272) The Strawberry Alarm Clock â “Birds in My Tree”
As Bruce Eder says:
[SAC’s] name is as well known to anyone who lived through the late-’60s psychedelic era as that of almost any group one would care to mention, mostly out of its sheer, silly trippiness as a name and their one major hit, “Incense and Peppermints,” which today is virtually the tonal equivalent of a Summer of Love flashback.
But, as I’ve said previously (see #127), the SAC is so much more than âIncense and Peppermints.â In fact, if I were them, I’d be incensed about “Peppermints.” “Birds”, a propulsive track on their first album (’67) and the B-side of their second single (whose A-side, “Tomorrow,” was their second big hit, reaching #23), is one of the many wonderful songs they recorded.
Jeremy says in Unwind with the Strawberry Alarm Clock that:
âBirds In My Treeâ features vaguely psychedelic touches in its adventurous melody, lyrical references to drugs* and a new ideal existence, and a real sense of wonder . . . . [It] begins with a tough, distorted guitar-led instrumental intro . . . . But soon it levels out into a calmer psych-pop sound . . . . marrying the strengths of the band (tough electric attack, and blissful pop loveliness) together in one simple song.
* I am not sure what the drug references are (âstretch out your mindâ?). Maybe the 60âs were one big drug reference.
Eder tells the story of their first album:
[T]he group had been prevailed upon to record an album around [“Incense and Peppermints”]. The album involved a few changes in the lineup, partly growing out of the fact that the existing membership didn’t have enough songs to fill an LP. They brought in 18-year-old George Bunnell, a . . . musician and songwriter . . . and his collaborator . . . Steve Bartek, who was still in high school at the time. They brought with them a brace of songs [including “Bird”] . . . . Bunnell was so effective that all agreed that he should become a member, and he agreed after initial hesitation over abandoning his current group. Even Bartek, who was only 16, was offered a chance to join, in recognition of his contribution to the album, but because of his age he needed his parents’ permission, which wasn’t forthcoming. . . . The Incense and Peppermints LP ended up coming out astonishingly strong, especially considering the haste with which the album was recorded, and the evolving membership during the recording process. Its number 11 chart placement (the only time one of their LPs actually charted) only affirmed the seemingly charmed nature of the group’s work during the last eight months of 1967. . . . [T]he album proved to be one of the more delightful artifacts of the psychedelic era, a strangely compelling mix of psychedelia, sunshine pop, garage rock, and California harmony.
271) The Human Instinct â âA Day in My Mindâs Mindâ
A popular Kiwi band known as the Four Fours went to the Big City (London), changed its name to “the significantly cooler” Human Instinct (Mark Deming in All Music Guide), and released some classic singles, most notably this killer psych track (not to be confused with the Talking Headsâs âPsycho Killerâ). Cosmic Mind at Play elaborates:
The band, who hailed from Tauranga on the North Island, had been known as The Four Fours in New Zealand and had had a number of hit singles as well as supporting The Rolling Stones on their March 1966 tour of the country. They changed name when they left for the UK in August of that year, playing a residency aboard the ocean liner Fairsky during its five-week voyage in return for reduced fares to England. Once settled in London, The Human Instinct supported all the major acts of the day and played the likes of The Marquee and Zebra Club, and had a Monday residency at the Tiles Club. The band released three singles on Mercury . . . . They then switched to Deram, a subsidiary of Decca Records, and issued the first of two classic popsike singles in December 1967 . . . . âA Day in My Mindâs Mindâ was written by guitarist Dave Hartstone and has a swinging âCarnaby Streetâ feel with strong harmony vocals, neat use of flute, and a very distinctive Morse Code inspired intro and outro.
As Mark Deming notes, “[j]ust as rock & roll went from Coca-Cola to LSD in the space of roughly five years, so did the Four Fours and the Human Instinct,â though I think that rock has now morphed into caffeine-free Coke Zero in a 7.5 oz. can, not a good thing.
270) The Breakers — “Don’t Send Me No Flowers (I Ain’t Dead Yet)”
The Memphis, Tennessee, band released this crazy-cool garage classic about a somewhat conceited guy as a ’65 A-side. It was written by Donna Weiss, the writer of “Bette Davis Eyes”! According to Rob Grayson:
While they didnât chart nationally, The Breakers knocked the Beatles out of the top spot locally with their single, âDonât Send Me No Flowers (I Ainât Dead Yet.)â The song was written by a neighborhood friend, Donna Weiss. The draft eventually broke up the Breakers. . . . But Donna Weiss kept writing. She would collaborate on a song with Jackie DeShannon in 1974, âBette Davis Eyes,â which would find the top of the charts with a new arrangement, performed by Kim Carnes in 1981.
According to Ron Hall’s book Playing for a Piece of the Door: A History of Garage & Frat Bands in Memphis 1960-1975 (yes, there is a whole book devoted to Memphis garage and frat bands!), the Breakers got to open for the Yardbirds in the fall of 1966. Hall quotes guitarist Mike Ladd (who had earlier been sent away to military school by his father to stop him from playing in Black blues clubs) as recalling that:
The whole night was a nightmare. The Yardbirds were supposed to use our amps, but as they got into their set and turned them up louder, they blew a couple up. I thought [keyboard player] Cully Powell was going to kill them! Some of the guys with the band were real jerks and then to blow the equipment too.”
The damn Yardbirds must have turned the volume up to 11! Now, if only their drummer had blown up too . . . .
Among the other recorded versions of the song, the best was released as an A-side in ’67 by the What Knots:
Iâve never understood Franceâs love affair with Jerry Lewis. Swedenâs affair with Lee Hazlewood â that I understand. This is my second selection from my favorite album of Leeâs â his â70 soundtrack to his Swedish TV film Cowboy in Sweden (see #48). Light in the Attic rightly calls the song a “stone cold Hazlewood classic.” And as Song Bar describes:
[It] certainly captures the groggy feeling of regret that comes with the discovery of whiskey bottles and presumably a woman walking out after his night of bad behaviour. Hazlewoodâs drunken hellraising, womanising reputation being well known. Still, the delivery and feel of this song (written by Len Moseley) captures the mood perfectly, slowly and dryly emanating that feeling of fuzzy-headed realisation and guilt.
Presented as a series of dreams, the movie alternates between absurdist skits and songs given totally incongruous visual settings. While much of Cowboy in Sweden is exactly what youâd pictureâHazlewood on horseback, cigarette dangling from his lips, alone with his doleful thoughtsâthereâs a whole lot in here youâd be unlikely to imagine on your own. . . . Punning on the songâs title, Hazlewood sings his lonesome prisoner ballad âPray Them Bars Awayâ to a group of polar bears swimming in the blinding Scandinavian sun.
268) The Mike Stuart Span — âChildren of Tomorrowâ
“Children of Tomorrow was the Span’s magnum opus (seealso #225). Richie Unterberger in All Music Guide describes it as “a classic British psychedelic single [with] driving power chords, squealing guitar leads, and haunting harmonies . . . [striking] a classic midpoint between hard mod-pop and the early psychedelia of UK groups like the Pink Floyd and Tomorrow.” All true, which is why I include the song. But Mike (OK, there was no Mike Stuart in the Mike Stuart Span), geez, the lyrics to this song are some of the worst enchanted foresty psychedelic lyrics I have ever heard. Mike, were you puffing on the magic dragon?
In any event, Unterberger goes on to explain that “hardly anyone actually heard the record, as it was pressed in a run of 500 copies on a small independent label.”
Dave Furgess opined years ago that:
The great thing about groups like The Mike Stuart Span is they arrived on the scene cut a few classic sides then got the f*ck out of town instead of torturing the world for decades later like so many of the DINOSAUR groups that I try to ignore now! ( Mick Jagger are you listening? ). For that we should be grateful for the likes of The Mike Stuart Span and their cohorts in obscurity land.
I do not agree with such views (just in case Mick Jagger is listening)! However, they are so gloriously bilious that I had to quote them. Guilty pleasure!
Barry Ryan passed away two months ago today, on September 28th, at the age of 72. The melodramatic, theatrical and grandly orchestrated â âpoperaticâ â songs he sang (written by his identical twin Paul, who died in 1992) represent the best of a side of 60âs popcraft that has often been unjustly maligned. I think we can now all look back on the Ryan brothersâs achievements with loving affection.
But even beyond that, it is hard for me to conceive of how Freddy Mercury could have written âBohemian Rhapsodyâ and launched it into the stratosphere had âEloiseâ and the other Ryan Bros. extravaganzas not come first. In fact, Mercury relied on the precedent of âEloiseââs five+ minute length to counter EMIâs hesitance in issuing âRhapsodyâ as a single. Seehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2021/10/01/barry-ryan-singer-formed-duo-brother-paul-had-worldwide-success/. Party on (up there), Barry.
The (UK) Guardianâs obituary of Barry Ryan tells us that:
Barryâs life had its share of Dionysian excess â parties at his flat in Eaton Place were renowned; Jimi Hendrix spent his first night in London there. But he never forgot his roots. Born in Leeds, he was the son of Marion (nee Ryan) and Fred Sapherson. Fred left when the boys were two, and Barry and Paul were brought up by âNanaâ, their adored grandmother, watched over by three loving âsistersâ â technically their aunts, but who were roughly the same age as the twins â while Marion, who had had her boys as a teenager, pursued her singing career. She became a successful performer, rising to prominence in the 1950s with the band leader Ray Ellington, and was a regular on the television musical quiz show Spot the Tune. . . . At 16 Marion sent them to a kibbutz in Israel, where they lasted two weeks and were later discovered singing in a Tel Aviv nightclub. Now they knew what they wanted.
Marion suggested they try a career as singers. Her soon-to-be second husband, the American impresario Harold Davison, managed the brothers and, with further guidance from other leading lights in the record industry, Paul & Barry Ryan had five Top 30 hits. . . .
Boudewijn de Kadt writes in the liner notes to the CD release of â68âs Barry Ryan Sings Paul Ryan and â69âs Barry Ryan that:
Styled and groomed for stardom, the image of the groovy singing twins living together in a pad in Swinging London could have come straight out of some retro Austin Powers type flick . . . . But it was all too true. . . .
Anyway, the Telegraph goes on:
A Cat Stevens song, Keep it Out of Sight, returned them to the upper echelons of the charts in 1967, but subsequent singles bombed. Paul then confronted Barry to tell him he no longer wanted to perform. âHe had a nervous breakdown and wanted to quit show business,â Barry [said]. âHeâd been frustrated about the fact we were getting nowhere. He didnât like singing in public [but] thought he could write songs.â Eloise, included on the album Barry Ryan Sings Paul Ryan, proved that he could compose a hit and the brothersâ singer-songwriter partnership continued for several years. But future singles . . . were only mildly successful in Britain, compensated for by the fact that they charted well across Europe . . . . [H]e packed in singing in 1976 to become a [renowned] commercial and portrait photographer . . . . âThe hits werenât coming,â he [said]. âI was drinking a lot. I was slightly off the rails and I thought Iâd had enough of this, and I discovered photography.â
Upon Barryâs death, the singer best known to us as Cat Stevens tweeted that:
Yesterday a good old buddy of mine passed away, his name was Barry Ryan. Our time together began back in the 60âs when he and his twin brother, Paul, were all tuxedo-suited, poppy teenage stars. I had written a song for Paul and Barry Ryan called âKeep It Out Of Sightâ and so we began hanging out. . . . We were prone to ravingâa lot. . . . When I contracted TB, it was Paul who gave me my first introductory book on Buddhism and meditation, The Secret Path, that inspired me to delve deep inside myself in search of ultimate answers to lifeâs questions. . . . When I spoke with [Barry] recently he told me he was fully at peace knowing he only had a short time left on this earth.
Ah, âEloise,â Eloise. It reached #2 in the UK in October of â68. I am pretty sure that everyone in the UK knows the song (love it or hate it). How can I possibly include it in a blog about songs that no one has ever heard? Well, it barely made the Hot 100 in the US, reaching #86. I am pretty sure that no one in the US knows the song.
The (UK) Guardianâs obituary notes that:
Paul had written the track for his brotherâs deep, soulful voice . . . . Eloise is mysterious. Its collision of styles â Puccini meets gospel meets Broadway musical â was part of what was being manufactured as ânewâ in pop. Not everybody warmed to it, with one critic describing the song as âsounding like a man being strangled by a catâ. The orchestral textures and structural intricacies were clearly influenced by Jimmy Webbâs MacArthur Park; and its âpoperaâ owes much to Phil Spectorâs Wagnerian overlays on tracks such as Walking in the Rain. Hyper-melodramatic content with soaring male vocals were in vogue. Yet none of this accounts for the enduring allure of Eloise. No one can agree whether it is a sugary madeleine of a song about a manâs idealisation of an unobtainable woman, or a melodrama of dark obsession and savage yearning. But everyone does agree that the vocal style and the power of Barryâs voice carries the song. âSinging from the heart,â one critic noted. Barry performed the recording in two takes, with a high degree of professionalism in the production. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, on their way to founding Led Zeppelin, were two of the session musicians.
[T]he monstrous, dramatic, five minutes and forty seconds aural drama that is âEloiseâ jumped out of nowhere as the new-look MGMâs first single release, pretty much straight to number one in six countries and the top five virtually everywhere else, including the UK! That a song encapsulating the wildest dreams of Scott Walker, the dark dementia of âMcAuthur Parkâ and the puzzling lyrical obscurity of the wiggiest psychedelia, boasting a startling arrangement, by the enigmatic [Johnny] Arthey with as many twists and turns and knowing winks as an imaginary Van Dyke Parks versus The Bee Gees video game should enjoy such mainstream success is almost unthinkable today. Indeed, it was something of a shock then as the âshow-biz bratsâ showed them all where to get off.
Here are two cool âliveâ renditions of âEloiseâ:
The British punk band the Damned recorded a version that reached #3 in the UK in February of â86. No lie:
265) Barry Ryan â âWhy Do You CryMy Loveâ
An equally cinematic album track from Barry Sings Paul Ryan.
Here is Barry and Paulâs version:
266) Barry Ryan â âThe Huntâ
This single and album track from Barry Ryan hit #34 in the UK in October of â69, though I could swear that Paul McCartney, rather than Paul Ryan, penned it. In places, it sounds as if âMartha My Dearâ got airdropped into a fox hunting pastiche. Donât get me wrong â itâs fabulous.
263) Pete Atkin â âBeware of the Beautiful Strangerâ
A gorgeous, like nothing else on the air (except for, maybe, Nick Garrie (who wasnât actually on the air)) song by Pete Atkin with lyrics by Clive James. Christopher Evans says in All Music Guide that:
Atkinâs music [drew] on every form of popular music from show tunes through folk, jazz, and rock. . . . [H]is deadpan and very English voice was the perfect vehicle for Jamesâ wryly melancholic musings . . . . [T]he title track [was] a beautifully constructed comedy sketch set to music in which a lovesick young man consults a dodgy soothsayer . . . .
As Pete Atkin recalls:
Iâd sung a few of my own silly songs at [Cambridge] Footlights . . . concerts, and one day Clive simply handed me a lyric and said âHey, sport, do you think you can do anything with this?â . . . [W]e soon started turning out songs . . . . [W]e did imagine our songs being sung famously by successful singers, which is partly what led me to organize some amateurish recordings . . . and to assemble a couple of privately-pressed LPs. The idea was to sell enough of them to unwitting friends . . . to cover the costs and use the rest as demos. . . . [T]he demo LPs did lead us in late 1969 to the publishers Essex Music [and] some proper studio sessions to record some of the songs. And those, amazingly, are the recordings you have here. . . . [The producer Don Paul was] a mate of Kenny Everett, at that time the most famous and influential DJ in the land with his Saturday morning show on BBC Radio 1. Don played him a couple of the tracks, and he . . . played them on his show several week running. . . . And so I became a recording artist, which hadnât originally been the idea at all . . . . Although the album didnât, as they used to say, trouble the charts, it did pretty well really, perhaps partly because it didnât sound much like anything else. It might have done even better, but the trouble was it didnât sound much like anything else.
Liner notes to the CD reissue of the â70 Beware of the Beautiful Stranger album.
Sizzling â66 A-side of the first of two singles by the Hammond, Indiana, band, which was led by 16 year old Don Revercomb. The organist (then 15) who played on the demo but not the actual single remembers that:
One of my most memorable gigs was at the Purple Poodle Teen Club in Hobart, Indiana. We opened for the Troggs and [we had to] wear long hair Beatle wigs . . . announcing to the audience that we were from England!
Being associated with a rock and roll band with a song on the radio had profound influence on the high school girls, putting me on a par with the sport jocks!
The group broke up when one member who âworked swing shifts at the steel mill . . . had to make the choice of not calling off anymore or being fired,â another memberâs âgirlfriend got pregnant and he had to get a fulltime jobâ and Carol Buehler, Donâs wife-to-be and singer on their second single, got pregnant. Seehttps://garagehangover.com/omens-searching-cody/. This was the real world.
In honor of todayâs Thanksgiving family get-togethers and the outpouring of love that readers of my blog sent Howard Tateâs way, here is Tateâs second minor hit â âLook at Granny Run Run.â It performed just about identically to âAinât Nobody Homeâ (#259), reaching #67 in February of â67 (#12 R&B). Written by two legendary songwriters â Jerry Ragovoy (also Tateâs producer) and Mort Shuman â it sounds like a Viagra infomercial, but one written decades before the little blue pill came onto the market.
Fleamarketfunk says:
With a nice piano hook, and funky bass line, this tale of a horny Grand Dad . . . paints a vivd picture of Granny running around the house from her now randy husband . . . . Jerry Ragovoy and Howard Tate really knew how to fuse together Gospel, Soul and the blues. . . . Southern church boy goes from church to secular music, then goes away, gets on drugs, gets swindled, and fades further into obscurity. However, there is a happy ending to this. Tate is back on track, recording and performing, and while still holding his underground status has remained an inspiration for many musicians today. Here is what one great musician had to say about him:
âOne of the sweetest voices in soul music, combined with one of the most savvy soul producersâHoward Tate & Jerry Ragavoyâand God has seen fit to reincarnate them! Is this a beautiful country or what âAl Kooper
From â70âs Atom Heart Mother(see #38). Paul Mattâs writes regarding Roger Watersâs âIfâ that:
[I]t is a step in the direction of familiar future Waters issues, such as the madness expressed on Dark Side of the Moon. Some feel the âspaces between friendsâ line is a reference to the gap in the friendship of the band with Syd Barrett . . . .â
Richie Unterberger says of Howard Tate in All Music Guide:
Highly regarded by soul music cultists and virtually unknown by anybody else, Howard Tate had some minor success . . . in the late ’60s. The singer brought a lot of blues and gospel to his phrasing . . . . Heâs most famous to rock audiences as the original performer of “Get It While You Can,” which became one of Janis Joplinâs signature tunes.
Harry Weinger tells us in the liner notes to Tate’s ârediscoveryâ CD that:
He was on the radio, was covered by the likes of Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Grand Funk Railroad and B.B. King, and his style clearly influenced singers from Steve Winwood to Al Green. Then he disappeared. . . . [Before he was rediscovered,] Howard, it turned out, had given up on music. He also suffered tragic family loss, ended up addicted on the streets of Camden. A religious awakening brought him back to church in 1994, where he ministers and feeds the homeless in south Jersey.
“Ain’t Nobody Home” was Tate’s first single and biggest success (reaching #63 in August ’66 (#12 on the R&B chart)). I think it would work well for Adele:
258) Reparata and the Delrons — âTake a Look Around Youâ
Here is a wonderful ’65 B-side by the Delrons. They got together in â62 (the year I was born!) at St. Brendanâs Catholic School in Brooklyn (where I was living!). As to their name, Mary O’Leary, their first lead vocalist, explained that their managers wanted one that was flamboyant and flashy, sort of like Martha & the Vandellas. Her confirmation name was Reparata, which she had taken “from the choir mistress at the Good Shepherd elementary school — Sister Mary Reparata, my favourite nun” [liner notes to The Best of Reparata & the Delrons]. And so they were christened.
Bruce Eder says in All Music Guide that:
For a group that never made the Top 40, and came along almost too late to exploit the [girl group] sound they produced,* Reparata and the Delrons have proved amazingly durable. . . . [They] were one of hundreds of girl groups that flourished in the early ’60s, and actually had a higher profile than many of their rivals, achieved in their own time by their participation in a pair of Dick Clark national tours and, for years after, from the fact that they actually released a complete LP to accompany their one widely recognized [’64] hit, “Whenever a Teenager Cries” [which reached #60 in February of ’65].
* I guess, as Billy Joel once said, you Catholic girl groups start much too late.
Their greatest success was with âCaptain of Your Ship,” which reached #15 in the UK in ’68 and got them an English tour.
No, Ashiya, not that Kaleidoscope. This is a â67 single from an American band founded by multi-instrumental super-session player (and future leader of El Rayo-X) David Lindley.
Lindsay Planer says in All Music Guide that:
[Kaleidoscope] synthesized rock & roll with roots and world music, first yielding Side Trips [on which todayâs song appeared] arguably the most diverse effort of 1967. . . . . The mid-tempo ballad “Please” was picked as the single . . .
Arnold Shawâs liner notes describe the album as:
It’s inventive, imaginative, intense and an amalgam of many divergent influences — sounds that range from old-time ragtime blues to exotic, drone-and-bells, minor-keyed music of Greece and Turkey, and even incorporate a Cab Calloway-Eddie South imitation of Minnie the Moocher. It’s music that is off-beat, far-out, and as unbuttoned as their comments about themselves.
According to Discogs, Lindley plays the acoustic and electric guitar, upright and electric bass guitar, banjo, lap steel guitar, mandolin, hardingfele, bouzouki, cittern, baÄlama, gumbus, charango, cĂźmbĂźĹ, oud, weissenborn, and zither, among other instruments. Lindley indicates on Side Tripsâs liner notes that he dislikes: “cool girls, unenthusiastic-about-anything phonies, bigots, hypocrisy, death/war, drugs, self-centered masses, what greed makes people do.” Did he think he was giving Playboy a centerfold quote?
âSearchingââs lyrics should be required reading in any âHow to Be a Good Friendâ class. They obviously come from a very personal place.
Another wistful and gorgeous song from the all-too-short lived Justine (see #200). Clem of Nazareth perfectly captures the band and the song:
Justine were short-lived and quickly forgotten, but the band did manage to put out one really charming and intoxicating record, especially if youâre one of those kind of people who love the late sixties/early seventies West Coast pop sound (which of course had more than a little psych sprinkled in it). The more harmonic and brightly delivered parts of these songs fit that description perfectly, while at the same time the post-War influence of British folk is evident in many of the arrangements that lie embedded in between the loosely-coupled and stoned meanderings. [T]he lovely young ladies delivering vocals seem to have taken their cues from the Mamas & the Papas, Quicksilver Messenger Service and every other band like them who surrounded themselves with paisley and patchouli until time and temperance caused them to change or fade away. . . . âSee Sawâ makes it a trio of hippie folk tunes just right for a lazy summer day in a park somewhere.
Richie Unterberger opines in All Music Guide that:
At its sappiest and most cooing, it could almost pass for a Californian sunshine pop recording. What the songs lack, however, are memorable choruses, or much cohesion between the parts, although the individual parts (especially the female vocalists’ contributions) are often pretty. File under the section with the many stylistically confused rock bands of the period who had some talent and tried hard to say something important, but didn’t quite have the goods.
Uh, file under bullsh*t! When did sunshine pop become a bad thing?! This song is so memorable, I can’t get it out of my head. Richie, even great critics (and you are great) sometimes get it horribly wrong.
Earlier this year, Chris Willman noted perceptively in Variety that:
How is it that the most idiosyncratic major songwriter of our lifetimes also came to be the most covered? Bob Dylan may be full of songs that are personal, peculiar and sometimes inscrutable, but if anything, thatâs made them even more of a magnet for any vocal interpreter or kindred-spirit singer-songwriter who ever saw a Dylan original that was tangled up in wordplay and saw it as a nut to crack. On paper, his material should be daunting â but on Spotify, you can find user-generated playlists of covers of Dylan tunes that actually extend to more than 4,000 recordings . . . . [M]usicians [believe they possess] the beautiful presumption to know what was in Dylanâs always mysterious, always revelatory heart when they interpreted these tunes . . . or [donât even care] if they [think they can] make them even prettier.
The results â often forgetable, often misguided, sometimes excruciating, and once in a blue moon revelatory. This last category has some famous examples: Bob and his career (along with the rest of us) owe a debt of gratitude to the Byrds for âMr. Tambourine Man,â to Jimi Hendrix for âAll Along the Watchtower,â to Manfred Mann for âQuinn the Eskimo,â and to the Band for âI Shall Be Released.â But sometimes the revelations still need to be more broadly revealed.
253) Them — âItâs All Over Now Baby Blueâ
Themâs rendition of âItâs All Over Now Baby Blueâ is one of those blue moon moments. Clinton Heylin has called it âthat genuine rarity, a Dylan cover to match the original.â
Van Morrison has had a long fascination with Dylan:
I think I heard The Freewheelinâ Bob Dylan in a record shop in Smith Street. And I just thought it was just incredible that this guyâs not singing about âmoon in Juneâ and heâs getting away with it. . . . The subject matter wasnât pop songs, ya know, and I thought this kind of opens the whole thing up.
Clinton Heylin, Can You Feel the Silence?: Van Morrison: A New Biography 134-35 (2003)..
As to âBaby Blueâ:
Morrisonâs record producer . . . Bert Berns, encouraged him to find models for his songs, so he bought Dylanâs Bringing It All Back Home album in March 1965. One of the songs on the album held a unique fascination for Morrison and he soon started performing âItâs All Over Now, Baby Blueâ in small clubs and pubs as a solo artist (without Them).
Only on Dylanâs âIt’s All Over Now, Baby Blueâ does Van truly shatter all the limits on his special powers. . . . Played very fast, Van’s voice virtually fighting for control over the band, âBaby Blueâ emerges as music that is both dramatic and terrifying.
Greil Marcus, Review of Astral Weeks, Rolling Stone, March 1, 1969.
Marcus has also said that â[a]s they listened to Them, people who already knew the song by heart weren’t certain they had ever heard it before.”
Steven Gaydos:
Perhaps the only rock and roll artist of the â60s who can match Bob Dylan in the fields of longevity, complexity, soulfulness and songwriting productivity, Van Morrison the singer also has a way of uncapping Dylanâs frantic, vulnerable, fearfulness that no other interpreter has ever done. When Van does Bob, all the human tragedy of vanquished dreams, unfulfilled desires and bitter disappointments come to life.
Perhaps itâs because Van himself is so adept at wordplay that reaches into the mystic, to coin a phrase, but when Van sings âBlueâ the songâs urgency is vibrant, the desire to move on clearly a life or death proposition.
254) Ben E. King â âIn the Midnight Hour/Lay Lady Lay”
Wax Poetics says that:
The record finds the former Drifter delivering an uncharacteristically loose, but truly gorgeous, set of almost psychedelic country-soul. King would never release another record like this, so enjoy.
Don Heckman wrote in the New York Times on August 2, 1970 that:
An interesting trend seems to he developing in which black artists finally are turning the tables on an old music industry practice â the making of âcovers.â In the past, âcoversâ usually consisted of noteâforânote simulations by white performers of recordings that originally were made by black singers and musicians. Lately, however, performers like Ike & Tina Turner, Isaac Hayes, and now Ben E. King, have been producing their own versions of tunes originally written and recorded by such white stars as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Typically, black performers haven’t been content to simply imitate: at times their versions are even superior to the originals. Ben E. King, late of the Drifters and best known for his early sixties hit âSpanish Harlem,â adds another wrinkle to the process in his first release for the new Maxwell label. Three familiar pieces, Dylan’s âLay Lady Lay,â Lennon & McCartney’s âCome Togetherâ and Bobby Russell’s âLittle Green Applesâ are considerably enlivened by their mixture with Wilson Pickett’s âIn The Midnight Hourâ (with âLay Lady Layâ), Rudy Clark’s âIf You’ve Gotta Make A Fool of Somebodyâ (with âCome Togetherâ) and Paul Vanceâ âShe Lets Her Hair Downâ (with âApplesâ). Surprisingly, the blend heightens the effectiveness of all the tunes. . . . The consistency with which King finds vigorously original interpretations of such familiar material is, for a performer rarely identified with such songs, remarkable. If this is the current style in âcovers,â we can be happy that something new and creative has come out of the cynical past.
255) Johnny Cash — “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”
Chris Morris wrote recently in Variety that:
Cash was one of the first major supporters and interpreters of his friend and label mateâs music â to the extent that he lifted the melody of this song wholesale for his own composition âUnderstand Your Man,â released in 1964. But the Man in Black finally got around to cutting his own solid, boom-chicka-booming version of the original tune, issued as a single later that year and included as one of the three Dylan compositions heard on the 1965 album âOrange Blossom Special.â
OK, please donât walk away â even you, Renee: this shimmering baroque number was written by the Left Bankeâs driving force, but isnât performed by the Left, rather by four guys from Jersey (even though the Left had recorded it first, after the songwriter had left the Left but wrote it for them anyway). Got it?
Mark Deming explains:
Michael Brown, the [Left Bankeâs] 17-year-old wunderkind, songwriter, and pianist, decided he didn’t care for life on the road. By the time the Left Banke cut their second album, Brown was out of the picture . . . . Brown reconciled with his bandmates long enough to write and produce a single, and both sides were included on [the album], with “Desiree” sounding like a grander variation on the tone of the first LP. The single was a flop, and none of the [other] songs . . . fared any better, but even though it proved the be the band’s swan song, it’s a great pop album . . . .
Michael Hann flips out over the Left Bankeâs âDesireeâ in the (UK) Guardian:
In Desiree, though, it had the best song [Brown] ever composed, arranged and recorded: anyone who thinks Brian Wilson was the only person capable of jaw dropping symphonic pop in 1967 should pay close attention. Brown knew he’d hit the jackpot, too, despite the US public’s obstinate refusal to send it higher than No 98 in the Billboard Hot 100 [in October of â67] â he rerecorded it for the only album by his next group, Montage, though not as well . . . .
As to Montageâs version, Jack Rabid (is that his real name?) explains:
Montage sounds far more like the real follow-up to the Left Banke’s first LP . . . than the actual one, The Left Banke, Too. This is because after the first LP the band’s three singers had sadly parted ways with keyboardist and prime songwriter Michael Brown, who instead became Montage’s mentor/mastermind. . . . And though Brown was not technically a Montage member, he not only wrote all the music and produced this LP, but he also played all the trademark piano and organ and charted the vocal arrangements. Yet the four New Jersey no-names he found clearly translated his vision of extraordinarily lush, unspeakably beautiful orchestral chart pop.
Finally, Richie Unterberger noted that Montage “might as well be considered a Michael Brown solo project . . . . [w]ith lovely choral vocals and sublime pop melodies, it strongly recalls Brown’s work with the Left Banke.” (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/montage-mn0001206263/biography)
OK, there are mixed opinions about which version of âDesireeâ is better. I love both versions, but give the edge to Montage. See what you think.
As I said regarding song #94, the Banana’s “Alexander,” the group was the Pretty Things in disguise, making some much needed money by providing songs for films trying to be hip. David Wells’s liner notes to The Complete De Wolfe Sessions comp explain that:
[The] Swinging London phenomenon had led to a profusion of groovy movies chronicling life [there] that, naturally enough, required an appropriately switched-on soundtrack for added verisimilitude. However, film companies soon discovered that the cost of licensing bona fide hit singles was prohibitively high [so, the music library de Wolfe] started searching for a young, vibrant pop group who were capable fo providing an authentic but relatively inexpensive sound.
Wells calls “Grey Skies” “classily neuroticâ and notes that it was âfeatured in the proto-slasher, Swinging-London-cum-Hammer-horror exploitation film The Haunted House of Horror.” IMDb unraps the plot of the ’69 cult classic:
A group of sixties teenagers [including Frankie Avalon!] bored with the party they’re at drive out to a deserted old mansion, but their laughter turns to fear when one of them is killed in a frenzied knife attack. Another of them persuades the rest that they should solve the murder themselves rather than go to the police, not surprisingly opening the way to further carnage.
I donât honor the Del-Vetts because they hail from my hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, a semi-tony Chicago suburb on the shores of Lake Michigan. OK, it doesnât hurt. And had they been from Winnetka, it would be a cold day in hell. . . But enough about my methodology.
The Del-Vetts got together in â63, shortly after I was born. But I lived in NYC at the time, so it is not like I was a big fan. âThe Last Timeâ was actually the first time, the bandâs first single for Dunwich, the legendary Chicago garage rock label (think the Shadows of Knight). It was an instant classic. As the canonical Nuggets comp opines:
Their first Dunwich single . . . in May 1966, is absolutely electrifying, with a desperation-choked vocal riding a lethal guitar-and-bass riff. The song takes off into a spectacular, fuzz-guitar rave-up before spiraling back to earth for a final lap of emotional despair. Any resemblance between [the] guitar solo here and Jeff Beck’s on The Yardbirds’ “Mister You’re A Better Man Than I” is probably less than coincidental.
Jason Ankeny concurs in All Music Guide:
A snarling fuzz-rocker featuring a blistering . . . guitar solo clearly inspired by Jeff Beckâs work in the Yardbirds [it] topped local radio play lists throughout the summer . . . [It] remains a masterpiece of the garage punk genre . . . .
And Jeff Jarema calls the song an “earwax-melting classicâ in his liner notes to Oh Yeah! The Best of Dunwich Records, He elaborates on the songâs trajectory:
Despite its crunching riff, hopelessly depressing lyrics, and ear-splitting guitar break, [the song] was picked up by both [Chicago Top 40 stations] WLS and WCFL and even appeared on their charts in July. Somewhat surprisingly, the record failed to break nationally while local momentum suffered from the five-month wait for the group’s follow-up . . . .
Tragically, lead singer and guitarist Jim Lauer spent much of his later life confined to a mental institution. âThe Last Timeâ was written by Lauerâs friend Dennis Dahlquist.
This is where it all began for Parliament (well, it really all began in 1955, but this was the first album). Alongside all George Clintonâs glorious ribaldry and side-splitting antics, the Wizard of Odd drops âOh Lord,â a stunning âgospel lament . . . [Parliamentâs] most reverent and straightforward cry against racial injusticeâ (Grace Birnstengel in Stereogum). This is a song for the ages, one that should have been etched in the grooves of the Voyagerâs golden disc to demonstrate to alien civilizations both the best and the worst of the human spirit.
Ned Raggett in All Music Guide says that â[a]midst all the nuttiness [of the album], there are some perhaps surprising depths — consider âOh Lord, Why Lord/Prayer,â which might almost be too pretty for its own good . . . .â Sorry Ned, it is pretty enough for all our good.
Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelationsđ 