a wealth of high-charting R&B hits in the early half of the ’60s . . . . [but] he wasn’t able to expand his R&B base into a huge pop following.
Oh, and did he invent the term “soul music”? Christian John Wikane writes that:
[I]n 1960 . . . Burke signed with Atlantic Records, home to Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, and LaVern Baker. At the time, Atlantic was the top rhythm and blues label in the world, but Burke took exception to the “rhythm and blues” moniker and did not hesitate to make his sentiments known. “They were a little upset with me because we [sic] didn’t want to sing rhythm and blues, per se, and be classified as a rhythm and blues artist, because of my religious convictions.” Burke suggested “soul” as an alternate classification to “rhythm and blues”.
Here, Solomon sings with the Derek Trucks Band in ’02:
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
558) The Carolyn Hester Coalition — “Half the World”
Folkie turns psychedelic. OK, she doesn’t get booed at the Newport Folk Festival, but she does get her share of grief and eye-rolls. “[S]tarry-eyed idealism and girlish, high-pitched vocals” — yes, guilty as charged. But as starry-eyed songs sung with girlish, high-pitched vocals go, this is a great one. It almost makes me want to join the Peace Corps. Oh, and the career lesson here? Never turn down the “Puff the Magic Dragon” gig!
Bad-Cat says that:
Anyone into [Carolyn] Hester’s earlier incarnation as a folk singer is likely to find her decision to turn to a more happenin’/commercial sound disappointing. On the other hand, anyone into this late-1960s psych-oriented effort is liable to find her earlier folk albums trite and dull. The thought of a folkie turning to psych is probably a major turnoff to many folks. That’s unfortunate since once you get over Hester’s little girl lost voice, 1968’s “The Carolyn Hester Coalition” is surprisingly enjoyable. . . . “Half the World” offered up some excellent psych/rock . . . .
Finally, Richie Unterberger gives some needed historical context (though I edit out much of his vitriol):
[Hester] was an important if marginal figure of the early-’60s folk revival, singing traditional material with a high voice in the manner of Joan Baez and Judy Collins (though with less command). . . . Hester herself was unable to make it as a folk-rocker despite a brief try, and unpredictably went into psychedelic music for a couple of albums before largely drifting out of the business . . . . In 1960, she made her second album [that] cast her very much in the thick of the folk revival . . . sung in her high, almost shaky and girlish voice. In the early ’60s, she was briefly married to author and folk singer/songwriter Richard Farina, who became friendly with Bob Dylan shortly after Dylan’s arrival in New York. While recording her third album . . . she invited Dylan, then almost unknown, to play harmonica on a few cuts. His work on the album helped bring him to the attention of [John] Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia . . . shortly afterwards. While other performers of the early-’60s folk revival made great strides forward in sales and influence . . . Hester remained relatively obscure. She turned down a chance to form a folk trio with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey, offered by manager Albert Grossman; that position went to Mary Travers . . . . [I]n sticking exclusively to traditional material, rather than covering songs by contemporary writers or writing anything herself, Hester was falling behind the folk curve. . . . In the late ’60s, Hester made the unexpected move to psychedelic music as part of the Carolyn Hester Coalition, who recorded a couple of little-known albums [which] were erratic but not half-bad, interspersing updates of traditional material . . . with moody and fuzzy folk-rockers. . . .
Carolyn Hester had been away from the recording scene for a few years when she re-emerged in the late 1960s as the centerpiece of the Carolyn Hester Coalition, a psychedelic- and folk-tinged rock group. It’s hard to read this as anything but an attempt to keep up with the times on the part of someone who missed the boat that made folk and folk-rock a commercial proposition. . . .
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
557) Q’65 — “Cry in the Night”
“Cry” is the B-side to Q’65’s explosive ’66 A-side “The Life I Live” (see #108). It is equally as explosive, and some consider it superior. High Times says that the song “is possibly the most powerful 45 ever . . . . Wim Bieler more than makes up for his crimes against the English language with an impassioned vocal . . . while the lead and rhythm guitars lock horns on the break, resulting in the greatest guitar battle of the ’60s. ” (https://hightimes.com/culture/dutch-punk-in-the-1960s/amp/) Tim Sandra says that it “is the group’s best, a snarling garage stomper with nasty guitar breaks and sneering vocals.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/beat-from-holland-vol-2-mw0000458895) Even apart from all that, it is very uplifting. Girlfriend treating you bad? “I put a rope around my neck. . . . Then I will rest in my coffin, and I don’t have to worry about ya. . . . I will never cry in the night.”
Bruce Eder gives some history:
The Dutch quintet could have held their own with [the Pretty Things or the Yardbirds] or the Animals without breaking a sweat . . . . Q 65 have remained one of Europe’s best-kept star-caliber musical secrets for more than 30 years.. . . [They] first got together in 1965, in the Hague . . . “the Liverpool of the Netherlands,” with a music scene that had been thriving since the end of the ’50s. . . . The group’s professed influences were American soul acts . . . yet somehow, when they performed, what they played came out closer in form and spirit to the likes of the Pretty Things . . . and the Yardbirds than it did to any of those soul acts, at least at first. . . .
High Times calls them ugly, slobs, and less intelligible than a New York cab driver, and it means that as a compliment! —
Dutch punks from the ’60s [were] an entire generation of long-haired, kicks-crazed maniacs who invented “punk” . . . . One listen to [Q’65’s] lead vocalist is as good as a thousand when you’re talkin’ about comprehending Wim Bieler’s “command” of the English language. If articulation is your bag, you’d be better off hanging out with a New York cab driver! . . . [T]hese guys are damn ugly. . . . [and] are worshipped on a cult level worldwide largely due to their wild looks and pre-punk approach to playing R&B. In their heyday, they were in direct confrontation with the Outsiders [and there were] fist fights between their opposing fans at shows . . : . Q’65 were total slobs in their aggression; unintelligible forerunners of the Stooges. . . .
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
556) The Humblebums — “Rick Rack”*
A beguiling and unforgettable song by Gerry Rafferty from his Humblebum days that seems informed by his relationship with his abusive father. Alan Murray says that “[w]hen Gerry Rafferty [joined the Humblebums,] . . the songwriting and music leaps to another level. Rick Rack [is] truly memorable”. (https://www.livingtradition.co.uk/webrevs/tecd400.htm)
Stewart Mason notes regarding the album from which the song is drawn:
Rafferty . . . turned the duo’s original trad folk aesthetic into a prettier, poppier sound. . . . That dichotomy continues throughout, with Rafferty’s unapologetically pop songs and Connolly’s folk- and blues-based tunes alternating. Truthfully, Rafferty’s songs are better, with their lightly psychedelic arrangements suiting his whimsical lyrics. . . . [His] six songs . . . are uniformly excellent . . . .
The New Humblebums . . . began to achieve far greater success with their mix of Rafferty’s plaintive vocals and melodies and Connolly’s upbeat tunes and fine guitar playing. That same year, the duo released their first record together and band’s second album, The New Humblebums. The album was a major-hit in Glasgow and was well-received nationally. . . .
Scottish folk outfit the Humblebums aren’t perhaps as well known as their two main individual members: Gerry Rafferty, who later scored hits with Stealers Wheel and as a solo artist, and Billy Connolly, who left music to become an internationally successful stand-up comedian. Conolly actually founded the group in 1965, along with guitarist Tam Harvey; both had been regulars on the Glasgow folk circuit . . . . The duo quickly became a popular attraction in Glasgow’s folk clubs, particularly as Connolly honed his humorous between-song patter . . . . After a few years of local celebrity, the Humblebums recorded their debut album . . . split between traditional folk songs and Connolly originals. Not long after[,] . . budding singer/songwriter . . . Rafferty approached the duo after one of their gigs for feedback on his original songs. He wound up being invited to join . . . . Rafferty’s songs soon took a prominent place in their repertoire, which led to friction with Tam Harvey; he departed around half a year [later]. Toward the end of 1969, [Rafferty and Connolly] entered the studio together and cut the second Humblebums LP . . . . With Rafferty’s pop instincts, the Humblebums grew more popular on the live circuit than ever, and they recorded another album in a similar vein . . . . However, there was growing dissension . . . Rafferty’s material had a more serious bent than Connolly’s lighthearted, dryly witty offerings, and Connelly’s comedy bits were taking up a large portion of the Humblebums’ stage show, to the point where Rafferty wanted him to cut the comedy altogether. . . . [T]he Humblebums broke up in 1971. Rafferty moved on to Stealers Wheel, best known for their hit “Stuck in the Middle With You,” and later went solo, scoring a huge hit with “Baker Street.” Connolly . . . in a few short years became one of the most popular comedians not only in Scotland, but the whole U.K. . . .
Rafferty was born in Paisley, near Glasgow, an unwanted third son. His father, Joseph, was an Irish-born miner. His mother . . . dragged young Gerry round the streets on Saturday nights so that they would not be at home when his father came back drunk. They would wait outside, in all weathers, until he had fallen asleep, to avoid a beating. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d leave,” Mary told Gerry. Joseph died in 1963, when Gerry was 16. That year, Gerry left St Mirin’s academy and worked in a butcher’s shop and at the tax office. At weekends, he and a schoolfriend, Joe Egan [with whom he later formed Stealers Wheel] played in a local group, the Mavericks. . . . after Gerry’s song Benjamin Day failed as a Mavericks single, Gerry and Egan quit the group and Gerry joined Connolly’s outfit, the Humblebums . . . .
Inspired by his Scottish mother, who teaches him both Irish and Scottish folk songs, and the music of Bob Dylan and the Beatles, he starts writing his own material. . . . In the mid-1960s Rafferty earns money busking on the London Underground. In 1966 he meets fellow musician Joe Egan and they are both members of the pop band the Fifth Column.
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
555) The Baroques — “Mary Jane”
From the lone single (’67) and the lone album by Milwaukee’s Baroques comes a classic psych/garage track “Mary Jane” that was banned for being a pro-marijuana song. But was it? Matt Kessler calls the song “a stand-out track which immediately grabs your attention with infectious electric piano . . . . accompanied by . . . vocals (that sound as if [the] voice box had been spliced with that of a bumble bee’s!) make this a truly unique listening experience. . . . of rhythmic ecstasy.” (https://moofmag.com/2018/01/05/album-review-the-baroques-1967/)
As to impact of “Mary Jane”, Sonic Hits reports that:
The Baroques formed in 1966. In January 1967 they signed a contract with Chess Records. By June 1967, both the album “Iowa” and single “Mary Jane” were released and banned in the same week. The ban was imposed by some local DJs whose stations directors thought “Mary Jane” was a pro-drug song about marijuana. [It was actually] an anti-drug song but no one got it. Instead The Baroques became infamous as “acid-heads” due to the “far-out” sounds on the record. At this point, [songwriter, singer and lead guitarist] Jay [Berkenhagen] had never tried drugs in his life. That soon changed and the band found itself pulling stunts at their live shows involving catapults, baby doll parts, and lip-synching onstage.
Matt Kessler adds that “local radio DJs. . . . wrongly assumed that “Mary Jane” was a pro-drug song, which was not at all the case. However, the band fed off this reputation, and began pulling wild and daring stunts during their concerts.”
Popular only on a regional level, the Milwaukee group (originally called “The Complete Unknowns,” until someone probably realized how dangerously self-fulfilling it could be) was dominated by the morose compositions and low, odd vocal range of . . . Jay Berkenhagen . . . . With a slight garage feel, their unusual, occasionally oddball material was built around electric (sometimes “baroque”) keyboards and fuzz guitar riffs, which occasional detours into uplifting folk-rock and freak-out jamming. . . .
[The album] is somewhat of an anomaly when compared to many of the era’s more famous psychedelic touchstones; there’s nothing specifically mystical in the lyrics, or any coded drug references, or epic extended jams. . . . [It] is also notable for being released by Chicago R&B titan Chess Records. At the time Chess was looking for a way to break back into the rock market, a place they’d been largely absent from since The Beatles changed the rules of the game a few years before. It would end up being one of only a couple post-Fab Four rock albums on Chess . . . . [I]t sold fairly well regionally at the time . . . . It’s one of the more unique sounding garage-era albums, featuring an unconventional mix of mopiness and wackiness, hard-edged guitar and subtle harpsichord, droniness and catchiness. . . .
[T]he [album’s] self-titled acid drenched magnificence .. . is extremely unique. . . . Their psychedelic/garage/pop hybrid was done by others, but the essence of darkness that is represented in this album makes their sound its own entity. . . . Some of these songs would undoubtedly fit perfectly inside movie scenes where a character may meet his or hers unfortunate demise…Extremely atmospheric, and filled with a moody fuzz guitar tone that segues into the bashing chorus where drummer Dean Nimmer lets loose with all of his might, finishing with an otherworldly psychedelic freakout.
Check out the site’s new page: Stick It to the (Fish)Man:Feedback — the coolest comments I have received!
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
554) Dave Barry — “Its Gonna Be Fine”
Dave Berry brings to buoyant life a Barry Mann/Cynthia Weill composition that wasn’t done justice by Glenn Yarbrough (who reached #54 with it in ’65) or the New Christy Minstrels. Richie Unterberger says it “sound[s] very much like a mid-1960s uptown Philly soul production”. (https://www.allmusic.com/album/this-special-sound-of-dave-berry-mw0000836814) I say, if this song doesn’t banish your blues and put a skip in your step, you are truly in an uptown funk.
Nostalgia Central gives us a grounding:
In 1961 [Berry, born David Holgate Grundy] assumed his stage surname when invited to front The Cruisers . . . . [They] flogged a predominantly Chicago blues repertoire . . . [including] Dave’s idol (and namesake), Chuck Berry. . . . Berry’s big break came when Mickie Most . . . saw him perform . . . and [then] supervised a demo recording session for submission to Decca . . . . [Berry’s] stage presence was almost unclassifiable, and it was not enough for him to simply stand and sing a song. He made a point of appearing from behind pillars (it may take a full five minutes for him to emerge completely) and staring straight ahead while making strange beckoning arm-movements. These abstract hand-ballets would have seemed sinister were it not for the subtle merriment in his oriental eyes. . . . The Crying Game took Berry into the Top Five in September 1964 . . . . [and a] cover of Bobby Goldsboro’s Little Things restored Dave to the UK Top 10, but – apart from a disinclined 1966 recording of the sentimental Mama – this was his last bite of that particular cherry.
Briefly a big star in Britain in the mid-’60s, Dave Berry faced the same dilemma as several other British teen idols of the era: R&B was obviously nearest and dearest to his heart, but he needed to record blatantly pop material to make the hit parade. It was also obvious that Berry was in fact much more suited toward pop ballads than rough-and-tumble R&B, regardless of his personal preferences. At his peak, his output was divided between hard R&B/rockers and straight pop. Help from ace session players like Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones notwithstanding, his smooth voice was frankly ill-equipped to deliver the goods . . . on the bluesier items. He made a rather good go of it, on the other hand, with romantic pop/rock ballads . . . . [H]e never made the slightest impression on the U.S. market . . . .
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
553) Ihre Kinder (Your Children) — “Hilf Mir” (“Help Me”)
John Lennon asked for “Help” and a year later Ihre Kinder pleaded “Help Me” — a wonderful folky psychy song with a killer electric guitar solo (think “Sound of Silence”). From the first album (’69) by the first German rock band to sing exclusively in German, and the beginnings of Deutschrock and Krautrock.
Prog Archives notes that “[t]heir music combined influences from the American protest song (Bob Dylan), white blues music from England and – in a cautious way – the typical German electronic rock music of the early 70s to a progressive und unique mixture.” And they did it in German. (http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1925) Silly Puppy explains:
Ihre Kinder . . . introduced the then radical notion of crafting rock songs in its own German language. The band was a continuation from the earlier pop band Jonah & The Whales . . . . After releasing an all but ignored [cover of] “It Ain’t Me Babe,” the band called it quits[. After] assembling a new team of noise makers vocalist/keyboardist Sonny Hennig and financier Jonas Porst . . . created a new band from scratch. . . . [Ihre Kinder] was one of the pioneers of German language rock and was met with great skepticism for having done so. . . . [Record labels] were [not] interested in this strange style of rock sung in German and [the album had to be] release[d] independently. Despite all efforts this debut album was met with little interest and the newly gestated Deutschrock had to wait a few more years for cultural acceptance.
They played acoustic folk and rich blues, oriental-tinged psycho-pop and rock-hard rock . . . [m]usically, the[y] . . . hardly differed from other German rock bands of the late sixties. And yet they were the beginning of a revolution. Because [they] sang exclusively in German . . . . In the early 1970s, the German language was still a sacrilege in rock music. Anglo-American idiom was cool, German, on the other hand, was discredited as the tongue-lashing of the escapist Musikantenstadl yodels and shallow-pink pop romanticism. Anyone who was self-respecting as a German rocker sang in English . . . . [The Kinder] . . . relied on poetic lyrics, a kind of psychedelic German beat lyrics, but could also be very clear and precise when they took up political topics. In 1970, the readers of the magazine "Musikexpress" voted the group the best German blues band. By then, at the latest, the band was well known even to high school students from the laboring suburbs . . . .
Nuremberg was . . . the city of Photo-Porst. In the 1960s, Hannsheinz Porst was at the head of the family business. He was a dazzling figure, a communist dressed as a capitalist . . . [who] turned the market-leading photo discounter into an employee company. . . . [and] had undisguised sympathies for the [Soviet Union]. [T]he German press liked to describe [him] as a madman, a spy, an ideological arsonist, a crackpot or a traitor to the homeland who was dangerous to the public. [H]is son Jonas. . . . played the impresario and put his father's dough into a recording studio that was to become the important nucleus of German rock culture - and he put it into the band "Your Children". The group's first album, financed and produced by Jonas . . . was initially rejected by German record companies as far too uncommercial. The prevailing opinion in the recording industry was that the English and Americans were much better at rock music. Who wanted to hear German lyrics? . . . . In the end, a record company showed courage. Philips released the album, but so half-heartedly that it almost went under without a word.
I don’t think Silly Puppy liked their first album:
[Ihre Kinder] capture the zeitgeist of the beat era of the mid-60s while adding only small doses of the more contemporary sounds that were developing in the world of Krautrock. Honestly if it weren’t for the album’s status as first Deutschrock album [it] would be considered by most as utterly forgettable as the production is horrendously amateur, the pop hooks are bland and the singers sound like they got very drunk at a beer hall and jumped up on stage for the first time. . . .
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
552) Kaleidoscope — “Flight from Ashiya”
Kaleidoscope was one of the great unsung (until years later) U.K. pop psych bands (see #154, 336) and “Flight from Ashiya” was its first A-side. As Vernon Joynson relates, it was “an amalgam of pop and psychedelia, it told the story of the pilot of a crashing aeroplane. It picked up quite a lot of airplay but failed to chart.” (The Tapestry of Delights Revisited) Mike Stax calls it “a fabulous example of pop-psych storytelling . . . . [though] it is difficult to discern exactly what is happening . . . [involving] an ill-fated airplane trip and a stoned pilot. A deliberate sense of confusion reigns throughout. Is the flight doomed? Or is it a case of mass paranoia brought on by the smoke?” (liner notes to the Nuggets II comp) David Wells describes the song as “[p]redominently a lyrical rehash of The Bee Gees’ recent hit New York Mining Disaster (protaganist delivers in neurotic warble his thoughts on being cut off from the rest of civilization following a tragic accident). Flight from Ashiya was nonetheless a superb release that deserved to make more of a mark than it actually did.” (Record Collector: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: Hight Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era)
Dave Thompson writes that:
Between 1967 AND 1972, Kaleidoscope were one of the most adventurous, and intriguing, bands on the U.K. psych scene as they morphed into prog, folk and a wealth of other structures. . . . Signed initially to Fontana Records before shifting to the label’s prog imprint Vertigo, Kaleidoscope/Fairfield Parlour released some of the most glorious records of the era, three albums and a clutch of glorious 45s [including] “Flight From Ashiya,” [and] “A Dream for Julie[.]”
Regarding the Bee Gees’ influence, Kaleidoscope singer and lyricist Peter Daltry recalls that:
[T]he Beatles’ Revolver changed everything. “Tomorrow Never Knows” was the catalyst. I was never entirely happy as the lyricist writing endless soppy love songs. The Beatles showed us all the way, followed closely at the time by the Bee Gees who wrote amazingly weird songs like “Lemons Never Forget” and the flawless “New York Mining Disaster 1941”. It didn’t kick start me into writing songs like “The Murder of Lewis Tollani” and “Dive into Yesterday”, as I used to assume; I have since found out that “Horizontal” came out after we were writing such songs – but it did show we were heading in the same direction. But don’t forget that psychedelia was very short-lived. It lasted not much more that eighteen months. It was that truly magical period between late ’66 to early ’68.
Daltry laments regarding Fontana, the band’s record label, that:
Fontana said they were going to give [“Flight”] a massive boost. It was the first single they’d ever put out in a colour sleeve, and I think its failure was our biggest disappointment. We were really expecting very big things . . . . It was a great track, and I still love it now. (Record Collector: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records) [Regarding the band’s future single “Jenny Artichoke”: W]e all looked at one another and said, ‘Bloody hell, that’s a hit record, and the radio … because it was so limited in those days … they never stopped playing it. You could literally walk down the street and hear window cleaners whistling the thing. But the distribution arm of Fontana was absolute rubbish. They never got on board, they never got in tune with anybody else. It was never in the shops, and it didn’t get the sales.” (https://www.goldminemag.com/music-history/kaleidoscope-reignite-the-heady-days-of-u-k-psych-rock)
Might the song have been inspired by the ’64 Yul Brynner film Flight from Ashiya? —
Featuring an all-star cast and on-location shooting in Japan, where the story is set, three US Air Force rescue pilots must overcome their personal problems and differences to embark upon a dangerous mission to save raft-bound Japanese survivors from a murderous storm-tossed sea. As they head for their location, the film flashes back to chronicle the pasts of each pilot to make clear their mixed feelings about their upcoming assignment.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
551) Willie Mitchell — “Everything Is Gonna Be Alright”
“Alright” is the A-side of one of my favorite double threat R&B singles, hitting #126 in November ’65. I featured its B-side a while back (see #181). No need for a shotgun wedding! “Everything is gonna be alright, alright, alright, alright. Here comes the preacher. There’s gonna be a wedding here tonight, alright, alright, alright, alright.”
As David Nager writes, “[i]f Al Green was the sanctified sex symbol of Memphis Soul, Willie Mitchell was its Hollywood matinee idol. Suave and dapper, impeccably attired and sporting a stiletto‑sharp pencil‑thin moustache, Mitchell was the courtly King of Sophisticated Funk, cutting a striking figure in the Mid‑South music scene from the 1950s [on] . . . . (https://memphismusichalloffame.com/inductee/williemitchell/)
Greg Prato gives some history:
After he was discharged from the Army in 1954, Mitchell moved back to Memphis, where he soon became a popular, local trumpet-playing bandleader — Elvis Presley hired his big band to play several private parties. By 1959, Mitchell had turned his attention to studio work and signed on with Hi Records; he is often credited as being the creator of the oft-copied and instantly recognizable Hi sound (churning organ fills, sturdy horn arrangements, a steady 4/4 drumbeat, etc.). Throughout the ’60s, Mitchell became a popular concert attraction on U.S. college campuses and he scored several moderately successful soul/dance hit singles, issuing a steady stream of solo releases . . . . When the founder of Hi Records . . . died in 1970, Mitchell suddenly found himself in charge of the label. [A] year [earlier], Mitchell had signed an up-and-coming soul singer named Al Green to the label. Under the guidance of Mitchell, Green’s career would soon skyrocket and he became one of the ’70s top soul artists, with Mitchell co-producing and engineering all of [his] albums from 1970 through 1976.
Most famous for producing Green’s stunning string of sweet‑and‑funky soul classics, Mitchell had already had several successful musical careers and was a star of the Memphis scene long before their paths met. . . . By . . . his teens [he] was a featured player in local bands . . . . [S]oon after his 1954 discharge Mitchell was leading his group at the Manhattan Club and other area spots. He later took over the house band at the Plantation Inn in West Memphis, one of the area’s top nightclubs and a place where young, white Memphis developed a taste for genuine R&B, paving the way for the music revolutions to come. There, Mitchell honed his leadership skills as well as learning the finer points of showmanship, arranging, management, and more. He was also playing band gigs on Beale, sweetening his sound at cotillions for the old cotton-money crowd and writing lead sheets and arrangements for Sun and other Memphis studios. . . . Observing his crowds from the bandstand every night, he knew what people wanted to hear and exactly what made them dance. . . . For much of the ‘60s, Mitchell kept a hectic schedule as a bandleader in clubs and as a session leader/musician/arranger at Hi. . . . In 1968, Willie Mitchell’s multiple musical personalities – arranger, bandleader and engineer – were in perfect harmony for the crossover hit “Soul Serenade” (#10 R&B, #23 pop). . . . [Later, a]long with Green, Mitchell built a lineup that turned Hi into the premier Southern soul label, with Ann Peebles, O.V. Wright, Otis Clay and Syl Johnson.
By the way, there is a great cover of the song, done in French by French rock star Dick Rivers! Jon O’Brien explains:
Dick Rivers is widely regarded as one of the first musicians to introduce France to the sounds of rock & roll. Born Herve Fornieri . . . he developed a love of Johnny Cash, Gene Vincent, and Elvis Presley from a young age, naming himself after the latter’s character in the 1957 film Loving You. After recording over 100 songs with the influential outfit Les Chats Sauvages, he went on to pursue a solo career in the early ’60s, scoring hits with the likes of “Baby John,” “Tu N’es Plus La,” and “Rien Que Toi,” before heading to Alabama in 1967 to work with some of America’s biggest blues musicians . . . .
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
550) Pacific Drift — “God Has Given Me”
Manchester United! — Pacific Drift was a brief stopover point for members/members-to-be of Wimple Winch, Sponge and Blodwyn Pig. The Drift’s sole album (’70) was, as David Wells describes, “a sparkling, West Coast-influenced amalgam of post-psychedelic pop and early progressive rock, skillfully weaving [together] wistful hippie laments and riff-laden rockers”. (http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2011/03/pacific-drift-feelin-free-1970-uk.html?m=1) “God Has Given Me” is indeed sparkling, wistful, hippie, West-Coast (and we ain’t talkin’ Liverpool) -influenced prog rock.
All Music Guide notes that:
This UK band, formed in the late 60s, comprised Barry Reynolds (guitar/vocals), Brian Shapman (keyboards/vocals), Graham Harrop (bass) and Lawrence Arendes aka Larry King (drums). King, formerly of Liverpool’s Wimple Winch [see #49, 384], founded this new quartet from the ashes of Sponge, a jazz rock unit that imploded when saxophonist Jack Lancaster left in 1968 to join Blodwyn Pig. The quartet’s debut single, a version of Spirit’s ‘Water Woman’, was followed by a self-titled album in 1970. However, although they appeared live at the requisite underground haunts and festivals, Pacific Drift were unable to sustain a career and split up by the end of the year.
Released to widespread indifference back in January 1970, Manchester band Pacific Drift’s album Feelin’ Free surely deserved a better fate. . . . Though their sole album wouldn’t emerge until the dawn of the Seventies, Pacific Drift had been around for some while by that point. A product of the highly incestuous Manchester group scene of the mid-to-late Sixties, they had first come together in 1967 as the Sponge – essentially an updated, psychedelic-era version of the Tony Merrick Scene, with singer Merrick and guitarist Graham Harrop involved alongside other musicians, including an Asian drummer. But there were several early personnel changes, culminating with Merrick leaving in early 1968 to form a new Manchester ‘supergroup’, Sweet Marriage. Barry Reynolds . . . quit in late September to link up again with Jack Lancaster in Blodwyn Pig, Pacific Drift duly imploded. Brian Chapman hooked up with Chicken Shack, Graham Harrap reunited with a couple of his old Toggery Five colleagues in Young & Renshaw, and Larry Arends left the full-time music scene to move into photography.
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
548) Barry Booth — “He’s Very GoodWith His Hands”
Before “The Lumberjack Song”, before “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”, before Monty Python, there was an “ode to a shy but dexterous model maker who is taken by a girl, but more at home with his wooden trains and aeroplanes.” (http://www.popgeekheaven.com/music-discovery/lost-treasures-barry-booth-diversions). Michael Palin and Terry Jones collaborated with Barry Booth, writing the lyrics to “a commercial flop [that] over the years . . . has gained a cult following and a reputation as a lost classic of British psychedelic chamber pop.” (https://www.barryboothmusic.com/biography)
Pop Geek Heaven tell us that:
Barry Booth is a most unlikely artist to have recorded one of the great lost chamber pop albums of the ’60s. When . . . Diversions!, was released in 1968, he was already thirty years old and had never recorded an album or even a single as an artist. Indeed, he had never intended to record Diversions! either. He was merely hoping to place some of the songs with other artists. That is, until iconic British producer Tony Hatch (The Searchers, Petula Clark, Jackie Trent) fell in love with the material and insisted that Booth record the album. Further evidence of his reticence is the fact he never again recorded as an artist . . . . Booth’s roots were in classical music and he studied composition and piano at the Royal Academy of Music in the late ’50s. Though accomplished, he was not a virtuoso pianist and, following a stint in the National Service playing in military orchestras and dance bands, Booth began to work as the bandleader for Roy Orbison in the mid-’60s. While working with Orbison, he began to collaborate with two young actors and comedians, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, whom he had met while working as the musical director for the British television series Five O’Clock Club. Booth commissioned the future Pythons to write some lyrics which Booth would then set to music. The resulting songs provided the entirety of the material on Diversions!. Booth brought some of the songs to Orbison and later to Hatch. While Orbison passed, Hatch was charmed by both the material and by Booth’s restrained and heartfelt vocal style. He talked Booth into recording the songs himself, with Booth arranging and conducting and Hatch producing. . . . The lyrics are whimsical, typically narrative, and often reflect a British Music Hall sensibility. . . . Two singles were released . . . [including] “He’s Very Good With His Hands” b/w “The King’s Thing” . . . . [It did not] chart[], though [it] was played by John Peel’s on his popular Top Gear show. . . .
[At] the Royal Academy of Music in London. . . . [Booth] studied composition, harmony . . . counterpoint . . . and pianoforte . . . while flouting the Academy’s rules by playing professionally in the city’s jazz clubs by night. . . . In the early 1960s he worked on back-to-back national pop tours, as a bandleader and piano player for various acts including . . . Roy Orbison . . . .
[H]e put his classical training at the service of one of the support acts when he offered a simple solution to a vocal harmony line they were having trouble figuring out. He proposed that they use an inverted pedal-point, sustaining a single high note in harmony with the descending melody line. The proposal was accepted and consequently can be heard in the verses of the Beatles’ early hit Please Please Me. (Many years later, Elvis Costello would remember noticing it as a 9 year old boy. As described in Craig Brown’s One Two Three Four, he ‘listened intently to the disc as his father played it over and over again. He was startled by the vocal harmony line; the second singer seemed to be singing the same note repeatedly against the lead singer.’)
Orbison, the original inspiration for that song, was sufficiently impressed by Booth’s abilities to hire him as his musical director and piano player in his backing band . . . taking him on tours of Europe and North America. Booth first entered the US illegally, smuggled by Orbison over the Canadian border in the boot of a car after a work permit had failed to arrive on time. Booth continued to serve Orbison in this position for several years, before going on to enjoy a long career as a highly versatile musical director, arranger, composer and pianist . . . .
Diversions! consisted of musical settings of fourteen lyrics he had commissioned from two young writers he’d worked with in television: Michael Palin and Terry Jones . . . . Pitching the songs to producer Tony Hatch in the hope of landing them with established singers, Booth had inadvertently landed a deal to record them himself. . . . [It] is an example of how ambitious and inventive popular music was becoming at the time . . . . It is uniquely charming, whimsical, often cryptic and sometimes slightly sinister . . . .
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
547) The Who — “Glittering Girl”
Who-didn’t do it — why was this wonderful song left off The Who Sell Out? Glittering indeed!
Plus, thanks to Iowgens2:
This rare 1967 footage, excerpted from the German TV documentary Die Jungen Nachtwandler – London Unter 21 (which aired on July 3rd 1967 and was directed by Edmund Wolf) sees Pete Townshend running through an obscure and unreleased Who track named Glittering Girl in front of managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp at at his Wardour Street flat, and then with his bandmates (including a bare-chested Keith Moon) at the Saville Theatre.
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
546) The Pickwick Papers — “You’re So Square”
B-side of the Papers’ only single (‘66) is a cover of a number that Elvis did in ‘57 for the Jailhouse Rock movie — and it works. I guess the moral of the story is — you can garageize Leiber and Stoller, but don’t name your garage band after a Charles Dickens’ novel!
This is an oft-covered song— Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Cee Lo Green, etc. (https://secondhandsongs.com/performance/20093) — but nobody beats the Papers’ version. I just wish I could find out more about this Michigan garage band.
Per Song Facts:
This was one of the songs written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller for Elvis for the film Jailhouse Rock. It was one of four songs written during the famous Aberbach episode. . . . Leiber and Stoller were in their motel room enjoying breakfast at the leisurely hour of 1 P.M. when Jean Aberbach, Elvis' music publisher, showed up to ask whether they had the songs for Jailhouse Rock yet. When they admitted that they hadn't, Aberbach said that he was not leaving without them, and pushed the sofa against the door of the hotel room and went to sleep on it. Leiber and Stoller wrote the songs and woke him up. After handing him the songs, only then would he let them go! By the time Elvis recorded "Baby I Don't Care," Elvis and Leiber and Stoller had really hit their stride working together. Jerry Leiber reminisces, "The fourth song was the most fun because by then Elvis was deep into our producing style. Our style wasn't anything more than being loose and having fun. Elvis' initial shyness had totally melted away and he was completely in the spirit of the music." Note the movie scene in the video to the right, where Elvis performs the song for a pool party. Have you ever seen such a quiet, still, well-mannered audience of ladies in your life? Of course, the filming was happening with Elvis lip-syncing . . . .
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
545) The London Phogg — “The Times to Come”
A-side of the Phogg’s only single (’68) is a sunshine pop supernova. As Richard Cameron says, it is a “unique juxtaposition of pop harmony vocals and fuzz guitar psychedelia”, a “kind of a sub-genre – “Sunshine Psych.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLbHXRVuFr4). This could have been a contender against “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” — “That Coke on earth at last has come and now at last a new world has begun.” What do you say, Don Draper?
A bit about the band:
This Las Vegas ensemble formed in 1968 and was originally called the London Fog before they issued their one and only single. . . . The group won the 1968 Teen Scene Battle of the Rock & Soul Bands competition at the Las Vegas Ice Palace, which gave them the opportunity to record and issue their 45 (‘The Times To Come’ b/w ‘Takin’ It Easy’) on the A&M label in late 1968.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊 