Whatever happened to good old rock and roll instrumentals? Whatever happened to INSTRUMENTALS, PERIOD????
Time was, a group of high school buddies could get together at someone's house with their instruments (guitar, sax, drums, bass) and come up with some super-stupid, super-great rockin' jam.
Time was, a DJ at a record hop could string together 5 or 6 instrumentals at the beginning of the night to warm the teenagers up (or kill time until they showed up).
Time was, REAL music played by REAL people could make you get out of your seat and MOVE!
Time was....
Anyhoo, this group from Florida had this one record, and it's a killer! Super-fast rockin' sax instro, with crazy, out-of-time chanting of "WE WANT MORE, WE WANT MORE". No clue as to why they called it "Fender Bender" (also no clue as to why they were the "Original" Starfires - was there another group with that name making records at the time??). Originally released on the Pace label, the record was picked up by Apt Records (same label that gave you the #1 hit "Little Star" by The Elegants) and promptly went nowhere.
This 45 has also been featured on "The Devil's Music" blog (that's how I knew the group was from Florida). Dig it here.
The Original Starfires - Fender Bender (Pace 101) - 1959
I really don't have much to say about this group from Louisville, Kentucky - it's pretty much all been said here. Only thing I CAN say is that this is one awesome 45 - this and the flip, "Love Me When I'm Down", show the two great sides of this group. Track it down wherever (and whenever) you can, either on the original Counterpart label or this national release on Laurie.
Soul Inc. - I Belong To Nobody (Laurie 3430) - 1967
One of the reasons I like country music so much is that it never lost its sense of humor. Rock and pop lost that a loooong time ago. Now what passes for humor in pop music is nothing but insults to one's intelligence. Now, instead of truly funny records like "Ahab The Arab" or "Transfusion" or "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bed Post Over Night", we get records like "Fuck You" by Cee Lo. Wow. "Fuck You". Brilliant. Wonder how long Cee Lo worked on that idea to develop it into such a powerful statement. Ten, maybe twelve seconds? Country, on the other hand, still has some pretty funny tunes, like "Bobby With An 'I'" by Phil Vassar (about a big, bench-pressing dude who just happens to like dressing up as a woman and going to bars), or "Fish" by Craig Campbell (about a girl who likes to drive out to the lake in her boyfriend's truck, gee that girl loves to f-f-f-f-f-fish - rather sophomoric, really, but still a LOT funnier than "Fuck You"). I also like the fact that country music can have really, really warped subject matter - murder (I've often wondered which form of music has more guns and shootings - country or rap), mental illness, in-breeding (see "I'm My Own Grandpaw"), oddball couples ("You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly" by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty comes to mind), good times spent in jail, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera....
Today's selection is one of the funniest cheating songs ever waxed. Ferlin Husky had been a country hitmaker for Capitol since the early 1950s, not just under his own name, but also under his humorous alter ego, Simon Crum. On this record, the two facets of this great singer came together. Basically, the guy's wife is cheating on him, and he keeps warning her, "someday you'll push me too far". Well, one day, ol' Ferlin snaps (or maybe it was Simon) . He coaxes his wife to their old make-out spot - at the top of a mountain. You can guess what happens next. If this sounds like a much more ridiculous version of Porter Wagoner's "The Cold Hard Facts Of Life" (released just a couple of months before this record), it should.
The man who wrote this song, Bobby Braddock, became a very in-demand songwriter (though I'd guess not because of this record), writing country classics such as "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" by Tammy Wynette, "Georgia In A Jug" by Johnny Paycheck, and the ultimate country weeper "He Stopped Loving Her Today" by George Jones. Amazingly, he's still writing big country hits, like "I Wanna Talk About Me" by Toby Keith, and "God Is Great, Beer Is Good, People Are Crazy" by Billy Currington.
Ferlin Husky - You Pushed Me Too Far (Capitol 5938) - 1967
There are blues records, and then there are Willie Dixon blues records. "Little Red Rooster", "Spoonful", "Evil", "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Wang Dang Doodle", "My Babe", "I Ain't Superstitious", "Back Door Man" - the list of the classic tunes he wrote goes on and on. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters used to berate Dixon for giving the other guy the best songs. His songs have been recorded by everybody from The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Cream to Megadeth and Styx. Not to mention ripped off big time by Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin.
Yet, like a lot of great songwriters, he couldn't have a hit by singing his own compositions. He did make some records for Checker in the mid-1950s, but for the most part, his career as a recording artist remains obscure. Of course, one reason for that could be the above record (cut for Willie's own Yambo label), which is one of the strangest and most sexually explicit "blues" records ever released. The reason I say "blues" and not blues is because it's not really a blues record - the piano (played by longtime Chess session man Lafayette Leake) is not played in a blues style - it's jazzy and slow, like you'd hear at 2 AM in some back-alley club where hard-boiled gumshoes hang out. That piano is virtually the only musical instrument on the record. The rest of the record is filled with dialogue and a VERY short chorus.
It starts with two guys, obviously in a hotel room or boardinghouse of some sort, listening to the noises emanating through the paper-thin wall from the room next door. One guy tells the other, "oh, he's pettin' his baby" and sings a short melody that he's heard coming from the room from time to time.
Then the action shifts to the other room, where the guy is telling his baby what he'll give her and how much he loves her. Then a female coo is heard, and at first you think he's actually talking to a baby. But then the female speaks up (the "female" being portrayed by one of the guys in the band - or Willie himself - in a scratchy falsetto), and you realize that even though he's calling her "baby" and she's calling him "daddy", this ain't no father-daughter relationship (though if it is, that makes this record even more disturbing).
Well, the "baby"s and "daddy"s get more and more suggestive, and before you know it this record becomes the aural (no pun intended) equivalent of a porn flick! When listening to this, stick around to the very end for one of the best (and truest) endings to what happens here.
One last note: a friend of mine told me a story that someone (who is a musician) told him about Willie. Sometime in the 1970s the musician was on a blues tour, with Willie as a headliner. In one of the towns the tour stopped in, the promoter put everybody up in a hotel that was literally infested with flies. The musicians went to each others' rooms to socialize, but when they went to Willie's room there wasn't ONE fly in his room that they could see. The musician asked Willie, "how'd you deal with the flies?", and Dixon said, "I bunched 'em". The musician didn't know what Willie meant until Willie pointed to one corner of the room - in which there sat a rather large pile of human excrement, with flies buzzing all around it.
Willie Dixon - Petting The Baby (Yambo 777-14/777-15) - 1973
"The Travelers" was a name used by MANY groups in the 1950s and 1960s. There are records on labels like Atlas, ABC-Paramount, Decca, Don-Ray, Gass, Knight, Magic Lamp, MG, Midwest, Princess, Vault, World-Wide and Yellow Sand - ALL by some group or another named The Travelers. Some are folk records, some are surf, others doo-wop - all obscure. It's a definite bad-luck name; not ONE of those Travelers groups ever had a national hit.
However, THIS group of Travelers at least came close - and their provenance is a lot cooler than all those other, anonymous Travelers groups. These Travelers were actually The Pilgrim Travelers, one of the GREAT early- to mid-50s gospel groups that recorded for Art Rupe's Specialty Records. With dual leads Kylo Turner and Keith Barber (and baritone Jess Whitaker), the Pilgrim Travelers were one of the most respected groups on the gospel scene. Their manager was J. W. Alexander, who later took an interest in another of Rupe's groups, The Soul Stirrers, especially their lead singer, Sam Cooke.
Well, we all know what happened with Sam and J. W., but the Pilgrim Travelers followed in their footsteps, leaving Art Rupe and Specialty Records shortly after Sam's defection in 1957. A&R man Bumps Blackwell, who also left Specialty at the same time, signed The Pilgrim Travelers to the Keen/Andex/Ensign family of labels in 1957, and used the same blueprint with them as he did with Sam - he tried to turn them into a secular group, re-christening them The Travelers. At this time a new tenor joined the group, a young man named Lou Rawls (I always think of him as a deep baritone, but everybody says he sang tenor for the group - and who am I to argue?). This was the first single the group released with Rawls (though, to be honest, I can't hear him anywhere on this 45). Kylo Turner left the group shortly afterwards (though he did make a solo 45 for Andex).
Ironically, it was traveling that destroyed The Travelers. The gospel circuit was rough in those days, and traveling 300 miles between gigs in a car was not uncommon. The group had already had several close calls, but on November 10, 1958, at about 2 AM, after a gig and a party, the group (with Sam Cooke himself in tow) piled into Sam's brand-new yellow 1958 Cadillac El Dorado convertible. With Eddie Cunningham (Sam's driver) at the wheel, Sam riding shotgun, and Lou Rawls and Sam's guitarist Cliff White in the back, they traveled from St. Louis to Greenville, Mississippi, down Highway 61. Eddie fell asleep at the wheel, and slammed into a soybean truck at about 100 miles an hour. White ended up with a broken collarbone, broken ribs, and broken fingers (not good for a guitarist, but White would play behind Sam for a number of years afterward). Lou Rawls hit his head on the steel bar that held up the ragtop, and was in a coma for several days. Eddie Cunningham was nearly cut in half by the edge of the steering wheel; he died in the hospital two hours later. As for Sam, who was also fast asleep, he somehow slid under the dashboard and walked away with a cut on his left arm and some glass slivers in his face. With Lou out for the forseeable future, the group decided to call it a day.
As for this 45, it's so goofy but so cool at the same time. From the opening "vroom vroom!" noises the lead singer (probably Jess Whitaker) makes, to the cries of "Hey man, lend me a quarter" and "Man, I just spent thirty cents!", this record makes being a cash-strapped teenager sound fun.
The Travelers - Teen Age Machine Age (Andex 3-4006) - 1958
One of the great pitfalls of being an artist in the music industry (particularly the American music industry) is that you may get pigeonholed into a certain genre of music. No matter how great or how varied an artist is, that artist is going to be known by one or two of his or her biggest hits. For me, there are two great artists whose later work gets cruelly ignored, while their early records get spun over and over again. They are The Everly Brothers and Dion, and one of the (many) things they have in common is that, unlike a lot of similar 1950s hitmakers, Dion and the Everlys actually made a conscious attempt to keep up with the changing times without losing their sense of self - and often the results were breathtaking.
Example: in most rock and roll accounts, The Everlys were a hit-making machine on a small label (Cadence), and were pretty much unstoppable. Then Warner Brothers came calling. They had a few hits for Warners in the early 60s, then those damn Beatles came along and they (and their matching pompadours) were knocked out of the box for 10 years, broke up in 1973, and made a huge comeback in 1984. That's it. Well, the truth isn't that simple. A closer look at the Everlys' output for Warners from 1964-1970 reveals, among other things, that the brothers worked with The Hollies (on the LP "Two Yanks In England"), Ron Elliot of The Beau Brummels, and pretty much invented the late-60s revolution called country-rock (dig up their 1968 LP "Roots" to hear the brothers show the world how it's supposed to be done). They also wrote many songs covered by others during this period ("Man With Money", done by A Wild Uncertainty and The Who; "It's All Over", a hit for The Casinos and later recorded by artiste Scott Walker) and put out killer singles, like 1965's "The Price Of Love" (one of the loudest, most rocking singles of the 60s - no wonder it hit #1 in England) and "You're My Girl". They also did the garagiest (is that even a word??) version ever of Little Richard's "The Girl Can't Help It" (from their 1966 LP "Beat & Soul"). Not to mention that Don Everly used to like to get high with Jimi Hendrix and trade guitar licks. In other words, the music was up to par, and the Everlys were still revered all over the world. The only ingredient that was missing? They couldn't get a hit in their home country, mainly because folks dismissed the Everlys as "that 50s group" without even listening to the music!
The same exact thing happened to Dion DiMucci. Born in the Bronx on July 18, 1939, he grew up on the mean streets of New York, joining a gang (the Fordham Baldies), and immersing himself in a world of fights, street drugs (becoming addicted to heroin by the time he was 18) and, luckily, music. Basically, Dion was Lou Reed ten years before Lou was. Except for the homosexual part.
Dion's dad was a vaudeville entertainer, so music was a big part of his upbringing, and Dion liked all kinds of music - especially country and western and blues. But the music of the Bronx streets was a capella, aka "group harmony" or "doo-wop" (though nobody used that term in the 50s), and Dion fell right in, singing with his buddies Carlo Mastrangelo, Angelo D'Aleo and Fred Milano (good Irish Catholics all) on street corners. He and the boys auditioned for two neighborhood guys, Bob and Gene Schwartz, who had a small label called Mohawk Records. They signed Dion but not the group, and put Dion together with a vocal group called The Timberlanes (these were NOT the Belmonts; according to Dion, he never even met the Timberlanes). They put out one single, "The Chosen Few"/"Out In Colorado", with arrangements by Hugo Montenegro (!!!). The single was later leased to the larger Jubilee label, and promptly flopped. Dion then convinced the Schwartz brothers to record him with his group, named The Belmonts (after Belmont Ave. in the Bronx). Since the streetcorner sound was becoming big business at this time (1958), the Schwartz brothers agreed, and released the first Dion and The Belmonts single - "We Went Away"/"Tag Along" - on Mohawk. This also flopped. Since Mohawk was becoming a "bad luck" label for them, the Schwartzes decided to form a new label, called Laurie. The first 45 on the label was Dion and The Belmonts' follow-up to "We Went Away", called "I Wonder Why". The record started to sell big-time in New York, Alan Freed got wind of it, and the rest is history. Dion was now a star.
By 1960, Dion and The Belmonts had a half-dozen hits under their belts, and Dion had already made his first trip to rehab for his addiction. The money was tight, and Dion was always the focus anyway, and so in late 1960 Dion went solo. He had some huge hits for Laurie ("Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Lovers Who Wander", "Little Diane", "Love Came To Me", "Sandy"), then moved to the major Columbia in late 1962, where the hits continued ("Ruby Baby", "Donna The Prima Donna") all the way up to early 1964, when Dion's remake of the Drifters' "Drip Drop" hit Top Ten.
But at that point, several forces combined to knock Dion out of the spotlight. First, of course, was The Beatles, who totally dominated the charts during the early months of 1964. But Dion probably could have weathered the storm like many other American artists (Gene Pitney, The Beach Boys, Del Shannon, Bobby Vinton). However, it was at that time that Dion (encouraged by Columbia's legendary A&R man John Hammond) decided to take his passion for the blues to the forefront, and his next few singles for Columbia were pure blues - "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man", a bluesy version of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" (backed with Dion's version of "Chicago Blues"), and "Spoonful". It was also around this time that Dion's heroin addiction began to rear its ugly head again, and Dion took another couple of months off in late '64 to try and shake it.
When he came back in mid-'65, Dion had a band. Featuring John Falbo on guitar, Pete Baron on bass, and former Belmont Carlo Mastrangelo on drums, they called themselves Dion and The Wanderers, and put out several singles on Columbia under that name, and the above record is the best of them by far. Released in June of 1966, "Two Ton Feather" is what it would sound like if Bob Dylan inhabited Dion's body for three minutes. Clangy guitars, foot-stomping percussion, Dion's tough-guy vocals and somewhat abstract lyrics (though nowhere near the abstractiveness of Dylan's) make this a lost masterpiece.
Unfortunately, the single died on the vine (like all of Dion's Columbia singles after "Johnny B. Goode"), and was the last 45 he ever put out for Columbia (though CBS rummaged through some old tapes after Dion had the comeback hit "Abraham, Martin And John" on Laurie and put out "I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound" as a 45 in mid-1968). The contract with Columbia ran out in late '66, and Dion reunited with the Belmonts for an LP and two singles for ABC in '67 (one of the LP cuts was a rewrite of "Two Ton Feather" called "Jump Back Baby"), re-signed with Laurie Records in early '68 (after finally kicking his heroin addiction) and hit big with "Abraham, Martin And John". After another year at Laurie, he signed with Warner Bros. in 1970 and spent most of the early 70s as a sensitive singer-songwriter. He later worked with Phil Spector on the LP "Born To Be With You" and then became a born-again Christian, recording religious music for several years.
But everybody wanted the old Dion back. The Wanderer. Bragging about the women he'd bagged. It's still that way, unfortunately. Dion continues to record interesting music (his two semi-recent blues CDs - "Bronx In Blue" and "Son Of Skip James" are definitely worth searching out), but most people want the early 60s Dion back, and consider his fine mid-60s work an aberration, his "weird period". I suggest you go out and find the 2-CD set "The Road I'm On" from 1997, or, if you don't want to break your pockets, try "Bronx Blues: The Columbia Recordings (1962-1965)".
If I ever get Dion in my radio studio for an interview, we definitely would need to talk about his love of the blues. Then I could die a happy man.
Dion and The Wanderers - Two Ton Feather (Columbia 4-43692) - 1966
Sorry I haven't been around much in the last month-and-a-half......I moved. Literally five minutes away from where I was. And I'm STILL trying to get all my crap together! At least now my LPs are all in one place and I can access them all easily (thank you, Ikea).....
As for my 45s.....well, that's another story. Right now they're in my parents' basement. Which is one of TWO reasons why I haven't blogged - the other being that my new, upgraded computer (built from scratch by my genius cousin and myself) will NOT recognize my USB turntable!!! So now, every time I want to blog, I have to go to my mom and dad's house and hook up the turntable to their ultra lo-fi, barely running computer!!
Anyway, I'm here to talk about cool records, not whine about my so-called problems! And records don't come ANY cooler than this Link Wray side from 1966. I acquired (did not buy) this record in the none-too-distant past, and was very excited over the fact that I finally owned an original of "Ace Of Spades" by Link Wray on Swan! I breathlessly told my girlfriend about it, and she just shrugged as if to say "who's Link Wray?", but also smiled, as if to say, "if this makes you happy, then I'm happy too."
I played "Ace" a couple of times, quickly realizing that it's just a slight re-write of "Jack The Ripper", Link's hit from 1963 (also on Swan). I got bored, so I turned the single over. And got my ASS KICKED for the next three minutes!!!!
But then again, ass-kickin' was what Link Wray was all about. John Cipollina of Quicksiver Messenger Service once said that "(Link Wray) taught me you could swear without using words" and, boy, was it true. Cub Koda and a lot of other people say that Link invented the power chord - not true, at least to my ears; I think Scotty Moore did with his killer riff on "Jailhouse Rock", predating Link by almost a year. No matter who invented it, one thing is certain - nobody could make a guitar sound like a menacing street gang the way Link Wray could.
Link (born Fred Lincoln Wray, Jr. in Dunn, NC on May 2, 1929) started out with his brothers Vernon and Doug playing country music as Lucky Wray and The Lazy Pine Wranglers (later changed to the Palomino Ranch Hands). They got their big break in 1956 when they were asked to step in as the house band for the TV show "Milt Grant's House Party" (a Washington, D. C. version of "American Bandstand", and the basis for John Waters' brilliant "Hairspray" - the one with Ricki Lake, not the oh-so-fabulous-and-aren't-we-so-retro-you-could-puke remake with John Travolta). One day in 1957, ol' Milt asked Link and the boys to come up with an instrumental that the kids on his show could do the Stroll to. The group came up with a tune they called "Oddball", played it live on the show, and the kids went wild. One night in Fredericksburg, VA, the group had to play it four times to satisfy the audience.
From there, Milt Grant stepped in and pitched the song to a friend, Archie Bleyer of Cadence Records, who were riding high in the charts with the Everly Brothers, Andy Williams, and The Chordettes. Archie didn't really like the song, but Milt told him of the reaction Link got whenever he played it, so Archie took a chance. Well, when Link and his group (now called The Raymen) showed up in the studio, he was told that he would have to play through the house amplifiers. Link did, but the sound was too smooth. So Link pulled out his razor and shredded Archie Bleyer's speaker cones! If Archie disliked the song before, he now absolutely HATED it!
Bleyer played "Oddball" for two people - his daughter and Phil Everly. Archie's daughter loved the sound, and Phil was so impressed by the song that he suggested Link change the title to "Rumble" - teen slang for a gang fight. Archie released it, despite his reservations, and he not only saw Milt Grant playing the hell out of it (it didn't hurt that Milt was cut in for half the writers' credit on both sides of the record), but also saw the record get banned in places like Boston for its "suggestive content" - even though it was an instrumental!! To this day, "Rumble" stands as the only instrumental in rock and roll history to be banned for suggestive content!! Swear without using words, indeed....
Link recorded an entire LP for Cadence, but when Archie Bleyer heard the dubs, he kicked Link and his band off the label (and the LP would not see the light of day until 2006, when Sundazed put it out - get it here). No matter. "Rumble" was so big that Epic Records snapped Link and the Raymen right up. They recorded some great singles (and an LP) for Epic until 1961, signed to Mala in '62 (and backed up the legendary Bunker Hill on "Hide & Go Seek" and the immortal "The Girl Can't Dance"), made a few one-offs for Okeh and Rumble (and one on Infinity credited to "The Wray Brothers" called "Ninety-Nine Years To Go" about a guy who shot his girl), and signed with Philadelphia's Swan label in 1963, staying until the label folded in 1967.
"Hidden Charms" shows that Link hadn't lost ANY of his toughness after The Beatles took over the music world. Over a KILLER garage-punk riff, Link yowls the old Willie Dixon tune in a Mick Jagger-meets-Clarence "Frogman" Henry voice (and considering that Link had only ONE lung - a result of tuberculosis contracted when he was fighting in the Korean War - this is a pretty incredible vocal).
Link went on to record for more small labels (doing things like "Rumble '68" and "Rumble '69") and continued to gig in obscurity until Robert Gordon "re-discovered" him and they recorded an LP together (which, if I remember correctly, includes the original version of Brucie Stringbeen's "Fire"). Link finished his days touring incessantly, mostly in Europe, having moved to Denmark in the 1980s. He died in Copenhagen of heart failure on November 5, 2005, at age 76, a rocker till the end.
It's good to be back!
Link Wray and The Raymen - Hidden Charms (Swan 4261) - 1966
