Old gold
This page is pre-blog! From now on these regular 'posts' will appear on the blog - along with other stuff I find interesting or inspiring
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Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks - Forty Days
Ronnie Hawkins (born 1935) is the cousin of fellow rockabilly pioneer Dale Hawkins (of Suzie Q fame). Around 1958 - the time of this recording - he moved to Canada (at the suggestion of fellow Arkansan Conway Twitty) where there was a thriving rockabilly scene.
Sun rockabilly artist Sonny Burgess once remarked, "There were three guys in those days who would really knock you out – Elvis, Jerry Lee and Ronnie Hawkins." This is Hawkins' re-working of Chuck Berry's Thirty Days which he cut on Roulette in 1958. The energy in the recording, particularly in the guitar and then the piano break is awesome.
Two of Ronnie Hawkins' classic albums, Mojo Man and Arkansas Rock Pile, both culled from 1959-63 sessions recorded in Nashville and New York, are to be reissued on Collectors' Choice Music this week – something I found out when digging around for info on Forty Days having found a copy whilst having a rummage in JBs last week.
Hawkins' band, The Hawks, was originally formed in Arkansas with drummer Levon Helm but gained its core membership in Canada with Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson. In later years, The Hawks went on to become Bob Dylan's band and later The Band. Respect.
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Little Milton - I Need Somebody
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This is another track that was on that CD that Boogaloo Bill gave me a while back – and I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a copy ever since. I Need Somebody is the flipside of So Mean To Me from 1961 – the second of over 30 45s that Milton cut for Checker between 1961 and 1971. This is also the second track in the latest Get Involved mix (Vol. III) – which has just been added to the Beats'n'Treats page.
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Link Wray & his Wraymen - Dixie-Doodle
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Link Wray scored a hit with his instrumental track Rumble in 1958 on the Cadence label: it peaked at No. 16 in the Billboard charts in 1958 - despite being banned for being too suggestive (rumble was slang for fighting). Link and his Wraymen then signed a three year with Epic and this is his first single on the label, Rawhide / Dixie Doodle (1959) which saw peaked at No. 23 – the second and last time a Link Wray record would make the charts. Both of these tracks are powerful, urgent and raw-sounding rockabilly instrumentals but I'd never heard Dixie Doodle until I picked this up the other weekend. Sounds like rhythm'n'booze...
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Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels -
Baby Jane (Mo Mo Jane)
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I love that in the mid 60s, just as the Motown soul factory was churning out highly polished soul productions, Mitch Ryder was leading the way for the kind of heart-pounding, high-octane, you-just-can't-hide-from-it, visceral rock'n'roll that would come bursting out of Detroit in the form of Iggy and the Stooges and MC5... This is from 1965 and while it has pretty much the same bassline and tempo as Otis Redding's energetic Hey Baby of 1962, the lyrical delivery sounds like Mitch has been out partying for about 24 hours straight before stepping up to the mic. This might be my favourite chorus refrain of all time too: "I don't know, I don't know – mo-mo Jane you messed me up."
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Betty Lavette - Soul Tambourine
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This 1973 tambourine-shaking soul tune ticks all the boxes: Great female vocal - check; lots of upfront tambourine shaking - check; a big fat, sample-able break - check. Hot-diggety-damn it's a beauty! It was brought to my attention a few weeks ago when Gilbey included it on his recently posted Right Place, Wrong Time mix (which is hosted right here on our Beats'n'Treats page). Being the busy-fingered guy I am, I've found and bagged my own copy. If you've got a tambourine, shake it!
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George Torrence and The Naturals - (Mama Come Quick and Bring Your) Lickin' Stick
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I first heard this track when Bill – a regular and knowledgeable attendee of our other night, Gerry's Joint up at The Boogaloo – gave me a CD of cracking tracks, all of which he described as "early Twisted Wheel" bangers. It's a gritty, funky cut that, for some reason, I can imagine Mick Jagger getting down to in the mid sixties when it came out. And the tambourine shaking on the recording is loud and proud - just the way I like it. Thanks for bringing this to my attention Bill (you legend) - and thanks to London's finest record shop, JB's, for continuing to stock old gold worth diggin' for in the 45s box!
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Shawn Elliot - Shame and Scandal in the Family
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I was in Berlin at the weekend with some friends and failed to get to any of the record shops while they were open. I kept spotting record shops in the evening, dagnammit. But on the last day of my weekend trip, on Sunday, I got up to a flea market in Prenzlauer Berg for a rainy day rummage. Only three stalls with records and only two of them had a couple of boxes of sevens each. I bought three records for 11 euros, of which, this is one.
I've known and loved The Wailers' version of Shame & Scandal (recorded before a certain Robert Nesta Marley joined their ranks - when their sound was purely calypso) for about ten years, so this record grabbed my attention. I know Derek Martin for his tambourine-shaking classic Daddy Rollin' Stone (which will appear on Get Involved Vol. III) and for his slower but hardly less groovy Bumper To Bumper – so I had to buy this French Roulette EP in great condition in its original sleeve. To be perfectly honest, the Derek Martin side pales into insignificance in the light of Shawn Elliot's 1964 version of Shame and Scandal in the Family, which is described on the back of the sleeve as "un morceau très dansant." In other words, get ready to get your groove on!
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Irene Harris - Dirty Old Man
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I picked this up whilst having a rummage in the 7" boxes in Good Records in the East Village last time I was in NYC. I paid $5 for it and picked it out just because it was on the Old Town label – the New York label that Billy Bland (er, and The Supremes) recorded some cracking tracks on in the sixties. I think this is early 70s and the price I paid tells you it's no rarity. Still, it's a great track I'm super-pleased I bagged on my trip – a slice of laid-back funky soul at it's horn-filled, tambourine-shaking best – and Reid's vocal is bang on the money...
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The Strangeloves - It's About My Baby
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The Strangeloves was the brainchild of a trio of songwriters/producers (Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer) from New York. They created a fake backstory that The Strangeloves consisted of three brothers brought up on an Australian Sheep farm called Giles, Miles and Niles Strange who formed a band after a sheep crossbreeding get-rich-scheme failed to reach fruition. I suppose they created this story in order to generate press about the band. Like I said, they were songwriters/producers. Not PR/marketing gurus...
Still, The Strangeloves' sound had a certain raucous immediacy and when I Want Candy became a hit in 1965 the producers found they were under pressure to perform live so it was at this juncture that they decided to get the session musicians that played on the record to become, for live performance purposes, The Strangeloves...
It's About My Baby is, in fact, the flipside of I Want Candy, pressed on Bang Records. The rolling tom-tom rhythm combined with the practically shouted lyrics gives the track a kind of primal urgency and potency you just can't hide from.
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Johnny Otis - Baby I Got News For You
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Band leader and talent-nurturer par excellence Johnny Otis is a legend, no doubt. Among the peeps he discovered are Little Willie John, Little Esther Philips, Jackie Wilson, Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton (he produced her 1953 hit single Hound Dog), and The Royals (later known as Hank Ballard and The Midnighters). His best known track is probably Willie and the Hand Jive (1958) and the flip of that single, Willie Did The Cha Cha, has been a staple Get Involved floor-filler for a couple of years now (an extended cowbell-tastic edit appears on Get Involved Volume II).
I'm gonna be honest, I don't know much about Baby I Got News For You other than I first heard it on a 1970 compilation called Rock Explosion on Ember Records that I picked up at a second hand shop for a couple of quid. That compilation has a hilariously bad cover featuring a girl and a motorcycle and some bad typography - which I must photograph and stick up here (note to self) but in the meantime, here's a scan of the label of the 45 I found (and had to buy) in a junk shop on the south coast last year. I think it was recorded in 1964 during a brief stint at King Records. All I know for certain is that I love this tune. You can find this and more of Otis' sixties recordings on a compilation called Let's Live It Up
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Lonnie Youngblood - Go Go Shoes
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Picked up a really good copy of this, Go Go Shoes by Lonnie Youngblood (Fairmount 1002), in JB's last week and am really glad I did. It's absolutely perfect Get Involved business: prominent tambourine, laid back but thumping groove fit for firing up the early dance floor with heaps of ace saxophone playing by Youngblood. And the guitar intro... by a certain Jimi Hendrix, who played on this session with Youngblood. This is the first time the guitar artistry of Hendrix was recorded and released on record. Historic single alert! There's actually been no small amount of mystery around the recording session which bore this track (and twelve others). In the mid 90's it was thought that the sessions took place some time in 1963 in Philadelphia – but actually that's not true. Lonnie set the record straight in an interview with Frank Moriarty in 1996 for a feature he wrote for UniVibes: The International Jimi Hendrix Magazine: "It was in New York and it was done on an eight track at Abtone Studio. It was on Broadway between 55th and 56th, up on the second floor."
Apparently the musicians had a blast but didn't make any money. Fairmount had a distribution deal but never had the tapes. "The tapes were at the studio," reveals Youngblood. "Once I'd mixed them down and mastered them, I always left my tapes at the studio because at that time that was the thing to do." In the years since those sessions, when the name Hendrix could be used to turn the tapes into $$, according to Youngblood the studio was bribed for the tapes by a New York producer called Jonny Brantley who then cut a deal with GRP in Chicago (worth an estimated $100,000) for the tape. "They took all the money and didn't give me any," says Youngblood.
But wait, it gets worse... "Then these companies started to put the shit out and didn't even put my name on it," Youngblood recalls. "They would say it was Jimi Hendrix singing, without my name on it - so many lies, man. The stuff that came out on that album called Two Great Experiences Together! – what happened with that, one company took that and tried to doctor it up to make it have more Hendrix activity. See Hendrix is more or less just backing me up on the original tape. The companies wanted to say they had a little more activity by Hendrix, so they found some Hendrix wannabees and they put them on the tracks. And what they really did was they messed the tracks up with overdubs."
So, Lonnie got shafted, but he's not bitter. He's way too cool for that. Just as cool as he sounds on this flippin' excellent track recorded in those historical New York sessions of 1963.
Further reading: Frank Moriarty's feature
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The Pleasures - If I Had a Little Money
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This is the flipside of Music City, released in 1963 on Catch records, later to be released in 1965 on Sue records in the UK. Everyone always bangs on about Music City - and rightly so as it's a great tune, no doubt. But it's greatness seems to eclipse the flip, If I Had a Little Money, which I absolutely love. OK, so the prominent tambourine shaking had me hooked from the very beginning – but check it out: it's a great side, similar in style to Leiber & Stoller's work for The Coasters, with bundles of soulful charm and it's well worth a squiz in its own right. Two crackers on one 45 – this record is absolute gold.
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Jesse Hill - Ooh Poo Pah Doo
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I wanted to stick this up here primarily because of the sleeve. It’s a London records Australian issue of Jessie Hill’s 1960 New Orleans smash, Ooh Poo Pah Doo, originally released on Minit records (MINIT 607). I’d never seen one of these house bags - brown paper inner with translucent outer bag with a creamy print, until I found this when having a dig in JB's record store in London recently (word to Rob and Bill at JB's!). The track is an absolute killer too and kind of sums up the Get Involved sound: infectious, tambourine-shaking fare aimed squarely at the dancefloor. It's bound to “create disturbance in your mind"!
Blogger Red Kelly in New York (knows his onions) has already blogged about the track itself in way more detail than I could hope to so click here to check his post out.
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Roy Head The Traits - Apple Of My Eye
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When Roy Head utters the cry, “Hey!” it’s just awesome. That, by the way, is an inescapable fact. Head is best known for his track Treat Her Right – a track which featured in Alan Parker’s 1991 film The Commitments - and which features a particular noteworthy volley of Hey!s. Treat Her Right was released on Back Beat records in September 1965 and reached number two in the pop charts and also in the R'n'B charts. Apple Of My Eye was actually recorded by Back Beat before Treat Her Right but released afterwards… it only just made the top forty. Maybe the line “I’ve got fifty women waiting…” was just too cocky for mass appeal. The fact is that this is a great R&B style tune (Roy was a white dude - and as such is regarded as a proponent of the ‘blue-eyed soul’ movement of the mid sixties) and the guitar break is just blinding. Tambourines at the ready…
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Johny Kidd & The Pirates - Dr. Feelgood
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Dr Feelgood is slang for heroin - or for doctors prepared to over-subscribe drugs – Wikipedia
Mention Dr. Feelgood and a lot of people will think of the 70s pub rock band from Canvey Island that gave us Roxette and the brilliant Down By The Jetty album of 1974. Well, apparently they named their band after a Johnny Kidd & The Pirates track. Now we like to think of ourselves as big fans of JK & The Ps but we'd never heard (or heard of) such a track, so when we spotted this 45 at a record fair late last year – we asked the guy on the stall to stick on the Dr Feelgood side.
It's actually a cover of a Willie Perryman (aka Piano Red) track called Doctor Feel-Good – recorded under the guise of Dr. Feelgood & The Interns in 1962. And it's a cracker. So is this an ultra-rare find? No, but that's really not the point. Best £3 we ever spent.
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If you've enjoyed any of the tunes on this page, please support the artists and labels that gave us the music in the first place - go out and buy a CD or if you want to find your own copy of a particular record, there are a number of places to start looking online or visit your local record fair or car-boot sale and see what you can find.
Now get diggin'!