Gerry Rafferty : Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway

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I believe in Ghosts.

No, not the ghouls and spectres of Halloween or graveyard apparitions.

The Ghosts I believe in lie dormant in the labyrinthine halls of the mind and the secret chambers of the heart.

And, these Ghosts, lingering traces of people and places no longer with us, can come to visit, unbidden, in afternoon reveries or in the quiet watches of the night.

A few bars of a tune from decades ago.

A once familiar fragrance floating by.

An overheard accent in an unexpected place.

And, suddenly, a Ghost appears and asks, ‘How is it with you these days?’

Do you still remember me?

Of course, sometimes, we summon up these Ghosts ourselves as we try to come to terms with the longing for and the loss of our past loves.

‘The coat she wore still lies upon the bed’.

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With , ‘Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway’ Gerry Rafferty wrote the most exquisite song I know examining the bittersweet persistence of the Ghosts of a former romantic relationship.

Now that’s a song that, once heard, will always linger in your heart.

Gerry Rafferty was a songwriter to his fingertips.

There was nothing accidental in a Gerry Rafferty record.

Consider the artistic intelligence and emotional acuity in opening a song about romantic reverie with a 40 second introduction of wispy woodwinds and muted brass accompanied by humming revealing what spoken words are not yet ready to say – mama you’ve been on my mind.

And, now the Ghost appears.

Now the memories cascade.

Cascade.

No point in pretending that these are not in many respects memories that warm as well as chill.

Memories that offer more insights when uttered than the bearer of those memories may care to consciously realise.

‘The book I gave her that she never read’.

Perhaps, that was one of those books men are so prone to giving as romantic presents – a book meant to signal the special intelligence and sophistication of the giver rather than one chosen to delight the recipient.

Gerry sings the song in a tone of melodic regretful intimacy.

Trying to make sense of it all.

Where did it go wrong?

Where did I go wrong?

What else could I have done?

Maybe it wasn’t just my fault.

These things just happen.

Her father didn’t like me anyway.

Her father didn’t like me anyway.

‘She left without a single word to say’.

Yes, at the end, there really is not a single word to say.

How many times can you say Goodbye?

Just the echoing sound of the closing door.

The closing door.

‘She always wanted more than I could give.’

Now, that’s a young man’s phrase.

You give how much you choose to give.

You can give so much more than you ever think you can give.

Time will teach you that lesson.

‘She wasn’t happy with the way we lived’

Living and loving every day is hard work.

You really have to want to do it from the depth of your being.

‘I didn’t feel like asking her to stay’.

If you don’t maintain that commitment things must fall apart.

‘To tell the truth I didn’t have the nerve’.

It’s so easy to let things drift and drift and drift until there’s no way back to harbour.

No way back.

‘So now she’s taken leave of me today’.

So, one of you comes to realise the spark has been extinguished and it’s past time.

It’s always past time when you finally decide to go.

And, there’s release in decision and action.

Even for the one left behind.

‘I know I only got what I deserved’.

How well the masochistic coat can fit!

Dim lights, strong drink, remember again.

Remember again and again and again.

Narrators can be very unreliable.

You know, we all know, it wasn’t really Daddy’s fault.

Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway.

Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway.

What a rich and resonant song!

‘Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway’ takes its honoured place as A25 on The Immortal Jukebox.

Notes:

Her Father was written and recorded by Gerry Rafferty when he was a member of The Humblebums with Billy Connolly who, of course, went on to be a major star as a comedian.

Long before the world wide success of ‘Baker Street’ Gerry Rafferty had recorded a series of superb songs distinguished by their melodic grace, their sardonic lyrical deftness and the care and attention with which they were sung.

Songs like, ‘Mary Skeffington’ (after his Mother), ‘Patrick’, ‘Steamboat Row’ and ‘Shoeshine Boy’ match Paul McCartney all the way for melodic flow and memorability.

There will be much more to say about Gerry Rafferty on The Jukebox later.

For now I urge you to purchase a Humblebums compilation and the solo records, ‘Can I Have My Money Back?’, ‘City to City’ and, ‘Night Owl’.

These records, the work of a major songwriter, will endure.

Jukebox Jive :

Recently several loyal Jukebox afficianados have written in to ask what music I’m listening to apart from that featured in the weekly Post.

Your wish is my command!

Top of the Music mountain this week:

Van Morrison ‘The Lions Share Shows’ – astounding live performances from 1971 (available on YouTube)

Tom Russell ‘Play One More – The Songs of Ian & Sylvia’ – characterful takes on folk standards.

Curtis Mayfield – ‘No Place Like America Today’ – A mature masterwork by one of the greatest figures in modern music.

From The Archive

Another faithful Jukebox fan wrote in to say he had just discovered the Post on Maura O’Connell and said, ‘How did I miss this one!’

Well, there’s over 200 Posts here now so there’s treasure aplenty to be mined!

So, each week I’ll provide links to 3 previous Posts so you can make a discovery or reminisce.

Here’s that Post on the tenderly wonderful Maura

Maura O’Connell – Silence and Stories: Maggie, Down By The Salley Gardens

Now here’s a rarity! One of my poems ‘Static’ – something of a meditation on exile and Father’s and Sons

Once in a blue moon a poem : Listening on a Clear Channel – ‘Static’

Finally the death of Chuck Berry reminded me of how world changing the original Rock ‘n’ Roll Forefathers were.

Here’s a tribute to the inimitable Little Richard.

The Immortal Jukebox A7: Little Richard – Tutti Frutti

Fats Domino RIP 1928 – 2017

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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!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUSibSbOZDE

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.

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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.

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I want a drummer who lives in and for rhythm.

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I want saxophone players who can play pretty or down and dirty as the song demands.

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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.

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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.

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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!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHunRdJnrWs

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!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2ezJmPdsTA

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.

 

Van Morrison : Brand New Day

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Mid October.

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.

In memory of Jack Schrorer and John Klingberg.

Graham Parker & The Rumour – Fool’s Gold! Fool’s Gold!

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‘I been doing my homework now for a long, long time’

One thing the world has never been short of.

Naysayers.

Naysayers.

Can’t be done.

Impossible.

Not for the likes of you!

A lanky, odd looking, uneducated nobody from backwoods Kentucky ain’t never getting anywhere near The Whitehouse!

Hey Wilbur! You don’t really think you and Orville will ever get that thing off the ground do you?

Albert, how many times do I have to tell you – you work in a Patent Office and you think you can show us all the things about the Universe Newton wasn’t smart enough to find out!

No way.

No way a working class boy, a child of immigrants, is going to win a scholarship to Cambridge.

Fool’s Gold. Fool’s Gold.

Well, I’m here to tell you some of us will never stop searching for that Gold.

And, you know what?

We’re going to hit paydirt and dazzle you with all that Gold’s glitter.

Graham Parker and The Rumour with, ‘Fool’s Gold’ from their 1976 sophomore Album, ‘Heat Treatment’.

The follow up to their magnificent debut disc, ‘Howling Wind’ also issued in 1976.

From the Summer of 1975 I’d been squeezing into pubs and clubs in Islington, Kensington and Camden to catch every GP & The Rumour show I could.

Simply, they were a Band on fire.

Burning with passion and commitment.

Graham Parker was no kid.

He was 25.

He had been a teenage Soul and Ska fan who had hit the Hippy Trails to Morocco and returned with an expanded mind and a deep desire to write and sing songs of his own.

The soul sway of Van Morrison’s ‘Tupelo Honey’ and the visceral venom of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood on The Tracks’ offered inspiration and a bar to reach for.

Add in chippy blue collar English wit and sarcasm with a pinch of Jaggeresque swagger and you’ve got quite the front man!

A front man who can perform his own compositions with audience rousing dramatic intensity.

Especially when in partnership with a Band, The Rumour, that combined instrumental brilliance with eyeballs out attack and drive.

To see them live, setting stages on fire, in their 70s pomp was to share with them the times of our lives.

‘Everything that I look for I know I will one day find’

It’s said that Bruce Springsteen said GP & The Rumour were the only Band he ever thought could give the E Streeters a run for their money.

And, having seen GP and Co dozens of times in the 70s I can tell you Bruce was spot on.

Guitarists Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont brought thunder and lightning and swapped the rapier and the bludgeon to turbo charge the songs.

Steve Goulding on drums and Andrew Bodnar on bass always seemed to have power in reserve as they drove the sound forward or laid back before engaging cruise control.

Bob Andrews on keyboards was the magic ingredient dispensing a dizzying anarchic energy that gave the songs a distinctive aura.

Out front Graham Parker sang his heart out.

Every night.

You really should have been there!

‘I’m a fool so I’m told .. I get left in the cold
‘Cause I will search the world for that fool’s gold’

Now, just because you’re a world class outfit and darlings of the critics and fellow musicians it sadly doesn’t follow that the greenbacks and the Grammys will inevitably follow!

As the 1980s dawned GP and The Rumour went their separate ways before a strange fate involving a Hollywood Film brought them back together again (for the detail of this unlikely tale see my previous Post celebrating their reunion http://wp.me/p4pE0N-1E).

I have to say it really did bring tears to my eyes to see them perform with such fire and assurance on their comeback tour.

Class is, as they say, permanent!

‘People say heaven knows .. see what comes I suppose
But I will search the world for that fool’s gold’

From the first time I heard Fool’s Gold it became one of those songs you can never get enough of.

I always shout out for it every time I see GP in concert.

And, I always will.

Fool’s Gold in every version I’ve heard Solo, duo or full Band simply sweeps you away.

The dynamics of the arrangement build and build lifting the heart and thrilling the spirit.

Keep on searching.

Keep on searching.

For that Fool’s Gold.

In the mountains.

In the valleys.

In the deep blue sea.

And, don’t you dare let anyone tell you there’s no Gold out there.

Jukebox Jive

I am delighted to announce that The Immortal Jukebox has now had more than a Quarter of a Million Views!

Enormous thanks to all my readers, supporters and commenters.

On to the Half Million!

I was also surprised and gratified to find that my Fred Neil post from last May has had over 400 views in the last week!

If you haven’t read it yet here’s the link:

Fred Neil – The reluctant guru of Greenwich Village

Keep sharing!

Dwight Yoakam, The Amazing Rhythm Aces & Alan Jackson : Third Rate Romance

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The ‘Moving House’ saga continues.

Now, everything down to the teacups and the toothbrushes is labelled, wrapped and ready for our new Home.

How did we accumulate so much stuff!

A major winnowing exercise lies ahead (honest!).

Soon, we will finally move into our Home in the Hills.

Everyone hearing where we are moving to says ‘It’s nice up there before adding with a shake of the head – of course you can be snowed in there for weeks, weeks!.

But, before we cross the threshold of our Shangri-La we are going to check in to a Hotel for a week.

Hotel living will be a blessed relief after all the clearing, packing and cleaning.

Room Service! (Talk me through your list of Malt Whiskies).

Now, you wouldn’t expect me to take up residence in a Hotel without sending the Jukebox Research Department (AKA my memory) off in search of songs featuring Hotels would you?

One fine day I’ll give you 5,000 words on, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and somewhat fewer on Chris Isaak’s, ‘Blue Hotel’ and They Might Be Giants’ ‘Hotel Detective’.

Despite the many merits of the above works the song that agitated the neurons most intently was the Carveresque ‘Third Rate Romance’ performed below by The Amazing Rhythm Aces.

A short story in song filed with dry wit and hard lived wisdom featuring a laconic vocal, a lovely guitar break and adept ensemble harmony – that’ll do for me!

The Aces came out of Knoxville originally before hitting their stride in Memphis.

Barry ‘Byrd’ Burton provides the liquid guitar line.

Jeff Davis and Butch McDade keep the rhythm flowing on bass and drums.

BIlly Earhart and James Hooker add keyboard colour.

Lead vocalist and principal songwriter Russell Smith has a keen eye for the way frail selves behave, especially when away from home, when it might appear identities and loyalties can be checked in at the front desk (for an hour or a night).

There’s some acute observation in the lyric:

‘She was starin’ at her coffee cup
He was tryin’ to keep his courage up …

‘… talk was small when they talked at all

She said, “You don’t look like my type
But I guess you’ll do …

He said, “I’ll even tell you that I love you
If you want me to …

Call me an old romantic but I like to think the above two lines were internal mental conversation rather than spoken out loud!

Undoubtedly though many a Hotel has been the venue for just such a Third Rate Romance.

Just such a low rent rendezvous.

Half truths .. evasions.. the devalued currency of adultery:

‘ I’ve never really done this kind of thing before, have you?

‘ Yes I have but only a time or two ….

Third rate romance.

Low rent redezvous.

Third rate romance.

Low rent rendezvous.

Now let’s see what chiselled retro Honky Tonk hero Dwight Yoakum can make of the song!

Well, that’s surely rugged, rowdy and more than right!

Dwight has a Voice.

Sure, Dwight looks like a Country Star precision fashioned by Hollywood central casting but it turns out he has a voice like the high desert wind and a real feel for classic hardwood floor Country.

I like the way this live performance uses Tex – Mex accents to suggest that the low rent Hotel is maybe whichever side of the border the participants are least likely to be recognised.

Now, if you and your sweetheart fancy a twirl or two around that sprung hardwood floor you can always rely on Alan Jackson to set those dancing shoes in motion.

Like the man says he put a little flavour on that one!

Have to admit I did more than a little high stepping as that disc was playing.

Time for me to check out for this week.

I got a first class Hotel waiting for my family and me.

Notes :

I strongly recommend The Amazing Rhythm Aces debut Record, ‘Stacked Deck’.

Happy Birthday Helen Shapiro! Walking Back To Happiness!

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Some songs stay with you all of your life.

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).

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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.

She has certainly earned that right.

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Ry Cooder, Captain Beefheart, John Handy : Hard Work! Hard Work!

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Hard Work. Hard Work.

Never killed anyone.

Or so the sages say.

But, Lord, Lord, it sure can make you dog tired.

What brought me to these thoughts?

Moving House.

Moving up into the hills.

Farming country criss crossed with ancient footpaths.

Moving all our stuff.

All our stuff.

All the Books!

All the Vinyl!

All the DVDs and CDs.

All the accumulated treasures and trifles of a lifetime to be boxed, bagged and loaded.

Now that is hard work!

Hard Work.

So, Dear Readers, precious little time to research and ponder deeply before writing.

So, so, I set the numbskulls free to roam in my brain’s music data base with ‘Hard Work’ as the search tag.

And, look what emerged!

From the 1970s two paens to the Working Life.

First up Saxophonist John Handy.

An alumnus of the Great Charles Mingus Band.

Classic solo on, ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’

Here, he digs in and you just gotta go with the groove.

Hard Work. Hard Work.

Next. From the Soundtrack of Paul Schrader’s, directorial debut, ‘Blue Collar’ the one and only Captain Beefheart in the guise of a classic Blues Singer with, ‘Hard Working Man’.

Can’t you feel the gears grinding and the metal shuddering!

A constellation of talent on show.

Written and produced by Jack Nitzsche a shadowy guiding hand and presence involved with many great records for decades.

Guitar by Ry Cooder.

Ry has impact whenever he plays.

Hard Work! Hard Work!

The Contours : Do You Love Me (Motown – The Empire lifts off!)

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‘ 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).

So, what about The Contours?

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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.

Tracks to look out for –

‘First I Look at the Purse’

‘Whole Lotta Woman’

‘Shake Sherry’

‘Just A Little Misunderstanding’

Rod Stewart, Bryan Ferry, Dobie Gray : The In Crowd, Drift Away

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We all like to think we are in the know.

We know important things.

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.