Terry Knight and the Pack
Listen/Download – Terry Knight and the Pack – Got Love
Greetings all.
Welcome back to the old leg of iron.
I hope you all had a chance to pull down the ones and zeros on this month’s Iron Leg Radio Show. If you haven’t you can always grab that, or any of the 27 previous episodes out of the archive.
The tune I bring you today is a smoking bit of 1966 garage band blues-mangling.
Terry Knight and the Pack are best known as one of the petri dishes out of which the mighty Grand Funk Railroad emerged, having featured Don Brewer, and for a brief time Mark Farner in its ranks, as well as future GFR manager Knight at the helm.
The group released nine singles and a couple of LPs for the Lucky Eleven label between 1965 and 1967, many of which were regional hits and a couple – the Yardbirds cover ‘Mister You’re a Better Man Than I’ and a version of Ben E King’s ‘I (Who Have Nothing)’ – that charted nationally.
Knight and the Pack really managed to tune into the Stones/Yardbirds influenced end of the garage spectrum, adding in just enough snot, jangle and fuzz to make a respectable showing.
‘Got Love’ is a garaged-out “expansion’ on Slim Harpo’s ‘Got Love If You Want It’ with some far-out, echoey harmonica, Bo Diddley drums and combo organ.
If you geta chance to pick up the group’s self-titled 1966 LP do so, since there’s a lot more to dig on it, including the fuzz-bomb ‘Numbers’, covers of the Yardbirds and the Stones and a couple of very groovy originals.
After Knight left the group to go solo, the band soldiered on, recording few more 45s as The Pack/Fabulous Pack before (forgive me…) pack-ing it in and evolving into Grand Funk.
I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll see you all next week.
Peace
Larry
this is cool stuff and I love it that so many (horrible) bands that made it in the 70’s actually paid their dues, cutting garage stuff along the way. I also dig that when they “made it” an enterpriser would put out their early stuff in a dubious-looking cover. .