Archive for the ‘1966’ Category

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‘Stewball Was A Race Horse . . .’

Friday, December 27th, 2013

Now, about the song “Stewball.” We offered in this spot yesterday the version of the song recorded in 1940 by Lead Belly and the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet for the Victor label. Pretty much a work song, that was the second of several iterations of the folk song that arose in England in the late Eighteenth Century.

Second Hand Songs notes: “Skewball, born in 1741, was a racehorse bred by Francis, Second Earl of Goldolphin. The horse, a gelding, was purportedly the top earning racer in Ireland in 1752, when he was 11. The song apparently originated as a ballad about a high stakes race occurring in the Curragh in Kildare, Ireland, in March 1752, which Skewball won.” The website gives a date of 1784 for the song, noting that the date “is for the oldest broadside identified of the ballad . . . held by the Harding Collection of the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford.”

The webpage continues, “According to John and Alan Lomax in American Ballads and Folk Songs, the ballad was converted into a work song by slaves – which is supported by the version of the lyrics published in their book. ‘Skewball’ apparently became ‘Stewball’ after the song migrated to the United States.”

Beyond the work song version of “Stewball,” the original story-song continued to be recorded. A 1953 recording by Cisco Houston is the earliest listed in the on-going project at Second Hand Songs, but Woody Guthrie recorded the tale of the horse race in 1944 or 1945. His version was released in 1999 on Buffalo Skinners: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 4 on the Smithsonian Folkways label.

Then came along the Greenbriar Boys. A trio made up by 1960 of John Herald, Ralph Rinzler, and Bob Yellin, the group, says All Music Guide, was “[o]ne of the first urban bands to play bluegrass” and was “instrumental in transforming the sounds of the hill country from a Southern music to an international phenomenon.” The Greenbriar Boys released their first two albums of bluegrass tunes in 1962 and 1964, but of more import for us today is a tune that showed up on New Folks, a 1961 sampler on the Vanguard label. Herald, Rinzler and Yellin set the words of “Stewball” to a simple, folkish tune (written by Yellin, according to website Beatles Songwriting Academy) and recorded the song as their contribution to the album:

After that, covers of the new version followed: From Peter, Paul & Mary in 1963 (a single release went to No. 35 and is the only version to chart), from Joan Baez in 1964 and from the Hollies in 1966, according to Second Hand Songs. And I know there are many other covers. Most of those take on the Greenbriar’s Boys’ version (including one by Mason Proffit on its 1969 album Wanted), but there are other covers of the early folk version and the work song version as well. I didn’t go digging too deeply, though, because something else about the song grabbed my attention this week.

Now, I’ve heard the version of “Stewball” using the Greenbriar Boys’ melody several times over the years, notably the versions by Mason Proffit and Peter, Paul & Mary. Heck, I even sang it along with Peter Yarrow at a concert a year-and-a-half ago. But I’d never noticed or thought about the tune’s similarity to another famous song until this week.

Last Tuesday, I ran past Second Hand Songs while looking for an interesting cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1971 single “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”, and when the results came up that put the Lennon/Ono tune in the adaptation tree for “Stewball,” I did a mild double-take. And then I thought about it, running the two tunes through my head. And yeah, John (and Yoko, to whatever degree she was involved in the writing, listed as she is as a composer) lifted the melody and chord structure from the Greenbriar Boys’ version of “Stewball.” There were a few changes, notably a key change and the addition of the “War is over if you want it” chorus, but it was essentially the same song.

And I’m not at all sure why Herald, Rinzler and Yellin didn’t complain. Does anybody know?

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Posted in 1944, 1945, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1971, Covers, Vintage Music | 1 Comment »

‘Like Shadows Bursting Into Mist . . .’

Tuesday, November 12th, 2013

As I sort mp3s and do some research for the seventh chapter of the series Floyd’s Prism, I find myself reluctant to pass by at least one of the unusable items that comes up in the search for “Violet.”

I find it difficult to believe, but in six-plus years of blogging about music, I’ve never once mentioned the song “Violets of Dawn” in connection with its creator, Eric Andersen. I’ve cited the song twice, both times while writing about Rick Nelson and his 1969 album recorded live at the Troubadour. My not mentioning the source of the song is especially puzzling given the regard I have for Andersen.

So here, from his 1966 album ’Bout Changes & Things, is Eric Andersen’s “Violets of Dawn.”

I’ll be back tomorrow with “Violet.”

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Posted in 1966, Single, Video | 6 Comments »

‘I Can Make It With You . . .’

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013

Just as readers getting to know one another check out each other’s bookshelves, so, too, do music lovers cast inquiring eyes on the record and CD collections of folks new to their lives. And I was rifling through the LPs owned by my new lady in June 1987 when I came across an album by a group I’d never heard about: The Pozo-Seco Singers.

The album was I Can Make It With You.

“Oh, that’s one of my favorites,” my ladyfriend said. And when I heard the album later that day or maybe that week, her love of the record made sense. The folk rock of the Pozo-Seco Singers’ second album, a 1966 release, fit right in with the folk and the folk-rock that made up most of her collection: Joan Baez, the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, Gordon Lightfoot, Simon & Garfunkel, the We Five and more.

And I Can Make It With You became one of the albums we played on occasion when we whiled away time at her place that late spring and summer. After that, I doubt that I heard it again until sometime during the last few years, when a digital copy of the album came my way. And when the title track popped up the other night as the RealPlayer rolled on, I got to thinking about the Pozo-Seco Singers and I did some digging.

The group released a total of four albums, according to All Music Guide. In 1966, Time went to No. 127 on the Billboard 200, and the following February, I Can Make It With You went to No 81. The group’s last two releases, 1967’s Shades Of Time and 1970’s Spend Some Time With Me, did not chart.

The group – perhaps better remembered these days for the presence of eventual country star Don Williams – had eight singles in or near the Billboard Hot 100, starting with “Time,” which went to No. 47 in early 1966 and ending with “Strawberry Fields/Something” (credited to simply Pozo Seco), which bubbled under the chart at No. 115 in late 1970. Of their eight charting or near-charting singles, the best performing was “I Can Make It With You,” which peaked at No. 32 on the Billboard chart on October 22, 1966, forty-seven years ago today.

I don’t recall the record from its time on the chart, but I wasn’t really listening in the autumn of 1966, and from what I see at Oldiesloon, “I Can Make It With You” never charted at KDWB anyway. A few years later, I might have heard it late at night on WLS, but as it happened, I likely never heard the record until I heard it on my lady’s stereo some evening late in the spring of 1987.

And I learned as I dug around during the past few days that the Pozo-Seco Singers weren’t the only ones who released “I Can Make It With You” as a single. Jackie DeShannon also recorded the Chip Taylor song, and her version reached the Hot 100 the same week that the Pozo-Seco Singers’ version did, on September 10, 1966. But DeShannon’s version – a slower ballad-like take backed with a near Wall of Sound – peaked at No. 68 in early October and was gone from the chart by the time the Pozo-Seco Singers’ version was at its peak.

If I were forced to do so, it would be hard to choose one of the two. I love almost everything I’ve ever heard from DeShannon’s catalog, and her take on “I Can Make It With You” is no exception. But the visceral tug of memory is hard to resist, so I’d probably go with the Pozo-Seco Singers on a warm late spring evening.

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Posted in 1966, Chart Digging, Covers, Video | 4 Comments »

‘Cast Your Dancing Spell My Way . . .’

Thursday, October 10th, 2013

So how many covers are out there of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”? Who knows?

There are sixty versions – including Dylan’s – listed at Second Hand Songs. There are more than 500 mp3s – with much duplication – offered at Amazon. Beyond that, I’ve found covers at YouTube not listed in either place.

(I checked at both BMI and ASCAP, as I’m not sure which organization administers Dylan’s songs. I found no listings for Dylan at either place, which eithers means I’m doing something wrong while searching or his compositions are administered elsewhere. Either way, it’s no help.)

The listing at Second Hand Songs starts with Dylan’s original and the Byrds’ ground-breaking cover in 1965 and goes on to the 2012 version by Jack’s Mannequin, which was included in the four-CD set Chimes of Freedom – The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International. The first cover listed after the Byrds’ cover is a 1965 misspelled offering of “Mr. Tambourin Man” from a group called the Finnish Beatmakers. Except for the Finnish accent – which I kind of like – it’s a copy of the Byrds’ version, starting right from the guitar introduction.

And that’s the case for many of the covers I’ve listened to this week: they’re warmed-over fowl. One of the few with an original sound came, interestingly, from Gene Clark, one of the members of the Byrds when they recorded “Mr. Tambourine Man.” His version of the Dylan tune – with a reimagined (and very nice, to my ears) introduction – was included on his 1984 album, Firebyrd.

The originator of the Byrds’ classic guitar lick, Roger McGuinn, shows up on a 1989 version of the tune recorded live in Los Angeles with Crowded House. As might be expected in that circumstance, it’s pretty much a copy of the Byrds’ version, with the Finn brothers et al. backing McGuinn.

Other early versions of note came from the Brothers Four and Johnny Rivers in 1965, from a young Stevie Wonder (with, one assumes, the Funk Brothers behind him), the Lettermen, the Beau Brummels and Noel Harrison in 1966, and from the Leathercoated Minds and Kenny Rankin in 1967. Versions from 1966 that I’d like to hear came from Billy Lee Riley and Duane Eddy. Odetta, as might be expected, offered an idiosyncratic and austere take on the tune in 1965.

Easy listening folks got hold of the tune, too. Billy Strange is listed at Second Hand Songs as having recorded a cover in 1965; I haven’t found that one (though my digging is not yet done), but I did find an easy listening version – with banjo, no less – recorded in 1965 by the Golden Gate Strings. And Johnny Harris & His Orchestra recorded the tune for the Reader’s Digest’s Up, Up & Away collection, which seems to have been released in 1970.

Speaking of banjo, the bluegrass/country duo of Flatt & Scruggs took on the song for their 1968 album, Changin’ Times. It’s nicely arranged with some nice harmonica in the background, but they’re too, well, square for the song, and that’s true right from the start, when they drop the “ain’t” and sing “there is no place I’m goin’ to.”

We’ll look at a few more versions of the tune – some of them quite nice – next week, but we’ll close today with a foreign language version of the tune. (Did you honestly think I would not drop one of those in?) Titled “Hra tampuurimies,” it’s a 1990 version from the irresistibly named Finnish group Freud, Marx, Engels & Jung.

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Posted in 1965, 1966, 1968, 1970, 1984, 1989, 1990, Covers, Video | 2 Comments »

‘And A Thousand Violins Begin To Play . . .’

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013

The other afternoon, the Seventies music channel provided the background as I dozed for a while on the couch. I kept the volume low, but every once in a while, I’d wake up and listen for a moment, just to see how deeply into the decade the channel digs. (Not very deeply, generally.)

At one point, when I raised my awareness, I heard Roberta Flack: “The first time . . . ever I saw your face . . .” I went back to sleep, and as I did, a connection flickered between a movie and Flack’s record, which spent six weeks during the spring of 1972 at No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary chart (and went to No. 4 on the R&B chart). And as the song ended and the music shifted to something from 1979, I went back to sleep, remembering the connection.

The movie was Play Misty For Me, the tale of a late-night jazz disc jockey and a fan who regularly requests the classic Erroll Garner record “Misty.” Over the course of the movie, the fan goes from devoted listener to lover to demented slasher. The film, directed by Clint Eastwood – who plays the disc jockey – was the destination in late 1971 for the first date I had with my first college girlfriend. And it was the first time I’d ever heard of the classic tune “Misty.”

The tune was written by Garner (with lyrics added later by Johnny Burke) and was first recorded by the Erroll Garner Trio and released as a single in 1955:

Shortly after learning about the tune, I came across it in a guitar book I was using as a fake book for piano, and I began to put together my own arrangement. I tried several approaches, ranging from slow minimalism to a bouncy trip, sometimes decorating the tune with some added sixth and major seventh chords, but I never felt at home with the song, and quit playing it. It might have helped, I suppose, if I had ever sought out and listened to the numerous versions of the song that were available on record, but I never thought of that. And the next time I heard the song was a few years later when I heard what Doc Severinsen and Henry Mancini had done with “Misty” on their 1972 album Brass on Ivory.

That cover remains one of my favorites in a list that stretches back to a 1955 cover version by jazz pianist Johnny Costa. The list of covers offered at Second Hand Songs (not necessarily a complete list, but likely pretty good) starts there and goes on to the 2010 cover by the Sachal Studios Orchestra that includes traditional Indian instruments and a 2011 version by singer Michael Ball. Some of the more interesting names among the earlier instrumentals on that list are Toots Thielemans, King Curtis, Buddy Rich, Cal Tjader, Earl “Fatha” Hines and Stephane Grapelli.

When it comes to vocal covers, the list includes the performance that a lot of people might think is the essential version of “Misty,” the 1959 cover by Johnny Mathis that went to No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and to No. 10 on the R&B chart. Other noted names who’ve done vocal covers include Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Julie London, Keely Smith, Frank Sinatra, Marty Robbins, Lesley Gore, Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Timi Yuro and more. Not being very conversant with current jazz, either instrumental of vocal, I don’t recognize a lot of the names post-1980.

As to charting versions on or near the Hot 100, they came from Mathis, Sarah Vaughan, Lloyd Price, the Vibrations, Richard “Groove” Holmes and Ray Stevens. Of those versions, neither Vaughan’s standard 1959 vocal (No. 106 on the pop chart) nor Price’s 1963 big band version (No. 21 pop and No. 11 R&B) grab me much.

I didn’t care much for the twangy countrified version that came from Ray Stevens in 1975; I like it better now, but it’s never going to be my favorite version of the song. Other folks liked it well enough, though, as it went to No. 14 on the pop chart, No. 3 on the country chart and No. 8 on the AC chart.

The least familiar name among those that hit the charts with “Misty” is likely that of the Vibrations, a Los Angeles R&B group. I do like the classic R&B sound they brought to “Misty” in 1965 when their version went to No. 63 on the Hot 100 and to No. 26 on the R&B chart.

Next to Stevens’ version, jazz organist Holmes’ 1966 take on the classic tune did the best on the charts, going to No. 44 in the Hot 100, to No. 12 on the R&B chart and to No. 7 on the AC chart. Not long ago, I lucked into a collection of Holmes’ work, and I’ve been digging through that. While I won’t say that his take on “Misty” is my favorite – I tend to lean to Mathis’ classic performance – it’s awfully good.

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Posted in 1955, 1959, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1975, Covers, Video | No Comments »

Nos. 17 & 76

Thursday, July 4th, 2013

So it’s July 4, Independence Day. And rather than get all philosophical about the meaning of the day or get all curmudgeonly about how that meaning gets ignored in favor of barbecues and fireworks – both of which I’ve done in the past – we’ll just talk about music. What we’ll do is dig into three separate editions of the weekly Billboard Hot 100 for a taste of what we were hearing on three July Fourths in the past. In a nod at history we’ll check out the records that sat at No. 17 and No. 76. And we’ll note, as we go by, the No. 1 record at the time.

We’ll start with 1966, go to 1971 and then finish in the Bicentennial year of 1976.

The Beatles were sitting atop the Hot 100 on July 4, 1966, as “Paperback Writer” was in its second week at No. 1. (It had been No. 1 two weeks earlier, was pushed to No. 2 for a week by Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night,” and then moved back to No. 1 for another week.)

Another familiar tune was at No. 17: Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock” was heading down the chart after peaking at No. 3, the fifth of an eventual twenty records the duo would put in or near the Hot 100. During high school a couple of years later, when I really listened for the first time to Paul Simon’s lyrics on the record, I admired the narrator’s stance for what I saw as his self-sufficiency. Now, more than forty years later, I hear Simon’s words and think, “Boy, what a lonely life that would be.”

R&B singer and songwriter Joe Simon had a long and productive career, with a total of thirty-five singles in or near the Hot 100 and a total of forty singles in the R&B Top 40 between 1964 and 1978. He shows up today with “Teenager’s Prayer” sitting at No. 76 on July 4, 1966. It’s a pretty but lyrically vague tune (the teenager in question asks for love and peace of mind, which are not bad things to pray for) that would peak at No. 66 on the pop chart and at No. 11 on the R&B chart.

When the fireworks went off on July 4, 1971, Carole King’s double-sided single, “It’s Too Late/I Feel The Earth Move,” was in the fourth week of a five week stay at No. 1.

Just down the chart a ways, we find the only Top 40 hit by the Beginning of the End, an R&B group from the Bahamas. The groove-shaking “Funky Nassau – Part 1” was sitting at No. 17 in the first week of July 1971, heading to a peak position of No. 15. On the R&B chart, the record peaked at No. 7.

Near the other end of the chart at No. 76, we find one of the classic R&B records: “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get” by the Dramatics. The first charting single for the group from Detroit, the record was in the early weeks of its climb to No. 9 on the pop chart and No. 3 on the R&B chart. The Dramatics would end up with a total of fourteen singles in or near the Hot 100 and twenty-two singles in the R&B Top 40.

As the U.S. celebrated its Bicentennial in 1976 (the only Independence Day for which I have a concrete memory: It was a Sunday, and I joined my parents for a community commemoration of the day at St. Cloud’s Lake George downtown), the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 was occupied by a single that appropriately mentioned “skyrockets in flight” (though the fireworks on the record came from a markedly different source than the Jaycees’ annual fireworks show): “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band was in the first of two weeks at No. 1; it peaked at No. 5 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

At No. 17 during that Bicentennial celebration was Neil Diamond’s “If You Know What I Mean” from his Beautiful Noise album, which for a few years found its way regularly onto my turntable. (A note to myself: Give it another listen and see how it sounds nearly forty years on). The single, produced – as was the album – by Robbie Robertson, was on its way to No. 11 on the pop chart and No. 1 on the AC chart. The record was the thirty-eighth of an eventual (and remarkable) fifty-six records on or near the pop chart for Diamond.

And our Independence Day observance ends at No. 76 on July 4, 1976: “Crazy on You” by Heart. The Seattle group’s first charting hit, the record was coming down the chart after peaking at No. 35. (A reissue of the single after the band had some hits performed less well, getting only to No. 62 in early 1978.) Heart was, of course, an regular chart presence during into the 1990s, with a total of thirty-two records in or near the Hot 100. (I should note that the linked video is the track as it appeared on the album Dreamboat Annie; I think the single eliminated the acoustic intro.)

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Posted in 1966, 1971, 1976, Chart Digging, Games With Numbers | 2 Comments »

‘Beauty In That Rainbow In The Sky . . .’

Friday, May 17th, 2013

So, about “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” . . .

As I noted yesterday, and as was the case for a couple of other sturdy songs I’ve written about in the past ten days or so, it was Glenn Yarbrough’s 1967 album, For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her, that introduced me to “Tomorrow,” which I’ve long thought to be one of Bob Dylan’s most beautiful songs.

The first released version of the song was recorded by Ian & Sylvia for their 1964 album, Four Strong Winds. Regular reader David Leander noted in a comment yesterday that “at one point Dylan told them he’d written it for them to record, but I think he told anybody that might record one of his songs that he’d written it for them.” I’ve read in a number of places that the song was inspired by Dylan’s early 1960s relationship with Suze Rotolo (the young woman shown with Dylan on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), but that doesn’t mean that he might not have had Ian & Sylvia – or Judy Collins (from her Fifth Album in 1965) or someone else or no other performer at all – in mind when he wrote the song.

As I also noted yesterday, Dylan has officially released two versions of the song: The first recorded, a demo, was officially released in 2010 as part of the ninth volume of Dylan’s ongoing Bootleg Series, and – according to Wikipedia – has been available as a bootleg for years. The second version he recorded, a live 1963 performance of the song in New York City, was released in 1972 as a track on Dylan’s second greatest hits album. Wikipedia also notes that a “studio version of the song, an outtake from the June 1970 sessions for New Morning, has also been bootlegged.”

The first Dylan version I heard of “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” was on that second greatest hits package. (The only video I can find at YouTube with that 1963 live version is from an episode of The Walking Dead. Zombies and a love song don’t match well for me.) By that time, of course, I’d absorbed the Yarbrough version from his For Emily album:

Over the years, “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” has been a generally popular song for covers. Second Hand Songs lists a total of thirty-one English-language versions, and more (I didn’t bother to count) are listed at Amazon. I imagine that iTunes and other similar sites would have more yet. As is generally the case, the list of folks and groups who’ve covered the song include the unsurprising and the surprising alike: Among the first category are the Brothers Four, the We Five, the Kingston Trio, Linda Mason, Chris Hillman, Bud & Travis, the Silkie, the Earl Scruggs Revue and Sandy Denny. Less expected (or even unknown in these parts) are Hipcity Cruz, Deborah Cooperman, Barb Jungr, Sebastian Cabot, Magna Carta and Danielle Howell.

I’ve heard at most bits and pieces of those covers in the above paragraph, but over the years, I’ve listened to many other covers of the song, and I’ve tracked down even more in just the past couple of days. One version that’s been mentioned here at least twice in the past six years is the version by Elvis Presley that showed up in his 1966 movie Spinout. Regular reader Porky noted yesterday that Elvis “supposedly learned it from Odetta’s version,” which was on the 1965 album, Odetta Sings Dylan. I like Elvis’ version more than I used to, but the austere dignity which Odetta brought to her music doesn’t seem to work for the song.

I was surprised to find the name of Hamilton Camp among those who’d covered “Tomorrow Is A Long Time.” Camp, a mid-1960s folkie, released the song on his 1964 album Paths of Victory. That album is likely better known for his version of Dino Valente’s “Get Together,” which became a No. 5 hit for the Youngbloods in 1969 (after being a No. 31 hit for the We Five in 1965).

Another, far more recent name that surprised me was that of the country-folk group Nickel Creek, which put the song on its 2005 album, Why Should the Fire Die? I enjoyed the group’s self-titled debut in 2000, but wasn’t at all pleased with the follow-up, This Side, in 2002. I may have to give the group another try.

The most enjoyable version of “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” that I came across this week came from a one-off album from 1973. Several blogs have featured the album Refuge by the duo calling itself Heaven & Earth, and one of my favorite blogs, hippy-djkit, calls the album a “psych folk funk beauty from the early 70’s featuring the gorgeous voices of Jo D. Andrews & Pat Gefell.” There are a couple of other notable covers on the album, specifically takes on Stephen Stills’ “To A Flame” and the Elton John/Bernie Taupin classic, “60 Years On,” but the best thing on the album – and maybe the prettiest version I’ve ever heard – is Heaven & Earth’s take on “Tomorrow Is A Long Time.”

Reference to “Get Together”  corrected June 8, 2013.

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Posted in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1973, 2005, Covers, Video | 3 Comments »

‘Beauty In The Silver, Singin’ River . . .’

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

We – that is, Odd and Pop and I – are going to continue with our Glenn Yarbrough fixation for a little longer, looking at the origins of yet another track from Yarbrough’s 1967 album, For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her. Today’s tune is, I would guess, the most familiar on the album (although Paul Simon’s title song might challenge for the title): Bob Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time.”

Dylan first recorded the song as a demo in 1962, but the first version he released was a 1963 performance at New York City’s Town Hall that came out on his second greatest hits album in 1972. The demo he recorded in 1962 is, I think, the version that was released a couple of years ago as part of The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos. I’ll dig into that tomorrow.

For now, I’m going to leave you with one of the many covers of “Tomorrow Is A Long Time.” This one is a 1966 version by the Aquamen, a group about which I know nothing. The Dylan tune was the B-side of their “Line and Track” single on the Hiback label, and it’s the only release listed for the band at Discogs. Along with a less-than-assured vocal, I hear a little bit of garage rock (is that a Farfisa? I think it is), a little bit of the Byrds, a little bit of the We Five and a little bit of Hal Blaine, all of which combined makes for an interesting concept. Enjoy!

I’ll have some more versions of the tune tomorrow . . . which actually doesn’t seem such a long time right now.

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Posted in 1966, Covers, Video | 4 Comments »

‘She’ll Leave You Lost Some Rainy Morn . . .’

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

A ringing guitar chord followed by an insistent riff came from the speakers last evening, causing me to look up from whatever I was doing. The riff was repeated twice, and then came the vocal:

Three silver rings on slim hands waiting,
Flash bright in candlelight through Sunday’s early morn.
We found a room that rainy morning . . .

I’d recognized the song from the first three words: “The French Girl” by Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker. But I did not know the record, so I checked the RealPlayer. It was by the Daily Flash, a band name I did not recognize. The mp3 had come to me a few years ago when I scavenged a good portion of the Lost Jukebox series from various boards and blogs.

The Daily Flash, it turns out, was from Seattle and had about a three-year run of recording and performing in the mid-1960s, during which it released singles on Parrot (a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Queen Jane Approximately”) and on Uni, which in 1967 released the band’s take on “The French Girl.” The second single, says Wikipedia, did well enough to net the group an appearance on the television show The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., which led “to a regular spot as a house band on a local Los Angeles teen-oriented TV show Boss City.”

Learning all of that was fine, and I may dig more into the band’s story another time. (Wikipedia tells the band’s tale here, and the revived band’s website is here.) But I was more interested in the song. There isn’t a lot of information out there about “The French Girl,” as far as I can tell. My favorite tool in that regard, Second Hand Songs, doesn’t have an entry for the tune. A folky version by Bill Staines is available at Amazon, where a countryish cover by a band called the Snakes is listed but not available. At Discogs.com, I learned that a band named Ashtray Boy released a cover of the song as a single in 1996, thirty years after Ian & Sylvia included the tune on their 1966 album, Play One More. I don’t know how Ashtray Boy’s version sounded, but here’s what Ian & Sylvia did with the song.

I know of two other covers of the tune (though I’d guess there are more out there): A version by Gene Clark of the Byrds showed up on the Flying High anthology in 1998, and a note by Richie Unterberger at All Music Guide leads me to believe that Clark recorded the track in the mid-1960s, around the time of the release of the 1967 album Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers. Clark’s version of “The French Girl” is a bit pallid to me.

The other cover I know is the first version I ever heard of the song: The version by Glenn Yarbrough on his 1967 album For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her. The album was, as I related some years ago, one that my sister had received from a boyfriend who was headed to Vietnam. I don’t know how often she played the record, but the record and Yarbrough became favorites of mine. And listening to Yarbrough introduced me, in those days when I was not listening to pop and rock, to the work of some of the finest folk and folk-rock songwriters of the day. The songwriter credits on Yarbrough’s For Emily album alone contain some impressive names: Paul Simon, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Stephen Stills, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan . . . and Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker, the writers of “The French Girl.”

First impressions matter, folks tell us when we’re young (and maybe not so young). And yes, they do. So it’s no wonder that the version of “The French Girl” that I like the best is the one I heard first. I know that Yarbrough’s lilting tenor might not be the best match for the song. I also know that Ian & Sylvia recorded the song first, and that deserves some respect. I know as well that the more muscular version offered by the Daily Flash is pretty darned good. (And if the Snakes’ version is ever available at Amazon, I’ll probably like it a lot.)

But it’s Yarbrough’s cover of the song that came to me first. And it’s Yarbrough’s version that takes me back to the basement rec room on Kilian Boulevard, the haven where I took in the frustration of the song’s narrator – “but her friends down at the French café had no English words for me” – and then pondered my life’s own mysteries, which sadly included no French girl.

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Posted in 1966, 1967 | 6 Comments »

‘Now When I Remember Spring . . .’

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

“The Shadow of Your Smile” is one of those songs that to me sounds like life in the mid-1960s. I have no idea what version I heard back then, but I’ve known the song since it was released on the soundtrack to the 1965 movie, The Sandpiper. (And my knowledge of the song certainly came through hearing various versions on the radio, as there was no way at the age of eleven or twelve that I would have ever been allowed to see a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.)

It’s a great song, a judgment supported by several things. The first is that the song earned composer Johnny Mandel and lyricist Paul Francis Webster both the Academy Award for Best Song and the Grammy Award for Song of the Year. Another indicator is that as soon as the song came out, covers began to proliferate and have continued to do so in the forty-eight years since, with the most recent listed cover at Second Hand Songs coming last year from Glen Frey.

Here’s what the song sounded like on the movie soundtrack:

Among the first covers of the song released was a decent performance by Barbra Streisand, off her My Name Is Barbra, Two . . . album, released in 1965. Other early covers that I’ve heard came from Peggy Lee and Astrud Gilberto, neither of which grabbed me much. Among my favorite artists, King Curtis covered the song for his album That Lovin’ Feeling in 1966, and a single by Lou Rawls went to No. 33 on the R&B chart in mid-1966. (I haven’t heard either version; the King Curtis album is supposed to be here somewhere, but I can’t put my hands on it this morning, and the single version by Lou Rawls seems to have been supplanted anywhere I look by a live version from 1966.)

Two versions of the song, those by Tony Bennett and Boots Randolph,  made the Billboard pop and AC charts. Bennett’s cover of the song entered the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1965 and went to No. 95 there while reaching No. 8 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Bennett’s version – which was released on his 1966 LP The Movie Song Album – is notable in that it’s one of the few I’ve heard that begins with the song’s verse, which serves as a prologue. Most versions of the song jump right into the portion that begins with the song’s title.

Randolph’s version of “The Shadow of Your Smile” hit the charts a year later, entering the Hot 100 in December 1966 and reaching No. 93 while going to No. 28 on the AC chart. The cover was also released in 1967 on Randolph’s Boots with Strings album.

Others who covered the song in the first couple years after it came out were Nancy Sinatra, Nancy Wilson, Maynard Ferguson, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis, Billy Vaughn, Jack Jones, David McCallum (better known for his role as Ilya Kuryakin on The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Ahmad Jamal, Johnny Mathis, Johnny Rivers, Ferrante & Teicher, Barbara Lewis, Mary Wells, Trini Lopez and Shirley Bassey.  I don’t know all of those, but one of the interesting versions of those I do know is McCallum’s cover, which showed up on his 1966 album, Music – A Bit More of Me. As a classically trained musician, notes Wikipedia, McCallum “conceived a blend of oboe, English horn, and strings with guitar and drums” for arranger H.B. Barnum.

Here’s McCallum’s version of “The Shadow of Your Smile,” which to me seems to have some John Barry-ish/James Bond-ian flourishes at the start. Whether those came from McCallum or from Barnum, they’re entirely appropriate for one of the men from U.N.C.L.E.

And we’ll stop there for today. I’m likely to pick up Thursday with more covers, unless something else grabs my attention.

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Posted in 1965, 1966, Covers, Soundtracks, Video | No Comments »

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