50th Music Anniversaries and Other Musings

June 1970 Odds ‘n Ends

I hope everyone is faring at least tolerably during these strange times. Let’s wrap up June of 1970 with a few notable releases…

6/3/70: Stevie Wonder – Single: Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours

This was the first single Wonder produced on his own, and it spent six weeks atop the charts. His early career stuff is great, but it’s when he traded the suits for batik gear that his music gets really interesting in my book.

6/3/70: On this day, Ray Davies made a round-trip from New York to London and back in the middle of a Kinks U.S. tour in order to re-record one word on their latest single, Lola. In order to receive airplay in the U.K. he had to change “Coca-Cola” to “cherry cola.”

6/5/70: Deep Purple – Deep Purple in Rock

This was the first album by Deep Purple’s “Mock II” lineup, and it put them over the top in Europe. It remained on the charts for over a year.

6/8/70: Bob Dylan – Self Portrait

This album was a major disappointment to fans and critics alike, both for its songs and production. Author, critic, and Dylan fanatic Greil Marcus put it rather succinctly in his review in Rolling Stone: “What is this shit?” Yet when these sessions were revisited on 2013’s Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait, it was a completely different story. A revelation, one might say. It was to me, anyway.

6/15/70: Grand Funk Railroad – Closer to Home

Grand Funk Railroad’s third album, relatively well received, is best known for the radio staple I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home).

June 1970: Tangerine Dream – Electronic Meditation

This is Tangerine Dream’s debut album. They went on to release eleventy zillion more in the 50 years that followed. That I know of, I’m only familiar with Zeit (1972), Phaedra (1974), and the soundtrack to Risky Business (1984). This music has its time and place for me.

June 1970: Elvis – On Stage

The tracks on this highly rated live album were mostly taken from Vegas shows in February 1970. I just can’t get into Elvis’s music from that point in his career though.

June 1970: Ides of March – Vehicle

The debut from the Ides of March was released 50 years ago this month. I’m including it because I missed the anniversary in March of the title track single, Vehicle. I’ve never owned or heard the entire album, and I’ve rarely heard the title track on the radio, yet I’ve heard it numerous times overall as its promo film was regularly shown on VH1’s My Generation hosted by Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits back in the late 1980’s. That seems really random to me now. It’s a pretty tight track, but I get all the brass-heavy 60’s/70’s rock I need from Chicago, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and The Electric Flag.

See ya in July.

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed,_Sealed,_Delivered_I%27m_Yours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Purple_in_Rock

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_Portrait_(Bob_Dylan_album)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_to_Home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Meditation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Stage_(Elvis_Presley_album)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_(The_Ides_of_March_album)

June 26 – Free’s Breakthrough

6/26/70: Free – Fire and Water

The English rock band Free released their third album on this day 50 years ago. The band, consisting of vocalist Paul Rodgers, guitarist Paul Kossoff, bassist Andy Fraser, and drummer Simon Kirke, found themselves in a make or break situation with this recording after their first two albums garnered little attention. Recorded over the first half of June 1970 and clocking in at 35 minutes, Fire and Water reached number two on the U.K. album chart and 17 in the U.S. The album spawned the single All Right Now, a top five hit on both sides of the pond which remains a classic rock radio staple. Due to the album’s success, Free was invited to perform at the Isle of Wight Festival a few months later in front of 600,000 people.

This is a tight, rocking album which critics have favorably compared to Blind Faith, Cream, and Derek & the Dominos. I don’t disagree with that, but to me what stands out is that it was a harbinger of an album rock sound going forward in the 1970’s, whereas albums by those other bands mentioned were (in my mind, anyway), the sound of the end of the 60’s. The obvious comparison would be with Bad Company, and the reason I find that interesting is because Free released three more albums after this one in rapid succession, but didn’t find much acclaim. Yet when Bad Company – including Rodgers and Kirke from Free, Mick Ralphs of Mott the Hoople, and Boz Burrell from King Crimson – released their eponymous debut in ’74 they were off to the races with a sound not unlike Fire and Water – just with better production and presumably better promotion.

The title track could’ve also been the radio hit from the album (though off the top of my head I can’t think of another example of a song fading out to a drum solo). Oh I Wept displays Rodgers’ ability to have a soft touch with his vocal when called for. Remember has a nice, mellow groove with its congas (I can hear a bit of Traffic on this one), and Heavy Load sounds very much like a preview of Bad Company (Ready for Love, for example). And, of course, the enduring All Right Now: To me, this song is a good example of the power of great rock ‘n’ roll guitar riffs and driving rhythm that more than make up for lyrics lacking much depth.

Tracklist

Side One:

Fire and Water
Oh I Wept
Remember
Heavy Load

Side Two:

Mr. Big
Don’t Say You Love Me
All Right Now

-Stephen

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/free-fire-and-water/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/fire-and-water-mw0000198572

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_and_Water_(Free_album)#Track_listing

June 1970 – Fotheringay

June 1970: Fotheringay – Fotheringay

Fifty years ago this month the eponymous debut from the British folk group Fotheringay was released. The band was formed by Sandy Denny after she left Fairport Convention in 1969, and included her future husband Trevor Lucas on guitar as well as Gerry Conway on drums, guitarist Jerry Donahue, and Pat Donaldson on bass. The band’s name was derived from a castle where Mary, Queen of Scots was once imprisoned. It was also the title of a Denny song recorded with Fairport Convention. Fotheringay was the only album they released during their original incarnation. The group disbanded in 1971 during sessions for their second album when Denny chose to pursue a solo career. Fotheringay 2 was finally released in 2008.

I began to take an interest in the late 1960’s/early 70’s British folk scene in the late 90’s, about the time I, like many others, discovered Nick Drake through a Volkswagen commercial. The first group whose music I explored was Fairport Convention, and I immediately became a fan of the late Sandy Denny’s vocals on their second through fourth albums. It turned out I had heard her sing before; she was the only guest vocalist to appear on a Led Zeppelin album, on the song The Battle of Evermore. As a natural progression I gave this album a listen and found it to be a continuation of the Fairport sound I like, then dove into Denny’s wonderful solo work. She was a brilliant composer and vocalist, but a somewhat tragic figure who passed away in 1978 at the age of 31.

Fotheringay was produced by Joe Boyd, whose fingerprints are all over recordings from the British folk and underground scene including the aforementioned Drake, as well as The Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, and others. My favorite tracks on the album overall were written and sung by Denny, especially Nothing More (with its Jerry Donahue guitar solo that I wish was about five minutes longer), though Trevor Lucas’s rendition of Gordon Lightfoot’s The Way I Feel is a particularly strong example of the British folk rock I enjoy. They also took a turn at Dylan’s Too Much of Nothing, another song from his 1967 basement sessions with the group that would soon be named The Band that wouldn’t see the official light of day until 1975. Interestingly, Fotheringay wasn’t even the first to release a version. Peter, Paul and Mary had a Top 40 hit with it in 1967, and Spooky Tooth also released it on their debut the following year.

Below is a live clip of Fotheringay performing perhaps my favorite song of theirs on the German TV program Beat Club, followed by the album itself.

Tracklist

Side One:

Nothing More
The Sea
The Ballad of Ned Kelly
Winter Winds
Peace in the End

Side Two:

The Way I Feel
The Pond and the Stream
Too Much of Nothing
Banks of the Nile

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fotheringay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fotheringay_(album)

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=10949

April 1970 – The McCartney Album 50 Years On

4/17/70 – Paul McCartney – McCartney

To wrap up my makeup work on some of the key 50th album release anniversaries I missed this spring, I thought I’d share some thoughts on the McCartney album.

As a kid I thought this album was titled Bowl of Cherries. I like it a lot, always have. My brother’s copy got a lot of spins when I was growing up, and since it was Paul McCartney I automatically accepted it as good, just as I did with all his solo and Wings albums through Tug of War. There’s definitely a degree of psychology involved in some of our musical preferences, which is another way of saying we like what we like. There are also plenty of folks who don’t like it. They hear some if not all of the songs as weak and sloppily recorded. It’s another example of McCartney’s ego run amok with him playing all the instruments. And worse, he slipped that little “interview” into the album jacket in which he announced the breakup of the Beatles, even though he later claimed that wasn’t his intent.

When artists achieve a certain degree of critical acclaim, they have as a result set a high bar not just for their peers but for themselves as well going forward. The most creative and ambitious among them welcome the challenge, though rarely are those peaks reached again. Though Paul would later attempt to scale those heights in his solo career with varying amounts of success, that’s not what McCartney is about. It was largely a vehicle for Paul to pick himself up again after the Beatles had come undone because he didn’t know what else to do. The McCartneys had retreated to their farm in Scotland after the difficult Get Back sessions in January 1969, and Paul sank into a dark emotional space of fear and depression. That’s a real thing. He was also compelled to reassure the world he was still alive via some uninvited guests on his farm from Life Magazine (hard to believe that was a real thing, too).

That’s not to say Paul didn’t care about moving product, because of course he did. With Linda’s help, he pulled himself together and wrote some songs which he combined with a couple he’d already written and demoed with the Beatles. You can hear John mocking Teddy Boy on The Beatles Anthology Vol. 3 during the Get Back sessions, for example. McCartney also features a couple of tracks in Maybe I’m Amazed and Every Night which I think are up to standard for any McCartney album or Beatles for that matter. Plenty of musicians can only dream of writing two songs that good. But for me as an adult it’s not just that I still enjoy listening to it. As with much of the music from past eras it’s also the context of the creation of this record that interests me after all this time.

And what of the other tracks on the album? The lack of flow to me is in itself the flow, beginning with the brief and whimsical The Lovely Linda which opens the album, a song whose inclusion makes perfect sense considering Linda’s role in motivating Paul at the time. In the instrumentals such as Valentine Day Paul shows off a bit of lead guitar work – something he did occasionally in the Beatles but which the casual fan wasn’t very aware of since Paul was “the bass player.” Man We Was Lonely is a goofy autobiographical song, and it’s just now dawning on me as I write that it’s a country song. I’d never thought of it like that. Oo You and Momma Miss America are improvised rockers, the latter with a cool tremolo guitar effect. I like Paul’s drumming on these tracks, simple as it might be. Teddy Boy and Junk are from the same mold as Another Day which was released the following year. And what McCartney fan hasn’t, at least in the privacy of their home, sung along to the karaoke that is Singalong Junk?

My first copy of this album came in the form of a low quality Maxell D-90 cassette onto which I recorded my uncle’s LP. During Momma Miss America the music cuts out and there’s a piercing, high pitched noise that lasts two or three seconds. My uncle later admitted he had inadvertently hit pause while it was recording. It just became part of the song for me for about ten years until I bought a copy on CD.

Tracklist

Side One:

The Lovely Linda
That Would Be Something
Valentine Day
Every Night
Hot as Sun/Glasses
Junk
Man We Was Lonely

Side Two:

Oo You
Momma Miss America
Teddy Boy
Singalong Junk
Maybe I’m Amazed
Kreen-Akrore

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCartney_(album)

June 14 – The First Time the Grateful Dead Went Mainstream

6/14/70: The Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead

For their fourth studio album, the Grateful Dead wanted to record in less time and with less fuss and expense than with their previous efforts. This was due in part to please Warner Bros., who hadn’t seen much of a return on their investment in the band, but also because the kind of music the band was gravitating toward demanded it. Workingman’s Dead was recorded over a period of about nine days in February 1970 and released a half-century ago today.

The album represented a shift in direction from the psychedelic sounds of their first albums, as well as the mayhem of those recording sessions, to more of a folk/country rock sound. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir had occasionally played acoustic guitars on tour just prior to going back into the studio, with the former being especially influenced by the Bakersfield sound. Garcia introduced a steel guitar to their music, and vocally the Dead were influenced by CSN’s vocal harmonies. And in a repeated theme of the time across the rock landscape, the influence of The Band’s first two albums crept into the music of the Grateful Dead, specifically with Robert Hunter’s lyrics.

Opinion | The Genius Behind the Grateful Dead - The New York Times — Robert Hunter

In his original Rolling Stone review from July 1970, Andy Zwerling emphasized the album’s warmth resulting from Garcia’s acoustic guitar and the band’s clean harmonies, but predicted “staunch Dead freaks” probably wouldn’t like country flavored songs such as Uncle John’s Band. He also pointed out that even the tracks which aren’t exactly country, such as Casey Jones, have that flavor. The group had dispersed from Haight-Ashbury into quieter and more rural surroundings around Marin County, which in turn also influenced the vibe of the album. While it might’ve seemed like a radical shift in musical direction, the album is a reminder that Garcia’s and Weir’s musical roots, as well as those of lyricist Robert Hunter, were found in places other than the manic psychedelia of the Dead’s first albums. Country, bluegrass, folk, straight forward rock, and blues make up this record.

As I’ve probably mentioned in the past, I’m a bit of a tweener when it comes to this band. That is, I enjoy the Grateful Dead as a live act and recognize that they were at home on stage, but I don’t possess the knowledge, passion, commitment, and downright obsession of most Deadheads to fully submerge myself in the vastness of their live documents. Not yet at least, though I’m inching in that direction. But from what I can tell, I might appreciate their studio albums more than those entrenched in the live recordings. What can I say, I’m an album kind of guy I suppose. And on this one, my favorite tracks besides the obvious Uncle John’s Band and Casey Jones are the country tinged High Time and Dire Wolf, plus New Speedway Boogie (Hunter’s commentary on Altamont), and Cumberland Blues with it’s fantastic harmonies.

Workingman’s Dead topped Rolling Stone magazine readers poll for best album of 1970, and contemporary reviews were universally enthusiastic. More significantly, the album and its followup, American Beauty, greatly expanded the Dead’s audience just as In the Dark and the promotional vehicle known as MTV would do 27 years later for better and for worse. As Blair Jackson pointed out in Guitar World:

“Workingman’s Dead” turned the Dead into a song band, and it was the launch pad for everything that came after it. It was a big gamble, a radical change in direction, but it paid off like a royal flush.”

Tracklist

Side One:

Uncle John’s Band
High Time
Dire Wolf
New Speedway Boogie

Side Two:

Cumberland Blues
Black Peter
Easy Wind
Casey Jones

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workingman%27s_Dead#Track_listing

https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/workingman-s-dead-grateful-dead-shifted-uncommercial-jam-band-one-worlds-most-popular-acts

Workingman’s Dead

June 12 – Gasoline Alley at 50

6/12/70: Rod Stewart – Gasoline Alley

Rod Stewart, including his work with Faces, is another example of an artist from rock’s late 60s-mid-70s era whose greatness I’ve bemoaned – probably ad nauseam – as not appreciated as it should be in the 21st century as a result of dumbed-down corporate classic rock radio, not to mention his own chosen musical direction in later years. That’s not to say the man has suffered; he’s done quite well for himself in later incarnations as disco Rod and Great American Songbook crooner Rod. Thankfully we can turn directly to the albums for a nice reminder of how good those early releases are, start to finish. Stewart’s second solo album, Gasoline Alley, turns 50 today.

This album, along with his other early solo works, is a consistent blend of folk, blue-eyed soul, country rock, and straight forward rock, mostly with sparse arrangements. All of his Faces bandmates – Ronnie Wood, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, and Kenny Jones – contribute to this album, just as some if not all of them would participate on Stewart’s other early solo albums. Gasoline Alley features powerful bass lines by Ronnie Wood and Ronnie Lane, heavy though not overplayed drums by Mick Waller and Kenney Jones, barrel house piano work by Ian McLagan and Pete Sears, and guitars by Wood and Martin Quittenton. These sounds are augmented with just the right touches of violin (Dennis O’Flynn, Dick Powell) and mandolin (Stanley Matthews).

Langdon Winner, in his September 1970 review of the album in Rolling Stone, interestingly compared Gasoline Alley and Stewart’s debut album favorably to The Band’s Music from Big Pink for its country rock, or what we now call Americana, flavor. That had never occurred to me, and I don’t disagree. Six of the nine songs are covers, but they all sound like Stewart made them his own. His cover of Bobby and Shirley Jean Womack’s It’s All Over Now is more raucous than the Stones’ version, and dare I say nearly as soulful as the original Valentinos version featuring Womack. His take on the Small Faces’ 1967 song My Way of Giving would’ve fit in even “way back” in psychedelic ’67 just as it did in ’70. Stewart’s version of Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s Country Comfort appeared four months before Elton’s, and his rendition of Dylan’s Only a Hobo was released 21 years before the original. Bob originally recorded the song in late 1962/early ’63 but left it off The Times They Are a-Changin’. It would eventually appear on The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) in 1991. There were no singles from Gasoline Alley, but it still reached 27 on the pop charts.

I’ll stop short of suggesting Rod Stewart hasn’t been given his due when it comes to being a great rock interpreter of others’ originals because maybe he has. I will say that I didn’t realize it for myself until I listened to these albums all the way through. It’s something that I had never really considered perhaps due to Stewart’s image in my mind based upon growing up hearing songs such as Stay with Me and Hot Legs, whether singing his own songs or interpreting others’. By image I of course mean that of the rock front man diva. I can listen to this and his other early albums and hear them for their musical qualities alone. He belts out the vocals when needed, but there’s a sincere, gravely warmth in his singing on tracks such as Only a Hobo, Lady Day and Jo’s Lament, the latter two being Stewart originals. Again from Winner in his 1970 Rolling Stone review:

The music of Rod Stewart helps us to remember many of the small but extremely important experiences of life which our civilization inclines us to forget. Compassion. Care for small things. The textures of sorrow. Remembrance of times past. Reverence for age. Stewart has a rare sensitivity for the delicate moments in a person’s existence when a crucial but often neglected truth flashes before his eyes and then vanishes. The amazing character of Stewart’s work is largely due to the fact that he can recall these fragile moments of insight to our minds without destroying their essence.

An Ultimate Classic Rock 45th anniversary retrospective review refers to his cover of You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want to Discuss It) as the only “clunker,” but even that track is worth a listen for Ronnie Lane’s driving bass alone. I suppose if there’s a weak link on this album to my ears, it’s Country Comfort. I hear Elton’s version on Tumbleweed Connection a few months down the line as being a fuller, more realized rendition. I’m not breaking any news here, but Stewart’s recorded vocal output between 1969-1973 is remarkable by any standard. For my own perspective I listed the four solo Rod Stewart and four Faces releases – all widely considered good/great – over a period of three years and four months in chronological order. I’ll just leave it:

Stewart – An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down (a.k.a. The Rod Stewart Album) – 11/69

Faces – First Step – 3/27/70

Stewart – Gasoline Alley – 6/12/70

Faces – Long Player – 2/71

Stewart – Every Picture Tells a Story – 5/28/71

Faces – A Nod is as Good as a Wink…to a Blind Horse – 11/17/71

Stewart – Never a Dull Moment – 7/21/72

Faces – Ooh La La – 3/73

How would Faces be rated in rock’s pantheon if Stewart’s first four solo albums had been official Faces albums instead?

Tracklist

Side One:

Gasoline Alley
It’s All Over Now
Only a Hobo
My Way of Giving

Side Two:

Country Comfort
Cut Across Shorty
Lady Day
Jo’s Lament
You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want to Discuss It)

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_Alley_(album)

https://www.allmusic.com/album/gasoline-alley-mw0000650828

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/rod-stewart-gasoline-alley/

Gasoline Alley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Stewart#1969%E2%80%931975:_Solo_career_established_and_Faces_albums

June 10 – Edwin Starr & the “Other” Protest Song from June 1970

6/10/70: Edwin Starr – Single: War

This Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong written anti-Vietnam War classic was originally recorded by the Temptations and included on their March 1970 release, Psychedelic Shack. Motown declined to issue it as a single out of concern that it might offend conservative fans of the group whose base crossed racial and political lines. With high demand for it to be released as a single, the label compromised by allowing it to be re-recorded with a different singer and produced by Whitfield. Enter Edwin Starr, who did a more dramatic take on the track. His version reached number one on the Billboard Pop Chart for three weeks and earned a Grammy nomination for best R&B male vocal. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

When I heard this song growing up, I tended to think of it simply as another of the many classic songs of the era I liked. Admittedly, I wasn’t familiar with the Temptations version as it was an album-only track. Psychedelic Shack represents a glaring omission in my music education.

Moving forward, when I heard Bruce Springsteen’s version on his live box set in 1986, it was clear he was bringing a current sense of relevance to the song. My fifteen year old ears could hear it, but my naive fifteen year old mind couldn’t grasp what that song had to do with 1986. As I understood the world at the time, the “next” war would be of the nuclear variety, and deciding whether or not I believed in the cause would be irrelevant. Turned out I was wrong.

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(The_Temptations_song)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Starr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_Shack

April 1970 – Elton’s Transatlantic Debut

4/10/70: Elton John – Elton John

When Elton John’s eponymous album was released 50 years ago this past April, it was assumed by many in the U.S. to be his debut, not realizing his first album, 1969’s Empty Sky, hadn’t been released in America. That album wouldn’t make it to record store shelves here until 1975, at the peak of Elton mania.

With this album we hear a significant shift in Bernie Taupin’s lyric writing. While there are hints of the esoteric themes prevalent on Empty Sky such as in First Episode at Hienton and Take Me to the Pilot (a song whose meaning even Taupin has stated he has no idea of), the songs on this second release – tracks such as I Need You to Turn To, The Greatest Discovery, and the instant classic Your Song – are of the variety that listeners can relate to directly. And, the socially conscious Border Song is no less relevant today than it was 50 years ago. Indeed, Elton and Bernie dove right in to what would be loosely termed the singer/songwriter era. In addition to Gus Dudgeon’s production, the album’s immediately recognizable sound is due in large part to the string arrangements of Paul Buckmaster, who I wrote about in a recent post.

One of my favorite tracks on this album is Sixty Years On. Elton performed a powerful version of it on his 1979 Russia tour with Ray Cooper. An official album from that tour was released in recent years, but unfortunately this song was left off. As a result, it’s not in my collection.

Elton John was certified gold in February 1971 and received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012. It also spawned a few of Elton’s concert staples over the following five decades. If interested in where I ranked Elton John within his discography, see this series I did a while back.

Tracklist

Side One:

Your Song
I Need You to Turn To
Take Me to the Pilot
No Shoe Strings on Louise
First Episode at Hienton

Side Two:

Sixty Years On
Border Song
The Greatest Discovery
The Cage
The King Must Die

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_John_(album)

Elton John Flashback: Stunning 1970 Live Version of ‘Take Me To The Pilot’

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/elton-john-1970-album/

Paul Buckmaster, Liner Notes, and Music Geekdom

Music fans, as with any other group of enthusiasts, vary in degrees of interest level. If there’s a scale of music listener nerdiness, I might rate myself a bit more “into it” than someone who grew up listening to music on the radio and owned a handful of albums and/or 45s, and maybe attended the occasional concert. But I’m less so than, say, musicians whose knowledge allows (causes?) them to be quite analytical beyond liking/disliking what they hear, or those who build shelving for their LP collections that take up entire walls in their home, floor to ceiling (something I greedily envy). I don’t know how else to quantify or categorize my level of interest other than to say that since I was a kid I’ve always been fascinated with the who/what/when/where/why of albums, many of the answers to which as a kid in the 1970’s and 80’s I found in album liner notes. That is to say, to some extent, I’m a geek. This is something that is largely lost in today’s digital music world.

I know many people can relate. It was about foraging through the album collection of an older sibling, parent, or uncle. Or, hanging out at a friend’s house after school, listening to music and comparing knowledge about music trivialities (just don’t touch his big brother’s albums!). Painting with a wide brush, when shooting the breeze about bands the focus was usually on the primary band members, though occasionally a session player or the producer’s name would come up. In some cases, years later we pieced together just how respected, talented, and ubiquitous some of these “other” names are. Growing up, one of the handful of artists everyone in my home liked was Elton John. All of Elton’s albums up to A Single Man were in my brothers’ combined collection and played regularly, and yours truly was usually right there listening with them, curiously studying the busy artwork on such jackets as Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. What is going on with all these cartoon characters? Look at those clothes! How did Dee and Davey get their hair to look like that? Doesn’t Nigel’s drum kit look cool? Why did Elton’s band completely turn over on Rock of the Westies? Gus Dudgeon? That’s kind of a funny name. And, Who is this Paul Buckmaster guy, and what’s so important about an “arranger?”

Sure, I noticed the strings on such songs as Levon and Tiny Dancer, among other Elton tracks. I liked the sound o.k., but had no real opinion. My mom played a lot of classical music, so I just accepted strings as part of music in general. Fast forward into early adulthood when it had been a long time since I’d given any thought to the particulars of Elton’s recordings. One day in the mid-90’s I was listening to an album by one of my favorite current bands, The Jayhawks. The song was Blue. Violins played from nearly the beginning, but a little over a minute into it the cellos kicked in and it sounded very familiar. “Is that…Paul Buckmaster’s work?” Sure enough, it was. Another time I was listening to the Stones’ Sticky Fingers album, and there he was again, this time on Sway and Moonlight Mile. Who is this guy, and what other albums has he worked on? I wondered. As it turned out, quite a few.

Buckmaster, who passed in 2017 at the age of 71, was a British cellist, arranger, conductor and composer. His father was an actor, his mother a concert pianist. He studied cello at the Royal Academy of Music and was a talented musician, but found his career path in orchestral arranging across multiple genres, as well as film scores. His debut as an arranger was on David Bowie’s Space Oddity. How’s that for an auspicious beginning? Shortly after that, Buckmaster attended a Miles Davis concert where he met a young Elton John, at the time working on his second album. He was invited to be the music director on what became the eponymous Elton John album. And the rest, as they say…

For those like myself who aren’t well versed in the nuances of orchestral arrangements, check out any number of tracks mentioned in this post and listed in his wiki page linked at the bottom and hear for yourself if there’s a familiarity, a Paul Buckmaster stamp, on the music. Or, try to imagine Your Song, Border Song, Tiny Dancer, You’re So Vain, Terrapin Station, Harry Nilsson’s version of Without You, and many, many other great songs including Train’s Drops of Jupiter, for which he won the Grammy for Arrangement of the Year in 2002, without Paul Buckmaster’s distinctive sound. He described his approach in a 2010 article in The Guardian:

“One general rule is to hold back as much as possible,” he said, “to give the listener the chance to let the song grow and unfold, introducing new sonic elements, such as new instruments or sectional groupings. If you use everything from the beginning, you have nowhere to go.” Yep, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say.

-Stephen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buckmaster

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0118729/

March 1970 – Bitches Brew: I Like It, Don’t I? Yes. Yes I Do.

3/30/70: Miles Davis – Bitches Brew

When I first began dipping my toe into jazz waters around the age of 19, I went with “safe” choices that even an unlearned, jazz-curious person like me would enjoy, much of which I had heard at least bits of before. You know, the usual suspects: Miles’s Kind of Blue, Brubeck’s Time Out, Ellington at Newport, Monk’s Dream, etc. I kept coming across the title Bitches Brew, reading how its elements of jazz and rock fusion broke down musical barriers, but I didn’t know what that meant. I worked in a jazz-oriented establishment for much of the 1990’s that featured live performances by local and national acts, and slowly my curiosity expanded. One day I finally asked one of my bosses, a knowledgeable jazz fan, his opinion of the album. With a slight grin he responded, “It’s listenable.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but fine, I’d just have to buy a copy and decide for myself.

I liked this double album right away, though I couldn’t have told you why. It was unlike anything I’d heard before in jazz or rock. I realize now it was probably due to a combination of the pulsating, somewhat muffled rhythms underlying Davis’s trumpet bursts and delicate piano improvisations by Chick Corea, Larry Young, and Joe Zawinul that it had my attention. I listened again. Gradually I began to appreciate the contributions by fusion guitar master John McLaughlin and soprano saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Pharaoh’s Dance sounds right out of the Dark Continent. The title track which follows puts imagery in my mind of dangerous, deserted early 1970’s New York City streets on top of the tribal rhythms of the opening track. It seems to build upon itself.

Those rhythms. For this album, Davis employed two bassists (Harvey Brooks on one, and Dave Holland on double bass), two to three drummers including Jack DeJohnette from his touring band, two to three electric piano players including Corea, and a percussionist. With some exceptions they all played at the same time. Miles provided his musicians with sketches for them to play whatever they pleased as long as they stayed with Davis’s chosen chord. The opening track of side three, Spanish Key, is one of the funkier ones on the album. Again, the rhythm section pushes intensively while Miles plays on top before an electric piano crescendo brings them together, opening another segment for McLaughlin’s guitar, a little crunchier this time around, then Shorter on alto sax. I listened once again. Finally it dawned on me: This is electric music. Now, I realized this was not a 1950’s piano/bass/drums/saxophone quartet and all, but I didn’t really understand until I stopped comparing it to what relatively little jazz I’d become familiar with. And when I take time to listen to the entire thing, I feel as though I’ve been through something rather intense by the end. As in, worn out.

Bitches Brew, recorded in August of 1969 and released March 30, 1970, opened some musical doors for me. While I’m no connoisseur of free jazz, I was able to enjoy Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come and Coltrane’s A Love Supreme as a result, the latter combining in a very timely way with my emerging interest in spirituality from the East and West. The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire by McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra became favorites in my small but growing jazz collection. Live Grateful Dead recordings became even more fun to listen to, and Zappa’s Hot Rats made its way into the rotation. Lastly, in checking out his previous two “electric” albums, Filles de Kilimanjaro and In a Silent Way, I was able to hear just how far Miles had taken his new direction in such a short period of time. Great artists who can’t get their ideas recorded quickly enough – I cannot imagine what that’s like. If you don’t know this album but are curious, don’t do as I did and dip your toe in. Dive straight into the deep end.

Tracklist

Side One: Pharaoh’s Dance

Side Two: Bitches Brew

Side Three: Spanish Key, John McLaughlin

Side Four: Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, Sanctuary

-Stephen

Miles Davis and the Making of Bitches Brew: Sorcerer’s Brew

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitches_Brew

Bitches Brew