Sometimes you just need that Bim, Bam, Boom – or think you do.
You like to be in a place where everyone knows your name but nothing really important about you.
You like a place where the Jukebox is stuffed with drinking, fighting and cry, cry, crying songs.
The ones you sing along to under your breath without even realising that’s what you’re doing.
The ones that bring those stinging tears to your eyes.
The ones that remind you of all the things you had.
The ones that remind you of all the things you lost.
No, the things you threw away.
Threw away.
Threw away in a joint just like this.
Threw away because you thought you needed a head full of Red, a bellyful of Beer or the wild song of Whiskey in your blood before you could face another Night or find the courage to face another Day.
In the end the nights and the days bled into each other and love and happiness drifted away with the alcoholic tide.
Too late you finally see.
Too late.
Time now to call on The Killer.
He knows a thing or two about throwing things away.
Hey Hank – right now I cant read too good – what number is, ‘What Made Milwaukee Famous’?
‘A1’ ‘A1’
Aint that just right.
Funny, every time this song comes on the place goes quiet and the murmur of the Loser Choir drowns out the Air Con.
Take it away Jerry Lee.
Sing this one for me.
Jerry Lee Lewis! Jerry Lee Lewis!
Now, it would take the combined genius of William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews to invent a character half as extraordinary as Jerry Lee.
For my part let’s just say that with Ray Charles I consider him the greatest song stylist of the modern era.
I’m not one for joining Fan Clubs.
But, at 17, I did join the Jerry Lee Lewis Fan Club and much as I looked forward to my subscription copies of The New Yorker, Southern Review and The London Review of Books coming through the letter box none of them quickened my pulse like seeing the bulky envelope with, ‘Fireball Mail’ stamped brightly in red hitting my mat!
What Made Milwaukee is from 1968 when Jerry Lee was rebranding himself as a Country Singer( having had more than a few run ins with the press, the radio, local sheriffs and the whole damn, petty, you can’t do that here!, official world which just couldn’t cope with a bona fide Wild man).
A Wild Man who also happened to be by an act of will and character a conduit for the great streams of American Music.
Jerry Lee, is of course, a Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll as well as a Country Singer to top all except George Jones.
Goodness gracious Jerry Lee can sing the Hell out of any song that’s ever been written and make it 100% Jerry Lee.
100% Jerry Lee.
And, Glen Sutton, when he wrote, ‘What Made Milwaukee Famous’ sure gifted Jerry Lee one fireball of a song.
Now, as is so often the way, the song was not the product of careful deliberation and prolonged polishing.
No.
Glen was reminded by a music publisher that he was supposed to have songs for The Killer who was due to be in town tomorrow.
What had he got?
With a professional’s presence of mind (Glen also wrote ‘Almost Persuaded’ and, ‘Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad’ among many other classics) he looked down at the beer mat next to the phone and said, ‘Its a drinking song – should be perfect for The Killer!’
Nw, it was simply a matter of working through the night to turn the slogan on that Schlitz beer mat, ‘The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous’ into a song that would appeal to Jerry Lee and the record buying public.
I think we can agree he succeeded!
Jerry Lee recorded the song the next day and gave it a regretful stately majesty powered by his rolling piano, glistening fiddle, and a vocal that proceeds with the awesome certainty of a Paddle Steamer navigating The Mississippi.
Follow that!
Very few could (you’ll find numerous versions of the song if you search) but there is only one other version which can stand comparison with The Killer’s.
One by another great song stylist who, when he was on his game, treated songs with a profound respect and care.
A singer who had an instantly recognisable voice – a voice which could express deep emotions with elegance and elan.
Let’s call Rod Stewart to the microphone!
On the evidence of this magnificent performance it seems to me that Rod missed a trick in his career by not recording an album of Country Songs.
Had he teamed up with a producer like Cowboy Jack Clement and launched into, ‘There Stands The Glass’, ‘Cold, Cold, Heart’ and, ‘Heartaches By The Number’ I think we would have had a record for the ages.
Still, lets look at the glass as half full given his bravura take on ‘Milwaukee’.
Of course, Rod, knew a fair bit about drinking as a member of The Faces who were Olympic Champions of partying.
At his best Rod’s let’s live it large! relish for life combined with an acute emotional intelligence when reading a lyric made him a truly great singer.
One entirely ready to share a microphone with The Killer.
I’ll leave with Jerry Lee, live at the piano, performing with his trademark insouciant charm.
‘Well it’s late and she’s waiting
And I know I should go Home.’
There are some sentences you know you will have to write one day.
Still you hope it wont be this year or next.
So, reluctantly and with regret, I write the following sentence.
Fats Domino, Rock ‘n’ Roll Forefather has died in his 90th year.
Thinking of all the immense pleasure his music has given me and millions of others I could not let such an event pass without a full salute from The Immortal Jukebox.
I also want to pay homage to the magnificent saxophonist Herb Hardesty who died just before Christmas last year.
That’s Herb you can hear soloing on, ‘Ain’t That A Shame’ and, ‘I’m Walking’ and that’s him too playing one of the most perfect parts in all Rock ‘n’ Roll on, ‘Blue Monday’.
I am also adding what may be my all time favourite Fats track – ‘Be My Guest’.
A record which beautifully illustrated the sheer joy woven into every bar of a Fats Domino record.
A record which demonstrated the glorious camaraderie of the Fats Domino Band.
A record which, especially in the wildly addictive horn breaks, virtually provides the corner stone sound for Ska to develop in Jamaica in the 1960s.
God bless you Fats!
Had I been born in Louisiana in the 1920s I know what I would have done with my life if I had survived World War Two intact and by fair means or foul accumulated a decently thick bankroll.
I would have bought a roadhouse on the outskirts of New Orleans.
Let’s call it, ‘The Blue Parrott’. And, all the dollars I spent and all the hands I hired would have had but one aim – to make the Parrott the jumpinist, jivinist, most joyful Joint for hundreds of miles around.
On the door and looking out for trouble before it becomes TROUBLE is an ex Marine called Tiny who stands six foot six and weighs in at 250 pounds. Tiny stormed the beach at Guadalcanal and came home with a limp and a chest full of medals.
Tiny never gets mad but he does get mean. No matter how drunk the drunks get and no matter how tough they think they are when they’re drunk no one, no one, thinks they can take Tiny down. Tiny maintains good order.
Behind the bar is Pops. Pops has looked sixty years old since I was six. He always will. Pops has heard and nodded sympathetically at every hard luck story ever told as he pours another shot of alcoholic redemption. Everyone know Pops understands. Everybody loves Pops. Pops has never touched a drop.
Out of sight in the Kitchen is Ferdy our chef. Ferdy don’t talk much. In fact he rarely says a word. Nobody cares about that because Ferdy can cook. Really cook.
So people who don’t come for the booze or the company or the music come anyway because they can’t resist Ferdy’s food. He will have you licking your lips just inhaling the aromas from his Gumbo, Jambalaya, crawfish étouffée and shrimp creole.
In the corner there’s a Wurlitzer Jukebox primed to pump out Hank Williams, Joe Turner, Louis Jordan and Harry Choates until the wee small hours.
I must, of course, have live music. A Roadhouse needs a House Band. So, I want a Band that’s has rural roots and city smarts.
I want a Band that folks will want to dance to, to listen to, to cry into their drinks to, to fall in love to, to remember the good and bad times in their lives to, to stare out the door and dream of another life to.
A Band people come to see the first night they get home from the Service or the Slammer so they can believe they really are home.
I want a Band that can whip up a storm one minute and lull a baby to sleep the next. I want a Band that you can stand to listen to three nights a week for year after year.
I want the Band to have a front man who makes people feel good just looking at him.
I want a guitar player who never shows off but is so good he makes other guitar players despair and consider taking up the banjo.
I want a Bass player who everybody feels but nobody notices.
I want a piano player who has the left hand of a deity and the right hand of a angel on a spree. I want the piano player to sing with such relaxation that it seems like he is making up every song on the spot.
I want the Band to have a secret weapon in a songwriter and arranger who knows all the music of the past and has worked out a way to make the music of the future from it.
I want Fats Domino, Earl Palmer, Herb Hardesty, Red Tyler, Lee Allen, Ernest McLean, Frank Fields and Dave Bartholomew.
I want, and will have, the best damn Band that ever came out of New Orleans – The Fats Domino Band!
Well, well, well …. Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah.
Baby that is Rhythm and Blues and Baby though you didn’t realise it at the time – Baby that is Rock ‘n’ Roll.
By my reckoning Fats Domino’s, ‘The Fat Man’ recorded in December 1949 in New Orleans and co-written with Dave Bartholomew and blues history is the first great record of the 1950s.
Some things are immediately apparent. Fats Domino sings with overflowing charm while his piano combines surging boogie-woogie with irresistible triplet flourishes. Right about here the great Earl Palmer invents Rock ‘n’ Roll drumming with his driving backbeat which lifts the Band and our spirits until his final fill decisively says, ‘That’s All Folks’ and you rush to cue it up again.
For the musically sophisticated there’s an excellent analysis of the crucial role of Fats Domino’s Band in the development of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ned Sublette’s book, ‘The Year Before The Flood: A Story of New Orleans’.
For the rest of us all we need to understand is that Earl Palmer’s bass and snare drum attack owed a lot to the style of New Orleans Parade Bands and that the way the whole Band locked into its rhythmic parts drew on Cuban, ‘Latin’ traditions to create something new under the sun in the Crescent City.
Listening here it’s abundantly clear that this is a Band that really does know its way around and that we should sign up now for a glorious cruise into the future. Of course, New Orleans picked up on Fats first with some 10,000 citizens putting their money down to buy, ‘The Fat Man’ in the first fortnight after its issue. A million or so sales followed as the entire United States fell under Fats’ spell.
We scroll forward half a decade now to a record which still sounds dew fresh 60 years after it was recorded in 1955. ‘Ain’t That A Shame’ was an instant classic and the passage of time has only added to its charms.
Fats grew up speaking Creole French and that must be a factor in his immensely winning vocal style. The Lower Ninth Ward where Fat’s family settled after moving Vacherie still retained a country feel despite its proximity to the city. So there always remained something of the relaxed rural about Fats nature.
Maybe that explains why I can’t think of anyone in the entire history of Rock ‘n’ Roll who exudes such bonhomie as Fats. As soon as he starts to sing the clouds part and the sun lights up clear blue skies. It’s an amazing gift he shares with his great New Orleans forebear Louis Armstrong. His piano adds further shimmer and dazzle.
Herb Hardesty has a lovely sax part here which always has me sets me gleefully swaying along with him and the Band. It seems the recording was compressed and speeded up to ensure favour with the mainstream (white) audience. Well, that sure worked!
‘Ain’t That A Shame’ is regularly used in movies to evoke the1950s most notably in George Lucas’ best film, ‘American Graffiti’.
Not too long after it was issued at 251 Menlove Avenue Liverpool the first song full time teenage rebel and would be rocker John Lennon learned to play was none other than, ‘Ain’t That A Shame’. John would formally tip his hat to Fats in his essential covers record, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’.
Following the major success of ‘Shame’ both through Fats version and Pat Boone’s cover the doors to the pop world swing widely open and Fats, always guided by Dave Bartholomew, took full advantage with a series of huge hits that had global impact.
Blue Monday tells a tale we all know all too well. Oh, I’ve had many, many, of those Sunday mornings when my head was bad yet I still grinned at the apparition in the mirror and concluded as the Seltzer fizzed that it was all worth it for the time that I had.
Naturally while reflecting that the awful ordeal of Monday would have to be faced I consoled myself that Fats knew and understand my feelings and somewhere in the grooves of his song lay the promise of the next, sure to be even better, weekend to come. This is one of the great vamping grooves that engages you from the get go to the thumping valedictory chord.
Blueberry Hill had been recorded many times before Fats took permanent ownership of the song in 1956. Fats and the Band invoke a bitter sweet recollection of the trajectory of love; part rural reverie, part lazy post love making langour. Their collective vocal and instrumental sound glides you through the song like an expertly piloted pirogue.
One last song. From the pen of superb singer and songwriter Bobby Charles the hypnotic marvel that is, ‘Walking to New Orleans’. String arrangement courtesy of Milton Bush. The relaxation maintained throughout with the sure groove could only be Fats Domino. This is one of those songs that the entire family sings along to when we are on long car journeys!
Fats Domino was and remains the King of New Orleans. The unique rhythmic signature of the city resounds joyfully through every bar of every Fats Domino recording.
They ought to put a statue up in the Lower Ninth and name a Square and a Bridge or two after him. He deserves nothing less.
Some personal memories to conclude.
In the late 1970s I went to see Fats Domino in concert at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. I only decided to go at the last minute and despite my silver tongue couldn’t persuade any of my hipper than hip friends to accompany me.
I was marooned up in Row YY at the very back of the Upper Circle. Friendless and far from the Bar. None of that mattered once Fats opened up with, ‘I’m Ready’. For the next hour or so as Fats played standard after standard with wit, playful power and affectionate authority I transcended to a state of near nirvanic bliss.
It was a rain soaked night but I waited for an hour after the show outside the Stage Door just to call out, ‘Thanks and God Bless You Fats!’ as he got into his bus.
That night remains one of my benchmark nights for musical excellence and personal happiness. Thanks and God Bless you Fats.
Now that there is more than a distinguished tinge of grey in my beard I lean more and more on the sovereign, reliable pleasures of life.
A good night’s sleep next to the woman I love; a mug of fresh brewed coffee in the morning, a walk on the common, the poetry of Herbert, Heaney and Hopkins. A glass of Malt Whiskey as the sun sets. The films of John Ford and Buster Keaton and the good humoured, life affirming, music of Antoine Fats Domino.
And, echoing Fats I’m ready, willing and able to follow this regime until someone puts out the big light.
The Sun rises at about 7 O’clock in this part of the South Downs.
It is my habit, ingrained from youth, to start my day at about 5 O’ Clock.
So, I have two hours of the mourning veil of night for reflection and contemplation before Day stirs the sleeping world.
Safely settled in our new Home (many thanks for all your good wishes) I lace up my boots, zip up my flying jacket, reach for my staff and head out in the dark to climb to the top of the ridge to await the Dawn.
Climbing steadily upward, aware that a new chapter in Life has begun, I recall roads taken and roads not taken in the past.
I recall friends and relations who have vanished like the melting snow.
I am grateful for the twists and turns in the road that have led me to this place now.
Reaching the summit I stand silently embracing the dark all around.
Tuning in I hear the wind blow where it listeth and the skitterings of nocturnal nature.
Slowly, slowly, as the world turns, the light returns.
There is always one moment when it seems as if all of nature is holding its breath, rapt, and all is silent with the light alone in motion.
And then a prophetic bird announces in song, ‘It’s day! It’s Day!’
Yes, yes, it seems like (seems like) feels like (feels like) A Brand New Day.
A Brand New Day.
This is the song I hear in my Soul each time I greet A Brand New day.
Van Morrison from his 1970 masterwork, ‘Moondance’.
Brand New Day is a song of steadfast Hope.
A song that admits no Life escapes trial and tribulation.
A song that takes us on a journey, at contemplative pace, through those dark valleys to the sunlit uplands of A Brand New Day.
A Brand New day filed with mystery and possibilities.
Van’s prayerful vocal inspires the musicians accompanying him to transcendent heights.
Jeff Labes’ piano shines like streams of daylight stars.
John Platania’s guitar has a tear-glistening tender beauty.
Jack Schrorer’s saxophone blows a corona of balm all around.
Gary Mallaber’s drums drive us forward on a pilgrimage to the Light.
John Klingberg’s bass holds us all in Faith. Faith in the journey to the Light.
Judy Clay, Cissy Houston and Jackie Verdell on backing vocals lift us up in celestial acclamation.
A Brand New Day.
A Brand New Day has dawned and the world will never be the same again.
Never the same.
I’ll leave you with a Miracle.
A demo of Brand New Day featuring a vocal by Van that takes us way, way, way, out beyond the Stars.
Into flooded fields of light beyond all measurement.
Some conjunction of their innate merit and the circumstances of your life when first heard sears that song into your memory for evermore.
Helen Shapiro’s ‘Walking Back to Happiness’ is such a song for me.
Every time I hear the song I get the same euphoric rush of delight.
Few things have proved so reliable for more than half a Century!
So, in honour of Helen’s 71st Birthday this week I am reblogging my tribute to her and taking the opportunity to wish her health and happiness for many years ahead.
Sometimes cultural earthquakes and revolutions, like their political equivalents, can turn the world upside down with staggering rapidity.
Looking around after the initial shock new figures, previously hidden, become prominent and established seemingly impregnable careers and reputations may lie buried or broken in the settling dust.
The emergence of The Beatles, in 1963 in Britain and the following year in America, as joyous rock ‘n’ roll revolutionaries, signalled that the times really were a changin’ and that all our maps would need to be hastily and radically redrawn to reflect a new reality (if you want to be fancy a new paradigm).
Today’s tale on The Immortal Jukebox concerns a British early 1960s pop phenomenon, Helen Shapiro, now largely forgotten- except by faithful greybeards like me.
Yet, this is an artist with a thrilling and wholly distinctive voice who began recording at the age of 14 and whose first four records included two British number 1 smashes and two further top 3 hits (as well as once grazing the Billboard Hot 100 following two Ed Sullivan Show appearances).
Additionally Helen’s first pre-teenage group included the future glam rock star Marc Bolan (T Rex) and she headlined The Beatles first British nationwide tour in January/February 1963 (they were fourth on the bill!).
Lennon and MacCartney were inspired to write, ‘Misery’ for her and she recorded, ‘It’s My Party’ in Nashville before Leslie Gore had ever heard the song.
Despite all this Helen Shapiro was overtaken by a cultural tsunami and was effectively spent as a pop star before she was old enough to drive a car or vote!
Perhaps, she was also a victim of, ‘Shirley Temple Syndrome’ whereby the public’s fickle support is withdrawn from a child star when they inevitably grow up and are no longer the incarnation of ‘cute’.
On a personal note I should add that her, never to be forgotten once heard, 1961 signature hit, ‘Walking Back To Happiness’ (below) is among the first songs I ever remember begging my parents to buy for me and probably the first pop song I could enthusiastically sing, word perfect, as the vinyl spun around at 45 revolutions per minute on our treasured Dansette record player (Helen Shapiro’s parents didn’t even own a record player when her first single was issued!)
If you can screen out the dated backup chipmunky ‘Yeh Yeh Yeh’ background singers you will hear an astonishingly confident and powerful singer singing her heart out and generating emotion at power station levels.
‘Walking Back To Happiness’ is pure pop champagne – bubbling over with fizzing life every time it is played.
Listening to it since invariably rekindles the ecstasy I felt as a 6 year old hearing it for the first time.
That’s quite a gift and one I will always be grateful to Helen Shapiro for.
The material and production on many of Helen’s records too often reflected the safety first, by the music business play book, of old school pre rock ‘n’ roll professional Norrie Paramor.
It was probably deemed not sensible for Helen to risk her moment(s) of fame by recording songs by, ‘unproven’ writers and in styles not yet fully appreciated (or heard) in Britain.
So this fine voice rarely flew unfettered.
Astonishingly, Helen’s management did not take up the offer to record The Beatles, ‘Misery’ and become the first artist to cover a Lennon/MacCartney original composition.
This was compounded by the later failure to issue her take on, ‘It’s My Party’ as soon as she had recorded it!
Still, as you can hear in her number 1 hit, ‘You Don’t Know’ there was always a quality of poignancy and direct emotional heft in Helen’s voice which still reaches out across the decades.
In all her records, from every era of her career, you can detect an artist who simply loves to sing, to make songs come alive for the audience as she becomes more alive singing them.
It is important to remember that the Britain that Helen toured with The Beatles in 1963 during one of the coldest winters for many centuries was emphatically not the, ‘Swinging Sixties’ Britain that would bloom later in the decade.
Though the nation was finally, after more than a decade of post war austerity beginning to enjoy economic uplift it would be a country unrecognisable to my own children: as alien in many ways as a distant planet.
In common with many working class families of the time I lived in a monochrome world of Without! Without a telephone, without a car, without central heating, without a bathroom (I bathed in a tin bath), without a refrigerator.
Crucially we did have a radio and a tiny black and white TV with a 12 inch screen that seemed to work best when firmly disciplined by means of heavy slaps to the frame.
Through the TV and the radio I became dimly aware there was a wind of change stirring and that it was likely I was young enough to be a lucky recipient of its transformative power.
The TV and radio also introduced me to records that sketched out new vistas of emotion and identification for me. I then bought my records (more accurately had them bought for me) from a stall in the street market that literally stood outside our front door.
The riot of colour and glamour that would characterise the,’Swinging Sixties’ was still securely stoppered in the genie’s bottle as Helen, The Beatles and 9 other acts boarded the coach in early February 1963 to visit Bradford, Doncaster, Wakefield, Carlisle and Sunderland on the first leg of the fourteen date tour they shared.
The Beatles had just issued, ‘Please Please Me’ and they were yet to record first LP. That would happen on 11 February during a break on the tour.
The impact of that LP would change everything and turn a raw bunch of provincial rockers into world wreckers.
You can see something of the joshing elder brother/adoring kid sister relationship The Beatles and Helen Shapiro developed on the bus in a clip (sometimes available on Youtube) from the TV show, ‘Ready, Steady, Go’ from October 1963 when Beatlemania was an established reality.
By 1964 Helen Shapiro was effectively an ex pop star.
For many that would have been a devastating and embittering fate.
Not for Helen Shapiro.
Helen Shapiro’s truest ambition was never to be a pop star. She had a vocation as a singer so when the caravan of fame passed on she was not emotionally defeated. Rather, she carried on singing – carrying out what she came to regard as her god given vocation.
A careful comb through her record catalogue yields a number of, ‘how that did that one get away’ gems and displays her passion and versatility as a singer.
Among those the one that holds my heart is, ‘I Walked Right In’.
It makes you wonder what would have happened if Helen had been born in Brooklyn rather than Bethnal Green!
Helen Shapiro was always a lot more than the cute teenager with the Beehive hairdo, the gingham, the lace and the train-stopping voice.
In the half century since her 60s supernova moment Helen has continued to honour her gifts.
This has included playing the role of Nancy in the musical, ‘Oliver’ and a dozen years or so proving her jazz chops live and in recordings with the wonderfully swinging Humphrey Lyttleton Band (Humphrey, a true gentleman maintained no prejudices except one in favour of real talent for which he had an unerring eye and ear).
These days Helen’s gifts are directed through gospel outreach evenings in the service of her faith which became central to her life from 1987.
Even in this context she still sings, ‘Walking Back To Happiness’ though now as a mature reflection rather than youthful impulse.
Filled the Shipping Container storage space to capacity.
Collapsed exhausted!
Buoyed by thoughts that all this hard work would prove worthwhile once we are settled into our new Home.
Home. Home. Home.
A concept. An ideal. A space in the heart longing to be filled.
A word freighted with so much cultural, social, political, emotional and spiritual weight.
As I pondered the meanings of Home I began to realise that the root of so many great works of art was the cry for Home.
The cry of celebration when Home was found or regained.
The cry of loss and mourning when Home was lost or torn away.
Perhaps all great stories, in the end, are about the loss and finding of Home.
Next year in Jerusalem. No direction Home.
Feel like Going Home. Bring it on Home to Me.
Our House. Our castle and our keep.
Darling be Home soon. Oh, Darling be Home soon.
After some contemplation three songs emerged to illustrate the theme.
So, let’s kick off with one of the greatest singers who ever lived with one of his greatest recorded performances.
Sam Cooke with, ‘Bring It on Home to Me’.
Sam Cooke had it all.
He was handsome.
He was both intellectually and musically smart and he was a savvy music biz operator.
Sam was an electric performer.
When he was with The Soul Stirrers no one could have the audience falling in the aisles and speaking in tongues like Sam!
Sam was also a gifted songwriter and in the early 60s before his untimely death he became determined that his records should be more than brilliant pop confections.
He wanted to find a way to bring the emotional weight and passion of his Gospel roots into his secular recordings.
He also wanted to reflect, as a black man, the torrid times he was living in.
The apotheosis of this quest would be the epochal recording of his own song, ‘A Change is Gonna Come’.
‘Change’ is clearly prefigured in, ‘Bring It On Home To Me’.
At one level the song is the heartfelt plea of a lover left behind in an empty Home.
A lover who, perhaps for the first time, realises how important that Home, that Lovers Nest, is to him.
Sam, with the invaluable assistance of Lou Rawls on harmony and call and response vocals, gives that plea a compelling urgency.
Sam Cooke’s voice had enormous reserves of power and astonishing fluency.
Who would not be won over by a plea from such a voice?
A voice which can only be said to genuinely infused with Grace.
The 1962 recording benefits from an 18 piece ensemble marshalled by Rene Hall and Ernie Freeman.
Beyond the brilliance of Sam and Lou’s vocals I would draw your attention to the stellar drumming of Frank Capp and the swelling power as the verses progress.
The song was born out of creative engagement with Charles Brown’s and Amos Milburn’s, ‘I Want To Go Home’ and also the old 19th Century Gospel standard, ‘Oh Freedom’.
By yoking together the Blues and Gospel in this song Sam creates Soul Music.
A music which can speak of and invoke the passionate Home of Earthly Love and the Home in Glory waiting down the road.
There’s also a political subtext here in the references to Slavery and being buried in the grave.
Redemption, forgiveness, atonement and resolve to live in love anew surely have wider racial and social resonances as well as personal impact.
To pack all these elements into a song that charms and beguiles and stays with you is no mean achievement.
Now we all know the world’s no place when you’re on your own.
Hearts will always be restless unless, according to your belief, they rest with another in Love and/or with the Divine.
It takes a very great artist to be able to write a song which can sound such depths and it takes an extraordinary singer to make such a song shimmer in the air in front of you like an apparition from on high.
Richard Thompson is such a songwriter and Linda Thompson is such a singer.
In this live performance Richard’s perfect plangent guitar and Linda’s ardent, devotional dedication pierce the veil.
A Heart Needs A Home. Oh, Oh, A Heart Needs A Home.
I came to you when no one could hear me.
How many of us have walked the empty streets or knelt in prayer wondering when someone, that someone you trust must be out there somewhere, will appear and at last, at last, you will be heard and more, understood.
Understood.
Richard Thompson understands that worldly wisdom is often the deepest folly.
To live the life you were born to live; to find the Home that’s waiting for you, calling for you, you must not run away bedazzled by paper ships and painted faces.
No. You must in faith and humility stand without pretence as the person you are.
Only then can a heart find the Home it so desperately needs.
Charlie Rich could sing the Blues. He could play piano straight from the Church.
Charlie could play white lightning Rockabilly and Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Charlie could sing a Country ballad and make you cry your eyes out.
No one who ever heard Charlie sing could doubt he was a Soul Singer.
Charlie Rich lived a life often blighted by cloudy skies.
He knew all about the ups and downs of life and knew what it was to feel, looking wearily in the mirror in the bleary dawn, that everything he had done was wrong and that to try again would be try and fail again.
Yet, always there was the piano and the music inside him.
And, playing a song like, ‘I Feel Like Going Home’ he could make that Home, a place of Peace and reconciliation, real to himself and to us.
In times of trial when no friend is around and Home seems far, far away, you will find a fellow flawed pilgrim in Charlie Rich.
Charlie’s race is run now.
He fears no more the heat o’ the sun.
Nor the furious winter’s rages.
His worldly task done he has gone Home.
At the end of this miraculous solo demo performance Charlie exhales and says, ‘And That’s It’.
Amen Charlie. Amen.
In dreams I have walked the halls of all the homes I have ever lived in.
Decades after I moved out and away I climb the stairs of my first childhood home and hear the rain on the roof and the early morning street cries.
Once again I walk down the tree lined road of my teenage years and turn the key in the lock and ascend to the bedroom I shared with my brother.
I gaze, as I did for so many nights, at the distant moon.
Distantly, I hear my Mother’s and Father’s voices and the heart stirring snuffling of my baby Sister.
Again, the Moonlight streams through the window of my College room illuminating the poster of Van Morrison and the series ranks of history texts.
Once more I take a turn around the garden of my first marital home listening to a night freight train shuffling by and smile as my wife, son and daughter sleep on.
‘ You broke my heart ’cause I couldn’t dance
You didn’t even want me around
And now I’m back to let you know
I can really shake ’em down!’ (Berry Gordy)
Roma uno die non est condita.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
It takes time to found a mighty Empire that will conquer all the known world.
So, from the founding of Rome (let’s say 753BC) to the final defeat of Carthage it was all of 600 years.
It is therefore somewhat remarkable it took Berry Gordy less than a decade from the founding of Motown in 1959 to establish an Empire that colonised the hearts and souls of music fans from Addis Abbaba to Zanzibar and Zagreb!
An $800 loan from his family became a multi, multi million dollar record company which would record songs that will last as long as we have Spirits that need lifting, hearts that need stirring (or consolation) and hips that just gotta move.
First, get yourself a base that you own.
Let’s show our ambition and call this base, ‘Hitsville USA’.
A Studio come Clubhouse where your singers and musicians can find competition and camaraderie 24 hours a day (acording to legend the local beat cop thought 2648 West Grand Drive Boulevard must be an all hours drinking den given the numbers of shady looking characters turning up at all hours of the day and night).
Next get yourself a live and play in the Basement group of musicians with Jazz chops who can fashion a wholly new sound – which is not jazz, not old school R&B, Blues or Rock n’ Roll.
Let’s call them The Funk Brothers and let’s have one of them, James Jamerson on Bass, be a fully fledged genius who will add grace and depth to every recording he ever plays on.
Let’s have a slogan calling that sound, ‘The Sound of Young America’ and let’s make so many great records that the slogan will became an every day reality on the airwaves and the charts.
And, we don’t mean, in still highly segregated America, the Black Music Charts .
No, no, no.
We mean the Pop Music charts.
Where the real money is to be made.
Open for Business and cast a cool appraising eye on all the would be stars who beat a path to your door.
This kid Smokey Robinson’s a Keeper – he’s got a notebook with hundreds of songs and he can sing ’em like a bird and work the Recording Desk too!
Not that I can’t write and produce myself.
You ever heard, ‘Reet Petite’ or, ‘Lonely Teardrops’?
Big Hits but Berry didn’t get the money!
Not going to happen again!
So, in 1960, New Frontier!, we get our first hit.
Barrett Strong with, ‘Money’ (bunch of English guys in Hamburg called The Beatles will learn a lot playing that one!).
Then Smokey comes up with, ‘Shop Around’ and by the end of the year we got a Million Seller!
Here comes 1961 and we get ourselves our first Pop Number One!
The Marvellettes, ‘Please Mr Postman’.
I got my eyes and ears on that Brian Holland – there’s a lot more hits where that came from!
Early ’62 I figure we need to find a song like, ‘Twist and Shout’ that will have all the White Kids, all the Black Kids and everybody who ain’t tied to a chair out on the floor and running down to the record store to lay down their cash.
Let’s call it, ‘Do You Love Me’.
I thought it might suit The Temptations but maybe they just sing too well for this one (I got big plans for them later).
Probably the best dancers of anyone who ever came through these doors!
Come to think of it Billy Gordon got a, ‘Wake the Dead and get ’em up Dancin” Voice if I ever heard one!
Next time they come through I’m gonna sit down at the piano and teach them the song one evening and record it the next day.
Gonna tell James to drive this one like a runaway train.
None of his fancy jazz licks – nail that backbeat to the Basement floor!
Of course, when Benny Benjamin is behind the Drums, the record is going to sound immense.
Immense.
Maybe I’ll start with a spoken intro and then let The Funk Brothers explode and tell Billy I don’t want him to be able to sing this song a second time ’cause I want him to tear his throats to shreds the first time!
Ok – let’s go!
Now, if that ain’t shaking ’em down I don’t know what is!
The Funk Brothers never let up and Billy Gordon’s lead vocal comes at you like a tidal wave.
Hubert Johnson, Billy Higgs, Joe Billingslea and Sylvester Potts make up a chorus that has an irresitble goofball charm. The trilling guitar comes from Huey Davis.
When I’ve managed to master some skill which has previously eluded me (and there’s a lot of them!) I just can’t stop myself singing, ‘I’ m back and I can really shake ’em down – Watch me now!’.
I love the corny spoken introduction, the false ending, the references to the Mashed Potato and The Twist and the bullfrog, ‘Um, Bom, Bom, Bom, brrrmm’ backing vocals.
Of course Berry got his hit!
Top 5 in every Chart and well over a Million copies sold.
They say it was the fastest selling single in the history of Motown.
Malheureusement, it was the pinnacle of The Contours career though they did make a handful of other excellent recordings.
They were simply too low down in the pecking order of Motown Vocal Groups.
And, when you consider they were up against the likes of The Four Tops and The Tempatations that is hardly to be wondered at.
There’s almost always been a version of the group out there driving a crowd crazy with, ‘Do You Love Me’.
And, by some mysterious alignment of the heavens, in 1987 the song gained a wholly unexpected new lease of life through being featured in the world wide hit film. ‘Dirty Dancing’ (even if they did, disgracefully, chop off the ending!).
One of the versions of The Contours got to go on a world tour and enjoy the big time once again.
Not so, for poor Billy Gordon.
For Billy died in poverty after spending time in prison (bizarrely with one time colleague Joe Billingslea being a Corrections Officer in the Prison!).
So it goes. So it goes.
Yet, every day someone, somewhere, has their life lit up by hearing Billy intone:
‘You broke my heart ’cause I couldn’t dance
You didn’t even want me around
And now I’m back to let you know
I can really shake ’em down!‘
And then, if they’ve got any blood in their veins they’ll go stone crazy for the next two and a half minutes.
Watch me Now!
Dedicated to :
Billy Gordon (RIP)
Sylvester Potts (RIP)
Hubert Johnson (RIP)
Huey Davis (RIP)
James Jamerson (RIP)
Benny Benjamin (RIP)
Joe Billingslea
Billy Hoggs
Notes:
Britain’s Ace Records has two excellent complications documenting The Contours recorded legacy.
Things that those not in the know don’t even know they don’t know.
A few code words and we know from their reaction, or lack of it, if others are in the know or not.
We soon know if they know.
We know whether or not they merit entry into the In Crowd.
If it’s square, brother we ain’t there!
In music, especially, there are communities of In Crowds.
I know some of these communities very well.
The Bluegrass buffs who can list, alphabetically, chronologically or by instrument every member of every incarnation of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys.
The Jazzbos who can do the same for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
The walkin’ talkin’, don’t interrupt me, Beatles completists who tell you solemnly that if you weren’t at their Port Sunlight show on 18 August 1962 (Ringo’s debut of course) then you really don’t know much about The Beatles.
The matrix number alchemists.
The, yes but have you got the Swedish pressing with the alternate take of track 3 on the EP, show offs.
The, of course, I’ve got The Complete Basement Tapes including the song where Bob …
OK, OK, OK.
I know those communities because in many respects I’m a paid up, card carrying, got the T Shirt and the embossed programme, member of those communities.
And, of course, if you’re reading The Immortal Jukebox then you are most definitely in with The In Crowd.
Dobie Gray is an In Crowd artist par excellence.
Covered by everyone from Ray Charles to Bruce Springsteen and revered by fans of Country, Soul, R & B and Pop Music (not to mention the fanatical devotees of Northern Soul) he recorded a series of classic songs in the 60s and 70s that will always launch the argument as to whether the original is really still the greatest.
Written by Barry Page and arranged by the brilliant Gene Page, ‘In Crowd’ was top 20 in the USA and top 30 in Britain in 1965.
I’m sure it was Gene who so artfully blended the brass flourishes and The just so backing vocals.
The tempo is just right for dancers – uptempo but not frantic with crescendos allowing for those so inclined to demonstrate their athleticism by spinning and pirouetting all the way to the fade out.
Dobie’s vocal has an Olympian, above it all, quality ideally suited to the song’s theme.
The thing about great Dance songs like this is that when you’re living inside one you dance with heightened senses and you really do make every minute and second count.
Dobie, born in 1940, came from a Texas sharecropping family with a Father who was a Baptist Minister. So, as for so many, the first songs he sang were Gospel standards.
But, of course, the radio beamed in R&B, Country and Pop and Dobie liked them all and found his warm vocal tones could easily cope with the demands of the different genres.
In the dawn of the 60s in Los Angles, in pursuit of a career in acting or singing, he hooked up with Sonny Bono (always an In Crowd Hombre) who got him his first recording contract.
By 1963 he had his first minor hit ‘Look at Me’.
The name Dobie came from the popular TV show, ‘The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis’ (there is much debate about Dobie’s original name but I’m going with Lawrence Darrow Brown).
Dobie wasn’t able to find a hit follow up despite some excellent recordings. Showing his versatility he switched to acting and was a cast member in, ‘Look Homeward, Angel’, ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ and had a two year run in the definitive 60s Musical, ‘Hair’.
Meanwhile, over in Britain, the son of a Northumbrian Coal Miner who looked after the Pit Ponies, Bryan Ferry, became an art student and connoisseur of black dance music.
I think it’s fair to say that Bryan most definitely set out to be in with The In Crowd and that few have had such a complete sucess in achieving their goal.
Flushed with the artistic, critical and commercial success of Roxy Music in his early solo records he revisited the records that had electrified his youth.
It’s not hard to see the attraction, ‘In Crowd’ had for Bryan.
His version had a crepuscular 1970s urgency signalled by the growling aggressive guitar with Bryan’s vocal walking the razors edge between witty reflection and self satisfaction.
Bryan, by now, knew all about those other guys striving to imitate him!
The final version I’m showcasing today comes courtesy of The Ramsey Lewis Trio and Nettie Gray. Nettie Grey? Well, as In Crowders know Nettie was the Washington DC waitress who played, ‘In Crowd’ for Ramsey on her coffee shop Jukebox suggesting that it might make a rousing set closer.
Sensibly, Ramsey took her advice and the live version cut at Bohemian Caverns became his biggest ever hit (top 5 Billboard).
I’m not going to say anything about this version beyond the fact that it always has me throwing a whole series of shapes that are most definitely not recommended by any osteopath or chiropractor but which afford me an enormous sense of well being
When his time in, ‘Hair’ concluded Dobie met the songwriting Brothers Paul and Mentor Williams.
It was Mentor who wrote and produced Dobie’s greatest record, ‘Drift Away’. I’m loath to call any record perfect but I’m making an exception here to prove the rule.
The incandescent warmth of Dobie’s vocal and the shimmering production really does sweep you away into an ambrosial reverie.
A song that is played on Pop, Soul and Country Stations every day and will do so as long as humans need to get that beat and drift away (which is to say until the day we turn into Replicants).
Drift Away was recorded in Nashville at Quadrafonic Studios in early 1973.
No praise can be too high for the team of musicans who lift Drift Away into the stratosphere.
David Briggs on Keyboards, Mike Leach on Bass, Kenny Malone on Drums and Reggie Young on Guitar were very much a Nashville A Team with extraordinary musical alertness and empathy.
I must mention the lovely, pellucid guitar figures played by Reggie Young for the intro and doubled up throughout the song. Now that’s a hook!
And, what about the wonderfully right and resonant sound Kenny Malone produces on a field marching drum!
Engineer Gene Eichelberger managed to balance all the elements so perfectly that you imagine all present exhaling a sigh of complete satisfaction when the track was played back in the studio.
Perfect, perfect, perfect!
The song, of course, sold more than a million copies as it became a top 5 hit and eternal radio staple.
Now, you can say all kinds of laudatory and derogatory things about Rod Stewart’s career but one thing everyone should agree on is that Rod is one hell of a judge of a good song.
So, it was almost inevitable that Rod would pick up on Drift Away and give it the full tartan scarves waving on the terraces treatment. And that’s
meant as a compliment – its rare that someone can be simultaneously part of the crowd and step out from it to lead it as Rod did so brilliantly in the 1970s).
After Drift Away Dobie continued to record quality material without troubling the charts. He earned favour in the music business through a productive songwriting partnership with Troy Seals.
George Jones, Ray Charles and Don Williams among others queued up to record their material .
Dobie died just before Christmas in 2011.
His songs will always last because rhythm and rhyme and harmony never go out of fashion.
Because, confused though we often are we will always seek solace in melodies that move us.
No one understands all the things they do.
But, one thing we do know.
One thing we do know.
Music can carry us through.
Carry us through.
Notes :
Dobie’s ‘Greatest Hits’ should be in every collection. I would draw your attention in particular to the dance classic, ‘Out on the Floor’ and his gorgeous version of, ‘Loving Arms’.
I have a special fondness for his album, ‘Soul Days’ produced by Norbert Putnam for its wonderfully relaxed and glowing treatment of soul standards like, ‘People Get Ready’.
There are a staggering number of versions of ‘Drift Away’.
My favourites are by The Neville Brothers and Tom Rush.
‘There are guides and spirits all along the way who will befriend us’
Guides and Spirits. We all need them.
Pilgrims all, we need Way Markers reassuring us that there is indeed a Way and that we are not the first to have set off in this direction.
Guides and Spirits are all around.
You find those with whom you feel a certain sympathetic kinship.
You think, ‘Here’s someone who speaks to me.
Here’s someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Someone worth attending to’.
So, for me; Thomas Merton, Erich Fromm, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Seamus Heaney, Emily Dickinson, Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, Russell Hoban and Buster Keaton.
In music Hank Williams, Howling Wolf, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan and .. Van Morrison.
One of Van’s ‘lesser songs’ but one which has always spoken to me.
Get into it like a meditation.
Taking it further.
Taking it further.
Further.
Van is tuned into the ‘Undersong’ all around us if we would but listen.
The Song of the Earth.
For Van this is first the undersong of his home place.
Belfast. East Belfast.
With the bewitching sounds of the Sea and the River.
The morning fog and the trees wet with Summer rain.
The bustle of the streets and the hushed quiet of The Avenue.
The salty tang of Belfast speech and the Mystery of voices coming through the ether.
At the same time he is tuned into the Music of the Spheres.
Music that’s always, always, all around us.
Van invites this music in and channels it for us.
On record and especially in performance he surrenders to this blessing.
Only a very rare artist can do this.
He’s a musical and spiritual voyageur opening up the territory for us to journey wherever we are brave enough to go.
I once met Russell Hoban at a book signing and said that I thought his words took us as far as words could go and then left us to explore the white space beyond.
He laughed and said, ‘Bon Voyage’.
It’s the same with Van.
His songs and his singing, incorporating the Undersong and the Music of the Spheres, act to flamingly make present the unnameable, the unsayable and the unknowable.
There’s a lot more Van to come on The Jukebox (while I toil over the, one day I’ll finish it, Book, Van Morrison : Dweller on the Threshold’).
So, on his Birthday, I offer my thanks for these gifts and wish him well in his further journeys.
I take this opportunity to present all The Jukebox posts featuring Van.
The Immortal Jukebox’s very own VanFest!
Catch up with those you may have missed and revisit those you read in the past.
It’s Too Late To Stop Now!
‘Brown Eyed Girl’.
An introduction telling the tale of my headlong plunge into obsession following my first hearing of Van’s best known song.
A meditation on Time featuring 2 astounding versions of John Lee Hooker’s tender Blues Ballad. One a reaching for the stars take of a teenager the second the work of a fully realised master musician.
There was a place; a place you can almost remember in your dreams.
A place, let’s call it a garden or an enchanted meadow, where the Sun shone brightly every day and gentle breezes played among the whispering trees.
Everyone knew everyone and everyone was safe and content.
But, but, one day, one fateful day, Humankind thought that being safe and content and warm everyday wasn’t quite enough.
It was the, ‘Everyone’ that was the killer.
For, Humankind craved particular pleasure.
Particular knowledge.
People and places and things that are mine and mine alone.
Individual consciousness.
Personal. personal, personal.
And so it began. And, so it goes on.
For, along with all these particular, personal possessions and holdings came, carrying poisonous venom, Lust and Greed, Envy and Pride, Wrath and Sloth and Gluttony.
But, but, so did Charity and Chastity, Diligence and Temperance, Kindness, Humility and Forgiveness.
There would, in particular be much need of Forgiveness.
In this new world musician and storytellers found that the glory and the folly of their fellows made for endless material for compositions.
Most songs and most stories are, in the end, about the sharp pain and the ecstatic joys of finding love, the loss of love, the theft of love and the betrayal of love.
So, here’s one of those stories.
Lust is here. And Envy. And Pride.
And, so too is, maybe, some humility and some forgiveness.
So, everything you need for a hit song,
And, a mighty Number One hit is exactly what Johnny Rivers and his supporting team of crack musicians and backup vocalists provided in 1966 with, ‘Poor Side of Town’.
Johnny RIvers was an established hit maker marrying the sound of 50s Rock ‘n’ Roll with folky elements on sides like, ‘Memphis’, ‘Mountain of Love’, ‘Midnight Special’ and, ‘Secret Agent Man’.
What distinguished Johnny Rivers records was their sense of easy flow that invites the listener to sing and dance along. It’s why he was such a legendarily popular live draw at the Whisky a Go Go Club.
Johnny Rivers is a guy it’s very easy to like.
Poor Side of Town was a very important record for Johnny because he had written it himself and because it introduced a more reflective balladerring element to his style.
The song wonderfully melds aspects of breezy Californian Pop with tinges of a more troubled Southern Soul ballad.
So, the superb piano of Larry Knechtel, bass of Joe Osborn and drums by the ubiquitous Hal Blane added to Johnny’s subtle guitar make for a tale that offers both sunshine and shadow.
To top it all off Darlene Love, Fanita James and Jean King (The Blossoms) provide a choral element that ravished the ear.
Arranger Marty Paich made sure it all came together as a premium blend.
And the story?
Well Rich Girl, Poor Boy and a spiral from ecstacy to tragedy is a tale that will be told for ever and a day.
I think particularly of the film, ‘A Place in the Sun’ starring the most eye scorchingly beautiful couple in the history of the cinema (now there’s a claim) Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
Sometimes a young woman can be so bewitchingly, breathtakingly beautiful that a young man, poor as he may be, will, must, cross any line, risk any risk, to be with her, to have her smile that brighter than the Sun smile and say, ‘Do I make you nervous?’
Oh, oh, oh, she sure does make you nervous!
And she sees something gorgeous and vulnerable in him that the Preppy Princes picked out for her by Mom and Dad just can’t compete with.
So, though they know in their bones that this won’t end well they soon find themselves skin to skin in Sugartown.
Until, the fates (always hovering in the wings) intervene and the seconds count down to death in the Chair with the clock on the wall dissolving into her heartbreaking visage.
Welcome back to the Poor Side of Town!
Now over here in Britain Johnny Rivers wasn’t very well known and he didn’t figure in the Chart Shows nor was he hip enough to feature on the ‘Progressive’ end of the spectrum.
So, a confession. I didn’t hear the original of Poor Side of Town for many years after I had become aware of it through the version by Telecaster Master Arlen Roth.
I had noticed his name appearing in the credits on premium recordings and so swooped when his debut solo disc appeared in a bargain bin at HMV Records (and I was a deep diver into those bins!).
There’s a lovely hypnotic sway to this take on the song and the guitar has a dead on certainty that only the very best players ever achieve.
To sign off a version from a tenured Professor of songwriting Mr Nick Lowe! (pictured above).
A further confession.
I own every record Nick has ever made and have seen him play on countless occasions through our joint misspent youths.
Seeing him now – a mature artist fully in command of his talent – is greatly cheering.
It seems that Nick now strives, successfully, to make records that appear effortless; concealing the infinite pains involved in achieving such an effect.
The musical empathy between Nick, Jukebox favourite Geraint Watkins (keyboards), Robert Traherne (drums) and Steve Donnelly (guitar) gives a regretful emotional depth to the story so that you feel like exhaling deeply at the end and wiping a tear from your eye.
Oh what tangled webs we weave.
Rich girls and Poor Boys.
Hoping against hope that, this time, the story will have a happy ending.
And don’t think that the dramatic leads in this story will ever listen to your sage advice to think and think again.
No. Some stories have to be played out again and again and again.
Towns and hearts will always be divided and few ever move, for good, willingly to The Poor Side of Town.
Yet, yet, there will always be those who believe that they can defy fate and the odds and strange as it may seem sometimes miracles do happen.
Let’s remind ourselves what’s A1 on The Immortal Jukebox and why!
Some songs have a brutally simple primal perfection.
Usually these songs are recorded at the very beginning of an artists career before they start to look into the rear view mirror and become conscious that they do indeed have a career, a legacy and a reputation to protect.
These are records that come at you full bore and demand you listen now!
Think of the primitive perfection of the last song recorded on the day the Beatles recorded their first LP.
You want to know what The Beatles sounded like in Hamburg? Listen to the raw bleeding magnificence of John Lennon’s vocal on, ‘Twist and Shout’ and the eyeballs out commitment of Paul, George and Ringo.
There was no way a second take could top that!
Think of the stupid beauty of the Undertones debut single, ‘Teenage Kicks’ – a record that captured as few others have the thrilling intoxication of young love and lust.
Feargal Sharkey’s impassioned vocal (All right!) and the unrepeatable delirium of Damian O’ Neill’s guitar solo combine to create a miracle that comes up fresh every time and is endlessly replayable – which seems a pretty good definition of what I want from a jukebox single.
And then there’s the Daddy of all primal utterances on 45 – Gloria by Van Morrison during his days with Them.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that throughout the 1960s that wherever and whenever a group of would be rock and roll stars gathered – in the family garage, in the basement or at a flea bitten church or municipal hall – very soon after they had plugged in they would launch, with wildly varying degrees of competence, into their own version of, ‘Gloria’.
Puzzled passers-by must have wondered why such a simple name needed to be spelled out with such repetitive intensity.
‘And her name is G – L – O – R – I – A, Gloria!’.
They must also have shuddered at the threat:
‘ I’m gonna shout it out night and day .. G – L – O – R – I – A! G – L – O – R – I – A, Gloria!’.
It is likely that many of the groups who attacked the song made a fair fist of the instrumental ground of the song – three chords don’t take long to master.
A few of the lead guitar players will have matched Jimmy Pages fluency and prowess as demonstrated on the recording.
However, No-one, No-one, will have come anywhere near reproducing the frenzied intensity of Van Morrison’s pyrotechnic vocal.
This Van Morrison was not the superlative song stylist or the Celtic soul and blues master he would later become.
This was a snarling, desperate, bewildered teenager who was reluctantly coming to terms with life and lust. The whole painful mess of it all.
A youth who looked down more than he looked up but who was nevertheless able to surprise himself with the ability to express vocally the gamut of emotions and frustrations he faced every day and every night.
But, from the very get-go in his career there was no doubt about who was leading and commanding the band.
Van Morrison on the bandstand or in the studio acts as an emperor, a ruler by right of his eminent majesty as a singer and as a band leader. In this, as so much else, he took his cue from the high priest of soul – Ray Charles.
Gloria is a work of explosive youth, of wanting and yearning, of overwhelming mind and body dominating lust.
Gloria may be the most purely male, testosterone fueled record ever made.
Gloria, five feet four from her head to the ground, is the eternal lust object. Van Morrison might say that she knocks upon his door and even more thrillingly comes to his room but the thrust of the song seems to me to be the solitary, devoutly told repetition of an oft returned to fantasy.
There may well have been a real Gloria but it is the dream of Gloria who knocks on Van’s door with such insistent force. Surely, if he could only chant her name with enough power she would indeed knock upon his door and make all his fevered dreams come true:
G – L – O – R – I A !! G- L- O- R – I – A
The musical drive of Gloria is the relentless beat, beat, beat of male desire in all it’s sullen and obsessive purity. Gloria is the incarnation on vinyl of the desperate teenage male imperative to be adultly carnal – its a boy desperately wanting, needing, to be a man.
Gloria has more tension than release – much like all young lives. This is no doubt why it appealed so powerfully to beat group boys all over the world.
Van snarls his way through the lyric with his uniquely salty Belfast tones alternately pressing and holding back – he already had a grasp of dynamics within song arrangement born of years of listening to Ray, John Lee and Leadbelly on the street where he was born.
Gloria is also as every listener who’s ever heard it knows one hell of a rush!
It comes roaring out of the speakers and before you have time to catch your breath you are carried along on its tidal wave of rhythmic power.
Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds later you will be nearly as elatedly exhausted as Van Morrison himself.
Take a breath or two and maybe down a shot of Bushmills – then press A1 again – you know you want to.
Notes & Comments:
Gloria was recorded on April 5 1964 at Decca’s Studio in West Hampstead, London and released as the B side of Baby Please Don’t Go on July 6th.
Them members Billy Harrison (guitar), Alan Henderson RIP (bass), Ronnie MIllings (drums) and Patrick McCauley (keyboards) were present in the studio when Gloria was recorded and all probably contributed to the single.
Also present were key members of London’s top session musicians of the time. Jimmy Page surely played the lead guitar and Bobby Graham (who would later play the on the equally epochal ‘You really got me’, must have played the drums).
Arthur Greenslade probably played the organ.
There have been numerous cover versions. The most commercially successful being that by The Shadows of Knight which made No 10 in the US charts at the end of 1966.
The most artistically successful is Patti Smith’s reinvention of the song on her amazing debut LP ‘Horses’ in 1975.
The Immortal Jukebox 