2-12-2014
Manfred Mann versus the Animals
I had a lot of fun a few years back when I played with the idea of who would prevail, Mann or the Animals. It was a fun little piece of humor that wore off quickly, but the substantial quality of the music made the presentation a success.
“It has been said that, through evolution, man has grown to become far superior to the animals. Not wanting to take this for granted, I set about to research that in the best way I know. I am no anthropologist, but I have developed a certain taste for music, particularly of the English R&B variety. I therefore set up the challenge of comparing two of my favorite sixties groups to shed some light on the subject: Manfred Mann versus The Animals.” (From the original blog post, August 2009)
I often say that it was John Mayall and Paul Butterfield that turned me on to the real Chicago Blues by checking out the back of their albums and seeking out the guys who wrote the songs but, thinking back, it was much earlier as groups like Spencer Davis, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones and especially the Animals that made me realize the tunes I preferred were most often Blues-oriented.
Pianist Alan Price, vocalist Eric Burdon and drummer Johnny Steel were all playing in the Kansas City Five around Newcastle until Burdon left for London. About the same time, 1962, Price joined the Kontours which included bass player Bryan “Chas” Chandler. Steel eventually joined them and the band became known as the Alan Price R&B Combo, adding Burdon upon his return home in early 1963. The final piece to the puzzle was guitarist Hilton Valentine, who joined the group now going by the name The Animals (a nickname acquired due to their wild stage persona) just before the recording session for their self-produced 1963 EP. I find no references to their December concert(s) with Sonny Boy Williamson except that a recording was first released in 1973, but it is considerably better than the set he recorded with the Yardbirds about the same time. Tours with Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis are mentioned on the back of their 1964 debut American album and they also played with John Lee Hooker.
The band was booked into Giorgio Gomelsky’s Crawdaddy Club and fell under the tutelage of producer Mickey Most, who got them a contract with Colombia Records. The first session for the label in February of 1964 brought out a restructuring of Bob Dylan’s Baby Let Me Follow You Down, re-titled Baby Let Me Take You Home, with the flipside Gonna Send You Back to Walker, which charted number 21 in the UK, while the June follow-up House of the Rising Sun / Talkin’ ‘Bout You soared to number 1 in both the UK and the US charts, leading into their first LP sessions that summer. Before the album came out, a third single I’m Crying / Take It Easy reached number 8 UK and 19 US.
As was the custom, the British and American albums differed somewhat in content. The Brits saw the singles and EPs as separate entities and did not include them on their LPs while the Americans had no such qualms about duplication. The first two singles (A & B sides) were included on the US album while six of the other eight songs plus six more appeared on the Brit LP, which actually came out a month later than the American version. A US-only single followed the album with Boom Boom, which was on the Brit LP, and it’s B-side Blue Feeling from the American album, but it only reached number 43. It was their version of Boom Boom that led to my eventual purchase of a couple of John Lee Hooker’s Vee Jay albums, among the earliest entrants in my “authentic” Blues collection.
A number one single plus a top ten album on both continents plus another top ten single in England between April and October of 1964 gave them a pretty fiery start on their career. January didn’t let down with the 45 Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood / Club A Go Go (number 3 UK and 15 US), but their second US album, a collection of studio tracks in spite of the name On Tour, only charted at 99. The April 65 release of Bring It On Home to Me / For Miss Caulker showed the band still very popular at home with a number 7 ranking but only reached 32 stateside. Likewise, their second UK / third US album Animal Tracks made number 6 and 57 respectively. While the Brit and US albums shared the same name, the only songs in common were Roberta and For Miss Caulker.
With July’s release of We Gotta Get Out of This Place / I Can’t Believe It, The Animals again solidified their standing on both continents by climbing to #2 UK and #13 US, but immediately after it’s recording Alan Price left the group, citing an aversion to flying as the reason for his departure. Burdon and Price had been having differences over who should run the band but, as I understand the story, the entire group had taken part in the arrangement of The House of the Rising Sun but only Price's name made it on the legal paperwork, and when the song hit big and the royalties came gushing in he opted not to share with his bandmates so instead took the money and ran. His Alan Price Set went on to score a hit with the remake of Screaming Jay Hawkins' I Put a Spell on You. The Animals had already recorded Its My Life / I’m Gonna Change the World while Price was still with them, and its October release again brought highly respectable numbers at 7 UK and 23 US.
Price’s departure was not the only change the band made at this time. They had become increasingly dissatisfied with much of the material their producer Mickey Most had been choosing for them, thinking it too commercial and not representative of the band on stage. Not only was Most sacked, but they changed from EMI to the Decca label (while continuing MGM’s American distribution) and, of course, a replacement for Price was found with the installation of Dave Roweberry.
The first single with Roweberry, who had been playing with the Mike Cotton Sound, was Inside – Looking Out with its UK B-side Outcast (#12) and the American flip side of You’re On My Mind (#34), but before the dust had cleared, former Nashville Teens drummer Barry Jenkins replaced Johnny Steel. Burdon considered Steel his best friend and the two had played in college Jazz bands together, Burdon on trombone and Steel on trumpet.
May 1966 saw the release of the 45 Don’t Bring Me Down / Cheating (6 UK & 12 US) and the English album Animalisms reaching #4. Somewhere in mid-1966, Chandler opted out of the band in favor of musician management and Steel eventually became his assistant. Chandler’s best known client would be Jimi Hendrix. The last original member aside from Burdon, Hilton Valentine, stuck around ‘til the end of the year. In August, the similar American LP Animalization hit in at #20. From that album was taken the September American #10 single See See Rider / She’ll Return It (the first record released as by Eric Burdon and the Animals) followed in November by another US album, Animalism (still credited to the Animals), which reached number 33.
Price briefly took part in a reunion with the other original members to record the 1977 LP release, Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted (did his ill-gotten gains finally run out?), and Zoot Money took his place for a 1983 tour culminating in an album of all original material, Ark. The band was voted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
While I am used to thinking in terms of when the songs came upon the American airwaves, I decided to use the British release dates as I tried to put the Animals’ material used in some semblance of a chronological order. For me, I care more about the recording dates than the release dates because it tells me more about the musical growth of the band as opposed to how the record companies wished to present them. And especially since the Animals’ Brit and US albums were put together so differently, logic tells me the Brit release dates must be much closer to the recording dates. Our first set led off with a song from their first recording session, for the 1963 EP, followed by tunes from their first three singles before delving into material from the first UK LP.
I took a different tack with the Manfred Mann set because their first American album made such an indelible impression on me that I wanted to run it by you in its entirety before getting into material from preceding 45s. When I finally got around to purchasing the CD edition (waiting because my vinyl was actually less scratchy than many LPs I have) I was a little bit irritated that they wasted space on the disc with mono and stereo tracks rather than adding more material, but during my research I learned that the American album had subtle differences in its stereo presentation than the British mono release. Besides, I already had two compilation CDs so there likely would have been little new added.
Our first Animals set took us through their 1963 and ’64 releases and our next set covers 1965. It is relatively easy to see the influences on the band by looking at who did the originals of the songs they covered, and most recognizable in this set are three by Ray Charles, a couple of Jimmy Reed tunes and one by Bo Diddley. The earlier set also showed an appreciation for John Lee Hooker and Chuck Berry. As far as writing credits for the band (at least to this point), aside from the arrangement of the traditional Rising Sun, there is only I’m Crying and For Miss Caulker.
Unlike the Animals, the crew of Manfred Mann wrote many of the songs they released. Similar to the Animals’ first set, our first Mann set covered material through 1964 while the closing set covers mostly their second US album from 1965 with a few favorites tacked on at the end.
The namesake and
co-founder of the band Manfred Mann was born Manfred Lubowitz in Johannesburg, South
Africa in 1940. He was highly influenced
by Jazz artists such as Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Ornette
Coleman and Dave Brubeck, and himself played briefly in a group with Hugh
Masekela early on before deciding in 1961 that England would improve his growth
as a musician. Leaving for that reason,
and also because he abhorred the racism of Apartheid, especially since it was
not more vehemently protested against by South African Jews. And also, South Africa was leaving the
British Commonwealth and the window of opportunity to get a UK work permit was
closing. He made his departure on May 10th,
1961 and by 1962, Mann was augmenting his teaching wages with an opportunity in
the Ken Goddard Quartet. Goddard’s group
had permanent gigs six nights a week, but their pianist Graham Bond was
committed during three of those nights to playing alto sax in the Don Rendell
Five. Bond had seen Manfred perform and
introduced him to the band to cover those other nights.
It was then that
Manfred became acquainted with the band’s drummer and vibraphone player Mike
Hugg. The two shared similar ambitions
toward Jazz that they tried to implement until, finally, Hugg suggested they
put together an R&B group. Starting
off in September of 1962 as the Hippsysippi Five, they played the interval
between Chris Barber’s Jazz Band and The Tubby Hayes Quintet at the Savoy Rooms
on October 4th before paring down to the Manfred Manne – Mike Hugg
Quartet (Manfred initially paid tribute by using the last name of Jazz drummer Shelley Manne) for seven day
workweeks in residence at the Birdhouse from October 13th to
November 9th. The public’s reception for the Quartet was strong
enough to set up the first of many gigs at the Greenford Hotel on the 10th. In addition to playing with the band there on
the 11th, Hugg also sat in with the Ian Bird Quintet at the Jazzhouse which led
to the full band’s residency starting January 13th.
The next piece to
fall into place for the group was multi-instrumentalist Mike Vickers, who was
concentrating on playing saxophone until the band held auditions for a
guitarist. When none were found suitable,
he volunteered to learn that instrument as well. Vickers proved to be adept at both Jazz and
R&B on each of the instruments he played and also later had his
compositions recorded by some of the top British Jazz bands.
In early 1962,
Paul Jones, then going under his birth name of Paul Pond, was in Thunder Odin’s
Big Secret, a band also having pianist Ben Palmer (who would later show up with
Jones on the three-song session of Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse that was
released on Elektra’s What’s Shakin’ album) and, at different times, guitarists
Tom McGuiness or Brian Jones, then using the stage name Elmo Lewis. Paul often joined Palmer in McGuiness’ London
Thunderbirds as well as rehearsing with Lewis.
The pair eventually reached their goal of sitting in with Alexis
Korner’s Blues Incorporated at the Ealing Club on April 7th of
1962. Subsequent performances led to
Elmo Lewis, now Brian Jones, forming an association with Charlie Watts and Mick
Jagger and later the formation of their own little R&B group.
The Mann combo,
under varying names and numbers, was proving to be successful on the London
club circuit and therefore held an audition in late 1962 for vocalists, but
Jones was the only one who showed up.
While he wasn’t the fit they were looking for to match their Jazz
leanings, they invited him to a February rehearsal at the Forest Hill flat
shared by Mann, Hugg and Vickers. The
addition of Jones and his R&B influence coincided with Dave Richmond
switching from standup bass to an electric and Mann from piano to Hammond B-3
organ while the band took the rest of the month off to tighten up the new
repertoire, now being billed as the Mann Hugg Blues Brothers,
On March 15th,
the band agreed upon publicist Kenneth Pitt as their manager (signing a four year
contract August 6th) and then got an audition in May 1963 with EMI,
and it was the company’s HMV (His Master’s Voice) label that shortened the band
name to Manfred Mann against the wishes of the keyboardist. Coming out of that audition was their first
release, Why Should We Not with the flipside of Brother Jack, a jazzy
instrumental worked out from the song Frere Jacque (unfortunately I do not have
that so my curiosity is piqued). Although their follow-up single Cock-a-Hoop /
Now You’re Needing Me also failed to chart, the band was asked late in the year
to write a theme song for the BBC show Ready Steady Go and the resulting
5-4-3-2-1 (with its B-side Without You) reached number five and became the
ongoing opening for the broadcast.
Shortly after that mid-December recording session, it was felt that
Richmond’s playing was too Jazz-based and not fitting the R&B repertoire
and so was replaced by Tom McGuiness, who switched from guitar to bass. McGuiness had been in The Roosters and Casey
Jones and the Engineers, both with Eric Clapton, for most of 1963 until October
when Clapton joined The Yardbirds. In
fact, The Roosters, with Clapton and McGuiness, had opened for them on July 15th. The April 1964 release of Hubble Bubble (Toil
and Trouble) / I’m Your Kingpin reached #11 but their next single Doo Wah Diddy
Diddy / What You Gonna Do kicked up the band’s popularity by ranking #1 on both
the UK and US ratings charts.
When we start
talking about their albums it can get confusing. The September debut UK album The Five Faces
of Manfred Mann reached #3 but shared that title with the second American
album. The US debut LP had three songs
missing from the Brit album but added Doo Wah Diddy.Diddy. While the album had been out since November
of 1964, I got turned onto it by a friend in 1967 and proceeded to fall in love
with every song on it. In my opinion,
then and now, it was simply
one of the best straight up Blues albums I had heard by any British band. With
covers of tunes done originally by Blues giants Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters,
Amos Milburn and Bo Diddley, it just dripped of the Blues. There wasn't a
single song that didn't segue smoothly to the one that followed in the creation
of a seamless masterpiece. No other version of Hoochie Coochie Man sounds right
to my ear, perhaps because it might have been the first version I'd heard. Their takes on Ike and Tina Turner’s It’s
Gonna Work Out Fine and Bring It to Jerome, written by Bo Diddley’s maracas man
Jerome Green, are unsurpassed by any other versions I have heard including the
originals. Their Jazz influence shows up
in the choice of Nat Adderley’s Sack o’ Woe but, in spite of my opinion,
the album only climbed its way to #33 US.
I am listening to the album as I write this and to me that ranking is almost
criminal. But then again I never claimed
to come up short on the voicing of my opinions!
Between gigs,
Manfred put in time producing sessions for The Yardbirds (Sweet Music) and the
Mark Leeman Five (Portland Town / Gotta Get Myself Together). The entire Mann band took part in the Leeman
session, most notably the inclusion of Jones’ harmonica solo on the
B-side. This was done through
Manfredisc, set up to facilitate any work they did for other artists including
not only production but writing, arranging or performing on recordings. Perhaps the most successful item to emerge
from this project would be the song Mister You’re a Better Man Than I, one of
my favorite Yardbirds tunes but penned by Mike Hugg and his brother Brian. Paul Jones also authored The One in the
Middle, originally written based on the band but rewritten for the offering to
the Yardbirds, who turned it down because it was too narcissistic to fit with
Keith Relf’s modest nature. The song was
ultimately released as the title song of the band’s June ’65 EP.
The group
continued their hits with Sha La La / John Hardy (#3 UK, #12 US) in October and
started 1965 off with the January release of Come Tomorrow / What Did I Do
Wrong (#4 UK, #50 US), the first three
also appearing on March’s second US LP which failed to reach the charts. I seem to recall hearing about some
resentment from the Shirelles regarding the Brits’ copy of their Sha La La
having a negative impact on their sales and I’m sure there is validity to that,
but I am also just as sure that some of the more commercially obscure
Bluespeople were invigorated in the public’s ear by the British bands covering
their material.
As a result of a
three week tour of the US in late 1964 which the band found too wearisome for
the paycheck, they concentrated instead on European tours and promotions when
they left the UK. This five man lineup
stayed together until October of 1965 when guitarist Vickers left and was
replaced by bassist Jack Bruce after his stints with John Mayall and Graham Bond,
allowing McGuiness to go back to playing guitar. They also brought in saxophonist Lyn Dobson
and Henry Lowther on trumpet and violin.
Even though the
entire band felt Bruce was the best bass player around, Manfred was reluctant
to ask him because he was currently gigging with John Mayall’s
Bluesbreakers. Mayall was a neighbor of
Mann’s and when Bruce actually left (after giving a month’s notice, during
which time Mann had to use transitional bass players), John felt so betrayed
that he wrote the number Double Crossing Time, released on his album with Eric
Clapton.
Bruce only stayed
with the band a little over six months, but from the beginning he fit right
into the band’s R&B / Jazz groove; if anything, he was occasionally too
Jazzy and hard to follow. He was
involved in 20 tracks plus a BBC session, but they fall just out of today’s
timeline, so we must visit them before we get into his time with Cream. I’m biased, but I don’t believe my
appreciation for Bruce’s 60s work disqualifies my opinion that much of his bass
work was the most exciting the band had.
Once Vickers gave
notice, Jones followed suit because, “here I was having all these hit records,
and one by one they were being gradually notched up to someone called Manfred
Mann, and I was not Manfred Mann!“ Jones
agreed to remain until a suitable vocalist was found, unaware it would take
almost a year. The December 28th
show at the Marquee had a surprise guest when Eric Burdon got on stage and
shared the vocals. Around this time, it
was also not uncommon for Bruce and Jones to vocalize together.
The members of the
band were long frustrated by the fact that they were handed pop-styled music
for their singles which the record company was all too willing to promote, but
the crux of the band’s musical identity was only to be found buried in albums
or on B-sides. It is my hope that the
true nature of Manfred Mann’s music has been slightly more exposed by today’s
broadcast.
So there you
go. Now you have it, now you know. Does your vote go with Mann or the Animals?
We will take a
brief departure from this series of shows on British Blues for our annual Mardi
Gras show and follow that up with a couple of Irishmen, Van Morrison (Them) and
Rory Gallagher in celebration of St. Patty’s Day, then return in full swing
with a grouping from the Rolling Stones first four LPs paired up with early
material from a singer I was until recently pretty much unaware of, Duffy
Power.
Here I would
like to take note of source materials for the artist commentaries before I
reach the point that I forget where I got the information. As mentioned earlier, all the music and my
writings for the Skiffle portion of our first show came from the second disc of
Proper’s 4CD box set, Rock ‘n’ Skiffle, and its companion booklet. The core of the Korner and Davies pieces came
from Blues-Rock Explosion with embellishments added from the CD liner
notes. For Long John Baldry, I went
online to Wikipedia and, more reliably, the All Music Guide website plus some
information taken from the liner notes.
The as yet incomplete Graham Bond segment has come from an unexpected
source, the Rough Guide to Jazz, which featured brief write-ups of all four
members, as did the segment on Chris Barber.
I have not had time to read again the Blues-Rock story on Bond, and I am
getting a lot of information as I read their saxophone player Dick
Heckstall-Smith’s book Blowing the Blues.
That brings us
up to date. Some more factoids for
Bond and upcoming artists (Eric Clapton, Rolling Stones) are showing up in my
read of Mannerisms: The Five Phases of Manfred Mann, a book I had recommended
years ago simply because of one of author Greg Russo’s other books, the one on
the Yardbirds, which gave just about every piece of information you could
possibly want to know about the band, and Mannerisms did not disappoint. I took much of its information and infused it
into the piece I had already written from the All Music’s internet entry. Similarly, the Animals write-up came almost
entirely from the All Music source and, though it appeared very lengthy reading
off my computer screen, I was surprised when I went to my paperback edition
which had the exact same article but seemed much briefer when held in
hand. My All Music Guide to Blues is my
most worn out book, a fact I am very proud of because it means it is reached
for so often to refresh my memory. I
actually read it from A to Z many years ago (but not all of the essays towards
the back) and its analyses have been responsible for many fine CD purchases
through the years. It is the first book
I would recommend to any Blues lover and I don’t even own any stock in the
company! The advantage of the online
version (aside from being free) is that some groups, such as Manfred Mann, are
not listed in the Blues guide. Another
book, this one providing seemingly complete listings of vinyl & CD release
dates and band members, is Martin C. Strong’s The Great Rock Discography,
although it falls short on some of the more Bluesy bands. It is an all fact, no opinions publication.
One final thought from the 2009 airing: “This show aired the day
that Teddy Kennedy passed away. If I thought really hard, I might be able to
come up with someone who came close to affecting the lives of all Americans of
my generation, but that would be too much work for me. Senator Kennedy, so
sorry to see you go.”
That sentiment has more than held true for me over the past five
years. We could certainly use a
legislator of his stature in these highly partisan times.
