This is a live cut. It’s a very fine rock song, and it only appears on the CBGB live compilation album, which was something of a survey of the bands who played CBGB who hadn’t yet signed major label deals. Mink DeVille, the Shirts, and Tuff Darts did, I don’t think the others did, but it’s still a pretty fun slice of the times.
I can’t believe we haven’t posted this one before. This is one of my favorite songs of all time.
Willy DeVille’s romantic songs kill me. This is pitch perfect, as is the whole Cabretta album. This music was taken at the time as some sort of revivalism, which as Gene said in the earlier post wasn’t handled all that much by the critics of the time, but that view misses the genius that somehow transforms that old time into the modern age. These songs aren’t oldie goldie mimicry but cries from the heart that use the languages available to express themselves most fully and directly.
In other words, rock ‘n’ roll.
One way to go with Mink Deville is the hard rock. Go here:
The sound of this YouTube clip and all those I listened isn’t as rich as the album, but this is an extraordinary rock ‘n’ roll performance from top to bottom.
Part of the fun and most of the drawback in writing about music is finding comps. Tracing the roots and the blending of styles is a great game, but it tends to rob the artists of their own identities. The more traditional the music the harder it is to escape the trap in print. The J. Geils Band, George Thorogood, ZZ Top – I mean, they were all really popular but not critically respected. Mink DeVille was another, not as successful but they could have been. The big critics hardly wrote about them. Christgau dismissed them with faint praise as genre-mongers, Greil Marcus never heard of them (or the Dolls or the Heartbreakers either, he probably hated Humble Pie and The Stooges too). I don’t think Lester Bangs said anything. Only Robert Palmer ever gave them their due: “Mr. DeVille is a magnetic performer, but his macho stage presence camouflages an acute musical intelligence; his songs and arrangements are rich in ethnic rhythms and blues echoes, the most disparate stylistic references, yet they flow seamlessly and hang together solidly. He embodies (New York’s) tangle of cultural contradictions while making music that’s both idiomatic, in the broadest sense, and utterly original.”
Something very few if any critics ever say: these guys rock. It’s the crucial datum scrupulously avoided.
Mink DeVille was one of the few real rocknroll bands in the early CB’s/Max’s scene. They opened for The Heartbreakers many times and always knocked us out.
As Palmer noted, they straddled genre lines. This song has John Lee Hooker and rockabilly and Aftermath but is a thing of its own. It’s not even their best song but I’ll hear it out every time.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Today’s post is another entry in the Evolution Series. This time focused on Stephen Stills’ “Bluebird.”
“Bluebird” was originally recorded when Stills was with the Buffalo Springfield. Another song supposedly written for Judy Collins (Suite: Judy Blue Eyes being the other), it was released in multiple versions. The first was on Buffalo Springfield Again (1967) and ran about 4½ minutes. It was also released as the follow up single to their big hit “For What It’s Worth” in a version edited down to 2 minutes. In 1973, the band released a 2 disc “greatest hits” compilation simply titled Buffalo Springfield that contained a longer 9 minute version. That’s the first SotW.
This is a vinyl rip because this version has never been released on CD and is currently out of print. The psychedelic Technicolor extended jam, and Stills and Young guitar solos (a preview of what would come from CSNY) begins right about where you would expect the banjo ending to start in the standard album version.
A couple of years later, in 1969, Joe Walsh’s James Gang released their first album, Yer’ Album. This disc contained a slowed down, dreamy 6 minute version of “Bluebird.”
As proof that you can’t keep a good song down, it was recorded again by Hookfoot and chosen as the lead off cut for their 1971 self-titled album. Hookfoot was a band featuring members of Elton John’s earliest touring band – guitarist Caleb Quaye, Ian Duck, Roger Pope and David Glover — all of whom also played on John’s Tumbleweed Connection, one of his best albums.
Their version is a little peppier, funkier and more guitar driven.
Other versions are also available for you to check out. Bonnie Raitt included it on her debut record and Stills, who has been known to recycle his own songs, closed Stephen Stills 2 with “Bluebird Revisited.”
One more thing… For kicks and giggles you should check out this YouTube video of a 1967 episode of the CBS detective show Mannix that features Buffalo Springfield playing “Bluebird” in a “hippy” nightclub scene.
Enjoy… until next week.
My first experience of Mustang Sally was this single by the Young Rascals.
The history of white acts covering hits originally performed by black acts is long, deep and full of argument.
I mean, Pat Boone?
The Rascals, as they grew up to be known, were better than exploiters, but where you draw the line concerning cultural appropriation might color your opinion. What I’m sure of is the Rascals loved R&B music, and brought their own shape (my first thought was to say color, but that would be wrong) to it.
If you doubt the Rascals soul, try this:
This is Miles and his septet at their best defining jazz/rock fusion. With John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Billy Cobham, Sonny Sharock, and Michael Henderson, Davis and his band totally kick the shit out of this instrumental that was produced as the soundtrack for an animated film on the life of boxer Jack Johnson.
Perhaps this is why Miles is in the R’n’R HOF, although it is ridiculous to consider who is in and out of that stupid museum, although I actually I do want to go there: I just don’t care who is in much anymore.
To the point, Deep Purple is in on the strength of two hits and a so-so album. This cut from Miles, along with the back side (a track called “Yesternow”) is better than anything Deep Purple ever imagined.
Add in Bitches Brew to the cartel of fusion Miles did, not to mention his incredible albums, Kind of Blue, and In a Silent Way and it is pretty easy to see why Miles et al are so highly thought of by all who love brainy music.
We could write tributes to those who have passed nearly every day. Today it is for Bonny Rice, whose biggest hit was released as Sir Mack Rice, who was a member of the Falcons in Detroit (with Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd, and Joe Stubbs), but who is best known for writing Wilson Pickett’s hit, Mustang Sally, and cowriting the Staple Singers’ Respect Yourself (with Luther Ingram).
The best anecdote from the NY Times’s obituary today: The song was originally called Mustang Mama, but Aretha Franklin, who played piano on the demo, convinced him to change the name.
Here’s the Wilson Pickett version, which was an R&B and pop hit. After the song there are some details about the writing of the song.
If there is an ur-moment of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll I would name the Sun Sessions with Elvis Presley. This is Elvis at his greatest, with a band that cranks it up.
If asked about the birth of rock I would chatter about Joe Turner and Little Richard. These are the giant creators of rock ‘n’ roll. And there was more going on at Sun than just Elvis in 1954.
But there are two records I put on when I want to hear the original stuff. The Sun Sessions with Elvis Presley and whatever compilation of Buddy Holly tunes I can find at hand.
Scotty Moore had jazz ambitions, but he gladly took the session backing Elvis. And you can hear in the finger picking that he inserts along with his rhythm part that his ambitions are greater than simply sideman.
Moore’s guitar is essential to Mystery Train.
What surprised me reading about this legend’s career was that his footprint wasn’t large. He made a deep impression early, and had influence forever, but there is not a big body of work out there that is Scotty Moore’s.
Still, this grab from Wikipedia explains his importance and his reticent impact:
“Moore is given credit as a pioneer rock ‘n’ roll lead guitarist, though he characteristically downplayed his own innovative role in the development of the style. “It had been there for quite a while”, recalled Moore. “Carl Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson, and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old.”[7] Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as “essentially … an Elvis Presley construction”: “the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country”.[8] In “That’s All Right”, the Presley trio’s first record, Scotty Moore’s guitar solo, “a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion.”[9]“
Everybody knows Jonathan loved the Velvet Underground. And John Cale produced the first Modern Lovers album, which is one of fewer than five epochal punk albums.
Later, Jonathan released this old-school rock ‘n’ roll sound, which has a fabulous sense of rhyme.
