Birthday Girl Fish Fry!

*
Little Oscar, my favorite geezer lady, is having a birthday for a few more hours, so here's a treat for her from the days when "Doug Stephenson" roamed the earth and Columbia Record Club would send you five---FIVE!---free LPs as long as you'd buy one a month for the rest of your life or send it back within 7 days at your own expense.



Whatever Gary Lewis album this was on, we heard the damn thing about five times a day for the entire summer of 1965 in heavy rotation with Jay & The Americans and Jan & Dean. Probably no one is more responsible for me taking up leaded gasoline for recreational use than Little Oscar and Gary Lewis' goddam Playboys!

I embedded this particular version of the selected tune, however, for reasons that have much to do with me and nothing to do with Little Oscar. See if you can guess what they are. Unfortunately, LO did not have any hot friends like the ones tearing it up above, with the possible exception of Terri W. who I was still slightly too young to "appreciate." But she and her bra-stuffing girlfriends were all nice girls, with no vices other than Pepsi. They were never a pain to be around. And that's about the nicest thing any kid can be expected to say about his big sister.

Happy Birthday, Little Oscar!

Little Miss Go-Go, Gary Lewis & the Playboys (1965, Liberty 55778 [45 rpm single; can't track down the album catalog number]), via YouTube, embedded with a claim of fair use because it's Little Oscar's birthday!!!

Editor's note: I read in the liner notes of my CD greatest hits collection that this recording was Take 27! Can you imagine that? I think Brian Wilson must have put together "Good Vibrations" in fewer takes than that.

Friday Night Prayer Meeting

*
Another piece (of several posted previously) masterminded by one of the most ubiquitous music men of the past 60 years.



I can't remember what I've written about Quincy Jones in the past and don't feel like looking it up, but his fingerprints are all over jazz, pop, rock, and movie scores that even people somewhat familiar with the man wouldn't suspect. The Wikipedia writeup covers a lot, but misses interesting projects. He worked for, with, or over everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Lesley Gore, Billy Eckstein, Michael Jackson, and Steven Spielberg. He did lay his share of stinkers along the way, unfortunately. His "Soul Bossa Nova" is loathsome, and practically ruins his 1962 album Big Band Bossa Nova to my overly delicate sensibilities (it's that stupid, flutey theme used in Austin Powers movies). Also, his experimentation with trying to make Louis Jordan into a rock and roll star on Mercury is interesting for an occasional listen, but the results are fairly sickening to a Jordan fan even if they sound swell in a way.

The album where this track originates, Walking in Space, is a record that made a number of alienated white high-school boys feel pretty hip. In listening, you can probably tell why. It's lush, it swings, and it's easily accessible to anyone who wants to hear. Upon recently repurchasing this album on CD, I find that I'm not quite as enamored with it as I was in 1969. Of course, I'm also no longer enamored of railroad-stripe bell bottoms and my electric blue spread-collar button-up type shirt purchased from Chess King.

Even when I was a teenager, there was a thing or two that sat wrong with me about the sound, but I couldn't put it into words. (I was just then emerging from my Leaded Gasoline Phase.) Today I'd express that uneasiness as two related criticisms. One is that the whole project pretty much talks down to many jazz listeners, even younger ones, with its relentless mellowness and too-easy solos. That recording session was staffed with major stars of all jazz eras up to that time, including "moldy figs" like Kai Winding and Snooky Young as well as younger giants like Roland Kirk, Ray Brown, and Eric Gale.  My other beef is that Jones uses only background vocals throughout without any prominent lead. (Even the solo vocal on the title track is produced like a background.) The orchestral setting seems designed to showcase a strong vocalist, but instead Jones arranges for an ethereal collection of background voices who serve roughly the same purpose here that go-go dancers served in mid-sixties rock. Today, this strikes me as somewhat creepy.

But I'm being too much of a dick about it. There's no reason to be any more of a snob about the sound of this album than Thriller, which I really enjoy a few times a year. I have plenty of space in my life for hookey, easy listening music, which is why I put it on the player tonight.

Killer Joe, Quincy Jones (1969, from "Walking In Space," Verve 314 543 499-2 [2000 CD reissue]) via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*
I've always considered this a gorgeous pop song, with the mix and more economical edit of the original single being the superior version.



As a lad I responded little and thought even less about pop music lyrics. The main reason is that the words sounded largely unintelligible to my ears, and so I paid attention to vocals almost exclusively in terms of their musical characteristics.

About 10 years later, when my brain was fully developed and I could both understand the words and parse their meaning, I remember being shocked by just how sociopathic the lyrics of this tune really are. By this time in "rock and roll history" (i.e., 1966), there were plenty of really cold lyrics about boy/girl-type stuff, such as Under My Thumb and Norwegian Wood (although I didn't "get" those, either). But, for cryin' out loud, I Saw Her Again is not only pretty, but quite a sweet and jaunty little production. As I say, this tale of a man deliberately and remorselessly exploiting an unsuspecting woman is downright creepy.

Only tonight, when I as looking for a version to post here, I learned that the story behind the composition is even more twisted than I'd suspected. The following is an extract from the notes posted about this cut at YouTube:

Mamas & Papas leader, John Phillips revealed in an interview that the "I Saw Her Again" was composed after he learned that Michelle Phillips (John's wife and fellow group member) and Denny Doherty (also a group member) were having an affair while the group was on tour. He laughingly told Dick Bartley that he wrote the song "so Denny would have to sing it on stage every night and feel guilty".  

You may remember reading in recent years that Mr. Phillips is said to have been quite a piece of work, so his expressed mirth in the above text supports the squick factor of the whole production, as I experienced it when I first paid attention to the lyrics. And because of that (but not the whole drugging-his-daughter-for-incest thing, which allegedly occurred 13 years later), I enjoy this song now more than I ever did before. It's analogous to a principle used in formulating perfumes: every world-class scent includes a minuscule portion of a gut-wrenching odor such as vomit, urine-saturated rags, or rotting flesh. Maybe this is why some of our greatest artists are, in their personal lives, monsters. Or the converse may be true.

Also, for historical interest, go to the notes on YouTube to find out for once and for all whether the famous false start on the outchorus (at 2:15 in the video) was intentional or not. Hint: it was a production error---just what it sounds like---but producer Lou Adler thought it sounded awesome, so they kept it.  

I Saw Her Again, The Mamas & The Papas (1966, Dunhill 4031 [45 rpm single]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*
A nice, nostalgic kettle of fish for you to fry:



This is the UK release of a brisk little ditty by a cheeky group of RAF personnel. The lyrics were toned down for the US market, supposedly, but the only difference I can detect here is the inclusion of a line about birth control... which would still be too controversial for the US pop charts here in good old 2013.

I noticed on the label that the tune was composed and produced by Jonathan King, who is best known (to me) for his 1965 wimp-rock ballad "Everyone's Gone To The Moon." Evidently, according to Wikipedia, Mr. King has had his hands in lots of projects over the years, ranging from work with Genesis, 10cc, the Bay City Rollers, a film called Vile Pervert: The Musical, and a 2001 conviction on charges of sexual assault of five teenage boys between 1983 and 1989.

It's Good News Week, Hedgehoppers Anonymous (1965, Decca F.12241), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Stars and stripes

*

A few years ago while drifting into sleep on a Sunday night, I had an aesthetic experience with a John Philip Sousa march. Our FM public radio station used to run a show called Pipe Dreams, which featured a fairly wide range of music as performed on genuine pipe organs. (In its effort to make WILL-FM "even better," the program was eliminated 2 years ago and replaced with the same syndicated (i.e., simulated) classical music programming that fills about 18 hours of their 24-hour daily schedule.)

Anyway, that evening on Pipe Dreams was presented a rendition of Sousa's iconic "Stars and Stripes Forever," zestily pounded out on a major league, one-off concert pipe organ. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to retain either the organist's name or any information about his mighty instrument into the next day's waking world. But my mind was in a peculiarly receptive state between waking and sleeping, and the performance enthralled me.

I had enjoyed playing alto and tenor saxophone parts, both first and second, on this ditty in high school because most of the other instruments (especially the piccolo) were doing all the hard work. Yet the arranger---Hal Leonard, no doubt---was generous enough to let all the saxes play soli on one of the several famous melodies penned for the march... the one that goes "Dah Dah Dah-duh-duh duh-Duh-Duh" and so on. As with my K-12 concert band experience (starting in 5th grade, actually), my marching and pep band experience helped to plow a larger field for my musical tastes than I'd have tended otherwise.

But hearing "Stars and Stripes Forever" in my mentally, and I'd even say psychically, receptive state, made a memorable impression on me even on the verge of slumber. First, I was able to hear that the organist was hitting every essential note in the score outside of the percussion parts. That was plenty of a mind-blower to me, physical-coordinationwise, who admittedly is not familiar with the level of virtuosity needed for, say, Bach's baroque organ works. But more important was the clarity with which I grasped Sousa's composition. It was the first time I had ever experienced Stars and Stripes as a masterpiece of form, coherence, and even arithmetic.

I tried earlier today to find the specific performance of my memory on YouTube, but I couldn't (not on the first page, at least). The versions posted there are flawed, soundwise and performance-wise. The main problems are excessive echo or audience noise, which obscures an organist's precision; or, more typically, an organist's actual lack of precision and expressiveness. The version I heard that night was a well-engineered studio recording with all requisite reverb, but not too much. And the performer, whomever he was, sounded like he really got the piece. At the time of its composition, Stars and Stripes was not a mere patriotic chestnut written to be pried out of its shell once a year, but was actually a huge pop music genre of the period. I have no serious knowledge about American music before the emergence of jazz, but I suspect that Sousa marches were about the equivalent of rock and roll at the turn of the 20th century.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

I heard someone commenting on NPR earlier this evening that it would be "impossible to overstate" the impact of Billy Strange on American pop.



Well, I don't mean to pick on the late Mr. Strange, who died on Tuesday. But, no, it wouldn't be impossible at all to overstate his influence. In fact, I'll do it right now:

Billy Strange was without doubt the most influential American pop musician of the 20th and 21st centuries!

Hyperbole is the chronic halitosis of our public discussion. Being the rhetorical equivalent of typing with the CAPS LOCK ON, it's tiresome. (Funny---I just noticed that type on the key cap of the CAPS LOCK key on my MacBook Pro is set in all lowercase characters.) Being the distorter of meaning, it undermines our collective ability to communicate. And in this case, reflexive hyperbole can set up the uninformed (including myself) for disappointment upon investigation. Meaning that it does a disservice to the memory of the deceased. It's cheap.

Yes, Mr. Strange penned some hits (including the horrible "Limbo Rock" for Chubby Checker) and had some enjoyable musical input to the Frank and Nancy Sinatra repertoire of the mid-1960s. And he was a member of the fabulous Wrecking Crew, a noteworthy career milestone with an ensemble that did in fact have an outsized impact on 1960s rock and pop. But, c'mon, leave the poor guy rest in peace, stupid mass media "culture" reporters.

Here's a nice, previously-unseen-by-me video of Billy Strange performing acoustically with meteoric bilingual boner mill Nancy Sinatra (and I say that with the utmost sincerity). Mr. Strange was a competent and accomplished musician. I'll listen for his Wrecking Crew work next time I play the $#!+ out of Pet Sounds.

Bang Bang, Billy Strange with Nancy Sinatra (mid-1960s, provenance unknown [but probably not US TV considering Nancy's lingua franca intro), embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

Brother's bought new glasses/Shaped like Leon Trotsky's
They look very nice on the mantlepiece/Next to the royal family



This is the single version of the opening track from one of a small handful of discs from the '80s that I really like (i.e., Confessions Of A Pop Group by Style Council). I'm afraid if I told you how I first became aware of Style Council, other than the radio, I'd have to slit your throat from ear to ear in order to silence you about it.

I'm surprised how cheezy the video is. I would have expected a high-concept, arty treatment. But then my mind is too literal ever to be an artist. (I'm more of a craftsman.)

Inspired by this post by Our Man In London, who seems slightly disoriented by Meryl Streep's touching performance portraying a sociopathic, now-demented former prime minister. Every time I listen to this track I myself am a bit disoriented by how much rage infects the synth-y, breezy pop performance. Excellent way to get one's "message" into the dance clubs. This one deserves to be heard through headphones, cranked high.

Life At A Top People's Health Farm, The Style Council (1988, from "The Singular Adventures Of The Style Council," Polydor 837 896-2), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Big Otis!

*

Santa Crutch has decided it's time to jak sie masz Big Otis so he stops picking through everyone else's Christmas stocking. Sing along!



I think you should work this into the rotation when make your traditional Christmas caroling rounds tonight. I'd suggest premiering it at the Persia VFW post, after guzzling perhaps about half a dozen bottles of Slits beer.

Do be sure to have a Blessed Season on this, the Eve of The Most Beautiful Holiday ever conceived by the mind of Homo sapiens. And if you must drink and drive during this holiday season, drink Slits!

Mr. Businessman, Ray Stevens (1968, from "Even Stevens," Monument 18102), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Speculations on the origins of Marginalia

*

Jak sie masz, sir. Let us travel back through the mists of history to examine what I am certain to be a credible account of the Marginalia origin myth.



"They came in tins." Hotcha! I think this explains why that chain mail was all rusted up inside. I am happy that you were able to win the heart of "the missus" (if not then, then eventually) and that your decades of toil enabled you to retire to "the allotment" to produce a bumper crop of "bangers and mash" or whatever it is that grows on your foggy isle. Best wishes to you both.

In my imagination, Swinging London was probably a still a glorious place even at the sunset of Peter and Gordon's recording career. I did in fact enjoy those lads a lot, including---inexplicably---this particular selection. This tune hit in Chicago during the winter of 1967 and helped to keep me company as I walked a predawn paper route with a Montgomery Ward transistor radio about the size of a cinder block in my canvas bag. (It belonged to my sister and played 45 rpm records, too!) It also reminds me of sniffing model airplane glue for some reason. I am certain that you were up to even more glamorous things in those days, in pursuit of your Fair Maid.

The Knight In Rusty Armour, Peter and Gordon (1966, 45 rpm single Capitol 5808), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

...now, you didn't really think I as going to leave you with that thing, did you?



Only three Georgie Fame singles charted in Chicago in the mid-1960s, and this is both the most obscure and my favorite. I've looked for it on YouTube in the past with no success, but now there are several versions posted. I remember being fascinated by the jazzy arrangements of "Yeh Yeh" and (especially) "Get Away." I thought his voice and delivery were about the coolest thing I'd ever heard. Even today, this sound strikes me as unique, and I couldn't really make a very good guess about who influenced his style. I hope this selection isn't overplayed on the oldies programmes in Merrie Olde England, and that it is as much of a flash for you as it was for me to rediscover it.

Get Away, Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames (1966 or 1967, live performance at the Town Hall, Offenbach, West Germany [other performance notes not available]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Little Oscar!

*

Jak sie masz!



It sounds not unlike "boinging music," some might say. Wikipedia tells me that this insane little bundle of gnat notes began life pretty much as a small throwaway interlude at the end of "Act III, Tableau 1" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean). The video was recommended earlier this season by Nick Scratch in a comments thread.

Flight Of The Bumblebee, performed on button accordion by Alexander Dmitriev (composed c. 1900 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Oh, wait. Doesn't Little Oscar like her present? Well then put this one in your pipe and smoke it!



And take that Doug-Stevenson-looking SOB playing guitar with you! At least he may look that way if you squint hard enough. Booze can help. (Well, of course, booze can help anything... except for maybe the heartbreak of cirrhosis.) He sure gets a lot of tones out of that axe around his neck---horns, percussion... in fact, everything except guitar.

Don't you wish you were the senorita with the pearl necklace back there? She's like The Anti-GoGo Girl, lurking in that low-rent MC Escher-type expedient stage landscape, waiting to strike like an asp! A low-energy asp.

Let's Lock The Door, Jay and the Americans (c. 1965, performance information and video provenance unknown), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

For the commenter with many names

*

Jak sie masz! Dude, you are known by more names than The Prince of Darkness. And even if You are He, I'm confident that you will still enjoy what Santa Crutch is about to stuff up your sock.



I think this selection is the absolute cream of Spike Jones. For one thing, I think the arrangement is just simply better than the original by David Rose; the Rose version begins too abruptly, and the first section is too staccato for my taste. The harp intro on this one is an essential touch that I remember from my childhood as we tossed the original Jones 78s around the living room until breaking all but one---this one.

Even though the cowbell in the first bars of the main theme will startle you, the phrasing is more subtle and expressive than in the Rose production. And listen how Jones passes the melody around every coupla beats to a different---but perfectly logical---instrument.

The second section is played surprisingly straight, with melody on whatever kind of bells those are, alternating phrases with brass, and filled with string flourishes. And the third section relies only on comic vocalizations, not Weird-Al type lyrics as Jones so often does in his parodies. It created a riot in the living room every time we played it when the old folks were gone---it's probably why we only have one of those 78s left. This one was on the turntable while we were slinging the others around, driven loony by the laugh chorus.

So, Lucifer, Happy Festivus (or whatever you secular humanists celebrate these days). Or Happy Monday Night, if nothing else. And look on the flip side of the copy of "Drip Drip Drip (Sloppy Lagoon)" you recently acquired; that's actually the B side on my version of Holiday For Strings."

Holiday For Strings, Maestro Spike Jones and His City Slickers (not dated, RCA Victor 20-1733-A, from the 78 rpm album "Musical Depreciation"), embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting [updated]

* 

This may be a nowhere song for many people my age, but I'm always surprised at my emotional response to it. And this reaction has no specific, schmaltzy boy/girl origin; I had to plumb the shallows of my wee brain to put my finger on it. It's about what happens when you don't notice that you've passed a fork in the road.



As pitiful as this sounds, even to me, the 1970s were the best time of my life. And that's even considering some particularly tough sledding in the '73 - '75 timeframe. I suppose memories may take on a lovely, saturated Kodachrome-type patina because our problems didn't turn out to be impossible after all, while the power and romance of wide-open possibilities turns out, for too many of us, to be a high point that can never be replicated once we start the march toward diminished options.

This pensive Earth Wind & Fire single charted in summer 1979, a time I now consider to have been an indescribable rare sunset diffusing into the crisp twilight of a formative era that was destined to end abruptly. I think I even knew that at the time, meaning I sensed the morning that would emerge east of midnight would for some reason, inexplicable to me, twist itself into a deformed and crippled facsimile of a new day. Morning In America dawned brightly to many, but to me colder than it looked through my window; languid, dank, and low in oxygen. For one thing among many, the general character of rock, soul, and pop music seemed to degenerate almost overnight. Suddenly, human vitality was aggressively being displaced through heavy application of digital production methods and all the romance that Big Business has to offer. To my ears, it all started sounding like music produced to sell instead of music to listen to and dance to. Previously, barely a majority of it had struck me that way; I'd always found plenty to like, ranging from Zappa to horn bands to wimp rock to New Wave and Power Pop. Now, in the stale new dawn of 1980, it seemed that almost nothing of that remained.

Some might complain that this track is little more than a clot of overproduced schlock romanticism. Myself, I think it finds a very sweet spot between intimacy and lushness. The layers of keyboards---there are sounds like a concert grand mic'ed for pop timbres, a classic '70s Fender Rhodes electric piano, an analog synthesizer---are washed in a classy orchestral mist. And in back of it all, those swinging, mellow EW&F horns fingerpainting together in the open spaces. If I make an allowance for poetic license, I can almost hear these poignant lyrics as an elegy for social comity, which was soon to fall ill through a plague that very few people (myself included) knew was starting to creep in from under the baseboards. But then, that's just me projecting my ruminations onto the rest of the world. Enjoy the song; I wonder what memories it might tweak in you.

After The Love Has Gone, Earth Wind & Fire (1979, from "I Am," Columbia 35730), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Update: I've done some editing and rewriting to flesh out the mental shorthand I was dealing out last night.

Sunday after hours

*

There is only one reason I'd ever post such a thing to this blog. See if you can guess what it is.



A Walk In The Black Forest, Horst Jankowski (1965, Mercury Records [catalog information unavailable]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: some wags might consider this tune 1965's answer to Kyu Sakamoto's 1963 hit, "Sukiyaki," and also to the eternal question "Who won World War II, you so smart?"

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

Has this ever happened to you?



It didn't happen to me, exactly. However, my 7th grade teacher, Miss Kilmartin, left the employ of Woodland School, Illinois School District 152 and a half (no joke!) around Thanksgiving 1966. Coincidentally, it was about that same time I'd laid my hands on a copy of Playboy (stole it from Timmy Rogers big brother, if I remember correctly) and what to my wondering eyes appeared but a Playmate falling out of her sweater who was a dead ringer for Miss K. I was preoccupied with this mystery for a few weeks late in 1966. My dad, who was a member of the school board during that era, might have shed some light on the subject for me, but I couldn't think of any way to approach the subject with him.

Ahem. Anyway, "Chicago's own" Cryan Shames never hit the charts very hard in other parts of the country, but "the Shames" were one of the Windy City's big three rock bands in terms of local pride during the mid-1960s. In my personal mythology, the golden age of Chicago pop bands (including the Buckinghams and the New Colony Six) was 1965 through about mid-1967, with the Shames coming on fast in 1966 and then pretty much finished along with The Summer Of Love.

That's too bad; I wonder why. It's easy to hear that this band had a lot going for it in this 2-minute gem. Listening to it tonight I was surprised how "California" it sounds, with impressive four-part harmonies like the Beach Boys, jangly Byrdslike guitars, and the peppy good-clean-fun pop sound of The Turtles. Very catchy; very slick. A flawless piece of pop that totally flashes me on getting too much sun during the summer of '66---heard it coming out of transistor radios everywhere.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the story of which band member was infatuated with which model from which magazine, or if he ever got his gal. Probably not. But feel free to chime in if you know the tale.

I Wanna Meet You, Cryan Shames (1966, 45 rpm single Columbia 43836), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday After Hours (Prayer Meeting)

*

That's death
That's what all the people say

On this day in history, 14 May 1998, Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra flew the coop (i.e., this mortal realm) with the parting words to his wife, "I'm losing it...." (I believe the Wikipedia account of this is incorrect or incomplete based on my memory of news coverage at that time.) But tonight I will bypass the obvious choice for commemorating the occasion---"That's Life"---and defer to my ultimate Sinatra cut.



For my money, his phrasing on this is perfect---immaculately understated, which often it was not when he felt the urge to play the aging ring-a-ding hipster or just goof around in live performances. As much as I esteem the vocal, I feel that the real star of this cut is the Nelson Riddle arrangement and the way he conducts his orchestra through it. It sparkles, reflecting the interplay of reedy cross-breezes both near and distant, with clear water surfaces lapping easily at beachfront sand. I've never been able to describe to myself in words what I find so artful and organic about this chart, where string tremolos emerge at the end of a jaunty, muted-horn line and muscular but laconic reed figures leave holes for the similarly reedy organ in the higher registers. Speaking of the organ, the way it is "stopped" fascinates me. In any other setting I think it would sound cheesy and trivial, but here it supplies an essential vibe to the entire mix; the sound would be impoverished without it.  (Editor's note: Mr. Crutch does not consider this to be an adequate verbal account of the "feel," but he tried nevertheless. Please make a note of it.)

As an aside, I don't think it's too geezerly to argue that in 1966, in Chicago and all over America, both radio (AM!) and pop music were much richer and more urbane than they ever were again. It was the closing of a sort of innocent era in broadcast mass media, where the music sales charts weren't fragmented ad infinitum by age group, region, race, and purchasing power for the benefit of advertisers. "Top 40" really did mean "Top 40," and it didn't matter whether the performers on "the survey" were the Stones, or The Four Tops, or Simon and Garfunkle, or Sinatra, Roger Miller, The Sandpipers, Dusty Springfield, Ramsey Lewis, or Mitch Ryder, the Hollies, Martha and the Vandellas, or... Nancy Sinatra. If you listened to WLS or WCFL during this brief era, you heard it all on an equal footing, presented by trusted curators such as Dex Card and Ron Riley. Sure, a kid wouldn't necessarily admit to his friends that he liked "A Walk in the Black Forest," by Horst Jankowski; or "Sweet Talkin' Guy," by The Chiffons, but many of these sounds wormed their way through his tender little auditory cortex to next in the memory stacks, there to vibrate deep within for decades or more.

Anyway, back to the libretto: here's hoping that Frank didn't really lose it on that 14th day of May. And as for the sarcastic-seeming epigraph at the beginning of this post; no disrespect is intended. I intended it as a tribute of sorts to Sinatra's legendary crudeness on and off stage, well documented in Kitty Kelly's biography of him. These things about Sinatra you have to take alongside the pensive stylings of this gifted, juvenile, complex, and often-tortured guy.

Summer Wind, Frank Sinatra with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra (1966, from "Strangers In The Night," Reprise Records, catalog information not available), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

Following a bit on last night's subtext, here's another band and song for "purists" to hate---this time, "rock purists."



Yes, I know the costumes and slap-happy comedy was lame, and certainly performed for edification of the emergent teeny-bopper cult. Also, while I don't know anything about their production methods, it would not surprise me if most of Paul Revere's big hits were laid down by studio musicians even though the lads could play their instruments. But the hard rock sensibilities of the Raiders jab holes through the facade and production value. It would have been very uncool to admit to anyone that I liked Paul Revere upon my arrival as a buzzcut nobody at Hillcrest High School in 1967. But as I began collecting 45 rpm singles in the 1970s I could hear, through more well informed ears, that lots of pop acts---including this band and the Monkees, for example---had much more going on for themselves than the era's longhairs would ever acknowledge.

I don't think a person has to listen too hard to hear some Stones-like guitar and energy in "Good Thing" and other Raiders tracks from the mid-60s. Of special interest to me in this tune is the movement of parallel fourths and/or fifths both in the vocals and guitars---they're the odd-sounding harmonies that sound vaguely oriental and a little incomplete, which Aerosmith and many others made heavy use of decades later and to this day.

The most capable dancer, which some of the YouTube commentators seem to think is Goldie Hawn, is featured near the front of the set and distracts attention from the weird gunplay subplot that ends up getting under another dancer's feet. "Good Thing" was issued in Chicago about this time of the year in the winter of 1966-67, when there was a shortlived pop music style fascination with the Victorian and Roaring 20s eras, which accounts for the dancers' flapper-style dresses in the midst of American Revolution drag. Anyway, it's a bit of flavor from an eclectic time in American pop music; three minutes of upbeat full-color rock, dancing, and tomfoolery.

Good Thing, Paul Revere and the Raiders (1966, from "The Spirit of '67," Columbia Records CL 2595 [mono], via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

As I've maybe mentioned here before, many self-described "jazz purists" either dislike or make excuses for Charlie Parker's interest in large band and orchestra formats near the end of his life. I don't share either of those views. The quality of each recorded effort varies, of course, just like in real life. And the observation---not a profound one, really---that Parker did these performances to sustain or enhance his income is immaterial to me. As they used to say in England during the Renaissance, "Shakespeare got to get paid, son."



Entertainment corporations tell us that rock and roll is "the soundtrack of our lives," but I'd argue that for individuals born before, say, the Kennedy administration, this style of music is every bit as much a part of our "soundtrack" as rock is (at least those of us who grew up in a major urban area). I'm not saying that Parker, specifically, was necessarily a component of our collective unconscious, but rather the orchestral setting for musical treatments of jazz standards and show tunes that our parents used to have on the car radio, during folding and ironing time, and so on, was endemic and burned deeply into our little neuro nets.

To the postmodern youthful ear, which often hears pop music from the past through a filter of campy irony, this cut may sound like something that "Mad Men" used to boink the secretary to after hours. But the best of the lush sounds from this era---say 1950 through 1960---have a deep resonance to those of us who were innocent kids waiting to be fed homemade burgers and fries on Saturday night or cruising southwest down U.S. highways toward a vacation in the era immediately before rock ascended into prominence. So to all those ultra-hip jazz purists who look down on Bird's big band and orchestral digressions, I say "fuck you, asshole."

My feeling is that this track could have been the outstanding gem of Parker playing in a big band setting were it not for one inexcusable "clam" that would have sent Buddy Rich on a spree with a butcher knife had he been conducting the band. It's in the last 10 seconds of the track; should be easy to hear. The perp, Danny Bank on baritone sax, was not slaughtered after the session, however, and went on to record an estimated 10,000 tracks in his distinguished career.

I Can't Get Started, Charlie Parker with Big Band (1952, originally issued on 78 rpm single as Mercury 11096-B), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

OK, OK! Heh heh!

*

I coulda sworn I told the little feller not to pop out of bed, but there he is jumping up and down on the furniture for an "encore." OK, Luigi: here is your... encore.



Holy Kazoozis---it's Grace Jones! (Grace Jones?!?) I don't recall seeing this lovely beast ever looking quite as comely as she does here, tantalizing Pee-wee Herman's inner homunculus after he almost cluelessly returned her to sender. It will not escape fans of The Dance that Ms. Jones begins her musical interlude with a coupla preliminary burlesque moves, but then loses herself in song without unhinging her outer candy shell or staying long enough for it to melt in one's mouth or hand.

I assume Reba's letter carrier union protected her from reprisals for the misdelivery. Had Mailman Mike still been on the Playhouse route, no doubt he would have tried unwrapping and poking around in the giant box before delivering it. And then Ms. Jones would have found it necessary to rupture every organ the poor guy had, leaving only one of them untouched.

Action-packed, Pee-wee!

The Little Drummer Boy, Grace Jones (1988, from the primetime TV special, "Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special," CBS), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

Momma was flattenin' lard with her red enamel rolling pin



On the way home tonight I heard on the radio that Captain Beefheart had died. It made me sad.

Beefheart, whose "straight" name was Don Van Vliet (sorta rhymes with fleet), christened his stage persona in honor of an uncle who used to brag that his schlong was the size of a beefheart; Van Vliet and his childhood companions nicknamed His Avuncular Highness "Captain Beefheart."

This tune, from his most influential album, Trout Mask Replica, features Mister Beefheart in what I think of as his radio reporter voice. A more common vocal style he used over the course of his recording career was actually a very profound (and piercing) channeling---not mere imitation---of Howlin' Wolf. (Follow the link provided by "Anonymous" in the comments section if you want to hear an example.) But here, in a suave, well modulated rap not rhythmically tied to the accompaniment very closely, he recites one of his lovely avant-garde poems. Like so many of Beefheart's lyrics, this one is full of vivid and absurd imagery that is not only entertaining on the face of it, but kind of starts making more and more sense with repeated listening. The Magic Band chugs relentlessly beneath the vocal track, sounding very rickety and odd. But, like the lyrics, the music becomes increasingly accessible with each playing.

There are plenty of accounts of Beefheart's important but sporadic lifelong artistic relationship with Frank Zappa, who produced the breakthrough Trout Mask. In many ways, artistically, Beefheart and Zappa perfectly complemented each other. I suspect that most of the regrettable personal problems between the two were driven by Zappa's need for ego dominance and recognition as the sole genius behind any project he was involved in. (Zappa is a major hero of mine, but one who wore two enormous feet of clay.) And it also seems obvious to me that Zappa's own lyrics owe much, much more to Beefheart's influence than he ever acknowledged. Also, Beefheart was notoriously poor at remembering the words to songs in live performance, and often got lost even when he was holding the lyrics right in front of him. You can hear this in a number of places on the 1975 Zappa/Beefheart album that centers on a live performance in Austin, Texas. This Beefheart idiosyncrasy must have made a maniac of Zappa, who was a tyrannical perfectionist and control freak.

Anyway, I earnestly hope that the good captain has ascended to a plane of existence where the poetic phrases he utters are instantly rendered into arabesques of painterly visual reality along the lines of the canvasses to which he dedicated the latter part of his career... and vice versa.

Old Fart At Play, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band (1969, from "Trout Mask Replica," reissued as Reprise Records 2027-2), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry Junior!

*

Hokey smoke, Bullwinkle! It's an ultra-rare Saturday night twin spin!



Why? Because when I walked into Schunck's (The Friendliest Store In Town, I'll have you know!) to shop for victuals this evening, I was pleasantly smacked upside the head to hear this terrific summer 1966 wimp-rocker in progress. It's a swingin' guilty pleasure, what can I say? Musta heard this repeatedly on transistor radios at the Indiana Dunes; I can practically feel the sun blistering my skin off and smell other people's suntan lotion as I listen to it.

This was the title tune from a comeback album by one Ezekiel Christopher Montanez. Wikipedia sez, "The title single from the album, sung in a soft, very high tenor range and played on primarily adult-formatted radio stations, confused some disc jockeys...." Haha! "Very high tenor" indeed --- I think they used to call that "alto." Anyway, the title single didn't "confuse" the program directors at WLS and WCFL in Chicago that summer, because that's where and when I done imprinted on it like a baby bird.

Other Wikipedia things I did not know: this tune was penned in 1945, and was performed earlier by Sara Vaughn, Nat Cole and Nancy Wilson, and even (date unknown) by the great Johnny Hartman.

The More I See You, Chris Montez (1966, A&M Records), via YouTube.