Jody Rosen has written a long and worthwhile story about masters archives, jumping off from a fire that burned about 120,000 masters of the Universal Music Group in 2006.
He does a great job explaining why the masters of albums by Elton John and Nirvana and Muddy Waters and John Coltrane, among many others, are valuable even when you can stream their music online.
But then he gets grittier, and talks about Don Bennett, whose masters burned in the UMG fire, and whose career is almost impossible to survey. He was a vocalist in the Chocolate Watchband, which I’d heard of, but he also had a solo career, which has almost completely disappeared.
The point? Lots of music that is disregarded at first turns out to be valuable later.
So, here is the Chocolate Watchband. And a plea for Rosen to digitize the album he bought and get it out there!
I was listening to a Spotify Daily Mix a
few days ago that was feeding me a healthy dose of Nick Lowe songs… and I was
digging it.
Lowe began his musical career in the Pub
Rock scene in early ‘70s London. By the
mid/late ‘70s he was working with Stiff Records as a producer and recording
artist – vaguely associated with “punk” rock, but not really.
His first solo album was called Jesus of Cool (1978) in the UK but was given the less offensive title Pure Pop for Now People in the US (with a reprogrammed song order). It contained Lowe’s first single release for Stiff, “So It Goes.”
Pure pop, indeed! The song ended up on the soundtrack of The
Ramones film Rock ‘n Roll High School.
Lowe’s next album, Labour of Lust (1979), contained one of his most popular hits,
“Cruel to Be Kind.”
Lowe’s third solo LP, Nick the Nife (1982), gave us the power pop classic “Let Me Kiss Ya.”
This song is so innocent and sweet it
could give you a cavity.
Lowe continued to write and record
terrific songs. In 1994, Lowe released
one of my favorites in his catalog – “I Live on a Battlefield” (co-written by
Paul Carrack) – from The Impossible Bird
album.
An irony of his career is that he’s
become a wealthy man from a song he wrote that was made more famous by Elvis
Costello — “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” But the big bucks came from the song’s
inclusion on the soundtrack to the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner film The Bodyguard (1992) and it wasn’t even
Costello’s version! The massive sales success
of that album generated royalties to Lowe estimated to exceed $2.5
million. Not bad!!!
Lowe was married to Carlene Carter for
11 years. That made him Johnny Cash’s
stepson-in-law. He played in “supergroup”
Little Village with John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, and Jim Keltner. He is also one of a relatively small collection
of artists that have performed at least 5 times at the free, San Francisco
music festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.
All of these connections put him in damn good company!
No wonder I was digging that Spotify
playlist. Nick Lowe is a treasure.
I seem to have posted only once about Dr. John here, back in 2014, when Mac Rebennack played piano at Louis Armstrong’s old house in Corona, Queens, NYC.
But Tom wrote a piece about him, which he reposted today, because Dr. John has died at 77. Too young for sure.
There were many Dr. Johns over the years. The original was a Mac construction that he wasn’t even supposed to perform, but when he did it stuck. It led to hits, like Right Place Wrong Time, and the theme to the Curious George movie, but the shtick didn’t always serve the elegant and weird music Mac was making at the beginning, like Danse Fambeaux, and made throughout his career.
Voodoo? Sure. But also lovely music that avoided the anthropological labels the Dr. John persona brought with him..
Lawr posted this when it first came out, if I remember correctly. It’s a terrific song, and I was reminded about it by Jade Bird, who is also English, hammers an acoustic guitar, is awfully young looking, sings with passion and is called by two four-letter names with the initials JB. Weird, right?
Enjoy.
I’m very saddened to learn that Dr. John, the Night Tripper has died. Mac Rebennack (Dr. John) was a true original. This link connects back to a SotW I posted in 2014.
I first admired Tony Glover’s writing in Rolling Stone in the early 1970s. He wrote a great story about a man who claimed to be the world’s oldest man, a story I think of often.
In his obituary in today’s New York Times Glover’s writing is mentioned, and he’s quoted saying of Jimi Hendrix: Hendrix plays Delta blues for sure — only the Delta may have been on Mars.
Glover reviewed the first New York Dolls album for Rolling Stone, too, which certainly turned me on to that great band. It’s a review that ranks the Dolls with the Allman Brothers as great real bands of the time, which is very true and not at all obvious, which is what we look to writers to do.
One of my favorite obscure records, one of those that not many know, is Ashes in My Whiskey, the record Glover and Dave Ray made in 1990.
Ray Barretto was a Puerto Rican conga
drummer that released dozens of Latin albums between 1960 and his death in
2006. He was a sought after session
musician for many great names in the jazz world, including Kenny Burrell (Barretto
played on August 5th, 2017, SotW “Chitlins Con Carne”), Billy Cobham
(on his landmark Spectrum album),
Dizzy Gillespie, Yusef Lateef, Herbie Mann, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Stitt and
Weather Report.
But he also left his mark on popular music; appearing on recordings by The Bee Gees and Eddie Harris and performing as part of the Fania Allstars at the 1979 Havana Jam with the likes of Bonnie Bramlett, Rita Coolidge, Billy Joel, Kris Kristofferson, and Stephen Stills.
In his book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, Tom Moon chose Barretto’s Barretto Power (1972) as a “must find” listen. Today’s SotW is “Oye la noticia” (“Hear the news”) from that album.
Moon says this about the song:
“Oye la noticia” …begins
as a medium-tempo dance tune, but right around the three-minute mark, Barretto
breaks into a marathon conga roll that sends an unmistakable signal: Change is
coming. The percussionists heed his call. Within seconds, they begin smacking
the rhythm around, adding inspired jabs. These don’t simply outline the beat
but pummel it into submission with phrases that require both brute strength and
tremendous dexterity.
This tune was designed to get you up, on
your feet, and dancing. So stand up and shake it!
Hot Tuna was the spin-off group from Jefferson Airplane, led by guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady in 1969. “Water Song” was on their 3rd album, Burgers (1972), that also featured (ex-Jefferson Airplane) violinist Papa John Creach, and drummer Sammy Piazza.
“Water Song” is ideally named. The shimmering acoustic guitar and rolling
drum fills evoke the image of a rippling
stream flowing through a forest of dappled light.
If you’re into the technical aspects of
guitar playing, check out this video of Kaukonen teaching how to tune your
instrument to open G and play “Water Song.”
As an instrumental, “Water Song” was very popular at WZBC in the ‘70s, used by many
of the DJs as the bed played behind their reading of the nightly live music
updates.
“Water Song” is also a fan
favorite. Hot Tuna often saves it for
the encore at their live performances, still to this day.
