Development of the British Blues --- show 9 ---
6-11-2014
Chris Farlowe 1963-1968Johnny Kidd and the Pirates 1969-1965
Them 1964-1966
Albert Lee 1966 ?
Here is something I’ve been pondering: what exactly is nostalgia? I’ve always kinda figured it to be whatever it was for an individual that they enjoyed in their formative years, essentially the high school years, that brings to mind all the good times associated with that span of one’s life. Most obvious for me would be music, but I imagine automobiles, fashion, furniture, baseball cards, anything that takes you back to that comfort zone before you had to really get a grip on the world would qualify. Again, for me that would be the music of the sixties, more specifically many of the British Rhythm & Blues bands we’ve already covered this year: the Animals, Stones, Yardbirds, Spencer Davis Group, maybe even John Mayall …. and some of the more Rock groups like the Kinks, the Who, and most definitely the Beatles.
But now we’re beginning to get to a point in our
series which is more exposing ourselves to artists whom I had only been
familiar with through their names but, in some cases, not even heard their music. So does it qualify as nostalgia because it shows
similarities of that particular era or does it have to be clearly recognizable
to me as something I enjoyed way back when?
Oh well, whatever niche we wish to place it in, I hope you will find that
our selections today still fit the category of good rockin’ music.
Our next three shows will be getting away from the
truly Blues music that was initially envisioned and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates reach the farthest towards Rock ‘n’
Roll. It is a fact that I waited almost
half a century to hear the original version of a song. Shakin’ All Over became a Rock classic almost
as soon as the Guess Who did it (I guess maybe as soon as Kidd did it) and
became practically an anthem when the Who performed it on Live at Leeds, but I
had never had the opportunity to hear the original until a few months ago when
I bought a 2CD “Best of” pairing. So you
know I had to pick a few tunes from it if for no other reason than to justify
the purchase. Actually, a couple of full
sets fit nicely into today’s show.
Frederick Albert Heath was the third of three
children born to Margaret and Ernest Heath, his birth taking place on November
23rd 1935 in Willesden, North London. (Does anybody really care about this stuff
besides the biographers who make it seem obligatory because they likely get
paid by the word? You should see the
useless trivia I have to wade through as I attempt to keep these notes less boring. And why do so many of these Brits feel the
need to change their names? Oops, did I
just say all that out loud?) In 1956,
Heath and some friends formed a Skiffle group that achieved some success,
including an airing on the BBC radio show Skiffle Club and gigs at the popular
2 I’s coffee bar in Soho.
Somewhat unique among the Brit rockers of the
time, he wrote some of his own material and even had one recorded by The
Bachelors in 1959. At the same time,
Freddie Heath & the Nutters got a contract with EMI’s HMV label and
recorded the same song, Please Don’t Touch, as their first single. It was at this time that some management
genius decided they would be better served with the name Johnny Kidd and the
Pirates, suiting them up in buccaneer garb including an eye patch for Freddie,
I mean Johnny. The song reached into the
Top 20, thanks in part to a live airing of it on BBC radio’s Saturday Club.
Of the several other recordings they made, only
the original disc’s B-side Growl makes our playlist until 1960’s Shakin’ All
Over, both penned by the lead singer.
The Pirates were a trio including drummer Clem Cattini, bassist Brian
Gregg and guitarist Alan Caddy, but added studio guitarist Joe Moretti on the
session for a remake of the 1925 hit Yes Sir, That’s My Baby, intended to be
the A-side until Shakin’ was laid down.
Everything about the song happened quickly. It was
written in six minutes in a coffee shop the day before the session. The label rushed it to market and it charted
immediately, reaching number one in seven weeks. Two releases later, Linda Lu charted but
Please Don’t Bring Me Down, in sound very similar to Shakin’ All Over, failed
to go anywhere. Disappointed, the
Pirates abandoned ship and by 1962 they were all members of the band the
Tornados with the trans-Atlantic chart topper Telstar.
The new Pirates were put together in 1962 from the
Redcaps, a band that had backed a guy named Cuddly Dudley. They were comprised of drummer Frank Farley,
bassist Johnny Spence and guitarist Johnny Patto. In addition to dates around England, they
performed at Hamburg, Germany’s renowned Star Club. They were also popular in Liverpool and once
headlined a Mersey riverboat shuttle whose lineup also included the up and
coming group, the Beatles.
At the end of 1962, they put out A Shot of Rhythm
and Blues with I Can Tell as Mick Green replaced Patto in the Pirates. With new manager Gordon Mills, they recorded
his composition I’ll Never Get Over You which took them to #5 but afterward,
while they were still a popular live attraction, the band failed to chart
significantly. In April of 1966, Johnny
was once again set adrift without a band.
The trio released a few records as the Pirates and we have included
Casting My Spell (because I like it) which is confusingly patented in 1964
(likely a typo). He formed a third batch
of Pirates and was still doing well in the clubs, but before they could put out
a song Johnny was killed in a car crash returning home from a gig.
Send for That Girl was released posthumously and
went nowhere. Despite relatively few
hits, this two CD set contains lots of good music, some of them not available
in his lifetime, including a version of the Muddy Waters / Willie Dixon Blues
classic I Just Want to Make Love to You recorded three years before the Rolling
Stones included it on their debut album.
****************************
Our show actually opens up with Chris Farlowe. He came into the world with the name John Henry Deighton in Islington, London on October 13th 1940. At the age of five he would accompany his mother on the piano and by the age of twelve he was absorbed in the Skiffle craze that swept the UK. His band, John Henry’s Skiffle Group with whom he sang and played guitar, even won The All England Skiffle Championships at the Tottenham Royal. Working as an apprentice carpenter in his teens, he would stop in at the local record shop on payday and immerse himself in Jazz and Blues and gradually added these stylings to his Lonnie Donegan influence. By 1957, when the floor dropped out from the Skiffle scene, Rock ‘n’ Roll and Blues had taken his interest and his band adjusted accordingly.
As it was common practice to change one’s name,
Deighton took the last name of American Jazz guitarist Tal Farlow (adding the e
later) with the first name Chris just because it sounded good, and since all
things American were what was cool in the UK those days, he took the name of
his favorite car and put it on his band, the Thunderbirds. The band gained popularity in its gigs around
the UK and was one of many to take a turn in Hamburg, Germany in 1961 which
strengthened their dedication to R&B.
Having sufficiently impressed Rik Gunnell to want
to be their manager, the band had plenty of bookings at the entrepreneur’s many
clubs, among them the Flamingo, the Ram Jam, and the Allnighter Club. The band at that time included two holdovers
from John Henry’s Skiffle Group, guitarist Bobby Taylor and drummer Johnny
Wiseman, along with bassist Ricky Charman and Vic Cooper on the Hammond organ.
Manager and agent Gunnell acquired a session with
Decca and in November 1962 the single Air Travel was issued with Chris backed
by studio musicians. This effort was
insufficient for Decca to proceed further at that time and Farlowe’s next 45
was issued for Columbia, the Farlowe-written I Remember with the B-side Push Push
in September 1963. By now well under
contract to Columbia but, similar to the true tradition of so many American
bluesmen, Chris did not let that stop him from recording another single for
Decca. The two sides were released in
January and are said to be of a Ska foundation.
I don’t know much about Ska except that I perceive it to be similar to
Reggae. I like the A-side The Blue Beat
very much but its reverse is remarkably forgettable. Still, particularly Georgie Fame’s
appreciation of the genre piques my curiosity and by the time we get to Fame’s
entry in our series perhaps I will have acquired some. Anyway, for obvious contractual reasons the
single was released as performed by the Beazers.
The band returned to their R&B leanings with
Girl Trouble and Itty Bitty Pieces for Columbia and I believe was marketed as
Chris Farlowe and the Thunderbirds.
Perhaps because of the lackluster reception to this single, Farlowe
decided to shake up the band. “We had
guitar players up to audition after the old boys stood down … Albert Lee walked
in, got up there, plugged in and did his thing.
‘Don’t get down, you might as well stay up there’, I shouted up to
him. He was phenomenal.” Joining Lee and bassist Charman were Hammond
organist Dave Greenslade and drummer Neil Hague. Saxophonist Bernie Greenwood also signed on
but shortly decided to join Eric Clapton in his escapades in Greece (which will
likely be divulged in the Mayall/Clapton section) and was replaced by Dave
Quincy.
The next release’s B-side What You Gonna Do and
the following A-side Hey Hey Hey Hey (a modification of Billy Boy Arnold’s I
Wish You Would) were both penned by Farlowe (credited to Deighton) and begin a
group of the CD’s remaining songs that impressed well enough to all make
airplay today. These included almost
obligatory though fun versions of Rock ’n’ Roll tunes, Big Mama Thornton’s
Hound Dog and Chuck Berry’s Reelin’ and Rockin’, followed by my personal
favorite Voodoo. The band was still in
high demand on the road but none of their 45s achieved any significant sales
level. Then Farlowe came out with Buzz
with the Fuzz, filled with hip slang that made it very popular with those who
heard it but, because it contained the phrase “rolling up a joint”, the record
was banned from the airwaves which served as the death knell with Columbia
Records.
The next foray into the record sales world was
with Sue Records’ double sided version of T-Bone Walker’s classic Stormy Monday
Blues. Seemingly free of any contractual
obligations, it is curious why it was released under the pseudonym Little Joe
Cook but perhaps it was to achieve the result that Chris mentioned after their
appearance on the TV show Ready Steady Go, “People refused to believe it was a
white singer”. No less an authority than
Otis Redding praised Farlowe as a “Soul Brother”. Still, there were many who believed a white
person could not sing the Blues, to which Chris would reply, “Listen here. I’ve lived through the war and been
bombed. You say we ain’t had the Blues?”
Up to now, the songs have been taken from the
single CD Dig the Buzz; First Recordings ‘62-’65. We now move on to the double CD Ride On Baby;
The Best of… for our second set. Chris
had known Mick Jagger from his travels on the British music trails and also one
of the kitchen staff at the Flamingo, Andrew Loog Oldham. Once Oldham became manager of the Rolling
Stones, one of his next steps was to start a record label, Immediate. Now that Chris was without a recording
contract Oldham asked him to sign on with his new label. Figuring it certainly couldn’t hurt to be
associated with the Stones, Farlowe accepted.
Very quickly (I’m tempted to say Immediately, but that wouldn’t quite be
the case), he was given the opportunity to record several Jagger-Richard
written songs but his first release came in October of 1965 with Lee
Hazelwood’s The Fool and Treat Her Good, the latter a slightly modified version
of Roy Head’s Treat Her Right for which Chris claimed authorship. Then came the handiwork of the Stones’ duo as
he released versions of Think, Out of Time, Ride On Baby, Yesterday’s Papers,
I’m Free, Paint It Black and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. Think hit #37 on the singles chart, and even
though we won’t here Yesterday’s Papers today, Chris’ versions of these two
songs are much more to my taste than those by the Stones which never appealed
to me.
We present many of these to lead off our next set
and, since Satisfaction was done in the style of Otis Redding, we continue with
a Soulful segment including Mr. Pitiful, In the Midnight Hour (these three were
part of a December EP which reached #6) and What Becomes of the Broken
Hearted. North, South, East, West was on
the cusp of being eliminated from today’s airing until I read that it was Tina
Turner and the Ikettes who provided the vocal backup that I initially
disliked. I guess I’m not beyond letting
a big name decide whether I like something or not. The first Immediate 45 precedes the Bob Dylan
tune It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue which is a song I think is so nice I’ll play
it twice (okay, even I know that comment was lame) when it appears again by
Them
The UK top-charting single Out of Time, which
showed up originally on the #19 rated LP 14 Things to Think About from April,
was Farlowe’s big hit as it made other European charts and opened up many tours
of the continent. The next album, The
Art of Chris Farlowe, reached #37 after its December release. Mick Jagger, who had produced many of
Farlowe’s tracks, dropped Oldham as the Stones’ manager and his last collaboration
with Chris was on Yesterday’s Papers in May of 1967. There were a few more attempts through 1968 before
Immediate went under, none with much significance and none appearing in our
show.
****************************
AHA! At
last, a familiar group! While all the
other Brits were seemingly changing their names, the name changes in the band
known as Them were due to wholesale
revisions of personnel. Aside from lead
singer Van Morrison, you couldn’t tell the players in this Irish band without
the proverbial scorecard. You think I
exaggerate? Just try to keep this
straight. When the first single was
released in August 1964, Morrison was fronting a band featuring drummer Ronnie
Mellings, bassist Alan Henderson, keyboardist Eric Wiksen (or Wrixen?) and
guitarist Billy Harrison, who had been together since 1963. We’ll work our way back up to this point in
time.
George Ivan Morrison was born in Belfast, Ireland
on August 31st, 1945 to a pair of Jazz and Blues loving parents, his
father a collector and his mother a singer.
By age 11, Van was singing in a Skiffle group while he also was learning
to play guitar, harmonica and soprano saxophone. Shortly after leaving school when he was
fifteen, he joined the Monarchs and played tenor sax with them for three years
as they gigged through Europe, especially Germany where there were many US
military bases.
Once he got back to Belfast, he used his
experience to put together his own R&B combo along with two of the Monarchs
who have not been identified in my reading.
An early 1964 studio session meant to create a demo tape to hawk around
to the record companies brought forth The Story of Them, but by the time they
got back in the studio again, Morrison and Henderson were joined by Ireland’s
leading session guitarist Jim Armstrong, drummer John Wilson and pianist and
saxman Ray Elliott. They put out an EP
in Holland that seems very interesting with Blues classics Times Getting
Tougher Than Tough, Stormy Monday and Baby What You Want Me to Do along with
the Morrison composition Friday’s Child, but they are not contained in the CDs
of their first two albums which grace my collection.
Nonetheless the band was signed to Decca / London,
now with brothers Jack and Pat McCauley handling the keys and drums respectively. Three songs from a July 5th
session were discarded and wiped from the tape to make room for the two songs
from their first 45, Don’t Start Crying Now and One Two Brown Eyes. It received a strong Irish backing but still
failed to chart nationally. Two other
songs were saved, Philosophy making it onto a later EP and a little tune named
Gloria. Their producers then brought in
studio musicians Peter Bardens on keys and Jimmy Page on guitar for their
smokin’ version of Baby Please Don’t Go, but it was the B-side, Gloria, which
made Rock history, which is strange because the twin pairing only reached #10
UK and 93 US. A strong part of its
success in Britain can be credited to the band’s appearance on BBC’s Ready
Steady Go and the TV show’s immediate adoption as its theme song. Fairly quickly, the first 45’s two sides plus
Philosophy and Baby Please Don’t Go were released on the aforementioned
extended player.
Visiting American Bert Berns was invited to
produce the next A-side, a version of his Here Comes the Night, which had also
been recorded by Lulu. Backed by All for
Myself, its twelve week run was stalled at number two behind the Beatles’
Ticket to Ride. The American version had
a ten week stay and topped out at #23.
The list of participants for the eponymous first album was difficult to
keep track of and even Jimmy Page expressed, “as another number passed, another
member of the band would be substituted for a session musician”. While the UK market pretty much ignored the
LP, its similar version here rose to number 54 during its 23 weeks on the
charts.
After a couple more 45s another fine tune, Mystic
Eyes, was taken from the album for a November single release but failed to
chart in the UK and only reached #33 US.
Aside from the LP and the three 45s we have mentioned, none of their
other releases, including the January 1966 follow-up album Them Again, managed
to get on the charts at all. For that
album, pianist and saxman Ray Elliott replaced Bardens and Jim Armstrong
replaced the original guitarist Harrison.
In January, Terry Noone replaced drummer Jimmy Wilson (it was also
stated that Wilson was replaced by Pat McCauley, so don’t feel that you are the
only one getting confused) and was then replaced himself by Dave Harvey in
April.
During the spring of 1966, Them made an American
tour which was seemingly dominated by stays in California. They had a residency between June 2nd
and 18th at LA’s Whiskey a-Go-Go, where they appeared with both the
Doors and Captain Beefheart. They headed
north to San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium on June 23rd, and it
must have been around this time that I had the opportunity to see
them here in San Jose at Losers South on Almaden Expressway.
In conjunction with the tour, a reissue of Gloria
on April 23rd had the song climbing slightly higher to #71. I would have guessed that it was much more
popular, but its charting this time was undoubtedly hindered by the Chicago
band Shadows of Knight version reaching the American top ten. Still, it is Them’s song that received the
most airplay. Their rendition was played
over and over and over ad infinitum, to my recollection, while the Shadow’s
disc is merely a faint memory.
In June of 1966 everything fell apart when
Morrison quit the band to go out on his own, bassist Henderson being the only
other original member to have stayed through it all. This was not the last the world would hear of
Van and, even though I have no particular plans, don’t be surprised if he
appears again in our profiles, especially now that I seem to be broadening the
stylistic parameters.
****************************
We probably won’t have time to fit this into
today’s show, but just in case:
As we mentioned, Albert Lee was a member in long standing of the Thunderbirds
throughout most of the 60s and he backed Chris Farlowe in the studio even
afterwards. I became familiar with him
from these three songs he did with Tony Colton and Ray Smith on the Immediate
multi-artist albums of the late 60s and recall him as a key contributor to the
British portion of the Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues seven movie series
broadcast on PBS sometime ago, but All Music’s biography by Bruce Eder paints
us a much wider picture than my mere recollections.
As Eder points out, Lee was born in Leominster in
1943, and since his father played piano and accordion it is not surprising that
Albert’s first instrument would be the piano which he took up at age
seven. His earliest influence was Jerry
Lee Lewis but it was only a couple of years before Albert switched instruments
and began to pick the lead guitar parts from records by Buddy Holly, Gene
Vincent, Ricky Nelson, and the Everly Brothers.
By the age of 16, Albert was
playing in the backup bands for many of the artists under contract to Larry
Parnes. In 1964, he would join Farlowe’s
Thunderbirds for four years until he changed his focus back to Country and
Rockabilly music, backing various touring Americans and ultimately recording on
Jerry Lee Lewis’ London Sessions. He would
soon replace Glen D. Hardin in the Crickets on tours as well on their
Nashville-recorded album Long Way From Lubbock, and ultimately wound up
being based in Los Angeles. While there,
he met Don and Phil Everly, joining Don’s band and recording on his Sunset
Towers album.
Next in his musical journey
was joining Joe Cocker's band leading to Cocker’s label,
A&M, offering him a contract in 1975 for a solo album. Before its completion, he began gigging and
recording with Emmylou Harris for a couple of years through
1978, and Harris wound assist Albert by joining in on his LP Home as a guest artist. Now with a solo contract with Polydor, Lee
was a highly sought after studio musician and appeared on recordings by artists
as varied as
Jackson Browne, Bo Diddley and Herbie Mann. The icing on the cake was his
recording and the follow-up tour for Eric Clapton’s Just One Night LP. He then joined the Everly Brothers in a
reunion concert, live album and video.
Albert continued with his
solo recordings, Speechless in1987 and Gagged but Not Bound in 1988, and later teamed
up with the Bluegrass band (Gerry) Hogan’s Heroes. He also toured and recorded with Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings and played with Eddie Van Halen and Steve Morse in a supergroup called the Biff
Baby All-Stars. Most recently, Lee
recorded a couple of albums for Sugar Hill, Heartbreak Hotel in 2003 and Road Runner in 2006.
Quite a remarkable and
diversified career! I almost hope we
don’t have time for those three songs so I can further explore his recordings
and perhaps profile him in more detail in a future show.
***********************************
Just to clarify, my dictionary lists three
definitions for nostalgia. Two are
similar, the best for our purposes being “a longing for familiar or beloved
circumstances that are now remote or irrecoverable”. Sounds right to me.
Needless to say, I was in a rather irreverent mood
for at least some of the Johnny Kidd portion of this writing. I’d ask your forgiveness, but … Nah!
Key to the HighwayJune 11th, 2014
The
Blue Beat
Itty
Bitty PiecesWhat You Gonna Do
Hey Hey Hey Hey
Hound Dog
Voodoo
Reelin’ and Rockin’
Buzz with the Fuzz
You’re the One
Stormy Monday Blues (parts 1 & 2)
She’s All Right
Chris Farlowe
Growl
Shakin’
All OverYes Sir, That’s My Baby
Linda Lu
Big Blon’ Baby
I Just Want to Make Love to You
Please Don’t Bring Me Down
I Can Tell
A Shot of Rhythm and Blues
Some Other Guy
I’ll Never Get Over You
Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
Baby
Please Don’t Go
GloriaHere Comes the Night
Mystic Eyes
Little Girl
I Just Want a Little Bit
I Gave My Love a Diamond
Bright Lights, Big City
Them
Think
Out
of TimePaint It Black
Ride On Baby
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
Mr. Pitiful
In The Midnight Hour
North, South, East, West
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted
The Fool
Treat Her Good
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
Chris Farlowe
Ecstacy
Casting
My SpellOh Boy
Whole Lotta Woman
Right String But the Wrong Yo Yo
Gotta Travel On
You Can Have Her
Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
You
Just Can’t Win
Go
On Home BabyI Got a Woman
Could You, Would You
Turn On Your Lovelight
Call My Name
I Can Only Give You Everything
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
Them
Water
on My Fire
The
Next MilestoneCrosstown Link
Albert Lee
NOTE: Because of time spent promoting next weekend’s blues marathon, we omitted Bright Lights, Big City from Them’s first set and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted from Chris Farlowe’s second set. We also did not get around to Albert Lee
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