A historical factoid, a rock and roll moment and usually a song all combine (if not collide) with my individual perspective and opinion at least once a day, sometimes more.
OK, I'm going to rattle off some songs I really like: The Kinks' Days, Girl from Mill Valley from the loner's Beck-Ola, Slip Kid from Who By Numbers, the Rolling Stones' She's a Rainbow, Donovan's Atlantis from the outstanding Barabjagal LP, Jefferson Airplane's We Can Be Together from Volunteers (hell, throw in the title track, too. Gotta love Paul Kantner using one riff for two songs on the same album), the Jayhawks' Waiting for the Sun from Hollywood Town Hall, John Lennon's Jealous Guy ... OK, besides the fact that I like all of them, what the heck do these songs have in common? Mr. Nicky Hopkins on piano, that's what. Legendary session musician, Hopkins was born on this day in 1944 and died far too early (plagued with poor health since childhood) at the age of 50. Ray Davies—who wrote in The New York Times in '95 that Hopkins "had the ability to turn an ordinary track into a gem"—was thinking of Nicky Hopkins and his vocation when he composed this song (with harpsichord and piano courtesy of ... well, you guess.).
Forty
nine years ago today a drummer came into this world who Mötley Crüe's
singer Vince Neil helped escort from it. Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley was
the Brit drummer who provided the unfailing and unflinching beat for
the Finnish glam band Hanoi Rocks from 1982 until that fateful day in
December of '84 (six days after he turned 24) when Vince and Razzle
climbed into the fancy Italian sports car that Mr. Neil should have
never tried to drive to the liquor store. This song is from their '81
debut album Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks. Razzle did not
join the band in the studio (replacing Gyp Casino) until their fourth
effort, Back to Mystery City but he starts off this live
performance. If you've not heard of them before, Hanoi Rocks was an
excellent band (and clearly Guns 'N Roses were taking notes).
Eighty two years ago today, the man who originally wrote the Twist was born. Hank Ballard and his Midnighters never had the same kind of luck with the song and associated dance that Chubby Checker did.
Ballard's version was released as a b-side to the slow and sinuous Teardrops on Your Letter in '59 and failed to reach the top fifth of Billboard's Hot 100. Frankly, I see the logic of the Twist as a flipside, Teardrops is a superior song.
Checker's cover of the Twist, by contrast, topped the charts initially in September of 1960 and then, stepping into the same league as Bing Crosby's White Christmas, hit number one again in a separate release January of '62. Hardly a stretch to say that the song was the spark, if not the mainstay, of Checker's career. He has complained it was a success so big that everyone assumed this was the one and only trick his pony could do. It's tempting to observe that Checkers has ever gained much ground in attempts to disprove that, but all that's another story since today's spotlight is on Ballard.
Hank Ballard had a reputation for lyrics that were too raunchy for airplay in the uptight and repressed '50s, even back when his group was more doo wop than R&B and was called the Royals (they later changed to the Midnighters to avoid confusion with the 5 Royales who had hits such as Think and Dedicated to the One I Love). Take for example Get It where Ballard certainly seems to be evoking love more carnal than romantic when amidst various whoops and hoots he sings, "get it, get it, get it, I wanna see you with it." and the bass man asks "now ease on up here baby, now don't you wanna see a good man with it?" Paper roses, this ain't.
Many radio stations refused to play Get It, which was similar in structure to the better known, but no less ribald, Work with me, Annie ("Annie, please don't cheat/Give me all my meat."). This was followed by the song Annie Had a Baby with Ballard singing, "Annie had a baby, can't work no more." You only have to listen to the song once to understand he was not talking about maternity leave.
It gets better. The Midnighters' third hit was simply called Sexy Ways. Plenty of rock and roll songs circa '54 implied sex and sexuality, but not many had the word in the title. Great piano touches in this song if you listen closely.
And (this'll kill ya') Ballard, who died in '03, has been quoted as saying "If you're looking for youth, you're looking for longevity, just take a dose of rock and roll—it keeps you going."
On this day 78 years ago, Sri Chinmoy was born (he died in 2007). The Indian philosopher and spiritual instructor emigrated to the United States in 1964 and taught the wisdom and value of following a path of "Love, Devotion and Surrender". His teachings (and an obvious desire to pay homage to John Coltrane) inspired guitarists John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana to record and release this LP in 1973. Though both McLaughlin and Santana would eventually cease to follow Chinmoy's teachings, the album still holds up fine.
Today
in 1942, Ian Dury was born. A musical artist still largely unrecognized
in the USA, although he had his moment in the UK limelight, Dury was a
kick ass funky front man, brilliant lyricist and according to his obit
in the UK's Guardian "one of few true originals of the English music
scene." Hit me!
Today
was apparently a good day for twisted individuals to come into our
world. What is the calendar trying to tell us when we observe that one
year to the day after Simon John Ritchie (AKA Sid Vicious) came into
the world (today in '57), former US senator Rick Santorum was born.
Both celebrated same day birthdays up until Sid died in '79. They
never, as far as we know, had the same barber.
James Brown, born today in 1933, had many epithets: Soul Brother Number One, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Dynamite, The Godfather of Soul, etc.
All are fun and well deserved, but I humbly suggest "The Founding Father of Funk". Brown's famous exhortation
to his band ("On the one!") essentially meant go for the downbeat instead of the
backbeat, which was far more common in R&B, at least until circa '64 when
Brown began his brand new bag: a sweaty stew of downbeat driven vamps,
horn fills & gasping, grunting guttural, verging on percussive vocals pierced by screeching falsettos when you least expected it but where, a split second afterward, you knew it obviously belonged. And funk was born.
Check out this clip from the Ed Sullivan show and as you watch and listen ask yourself what's not quite right with what's going on.
First of all, Brown's brand of funk, and perhaps funk in general, cannot be rushed. It's all about the persistent driving beat and nearly monochord vamps that allowed Brother James to build to his ecstatic intensity. Second of all, I'll bet that Sullivan's house band, while competent, was mostly white. And if not, at least restrained from putting the stank on what they played. And if you don't put the stank on it, you ain't got no funk. Contrast and compare the wham bam keep it clean and thank you, ma'm Brown performance from the Sullivan show to this clips which is a much older James Brown but also more able to command his own environment and thus far more funky.
A clear precursor (damn near the same song) to Poppa's Got a Brand New Bag was the song Out of Sight, which James Brown wrote under the pen name Ted Wright in 1964. Here it is done admirably by blues great Buddy Guy.
The late Alexander Lee "Skip" Spence was born today in 1946. His musical chops graced the output of both early Jefferson Airplane (as a drummer and only on their first LP Jefferson Airplane Takes Off) and of Moby Grape (as a co-founder/guitarist with band manager Matthew Katz). He started as a guitarist with Quicksilver Messenger Service, but none of this work with that band was ever recorded and released. Omaha, from Moby Grape's eponymous debut album, is one of the better known songs written by Mr. Spence.
Similar to Roky Erickson's story, powerful drugs—both the free wheelin' psychedelic street variety and those sanctioned by the psych ward—didn't mix well with Mr. Spence's brain chemistry. According to his fellow Moby Graper, Peter Lewis, Spence fell in with a nasty crowd who supplied some heavy drugs when the band was staying in New York City to record their second album Wow. This bad mojo resulted in Spence having some sort of a breakdown and threatening with an axe fellow band members, the doorman at the hotel where Moby Grape was staying and, eventually, Columbia producer David Rubinson on the 52nd floor of the CBS offices. Rubinson pressed charges and Spence was shipped to Bellevue where, as Lewis summarized in a '95 interview, "They shot him full of Thorazine for six months. They just take you out of the game."
While incarcerated, he wrote the songs for his only solo LP Oar which he recorded after his release from Bellevue. The LP is an odd and lovely artifact that has become legendary within some circles of psychedelic sixties music aficionados and music geeks in general. I recently discovered it thanks to my friend, musican and Daily Doser Eston. This is one of my favorite tracks from the album.
Today in 1939 the late Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, OBE was born. Not all pop is rock and roll and vice versa. Every rare once in a while comes a talent so strong that I don't care about the distinctions between the two.
From her first solo single, I Only Want to Be with You (1964), to her final album, A Very Fine Love (1995), Dusty Springfield was that kind of talent—a matchless vocalist and a beautiful person.
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