Little Eva was Carol King’s baby sitter. And she did the Locomotion.
It turned out Little Eva also had a boyfriend who hit her, when things weren’t going right. Carol and Gerry Goffin learned about Eva’s burden and wrote this song in outrage, but it seems Phil Spector missed at least part of the point.
So it stands as an amazing song with a killer arrangement and offensive lyrics. How do you reconcile that?
I referenced this last night. Here are two versions of this classic Burt Bachrach tune, first the standard from the Shirelles…
and then Smith, which I think was my first introduction to this song. Oh well.
I’ve seen Charlie Haden play many times in the last 20 years or so. In 2005 he reconvened the Liberation Music Orchestra to protest the War in Iraq, and I saw them in an explosive show in the Village.
A year or two later his family, musicians all, including his daughter Petra, who we’ve featured here a couple of times, put together a country band in honor of the Haden Family Band that toured the country when Charlie was a boy. I saw them at an outdoor festival near Lincoln Center. And some time earlier I saw an amazing show with Haden and Thad Jones at Iridium, when that club was in that fantastic space across the street from Lincoln Center.
In between I fell deeply in love with a gentle album of Latin American melodies and tunes performed with the great Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, though I never got the chance to see the two of them perform.
A few weeks ago I posted Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman here. Charlie Haden played bass on that classic, and much of the early Ornette stuff. His straightforward melodic bass lines were the spine that held together Ornette’s and Don Cherry’s raucous soloing in those free jazz days.
One of my favorite Haden stories in his obit in the Times today involved a show he was performing in Lisbon with Coleman in the early 70s, during which he dedicated Song for Che to the black resistance fighters in Mozambique and Angola, Portuguese colonies. He was promptly put in jail.
A detail I didn’t know about Haden’s life. He played only country music until he was 21, when he saw a Charlie Parker show in Omaha. He was inspired, started to play jazz and moved to LA, where he met and played with Hampton Hawes and Paul Bley and eventually hooked up with Coleman.
This tune is from a 1989 show with the great drummer Paul Motian and the pianist Rubalcaba. It combines the lyricism with the wildness the was a part of Haden’s whole package.
And here’s some Liberation Music Orchestra.
I somehow missed that he’d died late in June, but the last few days came upon RIP Playlists and other indications that Womack had passed.
I came to know him via the Rolling Stones, whose cover of his (and Shirley Womack’s) tune It’s All Over Now was a favorite.
But of course, Bobby had started in a somewhat different place. His version of the song entered the charts in June 1964. The Stones recorded the song a few weeks later and by the end of July their cover was their first No. 1 song in the UK.
Womack hadn’t wanted the Stones to cover the tune. He reportedly told Jagger, “Get your own song,” but when the royalty check arrived at the end of the year he told the Stones they could have any song of his they wanted. He worked with the band years later, on their Dirty Work album.
In the meantime, Ry Cooder did an ace reggae cover of the song on his Paradise and Lunch album.
I finally got to Cleveland to visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last week. It lived up to my expectations with tons of cool memorabilia to check out. We spent 5-6 hours there and easily could have gone back the next day to do it all again.
(BTW, Cleveland may get a bad rap, but I found it to be a very nice city. It was clean, has beautiful architecture and artwork, and there were lots of people out for the ballgame versus the Yankees or getting dinner and drinks.)
Of course the city of Cleveland has been all over the news for the past 24 hours due to LeBron “King” James’ decision to return to that city instead of renewing his contract to play basketball for Miami.
So with all this Cleveland stuff running through my consciousness, I’m taking the easy route and making Ian Hunter’s “Cleveland Rocks” today’s SotW.
Conventional wisdom is that Hunter originally wrote the song in tribute to his home country, England, but changed the reference to Cleveland to help improve the city’s self-image. But the leader of Mott the Hoople has been known to tell the story differently in recent years, implying the song was written to give kudos to Cleveland fans for embracing Glam Rock ahead of the rest of the country. In an article by John Petkovic, of Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer, Hunter is quoted as saying:
“I was watching TV one night when this comedian starts making fun of Cleveland… Cleveland had the coolest rock fans in the country — I wrote ‘Cleveland Rocks’ for them, because they were always so great to me.
Cleveland was the first city in America to embrace Mott the Hoople… The East and West coasts had their heads up their [expletive], but Cleveland was hip to us and Roxy Music and David Bowie right away.”
The recording certainly doesn’t suffer from the help Hunter received from Mick Ronson on guitar, and the E Street Band’s Gary Tallent on bass, Roy Bittan on keys and Max Weinberg on drums.
A version of the song by The Presidents of the United States of America is probably familiar to many of you as the theme song to Drew Carey’s mid 90s ABC sitcom.
Enjoy… until next week.
Goodbye original Ramones. Copied this from some website; maybe they’ll sue us. Didn’t post a picture either because, if you don’t know what Tommy Ramone looked like, just go away.
Really strange that Johnny, Tommy and Joey too, all got killed by really bad cancers. They may as well would’ve done heroin like Dee Dee.
That makes the oldest original Ramone a max of 62 (or 65). Ridiculous, when they definitely weren’t known for their excesses (again, besides Dee Dee).
Keith Richards will probably live to be 100.
Tommy Ramone, aka Thomas Erdelyi, the last surviving member of the original Ramones died today at his home in Ridgewood, Queens. He was 62 (several sources say 65) and had been in hospice care following treatment for cancer of the bile duct. The time of death was 12:15pm. Claudia Tienan, his partner of 40 years, asked Andy Schwartz, former editor of NY Rocker (among many other things) to make the announcement of his passing.
Tommy and guitarist John Cummings (Johnny Ramone) first got together in a high school garage band called the Tangerine Puppets. When the Ramones formed, he was supposed to be their manager, but ended up becoming the drummer from 1974 to 1978 and producing several of their albums. Tommy was always considered the most “normal” Ramone.
Post Ramones, Erdelyi produced the Replacements Tim album and Redd Kross’s Neurotica. In recent years he’d been playing bluegrass and folk with Claudia Tienan as Uncle Monk.
The Rolling Stones still play, I guess you can call it that, but they can’t play this now. They’re all tricks and humping the stadium for yawns. They used to rock like this:
They rock the shit out of this too, Brian’s rhythm and Bill especially:
With the Stones I want to avoid the MONSTER SONGS that everyone has heard too much, but some of the hits are too good:
This next is the first Stones song I ever heard, on the AM radio in 1964. It’s still one of their best, at the time they were first trying to bust out of the strictly I-IV-V thing, which was pretty soon actually. The Stones always followed the trends, and so much for their uncompromising vision. Who cares. Here they do the girl group thing, as did the Beatles and all the Brit groups at that time, which I think is really interesting because you didn’t see much, if any, of this crossover thing in the U.S. After the Brits did it, it became OK for American boys. A lot of this song comes from the Ronnettes:
There are at least two versions of the next song, this is the one from the Flowers album but it has a longer coda, and is much better without the orchestration and kinda bumbling classical rhythms of the other one. Asking Charlie Watts to play classical music, the very idea. You’re obsolete my baby.
Let’s get Monkey Man in here before it’s too late. The blending of guitars and Nicky Hopkins on piano in the middle part still gives me the chills:
This song has the worst video ever made so I went for the blank screen. Really, it’s painful to watch. But the song…Stanley Booth wrote the best book about the Stones (“The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones”), he put it this way: “it has the best music ever on a Rolling Stones record, but unfortunately none of the Rolling Stones is playing it.” Stanley is referring to Sonny Rollins on sax and I can’t say he’s wrong. But ya know, to my no doubt philistine ears that’s the best Sonny Rollins ever sounded too.
I haven’t touched on Exile yet and it’s hard to know what to do with it. The whole thing is like one song, a complete tour of their music. When it first came out I didn’t like it that much, although I loved Tumblin Dice. It took me that whole summer to really get into it, but then I hardly listened to anything else for months. I still love Tumblin Dice but I love this one more better, the slowest song on the album. Mick’s got those hedonist blues:
It feels weird to leave off the songs from Sticky Fingers since there isn’t a bad song on the album and there are several great ones. Many could be subbed for those that made my list. But I’m down to two and Gimme Shelter is one of them. The other is fairly obscure, from an uneven album that many believe marks the beginning of the end for the Stones. I guess so, but they still had some great ones in them and this is one, another slow one:
And now Gimme Shelter. Extra stars to Merry Clayton, who also never sounded better. The third time she says “murder” is like the smile on the Mona Lisa.
I’ll divide up the points three points each.
My friend Angela linked to this Seattle band today on Facebook, and their sound is retro and spare, like the Dum Dum Girls, but more so.
This tune reminds me of the Burt Bachrach tune, Baby It’s You, though it isn’t quite as exquisitely structured. But it has lots of air and reverb and good taste. The rest of the EP is similarly smart, though of course it’s just a tease until they put it all together and make a sound of their own.
But until then, this will do. Cause baby, it’s you.
We’re spending July up north, in the Hudson Valley. On our side of the river, the east side, the food is incredible. On the west side of the river there is music. Lots of it.
Tonight, a band from the Woodstock side came to play in the Spiegeltent at Bard College, up the road from us, on our side of the river. Simi Stone, our friends told us, sang backup for Natalie Merchant last week at a show in Kingston, and saved Natalie’s behind. At least that’s what it sounded like, our friends said.
I checked into Simi Stone on the internet and found this delightful clip:
Too cute for school, but fine for going out with friends. What could go wrong?
So we went to the show tonight, met our friends and one of their friends (who had been to the Merchant show and kind of fell for Simi Stone), and were prepared to enjoy, not be blown away.
But when the show started something better happened.
This wasn’t like Jon Landau and Dave Marsh seeing Springsteen, but the fact is that you can go to a lot of shows and not catch a fire. And Simi Stone and her band threw a spark.
The lineup was unusual: Piano, drums, bass and baritone sax, plus Simi singing, playing violin and guitar. The baritone sax guy played flute on a few songs when the bari wasn’t necessary.
Simi is not exactly graceful on stage, she can seem ungainly, but when she dances she hits the groove. She has a big head of hair and subtle feet. What might seem impromptu at first starts to seem very easy and knowing as you get to know her.
But what was gripping were the songs. Soul songs, for the most part, not really extraordinary in any obvious way, but in some ways all the better for the way they respected the traditions and also told Simi Stone’s personal story. These were personal songs, cut from the cloth of Rickie Lee Jones and Laura Nyro and Bill Withers, tunes that laid bare moments of life’s pain and despair, gently, in the first person, and then more forcefully claimed life itself for itself with a groove that just goes on. Simi Stone, she sang, deserved more than she had had at her low points.
This is powerful stuff that might not mean much musically, except Simi Stone made sure that it did. Whatever her previous problems, her performance was a repudiation of trouble, while at the same time she respectfully acknowledged trouble’s power.
So her show told us her story, and at the same time had the room on its feet dancing by the end, joyous in her message of transcendence and liberation.
On a side note, at the end, Simi introduced the band. They were all good players, older than Simi, but excellent at executing her vision, it seemed. Notably, however, her bass player was Sara Lee, who was the bass player in the rather significant post-punk band Gang of Four.
My point, I guess, is that talent doesn’t always make itself obvious. Sometimes you need to get your ass kicked by a bunch of fine musicians playing live. Simi, it turns out, is an ace fiddle player, and an able guitar picker. She was also happy to get down on the dance floor to promote the idea that folks should be shaking to her music.
We were. Alas, this clip shows some of her charm but doesn’t get the hip shaking. But let’s keep an eye out for that. And go see Simi and band i they play your town.
My friend Sheila bought me a copy of Simi Stone’s CD, which was nicely autographed:
More or less in ascending order. These are the Beatles songs I most want to hear right now, so I’m listening to them and writing them down.
Everything that made the Beatles great was there on their first album. They recorded better later and developed their ideas fantastically, of course. If you ask people what makes the Beatles great, one of the first two things you hear will be “the singing.” I contend that they were a great band without any singing, and even without Ringo. I dig the shit out of this song, and if any of you musicians would care to punk it up with me I’d be delighted. This is 1962 at the Tony Sheridan session in Hamburg with Pete Best on drums, song credited Lennon/Harrison:
Fast-forward to Revolver. I believe Lawr loves this one too. The better the song, the more all of them are at their best:
They were also a smoking rocknroll band and the best cover band by a thousand miles. They made MOTOWN better, they exponentialized Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins and Larry Williams and the Shirelles, and they gave Chuck Berry and Little Richard runs for their money. This neglected aspect is worth more than two songs but I don’t want to BORE you or anything:
Love Ringo especially on that one. Speaking of Ringo, might as well continue with the first song on their first album, talking ’bout boys:
Think the New York Dolls copped any ideas from that? The Beatles copped ideas from the Everly Bros., not only the singing but the abundant use of acoustic guitars. They took it much further, especially for rhythmic twists. as on this next one. Also John’s low harmony is one of his many strokes of genius, and the way he breaks out of it is why we are here:
I like that vein let’s milk it, and if anything this is even better:
Love the way they double the piano and guitar in the solo, and once again that rhythm is so swinging/rocking, Ringo’s fills especially. So I’m thinking how I’m neglecting Paul and that made me think of George. One of the greatest albums of all time is George’s Greatest Beatles Songs, and this isn’t even my fave. But talk about your unusually compelling melodies, not to mention the harmony on the chorus, not to mention Paul’s bass.
So I might as well do my fave George tune, as it happens his first:
Actually, if you said that Don’t Bother Me is the very best Beatles’ song ever I wouldn’t argue. You can laugh at me I don’t care, I will laugh in turn when you tell me that “A Day in the Life” is greater. I put it this way: if “A Day in the Life” was the Beatles’ first record, they never would have made it. Had the latter day Beatles sprung on the world in 1967, they would have been a cult band like Love. Songs like Don’t Bother Me are what made the Beatles the phenomenon they were.
Damn, I’m not going to get a Paulie in the Top 10. It seems wrong but too bad, he’s done very well in the songs I’ve already played. I think Paul’s best songs are You Won’t See Me and What You’re Doing. On another day they would make my list. But this is now. I think I said on this blog that Anytime At All was my #1, but on this I’ll make it #2. John at his desperate best:
So for #1, I don’t know how it is possible to hear a song so many times and still get chills. How rare is that magic? The bridge of this song is too perfect for words:
So I get 30 points to divide up. How about 6 points each for No Reply and Anytime At All, 4 points for Don’t Bother Me, and 2 points each for the other seven.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED