52 Rays of Sun-Light: A Tribute to a Bygone Music Blog and to the Legacy of Sam Phillips

   Yesterday I learned that one of the classic music blogs, Uncle Gil's Rockin' Archives, came to end. This was due to a creepy threatening message from a hacker. Assholes of all strips are threatening music blogs these days. I fear the golden age of music sharing may be over. I'm certain that these threats are engineered by the megacorporations who own (and could care less about) this      music.

    This post is a tribute to Uncle Gil--and to all the music bloggers who have come and gone, made a contribution to the preservation and love of this music. and either hung up their spurs or were scared off by cyber-monsters.

     As well, it's a tribute to one of my heroes, Sam Phillips, and his visionary work in bringing to the world some of the South's finest music of the 20th century. From Howlin' Wolf to Johnny Cash to Charlie Rich to Elvis to... well, I could make this sentence a block long with names. The point is that he had the courage to experiment with unknown musicians and give them a chance to be heard. Without his risk-taking, the course of American music would have taken a different, probably duller path in the last half of the 20th century. These recordings, now over 50 years old, retain the vitality, drive and human spirit that was Phillips' gift as a record producer.

  By the time the 26 singles offered here today came out, Sam Phillips had sold his interest in Sun Records to Shelby Singleton, a Nashville producer who had done a good bit of work for the labels owned by Mercury Records. Peter Guralnick's riveting biography The Man who Invented Rock 'n' Roll (a must-read) gives the full story of the sale of Sun to this seasoned Nashville cat.

   Singleton allowed European rockabilly researchers access to the mass of tape masters he'd bought, and these 26 singles, released in France in the late 1970s, were authorized by him. These singles consist of material that, at the time, was unissued, except on bootlegs. European record labels such as Charly and Bear Family Records have made sure these performances are available on compact disc, and chances are your town's library system has at least one Bear Family collection of Sun

Records material, ready for you to check out and enjoy.
     In 1976, these singles, which were curated by brothers Patrice and Herve Barbat, in partnership with Henri Ferrero, were a godsend. They remain a heapin' helpin' of the incredible talent and electricity that made Memphis rock 'n' roll such a defining musical force.

     Included in this download are all 52 sides of these now sought-after vinyl singles plus label scans of the discs. Many of these tracks may be second-nature to hardcore rockabilly or Sun fans, but I find them a great "mix tape" of the sound that Sam Phillips, Jack Clement and other producers captured on tape as southern rock and rollers expressed their heart and soul in the crowded studio at 706 Union Avenue. I hope you enjoy this batch of Memphis magic, and that you'll join me in a top of the Hatlo hat to Uncle Gil and all the other music bloggers who have helped make these wonderful sounds available to those of us who cared (and still care).

THIS LINK will net you the whole shebang. Peace be with you.

Otis Blackwell Volume Three: 28 Songs You've Probably Never Heard

Many years ago, I put together the first two volumes of Otis Blackwell compositions (both which are still available elsewhere on this blog).

I knew that, eventually, I'd get around to putting together another volume. Eight years passed, and with it much personal drama, illness and huge life changes. But I never forget my back-of-the-mind goal to get this set together.

Despite the host of big names you see at the left, I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut you've never heard one single song on this compilation. Almost none of these songs were hits in their day. Many were stuck on the B-sides of singles, or were flops on the music marketplace when new.

50 or 60 years later, what didn't pass muster back in the day sounds pretty damned wonderful now. As I mention in the extensive liner notes I've drafted for this set, not every song here is a masterpiece, but all have their charm, and certain ones are guaranteed to knock your footwear off and become your new favorites.

I'm in recovery from my second go-round with non-Hodgkins' lymphoma. In April, I had a stem cell transplant and spent 20 days in the hospital. During this recovery time, I can't work and have a LOT of time on my hands. Thus, I decided to create an honest-to-gosh booklet for this compilation, as if it were a real CD.

This is my version of fantasy football--putting songs together for the sake of the music. If I attempted to do this disc for real, I'd be looking at dealing with massive corporations like Universal Media, and having to shell out thousands in licensing fees for old obscure songs the current holders could care less about. So much music from this period is trapped in this snare. 

This put a bit of a damper on the one legit CD project I've created, Ace Records' P. F. Sloan/Steve Barri compilation, which came out back in 2010. Many tracks I wanted were too expensive to license, and we had to make do with some sub-par recordings to take the place of those unattainables. I'm happy with that CD, overall, but wish that two or three blah tracks weren't on there. Oh well.

HERE are the 28 songs; HERE is the booklet and CD tray. If you're so inspired, print out the booklet and tray and mock up an old-school CD for your music shelf. But do listen to the music. "Stick Close" by Estelle Brown will brighten your day immensely, and I dare you not to tap your foot to Johnny Thunder's "Am I Right or Am I Wrong."

Since I wrote about each song in the liner notes, I'll cap this post and let it go. Hope you enjoy this compilation. And who knows--I may do another post here soon!

Alternate download link for this set HERE.

Impressions of Outer Space: Ahead-of-the-Lunar-Curve Astro-Jazz

Whaaaat? A new post here? It's getting to be an annual event. This mega-rare 10" album from 1953 merits the shock-to-the-system of a Musenick posting.

Composed by Charles Albertine, Lee Pockriss and Kermit Levinsky, these eight tracks are sometimes-atonal, often bracing and brimming with the early-1950s sense of breaking new ground in recorded music.

Larry Elgart was, with his brother Les, a big band-leader with aspirations to do something more highbrow. Impressions of Outer Space pre-dates the spate of space-age astro-pop, such as Russ Garcia's Fantastica, Les Baxter's Space Escapade, Ron Goodwin's Music in Orbit and Joe Meek's I Hear a New World. More astringent and arty than those later records, IoOS takes the way-out course in most of its tracks, getting almost into Thelonious Monk territory with its shrill, mangled harmonies and instrumentation.

Charles Albertine is beloved by fans of Space Age Pop for the series of albums he arranged and masterminded for The Three Suns, RCA Victor's purveyors of the businessman's bounce school of chipper, flyweight instrumental music. He composed five of the eight tracks here, and they align with his subsequent Elgart collaboration, Music for Barefoot Ballerinas, which Decca issued as a 12" LP a few years later. This is the most out-there stuff Albertine ever composed, and it might come as a shock to those who love his psycho-perky Three Suns stuff.

It's surprising to find Lee Pockriss as composer of two pieces here. A pop songwriter to the max, he co-penned "Catch a Falling Star," "Johnny Angel" and "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini"--a galaxy apart from his two tracks on this album. They partially atone for the crime against humanity that is "Itsy Bitsy..."

Kermit Levinsky? He was affiliated with the Elgart big band, and wrote many film scores, including Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run. His brother Walt went further in the music firmament.

Enjoy this astral rarity HERE. And look for another post sometime in 2019...

Hollie-Day Special: The L. Ransford Songbook (re-upped on box.com 6/18)

You have, I hope, not come to expect more than one post a year here at "Musenick."

I've had this post in mind for awhile now. Hope it's of interest to you.

L. Ransford is the pseudonym chosen by The Hollies, one of the premier British beat groups of the 1963-66 period, for their original songs. Since three or more group members collaborated on the songs, it was thought clunky and confusing to have all those names 'neath the song titles on their Parlophone 45s.

Graham Nash came up with the name, based on that of his grandfather, L. Ransford Nash. The group put their own names on some 1963 compositions, which I've included for completeness' sake, and used the one-off "Chester Mann" for the '64 B-side "Baby, That's All" (track 8 on this set).

Like most of the beat groups that sprang up from Britain's working-class boroughs, the Hollies were not professional song-writers, but they learned on the job--and fast. As Graham Nash recalled about the group's early songwriting efforts:

Like all their peers in this emergent musical trend, Allan Clarke. Graham Nash and Tony Hicks, te group's principal writers, tried to create songs similar to those they liked from American and European pop, rock and R&B. Cover versions of the later overcrowd the Hollies' early discography. Few of those performances are memorable or worth much attention over 50 years later.

The group was stuck to a formula of cover versions for their 45s, and enjoyed hits with tepid-to-middling revivals of "Searchin'" and "Ain't That Just Like Me" (from The Coasters), "Stay" (Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs) and "Just One Look" (Doris Troy). Their first LP, titled Stay with the Hollies to cash in on their 1963 hit single, is all cover versions, save for one group original (the pounding "Little Lover") and "Baby Don't Cry," a UK song from Kennedy Street denizens Perry Ford (later of the Ivy League) and Tony Hiller.

B-sides of their early singles were fair game, and producer Ron Richards was a sympathetic ear to their efforts. Hearing many of these early songs, one longs for the boys to have one more go at the lyrics--their awkward use of the filler word "just" is prevalent, and trite rhyme schemes remind the listeners of the efforts of Gerry Marsden (of rival beat group Gerry & the Pacemakers).

Nonetheless, the songs have energy, are often pleasantly melodic and are keenly built around the Clarke-Nash-Hicks harmony force. Of the earliest songs here, "Now's the Time," B-side to "Stay,"  a pounds as hard as beat could get in 1963. Screaming-hoarse twin harmonies, slashing guitar chords and wailing drums dominate a performance that's almost over before it begins. Its “runaway” hook grabs the listener—the master touch of an outstanding beat disc.

"L. Ransford" clearly had an ear to the efforts of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, their mega-successful label-mates. Through 1964, the Ransford songs often echo the feel and melodic stylings of the Beatles--especially Lennon's efforts. Songs like "Come On Back," "Don't You Know" and "Please Don't Feel Too Bad," from their originals-heavy 2nd LP In the Hollies' Style, are extremely Beatley.

The first sign of things to come is "Time for Love," from that second LP. Its sinuous melody, with its sinister tinge and striking middle eight, doesn't sound like anything the Beatles could have cooked up.

The group finally placed a Ransford as a single A side with 1964's "We're Through," a commercial minor-keyed song in the vein of "You're No Good," which was a major hit for Liverpool's Swinging Blue Jeans a few months earlier.

A signature melodic style begins to show up with the flowing, harmony-based "Baby, That's All," a 1964 B-side. From this point on, the Hollies' originals tend to work more distinct musical paths, and in the process, they stop sounding so much like the other groups. By 1965, via songs such as "I've Been Wrong," "Too Many People" and "Put Yourself in My Place," "L. Ransford" have found their collective voice. 

As with the Beatles' contemporary songs, it's fascinating to trace the maturity and development of British beat music through the L. Ransford catalog. By its end. the group has shed all its apparent influences and emerged as a major creative force. Alas, this original version of the group was soon to break up.

These tracks are sourced from the terrific EMI box set, The Hollies--Clarke, Nash & Hicks Years (2011), which includes several originally-unissued tracks. All the "Ransfords" have been included here, and a couple of them are corkers. "Listen Here to Me," recorded in New York City in April, 1965, is a powerful, brooding song and performance--imagine a mash-up of their cover of Peter, Paul & Mary's "Very Last Day" and their first A-side as Ransford, "We're Through." Though this is clearly not a finished recording, it's quite impressive and would have made a dynamite LP track. "Bring Back Your Love to Me" suggests the early Easybeats (that Australian group who emerged as world-class pop with their global hit "Friday on My Mind"); "She Gives Me Everything I Want" looks ahead to the group's 1966/7 songs and could have been a hit single. "You in My Arms" anticipates the songs on their LP masterpiece For Certain Because with its strong Middle-Eastern tinge.

The final track here is an L. Ransford song the Hollies gave to another group, The Mirage. "Go Away" is instantly recognizable as a '65/'66 Hollies original--from its ringing guitar giff to its shifting minor-key chord patterns and plaintive melody.

Hope you enjoy this 37-song set. As said, check back here later in 2017 for something big along these general lines!

Re-upped on box.com, which never deletes files. No password; geddit HERE.

Don Gibson's 50 Best Songs: One of the Great Bodies of American Popular Music (re-upped 6/18)

This is another home-brew compilation, with songs in chronological order, going from 1954 to 1969. This was perhaps country music's most fertile period. Great songwriters seemed to exist by the truckload--Harlan Howard, Willie Nelson, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, John D. Loudermilk, Hank Snow, etc., etc., etc.

It's easy to take this massive body of music for granted. Some of the songs--such as Don Gibson's "I Can't Stop Loving You" and "Sweet Dreams"--are such a part of the fabric of American music that they may be invisible to many people.

I consider Don Gibson to be one of the strongest, most passionate country songwriters of his day. That he was a superb performer--until he adopted iffy vocal affectations, circa 1964--is a decided plus.

Many of the pro songwriters in '50s/'60s Nashville were charming, if tentative, vocalists. No one is going to champion Harlan Howard as an outstanding performer. Gibson is up there with Willie Nelson and Hank Snow as a masterful writer/artist in the classic country idiom.

Gibson's songs demonstrate the arc of development in country music through two turbulent decades. The earliest recordings heard here are typical of the hard-edged, plaintive honky-tonk country that surfaced via the inestimable influence of Hank Williams. There are, as well, a handful of solid rockabilly-style numbers ("I Ain't A-Studyin' You, Baby," "Tell It Like It Is" and the country-punk of "Sittin' Here Cryin'").

Gibson's soulful voice was used as the vehicle for "The Nashville Sound"--an attempt to give pop and rock fans a reference point for a music that was scorned as corny and old-fashioned. Some regrettable things occurred in the building of the Nashville Sound--obnoxious, ultra-white backing choruses, incongruous instruments such as electric organs and, to some purists' eyes, full drum kits. The arrangements tended towards the saccharine/Caucasian, as heard in several recordings in this compilation. It is to Gibson's credit that, while he embraces this new sound, he also transcends it with the power of his wavering, pensive voice.

Gibson struggled with drug addiction and was infamous for erratic behavior. These excesses took a toll on his abilities as performer and songwriter. His delivery becomes curiously clipped and curt in his post-1963 recordings. Compared to the moving performances of the late 1950s and early '60s, this new approach falls flat. If Gibson saw this as an improvement in his art, one can only disagree. He could still perform a song--his or others', the latter which he leaned on heavily after 1963--with beauty and soul, but the flowing sustained notes of his best early recordings are achingly absent.

When able to write, Gibson still proved a first-class country and pop writer. Late songs on this collection, such as "Around the Town," "Run Along Blues" and "Times Were Good" meet or surpass the quality of his late '50s/early '60s output. Indeed, the final song here, 1969's "There's a Story," shows the writer adapting to new changes in the sound of country music.

"Oh Lonesome Me," "I Can't Stop Loving You" and "Sweet Dreams" have proved Don Gibson's most enduring compositions. He recorded the latter several times before arriving at his definitive version, released as a 1962 single. Its flipside, "The Same Street," is a devastating, gloomy song about the traces of a ruined relationship that supremely haunt their singer. This was a Gibson lyrical specialty. Few of his songs have happy outcomes. In the song "Give Myself a Party," Gibson takes this melancholy and turns it inside-out. The results are unusual and gripping. The song is a jaunty death-march to the idea that human love can successfully exist.

All songs are derived from the three box sets of Gibson's 1949-1969 recordings issued by, er, "Ursine Clan" Records in the 1990s. All three sets are worth acquiring, in whatever form available, for their alternate takes, tremendous cover versions and a few minor gems that didn't make the cut of this personal Top Fifty.

These 50 songs come in two files of 25, HERE and HeRe. No password required.

P. F. Sloan--A Passel of Passionate 1960s Demo Recordings--re-upped August 2019!

SEE COMMENTS FOR WORKING LINKS. You may need to get a free account with Box.com in order to access the tracks. It won't hurt one bit, I promise!

_________________________________________

I summed up the musical career of the late, lamented Phil Sloan in the liner notes for the Ace Records compilation You Baby: Words and Music by P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri, which was released in 2010. Buy it, why don'cha? I put a lot of work into this project, including in-depth interviews with Sloan and Barri. I made 400 bucks for my trouble. I am, apparently, persona non grata at Ace Records, for reasons I shall never know.

Still, I am proud of this project, even though some of its song choices are weak, and some key tracks are missing--mostly due to unreasonably high licensing fees.

Destined to be one of the most controversial and maligned figures in that potent decade of pop music progress, Sloan's 1960s Los Angeles career was short but sweet. The years 1964 to 1967 saw a large quantity of original songs, written in a dizzying array of styles, most often with his collaborator, Steve Barri, composed, demoed and sometimes recorded by other artists.

"Eve of Destruction" changed Sloan's life and career. A prior composer of pop, girl group, surf, rock and novelty songs, Sloan was suddenly seen as a serious composer--the first "new Bob Dylan" in pop-rock history.

Like almost all others who had that mantle put upon them, it was more burden than honor. While Sloan continued to write dynamite mainstream pop music material, he also strove to create more complex, advanced songs that uneasily straddled the boundaries of pop and folk musics.

Some of these songs are failures--over-wrought, over-written and awkwardly conceived. But the majority are bracing, exciting and sometimes deeply moving compositions that showed the pop music world that there was more than met the eye to what a commercial piece of music could contain.

Sloan was out of Los Angeles by the end of 1967, and his songs were largely forgotten. Meanwhile, countless other singer-songwriters trod the path he had unconsciously blazed, and his influence--as the first composer to meet the disparate ends of Dylanesque personal songwriting and mainstream commerical material--still hangs over the American musical landscape.

Sloan's solo recordings of this period rarely do him justice. Perhaps at the encouragement of record-label execs, Sloan affects a Dylanish whine to his vocals, and most of the recordings are badly balanced, overly sparse, and betray the lack of TLC afforded them. His two period albums, Songs of Our Times and Twelve More Times, have their moments, but fail to satisfyingly cohere.

Sloan's secret recording career, as the passionate performer of scores of demonstration recordings, was unheard outside the music industry at the time. Sung beautifully in his rich, distinctive voice, and often more elaborately orchestrated than his solo albums, these demos show Sloan at his early best.

A CD of some highlights of these demo recordings was commercially issued in 2001. That disc, Child of Our Times, is the first act of today's post. Though its graphics are shoddy, the mastering of the 20 songs therein is superb. You can nab a 320 rip of that out-of-print seedee at the top of this post.

The disc represented just the tip of the iceberg. I've assembled a bonus volume, containing 25 more demo performances (see comment section below for 2021 links).

These 25 songs more accurately show the schizophrenic aspects of Sloan's commercial songwriting. Everything from a cutesy boy-girl duet, and several songs for an apparently abandoned 1964 album project devoted to the "swim" dance craze, to devastatingly good pop songs such as "He's Just That Kind of Guy," "And I Cry Over You" and "Things Are Different Now" and more Dylanesque pieces ("Me And My Captain," "It's No Disgrace") are on deck. There's even a country-pop song, "I Love You More Than Yesterday," that seems to have been written on spec, but never used.

That was the sad fate of so many of these songs: disuse and indifference. 50 years later, we can hear these and marvel at how good they are, even the sillier of them. But back then, when they were part of the commerical currency of the music scene, they were ignored. The music biz is a ruthless profession, and it's chewed up and spit out some very talented individuals.

Since I first posted these collections in 2014, P.F. Sloan has left this mortal coil. He passed away from complications with pancreatic cancer in 2016.  He created a final studio album, My Beethoven, and a memoir called What Exactly's The Matter With Me? His memoir is often-heartbreaking. He doesn't shift the blame away from himself for the poor choices he made in his youth, and confirms that he really wanted to make popular music better in his own way. Had he worn the Dylan influences more fluently, as in these demo recordings, I believe his vision of "people's music" would have caught on.

Sloan's book is a must-read, and his best songs will live on as younger listeners and musicians stumble across them in years to come. In the meantime, peruse these 45 demo recordings from the mid-1960s, and enjoy one of the era's most passionate voices.

25 Good Reasons To Like 14: Complete Works of a Criminally Unknown 1960s Band--RE UPPED IN 320! WITH LINERS!

This out-of-print 1998 compilation hasn't been available on blogs for several years. I recently scored a copy of the scarce, Swedish disc, which is, in part, one of my favorite albums, period.

What does the group's name mean? Here's a little chunk of information I found in the liner notes of the long-deleted Swedish CD anthology, Stora Popboxen, where I first heard 14's music:

“Floskler, Jeremiader Och Rim Till Omusikalisk Nation” [FJORTON, Swedish for 14) (literally: empty phrases, lamentations, and rhymes for an unmusical nation]  That was one of the explanations for the name “14”, and the number sits in quotation marks too.  Another explanation is that they wanted to choose a name that would stand out from the crowd.
“14” made eight singles and one album but were possibly a little too reserved for the Tio i Topp jury.

But for one of the members things went considerably better some 30 years later.  His name is Olle Nilsson – or is it John Lennon?

Not every track here is stellar, but the good ones are SO good that I rate them with the best work of a very fertile period for popular music (1965-68).

This Swedish foursome's music, at its best, weds stunningly inventive and memorable melodies to complex, evocative lyrics, with subject matter that often falls far afield of typical pop music tropes.

The group's principal songwriter and (presumably) leader, Olle Nilsson, imbued the group's 1960s recordings with an uniquely melancholy, introspective vibe. Though the music wears its obvious influences (Beatles, Who, Kinks, Paul Simon, Hollies) on its embroidered sleeve, the songs continually impress with their original, fresh feeling.

Some are misfires--the B-side throwaway "Nothing But Moan," the chunky but derivative "Suit-Men Crowd" and the parodic-but-wearisome "Mr Great Blues." The brace of originals from their album, In A Bunch, stand the test of time as brilliant songs and recordings.

"Little Down-Hearted Arthur," for example, captures the raw sense of youthful alienation as well as any song I've ever heard. "Restless Feeling One Hour After Dinner" is a striking evocation of boredom and ennui among a person who has no reason to feel those blues."Im Krankenhaus" tells the story of sickly child confined to his bed, too weak to venture beyond his room and miserable in his isolation.

"Frosty Stars on a Window Pane" and, most powerfully, "The Leaves of the Summer," evoke a sense of climate and seasonal change as a simple but affecting metaphor.

Listen to "The Leaves of the Summer" HERE and see how you like it.

The last three tracks on the disc were apparently composed in the late 1960s, and recorded (by the original group?) in the late 1990s. They don't exactly meld with the folky, intense quality of the 1960s recordings, but are worth a listen.

Get it, now in 320sound,with all the CD's artwork, and my inept but sincere translation of the Swedish notes, HERE. It's on Box.com, and should be a no-fuss download for ya.