nuggets volume one: ‘bobby charles’

as i have stated before, one of the main purposes for starting this site was my disagreement with those people who believe that ‘they don’t make music like they used to’. you just have to get past the industry filters and seek things out. to a certain extent, that has always been true. there is plenty of high quality material out there from the past that never saw the light of day. it is in this spirit that i have decided to start a new category – one dedicated to visiting vintage releases that didn’t get the attention they deserve, for whatever reason. we shall dub this new category ‘nuggets’. here is the first installment.

robert charles guidry was a cajun from louisiana who was best known for writing ‘see you later, alligator’ and ‘walking to new orleans’. in the summer of 1971 he was on the lam due to drug charges in nashville, and at some point arrived in woodstock, ny. a couple of local musicians took him in and and gave him shelter. they eventually started introducing him to other musicians in the area, including rick danko from the band. rick introduced him to albert grossman, who was the manager for dylan and the band. grossman offered him a deal: i will contact the powers that be down in nashville and get the charges dropped if you will sign a five year contract with me. charles agreed, and work got under way to record his first record under bearsville records – grossman’s new label. grossman also had a studio built on his property (called bearsville, of course), and local musicians started congregating there to begin working on the demos for the project. in addition, the studio was frequently visited by levon helm, garth hudson, and danko from the band, mac rebennack (dr. john), and nashville pedal steel guru ben keith (redeye readers may be familiar with his work with neil young, beginning with the harvest album).

sessions began in earnest in the winter of ’71, usually after the local bar closed. all involved thought that they were still cutting demos, and they never got around to any ‘final cuts’. what we have here is a series of vignettes of a bunch of guys just messing around with sketches of songs in a retrofitted barn out in the woods. very laid back, the songs all have a swampy, sleepy, country funk feel, and bobby’s southern molasses vocals are perfect throughout. released in 1972, it sold poorly, due in large part to bobby’s lack of interest in promoting or touring to support the album. i found it for 9 bucks on amazon, and rhino records produced a three cd offering in 2011 after he died. the latter went for over fifty bucks, and that was a little rich for me. add the former to your library, and you will not be disappointed.

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/13/150960729/the-untold-story-of-singer-bobby-charles

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16118-bobby-charles/

http://www.rhino.com/product/bobby-charles-handmade

clearing the spindle

here are a few things that i have been listening to. none of it conforms to any unifying theme, other than the fact that a selection either wasn’t really a recent release, or it didn’t completely overwhelm me. the first one is in the former category.

i had a group of neighbors over new year’s eve. i had recently introduced one of them to this site, and he asked me if i ever listen to ‘newer material’. it was his impression that my recent posts were dominated by older artists, and that is fair. as in many things in life, it all goes in cycles. i just really haven’t heard too much in the last couple of months that have really inspired me. he suggested that i check out leon bridges. i had heard of him, and he consistently showed up on my ‘recommended’ lists at various sites, but had never pulled the trigger. so i ordered it the next day. glad i did. leon was discoverd in fort worth texas in late 2014, and released this album in the summer of 2015. honoring the great r&b sounds of the sixties, it is a flawless little piece of soul. i am anxiously looking forward to his next release.

blue rodeo is band from canada that has been around for over 30 years. i had never heard of them, but found their most recent on my recommended list and took a chance.

my best way to describe this is a canuck version of the jayhawks, with maybe a more commercial feel. you can hear a lot of influences on this, whether the aforementioned jayhawks, early r.e.m. (specifically peter buck), roger mcguinn, newgrass revival, and others that i haven’t quite put my finger on. harmonies are superb, the musicianship spot on, and the songwriting is very good. there are many cuts that are really good, but maybe half of them are a tad overdone, over produced, a little too polished.the last cut seems to flirt with prog rock, and should have been left off. but i will keep an eye on them moving forward.

my cousin tom was over thanksgiving, and we got to talking about music. we discovered we had a mutual appreciation for ryan adams, and he turned me on to a release of his from 2015, ‘live at carnegie hall’. of course, there is a 6 album vinyl box set of these shows, but i opted for the 2 disc version.

all acoustic, extremely well performed, and amusing banter between a few of the songs. he has a reputation of being less than friendly live sometimes, but not here. not quite sure why, but one of my favorite songs of his is ‘sylvia plath’. a great version is included here.

in turn i turned him onto the 2016 release of the deluxe version of his solo debut, ‘heartbreaker’.

two discs, the first being a remastered version of the original, the second outtakes and demos. also included is a dvd with a live acoustic concert from the mercury lounge in nyc from 2000.

in a previous post i reviewed a book about owsley ‘bear’ stanley, a legend from the sixties who was known for a number of things, one of them being a recording archivist for much of the sound coming out of the bay area. in the book he referenced a recent release from his archives, a live performance of big brother and the holding company, featuring janis joplin at the carousel ballroom in 1968.

so i bought it. bear was very opinionated in his theories on recording music, and he was a technical genius. without him, we would have less of a glimpse of what this truly innovative era sounded like. it is in this tradition that he felt it was important to get this out in the public domain. historically significant, it is a little bit rough around the edges. janis had been thrust upon the band by their manager, and what we have here is the established san fran psychedelic band doing their best to share a stage with a newcomer to the area, someone who would eventually outgrow them and become a shooting star.

she would be dead a little over 2 years later. here she is in her breakout performance at the monterey pop festival. the woman in the crowd wearing shades that looks mesmerized is mama cass from the mama and papas.

i’m with her

legend has it that david crosby (fresh off of getting fired from the byrds) and stephen stills (reeling from buffalo springfield falling apart) were working on a song over at joni mitchell’s house. graham nash was in town for a hollies tour, and stopped by the party. when he joined in on the second chorus, adding a high harmony on top of their voices, the room went silent. the chemistry of the trio seemed like manna from heaven. and the rest is history.

i can imagine that a similar thing may have happened when these three chanteuses happened to join in on a song somewhere. each of them are established artists on their own, but their genres are similar enough that there have been plenty of chances to cross each others paths either in the studios or on the road. this was essentially a side project a year or two ago, and i only recently saw the video of them doing the great john hiatt’s ‘crossing muddy waters’. if you are not familiar with sara watkins, sarah jarosz, or aoife o’donovan, then this is a good introduction to their work. their vocal blendings are just divine.

each of them has also released solo material in the last year. my favorite of the three is sarah jarosz, but they are all worth a venture. sarah’s is a solid offering of a hybrid of bluegrass and slow blues. sara watkins’ release is more eclectic, with a few more edgy pieces and occasional darker lyrics – i get the impression she is going through some tough times. o’donovan’s record has more of a contemporary feel, with some celtic shadings.

http://imwithherband.com/

‘blue and lonesome’, the rolling stones

the stones haven’t released a studio album since 2005’s ‘a bigger bang’, and they entered mark knopfler’s british grove studios in west london in december of 2015 with the intent of laying down some tracks for a new one. struggling with the room and hitting a dead end on a particular track, keith decided to take a break and had the boys rip out a version of little walter’s ‘blue and lonesome’. they did one more take and asked legendary producer don was if they recorded it. luckily the answer was yes. they so much enjoyed the playback that they tried a few more old blues covers before calling it a day. mick went home and compiled a wish list of more standards that night. they then returned a month later, finishing the rest of the tracks in two days, keeping the same theme going. eric clapton, who was also recording an album in the room next door, joined them on two of the numbers.

the end result was a collection of tributes to the genre and artists that had inspired their music so long ago. no originals and no overdubs, just a bunch of flat out grungy tracks by a bunch of crusty veterans. they are all in fine form here, especially mick. in a rolling stone interview, keith said this might be mick’s best album. not sure about that, but the comment might be partly driven by the fact that mick plays a ton of blues-harp on this one, and keith has always been a big fan of his playing. apart from clapton, the band is rounded out by darryl jones on bass and chuck leavell on piano. they never got around to finishing the album of originals (at least not yet), and so they decided to release this one for the time being. twelve tracks, in varying blues styles, all very good.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-the-rolling-stones-new-album-blue-lonesome-w450645

bob dylan: ‘the real royal albert hall 1966 concert’

one of the most copied bootlegs in music history is the legendary royal albert hall concert from dylan’s legendary 1966 spring tour of australia and europe. there was only one small problem – the show that was so widely disseminated is actually a show a few days earlier at the manchester free trade hall – the show that is documented in dylan’s bootleg series volume 4.

as part of his ever evolving project of releasing his vast archives, he recently put out a 36 disk set of the entire tour, but also added this release of probably the most famous concert of all of them – the tour finale at royal albert hall from may 1966.

one of the more compelling features of this tour was bob’s decision to hire a bunch of relative unknowns to accompany him on the second set of each night, the ‘electric’ portion. known then as ‘the hawks’, they eventually become known to the world as ‘the band’. most of the world was not ready for the electric dylan, and he was summarily booed in every show on that tour. for the most part the musicians handled it well, but it did wear on them (in fact, levon helm quit right before they left for australia). if you have ever seen d.a. pennebaker’s documentary of this tour – ‘don’t look back’ – you will also be aware that bob’s health was steadily deteriorating throughout. robbie robertson and his manager albert grossman found him in his hotel room after the final show nearly unconscious and delirious from exhaustion. two months later he would be critically injured on his motorcycle, forcing the cancellation of the next leg of the tour. in fact he would not tour again till 1974. essentially this was the demarcation point for the next direction he would take in his career, holing up in woodstock with the band and creating ‘the basement tapes’ and the songs that would show up on ‘john wesley harding’.

this release is two discs of unreleased material (except for ‘visions of johanna’ which appears on ‘biograph’). the first is the acoustic set, and the second is the electric set with the hawks. considering the technical issues they were having with equipment, the cumulative effects of a world wide tour, the animosity of the crowd, and the fact that many of britain’s musical royalty were in attendance (including the beatles), the performance here is just stunning. having released three of the most important albums in rock history in the previous 18 months (‘bringing it all back home’, highway 61 revisited’. and ‘blonde on blonde’), this is a fitting capstone to one of the most productive bursts of creativity in modern musical history.